Overwhelmed on where to begin

[pianoplant]

I was officially Dx with CPTSD a few months ago and it made so much sense. I felt validated having a name to describe my chaotic brain, thoughts and behaviors. But I feel like there's SO MUCH I need to do in order to heal. I have over a dozen self-help books on various but related topics sitting in my bedroom waiting to be read. Right now I'm working through Pete Walkers surviving to thriving and Kristen Neff's self-compassion.  I want to read all these books, I want to work on mindfulness and mediation, but I also want to work through Kristen Neff's workbook that accompanies the first one, I want to continue EMDR therapy, I want to journal (about my day, past traumas, prompts, etc), but what about inner child work? Parts work? Pete Walker talks about the importance of grief work about our lost childhoods, but better to do it after practicing mindfulness (I think that's what he was getting at). But I really want to learn how to set and enforce boundaries to make my day to day life more bearable. I'm so overwhelmed! I feel like I need a personal trainer for healing, which I suppose is what a therapist is, but EMDR so far hasn't been what I expected. It's not bad per se, just not what I thought.

Does anyone have any ideas on where to start? What has worked best for them? What practices or work has seen the most success in healing? I want to heal but I feel paralyzed.

[dollyvee]

Hi pianoplant,

I've recently revisited some of the books I bought when I was (sort of) first starting to really dig into cptsd and start the healing thing in depth, and they now seem to make sense in relation to me. These aren't abstract concepts anymore but can really "see" myself in them. I feel like healing is peeling back the layers of an onion, and just when you think aha!, you start another go round. I feel too, that there isn't an end destination where you will be healed and problem free but, for me, it's been a slow process of acknowledging I can stand on my own, have regard for myself (little by little), and begin to see the patterns that play out in my life.

I started with EMDR and I think it was helpful to get some distance from "being in the soup" as my t calls it, but others on here haven't had a good experience with it. IMO how dissociated you are might play a factor. IFS also made a lot of sense to me and was one of the first things to actually help me connect to my emotions (or something in me), as well as reading The Shame That Binds You by John Bradshaw as a way to start identifying what was keeping me separate from things. Or one element of maybe why I was so keen to suppress things. I also recently (re)discovered Healing Developmental Trauma by Laurence Heller and I think this is the next step for me along with some type of bodywork (more neuroaffective touch than SE I hope). The preverbal stuff is/was quite difficult to get a handle on, and think I was dealing with some dissociation that I didn't realize early on in this process. IFS showed me this though didn't really understand what I was looking at at the time.

Other important factors have been seeing a good functional health practitioner to help get certain factors under control. I have an issue with mycotoxins (along with other issues stemming from that) and it impacts your CNS. So, certain lifestyle changes (no gluten, dealing with mold etc) have had an impact on my "body" anxiety and mood. I also microdose with intention, and asking to see what parts "run the show" has been quite revealing. Someone on the forum recommended the Beyond Bitchy podcast for dealing with boundaries ages ago, and I'm a big fan of Heidi Priebe's videos as well as Dr. Ramani (if you're dealing with narcissism). Dan Brown also has a very good, short video on visulaizing the ideal parents. I find IFS is also a good way to get in touch with the young parts of ourselves if you're able.

edit: Also, IMO boundaries are tricky for me. I've learned to say no, or getting better at it at times, but it doesn't/didn't stop me from feeling "psychically" invaded if that makes sense, like I don't have energetic boundaries as it's put in the healing developmental trauma book. Even my t would say, why does their behaviour get to you? And I would feel abnormal because it did. I couldn't just turn this stuff off. I'm hoping that addressing the connection survival style, and doing preverbal work (what comes up in the body around that etc), will help to go some ways to start addressing this.

edit 2: this forum and being able to share (for myself and without judgement) what is going on as well as connecting to people with similar histories, and learning from everyone's experience here

Thanks for asking this question. It was very thought provoking to try to put into words, how did I get better? because I feel you don't really realize it's happening when you're going through it. I guess little by little you build up the inner resources (by doing all the things your doing) and it just kind of happens. At least in my experience. 

Sending you support on your journey,
dolly

[Blueberry]

Pianoplant, that's a good question, but difficult. There's a saying in cptsd healing "The slower you go, the faster you get there". Which is rather frustrating.

You say you're working through Surviving to Thriving and Neff's Self-Compassion, so you have started! For my healing process that would be more than enough at the same time.

There are different ways to heal and different ways to get on the healing journey. If you can feel into what methods appeal to you now, that might help. Feeling into can be very difficult though, you might not manage to hold that for long, that's common in cptsd. Though of course you have started, so you might want to wait to feel until you've finished Surviving to Thriving and Neff's Self-Compassion. It's perfectly OK to try something out and then leave it if it doesN't work for you or doesn't work for you atm.

I think Parts work and Inner Child (IC) work overlap. IFS is one of the ways/systems of working with those. I get a sort-of inner allergic reaction to IFS, I don't know why but take it seriously which means I'm listening to whatever Inner Part feels freaked out about it. Taking note has been an important part of my healing, taking my ICs seriously since my parents didn't take my child self and her needs seriously.

EFT (Emotional Freedom Tapping) was very useful for me in learning to accept myself as is. For some reason I don't do it any more, for which I berated myself for quite a while, but my last T said my needs had obviously changed and that's OK!! No reason for shame and self-berating.

For me, positive healing work has been very, very important. That's NOT positive thinking. At some point (after retraumatisation thru FOO and thru at least one therapist), it was important to build up my own resiliency and get in touch with strong, independent Inner Parts before I could really go into the bad stuff. Those Inner Parts were often Inner Children who played independently and did not want to be rescued. There are threads on here which are very important to me like: Three Good Things, Success/Progress, I've Achieved... Again, they're not positive thinking but rather focussing on the positive in my life/day for even like 3 minutes, which strengthens me.

There is also a ton of healing information and experience on the forum, if you have time to read through some of it, even really old threads. That still helps me sometimes. We're all individuals and our healing paths can also be pretty individual. There are also different ideas on healing in different countries and cultures.

Hope this helps somewhat. 

[pianoplant]

Thank you both for taking the time to reply in such depth! I really appreciate it. Toxic Shame is one of the ones sitting on my shelf waiting to be read, and I've heard good things about IFS. I'm a huge fan of Heidi Priebe. Her videos have helped immensely because I feel like she's able to describe my fears and emotions and internal experience relatively accurately, especially her video on scapegoating. I haven't heard of EFT but will read up on it. Thank you for the info!

[storyworld]

Everyone has given you such great responses. I don't feel I have any wisdom to share, but I can share how I "began." For me, I had to start super, super slow, as I quickly became hyperaroused when trying to journal or read trauma books. I don't know if I'd suggest any book over another, except to reiterate what Blueberry said in giving yourself permission to go slow. I also did (and do) a lot of work to build by resiliency to handle the hard stuff by intentionally doing things creative, walking in the sun, etc. And watching clean comedy clips. My therapist continually stresses the need to take in the good stuff to build our bridge/capacity to deal with the hard stuff.

I do understand your feelings of overwhelm. I just made a list of things I might potentially need to process through in therapy, and it brought me sadness. I hate that I'm even on a healing journey, let alone that it appears to be such a long one. All that to say, I get it. It's hard and frustrating and discouraging, BUT, I also know I am healthier today than when I began. (And, I'm consistently sleeping, which is huge for me!)

[Kizzie]

I just wanted to chime in and say I agree with trying to go slowly if you can.  I came into recovery wanting to rip the bandaid off and be all better quickly.  Doesn't work that way as I found out.  Little chunks of reading, therapy, sharing with some shorts breaks - all work better for me personally.

[CactusFlower]

I also understand overwhelm, and I agree that taking it in bites is easier in general. When I found my therapist, I started out by saying I was willing to try different things because I didn't yet know what would work for me. I also had the intention that my male parental unit had years to do what he did, it's not getting fixed overnight. I'm going on my 3rd year in therapy and can't believe sometimes it's been that long. But it has absolutely helped. I'd say be flexible and take it slowly.