My name is Elizabeth, and I am a survivor of child abuse and horrific trauma. I feel there is a need for our society to hear about how survivors break away from trauma and lead their lives after child abuse. This is an area that is very personal and unique to all of us, and it is hard to talk about. The words do not come easily, but I feel very passionate about raising awareness because survivors exist all over the world, and we do matter.
How did you survive your childhood and move on? Where did your life take you? Where are you now? How are you doing?
These are questions we have all been asked, and some are not as easy to answer as others. My childhood will be similar to anyone else’s out there who suffered abuse and trauma from the people closest to us. We are all unique in how we cope with our situations and how we break away from them and move on. I can only really speak from my own experiences of abuse and trauma. I have also lived in this world for several decades, and I can honestly say that I am a very different woman now than who I was as an abused child. Life changes us as our bodies mature, and our brains are always learning new things as we are propelled through life. Our unique experiences shape us into the person we are and how we interpret situations. Everyone is different. It is great to be different from others because the world would be boring if we were all the same. It is our differences that should be celebrated, not ridiculed.
In this article, I want to explore how we, as survivors of abuse, deal with sadness, which is essentially another part of the grieving process after having lived through trauma.. Life continues despite our experiences. It happens all the time whether we want it to or not. We cannot turn off the clock just because we have a bad night of flashbacks. We still have to get on with our lives, but it is not always easy when you are living with complex PTSD. A nightmare can really mess up your day, and your organized schedule can easily spiral out of control when those emotions get in our way. As adults, we still have to go to work and get on with our daily chores, but what if you are too sad, and your need to just sit down or spend time in bed is greater than whatever else that schedule is telling you to do? Has this happened to you?
I often suffer from nightmares from my childhood and traumatic events that have happened to me since then. Most of the time, I can regulate myself back into the present and shrug off those memories, and move on with my day. Those flashbacks don’t hurt me as much as they once did. Don’t get me wrong, I still have periods when I get overwhelmingly sad from triggers and my emotions upset my day. I can also react badly to situations that I cannot control when I have already had an emotional day. While I know this to be true, those closest to me know who I am and how I react. Normal life stressors can be hard to manage for anyone, not just survivors, but we do tend to take things a lot harder than others. It is because we have already lived through too much. I am lucky because I now have a husband sleeping right next to me and young kids in the rooms next to ours. I am surrounded by family, and I take great comfort in having them around me. They help me and guide me when I am not feeling like myself. I also have a network of friends who I can turn to when I need them. It wasn’t always like this. I was once struggling as a teen with horrific nightmares that scared the living daylights out of me on most days. I would wake up screaming and terrified, covered in sweat and not knowing where I was. It used to take me hours, sometimes days, to get my emotions back in control. I also had very few friends because I had chosen to leave everyone I knew behind and start over. Being alone and sad is the worst feeling. I needed help because I seemed to be stuck in perpetual sadness.
Who do you turn to when you are feeling sad?
Feeling sad is part of who we are as survivors of trauma and abuse. We were, after all, deeply hurt in the most profound way. We were physically violated and exploited by adults who were supposed to look after us but ended up doing the exact opposite. That fundamental betrayal will leave a mark, and each mark adds up to something more than our brains made us “forget.” The physical bruises and pain vanished with time, but those emotional scars stuck with us like invisible glue. We forget what happened to us until a time when our brains can handle the hurt and get “triggered.” We then flashed back to somewhere we never wanted to revisit, but our brains made us go there again. There it is — BAM! — your very own 3D movie starring yourself in the worst possible moment of your life. Your brain makes you watch yourself in that tortured moment and feel that pain again. You hear the voices as if they were right there, even though these events happened decades ago. It hurts, and the pain is acute and severe, just like it happened. It is no wonder that when you come out of that flashback, you feel overwhelmingly sad. You grieve for that young life who had no option but to take that pain and that burden to keep the abuse secret. Some survivors are triggered many times during the day and into the night. It can be exhausting to live like this. Feeling sadness is part of the grief process that we go through in our healing journeys. Those feelings have to come out. If you need to have a good cry, then do. Just know that you don’t need to go at it alone. Most survivors seek help and support. We eventually end up drawing strength from others as well as ourselves. It takes time to heal.
Have you ever felt overwhelmingly sad? Perhaps you had a nightmare, or you got triggered by something small, and you just couldn’t stop crying? How did you get through it?
Life has to carry on, no matter if we want to be present in it or not. Being sad is not an excuse to stop living. In fact, it is a great reason to carry on living. I know that the first thing that comes to mind when we are sad is to stop. We feel ashamed of our sadness, and we stop. We stopped whatever it was we were doing, and we often went and hid somewhere and tried to stem those stupid tears. Does this resonate with any of you? Have you ever cried in the staff restrooms at work? Or maybe you have gone out in the parking lot and sat in your car and sobbed your heart out? I have done this many times, and I can tell you that going at it alone is not the right way. When we feel sad, we want to hide ourselves away from everyone and let our emotions out in private. Why do we, as survivors, do that? Why are we so reticent to ask for help? Well, the answer is simple: it is because we are trauma survivors, and we don’t trust anyone. We might say we do, but in reality, we don’t. The reason for this is that we were hurt as children in the most fundamental way, and we don’t trust that the same hurt will not happen again. We protect ourselves by not trusting and opening up.
Our grief becomes very personal and visceral. It is always there. We sometimes don’t know how to get help and support
When I was a child, the only thing that I could talk to was my teddy bear. I carried him with me wherever I went until I was too old for a teddy bear, and my pillow had to suffice as my emotional crutch. I also used to carry a small key chain in the shape of a dolphin in my pocket. It was something that would ground me to the present moment when I was feeling sad. The shape of it calmed me as I touched it and pushed me back to the present moment. Children who have been abused do not trust adults, and when we grow up to be adults, we often turn inward to hide our emotions and sadness. Our grief becomes very personal and visceral. It is always there. We sometimes don’t know how to get help and support.
When we grow up, we come to learn that we need people in order to survive, and there are many situations where we need others to succeed. One of them is teamwork to achieve something at work or in a sport. It is the same thing with our emotional health. We are social creatures, and when we work with others, we are stronger than we are on our own. It takes a lot of bravery to reach out to someone and say; “Hey, I need help.” It is almost incomprehensible to reach out to others when our brains tell us not to trust anyone. Our past experiences of that deep betrayal will always be a constant reminder that the world is untrustworthy. Yet, we must try.
I was a lost eighteen-year-old once when I flew hundreds of miles to get away from my abusive background. I never turned back, but it was not easy to start a new life. Nothing that is worth living for is going to be easy. We have to fight for ourselves, and, as survivors, we have to do this a lot more than those who grow up in a loving home. We don’t have the love and support of family behind us that can propel us out into the air with a parachute to soften our landing into adulthood. We are launched like projectile cannonballs into the air, and we often land hard as adulthood comes as a huge shock. We were never taught the life skills that a loving mom and dad would give their child before leaving home. We are often abandoned financially and left to fight for our own survival. Everything is a surprise when we first start out by ourselves when we have to be on guard and on high alert for people who wish to exploit and harm our innocent souls. Being eighteen and alone in the world was one of the hardest years I have lived, but I was stubborn and determined that I survived my childhood for a reason. I cried buckets during those first years as life kicked me over and over while I learned what it was like to be an adult. I had many disappointments and was in worse situations than I can count, but I got through it. I learned a lot about reading people and noticed the signs of those who wished to use me for their own agendas rather than my best interests. I started making fewer mistakes and relished in my small successes. Even though I was sad and coping with constant nightmares, I learned a lot about myself in those early years. I learned that I had hope that my life would be good one day, and I turned my talents and strengths to my advantage. I took classes at night school and got into college. It was tough to work during the day and study at night, but those years were so worth it because they opened up new doors for me. Even though I was hurting and deeply sad about my past, I watched the people around me and decided to trust some of the people I worked with. That trust paid off, and I got so much in return that it helped me along the way.
If you are feeling overwhelmingly sad, please reach out because there is help out there. Trust yourself to make the right decision because if you have been abused, you get a sense of people very quickly. Trust it and go with what feels right. You do matter, and it does get easier to live with Complex PTSD. If you choose to open up to a friend and talk about what is hurting you, most friends will listen. Your friendship may or may not last, but at least you have tried. I chose to open up to my first real boyfriend about what I had been through, and he understood me in a much better way. Our relationship didn’t last, but it wasn’t because of my past. Time tore us apart as our lives got pulled in different directions. You will find this to be true, as will people who come and go in your life.
There are many survivors out there, and there is support all over the world. There is support online, too, that acts as a good gateway to real face-to-face help.
My name is Elizabeth, and I am a survivor.
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Elizabeth Woods grew up in a world of brutal sex offenders, murderers, and inconceivably neglectful adults. She suffered sexual abuse throughout her childhood and witnessed unspeakable events. Elizabeth survived in an environment where most people would not. She is now able to help other survivors heal from trauma. She escaped that life and moved far away from everyone she knew.
Elizabeth is the author of several books and has written her memoir, telling her childhood story: The Sex-Offender’s Daughter: A True Story of Survival Against All Odds, available on Amazon Kindle. https://www.amazon.com/Sex-Offenders-Daughter-Story-Survival-Against-ebook/dp/B0BBSV97VF/?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_w=0pSdX&content-id=amzn1.sym.cf86ec3a-68a6-43e9-8115-04171136930a&pf_rd_p=cf86ec3a-68a6-43e9-8115-04171136930a&pf_rd_r=134-9913214-5397651&pd_rd_wg=MPpMc&pd_rd_r=d375a758-2d9b-4c6e-9aee-52c1f5a4e6f7&ref_=aufs_ap_sc_dsk
Elizabeth is also the author of “Living with Complex PTSD” and the Cedar’s Port Fiction series: “Saving Joshua”, “Protecting Sarah” and “Guarding Noah” available here:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CQRNST2B?binding=kindle_edition&qid=1711883073&sr=8-2&ref=dbs_dp_rwt_sb_pc_tkin
Dear Elisabeth,
Thank you for sharing. As you say we develop different parts that help us deal with the day to day. My parts disassociate from all emotions. They become exiles. When they are triggered it is overwhelming. Important thing is as you say, remain hopeful.
Thank you!
Thank you for writing about survivor’s sadness. I have been struggling with this my whole life. The last 2 years it has been the worst. I am slowly trying to reach out again. I have a lot of work to do. Reading this helps me understand I am not alone. That this is part of my CPTSD. That there is hope.