Chat/Support for the combination of Trauma and Disability.

For some of us Disability may have come from a traumatic incident.

For others we had a traumatic , even abusive ,childhood because we had a disability.

For both groups this can lead to the day to day world being full of triggers and new micro-trauma and it can be so easy to be ableist with oneself or fall into learned helplessness.

I am a child abuse and gas lighting survivor but because the abuse and gas lighting was centered around the fact that I have a Developmental Disability it took an atypical form.

So unless I really get into just how bad it was in graphic detail people tend to brush it off. It was bad, really bad, doubted my own sanity, and almost ended my life as a tween and then had to keep that a deep dark secret bad - as it would have been weaponized against me.

As if the schools so called experts were hopelessly incompetent or were actively trying to cause mental health issues and then make any they found worse instead of better.

That doesn't mean someone who has been through that much can just forget about the past and walk away - it's not that easy.

I went through some really really bad stuff and while life is better today - the scars are still there.

When the very act of making a mistake is a trigger because you were taught that passing was your only value in life - its hard to avoid triggering yourself let alone triggers from society. I have subtle but very real disabilities, things that mean I have to concentrate on how I both move and act to seem "normal" or people notice there is something wrong even if they can't quite put thier finger on it.

That's the short and detail free version of my story but many of us have dealt with bullying, gas lighting, invalidation,, not being believed, infantiilization and more.