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Thank you woodsgnome.

I'm sitting in a sports bar, typing on my work computer.  I didn't drive into the office because I couldn't motivate myself to do it.  I've had a couple of beers and am likely going to drink several more before I leave today.  But I'm working, doing what I can to finish what's on my plate.

I gave notice and I'm down to one week left at my job.  I've made a really positive impression and like 50 people came together to setup a going away party for me.  That's really nice and makes me feel special, but it also overwhelms me.

I can't work right now.  I have done really well for myself and I'm quite aware of how lucky and privileged I am to have come up from nothing with my hand-me-down clothes and my lack of resources to eat lunch most days when I was in school as a kid and my time when I didn't have a place to live and had to scrounge up whatever food I could find from the dumpster behind the diner I worked at some nights.  Now I'm in a place where I have saved enough money to take up to a year off and still take care of my family without sacrificing our quality of life in the process.  Very lucky indeed.

I'm pushing through and taking some time off to heal, to get to know myself, to cry, to create.  I want to write and I want to make music.  I am having such a hard time right now because I don't know where I'm going to live in a few weeks, but I know we'll find a place and make it all work.  I just really need to get out of here, it's too much, just too much.

I really want to heal.  I just really really want to feel better.  I find myself feeling suicidal almost every day.  I fight it, I find ways to get myself busy and to try and push forward.  But I just need to get through all this.

I'm exhausted.

Checking in again.

I've made some amazing progress in being able to recognize flashbacks and be conscious of them, but I still have a lot of critic shrinking work to do now.  I've spent the last 6 months or so focusing very much on personal healing and recovery, on improving self awareness and trying to find a "neutral" speed at which to function day-to-day rather than getting carried away by the sweeping, obsessive flow of thoughts in my mind.

It's hard.  I'm very frequently just a balled up knot of emotion, tears welling up under the surface but not actually breaking out unless I don't want them to.  I still haven't integrated the two polar opposite modes of being I tend to vacillate between - either completely shut off emotionally and intensely focused on achievement and execution (I work like a machine in this state and I'm almost unstoppable) to being completely given over to my emotions, surrendering to feeling, and overwhelmed at the prospect of doing, well, almost anything that involves other people.  The anxiety and self attack overwhelms me in those times.

I took a big step today, I asked for help.  I asked a manager I work with and have begun to trust enough to confide in about some of my deeply personal history of trauma to help me.  I asked him to help me come up with a system for organization to help me maintain focus and productivity in spite of all of the background noise in my head and to help me be accountable.  I want to fight through this, as I'm tired of running away from everything in my life when I get overwhelmed.  I've been fleeing my whole life and this time I really want to stand my ground.

So, anyway, he's helping me.  And I'm gritting my teeth and working through the painful muscle contractions that rake my body and sitting with my back to the wall and my laptop in my lap, pushing through in spite of my anxiety and panic.  Because I know I'm safe and I know this will pass and I know the feelings of panic and anxiety at pushing forward are from a part of me that had to adapt like that to keep me out of harm's way.  I know I will be healthier and happier if I push through this.

And I really just want to scream and yell and fight it out - I move from trying to run away or trying to freeze to wanting to fight it out.  At least one thing's for sure, I'm alive and I can feel.  And I don't want to give up and dissociate from that, I don't want to give up ground here.  I want to keep pushing forward and healing.

I'm making progress.  My dissociative symptoms have abated, for the most part.  Practicing mindfulness meditation and trying to bring some structure into my life.  Journaling fairly regularly.  Paying attention to my feelings and acknowledging when some of the intensity of what I'm feeling seems unfounded, trying to regulate my thinking.  I'm still having struggles, particularly when I bring alcohol or anything else into the mix, so I'm making a conscious decision to cut out alcohol and other substances entirely, so far I've made it a week without anything.

I've been absent from these forums for a while now.  I've been sticking with therapy and trying a few different exercises to improve my health and well-being.

Dissociation is still my biggest struggle.  I've never heard anyone talk about a "depersonalization episode," but I've come to be aware that I have them and recognize when I'm experiencing one.  It's unnerving because in those moments I feel no sense of purpose and no reason to push or follow through with any commitments or do anything.  Nothing feels real.  So now when I feel that way I immediately start talking about it or writing about it to try and give it structure and form and make it into something real.

I just had a silly thought, but in a sense I'm trying to dissociate myself from dissociation.  I'm trying to treat it as a something I can wrap my head around and put out of my head when I want.  I want to be able to just focus on getting through the holidays and on doing well at work.  But I don't feel a lot of satisfaction and don't feel like I have a big goal to strive for right now.  So it's just a confusing time in my life right now.  I'm used to always being at extreme ends of my feelings or moods, or completely numb.  I'm not used to how I'm feeling right now.  Ah well.

On the whole, things have been going well for me.  Treatment's going well, spouse is doing well, work's going okay, and in general things are well.  I'm just sad deep down in my soul right now and not sure how to process.  I guess some of it is the holidays, they always hit me hard.

Anyway, just checking in.  Peace and love to you all.

Thanks everyone.  I wish one letter was enough.  I still feel his voice inside my head, I still feel weak and defeated.  Today wasn't such a good day, so your encouragement is timely.  I recognize what I'm experiencing as an emotional flashback, I just don't see any way to get away from the triggers without drastically changing my life right now - leaving my job or leaving my spouse or both.  I just need time to process - now I have started to be able to feel again, but I haven't developed the muscles to break out of the feelings quite yet until lots of emotional damage is done.

Has anyone else tried melatonin and/or valerian?  I have used those off and on to make sure I'm getting sleepy at an early enough hour of the day.

Does anyone else like brewing a tea from dried strawberry plant leaves?  I think it tastes really great, and it helps with asthma.  Now I want to go make myself a cup of tea after reading all of your posts!

As far as coffee goes, my morning ritual is to put the kettle on to boil, grind some fresh coffee, and brew in a pour-over carafe.  I think it tastes better, and I like the ritual of watching the water turn to coffee each morning.  Then one of my cats waits patiently until I pour my first cup and sit down on the couch to drink it and check the news.  He of course climbs into my lap to tell me his version of the news first and get some love and affection.  Only then can I start my day.

Are you familiar with Brené Brown?  She has some interesting talks on the power of vulnerability, processing shame and guilt.  I like this one - she's lighthearted and funny but covers this topic so impressively and authentically:

http://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability

Some excerpts:
"And to me, the hard part of the one thing that keeps us out of connection is our fear that we're not worthy of connection, was something that, personally and professionally, I felt like I needed to understand better. So what I did is I took all of the interviews where I saw worthiness, where I saw people living that way, and just looked at those."

"And so here's what I found. What they had in common was a sense of courage. And I want to separate courage and bravery for you for a minute. Courage, the original definition of courage, when it first came into the English language -- it's from the Latin word cor, meaning heart -- and the original definition was to tell the story of who you are with your whole heart. And so these folks had, very simply, the courage to be imperfect. They had the compassion to be kind to themselves first and then to others, because, as it turns out, we can't practice compassion with other people if we can't treat ourselves kindly. And the last was they had connection, and -- this was the hard part -- as a result of authenticity, they were willing to let go of who they thought they should be in order to be who they were, which you have to absolutely do that for connection."

"The other thing that they had in common was this: They fully embraced vulnerability. They believed that what made them vulnerable made them beautiful. They didn't talk about vulnerability being comfortable, nor did they really talk about it being excruciating -- as I had heard it earlier in the shame interviewing. They just talked about it being necessary. They talked about the willingness to say, "I love you" first, the willingness to do something where there are no guarantees, the willingness to breathe through waiting for the doctor to call after your mammogram. They're willing to invest in a relationship that may or may not work out. They thought this was fundamental."


"And it did, and it didn't. And it took about a year. And you know how there are people that, when they realize that vulnerability and tenderness are important, that they surrender and walk into it. A: that's not me, and B: I don't even hang out with people like that. (Laughter) For me, it was a yearlong street fight. It was a slugfest. Vulnerability pushed, I pushed back. I lost the fight, but probably won my life back."


"The problem is -- and I learned this from the research -- that you cannot selectively numb emotion. You can't say, here's the bad stuff. Here's vulnerability, here's grief, here's shame, here's fear, here's disappointment. I don't want to feel these. I'm going to have a couple of beers and a banana nut muffin. (Laughter) I don't want to feel these. And I know that's knowing laughter. I hack into your lives for a living. God. (Laughter) You can't numb those hard feelings without numbing the other affects, our emotions. You cannot selectively numb. So when we numb those, we numb joy, we numb gratitude, we numb happiness.  And then we are miserable, and we are looking for purpose and meaning, and then we feel vulnerable, so then we have a couple of beers and a banana nut muffin. And it becomes this dangerous cycle."

Welcome zazu! 

I hope things went well Kizzie, positive thoughts your way!

 

So many things about this thread are quickly becoming tools in my toolbox now - thank you schrödinger's cat!  I like the adjustment metaphor, especially how you broke it out into "feel said, so look sad" kind of terms to help ground it in body consciousness, and I really LOVE the points you and Kizzie made about reflecting on perceived weaknesses / character traits in ourselves as just injuries to an otherwise strong person.  I think you and so many others in this forum show lots of strength all the time, there's a lot of growth happening here.

If you constantly read story after story where people wind up with similar symptoms after being traumatized in a certain way, then it's getting reaaaally hard to see this as a character fault. It's simply an injury. So when my inner critic pipes up with its constant song of "you're being weak", I point at OOTS and go: "hah, what about that? They aren't weak, so I'm not either."

I'll take a page out of Kizzie's playbook and say

Sooo that is something worth trying out. Thanks for sharing this. But isn't it just exhausting, moving out of denial and into awareness? I want to remember, I want to not feel so numb anymore, but oh my goodness is it ever a frustrating, frightening thing to do.

It is a super frustrating, frightening thing to do.  And it's absolutely unnerving and triggering.  On my drive home the other night I had an extraordinarily painful early memory come to the surface and I felt incredibly fragile and sad - when I finally got home my wife opened the door with a smile and immediately changed her expression and said 'what's wrong?' and gave me a big hug - perfect response for when I had no words.

Some of this is just rushing loose right now, I'm not certain why this time and my life and why so much.  I've been trying to work on various aspects of my trauma response for years without calling it that, just because I was determined to thrive but wasn't sure how.  I've had a general idea about what "healthy behaviors" to focus on so I've focused on those, and I've had some underlying mottos I've just repeated to myself along the way, like "don't worry about things outside of your control, focus on what you can control," and, "perfect is the enemy of good, just focus on getting one or two or even three small things done today, nothing more," and, "don't take yourself so seriously, you'll never get out alive (said with a grin because it's a crude joke)."  I fall back on silliness in times of stress when I can, and underneath everything I tend toward optimism (no idea why).

I've had good friends along the way that have helped me keep from falling apart completely.  I just fought against the therapeutic process, grew to be in denial about actually having experienced any trauma, and gave my inner critic too much floor time for far too long.

Then there are parts of me, more than just the inner critic, or that critic has multiple parts, that are altogether fatalistic and pessimistic that sometimes seem to be my default behaviors for long periods of time.  Now that I'm trusting the process I'm able to start working on putting these parts into perspective and not letting them overwhelm and consume my outlook for the future.

And now I'm really embracing the therapeutic process and I have a good support system now in terms of my wife, her mom, my therapist, my work, and this forum.  I've got a lot more information at hand now, and I'm learning a lot.  The biggest difference in how I'm approaching all of this now is to try and turn a compassionate, warm, loving feeling inward toward all the hurting parts of me and just simply learn to be aware of them and not deny them any longer.  So I think this is why I'm making progress right now and so much is rushing to the surface.

I finally got my copy of the Surviving to Thriving book, I started to read it last night, at least the steps for managing emotional flashbacks.  Honestly even the table of contents in the book is super interesting, hah!  I'm really looking forward to reading this.  I've also consumed a memoir written by a person with paranoid schizophrenia (particularly focused on how someone survives and even thrives professionally with a thought disorder - someone in my family has a similar diagnosis and I've recently resumed contact with them, want to help, but I need to do it carefully - I digress) , and I'm also reading a memoir from someone with dissociative identity disorder.  Honestly that one is really triggering for me right now, but I'm sticking with it.

But when I trigger myself in the right context, in the right safe places, I can allow the emotions I've been bottling up to come to the surface, I can process them and grieve, and I can turn compassion inward.  And that's all I'm really trying to do right now until I have a better understanding of CPTSD and how to thrive in spite of it.  I got away from my FOO and made some great strides in my life just motivated by extraordinary anger, like a dam broke loose in my early twenties - it was seemingly the only emotion I had, so I alternated between anger and numbness (or taking something to make me numb - whole other dark story).  But the anger never gave way to any healthier emotions. And I've reached a point in my life where the anger turns inward and tears me apart, and other emotions want to be expressed.

So, even though I've only known about CPTSD for not very long, I've been working on it for a long time.  I'm taking a different approach this time, paying attention to my heart and trying to grow in self awareness, and I'm reading my books and I'm learning to process feelings all over again.  I've always been able to tell other people, "you're doing fine, don't worry, no matter what you do or don't do, you're doing just enough, keep your chin up."  I've only just begun to start telling myself that.  Little by little.

The last few weeks have been a whirlwind.  Learning about CPTSD.  Learning about dissociative disorders.  Working through therapy and trying to become self aware.  It's gradual and difficult.

Had an experience with my therapist where she guided me through a body check, remembered feelings of physical abuse.  Broke down crying for the first time in years.  Been crying off and on for a week.  Wrote a letter to my father, my last letter to him.  Feel like I've knocked down a wall but there are many more inside.

Learning about how I've compartmentalized my feelings and thoughts and memories.  Questioning dissociative disorders - are they real or are they a product of therapy?  Trying to understand because everything I'm learning about dissociative identity disorder / dissociative disorder not otherwise specified feels like it applies to me.  Fighting waves of different feelings and experiences that take over me.  Trying to reconcile blank spots.  Trying to reconstruct my thoughts and feelings, memories.  Trying to push through and be productive at work so I have my basic needs met (food, clothing, shelter, etc.) while I work on mending my heart.

Memories are a lot more real when you feel them in your body.  I seem to have adapted to being able to talk about my memories as though they didn't happen to me, but meditating on my body and checking in with it brings a whole new layer to this.  I've been in denial for a long time.  I'm scared but determined.  Angry but resigned.  Focused and intent on moving forward.  At least right this second.

Starting a thread for me to try and get in touch with my feelings, as I go through therapy and integrate my experiences.  I just had a really intense therapy session and it unlocked memories for me, memories of a painful time but somehow the act of remembering made me feel alive, and that made me happy, in spite of the pain.  Happiness isn't something I feel often.  I plan to periodically post letters to this thread to vent and to help me allow myself to feel differently about my trauma.  I feel like if I can do this, then I am sincerely making an effort to help myself.  And if I help myself, then I can sincerely make an effort to help other people, which is something I want to be able to do.

This will contain harsh language, details of emotional flashbacks, details of physical, emotional, sexual abuse, and various other triggers - I'm not going to censor myself as I try to work through my defenses.  Please accept my apology if any of this triggers any negative feelings - I hope to give you ample warning so you can choose to look elsewhere if you need to.



Dad,

I still feel the heat and the welts on my legs from where you beat me that day.  You always told me if I cry you will hit me again, so I learned not to cry.  I can feel the pain in my back from your leather belt, the skin gives off heat and my stomach is hurting.  I can still feel the crooked bump in my septum where you broke my nose, and I didn't cry.  I didn't run and I didn't fight back because you terrified me.  I think you were terrified too, but it just made you swing harder.

I remember every time you hit me, every time you made me stand there while you brainwashed me for hours.  I remember every time you accused me of lying, told me I wasn't abused, you weren't abusive, every time you created an impossible situation for me and trapped me so you could have an excuse to take your anger out on me.  I will never be daddy's little girl again.

I remember crying as I watched you punch my brother in the throat and throw him through the wall, and I remember you yelling as you made us put up new sheetrock and repair the drywall you destroyed with your rage.  I remember countless other acts of violence.  I remember how mad you would get at my brother because he had a speech impediment and a nervous tic, and he couldn't sit still when he was afraid or anxious and you viewed that as defiance.  I'll never forget the spark of anger in his eyes when he got old enough to stand up for himself and the way that set you off.  You were so scary to me then.

Through you I learned the meaning of helplessness, hopelessness.  I was a prisoner in my own home, and I was isolated and alone.  I remember sleep deprivation, being held at gunpoint, threatened for existing.  I learned that you had been abused and I wept for you.  I couldn't reconcile what was happening to me and my brother, and I couldn't believe my own father didn't love me, so I fell apart.  My mind fell apart.  I learned how to make you happy and focused on that, and when I fell short and noticed your disappointment, I punished myself so you wouldn't have to.  I think you may have softened then, but I couldn't tell for sure.  I tried desperately to be good enough for you.

You taught me how men should act, you gave me my initial impression of where men and women fit on the hierarchy of life.  You taught me to please and made me feel worthless.  I guess I have you to thank for all the times I got * when I didn't want it, when I couldn't handle it.  I've forgotten more than I remember, at least until recently.

But now I am learning.  I am realizing that I froze up when I should have fought back or run away.  And I'm remembering how it felt to be that scared little girl, alone in my own private *.  And as I remember, I'm taking control.  I'm changing the narrative.  I get to choose how I respond to these feelings, these flashbacks.  And while I can understand and empathize with your pain intellectually, I can never forgive you and will never love you again.  I am learning to love again, and you don't deserve an ounce of it.  I no longer need your conditional acceptance, your pretense, your approval.  I am letting go of you for good.

I am not a liar, I do not exaggerate or gossip.  I was not a bad kid and I never deserved your abuse.  I would have loved you with my whole heart if you would have let me.  Daddies are supposed to love their daughters, protect them, not strip them naked of their sense of self-worth and safety.

For as long as I live, you will be dead to me.  I am learning to cry again and to embrace all the parts of me that went into hiding when you hurt me.  I am on my way to being whole again, and I'm doing it without you.