Hi @EternalFlower, Thank you for your reply today 🙂
How are you going?
(apologies for the long reply, don't feel the need to address what is contained within other than to share how you're going, as I don't want you to feel obligated to do so. we all have our own heavy bundles to carry).
It turns out that I got my wires crossed; it is the helpline that I've called a couple of times a couple of weeks ago now, not their peer support service. I'm due to have a chat with a SANE employee in a week or so around the peer guidance/support service or whichever its called, the service where they pair a person up with the one person. I feel that participating in that would be a safer bet for both the person who I potentially give it go with, and for myself due to once the story has been shared, that the traumatising elements of it can be laid to rest and the person and I can focus on working through current symptoms and towards the future that I envisage (if I decided to go ahead with the opportunity).
Unfortunately due to being deceived and abused from such a young age by my female primary caregiver in such a consistent and covert way (I refuse to refer to her as my mother anymore), as well as other forms of abuse experienced during my formative years and unfortunately also at times throughout my adult life, as well as being deceived by the MH field in the way of pretending time after time to have my best interests in the forefront of performing their duties yet whom actually had an agenda which was to serve their own selfish interests (not referring to GP practitioners here), too many times to wish to recount for the past 20 years or so (until about 2 years ago), I unfortunately have good reason to be distrusting of basically everyone until proven otherwise.
"Few people can handle trauma and that includes mh professionals. In my 2.5 years in the system I've encountered probably 50 mh professionals including nurses on wards, social workers, OTs, psychiatrists and their registrars ....
I'd say about 5 were safe people to confide trauma ."
to meet another person who has experienced prolonged difficulties in seeking the specific sort of validation for trauma that trauma survivors need in order to really make some inroads out the other side of the constant reliving of said trauma, is sadly not a surprise to me. I'm sorry to hear that you've not felt safe enough to talk about your trauma with many at all, this sentiment really resonates with me.
Being male and experiencing such a debilitating and humiliating form of abuse throughout my formative years (and well into my adult life, even though I left home at 18), isn't exactly the sort of conversation that males would feel safe let alone comfortable sharing with their close friends or with anyone for that matter, male or otherwise. as a society, we're unfortunately still worlds away in my opinion from the average male feeling comfortable talking to their friends about this type of abuse. The stigma around males talking about this form of abuse in particular, is imo humongous.
"Other than that they've treated me and other consumers really badly."
Now this is the mental health field that I've come to know so well, even if the exception to the rule was to be listened to regarding severe symptoms at the time, medicated appropriately for the symptoms and having been treated with respect. I remember those sparse memories even more so than the multiple medically-traumatic memories which is rare because human beings are unfortunately more prone to remembering the negative memories, simply due to being in such a desperate place at times and actually being treated with the dignity that I as a human being deserved and yet had been denied on so many other occasions.
I remember one such occasion where these things were afforded to me, only after stating to the nurse who saw me once I was admitted for Psychiatric assessment the following morning, as it was in the evening and the resident Psychiatrist had gone home for the evening, whom then tried to palm me off with a mental health calling card and told me that I was going to be discharged straight away and to call the service in the morning, when I was having an acute trauma response I now realise as I type this, surrounding what I can now see as clear as day was specifically related to being triggered by the behaviour of some people that I was around prior that evening which unfortunately must have reminded me of the covert psychological abuse of my mother but of which of course I couldn't see at the time or even until now six years later because it was buried deep in my subconscious as well as years of practiced disassociation, that because I'd been admitted, that they had a duty of care to me and that I wasn't going to be doing any such thing until I'd been assessed by a Psychiatrist. She wasn't happy about it but she eventually conceded defeat and told me that I could stay the night (how kind of her). I digress, apologies.
Back to the present; I'm expecting to have my anecdotal experiences at this upcoming diagnostic assessment medically gas lit, minimalised or even worse, flat out ignored. I say this because it has largely been the way of things throughout the past 20 years in my experience. With the assessment coming up in about seven weeks, it's brought up a swathe of medically traumatic experiences for me which have in turn, aggravated cptsd symptoms again. Stress also aggravates adhd symptoms as well as asd symptoms of over-stimulation for me, so this time in my life is proving to be in some ways, the most challenging time of my life.
Having said this as is always the case, there is always a silver-lining to be found. I guess the silver-lining for me here is that I'm finally learning what it means to truly stand up for what I believe in. To learn to live deliberately and with the gumption and dignity that I do in fact possess. I understand perfectly well that there are many suffering/struggling at this time and this truly sucks! but my sufferance's are just as worthy of being heard and validated as anyone else's.
The fallout from being male and having such a covertly psychologically abusive female primary caregiver who set about conditioning her son from such a young age, is still being revealed to me in moments of clarity. I guess that this is one of those silver-linings that I was referring to; the fact that feeling too unworthy to deserve receiving comments/replies to this thread is just one manifestation of her conditioning which commenced from the age of about 6 years of age, but I'm not sure exactly when because I was already disassociating from about that age.
I was conditioned to believe that how I viewed the world around me, was abnormal. That people saw me as a burden. 30 odd years later, I can see that how I was raised by her, was completely abnormal. But again I will clarify that I'm just a grain of sand on the beach of life and that my story is but one of millions of an unfair start to life.
"he spark for me is the peers I've met in these places , sometimes I got more from them than the clinical team !"
hopefully this will be the same for me if I haven't managed to scare people away by having been so forthcoming with my writing. I guess now more than ever the saying "say what you feel and be who you are, because those that matter don't mind, and those that mind don't matter" is in the forefront of my mind. I've shared as much as I have in the hope that others can relate to my story, even if they don't feel comfortable to share their own story on a public forum. if it gives anyone else some inspiration or hope then it will have been well worth the investment, not to minimalise the benefit to myself of putting the time in to do this. I wish that my brother was still here and that I could be that supportive, empathetic and loyal influence that he deserved but this doesn't mean that I can't be that to any one else who may come into my life either on these forums or in my day to day life.
"I hope U are doing ok and thank you for sharing with me."
human beings need connection, we're social creatures. To have conditions that make connection difficult and prolonged connection even harder might be a tough hand to be dealt, but I refuse to let it continue to rule my life and any plans that I have for the future. You're very welcome, apologies once again for the monologue!
Emergency, police & ambulance (24 Hrs)
Connect with a lifeline crisis supporter (24 Hrs)
Suicide callback service (24 Hrs)
Kids helpline (24 Hrs)
13 YARN