For the longest time, one of my biggest struggles as a traumatized individual has been not being able to feel like I am one. At face value, this might seem like a shallow or superficial problem to have, but at its very core, it has become one of the main contributors to my ever-present feelings of loneliness, desperation, and being neglected by everyone around me. As much as I have tried to tell myself that there is no reason for me to lack the sensation of having the identity and struggles of someone with childhood trauma, the way society at large treats people like me is the one at fault, and I am not in control of any of that. So I am left with the gnawing feeling of being alone and outcast in a space where I should find comfort in.

But why is that, exactly?

Invalid Submission

One of the worst parts of being traumatized by something else than familial abuse is the empty and hollow feeling I experience in relation to the identity of a trauma survivor. I cannot separate myself from something that shaped me as a person in such a fundamental way, it just has to become part of who I am, who I see myself as. But when there is a clear disconnect in my lived life experience as a traumatized person and the image the rest of the world wants to project, how am I supposed to find myself whole?