Recent posts
#1
Recovery Journals / Re: Starting my journal
Last post by holidayay - Today at 08:04:55 PMOne of the things I really, truly wonder about - is what it would be like to have a 'continuous' life. What I mean by that is, where life has felt generally OK, give or take a few fluctuations/peaks/troughs out of the baseline - and continued to build on each chapter. I'm not sure I can explain what I mean very well.
Maybe it would make more sense if I explain the other type of life, the one I have had. Where traumatic experiences pile on top of each other, and instead of building up neatly on top of each other to form a good sturdy house, instead they get throw haphazardly to form something of a ramshackle. The units making up the house - representing different areas of life such as relationship with the self, relationship with others, education, careers, one's emotional landscape, one's mental state....have not been put together thoughtfully. *, even the individual bricks making up each unit have not been meaningfully sourced to see if they are suitable.
I don't really have many continuous friendships, for example. A bitter regret of mine. My ideas of friendship were so complicated and confusing.
I had hardly any friends in early school years. We had just moved from the Middle East to the UK. I didn't understand the language. Then, when I did, I didn't understand...everything else. I remember feeling so utterly dazed and confused as a child. You know when they describe a deer caught in headlights, frozen in fear? It hurts to feel like that was my childhood. My experiences of 'other people' at home were that of cruelty, of unkindness, of mockery, of being shamed and degraded. Being at school...suddenly it felt like there was hundreds of potential sources of any number of these things to be dished out to me. I was scared, every day. Hiding and being invisible wasn't so easy. I would crawl under those outdoor tables in the school yard. The small space in the middle, wedged in between the criss-crossing table legs. It was so small, it hurt my body to crawl in there, as the legs pushed stubbornly against my skin. I don't know why I went in there so often. I guess something about an enclosed space perhaps offered some sense of safety and comfort.
It hurts to remember this. It hurts to realize how wrong I had gotten it, based on the viciousness I'd seen at home; the cruelty that had shaped my worldview to be warped and destructive at such a young age. I didn't know how to play. I feared retribution for even thinking I could allow myself to play.
My friendships in secondary school were somehow a bit better. I was part of a group of 4. 3 girls and a boy. I had by then developed humour a way to cope. Humour and studying. One of the few graces afforded to me by a family member back then...was my brother urging me to focus on education and pushing me to study. So, I laughed and studied my way through secondary school. Out of these two saving graces, I was...not much else. Out of this, came problematic behaviours. I didn't know how to trust, so I would test my friend's trust. I didn't know how to like or respect myself so I fawned for others and shamed myself. Other times I was frozen in anxiety. Then, when I saw troubled teens getting attention through behaving poorly, I copied them. I remember distinctly being envious that they were receiving attention. I wanted that attention - I didn't even care if it was bad - because it meant I was being recognised. Then other times, maladaptive daydreaming. Dreaming of being adopted by a teacher, or else developing completely inappropriate crushes on others.
My other 3 friends...they had issues of their own. One came from a strict household where it was understood she would be married off soon after finishing her schooling. Another one who struggled academically and was only in school because it would be illegal not to be; her parents did not care for female education and neither did she. And my male friend, the one I laughed with the most, we weren't allowed to be friends. My strict middle eastern mother would have punished me severely if she found out. As would his family. We had to hide our friendship. If we saw his cousin coming towards us, we would have to stand a distance apart and pretend not to know each other. One time my brother saw us walking in a supermarket together, innocently laughing and joking, and he told us both off and then went to tell my mother.
This was so confusing. We had the most sibling-like dynamic between us. And somehow I felt deep anxiety and fear and dread at our friendship becoming common knowledge.
None of that ended up mattering anyway, after another of my siblings died at the tail end of our schooling. Me and the male friend would go on to the same college for the next 2 years but the part in me that was capable of forming attachments had seemed to altogether wither and die. My brother's death changed my view of life from despair-but-with-some-glimmers to a darkness that I can't quite explain. Sometimes I'd try to hang out with that friend but we both knew it was never the same. I didn't know what to talk about anymore. I didn't know how to joke or laugh or find the silly in anything. My other 2 friends from school, they disappeared from my life. One of them did indeed marry not long after finishing her education, and the other just disappeared outright.
I don't know why I am typing all this.
I've had a pretty rough couple of days. Well, horrible to be honest. Horrible and lonely.
I worked a bit too much last week and this seems to always happen when I do that. I begin to feel tired, and weak, and then horrible, and lonely, and stuff from the past comes up....
The present feels too hard. I don't know how to look after myself when I feel weak; the table with the criss-crossing legs is no longer here to encase me. And even if it were, I have outgrown it. I no longer get safety from enclosures like that anymore; physical or mental. Hiding away, distracting myself, any of these ways in which that proverbial table manifested itself in my adult self....they long since stopped working. Since 2018. And yet, the excruciating experience of the reality that I needed shielding from hasn't.
Who knows if I'm even making sense anymore. A big mind dump today. I feel the urge to apologise for not having more clarity, or wisdom or humour, but I won't. I'll just hold on, for now.
Maybe it would make more sense if I explain the other type of life, the one I have had. Where traumatic experiences pile on top of each other, and instead of building up neatly on top of each other to form a good sturdy house, instead they get throw haphazardly to form something of a ramshackle. The units making up the house - representing different areas of life such as relationship with the self, relationship with others, education, careers, one's emotional landscape, one's mental state....have not been put together thoughtfully. *, even the individual bricks making up each unit have not been meaningfully sourced to see if they are suitable.
I don't really have many continuous friendships, for example. A bitter regret of mine. My ideas of friendship were so complicated and confusing.
I had hardly any friends in early school years. We had just moved from the Middle East to the UK. I didn't understand the language. Then, when I did, I didn't understand...everything else. I remember feeling so utterly dazed and confused as a child. You know when they describe a deer caught in headlights, frozen in fear? It hurts to feel like that was my childhood. My experiences of 'other people' at home were that of cruelty, of unkindness, of mockery, of being shamed and degraded. Being at school...suddenly it felt like there was hundreds of potential sources of any number of these things to be dished out to me. I was scared, every day. Hiding and being invisible wasn't so easy. I would crawl under those outdoor tables in the school yard. The small space in the middle, wedged in between the criss-crossing table legs. It was so small, it hurt my body to crawl in there, as the legs pushed stubbornly against my skin. I don't know why I went in there so often. I guess something about an enclosed space perhaps offered some sense of safety and comfort.
It hurts to remember this. It hurts to realize how wrong I had gotten it, based on the viciousness I'd seen at home; the cruelty that had shaped my worldview to be warped and destructive at such a young age. I didn't know how to play. I feared retribution for even thinking I could allow myself to play.
My friendships in secondary school were somehow a bit better. I was part of a group of 4. 3 girls and a boy. I had by then developed humour a way to cope. Humour and studying. One of the few graces afforded to me by a family member back then...was my brother urging me to focus on education and pushing me to study. So, I laughed and studied my way through secondary school. Out of these two saving graces, I was...not much else. Out of this, came problematic behaviours. I didn't know how to trust, so I would test my friend's trust. I didn't know how to like or respect myself so I fawned for others and shamed myself. Other times I was frozen in anxiety. Then, when I saw troubled teens getting attention through behaving poorly, I copied them. I remember distinctly being envious that they were receiving attention. I wanted that attention - I didn't even care if it was bad - because it meant I was being recognised. Then other times, maladaptive daydreaming. Dreaming of being adopted by a teacher, or else developing completely inappropriate crushes on others.
My other 3 friends...they had issues of their own. One came from a strict household where it was understood she would be married off soon after finishing her schooling. Another one who struggled academically and was only in school because it would be illegal not to be; her parents did not care for female education and neither did she. And my male friend, the one I laughed with the most, we weren't allowed to be friends. My strict middle eastern mother would have punished me severely if she found out. As would his family. We had to hide our friendship. If we saw his cousin coming towards us, we would have to stand a distance apart and pretend not to know each other. One time my brother saw us walking in a supermarket together, innocently laughing and joking, and he told us both off and then went to tell my mother.
This was so confusing. We had the most sibling-like dynamic between us. And somehow I felt deep anxiety and fear and dread at our friendship becoming common knowledge.
None of that ended up mattering anyway, after another of my siblings died at the tail end of our schooling. Me and the male friend would go on to the same college for the next 2 years but the part in me that was capable of forming attachments had seemed to altogether wither and die. My brother's death changed my view of life from despair-but-with-some-glimmers to a darkness that I can't quite explain. Sometimes I'd try to hang out with that friend but we both knew it was never the same. I didn't know what to talk about anymore. I didn't know how to joke or laugh or find the silly in anything. My other 2 friends from school, they disappeared from my life. One of them did indeed marry not long after finishing her education, and the other just disappeared outright.
I don't know why I am typing all this.
I've had a pretty rough couple of days. Well, horrible to be honest. Horrible and lonely.
I worked a bit too much last week and this seems to always happen when I do that. I begin to feel tired, and weak, and then horrible, and lonely, and stuff from the past comes up....
The present feels too hard. I don't know how to look after myself when I feel weak; the table with the criss-crossing legs is no longer here to encase me. And even if it were, I have outgrown it. I no longer get safety from enclosures like that anymore; physical or mental. Hiding away, distracting myself, any of these ways in which that proverbial table manifested itself in my adult self....they long since stopped working. Since 2018. And yet, the excruciating experience of the reality that I needed shielding from hasn't.
Who knows if I'm even making sense anymore. A big mind dump today. I feel the urge to apologise for not having more clarity, or wisdom or humour, but I won't. I'll just hold on, for now.
#2
Recovery Journals / Re: The ramblings of an abused...
Last post by GoSlash27 - Today at 06:44:28 PMQuote from: GoSlash27 on Today at 12:46:21 PMMom brought me down to the school and urged them to take me in at age 4. She demonstrated that I was far too precocious to be sitting at home. She had me demonstrate mastery of all the things they teach in kindergarten. Numbers, shapes, colors, etc. I knew my street address, home phone number, My mom and grandmother's full names, etc. Then she pulled off her favorite party trick: She'd pull out a book from her purse, open it to a random page, and have me read it aloud.
On this day it was "A Day No Pigs Would Die".
The school relented on the grounds that while I was too young to enroll, I technically would be old enough before the end of the school year.
Actually, upon further reflection this is not quite correct. She took me down there at the age of 3, not 4. They refused to enroll me that year, but relented on enrolling me that fall when I was 4.
#3
AV - Avoidance / Re: Dissociation, depression a...
Last post by Kizzie - Today at 06:05:33 PMHi Erik - Sorry to hear you are feeling so numb and exhausted right now, CPTSD and recovery can take so much out of us. Are you in therapy at the moment? If so, you might want to speak to you therapist about how you're feeling.
If not, I found what helped me (and please know we're all different so these may not be right for you), was to take what I like to call "trauma breaks." I would put down the books about trauma, read and post less here, take naps, try and do some fun things which could include just binge watching a good TV show if that's all you're up for, take short walks in the fresh air, or go for a ride in the car.
I hope this is helpful!
If not, I found what helped me (and please know we're all different so these may not be right for you), was to take what I like to call "trauma breaks." I would put down the books about trauma, read and post less here, take naps, try and do some fun things which could include just binge watching a good TV show if that's all you're up for, take short walks in the fresh air, or go for a ride in the car.
I hope this is helpful!
#4
AV - Avoidance / Re: Dissociation, depression a...
Last post by NarcKiddo - Today at 06:04:41 PMI'm sorry you're struggling with exhaustion.
For myself art or exercise can often help - but with exercise it is a very fine judgement as to whether I need physical rest or should start moving a little to see if I can push myself out of it. Given you describe how you are feeling as "really bad exhaustion" it does not sound to me as if exercise is likely to help. That said, some sort of movement is important and if you can get out into the fresh air for a short walk that is probably worth trying to do.
The main thing I get from your post is your statement that it is hard to do anything productive. That sounds as if you are being a bit hard on yourself. Perhaps you are thinking that you "should" do something productive. But looking after yourself is of itself productive and the goal is a very important one. So my main suggestion is to take as much pressure off yourself as possible. Use as much time as you can to take care of you, whatever that looks like.
Wishing you well.
For myself art or exercise can often help - but with exercise it is a very fine judgement as to whether I need physical rest or should start moving a little to see if I can push myself out of it. Given you describe how you are feeling as "really bad exhaustion" it does not sound to me as if exercise is likely to help. That said, some sort of movement is important and if you can get out into the fresh air for a short walk that is probably worth trying to do.
The main thing I get from your post is your statement that it is hard to do anything productive. That sounds as if you are being a bit hard on yourself. Perhaps you are thinking that you "should" do something productive. But looking after yourself is of itself productive and the goal is a very important one. So my main suggestion is to take as much pressure off yourself as possible. Use as much time as you can to take care of you, whatever that looks like.
Wishing you well.
#5
Recovery Journals / Re: The ramblings of an abused...
Last post by GoSlash27 - Today at 05:54:22 PM My father was arrested on January 27th, 1974 for domestic assault that occurred on Jan 24th at "Hingepin Manor". He was using an alias. He was released on Feb 1st. I don't know if he went home after that after the babysitter gave up calling, or he just never went home.
My sister told me a month and a half ago that she had gone down to Maryland to visit my half brothers in the early 2000s. The eldest brother told her a story about the time mom had ditched them with a babysitter to run off with my dad. The lightbulb never flickered. It should have become crystal clear then, but I didn't put 2 and 2 together.
My sister told me a month and a half ago that she had gone down to Maryland to visit my half brothers in the early 2000s. The eldest brother told her a story about the time mom had ditched them with a babysitter to run off with my dad. The lightbulb never flickered. It should have become crystal clear then, but I didn't put 2 and 2 together.
#6
Please Introduce Yourself Here / Re: Seeking Support after Extr...
Last post by Kizzie - Today at 05:30:42 PMHi and a warm welcome to Out of the Storm Seeking to Survive 
I'm sorry to hear you are feeling so isolated. I think it's good that you are reaching out here because even though we are anonymous and virtual, I find there's a feeling of being connected to a large community. I like that members here really understand what it feels like to struggle with CPTSD and share their own experiences and suggestions about what worked or did not for them. And there is a lot of caring support which it sounds like you really need right now.
I'm sorry to hear you are feeling so isolated. I think it's good that you are reaching out here because even though we are anonymous and virtual, I find there's a feeling of being connected to a large community. I like that members here really understand what it feels like to struggle with CPTSD and share their own experiences and suggestions about what worked or did not for them. And there is a lot of caring support which it sounds like you really need right now.
#7
AV - Avoidance / Dissociation, depression and e...
Last post by erik5 - Today at 04:05:53 PMI've read Pete Walker's book "From Surviving To Thriving" but I'm stuck in the healing steps because of emotional numbness. I have depersonalisation and I'm super tired all the time, which I've read that this could be because of dissociation.
Pete recommends "Coping With Trauma-related dissociation." Have anyone else read it?
A big problem for me right now is the really bad exhaustion, which makes it hard to do anything productive. Does anyone have any recommendations for it?
Thanks.
Pete recommends "Coping With Trauma-related dissociation." Have anyone else read it?
A big problem for me right now is the really bad exhaustion, which makes it hard to do anything productive. Does anyone have any recommendations for it?
Thanks.
#8
Recovery Journals / Re: the next step
Last post by NarcKiddo - Today at 02:15:53 PMIt's good to notice changes and watch cautiously rather than jumping to a conclusion in any direction. But the shift does sound like it is a good direction which is great news. I hope you enjoy the luncheon today.
#9
Recovery Journals / Re: the next step
Last post by sanmagic7 - Today at 01:53:03 PMfeeling pretty good today. there seems to be a shift that has happened, and i'm not sure about it yet. w/ all that happened the past 2 weeks, my level of exhaustion has not been where i expected it to be - much lower - and after everything w/ my therapy breakdown and my D being sick, and me running around, chores, errands, driving here and there to pick up medicine and such for her, cooking, (that's a biggie) to make it easier for her, i did not get stress flu. very unusual, and something that hasn't happened in a very long time. i'm not sure about this yet, just cautiously watching myself. it feels different, tho.
today is the girls' luncheon. we'll see how that goes. haven't done something like this is many ages, especially w/ there being someone present who i don't know.
today is the girls' luncheon. we'll see how that goes. haven't done something like this is many ages, especially w/ there being someone present who i don't know.
#10
Recovery Journals / Re: Living As All of Me
Last post by sanmagic7 - Today at 01:47:41 PMhey, hannah1, as to your question 'whose fault is it?', i'd always say it's not the victim's fault. we've been victims of others' behaviors, examples, words - not saying we have stayed in the victim mode - and the victim is not to blame. blame and shame and guilt all belong to the perpetrator(s). we've acted in a way always to protect ourselves from further harm. even if it was a passive stance, such as fawning or freezing, it was an action we undertook to keep ourselves safe. that's my take on it anyway.
also, the way i see it, our feelings (i learned this somewhere along the way, and it made sense to me) are directed by our experiences. if we've experienced love, we feel love, we can give love, we can accept love. if we were shamed, if shame was put on us by others for our actions, words, thoughts, whatever, we adopted it as part of ourselves, even tho it wasn't ours to begin with. we had no choice - we had to live w/ the people who shamed us so to make ourselves more worthy of their care, we brought it into ourselves as a way, once again, to protect ourselves.
didn't i once hear that shame comes from conscience? that people w/o a conscience don't feel shame? or guilt, for that matter? but if we were manipulated w/ shame/guilt and it was equated to us being 'bad', we didn't have the logic, perspective, knowledge about ourselves as humans to say 'NO'! i think there is a natural shame built into us, like when we begin being aware of our bodies and don't want them to be on display. that's an instinctual boundary, tho, isn't it? not as a way to think of ourselves as bad, somehow, but to protect our rights to our own bodies.
there's so much here, and i just rambled some of the stuff i've heard about these things, that make sense to me. if this doesn't sit well with you, please let me know. love and hugs
also, the way i see it, our feelings (i learned this somewhere along the way, and it made sense to me) are directed by our experiences. if we've experienced love, we feel love, we can give love, we can accept love. if we were shamed, if shame was put on us by others for our actions, words, thoughts, whatever, we adopted it as part of ourselves, even tho it wasn't ours to begin with. we had no choice - we had to live w/ the people who shamed us so to make ourselves more worthy of their care, we brought it into ourselves as a way, once again, to protect ourselves.
didn't i once hear that shame comes from conscience? that people w/o a conscience don't feel shame? or guilt, for that matter? but if we were manipulated w/ shame/guilt and it was equated to us being 'bad', we didn't have the logic, perspective, knowledge about ourselves as humans to say 'NO'! i think there is a natural shame built into us, like when we begin being aware of our bodies and don't want them to be on display. that's an instinctual boundary, tho, isn't it? not as a way to think of ourselves as bad, somehow, but to protect our rights to our own bodies.
there's so much here, and i just rambled some of the stuff i've heard about these things, that make sense to me. if this doesn't sit well with you, please let me know. love and hugs