Am I already hurting people as a consequence of unresolved trauma?

[trenton]

I tried doing the forgiveness exercise for my father. I seem to have gotten stuck at almost every point. In this case I tried to forgive my father for trafficking me. I was pretty overwhelmed to the point that the video would fade in and fade out. Sometimes I would hear it and other times it seemed to fall on deaf ears.

There was one thing that did stick out though. It was this idea that by not letting go of the pain, I am hurting others and passing it onto them due to unconsciousness and ignorance as I am blinded by my own pain.

This puts me in an awkward position. I suspect that I may have already hurt people as a consequence of my unresolved trauma such as the things my mother and father did to me that crippled my relationship with my sexuality and made intimacy very difficult for me. The social isolation that results is also painful and might make it less obvious as to how I might be hurting people.

In reality, people apparently get vicarious trauma from me talking about these things. I also sometimes express thoughts of wanting to end my life. I don't know how much that might be hurting people, but I do feel that way and sometimes I feel like I don't care because I hate my life and want it to end. I may have also become a burden due to losing my job over severe depression. I struggle to see the point in anything and I can't find someone who can actually help. I'm sick of relying on AI for emotional support, but I struggle to find a human who would actually help. Additionally, there is the people I could have helped but didn't due to the educational disruptions over depression. I was unable to finish my education due to hospitalization. In that case it is not that I overtly harmed someone, but that my pain has prevented me from reaching my highest self from which I could have prevented more pain in myself and others. At the same time I am constantly conflicted over things like life purpose and meaninglessness and feeling lost in life but unable to resolve this problem.

The main reason I struggle to let go of what my dad did to me is partially due to survivor's guilt. He and his gang claimed to engage in broader prostitution deals. The possibility that this is true and they actually raped multiple victims makes it feel like a betrayal to let these things go. At the same time, they could have lied and I may have been the only child they actually trafficked. Additionally, I sometimes feel like my silence enabled my father's behavior by not turning him into the police. I just froze and did nothing which leads it me blaming myself and feeling responsible for his behavior. The outcome is that I sometimes feel driven to be vocal about these sorts of things. This is similar to other survivors of childhood sexual abuse who may have a desire to speak out against such abuse for fear of feeling responsible if they stay silent.

In my case, I did try helping other victims. What I did was I documented what happened with my father and his associates. I outlined the evidence surrounding the situation in the hopes that the patterns could be used to aid in other cases. The problem is that sometimes my grandma goes through my emails and starts deleting things she doesn't think is important. Therefore, I tried to tell her that I had some important emails incoming with regards to child sex trafficking because of what her son did to me. Now she is pissed, my aunt is pissed, and my cousin is pissed. I wouldn't have done that if she didn't delete important things in my emails, otherwise I wouldn't have needed to give her a heads up about this one to make sure it doesn't get deleted.

I guess part of my problem with recovery is that I seem to weight the pain of other victims as higher than my own. It is like my caring tethers me to the pain and doesn't let it go because it feels like betrayal. This seems to be a recurring pattern in which I feel like I am responsible for preventing this kind of harm and I failed because of my father. The pain ends up being too much and it undermine my ability to function. If I could have a healthy relationship with my sexuality it would probably help along with having a sense of direction, meaning, and purpose. I just often feel like who I am isn't enough or who I am supposed to be. 

I remember I used to find a sense of direction through chess improvement. I wanted to be a professional chess player, but I was derailed by my family insisting on a different life path because they didn't want me playing chess all day. They stopped me originally, and now are acting like they didn't stop me and were supportive. At the same time, I no longer have the same confidence in that dream as I once did. I was given too much proof that my goal of professional chess play was a pipe dream and I needed to construct an alternative identity and life purpose as my desires and passions were obstacles to a practical survival which felt fundamentally empty and meaningless as it was void of love. I ended up researching a broad range of subjects hoping that learning would give me a path to something new and meaningful. This was originally to substitute for the love my mother and father never gave me. Chess became load bearing in the sense that it gave me a domain in which I could develop mastery and competence, and having it disrupted has now tainted it with grief and the question of what if I could somehow still make it work.

It isn't very well known, but autistic depression is apparently much deeper and crippling than most cases of depression. Special interests are often load bearing and if they fall apart or interest is lost, then life loses its sense of meaning, direction, and belonging. It also doesn't seem to help that I instead get religious messages about Jesus being the key to salvation. I had some bad therapists who insisted I pray despite my objections while saying "how dare you try to control the future" with this sense that I need to surrender to God without recognizing how I concieve of God. This is why I don't tell therapists my spiritual views.

At any rate, I am in a lot of misery. I tried forgiveness for my mother and father, but got stuck. In the case of my mother she gaslit me when I was six into believing I was a rapist. At the same time, if I don't forgive then I might continue to harm others as a consequence of my bitterness in life. I can see this dynamic and I am afraid of becoming someone who is like this as it seems like someone even worse who no longer cares about hurting others.

In order to prevent this, I may need to find what do I need in order to avoid being bitter in life. It might not be any grand purpose. It might be just anything that can stop me from being consumed by the bitterness and depression to the point that life seems unlivable no matter what I try.