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I have a deal with a friend. When one of us is going through a particularly rough patch, the other gently asks 'are you remembering to practise self care?' The idea is that 'when all else fails, practise self care'.

Because I am, unfortunately, going through a bit of a rough patch at the moment, I have been thinking about self care and how to practise it for me.

Unfortunately, I am finding that being in a rough patch often means difficulty in thinking up ideas for anything, including self care. I am hoping that people might be willing to list some ideas for self care that we all can refer to when going through a rough patch.

Three ideas that I had:

• Going outside for a walk

Preferably in a natural area (e.g. park) under trees, but rambling through my neighbourhood works too (especially when it means walking where I am vs. not walking somewhere that I need to travel to)

• Eating properly

This one for me counts double because I am not just eating properly but I also enjoy cooking healthy foods for myself (now if only I can find someone to do the shopping part of things).

• Doing an art-related activity

Sometimes this means colouring in a colouring book, sometimes creating my own painting, but for me art activities are soothing and enjoyable.

This is something that I am trying to figure out and am wondering if anyone might have experiences and/or references that might help...

Something I have noticed during and in the aftermath of very stressful/triggering times is that I feel like I am going to 'shatter into little pieces'. I then spend huge amounts of energy trying to hold myself together so that I don't 'go flying apart into little pieces'. I hope that makes sense; I have such difficulty describing it but it feels like my Self, my Being, is going to 'shatter' or 'break apart' in a type of 'exploding sense' unless I hold onto it tightly enough. It is a terrifying type of feeling.

In discussing this with my T, he wondered 'shattering' might be the mechanism that I use during trauma. Rather than flight/fright/freeze, I 'shatter' myself, strangely to protect myself. As a result, during triggering events I feel that 'shattering' sensation again. That idea actually made a great deal of sense to me and resonated strongly with me. Strangely, the realization that this might be my particular type of response to trauma was comforting and somewhat empowering. I am finding that it is easier to release that energy knowing that it is something that 'I do' rather than something that is 'happening to me' (again, I hope that makes sense).

My problem is, however, that I have never heard of this. Neither Google nor Scholar Google have offered any help. Searching for terms like 'shatter' and 'fly apart' with CPTSD bring many search results but none seem to have any application to what I mean.

Has anyone else heard of anything like this? Has anyone had any experiences like this? Are there any resources out there that address this? I would appreciate input and thoughts. Thank you!

Today is World Rivers Day.

Started in 1980 by Mark Angelo in BC, Canada, World Rivers Day is now celebrated by millions of people all over the world. World Rivers Day was declared officially by the UN in 2005 and falls annually on the last Sunday of September. I am just realizing that that would make this year the 10th anniversary of World Rivers Day.

For me (for many of us in the environmental community) this day is not just about celebrating rivers and waterways (which it definitely is), it is also a day to celebrate the efforts of everyone who contributes to the health of our rivers and waterways.   

Yay! Happy Rivers Day! 

I hope all of you have a wonderful day, and maybe even a chance to visit a river near you.
(if you are more of a homebody then I wish that you are able to find pictures of beautiful rivers on the internet).

I need to sign off now. I am volunteering with my regular group at our local Rivers Day celebration.

Yay! Happy Rivers Day! 

I have only recently learned that I have CPTSD, and that I often dissociate. I think... Now I think I must dissociate way more than I ever thought or perhaps way less It depends a lot on what dissociation is exactly, and I am getting different ideas from different sources, so am also getting confused and a little distressed.

Recently, I read an article by a therapist whose client was all flustered and 'overreacting' to a particular situation. The client was fully conscious of where she was and had a discussion with the T about her response to the situation. The T noted the client was 'dissociating' because she was responding to internalized emotional cues rather than the situation at hand. The T reported that the client agreed with that assessment. I do occasionally do that but never thought of it as 'dissociation'.

I also have been reading that there is a type of dissociation where you kind of 'leave' your body and take in what is going on around you but from a sort of 'floating' position outside your body, as if you were watching everything on TV. I often do this (unfortunately) along with a type of freeze response along with it - e.g. if a soccer ball were accidentally kicked toward me it would hit me; I would see it coming and know I should move but would stay frozen and 'let' it hit me because I would not be enough inside myself to react. I am, however, starting to learn my triggers and be able to 'grab ahold of myself before I can float away'.

Then there seems to be another form of dissociation where you go somewhere else entirely for a while. During extremely stressful times and/or very triggering moments I do that too. Where it is, for example 10 am, then 'poof' it is 11:15 am and I have no idea what happened in between, because it feels as if it should be only be 10:01 am.

And still yet again there seems to be this cloudy kind of fogginess that I can walk around in and mostly function in, but if I have to handle anything too complex or detailed I try to put the task off for another day or I am in big trouble trying to figure it out (where on another day it would be fine). I have usually just called this 'I must be tired' (even when I have had enough sleep). But I am now learning that this might be dissociation too.

Recently, and most terrifyingly, I did not leave my body so much as got sucked right into it, where a memory (maybe? memory) took hold of me during a therapy session and pulled me in where I could not get out. It was pretty horrible. But, I know that while I was fully pulled into the memory, I was also 'out' of the room. My T was had apparently been talking to me to try and get me out of it, but we had to wait until I escaped. We talked a bit to make sure I was, in his words 'fully back' - I lost time but did so in my body rather than out of it. I think this might be dissociation but I am not sure.

It's a bit like a intro university exam: Q1. Is dissociation 'all of the above', 'none of the above', 'some of the above', 'something else entirely', 'some of the above but these other things too', 'none of the above but this instead' and so on.

I am not generally one to try and box complex concepts into definite true-false types of boxes, but I am trying to figure all of this out. Also, if all of those types of 'being less than fully present' are types of dissociation than I think I might be spending way more time dissociating that I thought possible. That worries me somewhat.

Please, does anyone know? Which of the above are 'dissociation'? Are there other types? If these are not examples of dissociation than what are they? 

Hello,

I have read many of the posts here and many have resonated with me so I have joined.

I struggle with this type of introduction but here goes...

I will start with my user name...

I grew up as the empathic black sheep in an abusive home. This, let's call it, 'upbringing' for want of a better term, messed with my head so badly that I ended up having no idea who I was as a human being. I was so messed up that I, literally, could not even tell the guy at the soft serve stand whether I wanted a chocolate or vanilla cone (luckily there were only two choices or I might have had a meltdown ).

I have been no contact with most of my family for several years. I am in touch with two siblings who also went no contact with the abusers. I have been working to figure out who I am, what I like and don't like, etc. One of the first things I did was discover that I like vanilla soft serve ice cream more than chocolate. I am discovering that I also enjoy many other flavours of ice cream, but for me it started with knowing that I could like vanilla ice cream, enjoy eating a cone of vanilla ice cream, and not be punished later for my choice. For me, there will always be something very special about the flavour of vanilla soft serve. This taste will always mark one of the first milestones I have had in reclaiming my Self.

Growing up in an abusive home, I have recently learned, also led to me having CPTSD. I have for most of my life known that I 'had issues'. However, it has only been in the last year of so that I finally learned what the root of the problems was; a health care professional recognized it in me. Like many people here, this diagnosis was both a relief and enlightenment, and a concern and discouragement. Right now, I am hanging on to the 'at least now I know what it is and that I'm not crazy' part of things.

I have started with a new therapist (my third on my life's journey). He specializes in abuse-related trauma and CPTSD. He practices an embodied type of therapy that seems to be working for me in a way that the other therapies have not (though the other two individuals did help somewhat). I have been working with the new therapist for less than a year, but for the first time in a long time I have hope that things will get better.

One point that might be important here, is that I go in cycles. I often will communicate with people, post on the internet, catch-up on emails, etc. for a long stretch. Then, I withdraw and cocoon, and close off from the world, inadvertently 'disappearing' from my friends. I have learned to try and give warning to people beforehand, but sometimes the cloud catches me too fast and I cannot give people the heads up. So, if the pattern holds, I might post a lot here, then go away, then come back. I hope that is OK.