Hallucinations to escape reality - how do you know who you really are?

[mitrekov]

Hello everyone,

I developed a C-PTSD as a child, was psychologically abused by a teacher for 5 years, I was 7-11 years old .  I pretended in front of my loving friends and family nothing was happening because i was scared. In the end i wanted to commit a suicide but unsuccessfully, then it was revealed. I was ok for a while but when i was 14 i had a breakdown from it and took a therapy for a while and got better. But i was still unaware how deep my wounds were. Now i see i could not comprehend and accept my world in which i am not manipulated, used, controlled. That's when i started to think God is taking to me. It was appealing - he was controlling my life, i felt special, i was just obeying his rules. I thought i could predict future, hear his voice, his commands, that i understood how heaven and * works because he told me. I imagined seeing angels and devil and had many other delusions. I felt like i had strings again with no control and free will, which was all i was taught when growing up. This lasted for 4 years. It was so sudden when I realized none of it was true, like i always knew it but didn't let myself face it because the other reality was easier somehow. Full realization that none of it existed and that i wasted 5 years of my life living in madness was the hardest thing i have ever done.

I still feel random confusions about what is real and what is not. Th biggest challenge i face now is to realize where is the boundary between my trauma and my own personality. It feels like i have none, like my inside is only the fear from what my mind is capable of and the need to be manipulated again.

How do you know who you are?  Any advice would help.

[radical]

 
Hi and welcome Mitrekov,

What happened to you as a child was terrible, no wonder you struggle to know who you are under a mountain of fear and confusion.

It sounds like you've come a really long way already and I hope you can give yourself credit for that.  I don't know if this helps, but I've come to see that the person I am was buried under the fear and I needed and need to find ways to deal with and overcome it to find that 'I' never went anywhere.  Fear is so dominating, it can take control, and in the process take on a life of its own and I've ended up living inside the fear instead of living inside my own skin.

Are there any times you feel less afraid, things you can say to youself to reassure yourself?

[mitrekov]

hello radical,

thank you for your welcome and reply.
Yes, the fear is very dominating. When i feel this irrational fear all of a sudden with the confusion, i try to find a safe place, sit down, and analyze the subconscious impulse and accept the fear. I learned this technique in therapy and it works quite well for me. I was able to uncover wide feelings that i oppressed for such a long time and let myself cry and scream them out and then accept them.

Since the abuse happened in early childhood, I fear that it shaped the development of my personality, the implanted ideas shaped my worldview. I feel like my personality is a brick wall and while it was built some of the bricks were put there by my abuser. I am picking them out one by one. But I don't know how to fix the wall to be without these holes in it yet. Maybe this is another step of the recovery, but i am not sure yet how to get there.

The moments I feel less afraid is when I talk to people around me, because i observe my reactions and i see the changes in my attitude towards them, compared to the times when my feelings were so oppressed and i lived in the fear. This way i discover what the missing pieces might look like.

[Entropic]

Hi,

That sounds really terrible though I can somewhat empathize because I was borderline on developing similar tendencies at my worst (though not with regards to god since I was never religious). What helped me at least in creating a sense of self was to focus on the present and who and what I am today. Who I want to be, where I want to go, what I want to accomplish and all those things. It helps to create a sense that your self is at least grounded into something real that you can always point back to and say "yup, that's me". And while that's not a replacement for actual inner work, I think it helps when we are feeling lost and confused because it creates an anchor to hold on to for the time-being while we work on other things.

[sanmagic7]

hey, mitrekov,

i agree with entropic about asking ourselves those grounding types of questions.  i do believe that as we recover, we more easily discover the answers to them and can then place them, a brick or piece at a time into the holes.  we begin building the being that we truly are, not the one that was thrust upon us. 

it is a process, and sometimes we'll think we find a piece that fits only to discover a little ways down the road that it really isn't us.  since our true selves have been covered so mightily by others, it may take a little experimentation before we're comfortable with what we're creating for ourselves. 

it'll happen, tho, of that i have no doubt.  you'll find yourself again and rejoice when you do.  it's just a matter of time.  be patient, be determined, be flexible.  you'll get there.