trauma
At its core, trauma can be thought of as the psychological wounds that persist, even when the physical ones are long gone.
Suicide Survival
I had only turned 18 three months prior to June 2nd, 2013. I was a baby. I was pure, but on that day I was reborn. I survivied suicide, but it came with a price. What if I told you I came back to an alternate reality? This story is my apart of my life.
By Solibeth Nunez4 years ago in Psyche
Bipolar Diagnosis
Every day I wake up, it feels as if I am in a deep dark hole that I cannot climb out of. There is a huge weight on my chest causing the deepest anxiety and I feel that I am worthless. My once happy spirit has darkened itself through all of the pain. It is almost as if I am just here, but not living. The doctors force anti-depressants and mood stabilizers, all of which are numbing my reality, but not actually solving the problem.
By Nichole Higgins4 years ago in Psyche
My Lost Innocence
I am broken pieces of what I used to be. The strong fearless girl, now scattered on the floor. Have you ever noticed how fearless children are? So adventurous and curious. Always getting into something. Parents chasing after them taking things away. Protecting them from the world and themselves. I am sure that I had that at some point. I don't remember. What I remember is catching coffee cans full of frogs to put in the bed with my sister, climbing trees without the fear of heights I have now, and saying whatever came to mind without fear of not being liked. That didn't last long though. That girl had a very short life.
By Melissa Wilson4 years ago in Psyche
A Past Life Memory
This is a short essay on the topic of past lives. When I was a teenager I learned about the theory of past lives from reading books by Alan Watts and others on Zen Buddhism, and Theosophy by a variety of authors. The philosophy was that we have a soul that incarnates in the physical world to experience physicality and to learn soul lessons, and in each lifetime we create karma. In these Eastern philosophies they claim that we come to earth thousands of times as both males and females, but we never regress to animal forms from the human.
By Anne Elizabeth Matthews4 years ago in Psyche
The First Story She Ever Wrote
I watched Titanic the movie for the first time a year after it came out in 1998. I was eight years old and I was too young. The effects this had on my undeveloped brain were profound, so profound in fact I am still dealing with the after-effects 23 years later. “How?” you say could a film have such lasting effects on a child’s brain? Let me tell you! At eight years old I was as naive as naive gets, I blindly trusted those around me who were supposed to protect and care for me but I already had this intense need for belonging and love. My parents were separated when I was four and my mother an alcoholic moved me across the country and fell in love (or trauma bonded) with a hopelessly devastatingly deeply traumatized alcoholic man. She moved him in, married him, and had another child all in a very short few years and I was just along for the ride. My mother always valued having a man over the quality of the man and the effects they may have on her children. So to put it bluntly my mother chose an alcoholic man over me, and for the next decade chose him again and again and again. You can imagine how invalidating of an environment that was for a child to grow up in, constantly being emotionally abused and neglected by the one person who was supposed to care about her in the world. I hated this man for a very long time and hated my mother for taking me away from my biological father and subjecting me to this man’s alcoholism and violent unpredictable behavior. “What does this have to do with the movie Titanic?”. Well My friend I will tell you now. As I sat and watched this very sad and terribly inappropriate movie for an eight-year-old I saw my mother’s relationship playing out on the screen. Cal in the place of my new stepfather, Rose in the place of my mother, and to my great surprise, a wonderfully charming, handsome, and extremely validating young man Jack who although he has no possessions or status or money (all of the things my mother sought in a man aka security) in the world rescues and saves Rose from her terribly abusive relationship with Cal. At that moment my brain idealized Jack and instantly created this fantasy in my head of a man that would love me unconditionally and save me from my life. “That’s what we’re waiting for,” my brain said to me. “We need someone to save us.”. So from then on, that’s what I sought out, intense and passionate connections with people who loved me unconditionally, or at least I thought they would. In my sophomore year of high school, I thought I finally found him, my knight, in shining armor here to save me from my life and myself. Here to love me unconditionally and to live happily ever after with. I’m not exactly sure when the first time I split on him was but I did, any hint of invalidation or disinterest sent me into a spiral of emotions I couldn’t control leading me to knock my knight off of his horse and into the dirt for me to step on. I didn’t know then that I was the toxic one, I didn’t know borderline personality disorder existed, and I definitely didn’t know what splitting was. For those of you who don’t know splitting is a term used in psychology referring to black and white thinking. Something can either be all good, or all bad, idealized or devalued, I love you don’t leave me, I hate you leave me alone. I had no clue I was doing this and no one cared enough to help me figure it out so I went on like this for some time exhibiting this black and white thinking that changed on a dime many other extreme emotional behaviors until one day my knight, the one who was going to save me, cheated on me. I was completely devastated, I hated him for doing it, I hated myself because I obviously wasn’t worth saving, I hated her most of all for being beautiful and perky and blonde, all of the things I would never be. After this, I was very cautious in all of my relationships and I trusted no one, I became certain that no one could ever love me for me. So I stopped being me. I hid all of the parts of myself that I had ever been criticized, bullied, devalued, dismissed, or berated for. I became a shell of myself mirroring the actions, interests, values, and behaviors of those around me changing like a chameleon with each interaction in an attempt to keep people from abandoning me. But they did. Seemingly over and over again. Every romantic relationship and platonic friendship I had eventually left. I was never good enough to be loved unconditionally. I didn’t deserve it and I wasn’t worthy of it, or at least that’s what I thought. I was 31 years old when I was finally diagnosed with borderline personality disorder after I had burnt my entire life to the ground for the hundredth time. I began therapy holding the belief that I was the victim in the situation, that it was all my partner’s fault and they were the villain in my head. I wanted to know why I kept attracting people who weren’t good for me and that I wasn’t good enough for. After a few weeks of therapy and some different assessments, my therapist told me her findings and that there was a very good possibility I was borderline. I struggled with this greatly in the beginning, every time I searched “Borderline personality disorder” on the internet I was met with the stigma of the disorder, information to help friends and family of people with borderline to cope with their toxicity or to leave them completely. All of these articles and books and posts about people with this disorder painting them as the toxic villains of the story. It was extremely devastating for me, but I finally understood why people were always leaving me. The cold hard truth was not an easy pill to swallow, I was the villain, or at the very least toxic. This gave me a new lens to look through my entire life with and everything became crystal clear. There was no doubt in my mind that I had the disorder, I recognized all nine of the qualifying traits in myself. I grew up in the perfect microcosm of narcissistic, invalidating, addiction-filled chaos that would lead to them. My fear of abandonment and self-hatred had led me to behave in toxic ways and with zero self-awareness. It became clear that no one had really left me, I had pushed them all away, in my frantic efforts to avoid abandonment. I am slowly learning how to live with this disorder, and maybe someday I’ll even recover from it but for now, I’ll have to accept it for what it is. I am doing the work, becoming more self-aware each day, gaining confidence and self-respect, doing my best to maintain my relationships with others, practicing gentle parenting (which is the HARDEST thing I’ve ever done but that’s a whole different story), and going to therapy. My life may never look like I thought it would or how I envisioned my story to play out as a child, but I know now that I don’t need a man to save me, the only way I can be “saved” is if I do it myself! I am the author of my own story now and I’m changing the narrative!
By Braven Marks4 years ago in Psyche
Triggered Memories
A great cry, a mournful wail, an ear-piercing scream—an altogether heart-wrenching picture of a young woman crying out for her life, eyes shot forward in sheer panic. It was a blurry picture and a fainting frame. There she was in her car, seemingly cornered in her driveway. It was a long driveway going downhill, away from a lofty home that stood before it. Her screams were so frightened. It was like seeing a child alone in a dark room. So scared, so isolated; pending certain doom. She just kept screaming, waving her hands so as to frighten away something, or someone.
By Mizael Mendez4 years ago in Psyche
The Day Her Life Changed
When it all started it was the day before my fifth birthday. If only I knew that it would change my life forever. It was the day my baby brother passed away. He was my best friend who was by my side the whole time. He was very protective of me. If you were mean to me my baby brother would hit you till you apologized. He was deaf and had a hard time fitting in and I accepted him for who he was. I also had a hard time fitting in since I had spent most of my time with my brother and I did not care, he was my best friend. On May 11th, my best friend passed away. Jonathan is someone who made me feel as though I was never alone. A few months after my brothers death, I started to notice my mother changing. She started to be super depressed and refused to get out of bed for weeks. Then one strange day my mom got out of bed and decided to get a job. She changed so fast that I never realized my mother was on drugs. My mother would hide in her room closing the door and locking it. My mother was on drugs for years before something happened. Her drug of choice was Methamphetamine. This was just the only started of my life going downhill till one day it just hit a super happy note. But of course I am getting ahead of my self.
By Jessica Munns4 years ago in Psyche
