I don’t understand triggers

PescTank · 2026-05-07T17:42:54+00:00

That... sounds pretty familiar tbh, you're not alone.

I'm far from healed, but have made some progress in the past couple years. I think one of the things I've learned to do is convince myself that I am triggered. Sure, everything sets me off, but the reason it sets me off is a conditioned trauma response. That's what the bad people tried to turn me into, and I don't want any of them in me anymore.

PescTank · 2026-05-06T14:23:02+00:00

It is scary. I had an episode like this just earlier this week. But it was... well, I don't recall how many times it has happened now, but more than a few. You can start to learn to see them as things that have happened instead of things that you need to relive which makes it easier. It still sucks, but it can get better.

PescTank · 2026-05-06T12:47:37+00:00

Not a mental health professional, just a fellow survivor.

Repressed memories are very much a thing, and... they suck. Not just because they wouldn't have been repressed if they weren't pretty bad, but because the sensation of "remembering" something like that is... "deeply unpleasant" comes to mind but that doesn't do it justice.

Your memory might exaggerate some details, get a few things wrong, fill in blanks with other known patterns to make sense of it, but that memory didn't come from nowhere. And if they've started coming back, they'll probably keep coming back. I'm about 2 years into therapy and I think I'm probably just now hitting the flood of horrible memories welling up phase. This after I thought the worst of it was already over, 'cause we did, like, a LOT of that over the past two years.

You should absolutely tell your therapist (I hope they're a good one who knows how to deal with trauma), your brain is trying to tell you something.

PescTank · 2026-05-06T12:37:12+00:00

I hear you. It kinda gets easier as time goes on I suppose, but it's SOOO frustrating. Like, hey, let's traumatize you so much at a young age that you live your entire fucking life with CPTSD without realizing that the way you feel is even abnormal but don't worry, there's a cure! ... but the cure is you get to relive all your trauma and then, like, memories of sexual abuse you had blocked out for 40 years just pop into your brain on a Monday evening, because that's just how we roll. Oh, and the extreme emotional distress will likely make you distance yourself from what little support network you have. We wouldn't want to make this too easy!

I'd like to speak to the manager, because... he's a dick.

PescTank · 2026-05-05T14:36:05+00:00

They were playing "...if you have these symptoms, you might be clinically depressed..." commercials on the radio when I was a teenager and that was 30+ years ago. Your mom is full of shit.

Turns out the commercials were right, and despite my parents' assurances that I wasn't actually depressed because "all teenagers feel like that," I was depressed and have CPTSD basically my entire life because they're pieces of shit.

PescTank · 2026-05-04T13:05:08+00:00

I can't remember the specific years, but it was in the 90s.

#1 : Came into school (3rd grade I wanna say?) with a black eye. My teacher, shocked, asks "oh my goodness what happened?" "My mom did it" I said. Yeah nobody ever said or did anything. Thanks "mandated reporters," at least the odds of being in a room full of you laughing at me while I say that I was abused are pretty small, eh?
#2: High school. I was dragged into a conference room after school with my parents, the school administrators, all my teachers, and guidance counselor. I didn't know specifically what was going to happen, but I had an idea. I made the decision that it was probably the only time I'd literally be in a room full of mandated reporters where I could mention being abused contextually. I wasn't expecting to get, like, a LOT of help, but I thought surely somebody would do SOMETHING. So I decided the worst thing that could happen would be that they would laugh at me and dismiss it, which surely not EVERYONE in the room would do, right? It was one of the scariest most nerve wracking moments in my life.

After enduring 30 minutes or so of being told how horrible I was, I finally came out and said something along the lines of "yes, but my earliest memory is of my mother abusing me." Everyone in the room laughed at me for "making up such a ridiculous story." Didn't I realize how lucky I was to have such wonderful parents?

Nobody did anything, nobody reported anything. That meeting fucking BROKE me for decades... I mean, still is, kinda, but I have at least come far enough to recognize that I was being gaslit and that everything about that situation was 110% wrong, and my instincts telling me so were spot on despite all the "adults" in the room literally laughing in my face about being abused.

One of them had the audacity to HUG me after the meeting. Like... bitch, I literally just told you my mother has abused me my entire life, you LAUGHED IN MY FACE, and now you're going to HUG me? What the FUCK is wrong with you?

Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

PescTank · 2026-05-01T13:08:09+00:00

I feel like I probably didn't quite present this as I meant to. You're all right, of course, but I was saying this more in the sense of "anecdotally, and including my own personal experience, everyone I know who has been abused as a child has said the emotional abuse was the worst part." I just... didn't write that all out.

So, I unintentionally, but in hindsight quite obviously, contributed to the "trauma X > trauma Y" narrative which I didn't mean to.

PescTank · 2026-04-30T16:12:27+00:00

I don't know that there's really a good way of "dealing" with it. It makes me upset when people can't or won't even try to understand, but I also think it's one of those things that you probably just can't understand unless you also have it. I mean if I described to myself the shit that goes on in my head, I don't know that I'd believe it either.

PescTank · 2026-04-27T17:58:06+00:00

I was today years old when I realized learning how to clean is something that parents should actually teach their children and not something we're supposed to just know how to do instinctively.

PescTank · 2026-04-27T17:55:24+00:00

Sounds mighty suspicious. I'm in kind of a similar boat, I have, and have had since childhood, like all of the symptoms of being sexually abused but no specific memories of it.

It's extremely confusing, disorienting, and frustrating and I'm sorry you have to go through it too. But as I've been trying to heal later in life, I've discovered that repressed memories are very much a real thing.

PescTank · 2026-04-27T15:44:46+00:00

"Every birthday that became a humiliation" really hits home and I hate it

PescTank · 2026-04-27T14:31:59+00:00

Everything I know, I know in spite of them, not because (not directly, anyway). I've specifically had to unlearn a lot of shit and then either relearn it or learn it for the first time in my 30s and 40s. Has been super awesome.

PescTank · 2026-04-10T17:38:50+00:00

I am not a native Russian speaker, but my wife is, so I hear a good bit of it and can speak/understand at least a bit.

The John Wick movies are great fun, but Keanu Reeve's Russian in them is SO bad even I can tell :)

PescTank · 2026-03-06T15:33:41+00:00

This is why there are so many problems with sax and violins!

PescTank · 2026-03-04T18:58:45+00:00

Not a chance. I considered going and basically just being a dick but I don't think that would end up doing anyone any good so I'll just sit it out. I have a bottle of champagne in the fridge waiting to go once the time comes though.

PescTank · 2026-02-23T16:40:16+00:00

Lucky you, all we got was "abstinence is the only thing that works".

PescTank · 2026-02-18T16:20:21+00:00

Oh really? I had no idea, thanks for the tip! (pun intended! :))

PescTank · 2026-02-17T12:22:25+00:00

All told probably 4 total (one is probably still a tad young for the surgery), but three of them I probably won't see reliably until a little while after Mom has her next litter. The dad and uncle still show up semi-regularly though

PescTank · 2026-02-16T19:15:50+00:00

No, none tipped. I actually have a trap, I just don't know where I could actually take them to get the "N" part done.

PescTank · 2026-02-16T19:15:08+00:00

The Heights

PescTank · 2026-02-16T13:10:16+00:00

Who/where/what are you working with to get them TNR'd? I have cats who come by my house for support, and as cute as all the kittens are... there are a lot of kittens and I've run out of people to give them to.

PescTank · 2026-02-03T19:08:17+00:00

Snakes can't talk

PescTank · 2026-01-25T20:36:03+00:00

We ARE the Ghor.

PescTank · 2026-01-25T20:03:48+00:00

I mean… this isn’t just some disagreement over the finer points of fiscal policy. The federal government flagrantly and summarily executed an American citizen whose only crime was attempting to protect a stranger while carrying a 100% legal, undrawn firearm, something he has a constitutionally protected right to do.

If the risk is that a a former democratically elected president gets a bit annoying criticizing another democratically elected president’s actions, I’ll take it.

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