Joy and the Fear It Induces #AtoZChallenge

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. I’m once again late writing my post in the #AtoZChallenge. Today is another hard day. Last week when talking to my support coordinator, I realized one of the problems might be the fact that I think I don’t deserve to be happy. This is not necessarily all there is to my trauma-related symptoms and, besides, is it still paranoia if they are actually out to get you?

I’ve mentioned the fear of joy before. It has been following me forever, since learning that I was losing the little sight I had at around age seven. I always prepared for the day when I’d go totally blind. That day still technically hasn’t come, although I can hardly call the tiny bit of light perception I do have sight.

Then there is Jolanda Venema. Dutch people who are in their fifties or older will no doubt remember her photo in a newspaper in 1988. She was chained to a bed, stripped naked, in an institution for people with intellectual disability. I learned a few years ago that it was actually the institution I live in now. I am not old enough to have actually seen the original newspaper article, but I did learn about a similar case in a child and adolescent psychiatric unit in Utrecht in around 1997. This particular girl, a 16-year-old at the time whose name I forgot, was even more like me than Jolanda, in that she had a borderline normal IQ. Cases like these have always haunted me, but that got worse when I entered the care system in 2005 and more so when I was admitted to the psychiatric hospital in 2007. At the time, staff literally told me that, when I needed more support than the three nurses to sixteen acutely ill patients (if they weren’t understaffed) could provide, I’d be locked up in seclusion. And I was. And coerced into taking high doses of medication to prevent me being secluded tons of times after that.

I know for a fact that I’m not allowed to be truly happy. The adage in care is, after all, that it’s better to provide okay’ish care to two people than excellent care to one. And I would’ve agreed if care ever had been excellent. But it never was in the 20+ years I’ve been in the system and not in the 20+ years before that. At least not for people like me and Jolanda.

This doesn’t mean I never experience moments of joy and I do try to acknowledge them. I’m not purposefully being more negative in order to elicit better care. If anything, the opposite is true. However, as another incident this evening proved, most people don’t nearly try their hardest and they don’t think others do either. Well guess what? I do! That doesn’t mean joyful moments don’t induce fear, but fear is not a choice. Besides, like I said, is it still paranoia if they are actually out to get you? I don’t think so.

Institutional Abuse: Abuse in the Care System #AtoZChallenge

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone and welcome to my letter I post in the #AtoZChallenge. Today I want to talk about trauma that I for one didn’t experience in childhood: trauma and particularly abuse experienced in the care system. I’m struggling majorly with this, as just this evening I had an aggressive meltdown that led to me being thrown to the ground by one staff and another staff admitting that the only reason I’m not being locked up or physically restrained is the fact that I’m not strong enough.

I want to say here that my choice of words is a bit tricky. Is it “abuse” if the client was themself aggressive, even if it was “just” verbally? I am struggling intensely with the fact that, on the one hand, my wife never locked me into a room or threw me to the ground even though I was quite a nasty person to her at times when we were living together, but on the other, there are just two staff to ten clients here. I try to understand that staff are people too and not necessarily worse people than others are. My wife sometimes said that the staff at the intensive support home were ill-intentioned at best, but I doubt it. My point is, people are part of a system. When that system is purposefully created to oppress some people, yes, the “low-key” oppressors are to blame too, but that doesn’t make them personally bad people. Many unfortunately don’t realize how much they’re accustomed to using (and abusing) their power. In fact, where it comes to care staff, most don’t even have a clue that they’re higher up in the pecking order than us clients are.

That doesn’t mean that the (ab)use of power doesn’t affect us. I mean, I was once, at the intensive support home, told that if I were dragged to my room, I had probably asked for it with my behavior. The thing is, even if I had, that doesn’t make being physically dragged not traumatic. Similarly, I can totally understand why the staff this evening threw me to the ground (I’m not even 100% sure he intended on me landing on my head), but that doesn’t mean my head doesn’t hurt.

One last thing I want to discuss, is the fact that institutional abuse may technically be a staff’s action (or inaction), but it is the result of a long line of decisions made by management, the Care Office or other funding agency and ultimately the government. It is not the client “choosing” to be restrained/locked up/drugged/etc. with their behavior and, like I said, the staff are the ones doing it, but if the government chooses a lock or shot is cheaper than support, they are the ones ultimately responsible.

Hypervigilance in Trauma Survivors #AtoZChallenge

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone and welcome to my letter H post in the #AtoZChallenge. Today, I want to talk about a major symptom of (complex) PTSD which I struggle with a lot: hypervigilance.

Hypervigilance is an increased awareness of one’s environment and seemingly unimportant details in it. That is, often people who experience hypervigilance constantly scan their surroundings for signs of threat, but that doesn’t mean they’re hyper aware of everything going on. In fact, they often miss out on actually important aspects of their surroundings, such as missing part of a conversation they’re having.

There is a sensory aspect to hypervigilance, ie. increased sensitivity to noise, smells or other sensory stimuli. However, there are also cognitive and emotional aspects to it. People who are hypervigilant due to (complex) PTSD often overanalyze the things happening around them and too easily perceive them as threatening.

I for one commonly overanalyze things that I perceive. It doesn’t help that people often expect me to appraise already overloading stimuli differently based on other factors involved. Like, due to being autistic, I get very easily overwhelmed by loud noises, crowded environments, etc. However, due to both autism and C-PTSD, I also overanalyze my perceptions. For example, I often judge myself for being overwhelmed because, for instance, my fellow residents “can’t help” making certain noises.

People with complex PTSD often experience hypervigilance about other people’s intentions too. I for one am always looking for signs that the people who mean the most to me are going to betray me. It’s not like I want to, but that’s been my experience most of my life.

Hypervigilance can also show up in physical symptoms. An increased startle reflex is part of the diagnostic criteria for PTSD. Many people with (C-)PTSD also struggle to relax even when there are no sudden stimuli or changes to the environment. Which, now that I type it, I realize is nonsense: the environment is always changing even when people who aren’t neurodivergent or trauma survivors or both, do not notice. I last week had a meltdown because I was overwhelmed by the sounds in the living room, only to be told by the staff that it was totally silent. Well, except for a fellow resident’s tablet, the TV, the dishwasher and I’m not even counting the relatively “minor” everyday sounds, like birds chirping outside, the staff station clock ticking, etc.

Anyway, hypervigilance like I said can show up as physical symptoms. Many people experience an increased heartrate, heavy breathing, higher blood pressure, etc. After all, stress (and hypervigilance is majorly stressful) activates the body’s nervous system.

I don’t yet know what can be done about hypervigilance. I follow movement therapy, but so far, it’s incredibly slow-going. It doesn’t help that, like I said above, the world is ever-changing. In other words, even though my therapist talks about baby steps, I know the real world doesn’t work like that.

Grief As It Relates to Childhood Trauma: Missing Something You Never Had #AtoZChallenge

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone and welcome to my letter G post in the #AtoZChallenge. Today, I want to talk about grief as it affects survivors of childhood trauma and particularly family dysfunction. I discussed grief in last year’s A-to-Z too. The thing is though, for many survivors of family dysfunction, the grief is not related to loss, but to missing something you never had. After all, for most people growing up in dysfunctional families, the abuse and neglect started before they were old enough to form clear memories. Because of this as well as other factors, many children also grow up to believe their experience is normal. After all, if you’ve never known any different, it’s hard to understand that your experience could be traumatic. This is one reason way too many people still believe that adversity experienced in early childhood has few effects because “they won’t remember anyway”.

I personally greatly struggle with this belief. Like I shared, I quite literally experienced adversity from birth on if not before. As such, even though my parents claim I was a happy child until around age seven, I have very few memories of a happy childhood.

I also struggle with the belief that “it wasn’t that bad” because it was all I knew. This means that, for a long time, I didn’t actually grieve my childhood trauma. This might seem positive, but the grief is all the worse now that I do know that my experiences weren’t normal. Besides, denial is the first stage in grieving for a reason. In other words, not knowing means I’ll never move on either.

Many people who didn’t experience significant childhood trauma, react to those grieving the happy childhood they never had with well-meaning but hurtful comments like “leave the past behind” or “everybody struggles sometimes”. In reality though, I’m not everybody and the past is part of my life.

Dissociation and the Dissociative (Freeze-Based) Trauma Response #AtoZChallenge

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone and welcome to my letter D post in the #AtoZChallenge. Today, I want to talk about dissociation and the dissociative (freeze-based) trauma response.

Readers who’ve followed my blog for years or who’ve read my “About” page, know that I used to have a diagnosis of dissociative identity disorder (DID). Dissociation exists on a continuum from everyday daydreaming on to full-on, polyfragmented DID. I am somewhere in the middle.

First, what is dissociation? Dissociation is a disconnect between the usually integrated functions of identity, perception, thinking and memory. There are basically five different forms of dissociation:


  • Amnesia (memory problems), which can range from brief moments of “spacing out” to years of “lost time” in your personal life history. It can also be full-on lack of memory but also lack of emotional memory. I, for example, often experience the thing where I act as though I have no memory of doing or experiencing something, but do remember it at the back of my mind.

  • Depersonalization, which refers to the phenomenon of not feeling real. Parts of your body may feel numb without a medical explanation. It can also refer to the experience of “watching yourself”.

  • Derealization: the phenomenon of feeling like the world around you is unreal. I experience this on a regular basis, when it feels as though I’m interacting with the world through an invisible wall.

  • Identity confusion. This one has always baffled me and for a long time I thought this is actually normal. I mean, I have no clue who I am, but doesn’t everyone at my age? And even at nearly forty, I struggle to realize that no, in fact most people don’t experience this.

  • Identity alteration. This, at its most severe, refers to the experience of having “multiple personalities”. It can, however, also refer to distinct patterns of behavior, thinking and perception that “do not feel like you”, even if these distinct personality states do not have their own names, ages, etc.

Pete Walker refers to dissociation as the freeze-based trauma response. I’ve always struggled with this, because I rarely literally freeze. I, however, do often “space out”, watching myself from a distance. I also experience the existence of several distinct personality states. Now that I’m older, they are no longer as separate as they used to be when I was in my teens and twenties. However, the identity confusion is still very real, like I said. In fact, I believe it’s a lot worse now than it used to be when my “pieces” still were more separate.

Codependent (Fawn-Based) Trauma Responses #AtoZChallenge

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone and welcome to my letter C post in the #AtoZChallenge. Last year during this challenge, I discussed codependency for my letter C post. Today, I want to talk about the same topic, but specifically as it relates to people who experienced complex trauma.

You are probably familiar with the fight or flight response when it comes to fear. However, there are several other ways people can respond to perceived threats. One of them is fawning. This has always been a confusing term for me, particularly because I’m a non-native speaker of English and there is no proper translation of this word in Dutch as far as I’m aware.

Fawning, if I’m correct, in the context of trauma means being overly compliant with the wishes of other people and being unable to protest. It’s similar to people-pleasing, for which I haven’t found a proper Dutch translation either by the way.

Pete Walker, the author through whom I know of the fawn-based trauma response, has an entire chapter on this topic in his book on complex PTSD. I just opened the book to the chapter on fawning and oh my did it hit hard! Walker starts out by explaining how he learned that he himself gravitates towards a fawn response when he apologized to a chair for bumping into it. I have done that too.

However, it’s harder for me when I find myself apologizing to people, because too often my apology gets seen as being insincere when I truly have a reason to apologize. That makes sense, especially because I can also show a fight-based response when triggered.

The thing for me is that I overadapt until I can no longer take it anymore and then I have an aggressive meltdown. This sometimes makes me doubt I actually fawn at all. It doesn’t help that my parents from a young age on ingrained the thought that I am selfish into my psyche. I can indeed be self-centered, but that’s not the same.

I am still unsure whether I am a primarily fawning trauma survivor rather than a fight type. However, reading Walker’s chapter makes me realize I’m probably closer to the fawn end of the fight-fawn continuum than many people, including myself, believe. I, after all, experience a deep-seated lack of understanding and even deeper lack of appreciation of myself. Walker calls this self-abandonment and self-abnegation. I wonder whether, because my most outwardly noticeable reaction when triggered is fight, I have been conditioned to see myself as primarily a fight-based type.

Birth: The Effects of a Complicated Start in Life #AtoZChallenge

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone and welcome to my letter B post in the #AtoZChallenge. I’m doing this challenge on healing past hurts. Today, I want to go far into my past: I want to talk about the effects of a complicated birth.

As regular readers know, I was born prematurely and spent the first three months of my life in hospital. Of course, I have no conscious memories of this time, but that doesn’t mean my complicated start in life didn’t have an impact. There is evidence that many people who were born prematurely or otherwise had a difficult start to life, experience attachment problems into adulthood. Now of course I didn’t have the most positive childhood either and there is no way of knowing whether I would still have attachment issues had my parents been well-attuned to me. Of course, this is also a difficult question, since my parents experienced their own trauma having me prematurely.

The thing remains though, a child who was born prematurely, spends time in a clinical setting that they should’ve spent literally inside their mother’s body. There are attempts to lessen the burden this has on children (and parents). For example, kangarooing, in which a baby experiences skin-to-skin contact with their parents, is encouraged as soon as it is possible. However, for preemies and other NICU graduates who are now adults, this may not have been the case. Many older NICU graduates hardly saw or heard their parents for the first few weeks to months of their life. My parents, thankfully, lived in the same city I was in the neonatal unit in, so they were able to visit often.

One thing that haunts me though, and I’ve mentioned this several times, is the effect my being medically complex from birth on left on my parents’ attachment to me. Like I said, whether I would’ve experienced attachment issues had my parents not mistreated me as a child, is a difficult question because one of the reasons they treated me so poorly is their difficulty coping with my being disabled. My father quite literally asked the doctor whether it’d make sense to keep me alive after I’d had a brain bleed a few weeks after birth.

It’s telling, in my opinion, that when you look up “birth trauma” online, what comes up most frequently is not the effects a child’s own start in life could’ve had on them, but the effects of complicated childbirth on parents. And like I said, one goes hand-in-hand with the other.

I’m Participating in the #AtoZChallenge Again After All

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. A few weeks ago, I wrote my intended theme reveal for the #AtoZChallenge. I had been unsure of my theme for a while and also unsure of whether I even wanted a theme. I finally decided on doing the challenge on gender and sexual diversity, published my theme reveal and then remembered to ask one of the hosts whether it meant my blog should be marked as having adult content. I got the response to do so just to be safe. That somehow put me off and I decided to delete my theme reveal post (thankfully I hadn’t put it into the Google document yet). I hope the fact that I’ve disclosed being queer on here a few times, doesn’t automatically mean my blog has adult content.

Fast forward to last Friday and I had the phone call with my mother I mentioned in my post that day. That got me thinking I want to write to process my feelings. So here I am thinking of doing my challenge on healing past hurts. I have not prepared any posts yet, so I’m not sure where this is headed, but I think it will be part journal/personal musing, part mental health awareness. Wish me luck!

Chosen Family #WotW

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. Today, I’m joining in with Anne’s Word of the Week linky, as well as Natalie’s #WeekendCoffeeShare. My word of the week (or rather, phrase, as it usually is), is “chosen family”.

First, as I usually do when writing my weekend coffee shares, I’d like to write about the weather. Over the weekend, it was good: relatively warm and somewhat sunny too. I even sat in the sun for a bit on Sunday. However, most of this week brought cooler temperatures and rain. Today, the daytime high was 9°C. That’s considered normal for this time of year, which I honestly believe is crazy but oh well.

Now here’s why my phrase of the week is “chosen family”: several things this week made me realize my wife is more like family than my birth family. Yes, even now that we’re officially in the divorce process.

You see, we had our first meeting with the divorce mediator and financial advisor on Tuesday. I won’t go into detail as to what we’ve been discussing, but it looks like we’re both going to be okay and we’ll find a way together to make this work. We’ll have our next meeting on April 14.

On Saturday, I was at our house too. I got strange queries in Chrome so had run a full virus scan two weeks ago and it’d found a threat. I initially brushed it off, but finally told my best friend/wife. She was a bit stressed, because I had not paid attention to the full implications of this and for example changed my passwords. I didn’t know what the malware might’ve done, so went to our house on Saturday so that she could check it over. It looks like no actual damage was done, thankfully. In case I’ve mentioned the name of the recipe manager I used though (I’m pretty sure I touted it as the perfect app) and anyone’s installed it too: that was the source of the malware. No more Chrome extensions for me.

Today, my mother texted me to check on me. I, stupidly enough, called her. We’ve been in very limited contact for years now due to her attitudes towards my childhood trauma. After I got more of the same shit, among which comments insinuating that I should move closer to my family because my friendship with my best friend may not be forever, I had had enough. I don’t know yet what will happen in the long run, but for now I’m genuinely done with my family of origin. My best friend feels more like family than my parents do and yes, I’m aware that our friendship might dissolve over time. Then again, no relationship is forever.

Fear (Or Another Four-Letter F Word)

Posted on by Astrid

Fear. I’ve used this word as a starting point for my writings many times. The idea comes from Mari L. McCarthy’s journaling prompts. The idea is to pick a four-letter F word and write about it or use it as a prompt. Well, I’m doing that now, but I doubt I’m actually going to write about fear. I honestly don’t know what to write at this point and am not feeling anything in particular. That is, I guess I “should” be feeling something, but I don’t know what. Alexithymia. That’s what I believe this is called. Any emotional state for me is “good”, “bad” or “neutral” like right now. I don’t ever feel totally relaxed I believe. There’s always some level of stress or anxiety or fear in my body or mind.

My movement therapist tries to tell me that my body needs to get used to the feeling of being relaxed, because due to my early childhood trauma, it never learned to trust this feeling. That makes some sense, in that I almost always feel like I’m on high alert even when I’m half asleep. Is that even possible? And if so, isn’t it just normal? Do I even know what “normal” is, being that I’m autistic and otherwise neurodivergent, multiply-disabled and a trauma survivor? I doubt it. But if I’ve lived my life like this for nearly four decades, is there any way of changing it? I hope there is, because this feeling of always being on high alert is exhausting.

This is another freewrite I originally typed up in Google Keep, then finished here.