Mitigating the lifelong damage of early childhood trauma

Possible trigger warning.

I really really hope I am not breaking any rules by doing this or making a terrible mistake. I want to help others who may need this tool - and I'm trying to continue my healing journey by letting out the big secrets that I was always afraid to talk about.

Over 2 decades ago, I figured out how to safely edit my own memories - just enough to stay the same person but come out less *damaged*

I did this using a form of self-hypnosis to "be" the comforting, loving, understanding, caring adult figure that was never there in reality. It was something I *badly* needed and I recognized this after reading a lot of things on both psychology and child development.

We are not talking about full healing, the risks of that were to high, but it made a huge difference and I firmly believe it is the reason I can at least function, cope, and sometimes be happy.

I think I can teach others and I'd like to try - but I also want to make sure this is done *carefully* and that people understand that there are risks involved and the only way to know if this can be adapted for others is to try.

The memories I created are *not* real, but they *feel* real despite fullly knowing they were constructed to mitigate incidents of trauma. And that is a critical key - you *must* wake up aware the memories are not real.

My mind may be uniquely suited to this sort of thing - I have a very good long term memory as well as sensory memory and the trauma I went through did give me certain tools.

It's likely others have done things like this and if I'm right about the risks people probably have lost themselves both because they couldn't accept only partial healing and went to far - or else destabilized the very foundations of thier mind.

If you've seen inside out, let us just say there is some resonance to the risks of playing with pivotal memories, the sacrifices you may need to make, and the potential rewards.

I very nearly took my own life before finally realizing adults could be wrong and being different was not an unforgivable sin. That part is a topic for a different thread.

What followed was a multiyear quest to try and sort out my actual mental health status and seperate all the insidious lies from real issues that I needed to address - while still being forced to keep everything secret.

I'm not against therapy but it actually was weaponized against me and used as the

"boogyman" .

I've also had a really hard time ever finding a therapist that gets the trauma of disability and this sort of abuse so just not that helpful -for me - unless it help in coping with a current high stress situation.

One thing the school and thier so called "experts" were right about, was that they'd left me with damage that was really really hard to heal after they compounded it with "tough love" instead of actual support andlet it fester for even more years

In many ways it was just to late. I needed a time machine but back in the real world they don't actually exist. I had to much trauma that started at far to young an age.

Trying to heal certain types of early childhood trauma is very difficult once you get past a certain age according to studies and the outcomes tend to be bad.

If the school had tried, but all they did was double-down on trauma by prescribing "tough love" instead of help in healing the damage they had created - while I was still young enough that it would have been a *lot* easier.

I came up with a plan to make a virtual time machine in my own mind and "talk" to my younger self .

Time machines don't exist in reality but my child self was desperate for any escape and half wanted to believe in it.

To my younger self - my adult self was a time traveler and the desperately wished for savior who didn't exactly provide an escape - but gave all that suffering a purpose and gave support every time.

My older self told my younger self we couldn't change the time line to much - but it could hurt less.

For you, dear reader, the presentation might be different, you know what fantasy it would be possible to fulfill for your younger self. What would it take to get little you to accept and believe just enough to allow healing?

I know none of it is real, but my child self only found that out for sure when she was old enough to understand and after it had already made a litteral difference in my "wiring" which I was able to keep.

What I did was dangerous, I borrowed heavily from DiD integration theory and intentionally created such a situation in a carefully controlled way - so that there would *be*pieces to reintegrate into a healthier whole.

Thoughts?