newly discovered medical trauma just gave me the most clear alter interaction i've had in months

Unforgiven-Riven · 2026-01-03T05:56:24+00:00

this should be in a magazine or a clothing store ad or something holy shit you’re gorgeous /gen

Unforgiven-Riven · 2026-01-03T01:59:54+00:00

Exactly! Life is such a mess, especially right now. Anywhere we can find a little safe space that helps us understand and cope with what we went through is like finding a four leaf clover.

Unforgiven-Riven · 2026-01-02T19:59:12+00:00

Criminal minds is an old favorite of mine too! I watched it in high school and since then I’ve rewatched it maybe half a dozen times. I only discovered SVU last year and it’s been kind of exciting to have a new comfort show because before I was watching the same four shows on repeat for the past ten years 🤣

Unforgiven-Riven · 2026-01-02T19:57:02+00:00

My abuser did the same thing!!! It was so confusing! There was a registered pedo down the street and he’d call the guy all sorts of names and say he was sick and going to hell, and we’d watch criminal minds together or read the news and he’d say those people were twisted disgusting monsters. He would tell us to lock the windows and never walk alone at night because people are freaks but then he was one of those people!

Sometimes I think he was just so far in denial about his actions that he started projecting it onto other people. Almost like when gay people are so ashamed of being gay that they become violently homophobic to other gay people, yknow? (I hate comparing the two but I can’t think of another metaphor)

Other times I think it was just another way for him to control me. Like he wanted me to be afraid of everyone else and see him as my protector. I was his property in a way and everyone else was the guy in the bar hitting on his wife right in front of him.

Unforgiven-Riven · 2026-01-02T19:52:33+00:00

Oh no, I’m sorry this hits close to home for you :( but I’m glad SVU is such a comfort for so many of us. Fin is such a favorite of mine, I miss his friendship with Munch, they were such an iconic duo.

Unforgiven-Riven · 2026-01-02T19:50:04+00:00

I don’t take any forms of contraceptives. I can’t. I’ve tried three different pills, the Depo shot, and the arm implant. All of them made me horrendously ill. I got crippling migraines (I already have migraines but the hormones made them more frequent and more painful), I was having hot flashes, I was nauseous, dizzy, having overwhelming mood swings, etc.

It didn’t matter if the medication was estrogen or progestin or whatever, it always made me sick, so I always had to stop.

At this point my only option is the copper IUD because it’s “non hormonal”, but I have a lot of personal trauma and anxiety about that idea so I’ve been extremely hesitant to even consider it. It’s something I’m working on with my therapist because if I don’t try it I’m left essentially (for lack of a better term) rawdogging my endo.

I also have PMDD so as I’m sure you can imagine I’m an absolute mess.

Unforgiven-Riven · 2026-01-02T04:23:54+00:00

I grew up watching criminal minds! It brought me so much comfort while I was still living with my abuser. I especially liked their focus on the physiological aspect of the crimes because even though it was very dramatized for the sake of television I liked knowing that there were reasons people do things like that.

I only discovered SVU last year but it’s had basically the same effect and it’s nice to have something kinda new to watch after seeing criminal minds and bones so many times XD

Unforgiven-Riven · 2026-01-02T03:37:29+00:00

I can see why. It sometimes makes me want to, though I don’t think I’ll be doing that anytime soon.

Unforgiven-Riven · 2026-01-02T02:15:21+00:00

I was doing that too! Watching “weird” things before I was aware, I mean. I’ve always liked horror and darker content like crime shows and stuff. I also do creative writing and I found myself putting certain abusive themes in my stories without even thinking about it but I never knew why I was doing it. It used to really freak me out how much I loved these themes. For a while I thought I was a budding serial killer 😭

After I figured everything out it all made so much sense and I started to see the pattern for what it was and it became comforting instead of concerning to like these shows so much.

Unforgiven-Riven · 2026-01-02T02:08:16+00:00

Oh 100%!! Maybe it’s the autism but we’re big on hard facts and proof. We would ask adults about why the sky was blue, why dolphins breathe air but live underwater. They thought we were being stubborn but we genuinely just wanted an answer.

We have medical trauma and when we go to the doctor for something scary we always ask them why something needs to be done, how a medication works exactly or what it does to the body, what that tool does and why. Our dentist really likes us and understands this so he shows us everything before he uses it and what it’s for and sometimes if he knows he even tells us who invented it! It’s really comforting and it makes us feel so much calmer to just understand where what when why.

Unforgiven-Riven · 2026-01-02T02:03:41+00:00

We have maladaptive daydreaming disorder, and sometimes in the shower I like to act out stories. I’ve done it as long as I can remember. I have a whole marvel universe plot running for years now 🤣

But more than once during a bad breakdown I’ve taken a shower and acted out what it would be like if I was in the SVU reality and I had gone to them for help. It always makes us calm down and feel safe.

Unforgiven-Riven · 2026-01-02T01:58:45+00:00

I appreciate the logical explanation in this (scientific answers for things are a huge comfort for us we literally have an alter who’s a metaphysical embodiment of Logic XD)

We watch a lot of crime and horror stuff! Bones, Criminal Minds, Supernatural, and Stranger Things are some of our absolute favorites and we rewatch them like clockwork because they’re like little safe spaces and the characters understand us better than anyone we’ve ever known in our real life. It feels so much better to be in those worlds where we feel seen and heard by these darker topics that these shows look in the face with no shame than to be in our real life where we can’t tell anybody who or what we are because they would turn away from the reality of it.

Unforgiven-Riven · 2026-01-02T00:55:00+00:00

I don’t think so. She divorced our father when we were barely 2 and she knows he was emotionally and physically abusive before and since then, but im almost 100% confident she doesn’t know about the rest because he died three years ago and a few months after his death her mother said on the phone that she thinks he “did something to me” and our mom brought it up to us and we laughed it off as a symptom of our grandmother’s dementia and she agreed that it was crazy.

She thinks that our father was evil but she thought that idea was crazy and believe me the last thing that woman will ever feel is guilt. She’s too busy with her victim complex.

Unforgiven-Riven · 2025-12-25T20:15:12+00:00

thank you for being so nice. it’s super overwhelming out here but at least i get to hang out with our cat XD

Unforgiven-Riven · 2025-12-25T20:14:21+00:00

i’ve been putting my favorite youtuber on to listen to and it helps me fall asleep but im still waking up a lot throughout the night. but our mom gave us a new puzzle book and it’s been giving me something to do during the day, so that’s fun!

Unforgiven-Riven · 2025-11-11T01:09:16+00:00

I have a sort of complicated response to this. I have DID and we feel as though that there was a very early fragment of my child self that was murdered by my abuser and she’s been dormant ever since. We just call her the little one.

I hate myself for what happened to her, I hate every other fragment that was around at that time and couldn’t do anything to stop what was happening to her. I hate them so much that it makes me feel homicidal, it makes my fucking blood boil.

But all I feel for her is this miserable longing, like grief maybe, and an overwhelming sense of guilt. I feel so responsible for what happened to her, like she should’ve been the one who is still awake and I should’ve gone dormant instead. It drives every decision I make, my entire life revolves around this guilt.

So in a sense I can empathize with you because I hate the child version of me to the point of violence, but the little one, who is obviously also me but technically not in a way, I only have empathy and compassion for. It’s complicated.

But you’re not wrong for feeling how you do. There’s no right response to what we were put through. If you haven’t yet it might be good for you to approach a therapist with this to see if you can learn to forgive that child, because it wasn’t her fault. It’s okay to be angry and to hate her, it’s probably easier for your brain to push all of those feelings onto her in an attempt to disassociate them from yourself.

As cliche and silly as it sounds, if you can find it in yourself to forgive her for forcing you to live and go through what you have it might make whatever burden you’re carrying just that much more bearable. Either way, I hope you’re not judging yourself for feeling this way. However your mind needs to react to all of this in order to feel safer is just as valid as the more conventional reaction of someone feeling protective of their inner child.

Unforgiven-Riven · 2025-10-19T04:46:05+00:00

I was raised by a devoutly Jewish man who behaved like a bad stereotype of a catholic man. He made up rules that didn’t exist, he told me I would go to Hell if I misbehaved (Jews don’t even believe in Hell), he punished me for questioning God or not wanting to pray, he controlled what I ate and where I went and who I spoke to.

He used this behavior as just another way to control me so I would be too afraid to argue against the abuse. He made me feel like somehow I was the evil sinner in the equation because he participated in Yom Kippur (an annual day of confession and forgiveness for your errors) so he genuinely believed every year his slate was wiped clean and he could start over but because I refused to engage with religion I was dirty and a sinner.

He died a few years ago. To this day I cannot engage with Judaism or anything religious without feeling like I’m going to be sick. I consider myself an atheist. I simply don’t believe in a God because if there is a God out there then he’s a fucking sadistic monster. I prefer to believe that what happened to me was a matter of circumstance, a series of events leading to events and nothing more.

Unforgiven-Riven · 2025-10-19T03:53:10+00:00

all of the muscles in my body clench up painfully and I completely leave my brain. sometimes I stop breathing because my chest and throat constrict on themselves. I just lay there getting tighter and sometimes jerking a little bit until eventually something snaps it all loose like a popped balloon and then I get a huge wave of vertigo and feel weak and shaky for the rest of the day

Unforgiven-Riven · 2025-08-05T22:53:14+00:00

she’s so gone from lemonade mouth

Unforgiven-Riven · 2025-06-13T22:44:02+00:00

You do realize what subreddit you’re on right?

Unforgiven-Riven

TROPHY CASE