Messages

Thanks BeHea1thy.  Thinking about the "SHOULD diet" will actually help me recognize when I'm criticizing myself too much I think - it's a nice way to frame it.  I hadn't realized until reading your words just how much I tell myself what I should or shouldn't do.

I'm feeling really motivated to invest the time in analyzing my thought patterns and how I internalize external events right now, I can see the positive that comes from reframing how I think about and interpret my experiences and feelings.  I'm really looking forward to feeling good about myself, about who I am.  The difficult part is recognizing that a balanced, healthy, integrated me is one that perhaps has less energy wrapped up in my escapes, chief of which is work.  More change, more adjusting ahead.

The haunted house went well, I had fun playing a role in it too.  The people in our neighborhood loved the performance, and we gave away a lot of candy at the end.  It was a good night.  Thanks again.

Yep, I meant something positive by the term *, not even realizing it can carry a negative connotation.  Sorry about making you feel bad Rain!  Thanks for letting me know it triggers a negative connotation, I'll avoid it going forward.  I think part of having a safe place like this is for people to feel comfortable raising corrections like you did, so thank you for being honest about it so I can make an adjustment.  I think this builds trust and I appreciate your openness.

And Pixelpixiestick, I meant to encourage you and convey that you are strong, you've overcome a lot, and you have a lot more strength in you that you have yet to tap into.  And just as BeHea1thy said, I hope you will consider finding a therapist when the time is right for you - for me that's been a really important part of my growth and reconciling internalized feelings of shame and guilt.

I experience exactly this, waves of it off and on.  I like the idea of checking for mild EFs like patting down pockets for keys - there's power in shining light on things.

I've always been an adrenaline junkie, ever since I can remember - it's one of my adaptations.  So when I'm confronting stress head on I feel empowered to do something about it.

But when that stress lurks below the surface and I don't analyze it and identify it as stress, it chips away at me and takes its toll on me.  I think this dimmer switch is an early warning sign - something's wrong, stop and assess and make sure to frame things appropriately.  It's a sign that it's time to ground and center yourself.  At least, that's what I tell myself.

Pixelpixiestick, first of all, you're a *.  I can relate to your background more than I would like - and I've always use intellectualization to deal with things as well.  I have been lucky to be able to separate out what I've been experiencing from what it needs to mean to me psychologically, if that makes sense, and so I was always able to compartmentalize a great deal, even with the drugs, the violence the physical, mental, and sexual abuse.  It was every day of my life until I got away from the shithole I grew up in.

My twenties were hard, and I did the whole guzzling liters of alcohol thing and unfortunately got into a bunch of other stuff too.  Ended up with an opiate addiction and managed to kick that after a lot of fighting.  You have to hold on to your core and eventually, you have to recognize that it's not your fault and no matter how smart you are, some behaviors can't be rationalized.  I'm talking about the part of you that may or may not feel on the hook, mentally for the stuff you dealt with.  I mean you were living a contradiction - the people you loved that were supposed to love you were the people who were hurting you.  To stay, to endure what you endured, meant some part of you had to give up and shut down for a while.  But you are pulling through like a champ.

Bear with me if some of this is out of place - but I relate so strongly to what you're sharing that I'm almost writing this like I'm writing a letter to my 24 year old self.

You won't feel great all the time.  You may feel like you've always been fighting and that's all there is for you.  At least that's me projecting how I felt during my twenties.  Getting away from the abusive, oppressive environment was a huge step.  But somewhere along the way, just recognize that it's completely natural for you to have internalized a sense of shame or a critic.  It's possible that you feel like you have to be always on, always strong, and you might be really hard on yourself sometimes when you fall short of your high expectations for yourself.  This is a survival mechanism that you built for yourself.

But recognize this - you are more than just that part.  You're precious, valuable, whether you're on or off that day.  Everything you feel is fine, natural, and recognize that you are a survivor.  And also recognize, you have the tools to make the life you want.  You can do anything you want to do.  But you don't have to do it all today.

Sometimes your reach will exceed your grasp, and it's natural and okay to fall short some times.  Sometimes your desire to affect change and build the environment and connections you want will feel like the strongest most powerful need you have, but you'll feel held back and depressed.  And that's okay.  Recognize that sometimes with what we're experiencing, it's like getting pulled into a rip tide.  Fight hard against the rip tide and you'll just expend all your energy.  Give in, surrender, and conserve your energy, and you'll find the tide will carry you to calmer waters, from which you can tap into your reserves and swim back to shore.

This is a journey, and in some ways you are richer for all of the * you've seen.  In other ways, you were cheated.  But at the end of the day, you get to choose who you want to be and how you want to live, how you want to be you.  And whatever you choose is okay.

Thanks a lot for coming here and posting, I hope you'll be around more often.  I really care to hear how things are going for you as time goes by, you have such a bright future ahead of you.

Feel better soon Butterfly, take care!

Oh Mzmia, first of all a big hug.  You've been through * but you still have your spirit intact.  No one and nothing can take that away from you, even on the most dire of days when everything feels splayed and splintered far apart.

Just know you're not alone, we're here, and many of us are fighting similar battles and can relate.  You are always welcome here.

I can relate to that feeling of being terrified at a giant hole you dug for yourself, and it's helping me somewhat to acknowledge that where I am is objectively neither bad nor good but simply where I am.  However I got here is just that - however I got here.  And how I choose to act and live right now is my choice.

You are not encumbered by the past, no matter how heavy it feels in your heart when you look back.  It's liberating to know that you are perfect as you are right now, lovable and worthy as you are right now, and you're not alone.  And half the reason I say these things to you is because I'm also learning to say these things to myself.  The hurt you feel is real, but don't think for one second it has the power to prevent you from living your life to the fullest.  You have the power to decide, even on the days you don't feel like you do. 

I think it's really all about those small steps - and small is just a relative term.  Those steps are your steps and unless someone's walking in your shoes they don't know how much effort those steps take.  The important thing is to go at your pace Rrecovery and love yourself along the way.

Some things that I've internalized that help me are to recognize there is no such thing as wasted time - there is only now, and how we choose to live right now is our choice alone.  It also helps me to believe that I am not the only one who feels the way I feel, that even in my most isolated and lonely times, there is someone else out there, feeling just as isolated and lonely, and my sympathy turns inward and I try to feel psychically connected to that energy that I feel connects us all.  Psychically, not physically - my senses overwhelm me.  But whatever you believe, the point is we're not alone - and I'm glad this forum is a thing we can all share and use to support one another in these times.

Celebrate the steps, all the steps.  Acknowledge the effort and be kind to yourself.  And if anxiety and agoraphobia make it hard to connect to others in person (they do for me too right now - as I hide under my covers far longer than I should be today), comfort yourself - recognize that as an opportunity to love yourself and remind yourself you are okay.  We often look for love and affection and affirmation from others, especially when we're having trouble affirming our own sense of self worth.  You are perfect as you are.  You are worthy of love as you are.

Somnambulist, this is probably something you're doing anyway. But have you thought about managing your levels of overall stress? I'm asking because I'm getting the impression that many of us are so out of touch with our true selves, we tend to react to events/situations/places/people the way we ought to react. Or we simply go numb. Or we fling ourselves into a Fawn or Freeze reaction so quickly, we never really get around to feeling any actual feelings. And then it's only by really investigating ourselves thoroughly that we realize, "huh - that person drained me of all my energy, what do you know". So it's possible to think that everything's okay, but when we dig a little, there are quite a few things that keep on taking up a massive amount of energy. And obviously, less energy makes us less able to deal with triggers. More energy means more energy left for work.

Bingo.

This year I took a month off from work entirely to manage stress, get some balance - I also got to spend 2 weeks visiting my daughter who I hadn't seen in 5 years, which was amazingly wonderful and grounding.  And when I went back to work, I insisted on leaving my management role and moving into the role of an individual contributor, and my work supported me.  Of course this meant change and I tend to handle change terribly internally, it moves me off center and I feel even more lost while I'm establishing a new routine (I think I just try to be on autopilot too much, perhaps).

Right now though the biggest daily stressor is that my poor wife is also struggling with untreated PTSD and anxiety issues from her past.  And she tends to be a big worrier about everything. We've built this haunted house for Halloween and she's been wound up about everything she wants / needs for that, and I don't always interpret her emotions correctly - my response to intense emotions is to try and abate them or to shut down / go numb.  So lately, when either of us are triggering the other one, we politely take time out and give each other space.  We're working ever so carefully on co-counseling each other, kindly, empathetically, calmly.  But we have more bad days than good right now and space is generally healthier.

So I haven't really felt like I've had a place to go that's safe mentally for some time - the only respite is my commute, which is an hour and a half each way.  Of course driving carries its own stress.  I digress.

All this to say, I think you are exactly right and simply acknowledging my stressors and setting limits is slowly starting to help.  But I still feel immensely foggy and lost many days.  And on the edge of my thoughts I feel almost delusional.  I've been hearing voices and whispers that aren't there, or experiencing a sense of dread about people that aren't there.  In my traumatic experiences, I was often caught unawares and suddenly attacked out of nowhere, so sometimes my emotional flashbacks are extraordinarily confusing for me.  My therapist told me not to lend too much validity or belief to those thoughts, that I don't want to give them power and allow myself to have a psychotic episode.  One of my chief concerns has always been a fear of having schizophrenia, like my brother or some others in my family.

But focusing on all the possible negative outcomes doesn't generally help - I've learned through the course of my work that what you focus on is what moves and improves.  So if I focus on positive integration of my feelings and experiences, and I limit my stress and continue to stay grounded, I will be in much better shape.


But to your original point - focusing on how we ought to feel or forgetting how we truly feel entirely, I definitely am not doing so well at managing my stress right now - and I couldn't tell you how I really feel about things without much effort and consideration.  I really feel like I spend whole days, or weeks or months just trying to do what I feel I ought to do or is expected of me.  It's one of the crucial focus areas for me in therapy right now I think, or should be.

I love seeing you sort things out ...and, oh so quickly   ...just in one day, somnambulist!    Well done.    And, yes ...we matter.   

I just have to shake myself sometimes, I realize I've lived this before. Up and down.  Day by day.  I regress when I pretend my trauma wasn't real or what I'm feeling isn't real.  I am still learning how to be kind to myself.

Thank you.

And I meant to say, I do exactly what you mentioned, schrödinger's cat, I write down pretty much everything I feel or think or experience and re-read it later.  I honestly don't know why, but I just can't bring myself to remember things - sometimes it's bad and I can't remember any details, entire years, or I can't seem to remember what I'm experiencing day to day.  Other times it's not as severe.  But in general, I find journaling and re-reading the journals to work really well for me.  And I try to consciously frame things in a neutral or positive light - I try to counterbalance the critic inside me.

Hi Somnambulist,   

Welcome to the forum. 

I know how scary and confusing it can be to have recently found out you have CPTSD and starting therapy.  It has not been quite a year since I was just starting also.  You will find a lot of helpful information here and loads of support.  I know I have.  Good to have you here with us!!!!

Thanks bheart!  I'm encouraged so far.  Thanks for posting on the thread about feeling like an impostor, I was just reading that and reflecting on it.  I hope to try and contribute here - even though I feel really messed up I think I can help other people feel better.

The really insidious thing about how I feel is that part of me feels like this isn't real, it's all made up, and I don't know why that is.

Could this maybe be a sign that your perceptions weren't validated when you were a child? So if one's parents constantly use euphemisms for what they're doing, whitewashing it and putting it in harmless terms when it really isn't, that can make you end up feeling like you can't rely on your own feelings and have to go double-check first. And then there are the bystanders, people who see you suffer and yet do nothing - that's another cognitive dissonance right there. I had huge problems with derealization when I was a teenager. It's better now. I'm now writing down the things I'm certain of, so I can read up on my own point of view in times when I'm feeling a bit more foggy-minded and doubtful. Unintentionally funny, I know, but it works a little.

Sorry for my bad English, I'm tired and can hardly see straight, but I wanted to answer this before tomorrow. I hope you'll find something helpful here, and I wish that things will get at least a little better for you soon. Hang in there!

Your English is perfect (better than mine), and you are absolutely right - and thank you for taking the time to respond so quickly!  Really, I almost wanted to quote your entire post because it describes what I'm feeling in terms of the franticness and the "why now?  I thought I had it all together" sort of feelings I have.

I'm just worried about losing my foundation, about losing my job or my relationships because of what I'm experiencing.  I'm afraid of what will happen if I can't stop focusing on trauma long enough to function and produce meaningful and impactful work to make my employer happy.  But I need to stop worrying, I guess I've been through much worse than losing a job before.  And all this preoccupation with my job being my "foundation" is part of the problem - I never dealt with or processed all the pain I've experienced, and any time I felt the pain coming back I'd find something to do to change my focus or attention - drugs, other people, or work, whatever it was.  I don't really know how to find more of a balance.

Thank you for the suggestions about Pete Walker's work - I'm looking through so much of what he has posted on his website, I really think this is going to be helpful.

I am realizing I have to settle in for a long recovery - I am realizing it took a lifetime to get here, so there's not going to be a quick fix.  So I guess I just want to find a better way to adapt and compartmentalize so I can function according to my employer's reasonable expectations while still taking the time to confront my issues and find new ways to process them.  I guess it doesn't matter how that makes me feel this moment emotionally because throwing a fit and being hyper vigilant won't actually affect the positive change I'm hoping for.  So, settling in.

I'm getting really motivated by reading other people's posts though - I hope to get involved in the forums and help others.  I just also fear that today's an up day, and any day now is going to be a negative, down day where I deny any of this is real and I want to run away from all this.  I hope I keep coming back here and checking in because I think it could be so helpful.

I ended up just writing a "top five" for every member of my family and sticking it to our bathroom mirror, with the number one language of love written out in huge red letters, because like I said, it's devastatingly easy to lose sight of those things. If something isn't your OWN way of doing things, it's REALLY REALLY easy to end up assuming it isn't your partner's either.

This is brilliant - I used to get my feelings hurt all the time when my partner didn't hold me and show me attention the way I felt I needed it, until I realized she shows love differently than I do.  It helps me to have a visual reminder, as I'm sometimes oblivious to her showing me her love in her own way.


And separately, this whole thread is reassuring and enlightening to me - one of the number one isolating feelings I've ever experienced is this idea that who I am is somehow not authentic and not real.  It seems many of us experience this, and the reality is much like I think you were saying earlier schrödinger's cat, in that what we do and choose to do is as much a part of who we are as what we think or feel.  It helps to know that the effort I put into setting up a series of sensible default actions to take helps me ever so slowly affect positive change in my life.  And it helps me to keep score sometimes, to stop, calm myself, take a deep breath in, exhale, and recognize / review my journals and look at the small goals I've accomplished for myself.

I have the perfectionist inside me nagging me to no end as well, but perfect is the enemy of good.  Achieving a positive outcome is sometimes about the aggregation of marginal gains - sometimes that's what it takes to come out ahead in the end.  And my military buddies remind me to "lock it up" when I'm feeling extra-flighty / lost / or panicky like everyone's going to see right through me and "oh my god how did I get here" sort of ways.  It helps me sometimes to fall back on routine, and find some reassuring message that I write myself to remind me of a good day I had here or there. Sometimes, I've learned, when I can't bring myself to trust other people or listen to them, and I can't bring myself to trust myself, then I just have to let go of my thinking and focus on doing - something, anything - but not just doing, recording what I did and reflecting on it.  Identifying something positive about it.  Consciously trying to pay myself a compliment about it and recognize something positive in myself.

Hold on to your little gems everyone.  They matter, and so do you.

Thanks Rain, I think education is going to help me the most.

I saw in another post a reference to the 4Fs, and I'm trying to soak up whatever I can learn.  When I self assess, I identify most with the descriptions of flight / freeze hybrid.  I really appreciate the resources anyway, it's not that the labels are making me feel confined or somehow changed - actually knowing the labels helps me learn ways to grow and hopefully change how I feel.  So I am encouraged, at least in this moment before that feeling slips away.   Thank you.

I'm trying to read up on managing flashbacks now from this link I saw in another thread: http://www.pete-walker.com/13StepsManageFlashbacks.htm  - hopefully this brings me some relief, right now I don't feel like I have any control over how I feel and it's really making it hard for me to work - which is sort of creating this self-reinforcing negative feedback loop that I need to consciously break.  I want to break it, I want to beat this feeling.  The really insidious thing about how I feel is that part of me feels like this isn't real, it's all made up, and I don't know why that is.  But I'm trying to force myself to think about it because I think letting myself just drift off and avoid dealing with these feelings is not really helping.

As for an actual bit of background about me, I experienced physical and emotional abuse my whole childhood by my dad, watched him hurt my brother even worse, and it's hard to talk about it all in detail so I won't push much more.  My mom was there the whole time but didn't intervene.  Separately she got sick early on and I had to take care of her, take care of everything at home.  I learned how to make people happy and focused on that, and I grew up feeling like my feelings didn't matter.

I had lots more traumatic experiences growing up and even after I left home at 16.  Sexual assault, rape.  I kept putting myself into bad situations and got taken advantage of.  But I put myself in a good place when I went in the Air Force, at least I thought, and it helped me have some structure which gave me a sense of relief and control.  But then I also struggled with that, I went to SERE training and experienced a psychological break in the course of going through resistance training, but I covered up the symptoms enough to push through.  I kept everything I was feeling inside because I was afraid of losing my opportunities.

Eventually I got kicked out of the Air Force because of the Don't Ask Don't Tell policy.  So I had to figure out how to make it on my own.  I got lucky, got a good job,  and worked hard, then sort of became a workaholic - I was good at what I do and the praise was gratifying, and it kept me from thinking about how I felt too much.  But I did this so long I forgot how I felt and I just got used to always fighting and pushing.

My life situation has changed recently in some ways, and I've never felt as safe as I do now - and it feels like the safety is causing me to turn inward and come apart at the seams.  I don't feel like I have a right to complain about where I am because I'm so much luckier and better off than so many people who struggle with what we're struggling with.  But I feel how I feel, so that's what I have to come to grips with I guess and sort it out.