Submitted by universityofturku t3_z8pkaz in science
Trauma stunts people. In my experience traumatized people get stuck at the age they were traumatized. Trauma is overwhelming, paralyzing, and all consuming. Who has time to figure out life skills when your thoughts are always scattered while trying to make sense of why and what happened to you?
10 years old going on 31
this explains things
15 going on 41 for me.
5-17 going on 36 for me. Idk what age I'm stuck at since it happened a lot. I guess 17.
I meant inadequate therapy, but my phone changed it.
There has to be a limit to that - I've been traumatized since nearly birth.
I have Complex PTSD from child abuse and neglect from parents, peers, and school authorities. People seem psychologically compelled to abuse me; no person I have ever encountered has failed to at least vocally support my abuse unless they would risk losing their job doing so.
And yet I am capable of navigating the world (despite everyone's incessant attempts to interfere with my life) and have been for nearly forty years. How exactly am I "stuck" at early infanthood, when my abuse and neglect started?
As someone who is also healing from CPTSD, I know this reality. You get raised a certain way, and leave home thinking that you will finally be free from the abuse. We enter new relationships thinking that they might finally work out since they lack any of the obvious behaviors that were harmful growing up.
What's less obvious is that these toxic environments are only enabled by toxic norms. They can only persist if communication continues to be broken, and emotions routinely weaponized or ignored. When we think we are free, we are really only just finding people who are only marginally different from our caregivers growing up.
It's easy to see ourselves as the cause as we are the common denominator in all these interactions. What has really happened though is that we've learned to see ourselves a certain way, and that way is beneficial to abusers, and they pick up on it. It also skews our perception of normal and benign behavior, so things like ambiguity in relationships can feel very dangerous.
The result is that healthy relationships can feel very triggering and dangerous, and since we have never been in one we don't realize how they work. All we learned was transactional relationships. We only know how to see things this way, and are lacking context for a different experience. It's literally impossible to experience relationships differently unless you get lucky to stumble into it, or you deconstruct and unlearn all those unhealthy behaviors. It's not just a switch you can flip to suddenly be a different person and make up for years of healthy social development.
> What's less obvious is that these toxic environments are only enabled by toxic norms.
And these toxic norms are created and reinforced by society and human nature.
I have never "entered into" a "relationship" of my own free will - every interaction has at least an element of force and/or coercion.
> When we think we are free, we are really only just finding people who are only marginally different from our caregivers growing up.
That's because that's what the human race is, fundamentally.
> It's easy to see ourselves as the cause as we are the common denominator in all these interactions.
It doesn't help when every other abusive asshole on the planet insists that we are the cause - as if we somehow forcing the abusers to abuse us.
> It also skews our perception of normal and benign behavior, so things like ambiguity in relationships can feel very dangerous.
My perception is not "skewed" - I have all of the rest of humanity to observe, not to mention every psychology textbook I can get my hands on.
> The result is that healthy relationships can feel very triggering and dangerous
I have no idea how this would happen. I knew my treatment was abusive when I was a child - "healthy" relationships would be the farthest away from that, and that is exactly where I want to be.
> All we learned was transactional relationships.
And that comes to pass because human beings inherently drive toward transactional relationships.
> It's literally impossible to experience relationships differently unless you get lucky to stumble into it, or you deconstruct and unlearn all those unhealthy behaviors. It's not just a switch you can flip to suddenly be a different person and make up for years of healthy social development.
What if you grew up knowing that other people were abusive, and you went out of your way to reject everything they did or stood for? What if you made a point of not behaving like your abusers from a young age, even when that rebellion got you "punished" harder because you refused to adopt their toxic ideas?
>I have never "entered into" a "relationship" of my own free will - every interaction has at least an element of force and/or coercion.
This is actually case in point here. We tend to be withdrawn, aloof, defensive, wary, maybe even aggressive or openly skeptical. Healthy people see that and respect our boundaries, and keep their distance. Unhealthy people are the ones that push themselves past all that and into our lives. From the inside, it looks like only abusers and users exist, because everyone else is actually respecting us, our boundaries, and our personhood.
>And that comes to pass because human beings inherently drive toward transactional relationships.
This is yet another artifact of the same situation. I'm telling you that since it's been our only experience, our brains can only make sense of relationships from this transactional frame. The belief that everyone is like this is what helps us cope with our experience. This whole system we developed was learned in order to cope with a difficult environment growing up, but it's this very way of coping, this survival brain, that is holding us back. We only learned how to survive, we never got to live and be our own person.
>What if you grew up knowing that other people were abusive, and you went out of your way to reject everything they did or stood for?
You can only reject the behavior you can recognize as abusive. My point is that these are only surface level issues that are obvious, but the foundation that allows that behavior to exist in the first place has been normalized. Without digging deep, it's easy to to keep running into the same fundamentally dysfunctional situations that bear a different flavor of abuse. You can only reject what you recognize that you should reject.
I get it, we want to see the world in a way that makes sense based on our experience. That's how brains brain. This view of the world and people is learned. Whether or not we accept or reject the environment we grew up in, we are still coping with it in order to survive, and then we continue to operate in that mode which assumes everything is still the way we knew growing up. While it's true that as a society we tend to reward toxic norms, that doesn't mean individual people do the same. It's only people in power who want you not to have any who are the ones that benefit from the current cultural narratives. You are just tuning into this one station, there are others out there. I've been in your shoes, I know how it seems, and I know how impossible it was for me to see it any other way. It doesn't have to be that way, that's all I am saying. I wouldn't be surprised if you thought my entire message to you felt like an assault on your being and felt both condescending and completely detached from your reality. You have the right to your feelings, and to see things as you do. So no worries.
Anyway, I'm sure I am not telling you anything new to you. It's easy to see that it has not been easy for you in this world, but it's not your fault. Even if you hate yourself, that is something that comes from the outside. It's learned behavior. It all is in my experience, and it can be unlearned. People who grew up with healthy norms will never understand what it's like not to have them which can further our own alienation, but that's not the same as toxic disconnected and / or abusive relationships.
Run it down the list.
How are you physically? Most of us psychologically traumatized are often physically fine. But the body remembers things we don't. Got weird aches and pains going on?
Next, socially. Do you have family, friends, people who support you?
Intellectually. Any disorders or conflicts there? Do you adhere to stoic principles or collapse under pressure? Have you been tested for ADHD or autism?
Finally spiritually. Are you mad at extracosmological forces? Or are you in tune with them?
If you're good in all these fronts then... You good. And that's cool too. Some people have higher resistance to trauma than others. You may also have normalizing influences others don't have.
But if you see issues on any of these, see a doctor.
> Got weird aches and pains going on?
Just the previously broken bones.
> Do you have family, friends, people who support you?
I've never had anyone support me - that's the problem. And it's not anything I'm doing - I've had multiple therapists repeatedly insist that other people's bad-faith rejection of me isn't my fault. I behave exactly how other people behave - down to pacing of breath - yet people insist on reacting to me radically different that they do everyone else, seemingly out of spite. I've basically been Assigned "Other" At Birth and no one will tolerate me, no matter what I do to change their minds.
> Do you adhere to stoic principles
Are you saying that stoicism is a mental disorder?
> Have you been tested for ADHD or autism?
Autism yes, ADHD no. But my behavior is quite the opposite of the symptoms of ADHD.
> Finally spiritually. Are you mad at extracosmological forces? Or are you in tune with them?
I don't believe in spirituality at all. I'm strictly about what can be proven.
> But if you see issues on any of these, see a doctor.
Been there, done that. No doctor seeing me will force other people to ignore their misfiring instincts and act in good faith towards me. My problems are sociological, not psychological.
I feel you, 100%.
That’s not necessarily correct.
There was a study posted here yesterday that showed a link to rapid aging in offspring, from maternal pre-natal stressors.
I’ve often had the same thought about getting stuck at the age you experienced trauma.
Hope this helps: The ACE Questionnaire (Adverse Childhood Experiences) is a short test to determine later-in-life health risks from early abuse.
For context: my score is 8/10, and the therapist who first tested me, audibly gasped.
In the same boat. I have to make sure my therapist has a therapist.
Find that therapist’s therapist, then that one’s therapist, until you meet the Final Boss Therapist & win @ mental health.
(It’s obviously satire, and not mine, but I think it perfectly describes the hierarchical failures of the mental health system in what should be “WELL developed” nations.)
Research article is available at: https://doi.org/10.1037/neu0000877.
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It is not assumed most Children have poor self regulatory behavior?
Relative to well adjusted/normal adults, yes. Obviously they're referring to children with poor self regulatory behavior relative to other children. Were you actually confused about this, or just doing the thing everyone does where they see if they can poke a hole in a study without actually reading it?
Maybe they are suffering from midlife cognitive impairment.
In comparison to adults? Of course. That's not the question at hand. Add in the comparison of abused or neurodivergent children to the regular child mix and you've got yourself a study.
Challenging assumptions with evidence is science.
badFishTu t1_iycv66e wrote
Does that have anything to do with childhood abuse and inadequate teaching?