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Link – I don’t have a ‘pre-trauma’ identity. So I’m developing my identity.

ByMikeM Reading Time: 1 minute

A lot of trauma survivors, talk about how they miss who they used to be. They miss their ‘pre-trauma’ self/identity.
For many of us, however, who were severely abused from a very young age, we don’t have a ‘pre-trauma’ identity. This is something people will not fully comprehend, unless they have personally endured this.
Part of my healing process, is building my identity. A healthy identity. My real identity. The real me.

This is real. I hear from child abuse survivors often about how they just want to become who they were before the abuse, and it makes no sense. They were small children before the abuse, you can’t go back to being a small child as an adult. You have to, instead, figure out who you are, and who you want to be, as an adult.

Nothing in therapy helped me heal more than hearing someone tell me that I was free to be who I wanted to be as an adult. It literally changed the path of my life from that day forward. Instead of constantly looking back and trying to figure out who I was without the abuse, I simply looked ahead to figure out who I was now, having survived the abuse.

It may not seem like much, but for me, it was everything.

I don’t have a ‘pre-trauma’ identity. So I’m developing my identity.

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28 Comments

  1. I remember realising this too during my journey of recovery. People kept saying I am who I am because of the abuse and I hated them saying that!! I so AM NOT! I am ME and your explanation here makes perfect sense 🙂

    Reply

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