Hello I’m new here. I’m not very good with people so if I do something wrong please say. I’m still terrified of making the slightest mistake. I think any posts I make are capable of triggering someone, sorry.

This site is excellent and so far it’s a place I feel reasonably safe with. There’s several things I need answers to that I cannot supply for myself. Does anyone understand this?

One of the big problems for me is that I’ve received the message that it’s bad and cowardly to ‘run away’ so that my perceptions are that this includes avoiding triggers. So this site is safe because great care is taken to protect people from being triggered. People who are cowards are despised and in order to feel less bad I suspect I’m doing the emotional equivalent of self-harm by confronting my deepest pains (but without any therapeutic benefits as I don’t have answers to the worse things so confrontation makes me feel worse). It’s probably like eating nuts to someone with nut allergy. If someone has a physical problem they are not treated as cowards for avoiding sugar, (diabetes) or paint (asthma) etc but it comes across frequently for psychological damage caused by abuse, neglect and past trauma. I get really angry when people say ‘It’s good to talk’, as in ‘always’. Sometimes for me it makes things worse (but never on this site so far). That makes me feel there’s something wrong with me. When I get triggered I more or less stop functioning for variable lengths of time. This is at best inconvenient and at worst terrifying. I feel as if I can no longer carry on. I spend days with zero energy trying to hide how I feel because I’m terrified of people finding out. And there’s no relief if I manage to sleep at all because the nightmares start up again.

I was often given messages that I was bad. The shouting and solitary confinement lasted for hours. It was wicked to have feelings. I couldn’t work out how to stop having feelings and the extended punishments made the feelings worse so I thought I must have been born bad. Because the punishments lasted so long I thought I must be very bad. When I said ‘I can’t’ she said ‘there’s no such word as can’t’. I wasn’t told how to achieve things, just punished until I did. There was no mercy and no second chances. I deserved all the mental agony. When I said I would try to do better she said that wasn’t good enough I had to actually do it. When I said I wouldn’t do something wrong again she said ‘yes you will’. My brother enjoyed provoking mental pain and anger. When I said stop (the bullying) he did it all the more and laughed. My mother said I provoked it but I know minding your own business is not provoking behaviour. Two years after I’d been sexually abused by a relative in the extended family she told me that if a woman gets assaulted it’s her fault and that men ‘can’t help it’. I was ten. This was very frightening as it meant I wasn’t safe anywhere. I don’t know whether she realised something had happened or not.

When I was ill she either didn’t believe me or did believe me and despised me for being weak. She always made things worse. I still feel ashamed when I get ill or I’m in pain and have the greatest difficulty even telling my GP. I used to get similar treatment for being ill as the punishment for being bad. When I was a teenager I was told I was ill because I was bad and that I was making her ill and she kept threatening me that she would end up in hospital again and not come out this time, as if you can cure people by threats. When I was injured the first thing she always said was ‘don’t cry.’ By the time I was four I had stopped crying. When I was eleven she thought I might have broken my arm. She behaved as if it didn’t matter much. I had to get out of the house away from her as the pain was so bad I was having trouble stopping my eyes running. I was terrified she was going to start shouting at me and I knew that if she did it would make my eyes run even more and she’d never stop shouting and I couldn’t stand the shouting. When I had bad earache she wouldn’t have any more to do with me. My Dad took me to see a doctor. It was my fault when I was hurt or I was being a nuisance and in the way if I was ill. I’ve had the experience so often that if someone intervenes it makes things far worse. And that small things lead to disaster. So whenever I get re traumatised by the triggers I’m terrified people will notice I’m not functioning. And they might try to bully me into talking about why, which will trigger me even more. Some people try to bully others into talking as soon as they find out something is wrong. I’m always wrong and she was always right. So it’s not safe for them to find out when I’ve been triggered. But the effects are so great that it’s hard to hide.

Does this sound familiar to anyone?

The main questions here are: Is avoiding triggers the same as running away? Is it right or wrong to avoid triggers? Nut allergy v cowardice. Are people right to try to force you to talk about things that are too painful to talk about?

Ouchzone