You Have to Protect Yourself

Another night with almost no sleep. This time, a break from nightmares. You wake up around 2 a.m. try to rest. Will this work? If you turn something on, you'll stay up all night. But sometimes you can't go back to sleep, and need some way to feel safe.

Is everything violently triggering? Right now it feels like it. You have to screen everything. Don't give into the voyuer part of you that wants to see listen or read something that you know will make you violently dissociate and then black out. Your system literally shorts out. Then when you come to, you have no idea where you are. Are you safe? Or, will you black out again.

You try to protect yourself. Some days you literally have no noise. But even at times like that, the pain is still there. There's no place to escape. You try the usual mix of tricks to reground yourself. But at times, nothing works.

What do you do then?

All day long you fight to scream and get pain out. You can't just sit back and do nothing. At the end of the day you're totally exhausted. But you also have a sense of temporary relief. You can focus and not feel like you're under attack.

Symptoms are always there. You can't just sit back and do nothing. You have to fight back.

Why are other people horrible? I don't know. However I do know that you have to protect yourself. You don't want to feel burned out, cynical and turn into a total monster.

But you have to protect yourself.

Am I responsible for stopping all of the pain in the world? No I'm not. If the worst happens and Trump wins, I know it's not my fault.

Protect yourself.

Screaming In Pain (Contains graphic content. Read at your own risk)

Staying home at the moment and trying to regain some sense of being grounded. We still have to fight to focus when we wake up so we don't end up dissociating all day long. You feel like you're being bombarded with pain. Everything's a threat. You can't just sit back and do nothing.

You go outside and feel the sun shining. Then, for a split second you have a vision of what if you weren't around? Would you still feel any warmth at all? Why does this happen? We don't know.

Rock back and forth. Turn off all threatening stuff. Try to reassure yourself that you're safe. Nobody else is here. Nobody will break in and kill you.

You have to protect yourself
You're not a threat to anybody
It's not your fault
You're not insane

No noise. Try to reassure yourself, your multiples and little kid that it's okay.

Maybe we'll go out later. Right now, we want to feel safe in our own home.

Money, Balance and More

Our suggestion. Stay away from the triggering news, unless you have to look. If you do, screen everything, because there's a lot of sick stuff out there.

More closer to home, another three weeks until the next therapy session. In the meantime, I'm still balancing job leads with money problems, symptoms and more. Protection is also mandatory. Flashbacks to vicious abuse still happen all day long. You try to focus on the present as best you can. Despite doing that, you can still struggle with how come nobody helped me?

Even with the abuse and feelings of abandonment, you try to keep things in mind:

You're not weird, a freak or "abnormal" in any way because of being raped by three serial pedophiles.
Now, all of the backed up trauma is flooding out.
Just because you were raped by pedophiles doesn't mean that you will rape some other little kid.

Why then do I at times have that fleeting thought? I have no desire to hurt either myself or anyone else. Especially an innocent terrified little kid. Why then do I have this fleeting sick and twisted thought?

Is it because it's a reaction of some type to being raped and horrible trauma? I've asked lots of sources, and so far NOBODY knows. My current therapist doesn't like contact with clients outside sessions unless it's an emergency. And I have nowhere else to go to.

The thought comes to mind. Do I have to cure myself?

Important Questions

How's your week? Into the weekend, and we're struggling with lots of despair and abandonment.

We came across something online recently that was hard to deal with. Just how severe has our dissociating been from being raped? Every single day from that point, we've had to fight really hard to not give into daily abuse.

Abuse from people who say they're your friends.
Immediate family.

Also, no support from various people in authority roles. I won't go into all the abusive stuff that they said, so we won't end up dissociating for about two week to try and get our balance back.

Having said that, how do you reason with someone who uses double standards? One minute, it's I care about you. Then, I can do and say anything I please. Does that upset you in any way? Am I OFFENDING you in some way (heavy sarcasm on offending)?

No, sorry. You can't have it both ways. I just meekly sit back and do nothing? No.

That's how severely dysfunctional a lot of my fight to survive has been.

Since I've been raped, I've only had half a day of no dissociating. I've never had a PTSD symptom free day.

How does that affect someone?

I know it's not my fault. I know I didn't do anything wrong. Yet, being a normal human being, I feel like I've only had one person actually give me a reassuring hug and say I'm sorry you were raped that actually meant it.

Again, how are you supposed to feel? Yes, I'm a survivor. My little kid and multiples are survivors as well. But also, I'm a human being with emotions and not a case file.

Do you cry every night?
Do you feel abandoned?
Do you feel like people admit that you're there?
How do you set boundaries?
How do you protect yourself from dissociating?
Do you feel like you've been deprived of all supportive human contact since you were raped?

Feel free to comment. Thanks for reading.

It is Monday

Lots of bases to cover today. Also, lots of scam job ads. Then again, in this economy that's to be expected.

We're really trying to not get eaten alive by anger and just end up horribly cynical and a nightmare. Like a lot of trauma survivors, you try to get help and it feels like almost everyone just wants you to go away. You have to protect yourself, and not sink down to their level. That's one key for us. It's almost like programmed disfunction. I treat you like dirt. You respond like I want to respond. Then, that makes it okay for me to treat you like dirt again. This is normal.

No, it's not.

You're not responsible for what others do and say. However, you must protect yourself and stand up for yourself where necessary. Why? Because nobody else will.

Have a nice day.