Miswired Circuits/Things That Spark

[NarcKiddo]

 

Maybe your words feel tired, too. They are good and hard-working words and I think they serve you well. But neither you nor they can be expected to work at 100 percent all the time. Rest and recuperate.

[Bach]

Maybe your words feel tired, too. They are good and hard-working words and I think they serve you well. But neither you nor they can be expected to work at 100 percent all the time. Rest and recuperate.

Interestingly, in the past few days I've noticed that my voice is tired.  It feels obstructed in my throat.  It cracks and I can't speak loudly or sing well.  I'm trying not to hear that my voice has started to sound a bit like my mother's.  I am full of new difficulties expressing myself.  My life must be trying to tell me something but I'm stumped on what it is. 

[NarcKiddo]

I have read quite a lot of stuff online suggesting that voice difficulties (and indeed other issues surrounding mouth, throat and neck muscles) often go hand in hand with stress and anxiety. And if CPTSD isn't stressful, I don't know what is! As you are having a particularly hard time at the moment, perhaps it is showing up in your voice, too. I have no idea if there are any particular exercises that can relax those muscles, but it may be worth doing some research. Of course that is treating symptoms rather than cause, but it may help.

 

[SteveM]

Sorry to hear you are struggling, we are here to support you.

I'll share some of my personal experience in the hope it might help you and others.

I have done a lot of "work" around getting my voice back, also getting my handwriting back. May sound a bit crazy, the loss of handwriting, that used to actually happen. My life force was so blocked that I would come to a place where I couldn't write.
Almost the same thing with my voice, almost couldn't talk.

Over years as I uncovered the truth about the events of my young life and faced them in safe therapeutic settings and started to release those trapped emotions/energy my voice got steadier for longer periods of time and my handwriting got steadier and my signature actually evolved to one that is actually me.

So my voice and my handwriting have been great indicators to signal me that is time to go back in and work on what darkness presents. I'm just coming off a 4 day couples retreat. My wife and I did a piece of work together that was powerful and the learning for me is that all this time, about 30 years of out 37 year marriage I was trying to shield her from the horror I experienced as a child. I've actually been running a story that somehow I would contaminate her and my kids, that the darkness was contagious. It has taken huge amounts of my bandwidth for decades.
I feel so free tonight as I write this, it's what I've been yearning for for decades.

Bach, I don't know if any of my lived experiences are helpful , I truly hope they are.

[Blueberry]

Interestingly, in the past few days I've noticed that my voice is tired.  It feels obstructed in my throat.  It cracks and I can't speak loudly or sing well. 

I've had problems with my voice similar to this too. I often used to have a large lump in my throat. Not so often or so big anymore but when it's there, it feels like an obstruction. My previous therapist of the past 8 years taught me to be aware of that. It was like this obstruction was tamping everything down, all emotions underneath it, energy, everything.

Sometimes I've tried to tell a T or somebody else about an incident or symptom and found I could only whisper. But at least I could say it at all. In fact I've said that bit out loud e.g. in group work when others said they couldn't hear me.  A bit like SteveM - I lost my voice in early childhood and started gaining it back in safe therapeutic settings.

Voices crack with emotion, even in non-psycho speak...

Bach says: I am full of new difficulties expressing myself.  My life must be trying to tell me something but I'm stumped on what it is.  Whatever it is, I'm pretty sure it will become clear to you when the time is right, e.g. when you can handle the emotions and memories mixed in with it and when you can start on the baby steps to change whatever-it-is even if that's just accepting it really was that bad etc. Well, that's how it goes in my experience anyway.

Sitting with you, sending support  

[Papa Coco]

Bach,

I feel the struggle you're in. Just know that I'm sending my support as well. You're not alone in this. 

[Bach]

I am fussy and anxious like a small needy child.  A grubby frizzy little mess casting about for a safe warm place.  Only on the inside, of course.  I've got my face on.  My functional human shell, which covers all that up just fine as long as no one looks too closely and no triggers get inside it.  What an exhausting way to live!

[Bach]

When I was a child, I was always looking down at the sidewalk when I was walking.  I think I remember hearing my grandmother the psychotherapist saying something about it indicating that I had low self-esteem, but I think it might have been more that I was always hurrying to keep up (I don't think it ever occurred to my mother to slow down to accommodate a small child) and I was looking down to make sure I didn't trip over anything.  It could also have been that I lived in New York City and hurrying through that environment was too overwhelming for a small child who had no secure attachments and was never soothed with kind words or physical affection.  I think that there were times that my mother did try to engage with me in those ways, but when she did it confused and scared me because I never knew why it was happening.  Looking back (very few specific memories, just vague random flashes of people or places or things and waves of chaotic feeling), I think that my mother remembers herelf as having "paid a lot of attention" to me as a child because she would bring me along with her when she was doing whatever she was doing (shopping for dresses and costume jewellery and make-up, having her hair done, going to the bank, to the knitting shop, to the health club where I did pencil puzzles and word games in the lobby while she developed short-lived biceps, to the grocery store...what else? IT'S ALL SO BLANK!) and she would talk to me while riding the bus.  I imagine that she talked to me a lot when there was nothing else to do.  I think I spent a lot of time waiting around for her to talk to me.  I guess this is why all I ever want to do when I visit people is go along with them while they do whatever they want or need to do.  Also why I have spent so much time waiting around for Other.  Maybe even why I spend so much time distracting myself and have so much trouble being present.

[StartingHealing]

Bach,

I feel you.  Not having an adult take into consideration your physicalness as a wee one.. Similar situation with my adoptive mother. she would take me along on her jaunts but it wasn't like I was "with" her. If you know what I mean.

Sending you support if ok.

Wishing you all the best

[NarcKiddo]

I think that there were times that my mother did try to engage with me in those ways, but when she did it confused and scared me because I never knew why it was happening.

Sounds like it was all about your mother, with her bothering to engage you at the times it suited her to do so. By which time any discomfort you may have exhibited which she eventually got round to addressing had long since been addressed by you with whatever coping mechanisms poor little Bach had at her disposal. It makes me think of dog training in reverse: the owner comes home, finds poop on the floor and punishes the dog. The dog, of course, pooped ages ago and has no clue why the owner is angry.

Your post resonates with me. Of course it was better to have my mother being nice to me than in a screaming rage, but it didn't feel any safer.

[Hope67]

Hi Bach,
I also resonate with the things you've written in this entry.  Your post really resonates with me. 
Also sending you support, if that's ok.
Hope 

[Bach]

Thank you for your comments, friends.  They are always appreciated.  Be assured that I do read them and take them in even if I don't respond to them directly.

I feel so fragile, and yet I am holding up pretty well?  I'm getting my work done even though a hundred things about the job trigger me every minute.  I'm leaning more on cannabis than I wish I was, but I'm also leaning on some healthier coping methods like physical exercise and going out to the river and making another faltering but heartfelt attempt to learn how to play the bass guitar.  I'm eating too much food in general, but not crazy too much, and not much junk food.  Go me.  But inside I feel so awful most of the time, so tired of the struggle, so much like I don't want to be here, so trapped between the unhappiness of living and the fear of death.  And the guilt of even thinking about dying and leaving My Person on his own.  My Person and his generous mystifying unconditional love for me.  I have to keep living and have to keep trying to live my best life, because he needs me to, and the only thing I know how to do is do what other people want or need me to. 

[Blueberry]

I have to keep living and have to keep trying to live my best life, because he needs me to, and the only thing I know how to do is do what other people want or need me to.

Bach, I resonate a lot with what you wrote. One difference: I don't feel that anybody needs me to keep living far less live my best life. So although it might not feel that good to do what other people need or want you to do, if that keeps you going, I'd say it's a good thing, or at least less bad than not wanting to keep going.

I hear you're feeling fragile. Hugs if you want them.

[Not Alone]

Bach, I resonate with much of what you said; feeling fragile, yet coping and appearing fine, exhaustion, staying alive for others.

[Bach]

If I ever want to be happier and more comfortable with myself, I will have to get better at doing things I don't like to do that I like the results of.