Possibly distressing content. I have an intellectual understanding of
everything that has happened to me in the past. I have also completely
forgiven things done to me in childhood and carry no resentment about
those things. However, the impacts of e...
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Possibly distressing content. I have an intellectual understanding of
everything that has happened to me in the past. I have also completely
forgiven things done to me in childhood and carry no resentment about
those things. However, the impacts of early physical and verbal violence
remain in my nervous system. I have successfully processed adult traumas
somatically with my psychologist, removing the charge from those
experiences. But the charges from early childhood remain. The worst
physical violence occurred between the ages of 3 and about 7-8. While
that later lessened, frequent volatile verbal rage continued to be
directed at me. In my experience things like cognitive restructuring
have been useless as I've basically done that already and that doesn't
shift how my nervous system innately responds. I continue to have fear
triggered in daily life by situations that are not necessarily harmful,
yet my nervous system will be waiting for the harm to happen. I have
practised sitting in meditation in nature for extended periods. As soon
as I allow my body to let go I will usually vomit, my body purging the
toxic sludge it has been carrying as a lifelong thing. It seems never
ending and I am profoundly exhausted. I at least feel held in nature,
like it is my witness and it always feels way safer than anything to do
with other humans. The people I find I can really truly relate to are
very gentle and sensitive people like myself and I usually find they
have actually been through similar experiences to myself. I find people
who haven't had such experiences will judge how you should manage in
life with no understanding of visceral trauma and how it takes over when
Complex PTSD responses take hold. The world can feel like a very
alienating place of non-understanding, leading me to retract back into
self-protection and isolation. With the friends I know with similar
experiences, we tend not to go too deep into it, I think out of fear of
not wanting to trigger one another (we are all ultra sensitive empaths
so tread very carefully with one another). I think I am writing this
because I am still in this struggle and maybe wanting to know how others
have processed early life verbal and physical attack? There were forms
of less direct and more manipulative emotional abuse from my mother as
well and this would occur when she would dissociate and split off into
aspects of her own trauma, the same pattern of what her mother did to
her. So this compounded the more explicit, blatant abuse I experienced.
I am writing this out possibly because I minimised these experiences for
so many years which was a coping mechanism. Maybe I am now trying to
confront it head on. I experience flashbacks regularly, but I've been so
dissociated from them I've only recently started to grasp when I am in
them, if that makes any sense. Before I was just in them, so that is
probably progress that some part of me can step back just enough to see
I am in them now. Do others out there relate to purely visceral trauma
that comes from earliest life experiences? But please don't go there if
it is triggering. I find listening to musicians/songwriters who have
been through similar things helps because it is a form of empathy and
resonates in the body and emotions which is where I need to heal.
PTSD for Medical and First Responders
