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Definitely hit the nail on the head with that one Armee. I could definitely see that approach working. The main hurdle is making sure I can get to a place of empathy... Which would require getting out of my spirals and climbing into a warm happy place where I can be authentic. Honestly that sounds really hard to do in those circumstances, and the critic in me is instantly responding with "why are you the one who has to move mountains?", But at the same time I totally see how that would be the best approach. And our couples therapist said pretty much the same thing

Thanks for the reminder that you had talked to your existing therapist about EMDR - I may try the same and see what she thinks!

Hi OwnSide!

Oh I can not tell you how much I resonate with the 'post anxiety' thing.  It's calmed down a bit since I've joined the forum here, but the first few posts I made had me hitting refresh every few minutes.  The recovery letter I wrote my mom didn't get any replies for well over a month and I thought I had somehow offended the entire community / everyone saw that I didn't really have trauma / should take it down and pretend it never happened.  I've refrained from sharing my other letters because of how much that affected me.

Just know that we're all here for each other, and a lot of us read every single word, even if we're not in a place where we can respond to it.  I've always felt getting thoughts down on paper (or screen in this case) and out of your head is an important part of the therapy process, hopefully it helps you as well.

Have a great week!

Love your last post Papa Coco, and particularly the salt metaphor.  Definitely going to let that 'season' my thoughts for the next few days

Have a great week!

Hey Rainy!

Thanks for sharing that memory!  It made me feel warm and safe just thinking about it, and I'm glad that you were able to recall it and hopefully can use it as an anchor in the future.

Have a good week!

Hey Dollyvee!

I keep forgetting how good the Bradshaw books are, particularly that one.  You're right in that it's quite frank and sometimes brutal, but at the same time I appreciate not beating around the bush like some other books have done.

The fantasy bond is definitely a thing.  I resonate with what you said about coming up blank when thinking about how I relate to others, it was an observation that startled me a few weeks ago.  Not knowing my own needs, or what a relationship bond even looks like with others, is a void I struggle with.

Not much help, sorry.  Maybe knowing you're not the only one in the boat helps?  Hope you have a good week in any case!

Hey Bermuda!

Thanks for sharing that.  I've always hated those kind of people on social media.  I can usually smell them from a mile away, and can hardly believe when anyone falls for their c***.

I hope you feel like you can vent here about these kind of things.  If anyone understands how a parent can mistreat, abuse, and take advantage of others its us, and verbalizing this kind of stuff is much more healthy than trying to keep it in.

I hope you have a good week!

Hey everyone!  A bit long but I thought I'd get back on the weekend schedule for posting.

San, thanks for stopping by!  I definitely use research and reading and learning as an excuse to not actually _do_ any of the exercises that I'm learning so much about.  It's easier to stay in my logical brain than to dive down into my emotional or fear-based brain... I only really did that when I had therapy sessions, and it's been nearly two months since I've done one of those.  Perhaps I should get back into that.

Dollyvee, thanks for the encouragement and validation!  I always find some of these steps hard, in that it seems so obvious - "of course you need to ask for what you need" - yet when I'm in the moment it's like pushing a boulder up a hill.  I tried listening to the original IFS book, which had the meditative sessions recorded properly, but didn't really get that far with them on my own.  Yet another reason to try to dip back into therapy.

Papa Coco, I appreciate the commiseration   For me, it was always the threat of violence that made me want to be as small as possible - if I wasn't visible, if I wasn't needy or asking for things, I wasn't around the people that could hurt me.  Even if those people were also the ones who were supposed to be a source of love.  Enter that whole attachment dysfunction where my shame compensates for the lack of love, and so on.  I think that frustration from our current loved ones explains a lot of my relationship troubles as well; it creates a distance that those that don't have these defensive walls never have to deal with.  The anxiety and stress I feel is palpable any time I get to a point where I have to ask for help.

---

Have continued reading the How to Do the Work book.  It's still quite good despite straying away from the more serious forms of abuse.  One thing it's reminded me of is trying to stay grounded and present during emotional flashbacks, and one particular trigger I've noticed is when my wife asks me to repeat myself.  An innocent query almost instantly sends me into anger.  I've always kind of thought about it as just a personality quirk of mine, one of the few things that really upsets me, but upon reflection I think it is an example of my subconscious reaching out to me.  Something in my past made being asked to repeat myself dangerous, and my brain is still sent to that place when it happens now.

On a similar note, my grandparents have recently moved closer to me as well, and my two aunts live close by in the same city, but the thought of seeing any of them sends me into an anxious state.  I know I can't go there with my full self, that I have to be a certain kind of person.  And it's not even necessarily that they're bad, but I just feel like I have to be on the defensive.  My grandmother longs for me to 'forgive and forget', and my aunts just don't understand why I'm so distant.  Until recently I didn't either.  But that doesn't make it any easier to see them, and I really do have the option to just, not go.

Typing that out it feels like I'm running away from that particular issue, and honestly I have been for the last 10 years.  When I talked about that particular thing with my therapist she pointed out that despite all they have done for me over the last few years, it was never 'okay' for me to be around my extended family.  Yet another thing my stepfather has wrecked.  *sigh*

As I've said about four times now, I really do need to get back into a therapy cycle.  I'm finding it really hard to resist my past vices, falling into various forms of external comfort that I know are actively bad for me.  Now that I've been doing all the learning I have over the last year, I can understand that they're attempting to fill the void left behind by long festering attachment wounds.  Despite all this knowledge I find myself falling backwards, or having to do a lot of mental gymnastics to avoid it.  I've found that I've had more mental fortitude when I was in therapy regularly.

The current chapter of the book I'm on is about Trauma Binding, how our past traumas cause us to seek out and relive those traumatic relationships due to the neural pathways forged in our youth.  Growing up in a stressful environment wires our brain to seek out stress, our 'normal' state.  In adulthood this comes from those addictive behaviours the paragraph before and our relationships (romantic, work, family, or otherwise).  Not being seen or heard, being manipulated, not having boundaries, parents who lack emotional regulation, all create these voids that are etched into our grey matter, which our brain later seeks out as a normal, 'I understand how to process this' state.

This eventually creates a situation where both partners are feeling like their needs aren't being met, start resenting each other, and that's where we see the high divorce rate.  I can easily say that's where the relationship with my wife was last year around this time, when I started therapy.  But now that I better understand myself and where these thoughts are coming from, we're in a much better place.  It's not great, we still have our bad days, but it's definitely better.

Today was a good example of both a bad day but also how much better things are compared to how they used to be.  End of the week, we're both tired, and getting on each other's nerves.  I enter a bit of a spiral in my head - "she spends all her energy on work and the kids, of course I get nothing", "I make it easy for her to neglect me", "This is your lot in life now, you've done it to yourself, accept it".  But, I'm able to short circuit myself.  Simply calling it out internally, "I'm spiraling", is enough to snap me out of the self-reinforcing circle of thoughts.  Now, I was still a bit snippy and grumpy for most of the night, but not nearly to the same degree I would normally be.

I also wonder if I'm gaslighting myself a bit here - are those valid thoughts to have?  Should I be legitimately upset that I do usually get the short end of the stick?  Or am I just allowing my past to make the situation worse than it is?  Of course, bringing it up in the moment would just end up with an argument, but later once everything's calmed down I generally avoid those topics so I don't 'stir the pot' either.  Just another example of conflict avoidance / fawning I'm sure.

Anyways, I've rambled enough here.  As always I appreciate everyone stopping by and dropping in your thoughts, opinions, and suggestions.  Hope everyone has a good week!

PS> After seeing a few of you mention EMDR therapy I did some looking into it, it definitely seems interesting!  I found an online self-guided therapy for it, might give that a try although I'm not sure how effective 'self-guided' can be.  There are also local practitioners but I'm not sure how comfortable I am switching from my current therapist (despite not having seen her in months).  Anyone have any experience with EMDR, self-guided or otherwise?

A lot of the material I've read on CPTSD would back up what you're saying.  A few things I struggle with myself:

- 'all or none thinking'.  I find I can get really really excited about things, and when they don't happen I crash down hard.  Either I'm going to get everything I was hoping for, or nothing at all.  This bleeds into other things - people are either all good or all bad, experiences are either worth it or not worth it at all, relationships are either great or horrible, etc.

- detachment.  This is where the analytical / mathematical thinking comes into play, seeing things as black or white (a variance of all or none thinking) and things should only make sense from a pure data perspective, not acknowledging the feelings or motivations of others that may be involved.

- the three 'layers' of the mind.  All humans (and mammals to a degree) have three parts of their brain: the lizard brain (core autonomous survival), the emotional brain, and the thinking brain.  The three are literally built upon one another, and have 'barriers' between them that can be activated based on where you're at.  If you're experiencing strong emotions, it impacts your thinking.  If you're experiencing danger, you don't think at all - you just do what you need to keep yourself safe, whether that's fight, flight, freeze, or fawn.  Someone who's grown up in a toxic/dangerous environment when all their neural pathways are first being formed learns and keeps a lower tolerance for the threshold between 'safe' and 'danger', which definitely impacts how you brain thinks and reacts.

There's definitely other factors that play into the development of a person's mind, but C-PTSD or that chronic early threat during development definitely can play a big part.

Hopefully this helps!

Welcome Tryingguy!

You are a survivor.  The crap our family of origin's have put us through is insane, and honestly amazing that a lot of us made it out the other side.  Now we're left to dress the wounds they left on our psyche.

I appreciate reading what you shared.  Hopefully getting it down on paper helps a bit.  Welcome to the forum, I hope you're able to find some healing and support here.

Welcome to the forum!

Hey Autodidact, welcome to the site!

I'm familiar with the deep sadness you're referring to... I've experienced as a depression of sorts, where you just kind of coast through the day, doing what you need to do, but never actually getting any level of satisfaction from it, fully resigned to the life you've got, and the odd time someone asks what's wrong it kind of hits you that you're not happy, and haven't been for a long time.

That's where I was about a year ago when I started my therapy journey.  I'm nowhere near 100%, but I'm definitely in a better spot than I was a year ago.  A lot of it is thanks to this forum!  I've also done a lot of reading, a lot of therapy sessions, and a lot of self-work.  It's a long journey, full of ups and downs, but one well worth taking.

Honestly I keep my past pretty close to my chest.  I think most of my friends know that something happened in my past, mostly due to inferring how I never talk about my FOO or childhood.  The few people I've shared any details with often respond with "I thought something was up, just didn't know what".  Even then, I rarely go into any detail and almost never mention C-PTSD.  Not sure why exactly... part of me doesn't want sympathy, part of me thinks the average person won't really 'get it'.

Hey Papa Coco!

When I had originally read your post on being able to feel others I was reminded of part of the Healing Developmental Trauma book I had read which explains the concept of a 'energetic boundary' that all humans have, and how that boundary can be violated.  The TLDR:

- Everyone has an energetic boundary.  It's the feeling you get when someone's standing too close to you
- Intact energetic boundaries give a feeling of safety and the ability to set limits, and often aren't consciously noticed
- Chronic early threat can impede the formation of these boundaries
- Those with ruptured boundaries can be symptomatic and extremely sensitive to environmental triggers, hypervigilant/hypersensitive
- Because of the feeling of constant threat, those with ruptured boundaries use self-isolation and interpersonal distance to compensate
- Because most people don't register that they have an energetic boundary, when more sensitive people complain about a rupture they're often dismissed or written off

Those with healthy energetic boundaries
- feel comfortable in their own body
- feel an implicit sense of safety
- feel a clear sense of self and other
- can say no and set limits

Those with compromised energetic boundaries have
- extreme sensitivity to others' emotions
- energetic merging with other people, animals, and the environment
- hypervigilance
- environmental sensitivities
- feel uncomfortable in large crowds
- agoraphobia

Sorry for the large wall of text, but just wanted to reflect on how the text reminded me of your comments on being able to sense and detect others.  I often feel the same way, although not to the same degree - I can often tell other's emotional states before they even register them themselves, but I always chalked that up to the hypervigilance I developed out of necessity as a child, making sure to avoid potentially harmful situations caused by others' stress.

Hope you have a good week!

Hey Snowdrop!  I find reading about your IFS work really inspiring!  It makes me want to start back into that process... I had started it with my therapist awhile ago but we never got that far into it, only identifying one or two parts.

Hope you have a good week!

Hey San!

It's crazy how much the negative people in our younger lives somehow make it into our head and pop up at the worst times.  When spending time with my 'inner self' my inner critic showed up something fierce, and after writing it down I realized the same thing your therapist pointed out - I was parroting the terrible thoughts and feelings and phrases my parents used, against my inner self!  That realization is huge.

Hope you have a good week!