How to live life after extreme trauma?
Hello, I (25F) have spent a big chunk of my life entrenched in traumatic events.
I was born with ocd, I was abused physically at 13 around the same time my parents decided to stop parenting. From there it’s extreme ocd, isolation due to my parents, online grooming, sexual assault, got stuck in a kinda Christian cult, emotionally abusive, every friend I had for a decade was self harming graphically, and a world of being taught terrible terrible mindsets and ways of looking at life due to the Christian teachings and creeps normalizing me to things on the internet and quote. I broke out at 22 to try and leave Christianity got in a plethora of fights with my parents hit while trying to learn to be a normal functioning human and start changing all theses awful things I was taught. Got stuck in the worst abusive relationship of my life at 23 and got out at 24 where my mother is now trying to be a parent is taking care of me and paying for my therapy..
I am taking amazing strides put in that context, I have a part time job I love, I can socialize healthily and connect to people, I don’t cope in bad ways, I’m learning to find myself and my interests, i’m unfortunately sick a lot due to all the stress, but that will get better in time, and I’m looking for a ptsd and ocd therapist.
But I how do I live? Granted maybe this is living, but i wouldn’t know since I haven’t known a life outside of survival. I feel younger then my peers god do I feel younger then my peers and I know how to due adult things and handle adult problems but I feel like that’s not synonymous with feeling like an adult. I feel in this weird terrible void of learning to be a human for the first time due to all of my trauma and learning to be an adult. I don’t have good education or health and I feel like I’m a baby in the world of people doing adult things I don’t know how to join in, I’ve missed a lot of life and now a great situation has landed on my lap and I don’t know how to manage it. I find myself wishing I was younger so it’s make more sense in context my being lost.
After so much trauma how do you live and especially starting in your mid twenties?