Life after cancer. People expect you to bounce back and “be happy” after hearing you’re “cancer free.” In reality, the fear of recurrence never goes away.
When my dad came back from army, all his personal items including very precious ones were sold, given away or modified to fit someone else’s needs. This might not seem that traumatic, but he has been a terrible hoarder ever since to a point where he will take every inch of space available, be it a room, a house, a cave or even a backyard.
Moving to another country as a kid, especially around when puberty starts. Not only is there a lot of adaptation you suddenly have to do, but there are far less understanding people than you initially realize. I’m still haunted by a lot of things even 20 years later.
Bringing the first baby home from the hospital. It’s hard to imagine explain how a barely sentient baby who is completely immobile can turn your life upside down.
The first trimester. I’m 7 weeks pregnant right now and have had to take 3 weeks off work already because I can’t stay awake more than 4 hours and can barely keep anything down.
I can’t believe we don’t talk about how rough this is.
And even more than that we tend to keep pregnancy a secret until after this part is over due to miscarriage risk. So I feel like I can’t even explain why I keep bailing on things and have to come up with white lies to get out of events.
This may be personal to me, but when my friend and I asked out our first crushes in middle school on the same day, his said yes and mine said no. He became the stud of the school overnight and barely talked to me anymore. I was heartbroken. And for over a decade after I based my entire sense of personal accomplishment on what girls thought about me.
The dentist, doctors not listening, school in general, that one time you had both earbuds in and you didn’t hear your mom calling out to you, when the microwave beeping wakes up a parent, getting detention for something you didn’t do. I’m hitting my 30s soon btw. I get I sound like a teenager complaining about what’s happening around them
Living with or recovering from long-term paralysis caused by injury or illness often comes with a range of lasting conditions. Life is rarely the same afterward, especially if you’re unable to return to your previous physical abilities.
Having a missed miscarriage, you think everything going great with the pregnancy until the sonogram tells the embryo died weeks ago and you need surgery. You can never trust your own body again.
*edit* I’m gonna elaborate, because I feel like this is something people should know about. It doesnt have to be neglect, you’re parents can simply be people who, for whatever reason, aren’t aware of the conventions of hygiene. For me it was a combination of those things. It doesn’t just affect your childhood, it follows you, maybe your whole life(idk I haven’t lived very long). Aside from the fact that things people do on instinct can be more difficult for you, the skills you have yet to master, and the constant paranoia that you’re “doing it wrong”, there’s also a feeling of inferiority and shame that really sticks. When you feel dirtier than all the kids around you when you’re little, the feeling doesn’t go away just because you learned how to bathe properly.
Being betrayed by people you have a strong connection with or trust. For me it started with teachers lying, one nearly pushed a pair of us down a flight of stairs and later just friends or family who let you down in shitty ways. Some of them I haven’t spoken to in years and have no plans to change that. It still doesn’t always feel right though I know it is.
Many people who lose 100+ pounds talk about how disturbing it is to watch as people begin treating them better and assume them to be more trustworthy and intelligent. Significant regain means being even more aware they slowly become invisible in public again and people become less and less willing to be helpful or assume competence.
childbirth.
even when it’s all good, the fact that you just birthed another human being and brought it into the world after nine months, all the hormones raging, your body changed… it’s actually a traumatic experience and it takes a while to mentally process it.
Not that people don’t think it was a big deal generally, unless they’re stupid. But I feel like it’s fucked a lot of us up in ways we don’t fully understand yet. And we all just expected ourselves and everybody else to go back to how things were before, with no guidance for healing the trauma. So yeah, more traumatic than people think.
Infertility. The isolation of losing multiple pregnancies and people expecting you to get over it because “it happened early” and “your time will come.” The hormone changes from months and years of fertility treatments. Having to hinge your whole life on doctors appointments and waiting for pregnancy tests, labs, invasive procedures. Losing the romance behind intimacy. Watching other couples have babies and trying to be happy for your friends.
Having my wisdom teeth removed. 4 at once, and I was under general anesthesia! It was the psychological aspect of the recovery that got me. I just didn’t feel like myself. I told my sister I felt like I had a hole in my head. She said “you have FOUR! Go easy on yourself.”
The psych ward. I think people think it’s a place to get therapy and start to recover. I know people think that doctors and nurses take care of you. It’s really not, and they often don’t. Psychiatric survivors have lasting trauma from these interventions.
Periods. The mood swings, pain, and cravings are something you can’t control, and that’s hard to deal with. Especially when you get severe symptoms. It happens each month, and you learn to dread it. It’s traumatizing because of the severity and lack of control.
Emergency C-section. Specifically a category 1 where there is no time and you’re put under general anesthesia.
Sick of the comments of “don’t worry, you have a scar so you’ve been through childbirth only a little different” and all the shit coz I didn’t have a natural birth.
Bitch my baby was minutes away from dying inside me.
Also. It’s insane how jarring it is to see this baby appear once you’re awoken. Don’t think I’ve accepted that they’re mine yet. Haunts me.
For the longest time, I thought they occurred because it was something you were panicking about and your emotions were happening
boy was I wrong
First time it happened I was laying down reading a book then bam! Lost feeling in arms, headache, heart rate 160s, felt like I couldn’t breathe and I was dying. I was telling myself, in my head to calm down but my body was reacting differently. It’s like I’m splitting in 2 souls watching it happen. I had so many tests done with cardiology and neuro. Turns out my ferritin was severely low and causing them.
I can’t do iron infusions and it takes months to get ferritin up so I’m still having them but they’re happening less since I began supplements
Emotional neglect and bullying. These are subtle, quiet, victims don’t even realise those experiences actually matter, aren’t taken as seriously cause you don’t get beat up physically, go unnoticed, but the aftermath of it is LOUD.
Divorce and the effects of not having a father figure in your life, also the effects of dealing with a step mother who keeps your father away from you because of Jealousy.
Having a heart attack at 33 and being told it’s anxiety.. my troponin blood test came back and it was in fact not anxiety. One dr listened to me and my symptoms and literally saved my life.
People like to either tout psychedelics as miracle cure drugs for mental illness, or insist that they are on par with heroin or cocaine with the damage they do. Neither is true and the reality of when it goes bad is completely obscured by these lies.
Tripping on psyches can completely fuck your brain for a few hours, or cause lasting issues even after the trip has ended, even with no history of mental illness,
A bad trip quite literally feels like you are currently in the process of dying and going to an alien version of hell, while leaving you entirely physically unharmed in almost every case… not counting whatever you do to try to wake yourself from the nightmare you think you are in.
Ive bent my own fingernails back, watched one friend scratch his legs till they bled, and another stab himself in the neck with a kitchen knife to try to make it end.
And even if you end up completely unharmed, the psychological impact can be very deep. Sure, there are the successes— the cases of people curing their depression and anxiety— but on the darker side there can also be concepts unable explained in human words burned forever into your brain, like fragments of eldritch knowledge. Psych proponents will scoff and say it is part of the healing process, and not listen. Straight edge people will say “thats what drugs do to you” and not listen. And even if they did, it can’t be explained anyway.
All resulting in malingering existential dread that comes back when you get high, or stay up too late, or think too hard about symbolism in media, or smell certain smells, or interact with religious concepts, or hear certain phrases…
Bottom line, a bad trip can be FAR more traumatic than most people are aware of. And nobody, drug user or not, wants to hear about that aspect of it, except as fodder for askreddit youtube videos.
Obviously rape is traumatic, but I don’t think people fully grasp how awful of a thing it is to do to another human being, how terrible of a thing it is to have to go through. It’s so utterly damn demeaning. Like getting warpedly bullied. And then trying to act like the therapy is 100% working and trying to hide relapses of PTSD. Realizing that another human being managed to get off of causing pain and distress to another human being idk I cannot comprehend it. And then dealing with the rapist getting to go on about life as though nothing happened more than half the time with total lack of actual remorse. The expectation to just ‘let it go’ and happily and stably recover pisses me the hell off so damn much
Going to bed, people coming in and they sedate you while you slept, wake up handcuffed to a Green Handtruck after you are stripped of your clothes and end up naked and being tortured.
Giving birth. It’s terrifying. Especially if there are any complications. I was induced then had to have an emergency c-section as both mine and my baby’s heart rates were erratic. I’m terrified of hospitals, needles etc anyway.
Comments
Life after cancer. People expect you to bounce back and “be happy” after hearing you’re “cancer free.” In reality, the fear of recurrence never goes away.
Falling from a great height. I used to do roofing with no problem. Now I get chills even thinking about going onto a roof.
Broken femur.
When my dad came back from army, all his personal items including very precious ones were sold, given away or modified to fit someone else’s needs. This might not seem that traumatic, but he has been a terrible hoarder ever since to a point where he will take every inch of space available, be it a room, a house, a cave or even a backyard.
Losing the matriarch of the family and watching everyone start beefing with each other.
A psychotic break.
Effects of bullying on the brain
Being in a car accident. Even a minor one can fuck up a lot of shit.
Moving to another country as a kid, especially around when puberty starts. Not only is there a lot of adaptation you suddenly have to do, but there are far less understanding people than you initially realize. I’m still haunted by a lot of things even 20 years later.
An animal turning on you…
Losing a job.
…death of a baby. RIP, Oliver.
The Lion King.
CSA. The damage lasts forever. Trauma-based therapy can mitigate some of the more egregious damage but it’s life changing.
Getting an IUD inserted.
being cheated on
Not getting a job you interviewed for.
Bringing the first baby home from the hospital. It’s hard to imagine explain how a barely sentient baby who is completely immobile can turn your life upside down.
Tearing your achilles
The first trimester. I’m 7 weeks pregnant right now and have had to take 3 weeks off work already because I can’t stay awake more than 4 hours and can barely keep anything down.
I can’t believe we don’t talk about how rough this is.
And even more than that we tend to keep pregnancy a secret until after this part is over due to miscarriage risk. So I feel like I can’t even explain why I keep bailing on things and have to come up with white lies to get out of events.
This may be personal to me, but when my friend and I asked out our first crushes in middle school on the same day, his said yes and mine said no. He became the stud of the school overnight and barely talked to me anymore. I was heartbroken. And for over a decade after I based my entire sense of personal accomplishment on what girls thought about me.
The dentist, doctors not listening, school in general, that one time you had both earbuds in and you didn’t hear your mom calling out to you, when the microwave beeping wakes up a parent, getting detention for something you didn’t do. I’m hitting my 30s soon btw. I get I sound like a teenager complaining about what’s happening around them
Coming out of a seriously abusive relationship.
Letting go of things you once held onto so tightly.
People who said they’d be there through anything, cutting you off because something happens that they can’t handle’
Childbirth, recurrent miscarriages, lack of sleep, no supportsystem. On their own, all can change how you react.
Losing someone close to us to unaliving themselves.
Living with or recovering from long-term paralysis caused by injury or illness often comes with a range of lasting conditions. Life is rarely the same afterward, especially if you’re unable to return to your previous physical abilities.
Half of these comments don’t seem to understand the title of the post
Your life not making sense despite effort
Having a missed miscarriage, you think everything going great with the pregnancy until the sonogram tells the embryo died weeks ago and you need surgery. You can never trust your own body again.
Shitting your pants in army basic training 😅
Birth
being fat
Tickle torture
Reading the Guardian newspaper.
Not being taught proper hygiene as a kid.
*edit* I’m gonna elaborate, because I feel like this is something people should know about. It doesnt have to be neglect, you’re parents can simply be people who, for whatever reason, aren’t aware of the conventions of hygiene. For me it was a combination of those things. It doesn’t just affect your childhood, it follows you, maybe your whole life(idk I haven’t lived very long). Aside from the fact that things people do on instinct can be more difficult for you, the skills you have yet to master, and the constant paranoia that you’re “doing it wrong”, there’s also a feeling of inferiority and shame that really sticks. When you feel dirtier than all the kids around you when you’re little, the feeling doesn’t go away just because you learned how to bathe properly.
Homelessness. Once you get that low, you live the rest of your life knowing how easy it is t fall into it again even if you take every precaution.
Hitting your dad at the age of 12
Abusive sibling dynamics
Being betrayed by people you have a strong connection with or trust. For me it started with teachers lying, one nearly pushed a pair of us down a flight of stairs and later just friends or family who let you down in shitty ways. Some of them I haven’t spoken to in years and have no plans to change that. It still doesn’t always feel right though I know it is.
Not being able to cry. It doesn’t sound so bad, but it means when you’re genuinely hurting, no one will ever take it seriously.
Being a new parent
Surviving an attempted murder or serious fight
Shingles. I’ve had nerve damage for 10 years because of it and will forever. Also, nerve damage. It sucks. It’s just constant.
Working for 50 years.
Misrepresentation
Being betrayed by someone you considered trustworthy
Giving birth. There’s rough half of the human population who literally has no clue.
imprisonment.
Losing a pet.
Heights
Major weight loss or gain.
Many people who lose 100+ pounds talk about how disturbing it is to watch as people begin treating them better and assume them to be more trustworthy and intelligent. Significant regain means being even more aware they slowly become invisible in public again and people become less and less willing to be helpful or assume competence.
Getting beaten up.
Head trauma
childbirth.
even when it’s all good, the fact that you just birthed another human being and brought it into the world after nine months, all the hormones raging, your body changed… it’s actually a traumatic experience and it takes a while to mentally process it.
Pandemic.
Not that people don’t think it was a big deal generally, unless they’re stupid. But I feel like it’s fucked a lot of us up in ways we don’t fully understand yet. And we all just expected ourselves and everybody else to go back to how things were before, with no guidance for healing the trauma. So yeah, more traumatic than people think.
Infertility. The isolation of losing multiple pregnancies and people expecting you to get over it because “it happened early” and “your time will come.” The hormone changes from months and years of fertility treatments. Having to hinge your whole life on doctors appointments and waiting for pregnancy tests, labs, invasive procedures. Losing the romance behind intimacy. Watching other couples have babies and trying to be happy for your friends.
Having people be dismissive of your trauma, even accidentally so. It cuts deep
Having my wisdom teeth removed. 4 at once, and I was under general anesthesia! It was the psychological aspect of the recovery that got me. I just didn’t feel like myself. I told my sister I felt like I had a hole in my head. She said “you have FOUR! Go easy on yourself.”
Being Autistic and ADHD in the school system.
Pregnancy and childbirth. It’s often treated as something that’s just a given for women, but it’s an extreme thing to go through.
Watching a parent die slowly. In my case it was Parkinsons and Dementia. Such a smart and vibrant man taken down by his own brain.
Friendship breakup
The psych ward. I think people think it’s a place to get therapy and start to recover. I know people think that doctors and nurses take care of you. It’s really not, and they often don’t. Psychiatric survivors have lasting trauma from these interventions.
Periods. The mood swings, pain, and cravings are something you can’t control, and that’s hard to deal with. Especially when you get severe symptoms. It happens each month, and you learn to dread it. It’s traumatizing because of the severity and lack of control.
Watching a loved one who’s sick and in the process of passing away (death throes).
Having emotionally abusive parents, and in turn, not having a “support system” into adulthood.
Loneliness
Losing a parent. Lost my mum two years ago and my life has never been the same.
Emergency C-section. Specifically a category 1 where there is no time and you’re put under general anesthesia.
Sick of the comments of “don’t worry, you have a scar so you’ve been through childbirth only a little different” and all the shit coz I didn’t have a natural birth.
Bitch my baby was minutes away from dying inside me.
Also. It’s insane how jarring it is to see this baby appear once you’re awoken. Don’t think I’ve accepted that they’re mine yet. Haunts me.
Moving across the country
Panic attacks
For the longest time, I thought they occurred because it was something you were panicking about and your emotions were happening
boy was I wrong
First time it happened I was laying down reading a book then bam! Lost feeling in arms, headache, heart rate 160s, felt like I couldn’t breathe and I was dying. I was telling myself, in my head to calm down but my body was reacting differently. It’s like I’m splitting in 2 souls watching it happen. I had so many tests done with cardiology and neuro. Turns out my ferritin was severely low and causing them.
I can’t do iron infusions and it takes months to get ferritin up so I’m still having them but they’re happening less since I began supplements
Losing your job
Pregnancy loss esp. after infertility
Being bullied as a kid
Their own childhood
Emotional neglect and bullying. These are subtle, quiet, victims don’t even realise those experiences actually matter, aren’t taken as seriously cause you don’t get beat up physically, go unnoticed, but the aftermath of it is LOUD.
Chronic pain. It destroys your personality slowly.
Divorce and the effects of not having a father figure in your life, also the effects of dealing with a step mother who keeps your father away from you because of Jealousy.
Grief
When parents divorce due to one having an affair.
Panic Attacks
Sleep deprivation
How insidious child abuse is
Anxious attachment
Having a heart attack at 33 and being told it’s anxiety.. my troponin blood test came back and it was in fact not anxiety. One dr listened to me and my symptoms and literally saved my life.
Anything that’s actually traumatic is probably worse than people think.
Having a bad experience on a psychedelic.
People like to either tout psychedelics as miracle cure drugs for mental illness, or insist that they are on par with heroin or cocaine with the damage they do. Neither is true and the reality of when it goes bad is completely obscured by these lies.
Tripping on psyches can completely fuck your brain for a few hours, or cause lasting issues even after the trip has ended, even with no history of mental illness,
A bad trip quite literally feels like you are currently in the process of dying and going to an alien version of hell, while leaving you entirely physically unharmed in almost every case… not counting whatever you do to try to wake yourself from the nightmare you think you are in.
Ive bent my own fingernails back, watched one friend scratch his legs till they bled, and another stab himself in the neck with a kitchen knife to try to make it end.
And even if you end up completely unharmed, the psychological impact can be very deep. Sure, there are the successes— the cases of people curing their depression and anxiety— but on the darker side there can also be concepts unable explained in human words burned forever into your brain, like fragments of eldritch knowledge. Psych proponents will scoff and say it is part of the healing process, and not listen. Straight edge people will say “thats what drugs do to you” and not listen. And even if they did, it can’t be explained anyway.
All resulting in malingering existential dread that comes back when you get high, or stay up too late, or think too hard about symbolism in media, or smell certain smells, or interact with religious concepts, or hear certain phrases…
Bottom line, a bad trip can be FAR more traumatic than most people are aware of. And nobody, drug user or not, wants to hear about that aspect of it, except as fodder for askreddit youtube videos.
Someone cheating on you.
Racism.
Obviously rape is traumatic, but I don’t think people fully grasp how awful of a thing it is to do to another human being, how terrible of a thing it is to have to go through. It’s so utterly damn demeaning. Like getting warpedly bullied. And then trying to act like the therapy is 100% working and trying to hide relapses of PTSD. Realizing that another human being managed to get off of causing pain and distress to another human being idk I cannot comprehend it. And then dealing with the rapist getting to go on about life as though nothing happened more than half the time with total lack of actual remorse. The expectation to just ‘let it go’ and happily and stably recover pisses me the hell off so damn much
Losing your dog (or any special family pet). I love my pup more than 80% of my family. They’re irreplaceable.
Going to bed, people coming in and they sedate you while you slept, wake up handcuffed to a Green Handtruck after you are stripped of your clothes and end up naked and being tortured.
Alcoholism
Cyberbullying and its cousin, Internet trolling.
Childbirth
“Calm down, it was just a joke.”
Nearly drowning when your a kid ! Instant fear of open water for your whole life
Having a NICU baby
Experiencing a robbery
Giving birth. It’s terrifying. Especially if there are any complications. I was induced then had to have an emergency c-section as both mine and my baby’s heart rates were erratic. I’m terrified of hospitals, needles etc anyway.