My time line

After speaking to close friends and family they mentioned that at key times of my life, I withdrew more into myself.  I was unaware that I had been doing this and the first person who mentioned it was my ex, who mentioned that this had happened when one of my friends had died through an alcohol and drug related situation. I told my cousin that my ex had noticed this behaviour and she told me of another time when I reacted in the same way. I started to see a picture developing.

During one of the courses they encouraged you to do a life time line, a time line is a very simple concept when you look back at your life and you map out important events in your life. I had already started to realise some different emotions within my life but I my understanding was very basic.

When I did a time line of my life , I started with just the events above the line and then I looked back to see what I was doing (alcohol, drugs etc) and I also began to write down my feelings at the beginning this was difficult as i only had the options of happy, sad and not sure. Over the next few weeks/months, I revisited my time line and added other events that I had forgotten or deemed insignificant, I put down my behaviours and feelings, I started to see more words being repeated such as useless, lonely. The more events I wrote down the more I could see where some of my problems lay.  

These events at the beginning started when I was about 15 and went through up until I was in my 40's and each time I went through these moments, my character changed a little bit. For me I found this activity useful because I often found it easier writing down my feelings. I then had an issue whether these moments were excuses or reasons, I now realise that when I was unaware of my feelings and I continued to drink, gamble and look at illegal material, as I was unaware of my emotions at the time, they were never excuses. I used excuses for getting drunk eg hadn't eaten beforehand, I met somebody, I was only going to have two but .....

Throughout the course they encouraged you to look at what things triggered your problematic behaviour in the past and different strategies that you could apply to change your behaviour in the future eg going out for a walk or being around family because boredom can get you searching the internet and speaking to other offenders. 

When you want to change your life the excuses can change into reasons why you want to stop, bad things happen in your life, you need to learn how to deal with them better, I found talking to people about past events that I had ignored throughout my life such as my friends death, later allowed me to cry and let out all of the emotions that I didn't know that I had, it also helped me reattach my feelings, I hadn't cried from about 6 to 48 because I didn't get any help from it as a child. I was now crying when watching films because of the empathy I had for the characters, this felt very strange at first but it felt good.

Since doing the courses I have started having flashbacks to things that happened in my childhood, I now know that I suffered some abuse as a child which would explain why my feelings and emotions were messed up. I make myself come out of these flashbacks before I can see the face of my abuser because I don't feel ready or strong enough for this, I am also scared that if I see more of the flashback it might show more abuse that I suffered.

Before these recent flashbacks, I have never understood that somebody could suffer these traumatic experiences in their childhoods and not remember them, I wouldn't have gone as far to say the person was lying, I just couldn't comprehend how it could happen.