Recovered Lost Memories of SA through Psychedelic Therapy

[Chart]

As soon as I have "stabilized" myself a little bit more I'm going to start a local support group. It's gonna be some work but I feel driven by the fact that 90% of my true sense of being understood and supported comes from others with Cptsd (this forum). I keep trying to think of ways to tell people I have Cptsd, but aside from three close friends, I know that I will not be understood.

[Little2Nothing]

I think people, without a traumatic background, get uncomfortable when we share what is going on with us. They don't know what to say or how to react. 

I told a very close friend about my struggles and found out he had a similar upbringing. The end result is our friendship has deepened. 

[Papa Coco]

Little2Nothing, I like your story. I've experienced similar.  I was employed by the same corporation from my 18th birthday to my 60th. 42 years. I did several jobs during those years, and met a LOT of people. I'm a friendly, comical, compassionate person who made a lot of friends during those years. My problems at home were not known by my peers at work. At age 50, after my 4th suicide attempt, I went total No Contact with my entire FOO. That triggered me to feel utterly compelled to write my life's story as a fiction novel. After a few years of working on this book, and seeing how it might actually be publishable, I started telling my friends at work what I was doing. Their first question was: "What is the book about?" I would tell them it was a story of a boy who lived a life like mine, and who had been rescued 4 times from suicide. Their first reaction was "WOW! I never would have thought I'd hear you say somethign like that."  The next question they would ask was, "Can I tell you what happened to me?" I would find us a private place to talk, only to hear peer after peer tell me stories of their own childhoods that almost made me cry. In every case, the person I had known for years started with the words, "I've never told anyone this before, but..."

I tell this story a lot because I feel like I need to share with others that what I learned then was that there are more novels walking the streets then there are on the bookstore shelves. I learned that there are a lot of people who are hiding a lot of pain and I was not the only person alive who was barely surviving life while wearing a smiling face in public. The most important thing I learned was that a lot of people truly want to tell their stories, but don't feel like they're allowed to. 

I think it's awesome that you were able to bond with your friend. You took a huge risk by sharing your story with them, and you ended up giving them the gift of being able to finally share their story back.

I'm feeling fairly sure that there aren't many people on earth having a really good time these days. I feel like there's a lot of pain in the faces of most people, and I think that when we open up to share our own pains, that we give others permission to do the same. There have been people who've scorned me for sharing too much (TMI), but those people are rare, and in every case, the people who weren't receptive weren't really very good friends anyway. I think I've told you the story of the "friend" who said to me, "My friends and I who have PTSD from war have no respect for people like you who claim to have it but didn't see what we saw." That friendship was obviously a huge waste of time, and I left his life feeling glad he'd exposed his true colors before I got too invested in him.

Those who were able to open up and tell me what they'd never told anyone before, quite often became very deep friends with me for a good long time.

Sharing IS caring. USUALLY, I know who to not open up to, and even when I miss on that guess, the person just proves they are too closed off and aren't ready for a friendship with me anyway.  I'd rather have one or two open friendships than a thousand fair-weather-only friends anyway.

[Denverite]

@Papa Coco I'm reminded of the title of Gabor Mate's book, "The Myth of Normal." I haven't read the entire thing but your post is dead-on in that regard. Supposedly 1 in 5 women and 1 in 6 men undergo some sort of sexual abuse in their lifetimes. It's pretty much guaranteed that we all know or have met SOMEONE who would understand it. Yet we hold it all in because it seems like such an outlier event...

I'm only starting to share my experiences and slowly coming to connect with people who DO get it. I found someone one city over through a forum specifically for men with sexual trauma issues. We meet every so often and each time we talk I feel a deeper connection growing. He even had a family of origin that would qualify him for this forum. I feel like I've met someone I can be completely unfiltered with. It's astonishing to know that's possible for me as I've never not had to hold things back in a relationship.

[Chart]

I think people, without a traumatic background, get uncomfortable when we share what is going on with us. They don't know what to say or how to react.

I'm pretty confident the thought itself is traumatizing for most people, especially those without any experience, knowledge or understanding of the spectrum of human dysfunctional behavior.

I'm reflecting constantly on how to effectively communicate when discussing the subject of trauma with uninformed people. I always run down the list of the four principal causes of developmental trauma: Sexual abuse, physical abuse, psychological abuse and neglect. Just there it's clearly overwhelming to most of the people I talk to. Immediately I encounter a desire to "rank" things in a descending order from "best" to "worst". It cannot be done. Immediately we have to go into all sorts of facts and precisions and a debate usually ensues. And the worst is that the core issue of "protection of children" is just completely lost in the mix. Amongst all the daily and worldly problems we face, "suffering children" is just too often the drop too much. So many people are already at their limit of what they can take on.

I'm preparing to start giving lectures and conferences in various places around where I live. But I really have to prepare myself in advance. I really want to feel that I have "done something" to help future children. I'm not quite yet ready to tackle this project (gotta get my own ship in better order first) but I'm determined to do it relatively soon. It is in my opinion the single greatest hurdle faced by humanity and impacts our quality of life, mental equilibrium and future social and environmental evolution.

We very simply must, as a species, be able to raise our young on a healthy psychological base. This is not currently the case and the impact for our future as living organisms is, in my opinion, catastrophic.

[Desert Flower]

I agree Chart. 

I think that somewhere along the way, we lost track of what's important somehow. We seem to care about things like performance or what the neighbours think or what things look like on the outside. Instead of things like how we treat each other, see each other, be there for one another. These societies traumatize children by 'upbringing' and 'education', which is basically telling them they're not okay, they need to do better. Instead of looking at who they are already: perfect, delightful little beings.

And ranking traumas cannot be done for people. You never know how the other person feels the way they do themselves. Or having to explain what happened that traumatised you. I cannot do it. I usually just say: 'I grew up in an unsafe environment' and let them figure out for themselves, not very helpful either I'm afraid.

Sorry if I'm rambling here.

[Chart]

Freedom to ramble! Thanks for your response DF. I agreed with you 100%. This Forum is not primarily a political platform for advocating children's rights. We focus primarily (in my opinion) on healing. And I'm totally okay with that. I still have so far to go. But as a personal issue I feel deeply and strongly that our future so depends upon awareness of children's direct experiences as they develop. This is a "source" subject. It could be an absolute game-changer is solving interpersonal AND international conflict, violence, abuse, etc etc.
Healthy children almost always become healthy adults. The reverse is much more rarely the case. Hence the great importance of "getting it right the first time".