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Its just so hard today and I just wonder is all this effort to connect with others even worth it?
I have this human need to connect with others that I just dont feel capable of doing 

I feel you. I think it's worth it. It takes time. Baby steps. I try to think "good enough is good enough" with each interaction I have with people. Sending you big Love.  I imagine that you probably are capable, but that it just needs to feel okay first, which is totally healthy. You can slowly acclimate to socializing with people if you'd like to, ease yourself into it in your own timing. And if you are ever too overwhelmed, then it's okay to be where you're at too. We have to remember that our sensitivities and responses are normal ways of dealing with abnormal situations. Keep showing yourself compassion. Honor yourself, it's okay.

I try to remind myself that Shame is a social emotion. And the brain is a social organ. I believe our wounds lie in the realm of being social, and that eventually, so will our healing. In the meantime, thank you for sharing here and being real. Respect & Love to you!

Wow guys, beautiful thread. I really appreciate the honesty here, and I really resonate with it.

Sometimes I wonder if that emptiness is a longing for being reunited with myself?

I really believe that often we seek out Narcs and other 'balancing' personality types to our own because we are split off from the quality that we wish to experience in ourselves, so we project & seek it in others. To me, emptiness and longing go hand in hand. And as I do more Inner Child work, I tend to feel empty less often. John Bradshaw says that this is because we have never actually become a complete self. We never individuated completely. We have no self yet. So we long to feel that sense of self filled by others, because we haven't done our own healing work yet. And as we do, we will begin to feel full and alive.

It's been happening more and more for me as I'm discovering CPTSD and all this FOO work. For me, it's not a build up, but a sudden sensation of Nausea that comes up, often with a powerful dissociation or Emotional Flashback.

Feeling you guys on this 

Yeah, it's a confusing one because this ability is probably a pretty normal human thing to do that has become turned up by the necessity of our life experiences. I know that they say in Personal Development that 'the self is always coming through'-- meaning that we cannot help but transmit our state and others do in fact register it. Maybe in this way, we are actually the more normal ones who have chosen not to ignore the incoming messages we get about other people? Perhaps those who ignore this have conditioned themselves out of it? I don't get it-- it seems like a generally great ability to have. I like it when I'm a sharp & high functioning human. Clearer perception is generally better, IMO.

But that's the trick of it all-- making sure that we are perceiving clearly. Coming from a background of trauma means that our 'map' of the world is not always accurate. It becomes a little easier to project on others, and for me, this has been a big area of learning: being a bit more 'logical' in my perceptions and responding to what is actually happening in front of me rather than getting carried away with my jumpy projections of who this person might be. When I'm "logical", I have less EF's. I respond more cleanly. And I actually feel more grounded and trust myself to deal with a challenging situation appropriately. This is all per Pete Walker's recommendation in his CPTSD book. And if I really don't like / trust a person, I get away. Fast.

At the same time, I trust my gut. And if someone's shadow is gonna cause problems, I tend to know pretty early on. The thing I wonder about though is if I'm too focused on seeing people's shadow. Seems like up until recently, if I tuned into it, I would draw more of that person's shadow out unconsciously. I think that this is part of the volatility of relationships thing-- I think people do act a little weirder toward me. But then again, I'm a littler weirder toward people too, so I'm probably feeding it. When I assume the best, or at least I assume that I can handle the other person, things tend to go better.

The other thing to remember is to cut people some slack-- I'm a freeze type, so I tend to really do the "black and white", "people either are/not safe" thing in my head. And there's a large majority of people in our culture with varying degrees of need for mental and emotional healing. We have A LOT of unresolved people out there, most of whom are just trying to do the best they can given their situation, and are generally okay if perhaps they are not perfect. Good enough is good enough!

The sucky part of hypervigilance is that it can lead to full blown EF's really easily, and is terrible for your health (all that cortisol!) in the long run. If I'm too hypervigilant, I get jumpy and dissociate if I'm not careful.

I think it's circular. One can lead to another. I tend to think of the mind as circular and systemic rather than linear.

For me, it's often as the others say: They can blend together, and often the dissociation is in response to some trigger. But in my case, sometimes the triggering event is not clear. I usually recognize it by my response-- I know I'm triggered because I'm suddenly wanting to tune out and distract myself or dissociate. Maybe I suddenly feel panicky or emotional and my throat closes up in sadness. It can be a thought that crept through my mind at a low level, and I don't even realize it happened until I'm feeling upset for 'no reason'. Same can happen with a quick mental image or even a dream. I wake up in an Emotional Flashback a lot lately.

But it can go the other way-- the dissociation can also bring up guilt and shame. And this can cause me to become triggered.

I think it's also important to remember Pete Walker's point that dissociation is probably the body's way of giving you a little burst of internal opiates to ease the pain. That zoned out feeling becomes an addictive state to be in.

Some people are just pokers I guess and I chose  not to be their pokee.

Lol. Yup. Tell 'em to quit it. If they keep doing it, poke em back until they get the point!

Hey Beautiful People,

My first post here. What a great thread! So good it made me register to add to the discussion 

The way I think of 'Self Referencing' in my own healing is in terms of Boundaries.

Before I dove into all this CPTSD / FOO work, boundaries was an idea that I found kind of unattractive, a little vague, and I didn't fully 'get it'. Suprise, suprise!-- boy oh boy did I need to learn  Boundary work has since become a major piece of learning for me in my healing process, and a major tool in my managing EF's and all that comes with it.

I first learned more about boundaries from Spartan Life Coach, who made a Free mini course on it here: http://buildbetterboundaries.com/

And then, I've been learning a lot more about them from my reading of John Bradshaw (Homecoming especially) & Pia Mellody's work as well. So helpful to understand boundaries better. It helps immensely with not getting 'stuck' in other people's feelings, reactions, or ways of being, and I find I'm relating to my own inner world with much more self control as well.

Basically, Boundaries are protective layers. They are our way of defending ourselves, and of protecting others from our unhealthy expressions & actions (i.e., our Outer Critic nonsense)

There are Inner Boundaries--

having awareness of lines to cross in terms of what feelings we act on, what impulses we should honor, what we should (and should not) say or do in a given situation. Knowing how to say 'I feel / think / etc' vs 'you should...'. If we are speaking judiciously, we are using internal boundaries. If we successfully manage NOT to eat ice-cream sandwiches for lunch, we have asserted our internal boundaries 

and Outer Boundaries--

Knowing when someone is crossing our sense of how we want to be treated, or relating to us in any way that is inappropriate, and expressing that line. Saying things like "Hey, I'm uncomfortable with that", "hey, I'm my own person, please don't tell me how to feel", etc. Often, our boundaries are being crossed when the other person is not following their own sense of inner boundaries. I find that whenever the person is focused on what I feel, or 'should' do, say, etc..., they are really crossing a boundary. By doing so, they are ignoring how they feel, and putting it on me. We are our own people. We are not here for the sole purpose of pleasing others! If someone feels unhappy with something about me-- assuming I'm acting in a healthy & boundaried way-- then that's their stuff to work out.

For me, it's been invaluable to see that I don't have to manage the feelings & states of other people. That's actually me crossing their boundary to do so. I still have to remind myself all the time. And likewise, others aren't responsible for managing my state either.

So I guess I'm sharing all this as a long winded way of saying that I found If I'm getting hung up on validation, what other people think, feel or project on me means that there is probably a lack of boundaries on my part somewhere. When I have a clear sense of that boundary of "them" over there & "me" over here, it becomes much easier to allow them to have whatever feelings they are having because those feelings belong to them. If I'm trying to manage their state by people-pleasing, or reacting inappropriately, then what is actually happening is that I'm feeling their emotions as my own, because I have not made a clear boundary of who I am and who they are. And this is often what People pleasers do.  Self referencing is IMO learning how to have boundaries and check in *here, with me* first.

Shame dynamics work on violated boundaries. According to John Bradshaw, Shame (or 'Toxic Shame' as he calls it) is really the projection of that person's unhealed wounds onto US. This means that the person projecting shame on us is 'shameless' in their expression, and by necessity, not holding good boundaries internally OR honoring our boundaries either. Obviously, for people with CPTSD, we have experienced a lot of this, usually by our primary caretakers. What we learned to do from all this was abandon our own Needs & Values so that we could align with theirs. Discovering this was SO key for me. John says to "Give It Back"-- Any shame that is not yours must be given back and NOT accepted. How do you know whose shame it is? According to Bradshaw & Mellody its Simple: If it feels more like humility as you are aware of your own shortcomings, and instead of upsetting you, you are at peace with it, then it's YOURS. Your own authentic shame feels like humility. It shouldn't cause you to have a EF attack. If you feel terrible about yourself, are in emotional agony, and it makes you want to act out or hide, then it's THEIRS and must be sent back to them!

So we come from backgrounds where there were little to no boundaries, and where this was modeled for us as 'normal' adult behavior. I think a lot of us grow up with this muddy, mushy sense of self and other, and we end up feeling other people's feelings too often or too easily. We abandon expressing our needs, our wants, and our preferences. We get lost in the trance of the other. It's probably some evolutionarily useful tribal instinct to be so aware of the group-- gone awry in our modern small-unit family structures. But whatever the cause, we feel this undefined sense of self-- including all the feelings from our wounds, all the buried belief systems, all the stuff that actually belongs to others-- and we just feel it, without any clear definition of what we are feeling inside, or any clear definition of what is actually happening outside. Sorry if this description is triggering. I'm aiming to describe clearly here.

What I've come to see is that what underpins all of these dynamics-- and I think all the resulting PD's and dysfunction that comes out of CPTSD-- is Codependency in some form. They say that we become codependent when we are not allowed to fully be ourselves as children. That codependency is a default part of a child's reality, but we get wounded and stuck there, and never learn to individuate completely. For me this has been so true. And so, 'Self Referencing' is a wonderful way to begin exploring personal boundaries by exercising personal awareness. We begin to know what we want, what our stuff is and what belongs to the other, we can navigate with more clarity. We can begin experimenting with making requests, asserting ourselves, being more clear with people about their stuff, and what I've found is this great amount of peace and spaciousness inside myself as I do this. Sometimes it's scary, but my inner child always adores me for asserting my boundaries. And it's helped me to parent myself better by knowing when to do what. I'm a freeze type, and any distraction can be an alluring temptation at the wrong time.

So yeah, that's my journey with Self Referencing. Thanks, Cat for the great topic. Sorry for the epic length first post  Hopefully it's not triggering, and hopefully helpful as we share all our learnings together