I just don't understand how to move on from the past&get my energy back from vampires

@Alive99, well, for me, and I am speaking only from my experiences, I had had seven abusive relationships prior to meeting my now abusive husband. I truly knew better. I should have paid attention to the red flags, which I ignored yet recognized, and I ignored my gut reactions that something was very off. So I've had to forgive myself for not listening to my gut and for ignoring the red flags, and I've had to take responsibility for the fact that I also married someone whom I knew was abusive just before I married him. Now that's just my particular process and situation.

I am glad that my post made you think a bit on your own traumatic experience and on what you have learned about yourself coming out of it. That's all we can do is learn from our experiences.

Trauma is complex and different for every person. I do not know if you have or were abused in your childhood, for example. I was abused in my childhood, and therefore, I have childhood trauma, which is triggered by these abusive relationships I've had. I am working on healing all of it in therapy to date.

So, I suppose for you, and now please forgive me if I haven't read through your entire thread, but if you experienced childhood trauma, it could also be triggered by the experiences you've had more recently. If not, then these recent experiences stand more so as an anomaly within the entirety of your lifelong experiences.

Therapy really helps to process trauma and abuse. Are you in therapy? And again my sincere apologies if you are having to repeat yourself.

I am very pragmatic and practical when it comes to solving problems. So therefore, I face these issues with very practical questions: what can I learn from the experiences I've had and how can I apply that education and learning to my future relationships? How can I heal myself from past abuse? And finally, how can I find inner peace after so much turmoil and pain, after all is said and done?

That is why I chose to forgive those two past abusers, finally. Forgiveness is not for everyone. But there comes a point in your healing journey where you will want to finally release all the pain from the past, whether you choose to forgive or not. But forgiveness does allow for that release. It's a pathway. I understand you are not there at this present moment. You are still processing your experiences. That's just the path that I personally chose, and it's helped me.

At the very least, it helps to think it through in full - and again I point to what can be learned? How can I heal from this? And how can I move forward in life from this, putting it all into perspective and behind me?

Hey Have Hope. Sorry I got so low for months that I couldn't get on this forum. I was focusing on pure survival. I don't know how you are doing but I hope you are OK. I will check your thread as soon as I can get there but I hope it is no longer even relevant. (Which would mean good news)




This is an interesting issue, of ignoring gut feelings. I find that manipulation and gaslight made me disoriented, and through that, made me ignore my own gut feelings too. The last thing I would do is blame myself for being made disoriented. I don't know your situation of course. Sometimes people do sorta understand but need to learn the lesson for real via the truly hard way. Maybe that's what you meant, I don't know. Just wanted to add this.



I have childhood trauma but not childhood cPTSD (thank god, it would have been really bad to have to experience that too as a kid). I was not abused in some major way as a child though. It's just the trauma from a childhood that was made harder for me than usual/average (even if there is no truly literally average childhood). It is a long story as to what it was but it was not child abuse and the like. It was a hostile environment but not abuse beyond that



I think I can recognise the reactions that relate to my childhood and they are definitely different from these experiences. I would say, anomaly in that sense, yes. Even if of course anything that happens to you later in life is indirectly the consequence of your childhood.

It is one of the questions I've tried to answer for myself though: how could I get these bad experiences later in life?

It's been a hard question.



No worries there! I was in therapy before yes, but certain circumstances made it hard for me to get access to therapy while the measurements and regulations for dealing with the pandemic are in place. And they are still in place here. I was denied access to the trauma centre nearby because of them. So no, I am not in therapy now.



Those are quite general questions for me and so they take a lot of time to process. But definitely relevant issues.



I do want to get rid of all the pain of the past. It doesn't want to respond to commands from me like that though lol

So yeah, it takes a lot of processing.

Glad you got through it for yourself. I imagine you started the process earlier than I did. I took a while to recognise what was going on etc.



Yeah, I am trying to do these things. It feels like a lot of small puzzle pieces requiring a lot of time and energy for me. One day...

@Alive99, nice to see you return to the forums.

"It is one of the questions I've tried to answer for myself though: how could I get these bad experiences later in life?"

Sometimes, there are no answers. And when there are no answers, what can we do but process what has happened to us, integrate it into our lives, work on healing from it, and try to move forward from it all, taking what happened as a lesson in life. I've said this before and above, but really, what more can we do? It's all a process, and sometimes that process can take years.

I do hope you've been able to get on with your life in other ways and are not perpetually thinking about the past with these individuals? We need a mental vacation from traumatic experiences, although often they can engulf us so much that we cannot see or enjoy anything in life. For you, during the last few months, have you been able to take a mental vacation? I am working on this myself. I am not healed from my abusive marriage, which I know will take many more months and a lot more therapy.

Hugs to you in your healing journey and process.

Hey, nice to see you too. Thank you for your input again. Yeah there aren't always answers, but I still feel like I want to get a full picture of it all, and that will be the answer for me. And yeah, processing it all takes years in my case, and it's also made harder by how I need to make sure to not make my life even worse in the meantime. You asked if I'm thinking about the past with these people, and I'm not trying to, but it comes out anyway, there are many triggers even if I just try to enjoy reading some entertaining book or watching a nice movie. So no, I'm not really able to take a mental vacation from it and it does make it all harder. I don't know if you have any suggestions for that.

Hugs to you too in your healing process - however long it may take or hard it may be, I'm sure it'll eventually get the results.

What I do when I have triggers occur is to shift my focus. I acknowledge the trigger, allow the feelings that result from the trigger to arise and exist, then I shift my focus either back to what I was doing or shift my focus entirely and take a break - like I may get up and stop what I was doing to clean the kitchen, take the trash out or do something active until the emotional impact of the trigger passes. Then I go about my business and my day. I think often times there's no fully escaping triggers, but we can manage our reactions to them and control how we respond to them. Not sure if that helps you any.

Thanks for your tips. An issue for me is that if I try and block out the memories by getting active then I will get very angry/raging instead of being negative just inside my own mind. This assumes I was able to get active in the first place, which I feel is still the better option, but is just exhausting too. It takes a long time (years) for all this to become less intense, it seems. It is funny because it just feels like, I ignored the negatives until they traumatised me, and now my mind forces me to see and feel them and there's a LOAD to process, though maybe I've processed most of it by now...just I made my life worse (in some ways) in the meantime over these years so I have to undo that too.