Trauma by any other name...

As I mentioned in my previous post, the last week and a half has been a rollercoaster ride. I've been trying to think about why I got so triggered by two teenage girls from our old church knocking on my door. It's a complicated, long, confusing story of our situation with our old church, going back over a decade. People who have not been in that situation just don't get it and it's very hard to explain. I'm going to try to use this blog as a way to sort through the tangle of thoughts and feelings about it. I talked to my counselor a couple of days ago about what happened, and she said something I never thought of before. She mentioned that it's normal to have a situation trigger your emotions when you've been through a traumatic experience, as in PTSD. I honestly never thought what I went through in our church (Independent Fundamental Baptist Church or Fundy for short) was traumatic. I thought trauma was reserved for people who have been physically or sexually assaulted in some way, or witnessed a scary event or were in a bad accident. In my search for answers, I found that there is such a thing as spiritual abuse and that it can cause PTSD. In reading about the signs of spiritual abuse, I was shocked to realize that it describes perfectly what I went through. While it doesn't change anything, I do feel better knowing that there's a reason why I feel like I do, and that I am not alone, not by any means. Something my counselor said is that it's important to acknowledge the feelings instead of trying to repress them and dig into my tool box and find a way to get through it. So that's what I am doing with this blog. "I WAS SPIRITUALLY ABUSED AND I AM TRAUMATIZED BECAUSE OF IT!!!  There I said it.  Now I am going to do my best to not let it control my life and try to help others who have gone through the same thing.