u/shockedimdoingthis

I recently came to terms with the fact that my experience lines up with the definition of medical trauma. That realisation hit me like a ton of bricks. I never told the one therapist I had as a kid about what happened because I didn’t think it was that big of a deal. I thought the issue was something else.

Sometimes it just doesn’t feel real. I used to think that trauma meant that you had a specific trigger or set of them, and contact with any of them would trigger a complete flashback where you thought you were there. And it had to happen frequently. That was the notion I had.

What happens with me works a bit different. I don’t have a lot of clear cut triggers. Instead there are certain smells, sounds, and topics that have the potential to do something to me, but sometimes I can block it out unless multiple of them occur at the same time, or if someone specifically draws my attention to what I was blocking out. Other times (if I’m already overwhelmed by unrelated things), it may only take one of these.

The worst ‘episodes’, where I completely break down, might be months apart. So I find myself trying to attribute them to other causes, and then I feel like I just dragged up a random memory for the sake of having something ‘special’ to blame. I gaslight myself about the events a lot, and I find myself minimising how bad it really was. The one time I’m fully aware of how bad it is, is the middle of an episode, where my nervous system gets fried.

And most of the time, I am able to recover quickly. That is the other thing. I’m able to go through life without giving too much of an impression that something is wrong, but it’s to the point that I’m always second guessing it. But I guess if nothing was wrong, I would be able to walk into a doctor’s office or a hospital without crying and begging to be left alone. But I can’t do that. there are a lot of things I find that I can’t do, or things I find myself doing for no apparent reason.

Something happened to me involving doctors when I was little that I never told anyone about. Not getting into the story here. I didn’t even tell my therapist when I had one, because I thought maybe it wasn’t that bad.

I was wrong. I’m in my late teens, and I have not been near a doctor’s office, dentist‘s office, or a hospital in years.

And I know it’s gotten worse because I used to be fine with the dentist until something happened there that triggered what I’m assuming was a flashback to that original event.

It’s preventing me from getting ID, finding a job, or going into the career I wanted because I literally can’t handle the simplest of testing without breaking down.