Trauma || Self Journey

So today I wanted to explore briefly how childhood trauma can change and affect one’s mental health. This can range from experience of emotional, physical and sexual abuse. I wanted to use this blog to talk about it without sharing my own experiences as I haven’t reached the point of my life where I can even openly share and 100% deal with it. I want to be able to tell those close to me and especially my parents first before I even think of writing a blog post about it.

From what I have learnt from professional help, talking to friends and doing my own research, being exposed to traumatic experiences while growing up can really have a negative impact on the human mind, making us at our most vulnerable. As a result, those exposed to these have a higher rate of depression, suicidality, anxiety disorders and PTSD leading up to adult age. Sometimes your mental health and life is not even affected by these traumas until months or years after the event(s) took place. When I began my recent journey of accepting my past events from childhood and not just subconsciously blocking them out of my mind I realized the last event I experienced I was in year 8 (13-14 years old); a year later I started to suffer from anxiety, depression and I was constantly angry and hated my existence. I never 100% knew why I hated myself and just wanted to die so bad, I would convince myself it would be because I hated my weight or hated how people treated me, but that wasn’t the case.

Due to the different experiences I had encountered from roughly when I was 10-16, I developed a mental defence mechanism also called dissociation. The best way to describe it is when you disconnect from memories, feelings, thoughts and sometimes your sense of self. Normally when you have dissociation, you tend to forget things or sometimes have gaps in your memory. You also realize there are changes in the way you feel and have other symptoms. For me I feel detached and I get absorbed in a fantasy world of mine where things are perfect to the point it does seems real. Personally, how I would describe dissociation is when your brain shuts down, which can make you feel disconnected from your body and separated from what is happening around you at the time. This is because your mind is protecting itself by disengaging from that certain situation.

It’s sometimes frustrating for me trying to explain this concept of mind shut down or dissociation to people because it’s something they struggle to fully understand which I don’t blame them for really. It also frustrates me how because of what I experienced from when I was younger, is the cause of all the mental pain and suffering, I had to go through on my own. No one to turn to, no one to turn to confine in. I just saw it all as normal and dissociated from it, to the point where it was removed from my memory until once where I briefly told 2 of my internet friends but then I forgot again. When bad things happened to me like this, I just brushed it off and chose to focus on forgetting at all and escaping to this world of mine which is perfectly fine, and I just have these moments of depression that I can’t explain.

I was asked recently by my best friend “if the recent events didn’t happen would I have told anyone? Do you think it was best that it came to light?” Honestly from reflecting in a healthier matter I am quite a bit it did as it forced me to actually deal with everything; with therapy and discover the source of my depression and anxiety for all these years.

Over the coming months, I will be doing a selfcare blog journey to reflect on things I discover about my past and present, and my pure thoughts on it so I, like many others, can learn from it.