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Heyo, so I have nightmares all the time, like probably around 5 out of 7 nights. About half of the time, they stand in obvious relation to my trauma, but the other half are nonsensical, dystopian, horror movie type stuff with no obvious connection to my life even. (it should be noted that I practically never consume horror as a genre)
IDK, what's up with that? or why is my brain doing that? Do y'all have any ideas?

Hey OwnSide and Gromit!

@OwnSide  it is very comforting and validating to me to know that I'm not alone in this experience, but I'm sorry you share it and i hope you're doing ok.
I've thought about the tickling a bit more and as you already mentioned, aside from the fact that it caused me such pain and overwhelm, just the fact that my bodily autonomy was violated and my clear boundaries and needs were ignored in these moments in itself was horrible. I feel more confident calling it abuse now, although of course there's still some doubt, it takes time to let that go I guess. And I'd love to, feel free to send me a message if you'd still like to!


@Gromit  That sounds like a horrible experience and I'm truly sorry you had to go through that.
And honestly. It's tragic what people and especially children go through over so mundane things.
And yea, as already stated boundaries and agency are so important. Of course thats difficult to navigate when your environment doesn't value your autonomy

Thank you for your suggestion, I skimmed it a bit earlier today, it's a bit overwhelming, but I'll get a hang of it in time i think, just lots to learn.
And thank you so much again for your reassurance, genuinly thank you everyone.

Thank you, Kizzie! I was considering getting this book, Its good to know other people found it helpful!

Hello Wootu, 
Welcome and lots of luck on your journey!

Hi Kizzie,
thank you so much for your reply.

I relate to what you said about them appearing like good parents on the outside/surface and wondering what was wrong with me for feeling unsafe around them for years.
I guess it's especially hard if they gaslight you too (as my parents did), because I always feel like my perception is wrong or doesn't matter, so I often need my friends to confirm that, yes, it was that bad.
It's so funny how if someone else described these things to me I'd absolutely recognize that as abuse yet it's so hard to validate myself.

I'm working on trusting myself more now. Do you perhaps have any suggestions regarding that?

I have two playlists for this, one with songs relating to my trauma and one for uplifting songs.

some of my favs from each category are:
je vole - Louane
back to school - Mother Mother
the family jewels - Marina and the Diamonds
the water - Hurts (not really dirctly about Trauma i think but I interpret it to describe the experience of living with (C-)PTSD
No need to argue - the Cramberries
Numb - Linkin Park

Tomorrow from the Annie Musical
survivor - Destiny's Child
stronger - Britney Spears

Hello Kizzie and Papa Coco!

Yes, i´m grateful everyday. I still working on reducing the contact and becoming fully financially independant. It's fery much a work in progress, but I'm getting there.

And it's been really helpful and comforting so far!

I relate to this a lot, excessive daydreaming is and was a main coping mechanism for me. I would even prefer daydreaming over meeting with friends at times, and it has definetly affected my ability to get things done in the past. I can only say that changing my environment helped me, as there was no need for it, at least not to that degree, once i was safer.
I don't really know what else could help, maybe strategies similar to regular grounding tools whenever the daydreaming is inconvinient or unhelpful?

Thank you for your feedback.
I guess I wasn't aware that this pattern is as common but it makes a lot of sense. Maybe I was/am in denial abt it too to some degree. I still keep invalidating myself, gotta work on that.

As for the locking in, whenever I ask people, they usually call it anything from neglect to physical and emotional abuse, similar to your suggestion, so maybe a combination of all three? I suppose it doesn't matter too much in the end what you call it, it's bad nethertheless :/

I don't know if you ruled that out for yourself but could it be a body memory/somatic flashback of some sort?

And the pain being psychosomatic makes a lot of sense too, I think.

Thank you, Blueberry! 
Wishing you a great day!!

Hey,

so I am aware that my siblings and I endured psychological/emotional abuse from our parents, but there are some things that happened that I'm just not sure what to call. (And unfortunately I have this desire to categorize everything that happened, maybe to understand it better/confirm the realness of these experiences?)


(!!! Trigger warning for being locked in, physical violence and tickling!!!)

     

So one big thing that went on for a really long time is that my parents would lock my brother in his room as punishment, whenever he was "too much" or a bother, or when they didn't want to watch over him, as well as  whenever they left the house and during the night. This ranged from putting a piece of paper between the doorframe to physically locking the door.

They would also youse physical punishments, though very very rarely, which is why I'm not sure if this could be considered physical abuse.

One thing that happened to me that may sound a bit weird is that my father would tickle me. The reason I'm mentioning this is because I'm on the autism spectrum and therefore certain sensory experiences, like light touch, are incrediby overwhelming and painful to me. Like, I'd be legitimately suffering when he tickled me and very much express this by screaming/crying/trying to physically defending myself and it would still continue. He still does this thing where he'll lightly brush my arm or whatever and when I react he'll claim that it's an accident, but it feels like a deliberate action. The thing is that although i know I was hurting in these situations I still struggle to take this experience seriously because "its just tickling, he wasn't causing me any legitimate harm".




(!!!Trigger warning for being locked in, physical violence and tickling!!!)

What do you think of these occurences? There was clearly something going on, but what?

Hey!

I'm Joon, I moved out of my family's home during the pandemic to escape the abuse taking place and have been working on reclaiming my life since. I'm still figuring a lot out and I'm glad I found this forum, as there are many things that are still confusing and I'm looking forward to talking to others with similar experiences.

Looking forward to talking to y'all and I wish you all a good day!