Contains abuse - Started Having Flashbacks & Nightmares Again
It's been over a year since I moved out of the home I grew up in, and where I underwent the vast majority of my abuse. I went through a lot of stuff to try and forget what they did to me. I self-harmed, I drank, I did drugs, and not just the light stuff. Even after I moved out, I still kept doing a lot of it, but eventually I stopped, for the most part, about half a year ago. I still drink more than I should, and abuse my medical license to be high more than I should, but I stopped doing the heavy drugs, and I stopped self-harming.
I figured it'd been long enough for me to not have to worry about being triggered or anything, but I guess I was wrong. The other day, I decided to binge-watch Jessica Jones on marvel, which is a show that frequently mentions sexual abuse. I probably should've known that it would trigger something for me, but, too late now, I suppose.
Regardless, when I went to bed that night, I had several nightmares about the stuff that happened to me as a kid, and many things that I had managed to forget about, or at least, I thought I had. When I woke up, the memories didn't go away, and when I went to bed yesterday, I had even more nightmares, these about my father rather than my sexual abuser.
My brain constantly thinking about these memories is really starting to mess me up. I haven't self-harmed in roughly half a year, but I got pretty close to doing it again last night because of what all of this has been doing to me. Does anyone know a good, healthy way to deal with these nightmares/flashbacks?
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