When I was in elementary school, I had trouble regulating my emotions and I often caused a fit in class. I don’t know what was going on with me, and I didn’t know what to do. Maybe my trauma is because I did terrible things to kids back then. It’s all my fault, I think. The kids would probably hate me know if they see me. They’re probably going to hate me, and I hate myself too.
They’re probably going to be like, “Oh, it’s that girl who threw ink all over us. She deserves it. She deserves to be traumatized. It’s all her fault and she deserves it. She should be ashamed of herself.”
I’m not entirely sure how to think about myself, and the only way I think I should respond to my trauma is “it’s my fault”. I don’t know how else I can reply to what I’ve experienced.
I was never taught to learn how to regulate my emotions, and I was always pressured to perform well in school. I studied until 11-12am every night as a kid, and I scored on the top of my class. But I was never taught to do one of the simplest things like regulating emotions or managing my emotional health. I was taught that crying was a bad thing, and I wasn’t really taught that I could actually talk about my problems to people. I was told that all of the ■■■■ I’ve endured as a kid was my fault.
I don’t know, I was judged very harshly for having behavioural problems as a child, and I was never applauded nor praised for the good things I’ve done. I was also incredibly slow, so that didn’t fit well. Judgement was all I knew as a kid- nothing more than that.
It has been an awfully long time since you were a child. , I did something bad when I was in first grade. We’d gotten our first report cards, and someone said this girl had gotten really bad grades. I started yelling out to different people how many bad grades this girl had gotten. I still remember standing in line for the bus, and yelling out this girl’s grades to a person just coming out of the school building. It must have been mortifying to the girl. I was too young to realize that this girl had some kind of learning disorder, and it wasn’t her fault that she had gotten bad grades. I probably left some scars on her.
I think you have problems with mentalizing now as an adult. It’s probably related to your trauma, and maybe to BPD (idk if you have that diagnosis). I think you’d make life a lot easier for yourself if you worked on your mentalizing, especially when it breaks down and you start judging yourself and assume everyone hates you.
I actually thought I had BPD, but my psychiatrist tells me I lack some of the cardinal features. I do have very low self-esteem but I think all of this will improve if I can mitigate my trauma better. All of this somehow ends with my trauma. But every time I ask for a therapist who could help me, I get nothing. And if I don’t improve in a short time, my mother gets very frustrated.
You can try self-help. I’ve read your posts for a while and it’s very telling how you lose your ability to think rationally about your own thoughts and feelings and how others think and feel about you when you go into these states. Working through your trauma with a therapist could help, of course, but it’s not the only thing you can do to get better when you have trauma.
Maybe I slip into psychosis when I am in this negative state. My mom talked with me today about making friends so I’ve been extremely nervous throughout the day. I often lose the ability to rationalize my thoughts and I keep thinking people are putting thoughts into my head. The weird thing is, I’m usually coherent but I’m heavily disoriented. It’s really weird, and very tough.
I’ll try some self-help books today. Do you have any suggestions?
No, sorry. I haven’t tried any self-help myself. Maybe someone else here can help you?
I think you could consider your mom’s suggestion as a form of self-help too. But maybe you need help finding ways to cope with going to one of those places she talked about before you try it?
I think you’re right. I often quit when I go to places like that because I often have flashbacks of child abuse and such. I try to listen to music when I am stressed out or stay in my room. Unfortunately my mom has very little patience when things don’t improve quickly so I would have to “fake it until you make it”- acting like it’s better but working on it on my own after therapy. Otherwise she would quickly become impatient and yell at me for not abandoning my trauma.