Home→Forums→Tough Times→Trance of Shame and Unworthiness
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September 28, 2017 at 11:47 am #170831ZeezaParticipant
Hello,
I would like to share my story and take a step back to be able to see how my thoughts are shaping my reality. To start out with I have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and was diagnosed when I was 17. I moved across the country when I was 18 to restart my life and get away from the life that caused so much pain ( I was molested by my mom’s boyfriend, physically/emotionally abused, and grew up with my parents addicted to heroin and pills etc). I am now 24 and I have come a long way from being in and out of hospitalizations, intensive outpatient therapy, and counseling. I started getting my life back on track and decided to get my degree in Biochemistry, I am 38 credits away from my degree. Over the summer, one of my professors reminded me of my abuser, and all the work I had done to learn how to cope with PTSD fell out the window. I spent most days at home in panic, shame, and fighting the urge to self-harm. I had self-harmed form the ages of 11 to 20 so I was determined not to go back. I sought out counseling from school and barely passed my classes. After the quarter, I went back to visit my family, where all of the memories that haunt me had occurred. I started to self harm again, telling myself it is just this one more time so I can numb myself from the thought that I am one mile away from the man who molested me. It felt like I was playing a role to fulfill my family’s expectations, while they could never acknowledge or say what had happened to me was true. When I was diagnosed at 17, my family told me I was just seeking attention and that nothing ever happened. I can understand the confusion from my family, I was a suicidal straight A student and I always kept a smile on my face even though every night I would self harm. I can validate myself but what is hurting me the most is feeling like I do not belong anywhere, and that no matter how hard I try the memories will haunt me and interrupt my life. It makes me feel hopeless. I started self-harming again today and i just couldn’t stop for hours. It scared me because it felt like I lost control. Another layer to my mind breaking over my own meaning is a break up. I broke up with my SO whom I live with, and shared the longest healthiest relationship with. He is kind, patient, and would never yell at me or shame me and it was something to get used to. It was something to let someone get so close to me. When I started going to a dark place over the summer with PTSD, I didn’t want to bring him down with me. I broke up with him before I left to visit my family. I also took some mind altering substances and felt like I fell in love with someone else from the surge of lust. I was mistaken of what love was, love is a long lasting security and commitment, not the rush of chemicals it feels to meet someone lovely. I wanted to believe in love at first site, and that love was all I needed to feel hopeful. I am starting to think I have addiction to codependency and avoiding negative feelings at all cost. I missed my first day of classes and impulsively selfharmed again. I feel like I am falling down a dark tunnel inside my mind into a deep trance of shame and feeling unworthy. Suicidal thoughts creep in my mind; like I don’t deserve to live. I want to repair my relationship with my SO but I know if he finds out I was with someone else he would hurt and then hate me. External world, I know what to do to chase my dreams and be successful, internally I am destroying myself with regret and shame. I want to love and be loved but I think all the scars of the past and my own negative self-talk is blocking me. I have moved 11 times in the past 5 years, I keep running and my emotions catch up with me eventually. I feel too much or nothing at all. Numb is where I am at now, and I am worried all the good things I have built for myself have been self sabotaged. I am afraid of myself, and I know that awareness is the master of my mind, not my thoughts emotions or memories but I have such a hard time not letting regret and shame define me. I always tell myself life gives you whatever experience you need for the evolution of your consciousness and it makes me feel like my suffering isn’t meaningless, I will grow stronger I hope. And then the other part of my mind says if you could grow stronger you would have already healed and the past wouldn’t haunt you like it does and I get stuck in this argumentative circle in my mind. I tell myself, relationships help you see the parts of yourself that had been hidden in how you love and in how you see yourself but they wont take the pain away. I wish I could learn how to live and not just endure. Learn how to be me without saying sorry. Learn how to love without pushing everyone away, learn how to hope without looking for evidence of future pain. Some days I have a beautiful creative thoughts and I can trust that everything will be ok, and in a split second my flashback or something will send me into a fetal position crying wishing I could just end it all. and it happens so fast that it feels like I have no control, and I want control in my life so badly. I hate feeling/thinking like this because I know it brings the people around me down. It is easier for me to be positive with others in mind than for myself, and thats what keeps me living. I am posting this to hopefully be openminded to other’s insight with coping with deep pain and learning how to build a life where one feels meaning and belonging. I am posting this to convince myself there is a way out of this, I just have to reach out and look harder.
September 28, 2017 at 9:02 pm #170861AmuParticipantHello Zeeza,
Thank you for your vulnerability and for sharing this. I read your post and immediately created an account on tiny buddha just so that I could respond.
I am so deeply sorry for the pain that you have gone through. You are not alone. I don’t have anything groundbreaking to say, but please, keep going. It will get better. I’m sure you have heard that a million times, and I’m sure it’s hard to not understand why sometimes we feel back at square one. BUT YOU ARE NOT BACK AT SQUARE ONE. Every gain you’ve made is a gain you cannot lose. Every gain you have will stay with you. Sometimes these cycles of trauma come up again but you are healing in every single moment of it. I promise. Keep going. There is a way out of this. You’re doing great. Believe that.
-A
September 29, 2017 at 6:19 am #170901AnonymousGuestDear Zeeza:
It is not only the man who molested you who had injured you, it is also your family members who “”never acknowledge or say what had happened to me was true…my family told me I was just seeking attention and that nothing ever happened”
When they denied such a significant part of your personal experience, a trauma so devastating to you, they too are injuring you.
When you visited your family last, you started to self harm after four years abstinence, correct?
You listed a lot of thoughts, lots of thinking, in your post. But this one issue needs to be addressed first, according to my understanding: your future contact with your family.
If you are in regular contact, via phone and such, with the family members who denied then and still deny your traumatic experiences, then how can you possibly heal? I don’t see a way. Visiting your family is not congruent with healing. Do you agree?
I hope you resolve to renew your self harm abstinence and to no longer visit your family and that you succeed with these two resolutions. That will be an excellent start, or re-start.
anita
March 20, 2018 at 12:44 pm #198439ZeezaParticipantThank you for the words of wisdom and support; I have taken it to heart. I have successfully abstained from self harm since I made this post five months ago. I got into therapy for a couple months and got through two more quarters. The break up ended badly with him slapping me. In retrospect I look at this post at how I questioned my decision to break up with him and my questions about love and relationships and it shows me how confused I am.
Two days ago I confronted my mother about the sexual abuse because she is in a romantic relationship with him. I started the conversation stating how I am afraid of him but I am more afraid of him taking my family away from me. My mother went into gaslighting mode. because he has sexually abused another family member before I was born, he convinced my mother it was an affair with a 12 year old so my mom didn’t see it as sexual abuse, and automatically went to debunking that incident before I could speak a word about mine. She interrogated me for details and pressured it out of me that he touched me while I was in bed at night. She kept saying not enough details. So I ended the conversation with that statement that it hurts me once to have the event happen and it hurts me again to have you deny it so I can’t have a relationship with you. I get a voicemail by accidental pocket dial from my mom talking to the abuser. The conversation is about me and his innocence but my mom states that she believes something must of happened. She called me again to ask for more details about the event which I did not answer and blocked her phone numbers. She has a child with him. I started playing psychologist in my head, like my mom can’t move past the denial because it hurts so much, or the abuser did this because he was abused which is all true. but I can’t be a psychologist. I can’t really ever understand what goes on in their minds. I can hardly understand myself.
So I wrote out commitments I have made to myself so when my motivation to live dwindles I have strength to fall back on. A part of me flashes between doubting myself that I can trust my own mind and wanting to just end my life, and another part of me flashes into debunking shame and trying to imagine what healing looks like. I started journaling as much as possible.
1) I commit myself to always having hope, to allow myself to breathe deeply to feel space expanding around me and connect my mind to beautiful imagery and soft music to remind my brain I can have positive emotions and to keep hope.
2) I commit myself to build a life worth living so I can never feel worthless. I see this as a commitment to be practice gratitude, and share empathy with others and myself. A life worth living is full of connection with others and myself. The ability to trust. The ability to be resilient to accept life. To be able to empower myself to make decisions and set healthy boundaries. The ability to be curious and learn without the fear of not being good enough. To maintain the mindset that trying is doing and learning is a from of play.
3) I commit myself to letting go of shame by being grounded in my body and in the current moment. Over time, I hope yoga, meditation, and hypnotherapy and diminish the power the messages of shame that keep resurfacing in my mind. The urge to control shame is so strong I think this is what leads me to self harm. The skills I need to diminish the power of shame is uncertain. I feel like it leads to being able to control the thoughts I tell myself, what I visualize, and what action I take to counterbalance these intruding thoughts. I really do believe that I become what I focus on. Energy flows where attention goes.
4) I commit myself to trust in a higher power. I do not believe in a specific religion, but I do believe we are souls having a human experience. I find heart shaped rocks that I interpret as a sign that I am loved. I have experienced psychosis so I am trying to be careful with how I envision this commitment. But in essence, I commit to knowing that awareness is the master of my mind and I am more than just thoughts and experiences and that I deserve to live.
I am hoping I can make a clear boundary in my mind with the past and with my mother so It can not intrude in my life anymore. Thank you for responding to my post, Amu, you are right, every gain made is a gain that can not be lost. And thank you Anita for helping my recognize how having contact with my mother was hurting me. I hope my internal compass makes setting boundaries simple. I have been stuck in my head for weeks not wanting to leave the house and just think and process and try to find a direction and I think this commitments are my direction. Now I just need to implement them.
March 21, 2018 at 9:18 am #198625AnonymousGuestDear Zeeza:
You are welcome. I am glad you are back to your thread.
Congratulations for being abstinent from self harm since September of last year and for completing two more quarters in your biochemistry studies.
In your commitments you stated your intent to “never feel worthless”. Unfortunately our feelings don’t respond to our intents. A commitment to do certain things and not do other things when feeling worthless is more doable, I believe.
Better have no contact with your mother and her boyfriend and anyone else who has hurt you and keeps hurting you. As you abstain from hurting yourself (self harm), also protect yourself from others hurting you. No one should be hurting you, not you, not your mother. Not anyone.
To continue healing, you need to be as safe as you can be, to be able to trust yourself to keep yourself as safe as it is possible for you.
anita
March 21, 2018 at 9:36 am #198633MarkParticipantZeeza,
I wish you well on your journey towards wellness.
An observation about the man who you broke up with, any man who physically hits a woman is someone is not the person for you. I don’t care how provoking you were. Stress and anger brings out the worse in us but that is no excuse.
Take care,
Mark -
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