Sometimes healing is really hard.
I have been part of 7 cups for awhile now, and I am learning how to heal and grow from a childhood of sexual and physical abuse. I have been in counseling for about 18 months, and I am learning to love myself, but I sometimes have trouble. This week is my father and my sister's birthdays and I am having alot of flashbacks and nightmares. My father molested me from the age of four until about 8 and after that he would expose me to pornography and his own body well into my teen years. My sister was very mean and would lose her temper at the smallest thing and would take it out on me, screaming at me and beating me. Most of the time, my coping strategies work, I am able to calm myself down fairily easy, and give myself the love and understanding that others cannot or wont give me. However this week is so difficult. I am remembering things like they just happened, and I am dreaming about bieng chased by my sister or father and bieng blamed, that all the abuse was because I was such a terrible child and I deserved it. I am trying to reach out to this community and others that I trust for help, because honestly, I feel like a small, lost, wreched child that no one cares for or even remembers. Thank you for reading this.
@daisylee
I am so in awe of you, at how you see beyond the trauma and shame of events you've experienced, and recognise you're a good person, deserved none of it, and the shame is not a burden that belongs to you.
But there are still those trigger moments aren't there, and for you it's the birthdays of those who hurt you so much. And it sounds like they take you right back to being that small, innocent child again. I can remind you that you're an adult now, you're safe, that you're so much better than the people who did this to you, that they're the ones that should be suffering for it, not you. I can prompt you to use those tactics that ground yourself in the present day, to stay in this moment rather than go back into those dark memories. I don't know if any of that helps. So let me just share this moment with you, keep you safe, and reach out as one survivor to another. You've got this far, done so well, and you're not alone.