The tipping point…

[Chart]

Thank you HannahOne and SenseOrgan.

Extreme exhaustion at the moment. I passed my physical limits Monday and Tuesday. Yesterday it snowed, not much but enough to paralyze the school and much of the transport system. My daughter stayed at home, and me too. We had a lovely day together, made a cake, took a walk in the snow, played scrabble, watched Monty Python's Quest for the Holy Grail, made a pizza... she loves the knights who say "Ni!" But I ate too much sugar and carbs, this morning I broke down in sudden tears in the kitchen, sobbing as the kettle boiled. Made my way back to bed with a tea. I slept like the dead, and still awoke exhausted. Didn't even get up when my daughter went off to school. Normally I do... I feel the eyes of the inner critic peering in at me through the window. I can read his thoughts: he sees a spoiled, lazy, crybaby...  And that makes me scared... I need to move my butt... I need my body back, my energy. I'm seeing things coming and it requires a certain amount of action on my part. Picking up the phone is like moving sacs of ciment. How much longer is my psyche going to function like this? I never understood... it indeed can take years to recover. Cptsd is a MAJOR injury. Why is that fact so hard to completely integrate?

Aller, fait ton PMR Chart ! Un petit coup de pied aux fesses... comme HannahOne fait aux prêtres :-)

[Chart]

Ok, I did it. Did abdominal strengthening, cardiac breathing and PMR. I "cheat". I "trick" myself. I "make deals". No matter how warm and cozy I am in bed, I will always find the energy to make myself a big strong coffee (or tea). So I organize how I'll have my coffee/tea ready and waiting for me when I finish PMR (reward). My routine is usually very early in the morning before going to work. I take over an hour to wake up, so it's not unusual for me to set my alarm for 5am. After it goes off, I doze for at least 45 minutes. I call this the transition. Classically, there is a LOT going on in me at this time. I'm horizontal for starters and that changes everything for me. It is both a period of anxiety AND safety, but the safety has a time limit: I know that it won't last. It's got nothing to do with getting up. Actually, when I do go to a vertical body position, my anxiety plunges, almost to "normal" levels. I can function and usually get on with my day. No, the "safety limit" has to do with my infancy, in my crib, and what was going on outside my room, downstairs, etc. So for years now, I have been exploring this morning "feeling". And as of two years or so, I interact with my inner child at this moment, specifically talking, thinking, imagining I'm hugging him, explaining. All this is imaginary-tactile. I'm dealing with a baby and that baby's capacity of "understanding" their environment is nothing at all like my adult-me capacity. This "translation" of feeling and love and comfort is difficult and weird. Loving others has always been fluid and easy for me. Loving myself on the other hand has taken real effort. It felt totally plastic at the beginning, corny. But I very much appreciated Pete Walker's phrase, "Fake it until you make it..." very much... and took it to heart. I can pretend with all honesty, and over time I've learned... I've learned that that little baby really really suffered, was confused, was terrified and really really wanted "that man" to pick him up and interact with him. He never did. My biological father never gave me any love, quite the reverse. I had a talk with my sister a few months back and mentioned that I always feel like I'm being watched... she confirmed that she has the same feeling, always being observed, someone, somewhere looking questioningly at her. It's the exact same for me. That was our biological father. He was always watching us, like a wary-angry cat who doesn't quite trust anything.

So I did my PMR this morning. It was a little more difficult than usual, but once begun it's only fifteen minutes, so I don't struggle too much. Also, I know the benefits now. Abdominal strengthening is more annoying... I do that first of all, get it out of the way. Cardiac breathing is easy, five minutes usually. Sometimes I do ten. It's just the length of time needed for my tea or coffee to cool sufficiently that I can drink it, check the forum and/or the weather for the day, then PMR.

PMR often gets me crying. That's to say, emotions and tears often well up and come out. Regardless how long I've been doing this, it still comes as a surprise. I usually pause the audio and let it flow the time it needs. I use an audio file I downloaded on my phone (ripped from YT) so I can still be "led" and don't get too lost. Two years I've been doing this and I still feel that I need the person's voice and support (the guy has a German or Austrian accent that totally relaxes me and I really appreciate him...)

So today, during PMR I "sensed" the abandonment wound. I felt it in relation to my last relationship. As I did the exercises, the thoughts of lost love came to me, as they come to me often. That Love that is absent, not there, ungiven... My last relationship was with a woman for whom it was very difficult to give anything, and probably impossible to give emotionally. I remember sensing regularly the situations where aid or support WAS given, it was with resentment and she was not at all at ease doing so. I remember seeing her this way not only with me, but with friends as well. She often wondered aloud to me why she didn't have very many friends. Looking back, I still have feelings of anger... she had a genius-level IQ, but looking into a reflective object, she was totally blind. She was the "construct-to-perfection" to awaken my deepest trauma-wound, abandonment, desperate need for love, ridiculous expectation of understanding or change. Like the million cuts that bleed you out, I woke up one day, off Prozac for nearly a month, went into a panic about a situation with my ex-wife and got a severe reproach from my partner that my behavior was inappropriate for her and that we needed to have a serious talk to correct the situation. I broke up with her. Something in my head said, let's go... let's dance, bring on the chariots and horses and chaos... I surrendered to my inner-child that couldn't stand the humiliation and aloneness and ignorance. You know it's wrong, though no idea what or why. I split in two. For four days or so I reveled in my freedom, feeling a power of decision and control, until one night I awoke in a panic I have never known. I wrote her a text the next morning, and asked for forgiveness, asked that we get back together and try again... even though I knew it was impossible. For four months we "discussed". She showed all the old behaviors and all the evidence came back up into my face. But the pain of the abandonment wound had swallowed me whole. I knew she would never accept me back in her life... I knew I was in for a long haul of suffering and work... I heard an internal voice tell me... years... you're in it for years and years, perhaps forever. I wrote my ex-girlfriend and asked her to not contact me for a year. She has respected that demand and more. After one year, she failed to respond to an email regarding some of her stuff that I wanted to no longer store at my house. I spoke with her mother to organize the situation. I intuitively knew that she was breaking up with her new boyfriend. In hindsight, I know all. But "knowing" doesn't really help much. Now, I want to "feel" something different. And that comes through my body and nervous system... my brain is a sidenote, a distraction, a carnival... Back to life, the present moment, and the fact that nothing is separate. The truth is, I am not wounded at all, I just don't yet know gold when I see it.

[HannahOne]

Hooray for kicking your PMR and exercises where it needed to be kicked!

Your experience of making deals and getting yourself to do it makes sense to me. A mammal won's explore if it doesn't feel safe. It will run, or hunker down. As infants we can't run. So, we hunker. Hunkering can increase fear chemicals, as those keep us still and safe... so it can be a relief to stand up. And, we need to get ourselves to the point where we CAN stand up. Motivation, making deals,  time for our system to shift, and our brains to process.

Part of CPTSD is difficulty in relationships because they do wake up our wounds. The sense of what was lost or never there is profound. The wounds are in the nervous system of which the brain is just one part. I'm sorry you are going through this and also admire your courage to face it and make sense of your experience. May you recognize that gold soon.

[NarcKiddo]

 

[sanmagic7]

chart, i'm sending you a gentle, warm hug to soothe and comfort, a thousand band-aids for the 1000 cuts so they are covered and cared for while they heal, and wrapping you in the softest blanket for warmth and safety.  sitting w/ you while you sip your tea, you're not alone.  listening if you'd like to talk, silent if that works better.  reading to you from a favorite book. my heart goes out to you.  love and hugs