idk if my trauma is legit or if I’m just being dramatic

[spoopynatural]

By all means this can be ignored, maybe I just need a place to vent. But I am at a loss of what to do. I’ve never talked about it out loud before, only one internet friend (but even then, not with any details). I haven’t really thought about any of these things until maybe some time in high school and I just kinda brushed it off, but it’s built up since then. I want to leave a trigger warning but truly I don’t know how to describe it. It doesn’t feel “bad enough” (to me, but again, I feel like I genuinely don’t know if my discomfort is valid anyhow). I don’t know. Just…stuff that made me uncomfortable. Creepy childhood things, I guess.

It’s been wracking my brain lately. I’ve always had this memory of when I was a kid where I remember falling asleep and then waking up completely naked, and having no idea what happened. But I don’t remember a thing before that and almost nothing after. I remember wondering if maybe I fell asleep in my towel after a shower, but I had looked and never found one. I didn’t think about this for a long time cuz it just didn’t mean anything to me, and there’s a good chance that it really might not be anything at all. But now that times gone on I’ve realized there are memories of mine that really did happen, and I do remember them clearly. I remember being watched in the shower and being old enough to be uncomfortable with it and trying to cover myself up, only to be told to stop.

And I don’t know. Maybe that’s just a thing parents do when their kid is misbehaving. I truly don’t know. There’s a lot of stuff in my childhood where I was yelled at or hit or told I wasn’t wanted. I realize now that most families are probably closer and trust each other and aren’t scared to be alone in a car with one of their parents. I also realize that I try to lessen my experiences and say they aren’t that bad even though they DO cause me distress even into adulthood.

I just don’t know if I’m being dramatic. Some part of my brain just tells me I WANT to be traumatized when that’s an absurd thought. I just keep digging into my memories and remembering more things, or I read stuff that describes behaviors in children that are signs or whatever bad things that have happened to them, I realize just how many of those behaviors I have.

Theres just a lot of little things, I guess. Little things that never bothered me before, but now I’m an adult and I try to understand why I feel the way I do, or why I react to things the way that I do, and it all comes back to those little things that have piled up. I’m scared when men are angry around me. I get these weird, unsettled feelings in certain places and I can never understand why or how to describe them. It’s like sudden waves of guilt or anxiety, or I’ve tried to explain it to my friend as “nostalgia but in a bad way”.

I think maybe I want to tell myself all of these little things are nothing, but at the same time I don’t want to be told that it’s nothing. I know I wasn’t molested or raped (at least not that I can remember) but yet I act like someone who was. It makes me feel guilty. And yet, I DO feel these things, and I should just focus on that, but I can’t help but feel like somehow I need to permission to.

Truly, I don’t know what I’m looking for here with posting this. I just feel so miserable all the time. These memories pile up and if they pile up enough it starts to make me feel sick.

[BuhoWolf]

Hi @spoopynatural. I will confirm what deep down you already know to be true. You are a victim of childhood physical abuse, and childhood sexual abuse.

It is NOT normal for a parent to watch their child shower and it is NOT right. In a family where the child is abused they are scared of their parents, especially being left alone with the abusive parent(s). Even if your parent(s) never touched you sexually, it is still a form of sexual abuse for them to force you to be nude in front of them. Just like it is sexual abuse for pictures of a child to be taken while they are nude. Both are wrong and traumatic.

You are NOT being dramatic. These memories coming back, you searching for memories and answers. These are all normal for someone who has repressed memories, especially repressed memories from childhood sexual abuse. You DON'T want to be traumatized, that is also a common thought or fear that people with PTSD and repressed memories think. It isn't your fault for thinking these things, it is a defense mechanism from your mind trying to shield you from all of the pain of the past. It is how your brain learned to cope and survive all of those years being abused.

Many of these memories you have coming back to you or these little things, is one part of your psyche now trying to process what happened all of that time ago and come to terms with the trauma you have experienced while the other part still wants to bury it.

While you don't remember being sexually touched, I believe it is more likely than not that you were. Waking up nude but forgetting how you got like that is a classic sign of someone who dissociated from a sexual assault.

I will send you a PM so we can talk more about this in private if you want. I have been through the same thing you have and had the same thoughts and feelings. So I understand not wanting to continue this conversation right now in public.