342- (c)PTSD and identity definition

Elsewhere, I discussed multiple traumas that I experienced, their daily impacts on me, my maladaptive coping, and today, I want to discuss the topic of Identity. 

I mentioned the depersonalization and conditioning that I endured as a child, and as a teen. This, and multiple traumas, as soon as in the womb and post-birth makes it impossible to defining who I am and what my personality is outside of my trauma-induced mindset and values. Thus, the goal of my therapy isn't a full recovery or regaining pre-trauma capabilities, but to learn to better cope with my trauma, and building both adaptive coping, and my identity.

Identity is defined in dictionaries (in this example Oxford) as 

The characteristics determining who or what a person or thing is. 

In psychology, the definition of identity is extended to the qualities, beliefs, personality, looks and/or expressions that make a person (self-identity) ... The process of identity can be creative or destructive.

You can immediately see how depersonalization and conditioning in a religious cult, perpetrated with abuse and violence by a father who wasn't treated for his narcissism and schizophrenia can be destructive and disruptive.

Further complications arise from a set of factors : 

First, the break in bonding with my biological mother, in my formative years. This was done through the trauma of separation caused by my father’s kidnapping me from her.

Second, multiple name changes.

Here, I won’t tell you which names were used, but summarize the topic. I was supposed to have a first name and a middle name. They were swapped before my birth was reported to the authorities.

After my father kidnapped me, he brought me to another country, where he changed the entire family’s last name.

Years later, when I had to get my first ID card, I found these out ; the card also stated my official religious affiliation, and ethnicity. Both of which were falsified by my father, to avoid raising the alarm as to the nature of his self-proclaimed messianic "mission", and thus to appear to conform to the local authority and national religion.

The third factor resided in repeated abuse, depersonalization, conditioning, and drilling-in of his religious dogmas. These beliefs, philosophical worldviews, and isolation from the outside resulted in a series of secondary effects such as social phobia, avoidance, maladaptive coping, and warped and partial views and knowledge of the outside world.

These, in turn, created a set of needed steps of post-traumatic growth, de-programming of the conditioned beliefs, re-building oneself with no prior frame of reference to attain, and having to define and re-define constantly who I am in any given moment or period, which could change and evolve into a new set of definitions later – in a much broader and difficult process than any person who didn’t experience the same kind of traumas.

As a result of the above name changes, and upon signing my full name on numerous official documents here, I received so many remarks as to the cultish nature of my middle name, that it created an inner struggle and anger as to the meaning of that name, and I subsequently requested a full first, middle and last name change. However, the lawyer hadn’t fully understood my query, and had worked solely on the new first name, erasing the old middle name, replacing it with the old first name.

When I asked him what was going on with the last name change, he explained such a convoluted series of options that were all unattainable, unrealistic and counterproductive to my needs, so I had to drop this part of my request.

2 years later, I received my new first and middle names, which I had anticipated as life-changing, through my taking the power, and control over my identity, and which turned out to be false hope.

Indeed, this change didn’t bring about life-changing mindset, and didn’t make things much easier. It merely alleviated some weight off my shoulders, but my quest to define who I am, and what I may become, was still ongoing.

A few additional years later, I had my mental breakdown, and a new identity crisis arising as midlife crisis occurred concurrently. I dropped several interests and life-long passions, which were based on life-long, but possibly erroneous beliefs, and ever since, my quest redoubled in difficulties.

Thus, to come back full circle to the psychological definition of identity, qualities, beliefs, personality, looks and/or expressions that make a person I am forced to conclude that I have a set of core values, based partially on beliefs that I developed either alone or concurrently to my traumatic experiences, and beliefs that were instilled in me during my childhood ; but, that despite negative causes, these values are positive, respecting life, individuals and diversity; all the whilst refusing to accept and tolerate the unacceptable and intolerable aspects and beliefs that many humans display, and their hurtful actions towards others.

My looks of the world are still not fully healed, as they are tainted by black and white thinking of good VS evil precepts fed to me on a spoon during all my years in my father's cult, negative approaches and expectations, both for me and for humanity. I’m trying to bridge that into more realistic and pragmatic views, than outright negativity, but it’s a tough process.

So, the question remains:  who am I?

I already know partial answers to :

• what do I stand for? Through my core values, fighting injustices and believing in higher, equal rights to animals and humans alike, as we are only a form of animals ourselves.
• What do I believe in? I broke away from certain beliefs that were instilled in me, by embracing atheism ; learning to accept broader LGBTQa+ individuals, whom I was told were all sinners during my youth, and now, I’m an ally to all of them, not only due to my understanding my nonbinary gender identity, but encompassing other individuals from the spectrum, and wanting a better world for all, with equal rights to marriage, adoption, education and living.

It’s very complicated to heal from trauma, especially multiple ones experienced from the earliest ages into adulthood – as I have indeed endured until my late teens/ early adulthood.

Post-traumatic growth is possible, but a long, arduous undertaking, and so is defining who I am, and what my identity is; these remain works in progress. It may be so for the remainder of my life, as an ongoing process and journey. 

This will tie-in very nicely with the series of drafts I started, titled know thinself, unless I change it to something else by the time of publication.