Frustrated due to CPTSD and upset with Dissociative Amnesia

[sad panda]

Hello folks,

Would anyone have suggestions on how to cope/deal with feelings of "I'm not doing enough..." or "This isn't happening fast enough!" when dealing with trying to recover lost memories and information due to memory blocks from Dissociative Amnesia? I know that these feelings are part and parcel of my CPTSD making me feel agitated and worried because I have lost so much time because of these blocks. While I am fairly calm on the outside, there is raging turmoil on the inside, and try as I might to redirect or find ways to refocus, lurking just 'there' under the surface are those feelings. I want to take the time to make recovering the memories possible by feeling safe, and not further drive myself into dissociation by trying to power through the blocks. If I am being brutally honest with myself its not going well.

Related and also an interlinking issue is, am I truly prepared for what will happen when I do find my person? In my rush to find them, the question arises whether am I ready to deal with the reality of who they are today, how they feel, and the potential emotions and feelings I will have as a result. My therapist suggested taking three months to just sit with my feelings about what will happen when I do reach out to the individual I have been recovering memories about. She wants me to be prepared for any eventuality, and not just run full tilt boogie into a wall at warp speed and wreck myself in the process. Easier said than done.

Has anyone else had these problems? What did you do to cope with these 'urges' or feelings nothing is happening fast enough, or that you should be doing more? Are there any resources, books, or materials that you would recommend to help with these issues separately, or together? I'll be here. Thanks!

[zen_racer]

I can relate to feeling like I'm not going fast enough in my own healing.  I have had a number of things in my life that have gotten me to sort of ignore things I don't want to concentrate on, but be hyper focused on what I am concentrating on.  Now that I finally know what I'm up against and have the time, insurance, and funds to tackle this aspect of my life, I want to race through it like I have done with so many other things.  The number of people, texts, and videos I've seen saying it takes time and can't be rushed has helped push me to have a more realistic timeline on things.

In my experience, I started getting back memories as well.  For me though, they are memories that would've been better staying buried and never remembered at all.  Once those started coming back, I've wanted this process to slow down.

With what you said about wanting to take the time to feel safe, that sounds a lot like you should look into somatic exercises and work to start regulating your nervous system better.  I don't have any great resources, but that's something I've been working on a bit, and I think it's helped more than I realize yet.  I can now sit down on my couch, and if I remember to take a moment and try to check in with how my body feels, I can feel all my nerves kind of come back online and feel my arms and legs in such vivid detail that just isn't there when I let my brain set it's own priorities.  I'm hoping that in time, I start to not block everything out like I've done for so long.  I'm hoping that I can start feeling safe enough that my nervous system settles down, and allows me to react and process things as they happen instead of focusing all my resources on hyper vigilance and flight/freeze/fawn.

[TheBigBlue]

Hi Sad Panda,

I really understand that feeling of "I'm not doing enough / this isn't happening fast enough."

One of the hardest things I've had to learn is that trauma recovery seems to have its own timeline. There were things my therapist probably recognized long before I could see them myself, but she didn't push me toward her interpretation. She let me discover and understand them in my own time, with my own agency. And when some of those realizations finally came, they were incredibly destabilizing even though I was further along in therapy by then.

Something else I've learned is that recovery isn't very linear. For me it feels much more like a spiral. I come back to the same themes again, but from a different place. I may have more awareness, more capacity to regulate, or more ability to stay present with something that previously overwhelmed me or sent me into dissociation.

So when you write that you want to recover the memories but don't want to power through the blocks and drive yourself further into dissociation, I actually think that distinction is really important. Maybe the goal isn't to make the memories come faster. Maybe it's gradually building enough safety and capacity that whatever does emerge can be experienced and processed without overwhelming you.

One of my therapists uses the image of dipping your feet into the water and then coming back out. You don't have to stay submerged. You go in a little, come back to safety, and perhaps over time discover that you can tolerate a little more.

And maybe one of the things worth putting near the top of the "things to work on" list is self-compassion. These adaptations developed for reasons. Getting impatient with ourselves for still having them can become another way of demanding that we perform recovery correctly and quickly.

Decades of survival adaptations don't disappear because we've finally understood where they came from. I am trying to learn to give myself some of the patience and grace I would give another survivor without hesitation.

Your therapist's suggestion of giving yourself time before contacting this person therefore makes a lot of sense to me. Not because you shouldn't want answers or connection, but because you matter too, including the version of you who will have to live with whatever happens afterward.

One exercise I found surprisingly difficult but also therapeutic was writing a letter that was never meant to be sent. I wrote one to my narcissistic father, putting into words things I might want to say to him if it were safe to do so. But I have no intention of actually sending it. My father has no capacity for self-reflection, and my experience tells me that sharing something vulnerable with him would likely only give him something he could use against me. So the letter wasn't really about him at all. It was about me, giving myself the opportunity to finally say what I needed to say without making my healing dependent on his response.

Maybe that's also something worth considering before reaching out to the person you're looking for: what do you need or hope to receive from that contact, and are there ways of beginning to explore or express some of that before another person enters the equation? Because however much we prepare, we ultimately can't control whether another person responds with understanding, rejection, silence, a completely different memory of events, or something we never anticipated. If we're carrying a deep hope for a particular response, that uncertainty can potentially hurt enormously.

I think that's another reason your therapist's idea of taking some time sounds wise to me. It isn't necessarily about stopping you from doing something that matters to you. Maybe it's about making sure that, whatever you eventually decide and whatever the other person's response turns out to be, you are there for yourself afterward.

[Kizzie]

Hey Sad Panda, I am a good example of why it's not a particularly great idea to rush headlong into recovery and use the "rip the bandaid" off approach. It hit me with a lot of force and knocked me off my feet into a crash. I'm fairly certain a number of members probably went through this because understandably we do not want to live as we have been, we are tired and ready to move on to a better life.

When you think about it, because our abuse/neglect takes place over time there are layers of trauma to work through. Too much all at once and it will likely be overwhelming. We've long used the idea here that Dany mentioned of dipping your toe in and then out, leaving it a bit longer each time and then immersing your foot and shin, to let your body (and heart and mind) slowly get used to the shock of the cold and learn to tolerate it more.

There are many good resources in the Books section here.  Three I really like and found to be quite useful were Pete Walker's CPTSD: From Surviving to Thriving, Judith Herman's Trauma and Recovery, and Courtois's It's Not You, It's What Happened to You. Of course it makes a difference what your preferred type of book is. There's a mix of books in our resource section (e.g., academic, survivor stories, workbooks) so lots to choose from.

Kizzie