anxious artist
- Date posted
- 35w
How do you cope with Internet Trauma?
I find myself getting panic attacks over things that I was exposed to as a teen in my younger years and they still haunt me sometimes.
BigGyro09BigGyro09
- Date posted
- 35w
I have the very same problem. The memories don't ever go away and I don't really know what to do about them. All I can really do is find distractions throughout the day.
anxious artistanxious artist
- Date posted
- 35w
@BigGyro09 That works too, I occasionally play video games if I’m getting anxious over my thoughts again. it’s hard though to deal with the guilt of knowing that stuff traumatized you and was unaware of it until you got older, because ocd will use it as proof that you may/may not be a bad person despite having limited knowledge about safety online.
BigGyro09BigGyro09
- Date posted
- 35w
@anxious artist I couldn't have said it better. You're exactly right about all of that. I sometimes find myself blaming myself for finding and even looking for that kind of stuff but truthfully I didn't know better and I didn't get any kind of education on that side of life. I only blame myself because it's not like anyone else showed it to me, I found all of it. It pretty much put a dent in my childhood and it made my teenage years worse than they were looking back. The hardest part is actually trying to sit with those thoughts and letting your mind just think. I tried that the other night and the worst stuff from several different things in life just kept popping up, so it's no wonder I along with other people use distractions all the time
anxious artistanxious artist
- Date posted
- 35w
@BigGyro09 We all made regrettable mistakes during our youth and don’t even realize it till later in our adulthood years. Even if you can’t undo the past, the best thing you can do is move forward. Life will keep going either way. As long as you understand that what happened was a result of PTSD, you can still survive, there’s people out there with similar trauma to you with friends and families. A trauma therapist can help you process those emotions and help you get back on your own two feet. Don’t worry about what people say online, as it doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. No one is perfect and experiences the same lifestyle.
BigGyro09BigGyro09
- Date posted
- 35w
@anxious artist I dunno, I think this has ruined my life in some ways. It's always those painful memories and I don't feel like I can ever truly move on from them. If I never got exposed to that stuff at that time, I feel like I would have had such a great time in high school and had an easier time making friends. I also think it's held me back from making true connections. I also think it's one of the reasons I even have OCD in the first place because that stuff influenced the way I acted when I was around that age. It just sucks overall and I hate being reminded of it over and over again. It's basically like drugs to me. I hate that I have felt helplessness against it for so long and I just wish I was never introduced to that stuff. I feel like if I wasn't, thing would have gone so much smoother in my teen years. I probably would have had an easier time making friends, anxiety wouldn't be an issue, and I probably would have had relationships as well. It just took so much from me and it's hard to really focus on anything else without the trauma aspect of these things being solved. I hate it so much.
Related posts
BigGyro09
- Date posted
- 12w
Something happened 21+ ONLY
So I just took a trip down memory lane and it felt great. It felt like things were better in that moment and it just reminded me of the one thing that's been keeping me down for so long. Adult content. I had a bad relapse that led to shame that it still there. I think before it used to be a lot worse but it's still bad feeling this. I hate adult content, yet I feel like it keeps possessing my mind like poison. I've been making posts like these for years and it sucks that this is still affecting my quality of life by a lot. There were really bad taboos that I remember going through when escalating and I just hit one that was pretty awful. This never feels great to deal with in the long run yet it keeps repeating. I went on a binge of searching through wildly taboo contents that I deep down don't like and am against, yet I kept browsing anyway. I hate how much I remember of specific things that I remember. I just wish I could cleanse all of it from my life. To just go back to the time where I wasn't exposed to it all at such a young age
Anonymous
- Date posted
- 9w
POCD
At 14 I once searched illegal stuff on an adult website. It was out of curiosity and I wanted to know there aren't such things, but it currently caused me have POCD and false memory OCD which makes me sick, because I feel like I remember in details that I searched that with ill intentions. Since then I remembered every single stuff I ever did, and now I remember when I was younger between 9-12 I might've watched l0li to self please. How can I cope?
ivefailed.
- Date posted
- 8w
trauma.
at the start of the year my ex friends got together and spammed illegal disgusting stickers on the whatsapp groupchat to annoy me, because for them i was the morally strict one and they would often make fun of me, but not to this degree...they traumatised me and they thought it was something funny. I have POCD, so you can assume what those stickers were... Since then i cut them off from my life, I wanted to take revenge, I felt an uncontrollable rage and resentment towards them. I felt like the one thing that I didn't want to happen happened. What traumatised me is that it accidentally downloaded while i tried to manually select it to delete it. that stuff got downloaded on my phone without my consent automatically. i immediately deleted it. i dont wish this stain on anybody. i feel like i committed a crime, and i feel like im incriminating myself. I was so paranoid before that something like this could happen that i turned off automatic download on whatsapp. But I fucking made the mistake to press on the sticker to manually delete it... it's heavy if i think abt the words. abt what factually happened despite me not liking it, not partecipating in it. but i feel guilty by association. i cant stand that it got downloaded on my phone. i feel this unwashable stain that is not mine, but it is still my fault for accidentally pressing on it. to download it was not my intent at all, i wanted to delete that stuff and i was in panic. I cried. I don't think i have the courage and the strenght to accept that it wasn't my fault, and to be strong and resolute over my innocence. I feel like that my technicality im a criminal.
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