I don’t feel like I even have valid trauma

[justanotherhuman237]

ok starting off by saying: I'm a weird person. i say some very unhinged things sometimes and that causes a lot of people to dislike me. Now that I've got some context let me just say how it started. All the way back in elementary school, I had close friends who would constantly belittle me and Insult me and that impacted me to a point that to this day, I insult people as a way to show affection and have awful self imagine. Sadly those were the best years though, in middle school I met a girl who for privacy reasons I'll call "A". So A was not very mentally well and cut herself often. she was also one of those people that has to one up you in everything so when I told her I was sad, shed say something like "that sucks but at leas YOU didn't have to…". anyways one day I got a suicide note from her and me and my other friend called the police to stop her but it took a toll on me. Things turn a really sharp turn however as after that incident, me and A started fighting and I reluctantly cut things off with her. In response, she called the police on me and lied to them and said I was planning a shooting (as I said, she wasn't mentally well). Now for the fun part! highschool. Around this time, my self Image and depression were worse than ever and I took to the internet to look for validation, which I got when a man reached out to me. he was 41 and I was probably about 16 at the time and he told me that people would tell me how pretty I was if I pretended to be 19 and posted nudes of myself. So I did. He then told me he'd give me validation if I scratched my skin off and sent him photos of the aftermath. So I Did. he exposed me to a lot of shit like gore and videos of people dying. and I still see the affects of seeing that to this day. After we talked for a while, one day he admitted to raping his six year old daughter and I remember feeling helpless and unable to do anything. I think that was the final straw for me as I blocked him and called the police. now I'm really shy and get upset easily. I'm 19 now and Whenever I hear mentions of rape or death or suicidal i start to shake and feel extremly uncomfortable. People say whats happened is bad but I can't help but think it's not actual "trauma" Because some people have actually been the ones who got raped, some people have actually had friends who committed suicide… I just wanted to tell someone how I felt because I can't tell me own friends. Thanks for reading this

 

[human909]

I am so sorry you had to go through that, it was not right for the 41 year old man to do that to you. i hope you find peace soon.

 

[CatLvr]

Oh my God! I am both incredibly sad and absolutely furious at how you have been treated. Understand something right now, you WERE raped, and assaulted, and abused. You CLEARLY have PTSD from the things you have experienced. Be gentle with yourself and when you have the fear reaction you have described take a deep breath and remember you feelings are valid. Don't ever minimize your own experiences. You are worthy of so much more than what has happened to you. And you can vent here as much as you want. We will be here for you.

 

[yearofluigi]

That's horrible... To be blunt, that's definitely trauma. Your experiences in elementary school and the situation with A both sound incredibly stressful, and the stuff that man did to you was straight-up sexual and emotional abuse, even if there was no physical contact involved. The fact that he abused you over the internet doesn't make it any less real.

And even if it could've been worse... Trauma isn't about what happened, it's about how it affects you. That's something I'm just beginning to accept, myself. I'm in a sort of similar position to you, where I feel traumatized and have a lot of behaviours that seem like trauma responses, but I don't really have any memories that I felt "deserved" to be called traumatic (certainly nothing as bad as what you've gone through). But even if my experiences maybe "weren't that bad" by some metric, they still fucked me up. Acknowledging that has really helped me work through some things, I think. Let yourself feel whatever you're feeling. There's always someone who has it worse, but that doesn't make you any less deserving of comfort.

I wanna be clear here: What happened to you was absolutely terrible. No one deserves to go through that, and it would be fully accurate to call your experiences traumatic. But even if you don't think so, you can still acknowledge how badly they've affected you. There's no such thing as invalid trauma

 

[atrophy]

Children can be awful and mean spirited. You clearly seem to have trauma from the bullying.

You were just a child when you were exposed to certain topics.

You were clearly groomed by this man, he mentions all those disgusting subjects to desensitise you and try to make you his next victim.

You have been through awful lot by the age 16.
I hope you can heal and know that your trauma is very much valid, all trauma is valid.

 

[lastch]

All trauma is valid

 

[Forever Sleep]

You've been through an awful lot. I'm sorry. Granted, there will always be people worse of than most of us in some way. That doesn't lessen the stuff that happened to you though. Just witnessing self harm I imagine would be upsetting for a child. It sounds unfortunately though, that you have got involved with a few highly manipulative people. You were very courageous (and right) to report that man. But, it's absolutely understabdable that talk of NSFW stuff would be massively triggering to you.

Obviously, it's nowhere near as serious as being a physical victim of someone like that but you actually were. He exploited and mannipulated you to do certain things you may not have been entirely confortable with. Plus, finding out something like that about someone you know is massively distressing. Someone from my college was convicted of an appalling crime and that felt distressing to me. Not that I even knew them that well. But, you start to wonder about your own judgement etc. Really though, you were still pretty young. I hope at least- as awful as the experience must have been, it has made you cautious not to be manipulated now.

 

[sximii]

that is awful. Terrible. It's like small traumas, but they all build up slowly and cause a big problem. That's just as valid. I have been through abuse, and I sometimes feel the same way. Like it's not valid enough. But it is, for you and me and everyone that has been through traumas.

On a side note, I often feel that the way you described A might be how some people see me. I'm not sure, but there are times when knowing I'm going through worse gives me some sort of sense of security. It's weird. And I don't like that about myself

 

[Electra]

All trauma is valid

Second this!!!

 

[silkseal]

All trauma is valid

this is very true.
OP, I personally feel like your trauma is worse than mine. I think, part of the problem of living a complex human life is that we don't always fit into the fancy classical images we think of when we think of trauma. You have definitely gone through multiple difficult experiences and that is your truth.