Some of my friends tell me i have trauma and the more i think about it they may be right. Would like some insight

[BryceMcBryde]

so, i have a few friends who have spoke with me saying they feel as though i have symptoms of a traumatic past. i know i haven't had a completely easy life, but as far as trauma goes, i guess i kinda see it, but again im not an expert.

I had a pretty easy home life as a kid. school was a different story. Because i didn't know how to control my autism, alot of people thought i was annoying. I didn't have many friends, and the few i had were mostly fake friends. i had a couple real ones but i haven't spoken to them since i graduated. almost everyone had the same view of me. that i was the annoying weird kid.

when i was about 14 i tried to kill myself because i felt like my autism would get me nowhere in life. around this time i also started having daily intrusive thoughts. every day was a mental fight against my brain telling me i was a horrible person from 2018-2021. thankfully its gone now. there was a period during 2019 when i would fantasize about committing suicide because of these thoughts. i didn't necessarily feel suicidal, but i got a sense of relief just imagining shooting myself in the head or hanging myself.

in 2020 i left my old school and because i finally stood up for myself against my "friend group" who weren't my real friends. there was one really big asshole in particular. i had wanted to start a band with them and this one guy told me he lied and only told me he said yes cause he thought it was funny to mess with me. now all the people i used to know pretty much dislike me or don't care about me.

Then around April 2021 i spent a week in the hospital after my third suicide attempt. it was one of the worst points of my life (although the hospital food was good). I met my second boyfriend around this time too. however, when we first had sex, he did something i asked him not to. i felt like he violated me, but i stayed with him because of how lonely i was. my brain was in such a rough spot i was willing to stay with a person who i believed violated me.

thankfully later on i asked if he heard me when i said it and he said no. i said it much quieter than i thought i did and he didn't hear me. like i mentioned in my earlier post, he got kicked out and had to move to another state. ever since my life has been kinda just ok.

i don't really know how to classify "trauma" and stuff tbh. i would talk to my therapist but she isn't really a therapist. she just prescribes my medication.

 

[grommet]

I wish I could help with your question but I do not know how to know about other people having trauma. Me saying that might make you wonder then why I am responding. It is because I recognized some of my life in what you talked about at school and I am traumatized by what the other kids did.

I am 55 and I am still very hurt and in shock by the teasing, tricks and bullying. It is not a choice I made to keep thinking about it, it won’t leave me alone. I think trauma does that.

When the kids realized I believe what they told me (because I think literally) so many played with me that way, telling me things and laughing when I believed them, it was a trick. It was not a kind of playing or game I understood, it just felt cruel and I felt unwanted and humiliated.

I also learned not to be myself. Answering questions accurately was wrong to do socially. I did not understand the problem but all the kids laughed loudly at me and called me names when I did it. So it must be something very commonly understood as wrong to do though morally I cannot see what is wrong with answering a question accurately and well. I thought it was good but it hurt so badly when they teased me for it I changed who I was.

I started deliberately mispronouncing words, I practiced mumbling on purpose, things so I would sound like they did when they talked. I learned to never say the accurate time. Always say 3:15 or about 3:30. Do not say 3:17 if it was. They really did not like accuracy.

None of it made sense or was natural to me so I had to stop being who I really was to fit in and stop them bullying me which made me feel really bad about myself but it worked, they started leaving me alone. I kept pretending to me someone else my whole time in school and it did not always worked, I still got picked on or choked agains a locker or hit in the head or tripped. I could not be enough of someone else well enough to get them to totally stop.

I am sorry about what happened to you with your boyfriend. That sounds scary. I also did many things I did not want to though I made a choice to do them anyway and you did not choose to do what was done to you.

I do not know if what I said helps you in a way but I wanted you to hear about someone else so maybe it made you feel like you were in the right place and there were people like you.

 

[Gerald Wilgus]

Through HS, University and Graduate School and into young adulthood, I was socially isolated, and while I was intelligent enough that people somehow thought I was normal (though a bit scary with my facility with explosives and unusual, counter culture, ideas.) Consequently, I internalized a lot that was negative about my self image and body image. It was a time when people were pairing up and experimenting with their sexuality and my deficits kept me from that though I had normal desires. I was existentially lonely when at first I could not understand any way foreward. I thought I was damaged, unlovable, and incapable of any normal relationship. I finally broke out of that cage, but there have been things that triggered me to live in the mind of that desperate younger me. My anger at the world was significant and I would start to treat others poorly. Happily, Cognitive Processing Therapy has allowed me to put a stake through the heart of the past and I am feeling quite well. That is my experience with social trauma.