Trauma caused by family toxic patterns continues to break me even now. Just read my story. 

IWill blogs

Years have passed since I first encountered toxic behaviors of people who were so called family but the pain they gave me and the scars I have, the trauma continued to break me.

When people behave poorly with you, they don't just damage you then, they damage you, your mental health and emotions for a long time.

10 years ago when I got married, I met with a family Who didn't like me at all. They had problems with everything I said or did. 

They didn't like me spending time with my husband so they would make him concisous of spending time with me, always remind him how he had to take care of his family. They would force him to ignore me and I would be made to cancel my plans, my dreams. It was so heartbreaking, so traumatising, so emptying.

They would never make me feel good about my accomplishments.

On the contrary anything I said, I would be put down and ignored. My success, my pleasure, didn't matter me. I sang very well for instance but no one would praise me... they would rather praise someone else when I would sing, recalling and remembering someone else.

 

I was constantly made to fight for basics, left alone, always made to feel like I was less, like I didn't exist.

As time passed, I got the strength to make space for myself, my husband too understood that it wasn't ok to ignore me. I was his wife. 

But even as things changed, toxic people and their feelings never changed for me. They started showing their anger and disgrunt now more passively.

 

And these years of pain has broken me. I had become a changed person. 

That abuse of who I was, of constantly judging me and not giving me praise but making me feel less, has left me :

Completely self conscious 

i still am constantly trying to prove myself , even when I do well, I don't feel it. I am so hesitant to try new things. I am so easily bullied at work. 

- I have issues feeling good about my self. Nothing makes me feel good about myself anymore. 

The fact that my husband was made to ignore me and make me feel so abandoned, the fear of losing a loved one had become a part of my mental fabric.

I had developed such deep sense of fear of abandonment that nothing made me feel secure. 

This fear that people will form groups against me to isolate me and dominate others to ignore me was something that would never leave me. 

 

So much drama had happened around me that I had lost the ability to focus and prioritise.

I had a general sense of fatigue, I had difficulty in getting things done. 

I just couldn't keep straight in my head.

I would imagine the worst and panic on small issues.

I felt so tired and my mood would be unpredictable.

 

I had started feeling there was something wrong with me as a person.

 

Then I read an article about IWill therapy in a news paper. It was on trauma and every box ticked.

The fatigue, the painful thoughts, the inability to feel happy, the fear, all was present in me. It was trauma.

I joined IWill therapy as I wanted to work on myself, and heal and get better and succeed and lead my life to the fullest.

 

IWill therapy helped me so much.

 

My therapist worked with me in healing my trauma.

She helped me re-learn things about myself, she helped me appreciate my qualities, my thoughts, gave me the spacs to think. 

 

Whenever I would panic or have issues, I would bring it up in a session. Not only did it help me to relax at this time but she also helped me deal with such fears, such fatigue on my own later.

She helped me achieve small wins and celebrate myself.

She helped me assert and achieve so much that my success becomes an answer to everyone who in name of family abused me!

 

 

She also helped me the art of voicing concerns, of Clarifying doubts early on. And so I don't let the past negativity break me in my present.

 

Trauma is do toxic. When family or people around you bring their toxicity, they break you for long term, not just in that moment.

 

I am glad I joined IWill therapy.

Today I have started a great job again. I look good. I laugh.

I don't care if those toxic people call me to their common events or not.

I don't care what they think. I am comfortable being myself now.

Shreshtha Joshi