@pixiething I’m just dropping by this whole thread to say: teach your children the formal name for their body parts and normalize using those words without shame so if someone ever sexually abuses them in anyway they are more likely to be understood when trying to communicate or speak up.
If you're alive to read these words, you're doing SOMETHING right. SOMETHING supported you in surviving. You didn't give up for SOME reason.
The key to your trauma or addiction recovery can be in discovering, developing, & leaning into that SOMETHING.
It exists. You're proof.
Trauma survivors often are often tempted to blame ourselves for everything. We see EVERYTHING as our fault, & EVERYTHING as our responsibility.
That'll happen when we were blamed for everything-- including our own abuse & pain-- for decades.
Gaslighting dies hard.
Recovering memories from dissociative/post-traumatic amnesia isn’t just about the specific memories that come back. It’s also about looking back on different things in your life and suddenly seeing them differently with new context. And sometimes that’s a grieving process.