This is utterly fantastic, and as an Armand girly, I especially loved his character analysis here.
Needed this today, both personally and artistically.
I've been learning a lot about exercise and trauma, and how for people with PTSD, C-PTSD or other trauma related disorders, the act of exercising and the side effects such as your heart rate going up, getting sweaty, getting breathless, your muscles hurting, etc., can actually trigger you. And it's got me thinking about all the times I was forced to exercise as a kid which often related to me dissociating or breaking down crying. When really I was just triggered and needed to be taught how to ground and remind myself I was safe, and also needed to dial down how strenuously I was exercising or being forced to exercise (anyone remember having to run 20 laps at the beginning of gym class as a kid?).
I also think of the times when I was told that I could solve my yo-yo-ing weigh issues, if I would just consistently diet and exercise, and was sort of shamed or even guilted over this, even, on at least one occasion, by a medical professional. And like I had an eating disorder, which was also trauma-related, but no one took the time to really look into that. And I kinda hate that for kid and teenage me.
So anyway, I guess I just want to say that if you struggle to exercise or eat healthy, and you have trauma in your past, or suspect you do, please be gentle with yourself, don't feel guilty or ashamed by that. When your body has been chronically violated, any sort of bodily discomfort can feel like stress, danger, and a reliving of the trauma, and taking good care of your body, even just the basics like feeding, watering and cleaning it, can feel like something your body doesn't deserve.
However, if taking better care of your body is something you really wish you could do. Maybe start by looking into things like grounding techniques, and establishing and maintaining psychological safety, and work on that for awhile (and if you can afford therapy with a trauma-informed therapist who also does body work, all the better!). These are things that must be done before you will ever be able to take care of your bodily needs with any sort of consistency.
And if and when you feel ready, start with really gentle exercise like walking, or chair yoga, or wall pilates, and slow down or stop when you start to get breathless or if they exercises hurt. I know this goes directly against the whole 'no pain-no gain' philosophy pushed in most fitness programs. But for you it is better to start to program your brain to associate exercise with positive sensations. And like this could take a year, or years, to move on to a point where you can tolerate your heart rate getting up a little bit more, or your muscles straining when you do weigh bearing exercises or weigh lifting.
Just take your time. Be gentle with yourself. Don't let your body reach the point of pain and major discomfort. Accept that for you, those limits may come sooner and with less effort than the average person, especially at first, and try not to feel guilt or shame over that. It is what it is. It's better to accept those limits and work to help your body feel safe exercising, slowly and over time.
a-darling-thing reblogged
"In the face of abuse and neglect, especially at the hands of those they love, children need enough psychological distance from what is happening to avoid being overwhelmed and survive psychologically intact. Preserving some modicum of self-esteem, attachment to family, and hope for the future requires victims to disconnect from what has happened, doubt or disremember their experience, and disown the “bad [victim] child” to whom it happened as “not me.” By holding out some sense of themselves as “good” disconnected from how they have been exploited, abused children capitalize on the human brain’s innate capacity to split or compartmentalize. That “good child” might be precociously mature, sweet and helpful, perfectionistic, self-critical, or quiet and shy, but, most importantly, he or she has a way to be acceptable and safer in an unsafe world. Splitting or fragmenting in this way is an ingenious and adaptive survival strategy—but one with a steep price. To ensure that the rejected “not me” child is kept out of the way (i.e., out of consciousness) requires that, long after the traumatic events are over, individuals must continue to rely on dissociation, denial, and/or self-hatred for enforcing the disconnection. In the end, they have survived the failure of safety, the abuse, and betrayal at the cost of disowning their most vulnerable and most wounded selves."
-Janina Fisher, Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors: Overcoming Internal Self-Alienation; page 19
a-darling-thing reblogged
Did I go through enough to cause DID?
by Sunflower
—
Did I go through enough to cause DID?
“Do you really want to know?” says a concerned voice, from the back of my mind.
“Yes. Why shouldn’t I know?” comes a reply, not from me.
“Maybe,” comes another.
“I guess not,” I finally say. I shouldn’t have bothered asking this question.
—
Did I go through enough to cause DID?
“No,” says a small voice to me.
“Why do you think that?” I ask it.
There’s no answer. Only crying.
—
Did I go through enough to cause DID?
“Yes,” states someone matter-of-factly.
“How do you know for sure?”
“You’re literally talking to an alter, right now,” they point out.
Ugh! How is that supposed to answer my question?!
—
Did I go through enough to cause DID?
“Fuck off with these questions! It’s ridiculous!” growls something from deep inside, bubbling with rage. “Do you think this is fun? Do you think this is a game?”
I don’t.
Oh God, I don’t.
—
Did I go through enough to cause DID?
Screams.
Ripping.
Spiraling.
Falling apart.
—
Did I go through enough to cause DID?
“Why does it matter?” replies someone in the back.
“I don’t know,” I confess.
“Does it matter to you?”
“No, I guess not.”
“Does it matter to someone else?”
They already know the answer. They’re sitting in the back of my thoughts with it.
—
Did I go through enough to cause DID?
“Do you feel like you’re not hurt enough?” Someone asks this.
The background is wracked with voices mirroring my own. Some shout yes, others shout no. I don’t know if they’re my own thoughts or something else.
“I’m not sure,” I finally say, confused.
—
Did I go through enough to cause DID?
“Why are you asking this so much?” a voice asks.
“Well, sometimes I just wonder if I was hurt enough to have DID,” I explain.
“You have it. Doesn’t that already answer your question?”
“No,” I reply, a bit angrily. “I don’t feel like what I went through justifies me having DID like this. Wouldn’t my childhood have to be extremely unnatural? I mean, sure, I was suffering, but was that enough?”
“You do realize that suffering isn’t natural, right?”
I don’t know how to reply.
—
Did I go through enough to cause DID?
A child is asking me this. I hold them close. I cradle them in my arms and rock them.
“I wish you didn’t,” I sigh.
—
Did I go through enough to cause DID?
“You went through too much,” says someone else.
“Yeah. You did, too,” is all I can utter.
Acceptance fills out the space between us.
—
Did I go through enough to cause DID?
A sad voice whispers through the frosty darkness. “I don’t wish anymore pain onto you.”
“I don’t wish it onto you, either,” a voice whispers back.
I touch their hands. We are connected.
—
Did I go through enough to cause DID?
“Yes, and the proof is in our existence. Our existence is proof of our survival,” a familiar voice answers me.
We survived?
“You did. I did. All of us survived.“
I feel the others shift inside. Warmth blossoms in my chest.
The system that is me, suffered. The system that is me, also survived.
Maybe knowing this is more important.
a-darling-thing reblogged
seerutkchawla ~ Instagram
Also, it's important to recognize that you having been impacted by childhood trauma is not a free pass to be an asshole, or to take zero responsibility for the unhealthy state of your relationships. Recognize that it is very highly likely that if you have childhood trauma and the C-PTSD, BPD, Depression, Anxiety, and/or Dissociative Disorders that often go hand-in-hand with that, then it is VERY likely that your patterns of interaction and attachment in intimate relationships need a lot of work, care and attention paid to them. Yes, people with a traumatic past can often be attracted to those who mirror the negative patterns they were attuned to as a child, but people with traumatic pasts also have HUGE issues with emotional regulation, healthy boundaries (both setting and respecting them), and may have little to no skills for engaging in healthy relationships at all, because healthy relationships were never modeled to them. Thus those are skills we have to learn and practice if we are ever going to be able to have successful relationships.
Becoming aware of your own trauma, and educating yourself on how that has impacted you is about starting to know yourself, and then taking responsibility for ways you move through the world in toxic or unhealthy ways as a result. It is about healing, learning, and doing better as you learn how to do better. It's about acknowledging and healing your pain so that you can move forward as a healthier version of yourself, and in the process heal your relationships, as well. And all that being said, sometimes you do all the work, and realize that certain relationships are not sustainable, and need to end, and that is okay, too. But it's important to recognize that it isn't because the other person is all bad and you are faultless, but rather because once healthy boundaries start to be set, healthy patterns of interaction become habit, and healthy forms of attachment begin to develop you may find that the other person cannot or does not want to meet you there, and that's okay. That's their choice and their journey. You just keep growing.
a-darling-thing reblogged
traumatised-mum
you ever just sit and realise u can’t remember 80% of your childhood? like … what happened? who am i ..?
vanerdsa
Many people in the comments are saying “trauma”, but this is actually a very normal occurrence. It’s called Childhood Amnesia, and it’s a process which, as the brain reorganizes itself for cognitive thought that is developed in late childhood, it changes the Accessibility of those memories during recall. Many childhood memories are available to the person, but they will not be remembered during regular recall activity, you have to “trick” your brain into remembering with different tactics.
This is because there are two parts to memories - their encoding and their recall. The encoding determines their availability, their recall determines their accessibility. The reason why trauma memory and childhood amnesia are different is in this distinction. Trauma memory is often encoded differently, bypassing to the limbic system where it is stored as intrinsic memory. It can’t be recalled because it was never encoded. Childhood amnesia, however, seems to indicate that the memories are encoded, but we lose access to them as we age. This is most likely due to the development of brain structures that fundamentally change our encoding and recall of memory as we get older.
This is an important distinction, because trauma memory is “stored in the body”, i.e. you get triggers that send your body into a cascade of uncontrollable feelings, sensations and reactions. Whereas childhood memories won’t generally do that, they are just recalled at odd times with odd associations.
reblogging this because I’ve legit seen people freaking out when they realised they can’t remember some of their childhood, thinking they might have some repressed trauma.
So you mean my brain literally looked at my whole childhood and said “sorry that file type is no longer supported”
a-darling-thing reblogged
Thank you! My actual question is, what is trauma? Particularly trauma that doesn't stem from a single Traumatic Event (TM) -- like, trauma that comes from years of being treated as a "gifted" child, or from developing a disability slowly and quietly rather than in some big accident, or other non-obvious sources. What is trauma, what does it do to someone, why can two people go through the same shit and one comes out traumatised and the other does not? This is a big and vague question I know.
Yeah, “trauma” as a concept is kind of confusing because people think that to be traumatic, something has to be dramatic. And it doesn’t. In point of fact, when my province did its public messaging campaign for trauma-informed care, they completely replaced the word “trauma” with “toxic stress”.
This is gonna get long. For further reading, I’d suggest looking at the Child Trauma Academy’s Trauma and PTSD Library. And it will sound at the beginning like I’m answering some different question than yours, but I promise, I am.
a-darling-thing reblogged
for the record, ‘not feeling anything’ is a valid and not unusual response to trauma or grief
so if you feel empty and devoid of feeling, it’s not because you’re a cold and uncaring person.
Sometimes, not feeling anything is the only way you can cope.
Be prepared for a delayed reaction, too. It’s very common to be totally calm during a crisis, and then days or weeks (or years) later suddenly get hit with a tidal wave of “HOLY SHIT THAT HAPPENED.”
Sometimes your mind waits until it feels safe to start processing things emotionally. It’s a powerful survival strategy, but it can really blindside you, because just as you start to feel like things are okay, you’re overwhelmed by the realization of how not-okay things were before.
This may not happen, and that’s okay too. But it’s something to watch out for when your initial reaction is numbness.
a-darling-thing reblogged
Just a friendly reminder that the brain of those who have suffered trauma is physically different than a “normal brain”. Trauma and abuse has a severe, long-term psychological and neurological effect. This is why you have difficulty concentrating, why you have trouble sleeping, why you can’t seem to stay focused, why you cry at the drop of the hat, why you’re not satisfied with yourself, why you think everything is your fault, why you think you’re toxic, why you’re full of regret and you don’t know why.
And get this. When you experienced this trauma, no matter how long it happened or how many times, your brain instantaneously made judgments about the world, your sense of self, and others. This is why you’re paranoid. Why you trust no one. Why you perceive things to exist that aren’t true in reality. It’s why people say you’re crazy, over-dramatic, or too emotional.
You may not heal in a day, but know this: it is not your fault. Your brain is responding to trauma.
chugway
this is also why you may have memory problems - undergoing severe trauma or prolonged periods of stress can cause the amygdalae in your brain to change shape, thus causing damage to long-term memory and troubles with making and maintaining short-term.
nytetyger
thank you
a-darling-thing reblogged
“After seeing brutality or being the subject of either verbal or physical violence, it’s crucial to tend to your immediate needs.” 💜
Remember, we’re here to support you 24/7 at: 866.488.7386🌟 Text and chat available at: TrevorProject.org/Help 🌟
a-darling-thing reblogged
As some of you may or may not know I work in a Jewish hospital that provides rehabilitation and palliative care, and we were provided w this booklet regarding care for holocaust survivors and family members
I thought I might share it since it may be of use to other ppl who care for older Jewish people
Tbh some of this, in particular the first few bullet points, looks broadly useful for talking about trauma and generational trauma even outside the specific context of the Holocaust, and this deserves to be shared around! Thanks for putting it here.
This is a really useful set of points for not only what it’s explicitly created for (which is in and of itself very important), but yes, also for a *lot* of major trauma, intergenerational trauma and its effects, and also useful to read through and just think about how these things apply to trauma and intergenerational trauma generally (which I promise is actually all around you, wherever you are, and affecting things in ways that one doesn’t notice, really, until one does.) Thank you in particular @kaaramel for the transcript.
a-darling-thing reblogged
Do people like forget that Sherlock’s hands are still trembling, third episode on?! That he is still seizing every opportunity he’s got to hurt himself or even worse… ?! That he is still surrounded by his abusers like images of Moriarty and now his sister? and in his mind by Mary who is still practically stalking him from the dead with that ridiculous speech? Mary who from the dead still tried to get him killed? How … how has he has grown? PROTECT HIM FFS!! PROTECT HIM NOW!!!!
redpeacoat3
He won’t even sit next to John on the sofa while they watch the dvd. He stands, wrapped in his armor, can barely even look at him.
And now I’m crying again.
a-darling-thing reblogged
You don’t have to be grateful that it isn’t worse.
read that. read it again, and again, and again. somebody, somewhere, always has it worse than you. there is one person on this planet that has it the worst of all, and that person is NOT the only person allowed to be unhappy with their lot. if things are bad for you, they are bad for you. period.
This goes for trauma as well. A lot of times survivors get trapped in a cycle of minimizing/diminishing their trauma because “other people have it worse” - but there is no hierarchy of trauma. There is no ranking system for which traumas are “better” or “worse.” Your trauma is valid. Period.
IMPORTANT TRUTHS.
hobbitsaarebas
As a therapist, lemme just say: almost every trauma survivor I’ve ever had has at some point said “But I didn’t have it as bad as some people” and then talked about how other types of trauma are worse. Even my most-traumatized, most-abused, most psychologically-injured clients say this.
The ones who were cheated on, abandoned, and neglected say this. The ones who were in dangerous accidents/disasters say this. The ones who were horrifyingly sexually abused say this. The ones who were brutally beaten say this. The ones who were psychologically tortured for decades say this. What does that tell you? That one of the typical side-effects of trauma is to make you believe that you are unworthy of care.
Don’t buy into it, because it’s nonsense. It doesn’t matter if someone else had it “worse.” Every person who experiences a trauma deserves to get the attention and care they need to heal from it.