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I don't like to be under the control of someone else and "obey". That is exactly it, but it feels humiliating and dangerous to me. People I have talked to don't have this at all! They trust and just hand themselves over, which is pretty foreign to me!

It's like they think they're surrounded by an invisible force field that willl keep things at bay. "Oh, such things only ever happen to other people, I'm quite safe."

.....except my inner critic says "That's because you have to be treated like a baby!" Because to tell the truth, the technician doing the mammogram DID talk to me in a gentle voice like I was 5 yrs old! And that's what I need, so I feel guilty and like a fool because the inner critic is calling me a baby. Can't win.

I once knew a huge, strong guy, a trained policeman who now worked as a truck driver, who fainted at the dentist's.

But if you do have to leave a situation, doesn't your inner critic punish you for it? Or don't you then feel like a failure for having to leave?

I feel like a failure anyway. But let me think about this. The thing is, about twelve years ago, two separate doctors on two separate occasions triggered my PTSD. (No assault happened, they were just insensitive jerks and triggered me.) Those weren't CPTSD flashbacks, they were PTSD ones - hypervigilance and tunnel vision and the feeling that I was physically, actually under threat. That feeling lasted for three days each time. After that, it grew into a numb sense of heightened (but not actual) danger. It took me a LONG time to feel safe and at ease again. So that's probably why the sheer thought of making a run for it comforts me. I know, it's not practicable in most cases. But the thought that I could theoretically do it helped. I'm at the doctor's volitionally. No one can force me to stay there. I can leave. If someone made me stay, I could call the police. PTSD makes me feel actually, physically threatened, to the point where I enter a room and instantly choose a seat where I can get up and leave, I scan the room for exit routes, I jump out of my skin if someone sneaks up on me, all that kind of thing. And in that particular context, it made sense to remind myself that I have always the option to flee.

So far, I've only ever exposed myself to low-risk and low-fear situations. I've been to the hairdresser's, but not yet to a GP. I dodged out of routine appointments for the past... how many years? But I went to a GP a few weeks ago, for something that was low-risk and didn't feel threatening. (A toe that wasn't as bendy as it should've been, and I wanted to make sure nothing was broken.) And the GP I went to was nice! Wow. So maybe that'll help ease me back into things.

But back to the point I was trying to make - I think I prepared for those situations ahead of time and tried to find out at what point I might leave, and how I might go about it. If a GP is about to do something that might trigger me, I might tell him that I'm prone to anxiety attacks and I'll have to do this some other time when I've had time to prepare? I never had to put this to the test, so I've no idea if this is doable. Or, I might say: "I'd like to think about this for a few days first"?

Oh man, yes, that's how I feel, too. There's this sudden, profound shock and fear and embarassment: "GAH, I've made a mistake again, I've been unacceptable again, I've again laid myself open to abuse." And it's two-sided. The other side is: "I thought this place was safe but it's not." If someone criticizes me in a certain way, I'll never trust them again. I'm hoping this will change over time, but right now, that's what it's like.

Sorry. I didn't want to endanger anyone.

I did some work with my inner child. It started out as a written dialogue with my inner critic, because of some writing advice I read in a book. (Henriette Klauser's Writing On Both Sides of the Brain.) It developed into a kind of dialogue with several parts of my psyche. I even got to talk to my creativity. This technique alone helped me so much. The difference it made was incredible. I had the feeling that there was real, proper healing because of this.

I want to second kizzie's compliment. I too thought "wow, if my mother had done something like that...!" You gave your daughter what she needed. That isn't to be taken for granted, as we're uniquely placed to know.

Your kid had this traumatic thing happen to her and you validated her, you let her heal at her own pace, you respected her wishes (sleeping in her room when she needed it, letting her revisit the scene once she was ready, letting her choose who was to accompany her). And it would surprise me, from what I've read, if you'd ever given her those typical "buck up and pull yourself together" pep talks. That is NOT a normal parental reaction to trauma. It's something huge and wonderful.

Hi Mary,

nice to meet you. Your story leaves me speechless. I'm really sorry to hear that you had it so hard for so long, and I hope you'll find something here that helps.

This poem stopped me dead in my tracks when I happened to re-read it yesterday. A warning: for me personally, some things rang so true that I felt shocked. Not triggered, but maybe that's different for everyone.

I've cut out the gory parts. If you google the original - there be dragons. (PM me if you want to know what kind.)

BTW: I never understood the bit about the bulbs. It's about hope, I think. It's actually not a bad image - how the seeds of new life (or recovery) look so unassuming and even a little dead, but there's all this life inside of them.




This Dead Relationship
by Katherine Pierpoint

I carry a dead relationship around everywhere with me.
It's my hobby.
How lucky to have a job that's also my hobby,
To do it all the time.
A few people notice, and ask if they can help carry this thing.

But, like an alcoholic scared they will hear the clink of glass in the bag,
I refuse – scared they'll smell rottenness,
Scared of something under their touch
That will cave in, a skin over brown foam on a bad apple.
I cram this thing over the threshold

Into the cold and speechless house,
Lean against the front door for a moment to breathe in the dark,
Then start the slow haul to the kitchen. [...]

[A section on how the dead relationship is like a reptile. It feels alien and other, and it quietly makes its way towards her when she's unawares.]

Next thing it's looking out of my eyes in the morning—
And in the mirror, though my eyes are not my own,
My mouth shows surprise that I am still there at all.

Oh, a sickness that can make you so ill,
Yet doesn't have the decency to kill you.
A mad free-fall that never hits the ground,
Never knows even the relief of sudden shock;
Just endless medium-rare shock, half-firm, half-bloody all the time.
A long, slow learning curve.
The overheating that can strip an engine badly,
Strain it far worse than a racing rally.
The fear that you will slow to a stop
Then start a soft, thick, slow-gathering roll backwards.

This dead relationship. This dead and sinking ship.

Bulbs lie, unplanted, on a plate of dust.
Dry and puckered pouches, only slightly mouldy;
Embalmed little stomachs but with hairy, twisted fingers,
Waiting for something to happen without needing to know what it is.
When it happens everything else in the universe can start.

This dead relationship.
I am this thing's twin.
One of us is dead
And we don't know which, we are so close.

https://bsbh.wikispaces.com/file/view/s902529_wk_046.pdf

Oh man. I'm so sad for both of you. This sounds really, really, really hard to deal with. I know the moment someone criticizes me, I panic. And the rational part of me can explain things until he's hoarse: the hurt part of me "knows" that this is simply the cycle of emotional abuse starting all over again.

My mother does that too - keeps me at arm's length, says hurtful things, but woe betide me if I do the same things to her. I'm just so tired by now.

I'd be sorry if you stopped posting here.

No. After all, I'm in a good position to know that emotional injuries are just as debilitating as physical ones.

I understand about the hesitation, though. I felt something similar when I thought about filing for social support when I was jobless. Turned out I'd internalized my parents' stubborn refusal to "accept handouts" (i.e. to use legal and reasonable means of support). I once applied for a support fund from a charitable Christian organization. The woman there was kind and supportive. When she calculated my income and savings and so on and told me that I was applicable for support because I was under the poverty line, I was in tears. I was never in tears at that time; I was mostly numb. But simply just finding help was such an extraordinary, unexpected relief. I only noticed then that all the penny-pinching and doing without had just completely worn me out.

I've since read that studies have proven: if you're constantly "doing without", that takes up a lot of energy that you then don't have for other things. So all the things wealthy people tell themselves - "oh, if I were poor, I'd save money or gain an income by such-and-such a time-consuming and complicated strategy" - that's cloud cuckoo land.

If this SSD thing gets you the resources you need to recover, then doesn't it follow that you're doing the exact opposite of giving up?

My computer seems to have eaten the reply I thought I'd posted. I wanted to thank Butterfly for her definition and for her kind words. So: thanks! Funny thing - I thought about the Borg too.

Kizzie, glad to hear you're in remission. I can't even begin to feel what it would be like to have someone steal sympathy from me. A woman of my acquaintance did that once to her mother. It was just surreal to witness. I remember thinking that she has something predatory about her, like a part of her always lies in wait and jealously eyes the good things you have, and if she sees something she wants for herself, she darts out of cover and snatches it. "Mine mine mine."

I studied translation at university. Translators know that finding the right term fixes everything.

That isn't even a joke. Okay, it is, but it's got a kernel of truth to it. The Sapir-Whorf-Hypothesis says that how we conceptualize and use language has some effect on how we conceptualize the world, maybe even on how we feel about things and on what we end up doing. (If this weren't so, prunes would never have been rebranded as "dried plums", and marketing departments wouldn't exist.)

More specifically, there's the relationship between a word and its meaning. In translation theory, some call it the scene and the frame. (Or signifiant and signifié, but I find that sounds less snazzy.) The "scene" is what you picture in your head, the "frame" is how you express it. You hear "mousse au chocolat" (frame) and it instantly evokes tastes, smells, specific memories, maybe a certain kind of chocolate, maybe the social setting you expect to find it in, maybe the colour of your favourite bowl. All of that taken together is the scene.

So my theory is: In CPTSD, some real and actual events are framed in inaccurate, spin-doctoring terms. Those terms then evoke toxic, unhelpful scenes.
Actual fact: lethargy, freeze response, depression. Frame: "lazy", "inept", "selfish", "worthless". Scene: every memory ever where I felt lazy and worthless. Effect: emotional flashback. Lesson learned: find an accurate way of talking about lethargy. Points in favour:

• Accurate terms always have priority. (Even my inner critic agrees, so probably he's a translator as well.
• Recovery entails learning that I have every right to let the truth be the truth, so this word thing is a part of healing. A tiny part maybe, but a part.
• Most of those toxic frames and scenes are taken from people who abused me. Those are their thoughts, not mine; not originally. I'm taking back my right to look at my own experiences and find proper words for it.

[li]Those toxic frames and scenes are process-oriented. They take housework and make it so it's all about character faults. This is not how a professional would think. A professional would first attentively observe the present situation; then work out a desirable and reachable goal; then work out strategies and ways of reaching it that are doable; then go on doing it. A professional would be goal-oriented and realistic, always checking the real world for facts and feedback. Therefore, if I refuse to feel "lazy" when I'm slowed down by an emotional flashback, I'm being professional. (Again: professionalism is always a good thing in my culture, and my inner critic agrees, so the mere use of the word "professional" calms him.)
[/li][/list]

In other words: hi, I'm schrödingerskatze, and I routinely overthink the fact that I hate hoovering.

I'm another fawn-freezer. I know what you mean about the outer critic. At first I thought: "what outer critic? I don't do that. Other people do it to me! Because they're all dangerous, thoughtless egotists who stab me in the back the moment I'm letting my guard down!" It's a little embarassing how long it took me to realize that this wasn't really the most logical thought I ever had.

What complicates things is, I got emotional abuse from people I never, ever expected it from. How does one deal with that?

Does this get exacerbated by denial? I wasn't allowed to be angry at emotional abuse and neglect. Even at abuse that happened outside our home: my mother simply told me that "it's just kids being kids", and that "only childish people seek blame in others. 'The others did this, the others did that, those evil, evil others!' Remember this: the truly mature person always seeks blame in herself first and foremost." Then she gave me a little sermon on how she'd overcome teasing and problems by being proactive. End of story. She didn't talk to any teacher or to the other kids' parents, she didn't hug me, she didn't comfort me at all, she didn't even inquire again as to how things were developping, she didn't express even one bit of anger at the people who'd hurt me. (This from a woman who was always crucading to protect the weak.) She just completely trivialized and minimized that whole thing. I somehow thought this to mean that it was shameful in me to resent bullying. And of course, bullies and emotional abusers and people who neglect or reject you, they all normalize what they do. They all have their rationalizations. They all victim-blame. So you're slowly brainwashed into thinking that this is normal, it's just this harmless thing everyone keeps doing, resenting it would be churlish.

Then that has two effects that I observed in myself. In each of them, my outer critic means well, but is misguided.
One is thinking: "What my mother told me made me feel really stupid for thinking bullying is this rare, extaordinary offence. It's simply just normal behaviour. That means everyone I meet will be like that." And a part of me wants to protect me. It's always on the look-out for warning signs. Once bitten and so on. So if someone enters the room too confidently, looks too smooth and slick and superior: BULLY BULLY BULLY.
Since bullying has been normalized, it's no longer something a perpetrator perpetrates, it's a quality of life, a normal characteristic of ordinary, sane, laughing, happy, wonderful people. My outer critic has learned this lesson well. The bullies and bystanders have conditioned him to look at the anger and contempt we felt for our bullies, and to realize it's caused by normal, ordinary, everyday behaviour. So that's what he does. He doesn't criticize the words our bullies said, or the things they did. After all, one mustn't do that. It's normal behaviour. It's part of "kids being kids". So accordingly, it must logically follow that those kids' general behaviour was the problem. It wasn't, but I can see how my outer critic might come to that conclusion. He criticizes the normal, ordinary, everyday behaviour that accompanied our bullying. He doesn't criticize the words our bullies said to us: he criticizes their laughing confidence, their fashionable clothes, their giggles, their way of standing tall and sitting on tables and taking up too much space.
Because all the criticism I had to get rid of is still there, deep down in my subconscious. Its connection to the original perpetrators is stoppered up. But here's a group of happy pretty people laughingly entering a room and looking suspiciously arrogant and smug! Ka-WHOMP: instant judgmentalism. Scorched earth. Problem solved. My outer critic has seen to it that these people can't hurt me. He's seen right through them. They're stupid, shallow, hurtful people. He's protected me from them. Nobody will sneak by him now.

Hah! NOW I know who my outer critic reminds me of. Walter Sobchak from The Big Lebowski.

That's this program on how to do chores, yes? I heard of it, but I never did it. I read as far as her advice on how to clean draining boards. She realy, really hates dirty draining boards. From what I remember, she only jiiust goes short of throwing molotov cocktails on them to try and explode the dust particles. Since part of my problem are my mother's really high standards plus her insistence that there's a "right way" to doing chores, I didn't read further.

The "room of the day" thing and the "basic program plus one extra task" are from a Swiss book. A friend of mine enthused at me about it until I gave it a try. The "so-and-so many minutes" approach is the pomodoro technique, but I heard from it first in an article about how to overcome writer's block.

Now there's a thought! I have Cleaner's Block!

...I want to feel productive about something.  But as it turns out, cleaning gives me no satisfaction. 

Exactly! It's like blowing one's nose: it's necessary and you do it, but nobody in their right mind would ever make it the be-all and end-all of their existence. You'd never get any TV ad showing a blissful woman says: "I tested this new hanky and now I have the most amazingly shiny nose!" And nobody would expect blowing my nose to fulfill me as a woman.

I tried to be a good housewife, but then my CPTSD got worse and I capitulated. I'm now trying to organize my lethargy. I've made a three-level plan.

Level 0: have unrelenting standards, be triggered, battle CPTSD.
Level 1: I do the tasks that, if I don't do them, get me or my kid in trouble. (Fix meals, buy toilet paper, buy birthday presents, do my techniques that help me keep my CPTSD bearable,...).
Level 2: I fix/organize/clean everything that really annoys me until it doesn't annoy me anymore.
Level 3: I take my kitchen timer with me and spend five minutes on each room. (Intervals up to 20 minutes work. Everything else feels too long.) And every day, I'm cleaning one room. Monday is kitchen day. The task gets divided into a basic program plus one extra task. Basic kitchen program: tidy, do dishes, wipe down surfaces, clean draining board and sink. Weekly extra: either clean windows OR wipe cabinet fronts OR declutter a shelf (etc etc). Pick just one, no more.

This plan isn't fully foolproof. But it has the advantage of keeping the unrelenting standards at bay that my mother had when I was a child. It gives me a feeling of being in control. And it helps with the lack of motivation. I can't "tidy the living room", but I can spot the most annoying bit of clutter and then tidy that up. I can't "clean all the things", but I can clean my sink and draining board. There's also this in-built level at which I get to feel accomplished. On Mondays, once I've tidied things up a bit and done the kitchen, then that's it, I achieved my goal, everything else I do is a bonus. It's calming, that thought.

(Sorry this is so long. Most probably this won't be helpful for anyone but myself. I just thought I'd risk posting it anyway.)

And then I worked out that if I hate myself, it means her criticism and treatment of me was justified and I can continue to believe the family dogma that "Mom loves me, she's just trying to help me improve by critiquing me, and her bad behavior is the result of emotional problems that she can't control."  If I don't hate myself, because I don't deserve to treat myself or be treated that way, that means her treatment of me was wrong, and the whole house of cards collapses.

Oh good, someone else does that, too. Ouf. It's surprisingly like having to de-brainwash oneself, I find.