It dawned on me tonight that a pattern of my intimate relationships is to pit my partner against another. This is learned behaviour. It comes from having to decide who should be abused, who shouldn’t be, who should live, who should die. It is a double bind. No matter what I choose someone gets hurt. I hope for a happy ending, but in reality all I am doing is replaying the trauma of a deranged childhood. No wonder I have so often felt like a rat on a wheel. It’s time to get off.
Trauma wheels
Published by Leni
I am a 40 year old woman and survivor of ritual abuse. I have dissociative identity disorder and experience complex PTSD symptoms. Despite this, I am relatively high functioning and tend to be very active and engaged in life. I started remembering my abuse at around the age of 25. Prior to that I had no solid memory of my childhood and things just felt blank. I was programmed to keep very busy in order to forget my abuse and so I am always on the go and doing things. I was lucky to find an interest in the creative arts and filmmaking, so my pursuits have mostly been very stimulating and enjoyable, though hard work. Almost everything I did kept me away from myself and I would say that I was (am) extremely disconnected from the way that I felt (feel) in general. I always felt something was wrong, but couldn't put my finger on it. When I discovered I had been sexually abused as a child, it was like my whole world changed and everything that I had felt or experienced prior to this was a lie. Everything, yet nothing, made sense. I wanted to pursue recovery and wholeness immediately, but the more I tried to do this, the more walls I kept hitting. Programming was inbuilt in me to 'not remember' and I thought I would die if I did. The paradox was, that I longed to die, and suffered suicidal ideation on an almost daily basis for over ten years. I had used drugs and alcohol from the age of 13 to self soothe and medicate and the turning point for me was when I hit a rock bottom with drinking at the age of 31. I went into AA and that really kick started my journey of recovery. I learnt how to deal with life without picking up a drink or a drug and most importantly, I was led to my real saviour, Jesus Christ. Almost a year into being sober, I started hearing voices. I had heard these voices for a long time but had stifled them with alcohol and drugs. The voices were extremely loud and negative and told me to kill myself. I sought psychotherapy and prayer ministry and it was through these experiences that I discovered I had dissociative parts of self (multiple personalities). Since accepting this, I have definitely started to get better, although it has been a long journey. I am over six years sober now and on a very personal, determined journey to find myself within my fragmented identity. View all posts by Leni
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