Little T Trauma

For as long as I can remember, I haven’t been mentally stable. I struggled with anxiety as a kid long before I even knew what it was. As I got older, I began to have compulsions and intrusive thoughts, which I now know were OCD. As young as 5 years old, I would have bedtime rituals that consisted of staring at certain things on my walls until I had double vision, up to an hour at times. I would also switch positions a certain amount of times and face my wall staring at it until it felt “right”. I truly believed that if I didn’t do these things, I would sleep horribly or have nightmares. I didn’t understand why I “had” to do these things to soothe the constant anxiety I felt. For the better half of fifth and sixth grade, I experienced intrusive thoughts about committing suicide that really scared me and confused me. I didn’t want to die, but I had this inexplainable feeling that I wouldn’t make it a couple more weeks. My OCD symptoms eventually subsided by the time I was in middle school, but I still spent most of my days in my head. I was officially diagnosed with anxiety and depression in early high school, but didn’t start medication until sophomore year of college.

I grew up with a seemingly perfect childhood and an amazing relationship with my parents, who gave me everything. I had an older brother who was three years older than me and I can’t remember a time we weren’t at war with each other; it passed the point of typical sibling bickering and became verbal and sometimes physical abuse. I was constantly put at fault by my parents, whether I was truly to blame or not, for causing conflict, not putting in enough effort to get along with him, not being easygoing enough, ruining meals, vacations, holidays, anything. I was raised believing the abuse was partly my fault, which causes me a lot of shame to this day. The shame made me stop telling my parents what was happening in fear of getting in trouble again. I now find myself resenting my parents for not truly listening to me or helping me. My brother was diagnosed with depression in early high school, but refused any treatment, including medication and therapy. In my unprofessional opinion, he is dealing with something way more than severe in addition to depression. Unresolved mental illness affected my household more than I understood at the time.

As time went on, we slowly became more distant than ever and the constant fighting turned into speaking to each other only when absolutely necessary. While we were both in high school, my brother and I barely spoke. Screaming, crying, swearing fights between my parents and brother were becoming a daily thing. No contact became easier when he went to college; I adored feeling like an only child, but was sent into a whirlwind of anxiety and dread when he would come home from college on breaks. My parents would beg him to seek help and even threatened to financially cut him off if he didn’t. My mom would cry to me, worried that he would commit suicide. I never knew what to say.

Although at this point there were no fights and only silence between us, every little thing he did disgusted me. I couldn’t look him in the eye or even say his name to other people. I was so uncomfortable in his vicinity. This also made me feel guilty because I thought, “if he doesn’t verbally abuse me like he used to, why do I still hate him so much?” I was constantly told by others that family is family, forgiveness is important, you’ll get along when you’re older, blah blah blah. The shame I felt from others manifested into shaming myself for the same reasons. It was, and still is, near impossible to explain to anybody; I don’t have the words or the proper memories to adequately describe the extent of the abuse. I have forgotten so much that at times I will question myself if it even happened, which obviously makes my story less credible when I try explaining it to others. I don’t blame people for not understanding. Not only am I unable to explain my past with my brother, but people can’t grasp anything other than most siblings are each other’s favorite people and best friends, even if they grew up arguing, as all siblings do. One of the hardest parts about the whole situation is still feeling like I can’t talk to my parents about it. The few times it has been brought up have ended in tears and more shaming. My mom says how sad it makes her and how she failed as a parent. Mom, it makes me sad too. I’ve never talked to my dad about it. It’s always been a huge elephant in the room and my mom acting like everything is fine and what we have is normal, when we all know it’s not. I think she will always try to push me to repair our relationship and make comments that imply we are close, when she knows we aren’t in the slightest. The people who know about our lack of relationship often ask if I hope to have a relationship with him someday; the answer is no, and (shockingly) I don’t really know how to explain why. I don’t even know why myself, I just don’t.

Our lack of relationship didn’t really bother me until very recently. It wasn’t something I actively thought about until, for whatever reason, my feelings about it began to resurface. I would have nightmares of fighting with him and my parents gaslighting me. The nightmares would affect my whole day and made these thoughts more present than usual. I decided to see a therapist for my mental health in general, but it led to my past trauma being brought up as a potential cause of my current struggles.

“What do you think when you hear the diagnosis PTSD?” my therapist asked me during one of our first sessions. I answered how most people would typically answer: war veterans, sexual assault survivors, children who grew up with abusive parents, etc., which is why I was shocked when she brought it up as a potential diagnosis for me. I wasn’t any of those things and it was almost comical to me even discussing the possibility. Knowing I am a nursing student, my therapist assumed I could never see myself in the patients I cared for with PTSD and other trauma-related disorders, and she was right. She urged me to go through the DSM-5 criteria with her symptom by symptom, which slowly made me realize how I actually do fit the criteria. Not only do I meet the minimum symptom requirements for diagnosis, I exceed them.

Because I was constantly invalidated growing up, I immediately invalidated myself and that diagnosis, and am still slowly accepting it. I haven’t told anybody about it in fear of being invalidated more or feeling embarrassed that I could even think I would have PTSD. I don’t know if I will ever tell anyone. I still hate the idea of that label because of the stigma I know most people believe about it, not knowing what I have learned. One of the most valuable things my therapist taught me was “little t” trauma and “big T” trauma. Big T trauma is all the things most people think of with PTSD, like war and other major traumatic events. Little t trauma is defined as a repetitive pattern of shorter traumatic events that build up over time. Both forms of trauma are valid, even if little t trauma is less obvious on the outside.

I have since done a lot of research on PTSD and have found how extremely common it is for women to doubt their diagnosis, downplay their trauma, and question everything they went through that led up to their diagnosis of PTSD. I deeply resonate with the blogs and articles I read about PTSD and am starting to come to terms about the stereotypically intense diagnosis of PTSD. I still and probably always will struggle with invalidating my experience and my past. I am so thankful for my therapist, the first person to ever validate me and my experiences, and someone who finds all the right words to describe my emotions when I don’t know how to. The tears I shed in therapy (everytime!) honestly feel so healing because I never allowed myself to feel those deeply repressed feelings. I now understand the value of working through my trauma, how it could have contributed to my mental illnesses, and how continuing to come to terms with it will help me live a happier life.