Nightmares and retraumitization

Ok. Really sorry it didn't work out for you. Do you meditate at least once daily? 5 minutes a day can change your life. Does mine

Yes, this is true in that a traumatic childhood can contribute to one's susceptibility to developing PTSD if a big enough trauma takes place.

Our childhood experiences and environment contribute a great deal to who we become as a person. One can receive a lot of messages in their childhood that contribute to how that child begins to feel about self and how well "self" can interact in their environment.

When we are young children we are very vulnerable and extremely malleable
where we will follow and believe whatever we are told to believe. For example, a child who is raised to believe there really is a Santa Clause that will bring that child presents in a magical sleigh that flies in the sky pulled by eight magical reindeer, will believe this is real. If a child is told they get bad grades because they are not smart enough or are a bad child, they will believe it. If a child is bullied in school and told they are ugly and worthless, that child will begin to believe they are ugly and bad and we even know how some children who are not ugly at all even, can end up taking their own lives.

Many little boys are told that having emotions is "weak" and that it's bad for a boy to "show" emotions. For years and years little boys were told to "be strong and man up" and they genuinely believed that "feeling" emotions is a bad thing. So, one emotion that tends to come out of that is "anger".

Children tend to be constantly exposed to the "need to be perfect" and that any imperfection means "they are failures". Children are also constantly exposed to how they should feel too and often children get a lot of exposure to how their parents express their feelings and the child picks up emotions that can be unhealthy that they don't even realize are dysfunctional feelings.

The main reason for societies huge problem with alcoholism is created by how a young child can begin to experiment with alcohol at a young age and be drawn to how the alcohol helps reduce not only their inhibitions, where they feel free, but the alcohol also affects the reward center in their brain where they gain feeling "rewarded" much like when a child does excel in some way and "feels" pleasure.

Also, when a child is encouraged to "feel" entitled, that child genuinely begins to believe they are in fact entitled.

If a child is not "loved and nurtured" the child can begin to believe they are not worthy.

When someone experiences a trauma, it's a major loss of something and one of the big challenges that person struggles with is "guilt" in how that person was not able to prevent what ever happened.

If a child grows up with parents that have challenges, including being alcoholics, that child can begin to develop feelings where that child has to make up for whatever is missing in their parent. What that means is that child is surviving already with a "loss". Most of the time this "loss" is how that child has to learn how to live in an environment they don't feel "safe" in.

The term "survivor" is often used in therapy when a therapist says to their patient that therapist learns was exposed to a lot of dysfunction and traumas growing up.

Personally, I did not like it when my therapist told me that I was a "survivor", because I developed PTSD, from a major trauma where I suffered more loss than I could handle and I experienced a post traumatic stress breakdown if I was a true survivor I would have been stronger right?. Then because I failed to get the right help for that, and was only further treated like I should not be having this challenge over what I lost, I got even worse and after a while I began experiencing flashbacks from my childhood, and in my childhood I actually was traumatized a lot. So, the reason I did not like it when my therapist said I was a strong "survivor" was I felt as I mentioned if that were really true I would not be suffering from this PTSD condition that anyone who struggles with it KNOWS can be very confusing and debilitating.

Yesterday I had yet another really bad day.

What has been taking place in the now for me is very dysfunctional and has been very triggering on so many levels. I think that anyone who reads this that is struggling with PTSD can relate to how "lonely" it can get.

One of the things I can do when I NEED to release a build up, is "vent". When I do that, my venting can be rather long. When I get triggered I can end up having a lot of flashes of other times when I faced some kind of challenge that "stuck" with me, more than I realized. I often feel like when I vent that either two things will happen, NOTHING, which means little to no response, or that I will end up getting some kind of "criticism". The other thing that can happen is "how come you are so good as helping others and seeing their issues, yet here you are with a lot of challenges yourself?".

For whomever is reading this, ask yourself a question, "were you good at being strong for others and not yourself?". Do you fear that if you open up with a therapist that the therapist will "hurt or judge you?". Is it HARD to trust? Do you feel that no one else could possibly understand the depths of you, that to even TRY to make the effort will end up with YOU facing some kind of HUGE disappointment? Often when someone struggles with PTSD, they isolate a lot. I know I do, I might as well be honest. I am not a complete agoraphobic though.

When I vent, I tend to repeat a lot, I DO HAVE a lot of trauma in my history that most definitely does go all the way back for me. One of the symptoms of PTSD is "anger". Yup, got that one too.

It was not until yesterday that I finally noticed something about all the traumas I faced in my past. I have to include being traumatized for being traumatized and suffering a post traumatic breakdown too. Because that was the same kind of trauma. The one thing I experienced a lot of was failing to find a way to get others to understand that I really did have a major challenge taking place or that something I had accomplished took a great deal of hard work and effort on my part.

Actually, the worst flashback for me was reliving myself being in a crib, and that was the scariest and most painful flashback of all. The pain was so horrible and yet I could not see what was happening to me. The one thing about that flashback was that it was not a flashback that I could say "yes that happened, I remember, but I am ok now". Well, one thing I thank God that I did have when I began to experience that was a therapist that had the ability to actually HELP ME, and he talked me through it one day when I was starting to have it and I was in my bed and somehow had it in me to call him and that I was LUCKY he was able to pick up his phone and help me.

That therapist was AMAZING, and he saved my life. No only did he provide something so very important that that child in me was not getting, but he took a lot of POWER out of that flashback with his patience and kind and calming voice. Then, he helped me figure out what that child was experiencing that she needed and was not getting. He told me that when babies wake up in their crib, they are cold, wet and hungry. He told me that when a baby is hungry they feel a lot of pain in their stomach which is what I was experiencing in that flashback and let me say, the pain really is significant and that is why babies cry and cry. And I was also shivering in experiencing that flashback because that baby me was wet and shivering too.

I thought about how I was the youngest of three children and I remember how that house I lived in was cold a lot because it was an old house and my parents were struggling to make ends meet. When I remembered how my mother had three small children and had to take care of her children by herself and how my older brother tended to be a bit of a handful, I realized that I probably had to wait longer than I should have feeling cold, wet, and very hungry to the point where my stomach was hurting so badly. I have a feeling I experienced that a lot too. Back then diapers were cloth and when a child was wet they really felt that wet and it did get cold too. Today diapers are so much more absorbent so the baby "feels" dryer then back when I wore those cloth diapers.

Because I was the youngest, I probably suffered from unmet needs a lot. However, in all the flashbacks I experience I am trying to communicate how I am genuinely struggling and I end up experiencing anger and dismissivness, even to a point where I have been literally humiliated and yelled at in anger and treated like I am a huge inconvenience for having a significant need. The other thing I experience in flashbacks is disrespect and invalidation.

One of the things I have noticed about this trauma that broke me was how personal the loss was to me. There was a lot of my private effort to overcome so many bad things from my past that went into this loss, more than I realized and could explain and just how far back the really went in me.

Recovering one's history and talking about different traumas one faced in their past isn't supposed to "re-traumatize". It IS important to have a therapist that understands this journey and the significance of their part in the often lengthy healing process. The one thing the therapist I finally spent time with after experiencing therapists that failed me and made me worse, was his ability to actually listen and problem solve with me. He helped me begin to see what I was missing that I could not see myself through the horrible and confusing condition called PTSD. He retired and I had to do a lot on my own, I did see another therapist that helped to, but he was not as good, he was not as good at problem solving. It's been very hard to move forward on my own, especially with all the ongoing dysfunction taking place in the now of my life that often very toxic and sad and confusing.

I realized that the one thing I miss the most about this therapist is having a person that HEARD ME and did not respond with needing HIS feelings and emotions be louder than mine. He never told me not to feel, he never told me to "just ignore" and he never got angry and stomped off or slammed doors or had a need to dismiss my feelings and challenges. He never criticized me for being challenged and he never got cross with me if I was late and he was understanding when I was so bad I could not drive to see him and had to do a session over the phone instead. So, I would agree that YES often when someone suffers from PTSD after a trauma, there are probably things from their childhood history that made them more predisposed to developing PTSD after a big enough trauma.

Wow! You know your stuff. You know mine too, but don't know me. That's very well written. Thank you.
It took pdoc reading my age 7 bio before she said "I think you have PTSD from your parents." Everyone else was already saying it.

((SorryShaped)),

PTSD is very confusing and scary and it took me a very long time to understand all these flashbacks I was experiencing and that included experiencing emotional flashbacks which are very confusing because often I did not even understand what triggered me to have them. It took me a long time to realize that what a lot of these flashbacks had in common were experiences I had where I struggled to be heard and respected.

When someone grows up in a dysfunctional home environment the end result is basically learning how to thrive even when your needs go unmet or that often you learn to survive by paying attention to others around you where their needs are more important and if you fail to see that you will somehow be "punished" and hurt. Also, what can happen is how a child witnesses conflict that frightens them and they feel helpless to have any power to stop it so they withdraw or hide. That can mean learning to dissociate and shut down or running to your room and shutting the door and doing something to distract yourself away from the toxic conflict.

Some children don't remember because it was too toxic for them to remember and they found some way of distancing from whatever was toxic. When I began having flashbacks, they were fractured and I did not know exactly how old I was and was surprised that I was having these flashbacks as I have mentioned.

I also realized that without realizing it I married a man that has things about him that challenge me, I did not see them right away because I had been exposed to a dysfunction taking place between my parents where I grew familiar with it and thought it was "normal" so I did not notice certain red flags right away. We can choose a partner because something is familiar, however, that familiar doesn't always mean "good for us", it's just familiar.

People will ask, "why do I attract narcissists", well, that's because you probably learned how to interact with them because you were exposed to this behavior so you don't see the true problems with it.

Human beings are designed to adapt, so unfortunately, we can adapt to an environment that is actually unhealthy.

Eeeeeppp!
And yes. That's what I did. One type of yucky for another because I was accustomed to yucky. Bad is bad. I get that. I did that. I'd have moved in with someone I knew to be a serial killer to get away from my parents. It happened that I thought I was moving into a good and wholesome situation, but it was one of control and being dominated emotionally. Another yucky. I've talked about this with my therapist and he tells me I should be angry, but only recently have I realized how much anger, or at least some of it. I take it out in the gym because that's my safe place to do so. I don't even look at the people who did it to me like it's their fault most of the time. I think they're stupid for not having stopped the problems themselves. That does sound angry when I read it. Yucky

SorryShaped,

When horses are in a burning barn and someone quickly goes in and lets them all out, often they will actually run back into the burning barn because they see their stalls as "the safe place". Unfortunately, that is how the brain works where one can run away from one toxic situation only to find themselves in yet another very similar toxic situation.

I got retraumatized a few weeks ago in therapy. It has shaken my world to the core! I have had nightmares since then and it has been really bad. I am scared of my therapist!! She scares me. The dreams involve themes surrounding her and the traumas I have experienced in therapy.

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