2025- Damn.
The New Year feels like a fresh start and a convenient time to reintroduce an old habit that I’ve been meaning to revive: blogging. Writing has always been a compulsion of mine, a way to organise the chaos in my head, and this year, I’ve resolved to let it flow freely again. January 1st feels as good a day as any to begin. My aim is twofold: to share what I’ve learned about trauma from the perspective of a Survivor and to scratch the persistent itch to document my journey—a unique one, to say the least, as a male CSA Survivor navigating a justice system that feels more broken with every step I take.
The end of the holiday season always brings a huge relief for me, marking the close of a particularly difficult stretch of time. Christmas, in all its overextended glory beginning at the start of November, is especially fraught for me. This past season was no different; in fact, it brought the strongest bout of suicidal ideation I’ve had since the summer, when I had to face my perpetrator in court.
Those words—suicidal ideation—are sharp and alarming, often sparking panic in those who hear them. Don’t panic. I’m not in immediate danger, and I’ve come to understand enough about trauma to know that these thoughts are part of the package, especially during something as grueling as the justice process. That said, I don’t minimise the gravity of entering that headspace. It’s dangerous territory.
For me, Christmas triggers are plentiful. C-PTSD leaves its marks: emotional wounds carved deep by prolonged, repeated trauma. When those wounds are touched, they bleed despair, hopelessness, and an ache so raw that suicide can seem like the only escape—a hatch that, while irrational, glimmers with the illusion of relief.
This isn’t to say these feelings arise without warning or logic. Trauma rewires the brain, impairing its ability to regulate emotions. Intense shame, anger, and guilt can flood the system, and when those emotions overwhelm, suicidal thoughts can seem like the only way to dam the tide. One of my more insidious coping mechanisms when triggered is dissociation—a shield against pain that, paradoxically, comes with its own set of frustrations.
Understanding dissociation has been a turning point for me. A book that became a kind of map through this labyrinth is The Haunted Self by van der Hart, Nijenhuis, and Steele. It delves into the theory of structural dissociation, explaining how trauma fragments the self into dissociative parts that serve specific roles. It’s a survival mechanism, but one that wreaks havoc in daily life. The theory identifies two key types of dissociative parts:
The Apparently Normal Part (ANP): The part that handles daily life, avoiding trauma at all costs. It’s functional, yes, but often disconnected from the depth of one’s emotions.
The Emotional Part (EP): The part that holds the traumatic memories, emotions, and responses. The EP lives in the past, locked in survival responses like fight, flight, freeze, or submit.
For me, learning about these parts wasn’t just illuminating—it was liberating. It gave a name to the chaos and a framework for understanding my reactions. I like to think that once the justice process is behind me, once I’m no longer entrenched in re-traumatisation, these effects will diminish. Or maybe that’s just hope speaking. Either way, it’s something to hold on to.
I’m sharing this because Christmas is hard for many, not just Survivors. It’s a season that insists on joy and celebration, which only sharpens the sting when your reality doesn’t align. For CSA Survivors, the weight of societal expectations often compounds the isolation we feel. This world isn’t built for our reality or our brains; it demands denial of our experiences, which is as destructive as the trauma itself.
C-PTSD has a way of pulling the rug out from under you when you least expect it, but healing, I’ve found, is learning to steady yourself mid-fall. Christmas is over now, and my mind feels like a different landscape entirely—a clear day after a storm. Such is the maddening unpredictability of triggers.
In December, I found a welcome distraction in helping my friend Darya Dickinson with the rebranding of the Manchester Photography Collective, which has been a labour of love. Big plans are ahead, including an awards ceremony where we’ve been nominated for Forever Manchester’s “Connecting Communities” award.
And so, as the new year begins, I return to writing—to document, to share, and to navigate this journey with words as my guide.
