I started this thread because I had noticed the question somewhere else and it really hit me. I wanted to explore it because while I have always noticed this challenge in people about "what to do with emotions, or how to surpress or hide them", I was very challenged this way myself "a lot" in my life. However, people have always misunderstood me too, thought I was strong, brave, and expected me to just be the one that knows so much that I should not struggle with my own feelings/emotions. Even if I was strong that I didn't have a right to my strong emotions and I was wrong if I did "not" see their own feelings/needs above my own.

I was the youngest, I was the smallest, and with what my environment was, I had to learn "how" to be strong and brave. However, to also be "sensitive" to the emotional needs of the others around me too. In a way, when I think about it, so much trickled down to me too.

The last time I talked to my older sister, she talked about when she took care of my grand nephew and how because he has Aspergers/Autism she tells him her rules are really simple, just "one" rule and that rule is "do what gammy says". Ok, I know what you are probably thinking, "well, that is probably much easier for a child like that". But, the thing about that rule is "that is and always has been how it is with my older sister". When we were growing up her nick name was "the princess" because the "princess rules and that's just how it is".

However, I did know that my older sister had her own challenges in the family, I did see it and I did empathize with her and I did give in to "her need to rule". I also felt that she was "burdened" by my older brother and even me, that she wanted to get away from "us" and be on her own as soon as she could. That horrific bus ride, oh she could not "wait" until that time came where she was not left with the inconvenience surrounding my older brother. She never liked my older brother, he was ALWAYS such a big inconvenience. She always resented the fact that she had to share my parents with two other children that kept my parents busy to where she did not get the attention "she" wanted and probably did "need". So, I do see how in ways she did feel "alone" too. She did get "away" from the horrible bus ride, she was four years ahead of my older brother in school and actually 5 years ahead of me, not seeing "my world and hell at all". And, I remember thinking, how lucky she is to "not be dealing with everything the way I was". What comes to my mind is "out of sight, out of mind" and that is where "she was" with me, so much she did not see of "my challenging world".

I am sharing this because I know others that also struggle with their siblings in different ways too. Often what I do hear is how often siblings seem to aclimate "better" to the dysfunction and even say it was not "that bad" somehow and can actually be distant and "unsupportive and invalidating". Often what siblings do is often say, "you had it better than me, you don't know how it affected me", too. The truth is, children live in their own worlds and tend to see how the family universe affects "them" and often really don't see their siblings and how the family universe affects them. As the youngest child, where it was "all" my universe, all of it, I saw each one and their needs and if I was going to survive somehow, I better figure out how to see the needs of each entity. To try to figure out how my little world could feel "safe" in the universe of my family that revolved around me.

When I think about the things that "trigger me", it is typically when someone doesn't want to "know" my side of a challenge, doesn't want to believe I am challenged, and stands over me in a "condescending" I know all about you and your opinions are "unworthy", and you better bow down to "my" opinions. And quite honestly, when I was at my worst, so unbelievably bad in that psych ward, that all came down on me REALLY BADLY. My older sister sat across from me and was so angry with such and angry stern face and condescendingly told me that if I did not "SNAP out of it, I would lose EVERYTHING, my family, farm, EVERYTHING". And, she would not allow my mother or father to come and see me either. I NEVER FELT SO ABANDONED IN MY WHOLE LIFE.

My room was so cold because the heat was not working in my room at that psych ward. I was also in shock, but I didn't know what "shock" meant. I never felt so alone and unsafe and abandoned in my whole life, and I have been through some awful things. I did not have any "privacy" either and I tried so hard to create my own privacy by taking the flimsy blanket I was given and hiding underneath it in an effort to shut everything out and try to stop shivering. The one person that would never have allowed any of that to happen, my mother, was not allowed to visit me, my older sister would "not" allow it.

It is a horrible thing when people around you "emotionally isolate you", I AM SO SORRY FOR OTHERS WHO EXPERIENCE THAT. I had to literally BEG to get out of that psych ward too. I was pretty much "dumped" in that place where I was surrounded by very confused and mentally ill people, many of them on several medications too, and wow, were they so CONFUSED. I was left in that place for 9 days, thats an eternity in my condition, an eternity when I had absolutely no privacy at all too. I sat at a table for a Thanksgiving meal, with all these strangers and I REALLY WAS TREATED LIKE I WAS TOO DAMAGED TO EVEN GET TO SEE MY OWN LOVING "MOTHER". I knew my older sister was having her annual Thanksgiving gathering too, her Martha Stewart perfection, and I was TOO DAMAGED to be included in that family gathering. No one came to visit me either, I was SO ALONE, I can't say enough how ALONE I WAS.

I was trying to figure out how to deal with that emotionally/psychologically and I guess I just wandered around so alone. I ended up finding this room with chairs and a TV, I had not known that was there even. The room was empty and I sat there trying to watch the TV, just someplace for my mind to go? As I was sitting in that room alone trying to escape in whatever was on that TV, a young man came in and that triggered me tbh, funny, how at the time I did not even know "what" trigger meant. I did even know what "freeze" response was, but that is what I did, I just froze. This young man began to tell me he was Jesus Christ and that he could see that I was in a lot of pain and lonely too. He told me that he was going to take care of that, he was going to help others and then give up his life so people would again see how "humanity was not caring" anymore. He told me if I let him touch me he would take away my pain, he said this in such a way that he believed what he said, that he did have that "power" in him. Wow, I was "in freeze mode", and yet I was so lost and lonely and confused that I remember thinking, "Oh, if only he COULD take away my pain". I knew nothing about post traumatic stress, nothing about fight/flight/freeze, no one even mentioned any of that to me during my time in that place either. I let him touch my leg and after he did that, I slipped out of "freeze" and went into "flight" and somehow made it back to my cold room where I fashioned my little tent of escape with this flimsy blanket that really did not provide any warmth. I had to learn how to sleep every fifteen minutes somehow because the staff came in and checked on me every fifteen minutes. I could not close the door either, and that was something that had been important to me so many times in my life too. I hid behind so many doors trying to get a door between me and someone intruding on me. I was not going to see that really until much later though. I could not even shut the bathroom door when they gave me a medication that made me so sick I spent the day kneeling at the toilet in my room, my cold room. I remember a nurse who was mean to me about that too because I was "missing group" that day too. She refused to believe that I was actually really "sick"
that day.

I had a friend that called and told me she was coming to visit me. My friend told me I had to take a shower and she told me that if I did not she would not stay. So I braved it and took a shower, and I did not have privacy with that either, I had to ask for my hair dryer and make up and I had to dry my hair and put on make up with someone watching me. And she was watching me and commenting on how I dryed my hair and did my makeup, and that was always something I considered "very private" and I felt so invaded with this stranger hovering over me. I have to say, that was the "only" shower I took in that place.

My friend told me that I had to "pretend" I was "better" no matter how hard it was. It was the only way "out". "You can do this OE, you can just pretend no matter what so you can get out of this awful place".

So, I pretended and kept asking "when" can I go. Oh how I wanted to get home to my own bed and finally really "sleep", that is all I thought about. And when my husband finally agreed to come and get me, he did not want to, I see that in my files, HE was not READY, it was all about HIM. And during that long ride home, it was very CLEAR to me, that HE WAS ANGRY AND THE ALL ABOUT HIM WAS THE NAME OF THE GAME.

On the long ride home, I just kept thinking, I have to find a way, dig really deep somehow, even though I am so exhausted, more exhausted than when I was taken to that awful place, I had to PRETEND and figure out how to IGNORE his angry body language and angry face and all about HOW ANGRY "HE" IS. I was THE PROBLEM for everyone and it was quite clear that NO ONE in that place I had spent so much time in talked to ANY of my family about WHY I was struggling. "I" was not even told either, so I really did feel like WHATEVER IT WAS WAS MY FAULT SOMEHOW.

For a month and a week now, I have been "reliving that" experience. I get the shivers every night, I am not sleeping well, my body is reliving all of those memories too. And all I want to do is SLEEP. And it's also the same scenario too where I CAN'T TALK ABOUT IT EITHER. And I had also tried to take a new medication that made me very sick. I genuinely did not see something, it doesn't even matter, same thing "HOW LONG"? My body is now in so much pain too. I honestly don't even know "how" my body is holding up to all of this either.

When someone says, "we never know what is going on in someone's mind", you can but you have to be "willing to listen". It's amazing how people lack the capacity to do that, even professionals that I have had the misfortune of experiencing first had. It's pretty sad to have to have therapy to help with the bad therapy one had. What I find very hard though, is how just having that validated, doesn't help when I am in the middle of "reliving" something that traumatized me on top of already being traumatized. Two words without an answer can turn into such debilitation for me. "How long"? It seems like that has been a constant with me now too. Those 9 days, every day, I asked that question and did not get the answer until the 9th day when it was determined I could finally be free. 7 years and counting about that same question "How long" no answer "yet" to that one. How long before I get to finish being deposed, that never got answered either. How long do I have to be stuck with this Lawyer, that took six years before it was obvious how bad it was.

I am very tired, I do try every day, one day at a time and have had to learn with simply "not knowing how long".

OE