when you go from a bad situation into a better one you may collapse exhausted and unsure what to do and full of grief, you may need time to regain the ability to do things as yourself or motivated by anything other than terror, you may need time to process or mourn or fall apart in ways you could not before,
and people may use this as proof that the old situation was better for you, proof that you need to go back, and it is not proof that it was better for you or proof that you need to go back
!!!
It’s so incredibly common to “fall apart” when you’re finally safe. You no longer need to stay so tightly coiled in on yourself, you can finally leave survival mode and process your trauma. You’re not holding yourself up by sheer terror anymore and suddenly the damage that terror has done to you becomes immediate and obvious.
This is so important. Don’t go back. Things are already getting better, even if it doesn’t feel that way.
Man does this ever hit home really hard. I’m going to talk about my experience with this phenomena, sorry OP for jacking your post.
From 2009 to 2014, I was 100% motivated in everything I did by fear and panic and uncertainty ranging from not knowing who i could trust to who would hurt me or wouldn’t hurt me to “am i going to have a place to live.” 2014 was like the apex of garbagetown for me when I got divorced from my emotionally/mentally abusive ex husband, and basically got bounced around from place to place for about 7 months before finally moving back into another abusive household with my parents.
I’m not going to go into the abuse, but suffice it to say that it was bad and I was suffering for it pretty badly and there was not a single day that would go by without me being screamed at or without someone screaming at someone else, causing a big dramatic blowout.
In July of 2015, I ended up finding a lovely apartment with my 2 roommates (who I have been living very happily and comfortably with for nearly a year) and everything was great! Life was great. I had a nice place, a lot of income, a lot of comfort and security that I hadn’t had before. And for a while, it was awesome.
And then I crashed and burned. Hard.
I was depressed and nearly literally nonfunctional from september to maybe about a month or two ago, and I got no work done, could barely care for myself, went to sleep crying, woke up wanting to die or vice versa, and basically it felt like my world was shaking apart and I had no idea why. It was terrifying. I was so mad at myself because why was this happening!? Why was I being such a lazy, useless piece of shit? Was everybody right who I thought had treated me badly, like, was I actually just shitty, lazy, irresponsible garbage?
I found out after that period of time and a lot of soul searching though, that it was like something in my brain had gotten unplugged. Like there was a spark plug gone and nothing was arcing, and that spark plug was, and I say this in caps, ADVERSITY!
See, I had spent nearly 6 years in a constant state of panic and fear so my brain had normalized that and had decided, “this is what average is like for you. you know how to cope with this” and I mean, that’s true! I did know how to cope with adverse situations, because I literally had no other choice. I wasn’t allowed peace and quiet and time to reflect.
And now that my “normal” was gone, and replaced with something comparitively more “normal” and peaceful and easy, my brain basically went “wait what. what the fuck. where’s the fire. THERE’S NO FIRE. There’s gotta be a fire somewhere, we have to put it out. why aren’t you doing anything. WHY AREN’T YOU PUTTING OUT THIS HYPOTHETICAL FIRE. IT’S OUT THERE YOU IDIOT SOMETHING’S BURNING GO FIX IT RIGHT NOW”
And that was terrifying.
It’s horrible to not know why your brain is treating you badly, but that’s literally what it’s doing. You become so used to a certain way of living that when that calamity and discord are removed, your brain goes “haha what” and makes you invent things to be worried/upset over, and most of the time, there isn’t even anything specific that you are worried or upset about, it’s just this horrible, murderous sense of dread and panic and fear and inability to function and you end up feeling so bad for it because it’s all in your head! Everything you are upset about doesn’t exist so what the fuck.
I don’t know if there’s a term for this disorder, but I know that it’s painful to go through, and a lot of people, both pre-diagnosed mentally ill folks, undiagnosed MI folks and neurotypical folks experience this. It’s not as unusual as we think, we just don’t talk about it bc in our heads, it feels like we are being objectively crazy for no reason, so there’s a sense of self deprecation and shame and lord does that make everything worse to boot.
So please, if you find yourself in a situation where you are free from your abusers or your adversity and you are in a good, safe place with good income or good support or friends and you are INEXPLICABLY still miserable and depressed, possibly moreso than you were before, understand that you are not bad or lazy or anything like that, you are readjusting. Your body and brain are being re-tempered. It’s hard, and it’s okay to crash and burn sometimes. You can get back up, you are worth it, and the pain and suffering doesn’t mean you are doing something wrong. You are normal, this is normal, and things will work out.
