Post-Traumatic Growth Journal

[dollyvee]

There's a deep fear that people with a lot of power to do something negative to me, are going to draw terrible conclusions about me by how I act or come across, which will set the doom in motion. In places I can't escape. That is a crucial ingredient, just like it was when it started.

You know SO, this reminds me again of how similar our stories are. I often struggle to explain this feeling to people that I somehow get engaged in these "power struggles" with other people, or my deep fear of someone else's "power" over me, and my reluctance to open up and share those parts of me that won't be spoken over; that are mine. It's comforting,and validating, to know that others experience this because I feel like it's chalked up to "old stuff," or dismissed as irrational (like I SHOULD be able to get a hold on this fear, or escape it, but it's often like it's so big, or inexplicable).

I am also reminded of your entry by our conversation about people "rewiring" what I say. At least this is how I remember it, that struggle to be heard. I am currently undergoing a back and forth about this with my t, where I feel the manner in which she says things are akin to the ways that emotion was used as manipulation growing up. She feels like I'm trying to "control" her expression, and I feel like I'm asking for just some recognition. I also had the experience where it was like being baited to give an answer and then "shown," or told that there were studies that showed how just letting a client talk wasn't that effective. To me, it's the same merry-go-round of not being heard as to what my needs, and inner world require, which would actually allow me to open up and trust. Ironically, I chose a t that was about agency and the "self." So, am just offering that there is someone else who understands a bit about the feelings/aftermath that result after having grown up with a critical/encompassing force. I don't know if you've seen them, or if they would be of use, but I've found Jay Reid's videos on scapegoating to be helpful in mapping out a sort of framework for this "displaced" self. Though, there's still more understanding to come.

Sending you support,
dolly

[NarcKiddo]

I'm sorry you had that experience with the neighbour in the garden. I do very much admire your self-awareness in saying you lightly fawned your way through it. I will often lean on old coping mechanisms in that way - but I think there is actually nothing wrong with that if you are aware of them (at the time or when thinking about it afterwards) and can see that they were used reasonably and with purpose. I mean, as an adult with agency (as my T likes to say), you could have told him very rudely to but that would probably not enhance community relations.

[SenseOrgan]

For everybody, much gratitude for you being here 

Marcine
Thanks for sharing that. Even though I know I'm not the only one, that moves very far to the background when this hits. There's nothing like relating to safe others to break the spell of aloneness.

dollyvee
Thank you big time for sharing that. You're actually the first person I'm discussing this very specific issue with. You're validating a lifetime of experiences! Co-validation!

This topic reminds me of Pratricia A DeYoung's definition of shame: "Shame is the experience of one's felt sense of self disintegrating in relation to a dysregulating other." The trigger is misattunement. I think what you describe, and what I also experience with people who leave little/no space for me is that I start to disintegrate. It's a distinct feeling I can't quite put into words. It feels dangerous, accute. The opposite of co-regulation. There's an internal conflict going on between two primal interests. Authenticity and connection, or at least being tolerated. To be or not to be. Exist and get your head chopped off? Or chop your own head off and sort of survive? Check mate. In my view, it stems from the time when my entire survival depended on a connection whith a misattuned and dysregulated person. 

Existing as an individuated entity next to the relentless force in the form of this opinionated/aggressive/etc person is like a life and death struggle for a young child. I regress to this state over and over in the presence of highly triggering people. In the past, I've referred to severe incidents as "being flattened". I do not check out, like in dissociation, I think. But I do instantly loose my self esteem, often a significant part of my cognitive capacity, sense of belonging and safety in general. I end up in a nasty cocktail of despair, powerlesness, anger, shame, loneliness, and probably much more.

And what makes it so painful, is that I really don't agree with this. In the moment. And rightly so. So I remain present with this overwhelming force, pulling from all the resources I have to stay as regulated as I can. It feels like so much is at stake. Not much is in the interaction with the person in front of me in reality. I'm also kind of aware of that in the moment. So it's another battle to not get reactive [and make things even worse], and nip [potential] conflicts in the bud. It's a minefield. One that can happen at any time with people I don't know that well.

I've gotten a bit better at navigating these situations over the years. At least the mild to moderate variety. I think a vital ingredient for that is meditation. It has strengthened the witness. A part of me is not invested, does not jump on the train, and simply registers what's happening. It provides a tiny pause, creating a bit of a choice between reacting or responding. With reacting I also mean completely imploding and fawning all the way. In the recent example I felt an urge to go against the bulldozer as well as to get out of there asap. So it was hard work to stick to my actual position, which was in most cases that I haven't quite formed an opinion around it and don't care all that much to do so. It's the most difficult position to have around this type, but in line with my authenticity. I was way too dysregulated and intimidated to properly connect to that and word my thoughts, so that's how I ended up mildly fawning my way through it. I have a long way to go dealing with these people. I have no choice, since they're everywhere, and everywhere I go, I take my trauma and triggers.

It seems to me our sense of self is easily influenced by the strong emotions of other people. It lacks the robustness of people who were allowed to individuate properly. The ICR is part of this too, but I believe a good chunck of this is the autonomic nervous system taking the wheel during certain social situations and cognition following suit. This is how this developmental arrests manifests. It's old, and heavily compounded. What's also going on is me projecting onto these people. I'm rarely aware that this is what I'm "doing". These people remind me of something I haven't processed, apart from triggering deeply ingrained patterns. My contraction around this keeps happening because I haven't integrated enough of it. I'm not reacting to these people. I'm reacting to what's already within. I also know what it means to not be triggered by them, which is a bit of a tangent not for now. Nothing changed in the outside world, is the bottom line. I didn't make what other people think of me my business.

What you describe about your experiences with T's is very painful. I'm really sorry you have to deal with this. I've had my unfair share of that too. Including the irony of it being patient centered, and so on. Retraumatizing. As a rule of thumb, I believe it's extremely important that people struggling with attachment trauma stay/get on their own team and kindle the fire of agency and truth. So if this is how you feel, the act alone of validating your own experience and not taking on a T's view about you has a lot of merit. A lot! It may be your therapy while your T has another agenda. This is literally what I concluded after the fact about these encounters. There are caveats to this too. It's crucial to be radically honest with ourselves. There may be truth in what the T's are seeing in us too. I've attempted to make many of them into the understanding parent I never had. I did not grant them much bandwidth to see me how they do, or to interpret. Partially justified, partially reactivity on my part. I wasn't ready to feel what it actually triggered in me, and it wasn't safe because the container of attunement wasn't there.

Walking around like an exposed nerve, it's exceptionally hard to find the right therapeutic fit for that moment in time. Give yourself some credit for getting out there, will ya? It's bloody difficult to find the right blend of safety and being challenged. What we carry is exquisitely painful. It took me forever to start opening up, because the therapists on my road were often so triggering and unsafe for me themselves. When it comes to therapist advertising what it is that they offer, what's written on the cover of the book doesn't always match the content. Part of finding the road home, is to tune into when it's time to leave, or actually stay. Only you can know.

Thank you for you're support. I'll check out Jay Reid.


NarcKiddo
Thank you for your kind words adult with agency. Great term! I can honestly say I did the best I could. It hit me by surprise and I was vulnerable to begin with. Fawning helped me survive many situations, so like you I acknowledge it's value. The aftermath was really rough. I hope to hash that out a bit in my next entry.

[sanmagic7]

the inexplicable feeling of fighting against being disintegrated is unnerving, in my experience.  losing self while self is feeling threatened is, as you say, like finding ourselves at the bottom of a nasty cocktail.  it's very much a battle to stay regulated, present, and whole.  i often can't keep up.  love and hugs

[Desert Flower]

Hey SO, I just wanted to say I'm sorry you've been struggling.
I was unable to read all of your last post for fear of disintegrating a little bit again myself.
Just wanted to let you know I'm here. You're not alone.
 

[SenseOrgan]

sanmagic7
This is so validating. I'm sorry you get this! 

Desert Flower
Thank you. Happy to see you again. I'm on the other side right now.  Glad you did the right thing and stopped reading my post. That's what self care looks like.





The night following the trigger wasn't good. Quite a lot of short moments of waking up. I was IN the doom that had been triggered. It was absolute, inescapable, forever. Condemned to eternal loneliness. The fact that such a short interaction, in a place that actually had potential for me to break my isolation, also triggered this, gave my despair extra power and validity. It took me a very long time to find a place where I could see myself not being triggered all the time, and meeting nice people. All of that was out of the window. This place too was a war zone, just like the rest of the world. This entire existence.

When I got up, I was in deep despair. It was excruciating. I didn't know what to do with myself. In my emotional reality, no possibilities existed. The connections I have here, and elsewhere... didn't exist. Any progress I had ever made... didn't exist. Good experiences? Didn't exist. And so on. Total bleakness. My emotional reality flooded everything.

Eventually I connected with a friend. We chatted a long time. And the flood completely vaporized quickly. Like it had been a bad idea that I dropped. No problem. Previous possibilities, connections, and achievements returned. Almost as if nothing had happened. Fully in, fully out. A day and a half later, I'm still out. Amazing.

It feels like something far away now. Yesterday I started having some insight around it. Today I have to work hard to tap into this. I wrote down just a few words right after. I'm glad I did.

TW/the nature of reality
I haven't thought this trough, it's a brainstorm of sorts...

What we take reality to be isn't objective. It's formed. As is the sense of self. On a moment by moment basis. The perceiver and the perceived aren't separate. What ends up being one's experience at any given moment, depends on an endless amount of variables. Most humans are capable of experiencing an extreme range of emotions and states. But we're not all in the center of the bell curve. What we experience is the subjective truths we have gathered throughout our lives. About who we are, and what other people and the world are like and what they mean in relation to who we are. Libraries of it.

Some truths are of higher importance than others. The most important ones are about survival. In the case of PTSD, they are front and center [almost] all the time. With other types of trauma, there may be more flexibility. There are situations where these truths are in the forefront, and situations where other truths are. It's highly variable. Both in time and from person to person. The most appropriate version for the moment is pulled up, without us even realizing it. This is the world we live in. What we interact with. It's all projection. The entire world as we experience it. We don't see other people. We see what we project onto them. The same goes for the world, and who we experience ourselves to be.

What happens in an EF, is that we're back in an emotional truth we've learned. We've learned how that feels, and also what this means in terms of agency, and possibility of changing our situation. In the case of trauma, in the situations in which it was created, our options were severely limited. A situation like that, the possibility of being in one a gain, is of extremely high importance to the system. These are profoundly educational moments. We have very important memories about this. They have come to make up some of the most fundamental building blocks of our sense of self and of reality. They make up our truth to a large degree.

What I experienced the other day, was a dramatic shift between truths. Two in a row, actually. Back and forth. Experienced by the same person. In the same world. The EF feels so real because it's a truth I learned early in life and it was repeated ad nauseum. In part also by myself via isolation in various ways. My brain predicts how situations/life will be, and comes up with the most optimal action to take. A bit like the weather report is created with a gazillion projections, producing a range or a likelihood. The prediction is based on my emotional truths. A thick stack of it. Perhaps a tiny bit on my intellectual knowledge. These predictions and truths need to be wrong and disproven. Endlessly.

In line with what Einstein said about solving problems, I think it's going to be pretty hard for this brain to go against this brain. Particularly when highly emotionally charged truths are pulled up and projected onto the future and even the present. As per usual, I arrive at the conclusion that connection is key. I don't think that I'm exaggerating if I say that everything depends on it.

[Chart]

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
 

[Desert Flower]

I think that's a very accurate description of what's going on SO, and very helpful too. I can feel these two states very well myself. The difference is huge.
 

[SenseOrgan]

Hi Chart, welcome to the party! Can't wait for you to chime in. Happy to hear things here resonate with you. Good luck out there with the skills that pay the bills!

Desert Flower
Thank you. I never intended to write all of this, really. It's like the floodgates opened up once I attempted to describe what's going on. Great to have your feedback on this!




I'm convinced, that for the deepest level of psychological trauma, the attachment wound, the prediction error needs to happen experientially. What has been learned preverbally as truth, won't be disproven on a strictly cognitive level. That's why CBT doesn't work for attachment trauma. I've listened to almost everything I could find on YT by a therapist and researcher called Bruce Ecker. He and his team are credited for discovering the mechanism behind what they call memory reconsolidation. It's what actually happens in the brain, when reality doesn't match what the brain predicted. That's a learning moment. Every form of psychotherapy aims to bring this about, and send the client home a little differently than they stepped into the office. Targeted. In my experience, most of them don't live up to the claims. Regardless of the particular modality that's used is backed up by scientific data. I'm not saying this is necessarily a fact. But it is my experience. I think attachment trauma is inherently treatment resistant. Precisely because the truths that were learned are so old and compounded. They're probably buried under a gigantic pile of other truths, that partially overlap with it, an also all point back to who we are [in relation to others], and so on. It's not just something we experienced. Not even just something very challenging. It's something that's in the middle of who we experience ourselves to be. And the world. Our existence. It's being predicted and confirmed on an ongoing basis.

Bruce Ecker developed a therapy called coherence therapy [CT]. The aim is to bring about prediction errors in the client's brain. CT doesn't have a counteractive approach. That is to say, it doesn't aim to replace or override thoughts, emotions, or behavior with an alternative. It relies on the brain to do all of that on it's own, as a result of encountering prediction errors. So the chance of invalidation is also slim. The existing truths aren't being "challenged". The brain is simply being fed with information, in the light of which, learning occurs on a deep level. This has definitively happened to me during PSIP sessions, when I was so vulnerable, yet able to show up with it in relation to the T. And it was safe. I barely knew how to handle the safety in connection, because it was so alien to me. A mild version of this happens here on this forum. Every time I have another wonderful exchange.

I've listened to Ecker describing some sessions. I got the impression that he's highly skilled and attuned. A wonderful human being overall. But also that the CT approach still is rather cognitive and could be more experiential. The main thing that seems to happen in CT therapy is talking. In everyday consciousness. I do not want to debunk any of it, and I don't have any personal experience with CT, but this still is my journal and I do have my doubt about CT. Because of that. Nevertheless, I do think Ecker has dug down to where we need to go psychotherapeutically. Especially in the case of attachment trauma. That, is awesome!

Ecker and his team started to discover that memory reconsolidation occurs in more modalities than CT. Clinical psychologist Niall Geoghegan ended up creating a dedicated website for it. What these modalities have in common, is that they're experiential. The list is incomplete. It's a work in progress. Since he's concerned about the use of psychedelics in psychotherapy, Geoghegan unfortunately didn't include PSIP thus far. My hunch is that it actually needs to be the first one on the list, but that's my bias. I'm having doubts about accessing the deepest parts of trauma "au natural", which is something psychedelics can assist with like nothing else. Even with low to moderate doses. I do also have some concerns about the use of psychedelics in psychotherapy though. We're still very much in the early stages, these are very powerful substances, and this cohort is very vulnerable.
 
Nowadays, I tend to think that what happens outside of the limited time in therapy, is vitally important also. It really needs to work in tandem with the therapy. The line between therapy and daily life needs to be thoroughly blurred, in order for this to take root, I think. In my case, at least. It can't be therapy over here, and the rest of my life over there. Because attachment trauma influences all facets of my life. All day, every day.

One of the modalities on the list is AEDP. I already put it on our list of therapies a while ago here. There's overlap with PSIP [also listed on our list here] which I can't reproduce anymore, but hence my hunch.

[Marcine]

SO, this is really interesting stuff you are diving into and dare I say (in a good way) playing around with to see what fits with you.
Cognitive v experiential
Heart/feeling v mind/thoughts
Time during therapy session v life outside
And how synthesize it
Alchemize it

"I barely knew how to handle the safety in connection, because it was so alien to me. A mild version of this happens here on this forum. Every time I have another wonderful exchange."

I completely relate with that.
The word "community" is overused in our world. We all long for it and it is our birthright. Feeling seen and appreciated and reciprocally connected... that naturally allows the integration of safety and closeness.

There is a small sacrifice of individual independence to being
part of a group.

But the benefits of connection hopefully outweigh that.

I always appreciate the thought-provoking that your posts set off in me— thank you!

[sanmagic7]

hey, SO,

when reading your post i thought about an exercise i used to do w/ couples - what did one say and what did the other hear?  it was quite amazing how mis-heard we might be based on triggers from tone or word usage.  an example my D discovered was when she lived w/ 2 other people, and she asked one the, supposedly, simply question - 'do you want to take the garbage out?'  this lead to an extreme discussion from the other about how manipulative that question is, passive-aggressive way of mandating something in the form of a question.

when she brought it up to me, totally confused about what had been said to her, i explained that a lot of people are brought up with the idea of a question hiding an order.  do you want to do *whatever* is often used in the workplace, in relationships of all kinds, by teachers, in churches - i don't know of a place where it isn't used regularly (from my limited perspective).  she didn't know that at all (i'd never used that on my kids) so she was unaware that it is prevalent in the world, and many many people are familiar with it.  to her, it was a simple question, and if you don't want to, just say so and someone else will.

so, perspectives being created by background, learning, teaching, yes, i totally agree.  and i think emotions extend from those perspectives, ultimately from what we learned and were taught.  trigger emotions based on our original experience that are still hanging around, waiting in the wings, so to speak, for that perspective to rear its head. 

when i lived in mexico, i learned about the culture of poverty.  since i'd always had a roof over my head and food on the table, it wasn't something i was familiar with.  living there, tho, in the midst of it (i didn't live in an american compound/gated community, but in town w/ my mex. husband) was eye-opening.  and mind-opening, for that matter.  here were people who existed on beans and corn tortillas, literally.  many lived in a flood zone in town, and the powers that be determined that providing electricity for them would be useless, so they lived without every day. (i think of this when i hear about disasters and people having to go w/o electricity for several days, and how awful it is for them)

and i'm not putting anyone down here, but due to life experience, teaching, learning, their perspectives have been formed far differently than mine were.  the idea of long-term planning doesn't exist. there is no 'vision' for the future. these people worry about getting enough beans and corn daily to feed their kids.  they kill the golden goose cuz they see something bright and shiny in front of them and can only think how it will relieve the pain in their bellies for a few days.

i saw my husband work 10 to 12 hr. days, 7 days a week.  if you don't work, you don't get paid.  there is no sick leave, no vacation days, no mental health days.  nothing about self-care.  so, their perspectives are completely different from someone like me, w/ pale skin, a minority person in their country coming from across the border - a border i could cross at will but my husband wasn't allowed.  they have no sense of personal power, no agency, as it were, are dictated to by the catholic church - which means no birth control - and make it thru each day as it comes.  their emotions are often tied up with despair. there is no light at the end of the tunnel.

this experience changed me profoundly.  i made many friends while i was there, good, decent people no matter their financial status.  all they want to do is make enough money to feed their families, literally in many cases.  so, the idea of perspective being different for each individual rings true to my mind. we are all products of not only our learnings, but of our race, our religions, our educational levels, and each has its own perspective.  we hear other people thru our own perspective filter, which can make communication go off the rails from a different experience with a word, gesture, tone of voice, eye contact. 

and that's why i think learning about cultures is important, learning about perspectives is important, learning how individuality is important.  whew!  i guess i kind went off the rails there, but i've witnessed the assumptions, had a lot of them myself until i moved into a different culture and learned differently.  it's a wonder any of us can be made to understand each other at all!