Messages

Awesome. I'm sold. Did exactly this last week with my t. Coincidence? Two cerebral halves connecting. Just like two people... it's all about connection. Regulation comes when the two halves "work together ". Just like relationships can do. The sum of the parts is greater than the whole.

AND Emdr can be used for preverbal by treating the associated present-day negative experiences that remain the aftermath of what happened before cognitive memory came online.

To be continued...

Holy cow, I feel like I struck a goldmine here. Chipping away at grey flakey rock, tedious day, up and down a dozen boring times, grains and sweaty dust covering my face... and then something scintillating, it drops, feels heavy in the hand... gold man, it's gold! And then it kept going, each next nugget bigger than the last. A good half-dozen inspiring things I zealously desire to respond and explore with all here! But no... work tomorrow. Gotta rest, serious rest. I feel like I'm looking in through the window at an awesome party.
I'll be back
 

Hey San, yeah, a broken photocopy machine of a therapist would bring anybody down. But that being said, please take your time. Hope is important, but we all know the reality: good, honest, informed and balanced trauma therapists are definitely not in the majority. I totally believe you deserve the very best, but sadly, the very best is hard to find, so please hang tough and know that your search might take some time. Keep looking and keep positive, but most important, be patient (as best as you can).
Sending love, support and hugs through this process.
 

Thank you Narc, SO, San and Thebigblue!

It is absolutely insane the effect of coffee on my mood and mental state. Mornings are very hard for me. I think my biological father would often come home at sunrise. He was definitely intoxicated with alcohol and probably other stuff to boot. This is when I would hear the shouting and screaming downstairs. Wouldn't be the only time of day I'd hear these things, but I'm certain that mornings were particularly brutal. So i believe I developed a chemical propensity for somnia. I can sleep through anything. I once fell out of the top bunk (we'd switched bunks with my sister cause she had a broken leg) during the night. When I awoke in the morning I was on the floor and later the pain in my shoulder was shown to be a broken collarbone. I never woke up from the fall and remember nothing from the night.

So my "sleep issue" is actually the reverse of a lot of people. I don't suffer from a lack of quantity or quality of sleep, I actually am severely sleep addicted and experience terrible fearful mornings when I'm obliged to wake up and get with the day. The anxiety upon waking is strongly linked to my horizontal position. Once I stand up the anxiety symptoms descend significantly.

But during periods of strong EFs, I've noticed that coffee has a profound effect on the intensity of the EF reducing the Fear and discomfort dramatically. So, for pretty much my whole life I've been a coffee junkie.

To be continued...

My daughter almost always does chocolate chip cookies. She doesn't like nuts herself, but she takes requests and happily does half the batch with nuts for those who like...
 

What's the expression... "the road to Hades is paved and the with the best intentions..."

For me intentions matter, but if there's not recognition that behavior is hurtful and toxic then whatever the "intention", what ultimately counts is the result.

Another observation: a lot of people suffer from trauma, and DON'T hurt other people. Trauma can be an explanation, but as an excuse for damaging behavior it doesn't go very far.

Ultimately, we are all responsible for our behavior, regardless the "feelings" that drove us there.

(That was all VERY hard for me to sort out in my head... I hope I didn't mess that up...)

 

Listened to just the beginning but it sounds excellent. Gonna continue tonight.
Thanks Hope!

 

Every time I post on the Forum, I feel fear. I write from my heart. I write from my soul. But every single expression I make/do/express, I fear. I fear I'm going too far. I fear what others will think. I fear I am a "bad person" and my rejection will swiftly follow.

For this reason I almost always return and reread my post. I've learned to absolutely NOT TRUST my fear.

Rereading what I've written, usually a day later, I have a clearer sense of what my objective truly was. I have some distance. Usually, nearly always, it's okay. I think, No no, that was nice or kind or helpful... then I think... why was I scared in the first place?

I'm scared because I suffer from Cptsd. Developmental trauma has shaped my life like a sculptor starting fresh with cold hard stone. What was hammered into me as a baby was chaos, fear and utter confusion.

And I remember nothing. My mother left the hurricane when I was four-years-old. Like a tsunami that carried me deeply inland, I awoke one day and realized: the man who never loved me has now truly disappeared... I don't think my mother "explained" anything. What can you explain? Can Cptsd be "explained"? I think not. Only those who have directly experienced it can fully know the eternal chaos of obsessive mental torture that follows us around like a decaying corpse...

sorry, that's the wrong path...

This journal, I want it to be about what I've come to understand. Its been two years since I collapsed mentally. I've made good progress... solid progress. I've shaken off the corpse and that stink only wafts my way four days out of the week. At this very moment I've only sensed the Depression very briefly, once today. Today is an exceptional day. Tomorrow it could all revert again. If I've learned one thing, it's that it's not over. Just feeling better a couple hours, a day or two, well, "it" comes back. Cptsd is chewing gum on the sidewalk... and I stepped right in it.

"The tipping point" is now my objective. I want to feel okay 51% of my time here on this earth. I also want to vanquish this thing. I want to fight. I'm tired of being shamed and doubting and folding and feeling like a crumpled-up piece of trash not even in a waste bin... just lying there on a curb or in a gutter...

I want to get to a point where MORE than half of my life is "relatively" free of the razor-depression-pain of horror.

I hate this thing... and I'm wondering if hate is truly helpful.

Anyway, there's doubt... I know that feeling too. It goes on the shelf like all the other "crap".

First journal entry, new journal. Much I want to say. Didn't even scratch the surface.

It's sunny out today.

Sending love and hugs to you all.

Chart

 

Noraw, so much of what you've written and expressed is familiar to me (and I'm confident, many on this Forum). Truly, you are in safe company here.

Interesting what you say about IFS and your therapist. It makes me think that there's no one "set" chronology to the therapeutic process. It seems to evolve in a rather haphazard way. At least it has for me.

That being said, and with the experience I've had, I think your "intuition" is correct. I wonder, is your therapist trying to "push" Ifs? Maybe because that's what they know/like? Is your therapist "good" nonetheless, only the Ifs doesn't click for you (at this stage maybe)?

I know it's hard, but maybe try to discuss this with them. A good therapist will listen, accept and adapt. Ultimately we know ourselves best, so it should really be a group work and our therapist should "learn" from us as well.

Just a few thoughts. Good luck and be good and patient with all that is happening and going on. It's a lot.
Love and peace, chart
 

Now I sit here having cried for some hours and just see the damage done. I don't have a question. What I am asking is to be kindly witnessed. That I exist. That I matter. That I'm allowed to be human.

DD, I hear you, I feel deeply what you have written. You are seen. I'm so sorry you were thrown to the wolves by those that were responsible for your safety. The child betrayed makes absolutely no sense to any true human.
Sending support and acknowledgement.
 

Good luck with the phone consultation, San.
 

Thinking more about the holiday blues. I think that the extreme contrast between the idealized Christmas and the reality in my home as a child made the longing for soundness even more intense. I lived in a bubble of unkindness, violence, and sheer terror. Christmas was never a happy time. That was my reality. Everything else around me told me that I was abnormal. My holidays never resembled the Currier and Ives ideal. A hallmark moment in our home was when someone didn't wind up in the hospital.

Every song spoke of happiness, joy and peace. The music was sentimental and left a lingering sense of longing. Now, I don't know how many people felt the same as me. I'm sure there are plenty. TV shows always had some astoundingly touching Christmas story. Some miracle occurred, some need was always met. The message was that Christmas produced miracles. Everything bad became good.

As a kid I was on the outside looking in. I never had a Christmas miracle, no happy music, no sentimental reunions, everything I experienced was the exact opposite of that. The happenings at Christmas were no different than the rest of the year, but during the rest of the year I was not bombarded with promises of miracles and happy endings. As a child I believed the stories, or at least intensely longed for them.

Those feelings of loss precipitated by the season were profound. At no other time of the year did I experience that compounded loneliness. That sense of loss stays with me along with the memories, fear, and sadness. I may never rise above this, but I believe it can get better. I'm not living there anymore, though someone forgot to tell that to the part of me that suffers this time of year.

Little2, I believe you are mourning. This sadness is the child that was never allowed to be a child, that had to grow up fast, stay awake and aware, always be on guard to survive another day. That loss is what comes back every holiday season. Your post broke me up. I literally wept for fifteen minutes. I know now that my first four years of life were like this, constant terror, periods of peace and calm lasting not more than three or four days. I still have no memories, real, solid, of that period. But when I read someone else's history, when it resonates like that, I know that I had something like that. My pre-verbal trauma has been manifesting my entire life. But as of two years ago, I have entered into mourning. I have taken that inner child and I now hold him in my arms. Sometimes we cry together. I have to say, he doesn't want another childhood. He remembers only confusion. But what he does want, and what I've started giving him is Love. I feel what he feels. I know what he knows. But I also know more. I know we are deeply deeply wounded. And my way out, my savior, my happy ending... is tears. I cry now. I cry and cry and cry again. I hold nothing back. I find tears coming at least once per day. I cry while driving. I cry in public. I cry when I see, hear, feel something that resonates... and there is so much that resonates... A women carrying her child in her arms... A smile from a stranger... A memory that cuts into my thoughts like betrayed hope.

Little2, I do not believe our inner children want to change the past. I do not believe my inner child wants another childhood. My inner child wants MY love, MY recognition... Now, he wants and needs it now. The past is the past. Nothing can change those events, circumstances, memories. But NOW is something else, and the healing I'm finding is in tears. I mourn daily, and with each salty tear I feel a little lightness, a shift, a child that takes a deep breath after holding his anxiety for too long. I find release in the love I know is with "us" now.

I believe there is a happy ending. The happy ending is now, this moment, this family that I have. The sadness of the past needs it time to be seen, to be felt, to be acknowledged. But the miracle is there, it is coming. But I will not let the child I was cry alone any more. I look at him and tell him, I say to him, I speak to him... I know. I know what you went through... You are one tough little dude... But you don't have to be brave anymore. I'm here, I'm strong, I'm good. And we are one.
Hugs to your inner child, just like hugs to all your loved ones. The happy ending is coming. But it's not an ending, it is a beginning.
 

Hello Noraw, welcome to the Forum. I'm happy to make your acquaintance and sorry it is under such difficult circumstances for you.

I'll just quickly add my two cents. Everyone has given great information. I'll just mention two other major subjects you will also eventually want to look at and possibly explore. Very simply, body work, known also as Somatic therapy. Peter Levine is the big pioneer of this one though many many others have followed up on and developed his core themes.

I personally am deep into Polyvagal Theory and working with my Vagus nerve on a daily basis. Irene Lyon is very interesting (for me) in this branch of therapy.

Finally, Attachment Theory can also be very helpful when trying to unravel what is "happening now" in relation to "what happened then". I might be wrong, but I believe nearly 100% of trauma experiences touch either principally or in some significant way the attachment process we all experience as babies/children/adolescents.

Sending hugs (if that's ok) and support, chart