R71, I can see why trauma victims want to save children that are being abused. That’s only natural, like people who have a parent die of cancer and grow up to be a hospice nurse or a cancer doctor. That’s understandable that someone would want to save the next generation.
The problem is, if you get yourself into a situation where your competency could mean life or death for a helpless victim, and you have blackouts or memory gaps, that could kill someone else who’s already in a desperate situation, whose life is in your hands. Plus, there is taking on further trauma when you’re already full up all by yourself, let alone sharing other people’s trauma.
My mother was extremely emotionally abusive, and all the kids in my family to this day cannot stay in a room where someone is screaming and being abusive. We literally just get up and leave the room without even thinking about it. I’d climb out a window if I had to, to get away from it. I’ve opened car doors when the car was moving. Anything.
I don’t know how to describe it, other than to say, imagine you’re in a building and somebody pulls the fire alarm. You’re not going to ask why, you’re just going to leave. It’s an automatic reaction and you follow it.
I had no idea my siblings did this too until years later, I was talking to my sister, and I found out she did the same thing I did. I had no idea. We had never even discussed it. We have a saying, “I’ve used up my lifetime limit of screaming, and I can’t take any more. Not one more minute.” At this point it’s involuntary. I just have to go.
Now imagine someone that has escaped a situation about a hundred times worse than I have, and put them back in that room with the screaming over and over every day. Do you think that is good for their long term mental health? I sure don’t. No matter how well meaning they are. If you’re so traumatized you have a split personality, that’s where you reached your lifetime limit. Way back there behind you.
People like that may think it’s their job to help somebody else, but it’s not. It’s their job to make themselves as healthy as they can, so nobody else can suffer at their hands. If that means avoiding stress, so be it. If the mental illness ends at your generation, you ARE doing your part. That’s your part right there. Stop it from going on, by devoting your life to maintaining your own health and stability. Spare your spouse, coworkers, friends and kids, if any, from having to endure the suffering you did, but at your own hands. End it with you.
You have to put on your own oxygen mask before you can help anybody else.