Trauma Things

i realize I am the emotionally unavailable one (as well as the partners I choose - oops). i have been for more than a decade. i feel deeply lonely, because I am incapable of connecting to other people. whenever someone enters my life I can't interact with them normally bc this need has been unmet for such a long time, my brain is absolutely desperate. I get so preoccupied about people leaving. I crave connection but I simply can't. I no longer know how to do it.

spent the day feeling miserable. got a message on a *spicy* website and went on to reply. the conversation (understandably) was getting sexual. was not down for that, but also I feel incredibly lonely. didn't want to end the conversation already, so kept engaging. tried saying something i thought would get the person to either talk abt something else or stop talking altogether. didn't work. now I am uncomfortable and have shared something that makes me feel vulnerable which I was not trying to be.

me every week afterwards not having done that: 👀🤡

under read more for whoever wants the gossip abt my life.

like yeah i know it's a lot but it would be nice if people would ya know

like no, lucy, I didn't want to hear in response to me saying I found cheaper colored contacts that I might have to go to the hospital and might end up blind because omg why are they so cheap they must be terrible quality. I HAVEN'T EVEN BOUGHT THEM I JUST MENTIONED IT

like????? bitch I have anxiety, this is no joke, you share one catastrophizing thought my own catastrophizer will literally never let it go

the way most people define “narcissistic abuse” isn’t a thing. not all types of abuse are “narcissistic abuse” and not everyone who is shitty to you is a narcissist.

it took me a LONG time to understand that just because some people are TOXIC and treat you like shit, that doesn’t mean they are necessarily abusing you. Abuse is a POWER dynamic. If there is no power imbalance, than it isn’t abusive. But it can still be toxic, harmful and even traumatizing. That doesn’t mean it was abusive. By framing EVERY toxic interaction that you have as abuse and every toxic shitty person as a narcissist you are putting yourself in the place of the victim eternally. You can leave a toxic interaction a million times easier than an abusive one. By framing everything as abusive you are telling your brain that the situation is harder to leave than it actually is and you might be staying longer in a situation you could’ve left.

Not every shitty person is being abusive to you. Not everyone who is toxic is “narcissistic”. KNOWING ABOUT TYPES OF ABUSE AND HOW PEOPLE ABUSE YOU ISN’T ENOUGH TO PROTECT YOU FROM IT. You know what protects you from this type of toxic or abusive people? Strong boundaries, a healthy strong self-esteem, sense of self and self-respect. Aside from situations that you physically can’t leave, a toxic person can’t get past strong boundaries and self-esteem. You’re gonna drop them and cut them off long before they have the chance to do you any harm. So getting a phD in how people abuse and manipulate and how people get you down is just a bandaid for the real work which is BOUNDARIES AND STRONG SELF-ESTEEM. DON’T FORGET THIS Y’ALL.

and also please stop throwing the term narcissistic abuse around like it means something, we’re past this type of misguided language.

i’ve officially been alone for so long of my life that I literally no longer have a concept of what “being around people” and “having friends” even means, so obviously I can’t crave something I no longer have any concept of AND I’ve officially stopped caring abt small talk when getting to know people which basically means I can’t talk to anyone since I literally don’t care abt their lives. I can’t hold a conversation to save mY LIFE

well, this is just my experience as someone who doesn’t dissociate very often.

to me it feels like a wave is pulling my attention/consciousness somewhere else. Most people have felt a minor form of it when you’re “spacing out” and then come back to it. That’s dissociation, it just lasts longer and it’s much harder to snap out of. You can’t really control it either. I’ve had various forms of it happening over time, but on the mildest, for me, it’s just this irresistible pull to space out. The difference is that even if you continue doing something, or idk browsing the internet or whatever, that feeling of being spaced out doesn’t fade. You can’t come out of it even if you try to focus on something. I often dissociate during class, and so BECAUSE I am specifically trying my hardest to stay present, it makes me feel really sleepy. It’s not real sleepiness, if the class ended that exact moment the sleepiness would disappear, it’s what happens to me when I try to fight my dissociation. Most of the time I just give in to it and wait it out.

I’ve had derealization exactly one time, and it was weird as hell, and depersonalization I felt right after one of my traumas happened.

Most of the time that I dissociate like, day-to-day is actually when I’m either in class, or when I see someone else dissociating and/or describing it very vividly. I’ve seen someone explain this as dissociation is a protection mechanism, and when you see someone else dissociating your brain goes “why are they dissociating, is there something I should be escaping/running from/scared of?” and then you dissociate as well, just in case lol

It can also happen when I force my hand on remembering certain traumas, or I linger too long on the memories for whatever reason, but that doesn’t usually happen cause I am running from my trauma memories like satan from the cross so

I think that because I’m also a maladaptive daydreamer I’m particularly susceptible to dissociation mentions. I once said that I thought it was the word dissociation, but it’s actually mentions of dissociation, not the word itself. I’m lightly dissociated just cause we’re talking abt it lmao