If you’re getting notified about this, FYI, this post is old.
But I guess that’s the point. It all just kind of is what it is. I tried things ’til I got seemingly better (ish). Some advice was really helpful, some not so much. But I think everyone is, at least, trying to be helpful.
(At least, I want to believe in the best in people. So, I’m gonna go ahead and assume everyone is trying to be helpful.)
But we’re all seeing the world through our own lenses! I might be seeing a way different world than you are. And what might work for me might not work for you.
None of us know anything. (I mean, I know, we all know some things. And certainly people in certain fields (such as mental health) probably know a lot more about trauma than the average person.) But at the end of the day, we’re all just trying to figure this life out.
And for every piece of advice you find that works amazingly for someone, it’s turned out horribly for someone else. If you have a piece of advice that has helped you many times before, there may come a situation where it doesn’t work after all, even for you.
And I guess it’s weird to learn that even though we maybe “think” we’re learning through life (and we are), that different things we think we sooooo can handle this time around might end up teaching us different and new lessons (and be totally different this time around).
(How long do you think we’d have to live before we could stop learning super tough lessons? I dunno. But I would guess pretty long, or at least it seems so to me.)
So, anyway, basically, I just wanted to reiterate that none of us (including me) know anything anyway. So, if you’re looking for advice on how to get through a traumatic experience, sure, talk to everybody, and read the books, and try what you want. But at the end of the day, you do whatever you need. There is no “right” answer, as far as I’m concerned. There’s whatever works for you.
So, you might not take everything you hear from everyone. (You might not be able to, as some of it’s different!) And maybe none of the advice I gave in my whole gajillion blog posts works for you. That’s totally cool. Just throw it in the trash then.
No matter how much somebody cares about you, or wants to help, they still might not know what you need. And you might not either. So, I think we try things on ’til something fits.
I feel like I’ve been pretty rambly in this post (and I doubt anyone is surprised by that, haha!). But basically, none of us know what we’re doing. (I apparently don’t even know how to write a blog post!) *tap dances out of frame*
[This is part of the sexual assault series.]