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I'm so sad. The one person I trusted and I felt safe with fucked me up and its been 4 months and I still love him and I can't get over the fact he did what he did to me

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Back here bc more SA happened in my life lol but I'm deducting this summer to healing sexually. I'm going to learn to reclaim my body and enjoy things

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Red flags for Love Bombing:

The person doing it is someone you met recently (days, weeks, month ago), or they recently decided they want to get closer to you

They decide that you’re perfect (friend, relationship partner, peer, employee, student) before actually taking the time to get to know you

They talk about you as if you know each other for a long time, and make statements about you as if they’ve known you forever

They talk about plans they have for you; they’d love to be closer, travel together, live together, meet you more often, some will even talk about marriage or some kind of partnership early on even though you’ve only met recently

You get a LOT of positive attention from them, to the point where you don’t feel the need to get positive attention from anyone else, and you end up giving your full attention to them

You feel like this is the person you’ve been waiting for, someone who sees everything good in you, you consider them special and feel flattered and grateful to finally get the attention you lacked for all this time

They always seem to say the perfect things, drop perfect lines you’ve been waiting to hear, to the point where it can sound like a movie or very idealized version of reality

You feel intensely reassured about your worth, your appearance, your value, your actions, your pain, it causes a rapid change in your daily feelings about yourself

You enjoy your new perception of yourself, but it’s completely tied to this one person who created it for you, and you don’t feel special or interesting or important out of that relationship, your identity is now tied to what they feel about you

You get the sense of ‘this feels to good to be true’ but you dismiss it because you don’t want to be suspicious or anxious about one good thing that finally happened to you

Their promises get overwhelming to the point where it doesn’t seem like they could possibly deliver them but they give you a chance to indulge yourself in daydreaming and wishful thinking and you hold onto that

You feel tied not only to this person, but to the future they’re promising, and even if you don’t know them for a very long time, you feel intensely about wanting to keep them in your life, do anything to not lose them and to keep the relationship as is

If you believe in soulmates, twin souls, or any new age spirituality, this person will feel like your destined one, or they might even suggest it themselves, that they were sent by an entity to 'fulfill you’ or 'destined for you’

Your life changed from how it normally was to the point where you feel like you have a life 'before’ and 'after you’ve met them’, you even kind forget who you were before them, as you find it’s painful and lonely life you don’t want to go back to

With time, you get anxious about their perspective of you changing, because it would shatter everything good you’ve started to think about yourself because of them

It’s very hard for you to think about them critically or in a negative way

If they started thinking badly of you or started mistreating you, your heart would break

Love bombing is a manipulative tactic of getting someone attached and dependent as quick as possible, and it’s done with over-the-top attention and affirmations, future faking, mirroring, and creating an idealized version of you without actually getting to know or understand you. The promises, feelings, gestures, imagined future and compliments are not real, they’re there so you would be invested enough to ignore any other red flags, to forget to context of the relationship, to bond to the point of not leaving even if it develops into abuse.

If you’ve fallen for it, do not feel guilty; this is designed to get your defenses down and to make you feel fulfilled to the point where your reasoning turns to mush and you grasp that break from being devalued and neglected all of the time like it’s a lifeline. It’s often impossible to resist the strong emotions and relief at being offered, however fake, positive attention. Previous victims of abuse, neglected children, mentally ill, autistic, or in any way vulnerable members of society are very susceptible to this, because they’re often the ones starved for attention and will not question the kind of attention they get because they need it too badly. Whoever uses this tactic is aware of this, and is ready to dangle affection in front of you in order to trap you into abuse. You are not responsible for falling for it, doing this to you is criminal. This is what a start of an abusive relationship looks like.

[ttainted-angell]

This was abt a man that was grooming me yikes. I'm in a much healthier relationship now and navigating things are still hard but things are better, easier, and safer

Relationships with unresolved trauma are so hard.

Sex is hard, their kindness is hard, and you just don't want to make them feel bad or burden them. Crying when things get intimate and apologising because you're not being 'useful' isn't fun for anyone. I want to marry this man but maybe he'll be better if we're separated

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pro tip, if you’re ever feeling overwhelmed or upset for no reason, check the holy trifecta

have i eaten?

have i had water?

have i showered?

these questions will literally change your LIFE. if you’re feeling icky for no reason, there’s a 90% chance it’s one of these.

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“Your trauma made you stronger, it got you to where you are today!”

No, I could have learned to be strong just like everyone else. I could have learned how to deal with grief, pain and trauma like everyone else. I could have grown up like everyone else but no, I had to lose my life before it even began and now I’m here, today, with a body the age of an adult and the brain the age of a child who doesn’t know how to survive without constantly hurting themselves!

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Hey guys :) anyone want my Instagram or anything? I'm making a gc for csa/cocsa survivors there :)

It's not just to vent tho, just to have a safe place in general

My Instagram is

@lung.fungus

#csa blog #c #csa vent #cocsa blog #cocsa #traumacore #domestic abuse survivor #sexual abuse #abuse

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Unrecognized signs of abuse

This list includes signs I exhibited while being abused and afterwards, as well as signs I’ve seen other abused youth display, all of which are less commonly recognized for what they are: red flags in disguise. 

Being described as a “perfectionist” or having an extremely competitive attitude to the point of experiencing breakdowns if you are not “the best”

Developing a habit of locking the door to every room you enter, especially when at friends’ houses or your own home, or other places you would be expected to feel safe and welcome at

Excessive daydreaming or fantasizing which may be accompanied by restlessness, pacing, or listening to music, and will often last for hours at a time, and may interfere with daily functioning

Experiencing an inability to relate to your peers which may lead to you creating pseudo relationships or obsessions with fictional characters to replace your lack of social interaction

Refusing to look at yourself in mirrors in public, especially when buying new clothes or going into fitting rooms

Showering in the dark because you are ashamed of your body

Experiencing intense feelings of guilt when someone does something nice for you

Hyperfixation on a hobby such as drawing or writing, which is often used as an outlet and a way to escape the abuse

Purposely making yourself appear unattractive 

Being known as the shy or obedient child who never acts out

Possessing an unnatural amount of maturity for your age which many adults may have praised you for

Not knowing how to live, having an “I can survive with the bare minimums” mentality

Hoarding food or other objects in your room such as toiletries so you do not have to leave your room. This may be as severe as going to the bathroom in bottles or cans, or having months worth of dishes piled up around your room 

Having an anxiety attack if you’re woken up abruptly or if you wake up to loud noises in your house

Never experiencing sexual interest in others, never going through a “boy phase” or a “girl phase”; alternatively, being hypersexual 

Intrusive violent thoughts about small animals or children

Having no sense of belonging since you were a toddler, never feeling connected to your childhood town or house, and feeling alienated among your family members

Feel free to add more to this list. If you or someone else has experienced at least half of these signs, it’s very likely you or them has been through some form of abuse.

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Trauma symptoms caused by childhood abuse

Early symptoms (childhood and teenage years):

Inability to show pain and vulnerability to others

deep belief that you ‘have to be tough’, secretly fearing that you’re weak and pathetic if you ever shed any tears or break down in pain

personality changes from outgoing and social, to isolated and quiet, trying not to be noticed

feeling like there’s something deeply wrong with you, deep belief that you’re some kind of monster who deserves to be punished

fear that if someone finds out about whats happening to you, they will blame you and hurt you worse

anxiety around adults, always being scared you’ll annoy someone and be hurt for it

very low attention to your needs and wants, feeling pride in neglecting your own well being, even neglecting your pain

belief that your value is tied to how much pain and mistreatment you can endure

urge to self harm, or outright hurting yourself

feeling like you want to disappear, or not be born at all, contemplating suicide

self hatred, feeling extremely negative about yourself and feeling like things would be better if you didn’t exist

spending phases of time being emotionless, feeling like a zombie and not caring about anything

foreshortened sense of future (belief that you wont live for much longer, inability to see your future or plan for it)

not feeling the consequences of events in the real time, or not at all; for instance, being completely unphased by a violent outburst or screaming, not feeling pain when you’re hurt, or not feeling the exhaustion when you’re clearly overworked

strong urge to not think about certain topics or events, or inability to do so

fear that your body is wrong and disgusting, anxiety about anyone seeing it but desperate need for validation that you’re normal

deep sense of shame in yourself, your actions and your appearance

strong investment in finding excuses for people who do bad things, always trying to see things from their angle and to forgive them

feeling like the blame for any bad thing in the world can be put on you

not feeling like a human being, belief that you’re less than human

feeling like your home is not here and you do not belong on this planet

feeling uncomfortable being touched and wanting people to back off

uncontrolled ourbursts of rage

looking for anything to soothe your pain or distract you, indulging with obsessions or drugs

early development of anxiety disorder, depression, insomnia, ocd

trying to regress your age and force yourself to stay younger than you are, because you feel like your value is dropping with age and nobody will care for you anymore

trying to desperately take control over some aspects of your life, which can result in overdoing or completely neglecting school, losing yourself in virtual life, eating disorders, self harm or magic thinking that enables you to believe you can control your circumstances

in case of a sexual trauma, innapropriate sexual behaviour, deep shame tied to your body, indulging in sexual interactions even before puberty, feeling like you’re meant to be used, violent or forceful sexual fantasies accompanied with shame, fear of touch, fear of anyone finding out, reaching out for pornographic material to put your experience into perspective

feeling desperate to appear normal and clinging very strongly to the perception that your childhood is normal

Later symtoms, can develop anytime after puberty, can be in 20s or 30s or even 50s:

Emotional

Flashbacks, nightmares, panic attacks, freezing up in terror, beyond average amounts of fear and dread

Trust issues, either trusting without suspicion even when you shouldn’t or trusting nobody and feeling completely alone in the world

Episodes of re-living traumatic events from childhood or later in life; emotional meltdowns

Being unable to leave the past and feeling frozen in the moments of trauma

Emotional flashbacks, feeling the events from past as if they’re happening now, except this time you feel it thousand times stronger and completely fall apart from the horror of it

Feeling unstable, ashamed for not being able to control your emotions, fear of being judged, mocked or humiliated for it, trying desperately to not feel it, using distractions or drugs

Self doubt, struggling to know what is real and what isn’t, doubting your memories and emotions, trying to only feel what you believe is obliged from you

Questioning the past over and over again, trying to find sense and who to blame

Trying desperately to put your relationship with your abuser(s) into perspective, feeling both guilt and obligation towards them, but also rage and desire to take over control from them

Self harm, self-destructive behaviour, suicidal behaviour, wanting to die to end the pain

Deep and overwhelming grief over loss of childhood and loss of trust in people you believed wouldn’t hurt you, or believed they were doing it for your good, which now proved not to be true

Depression, loss of joy in anything you used to like doing, loss of optimism in life

Losing the courage to try anything, regardless of how much it would benefit you, if there’s even a slight chance of getting hurt in a way you find impossible to endure, living passively

Feeling irreparably damaged and ruined

Getting lost in maladaptive daydreaming, fiction, or the virtual world, feeling unable to face reality, falling to obsessions or addictions to endure the pain

Feeling other people’s feelings as if they’re your own, especially feelings of pain, anxiety, fear, nervousness, anger or grief; trying to soothe them and especially having strong reactions to anger

Feeling overwhelmed whenever around people, feeling the urge to self-isolate and to be completely alone

Being hit with extreme amounts of rage and struggling to process it; worrying about misdirecting the rage or acting on it, violent fantasies

Getting stuck in a mindset of a child and barely able, or unable to do any grown-up tasks

Struggling to achieve even minimum function, or not functioning at all

Losing the will or the energy to participate in any activities you used to enjoy

Fighting or indulging the urge to normalize what happened or make it ‘not that bad’, trying to re-live it in a way that wouldn’t be traumatic, especally with sexual trauma, needing to perceive it as if it would be normal only if it was ‘consensual’ or more controlled and trying to find a way to frame it as ‘not that big of a deal’ and denying it’s hurting you

Beating yourself up horribly for still being upset and traumatized by events that happened long ago

Inability to have friends or form connections with others, high alert for betrayal and manipulation

Avoding places and people connected to the trauma, getting easily triggered and forced to re-live something that needs recovery time of days or weeks

Losing your sense of reality; not being sure where you are or what year is it for some periods of time, feeling like you’re going crazy

Only being able to focus on surviving a short amount of time (just trying to get thru the day or week)

Physical

Extreme anxety; trembling, spending prolonged amount of time tense and expecting danger and pain at every second, inability to calm down, limbs not working properly, fainting out of fear

Continually activated “fight or flight” response, always feeling endangered, trouble digesting food because your body shuts down your digestion in order for you to be able to escape faster, vomiting, stomach pains after eating

Hyperventilation, problems with breathing, feeling there’s “no air” in small or crowded spaces

Chronic exhaustion, feeling heavy weight over your body, having difficulty moving at all

Chronic pain, tension in your body never leaving, physical pain appearing when you’re experiencing emotional pain, chest pain, heart palpitations

Problems with blood pressure, fainting easily

Dissociation (feeling detached from your emotions and/or body, feeling numb and unreal, your body not feeling yours, feeling outside your body or like you’re stuck in someone else’s body)

Memory issues, not being able to remember whole parts of your life, weak short term memory, not being able to look back on your life in linear way or put the events in they order they happened in, mixing several events into one, remembering feelings but not events

Increased sensitivity to noise, getting very upset at any non recognizable sound, reacting with irritability or rage to background noises, or with terror at loud noises; needing complete silence, or constant soothing background noise

Extreme sensitivity to stress, having to block out stressful things from memory, having physical reactions to stress, like shaking, your hair falling out, feeling incapable of dealing with even minimally stressful tasks

Dry mouth in the night, overheating during the nightmares, getting so distressed after sleep you can’t move from the bed for hours, not calming down for days

Not being able to control your body, falling down and shaking uncontrollably, even trashing around as your body processes violence done to it

Not being able to relax or calm down without experiencing physical pain, feeling addicted to abuse and indulging in self harm, or letting someone else hurt you so that you might gain a moment of not feeling tense, stressed and scared

Feeling sensations of pain or discomfort on your body even when nothing is happening to it, especially the body parts that have been violated in some way; in case of sexual trauma it would mean private parts, in case of overworking yourself or break yourself with effort, pain in all muscles and joints

In case of sexual trauma, reoccurring memories of it, trouble figuring out your sexuality, wanting to escape your body or perceiving it in a distorted way, urge to repeat the trauma to get desensitized to it, hypersexual behaviour or complete lack of interest in sexuality

Weight gain or loss, hatred of your body and desire to change or hurt it, or complete neglect over body, lack of any self care of even acknowledging you need it

Difficulty sleeping or being awake, feeling too high alert to fall asleep or dropping out of consciousness from overexhaustion

Inability to focus or finish tasks, procrastinating or feeling sick just knowing there is a task you have to do.

 If you struggle(d) with 5 or more of early ones, or 5 or more of later ones, you’ve been dealing with trauma.

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[ttainted-angell]

I feel like a freak because I miss being abused and I don't know why. Is this even normal?

Hey anon,

You aren’t a freak. It’s fairly normal to miss being abused. Abuse alters the way you view attachment and relationships, so it can be hard to connect with people outside of abusive situations. Abuse also includes “honeymoon periods,” which are often times where the abuser makes you feel great, and it’s possible to miss those as well.

What you’re going through is normal, anon. You will get past it, you are strong.

–roboraptor

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