Living As All of Me

[HannahOne]

 
"an organization of how I had come to understand the world growing up. And that control is a part that wants to stop an exile/feeling from coming up."

Dollyvee, I think you're right.
I am going to sit with this.

It may be preverbal, an unconscious agreement. A defense. An exile. "I'm not fleeing from feelings....." LOL. Ok, my love, HannahOne, ok.

Maybe I'm not consciously driving myself this way to flee from feelings. Yet the effect is a blunting and evasion of feeling, replacing some feelings with others, replacing grief and rage with "exhaustion" and "I can't feel my arms," replacing despair and a feeling of aloneness with fear about not doing enough, worry about my "mental health" or workout routine, or anger at myself for not achieving X goal.

The dissociation is clearly a protection from feeling, "I can't feel my arms." And I've been having these grieving crying jags, which I think are much needed, I feel regulated after, it's old grief, it's old stuff. The crying jags feel regressive, I wail like an infant. And I have to do it in my car, LOL. Nowhere else alone, or while driving, to keep some other driving part online, I suppose lest I give into it completely? A fear of falling completely in. So I drive myself hither and yon, while crying from the inside out.

I'm going to notice more, both the protection and the exile. How I adapted to a way of being, as you say.

Thank you for your honesty and sharing your experience.
I am deeply grateful and profoundly moved at how other survivors get it. After so many years of therapy where the therapist just so often couldn't get it. I have never shared with anyone but a therapist. So finding you all here is just a whole new world for me. It is a new experience to feel included in a world of people. And amazing that other people have similar experiences to me. And can understand.

I never find that others have a similar experience, my experience was always so alien. Others talking about jobs and clothes and I mumble along, while my experience is a hall of distorted mirrors, ambitions about jobs and clothes while not feeling my arms, nodding and trying to block out internal wailing, yes yes the HOA, taxes, and the cost of gas....Not so here, where I can have an actual conversation about the real me, All of Me, and it connects to the All of others who can converse back about their experiences of the reality they know of being themselves.
 
 

[sanmagic7]

hannah1, i think it's remarkable how our minds/brains have come up with ways for us to be protected, including from feelings.  staying busy could certainly be one of those; worrying, anxiety, OCD, doing too much, too little, tv, phones, gaming, eating too much or too little or unhealthy, and on and on.  i think the key is balance.  i think the first step is realization, which it sounds like you might be close to.  i think the hardest part is actually recognizing, then feeling those feelings, get them behind us.  very rough stuff, indeed. i've had a really difficult time w/ this last part.  and the realizations have knocked me down as well at times.

while it's not always possible to find balance, depending on what's going on in our lives - for example, the very poor don't have very many choices to propagate balance - we can do what we can and know we did that much.  it takes time, it takes work, it has its ups and downs, but when we keep chipping away, whether it be over days or years, the results come.  sending you love and a hug filled w/ a series of chippers, each a different size, for when you might be ready to utilize them.

[HannahOne]

SanMagic, it's pretty wild to me to say, I am in the process of owning my feelings. After so much therapy?!? But apparently that is the case. These are my feelings. I can know where they are coming from, what they relate to in the past, and own them as mine in the present.

It really does knock me down. And again, after decades of therapy...how can that be.

I can only surmise that as I grow, I grow in capacity to take delivery of it all. So there is more to do. The losses compound, loss of experience of being loved, loss of experience of being able to love safely without betrayal. Loss of experience of safety. Loss of rupture and repair practice. Loss of shared knowing. Loss of developmental steps. Loss of me. Of parts of me. Of who I might have been.

I am thinking about grief, and complicated grief. I scraped this off the Internet for complicated grief:
"Persistent Intense Grief: Unrelenting, deep sadness and yearning for the deceased that does not lessen over time.
Preoccupation with the Loss: Constant thoughts of the deceased or the circumstances surrounding the death.
Inability to Accept the Death: Feeling like the death did not happen or that life is meaningless without them.
Excessive Avoidance: Actively avoiding people, places, or reminders of the loved one.
Emotional Numbness or Anger: Feeling detached from others, experiencing anger, bitterness, or feeling like part of yourself has died.
Reduced Quality of Life: Significant impairment in daily life, work, or relationships."

Our grief is ambiguous, it doesn't end in a way as the lost people/relationships may be alive, or if dead, are unresolved. It's a grief that re-arises at each developmental phase of adulthood, I guess. The internal wailing/yearning doesn't seem to go away. Difficulty accepting the loss. Emotional numbness. Feeling like part of me is dead/missing.

And as I age, I become the age my F and M were when they abused me this way, that way, when I left them and didn't look back, when I reapproached and they turned away from acknowledging, I become the age they were when they turned in on themselves, the age when I realized they would never change or grow....

Complicated grief also has no container, there's no funeral for a dead childhood, no community rituals to acknowledge and help me re-form around something other than loss, and no ongoing container---except this forum!

Here we are. I found it.... So I must keep chipping! Thank you for the virtual chippers!! And the hug. Sometimes feels lonely, me and my feelings I have to own. I am not licensed to own this many feelings, LOL.

[Marcine]

——————————————————————
| This Special License entitles
| HannahOne to own, caretake,
| sort, feel, claim, and
| otherwise handle as many of her
| emotions as she deems
| safe and desirable.
| ~ Issued by powers for good
| (No expiration date)

[HannahOne]

Claimed!!!
 
heehee!
Thank you for reading, Marcine!

[NarcKiddo]

there's no funeral for a dead childhood,

Perhaps there should be. I just went away and listened to Elton John's 'Funeral for a Friend' and held a mini funeral in my head while doing so. I'm not quite sure who it was for (I think it was for dead childhoods in general) because I just wanted to see if the music worked. It does for me and I will probably do it again.

Those crying jags are quite amazing in their intensity when they hit, aren't they? I can see why you might fear being taken over entirely. I'm glad you feel regulated afterwards. They are clearly needed.

 

[sanmagic7]

hannah1, i agree w/ NK - we can make our own funerals for our dead childhoods.  they deserve to be put to rest while we grieve what we never had, or that we got and we shouldn't have.  and onward we go, newly forming adults, making our decisions for ourselves instead of having them made for us.  sounds like freedom to me.  and power and boundaries and all we didn't have as kids.  love and hugs

[TheBigBlue]

Hannah, I'm not in a good place to answer, but I wanted you to know that I'm reading and feeling what you write.

[HannahOne]

NK, I send virtual flowers, I am so sorry for your losses. I checked out that song, the organ really makes it!
sanmagic7 and TheBigBlue, thank you for being here, reading, commenting.  It's amazing to be together in this.

[HannahOne]

So with a little help from my friends, Dollyvee, sanmagic7, NarcKiddo, Marcine, SenseOrgan, TheBigBlue, Dalloway, and others, I am feeling my feelings.

I feel silly. I'm middle aged and working on feeling my feelings. After thirty years of therapy I've decided to feel my feelings. It's embarrassing. Oh well!

For the first half of my life, I was in work and survive mode. When I had a feeling, I turned away from it. Sometimes I tried to solve it in the outside world. Change the job. Change location, move states. Change my name. Change my religion. Change therapists. Change therapies. Change hobbies. All of these are a form of "geographic cure." They don't "work," because wherever you go, there you are, and a rose by any other name is still a rose. It worked for what it worked for, in the sense that I got to a safe relationship, a safe home, mostly financially stable, I acquired many skills, experience, friends, stuff, connections.... all of that is not nothing. I come from nothing and I know that all of that is very much NOT nothing. So it worked in that sense.

But all of that is not feeling my feelings. Here I am in a perfectly fine life, and miserable. Because of all these feelings.

I don't really know how to communicate about this but I want to try. Maybe I'll get an Amen, maybe not, either way I want to try. I'm sure it will turn out to be just part of CPTSD or part of the human condition and not anything rare about HannahOne!

The best way I can describe it is that I seem to have specific feeling states that come up. You could call them emotional flashbacks. I just never quite understood what that meant before, emotional flashback. I never had this kind of distance or perspective on my own emotions. I can see lately that some of these very common repetitive feeling states really DONT have anything to do with the present. They are MY feelings. I own them. Nothing on the outside can fix or change them. In the past I only had two options: ignore the feeling or give into it completely. Ignore it and keep going, or stop and fix/change my situation to try to fix/change the feeling. That created some chaos here and there.

Now I have another option. I don't know where this option came from! But lately I can notice, observe, and I just know in my gut what that feeling is about, what it's from. I feel very connected to my feelings. Maybe that's the difference. I'm more connected to myself. I can connect to a much younger me who had those feelings. Somehow that is making a big difference. To tell myself, "Ok, these are MY feelings. They are inside me. I own them. I don't have to solve it right now." And try to be with myself. Let myself know. That feeling is the feeling of standing in front of an empty fridge when you can barely open the fridge door to see it's empty, a feeling of helpless hopelessness. That feeling is the feeling of knowing you're in an empty house, in an empty room, in an empty crib with an empty bottle, a feeling of longing that cannot be allowed to be felt. That feeling is the feeling of knowing what is happening is VERY VERY WRONG and there is nothing, nothing you can do about it, a scary light feeling of flying apart. That feeling is the feeling of wanting to become someone else because this is too painful, a feeling of shutdown. That feeling is the feeling of watching things go very wrong, watching myself become a thing because the other person can't see me as a person, a heavy feeling like I'm a brick. These are actual situations, where I was having these exact feeling states. Knowing that makes a big difference. It's less confusing. It's more clear. I can be more calm-headed because it's not happening now, it's old. I can spare some compassion because I'm old now and not in that situation.

I would describe them a bit like Janina Fisher does, in terms of survival responses.

 I have a submit/hopeless/helpless state. It comes up in a relationship where there's a misattunement. It feels very heavy.  generally ignore it, talk myself out of it. A lot of times that's good. I would torture my partner if I was hopeless every time they didn't bring home the right takeout food or toothpaste. Sometimes it's not good to override that. I have gotten into some bad relationships and situations when I was younger because I ignored the miscommunication or intentional gaslighting and ended up "going along with" or submitting to things that were unhealthy or dangerous.

I have a depersonalization/dissociation state. I guess that's a form of flight. It comes up when the misattunement is more serious? If there's something like betrayal with gaslighting. If my partner brings home the wrong toothpaste and I say so and they respond with denial or excuses, like if they say I never said what kind of toothpaste. I start to doubt my sanity, my reality. I might not feel my arms, or might not be able to hear. Again a major overreaction to toothpaste...so I've coped with this by avoiding asking people for things. Doing it all myself. As much as possible. Needing nothing from anything ever. And avoiding deep sharing as much as possible. Not letting myself be known. And in a way, not even knowing myself. Not knowing All of Me, or not knowing it all at the same time.

I have a state of longing sadness. I think Fisher would call it "attachment cry." But my attachment cry doesn't seem to lead to or even see the possibility of connection or presence. It is a profound despair and hopelessness that's paralyzing and I don't "cry" or cry out, I just feel in my chest a pressure or hollow or feeling of lightness that shouldn't be there. This comes up randomly it seems. Just driving around. Or sitting around. There's a hopelessness to it and also some frantic energy on the edges. I have coped with this by ignoring it, yelling at myself to "stop it," some SIB in the past, or reading, doing screen time, escaping into something that will make me numb.

I have a state of rage, but it's been hard to recognize because it's so internal. On the outside I "keep sweet" as the religion told me. On the inside it feels like blinding tension. I can't see. And everything locks up. Sometimes some SIB. My "fight" state is a bit jammed up. I often end up very sleepy. Dissociating, I guess. But I notice a rage feeling first, a fight feeling, sometimes. I felt trapped in a store the other day and couldn't find my way out very well and I started to feel it. Or when a boundary is crossed, like someone yelling at me. Or at the blood lab when they wouldn't honor my appointment. I just turned and left, so I went to flight. But I couldn't see and walked into two doors on my way out, so that's fight. Fight was very risky growing up and never really worked for me.

Noticing these states as my feelings, as mine, as belonging to me and not happening to me, as generated by me and not imposed on me by someone. Noticing these states and knowing right away who inside it belongs most to, what younger me experienced that first led to this state or that cemented it or that makes it so familiar. Noticing the state and not immediately going to fix it or to avoidance. Noticing the feeling and letting myself think and feel my way through it and cry or say out loud to no one all kinds of unacceptable or impermissible things. Say what happened. Say who did it. Say what didn't happen and should have. Say what I want. Say what I wish would have happened. Say what I think I deserved. Say how wrong it was. Own my right to feel this way right now in this moment. That's the least I can do for all of me. Allow myself to feel what I feel.   

The more I am noticing, and feeling, the more choices I have. The more free I am. To go and do or not to go and do, to live big today or small today, both are ok but I want to have the choice. Growing up, so few good choices. Every choice such a high cost. Now, many choices. The more I feel my feelings and own them as mine from the past, as the feelings of parts of me, the more freedom I may have in the here and now, the more choices will actually be possible for me here and now. 

[SenseOrgan]

It's moving to read this HannahOne. A paradoxical mixture of excruciating feelings and the taste of liberation. It can be a part of you now, since not all of you is drowning in it. Big waves, and underneath, the seabed. Always. Not going anywhere. Just there. The stage on which the waves can play out their saga. Perhaps connection is part of that foundation, making it safe enough to be known.

I'm so sorry for your exiles HannahOne. It breaks my heart to just get a tiny glimpse of what it must have been like. All they want is to be recognized, cared for, loved. In the end, it's good that time has come. It makes sense it took this long, and you had many ways of keeping the pain out of awareness. I think this is the case for most of us here, and humans in general.

Go for it my friend. 

[sanmagic7]

 

[HannahOne]

TheBigBlue  Thank you for reading.

A paradoxical mixture of excruciating feelings and the taste of liberation. It can be a part of you now, since not all of you is drowning in it. Big waves, and underneath, the seabed.

SenseOrgan, thank you for reading. That's such a good description, I really like how you put it together and I'm going to ponder that. It is a taste of liberation. I "Tried" to meditate for many years in various spiritual and secular groups. I'm so interested in the idea that the connection is part of the ground of the new awareness. I truly appreciate your time and energy in responding and reflecting based on your experience. Hooray, I'm not unique! I felt like such a freak alien for so long.

I remain baffled that therapy couldn't provide this kind of ground, I worked so hard for so long in therapy. I am also thrilled that a group can. Maybe it's the nature of group energy, the synergy of each person being themselves. Maybe it's like plants, one lone tree in a field is not strong as a tree in a forest, buffered from the wind and with intertwining roots in an ecosystem of others. Maybe the idea that I could do it by myself in a private therapy room or that time and money and effort could buy the ground was just a lie. Maybe as I am fragmented, it takes more than one person to resonate with All of Me. Maybe it's just that you really cannot understand it if you have not been through it. Whatever the case, I'm feeling so much gratitude and sense of groundedness as you describe it. And from that ground, so much more is possible to accept, to acknowledge and then to do and experience. Because I'm not at war with myself, not reenacting the trauma within myself.

I am seeing some ways that I recreated the trauma within myself. I'm not blaming myself, I could do no other. But seeing it means I can change it. It's a little weird to explain but it's like I was recreating the traps. Like one part of me wanted to say no. Another part of me was panicked at that idea and wouldn't allow it. Cue severe anxiety, panic attack. Another part steps in to shut everyone up and shut down the noise. Soon enough I haven't said no, I'm on automatic pilot. Then comes recrimination that I did it again. Even more fear about any situation in the future where I have to exist, say yes or no. Avoidance of all future events, LOL. Recrimination for avoidance. Force self to go and do. Situation arises where no is needed. Part of me wants to say no. Other part is terrified and won't allow it.... cycle continues.

Being able to be above or below those waves is an entirely different experience than being tossed about in them.

And I see how I can calm the waves, not by stopping the wind, wind is inevitable.... not be pretending there are no waves.... As soon as part of me wants to say no and part of me freaks out at that idea, I can do something different right then. Relate to the parts differently. Not be in any one part, not totally identified with any of them. Able to have perspective and understand why they are feeling as they are. Very valid in the past. This is now, and I don't have just one part of me to manage, I have All of Me and also All of You! So no part is alone.

[HannahOne]

Woke up feeling so sad and angry. If I consider this an emotional flashback, how would I approach it? I am feeling burning in my stomach and hot and I'm holding my breath. I have tension in my throat. I am feeling hopeless and I want to be unconscious. I'm hungry and tired and I have a huge day. My thoughts are resentful, I feel mistreated. But I'm an adult and I can make choices.

I'm irritated that other parents have assumed I'm the default driver. I asked one to take a turn and she "doesn't know how she can." I said I'd ask the other parent. I feel stuck because I want my kid to be with fiends, but both these mothers have relied on my to do all the hosting and driving for years, and one of the kids has dropped my kid in the past. I hate small town living! I'm so done. My kid is in high school so I'm almost done with these rich witches. I could send an email later or a group text and let them know I can't drive every time and see if one of them can find a way. I will have to phrase it kindly and politely but I can still set a limit and express what I want.

I'm irritated my kid didn't walk the dogs this morning. I don't know what I can do about that, the kid is very difficult to work with because they have a lot of difficulties. Again, I'm almost done... kid is an adult at this point. Kid needs to treat this home like a hotel for now and I can roll with that. It's just frustrating and annoying and it's ok for me to feel frustrated and annoyed....

Maybe that's the point. It's ok to feel frustrated and annoyed. In the past, it wasn't ok. And in the past I wasn't frustrated and annoyed about entitled parents and low functioning adult kids. I was frustrated and annoyed because I was having to function as an adult when I was 9. That's a very different matter than driving kids around or walking my dogs now.

As a kld I was way overburdened with responsibility. I couldn't rely on much. And I had to do things I shouldn't have had to do. People took advantage of me. Ugh.

I see why I feel sick to my stomach.

But this is not that. What can I do for myself? I need to eat a little something to settle my stomach and give me energy. Oatmeal is quick in the microwave. Maybe a ginger tea. Maybe read a book. I have an hour before I have to leave the house. A hot shower with rose petal salts. Smells are powerful and can change my mood and get me back into the present, show me how this shower is different from showers in the past.

I'm so sorry HannahOne. It should not have been that way.

I'm remembering my dreams. I can't quite remember.... I'm doing a lot of sorting in my dreams. For a few years I don't feel like I dreamed at all, I never remembered any. Now every night I'm dreaming vividly. Last night I dreamed about a former therapist who was driving me to therapy. In the dream I was upset and worried, she's breaking the frame! She shouldn't be driving me! She told me it was just a dream so it was ok, LOL. And that I could change the dream if I didn't like it. I was curious so decided she could keep driving. But I couldn't remember my house, where I lived, for her to take me home. She kept taking me to houses she said were mine but none were familiar at all. I was scared.

At the top of the screen it says CPTSD.org. I guess that's what this is. CPTSD. Woke up in a mood. Woke upset. Hating life, not wanting to be conscious. Wanting to avoid. Avoid little tasks of daily life like walking dogs or telling entitled parents "no." Feeling I have to control and do everything, have to drive in circles every day to help my kid have friends so she's happy, have to walk the dogs for my kid or tell my kid they need to walk the dogs next time, and both options seem pointless or wrong, one way is not enforcing responsibility with the kid and enabling, the other is having a conflict that will be useless because the kid just isn't high functioning. Feeling the hopelessness of having a conflict with my parents, because they cannot or will not change, and the double bind of either way being wrong, if I refuse I'll be beaten, if I don't refuse I'm allowing something very wrong. The uselessness of trying to help my parents be happy, I could spend every day all day going in circles trying to help them figure out their problems and it's pointless.

Although leaving at 18 was too young, although I made some mistakes and often lately regret that I left so unprepared, I'm glad I left when I did. I'm glad I left at 18 and didn't spend one more day in all of that. Mistakes I made were mine and I learned fast, very fast. By 21 I was making good decisions. Not all of them worked out, but I was making good decisions. God I wish it could have been different.

I'm so sad. If wishes were horses... and they're not. I will lie here and be sad for five minutes. Then I will shower with rose petals, while the oatmeal is in the microwave. Then if I'm not up to doing my day I will cancel it. But I wont' cancel it until I've gotten in the car and driven for ten minutes. Driving often smooths things out for me. I guess it's an embodiment of flight, or a form of freedom, a remind I can move, I can get to somewhere else. I AM somewhere else. I just have to remember fully where I am. In the now there's no big problem. I'm not being mistreated because the kid didn't walk the dogs or because parents are lazy. It's just daily life as a middle aged person and it's pretty good. To have dogs. To have kids that need rides. To deal with people with too much money and time on their hands who can't be bothered to drive their own kids. I'm a lucky HannahOne, now. I worked hard to make myself this pile of luck. Past me sacrificed just about everything so All of Me could be here now. And All of Me is here and now, everyone come be here now. It's no good back there. I have cotton sheets and a wool blanket for my hot flashes, lol. And my mattress is comfortable. And my house is safe and quiet. And the dogs are waiting patiently and they love me. And there's a bird singing. All is well, now. All is well and all will be well.

I am sorry I had to do so much to get here. I no longer have to do so much. I no longer have to push to hard or take so much pain or give up so much to get what I need. Maybe part of what's happening is getting used to it being easier and smaller. Not everything requires a fight, matters so much, requires a loss, requires me to bleed. I can say no to the mothers and it costs me nothing except angst. I can walk the dogs or not, it costs me nothing. I have to get used to that. What I need to do now is really very little. Just shower and eat and drive and do a little work. It feels like a lot, and that's the flashback. It can be easy today. Easy to glide to the microwave and with the greatest of ease produce oatmeal. It can be like nothing to take a shower. How easily can I do the day? I will be curious to find out. And if it's too heavy I am lucky I can cancel without much consequence. Very lucky, HannahOne. And also, not alone.

[sanmagic7]

I'm so sorry HannahOne. It should not have been that way.

ditto to this, hannah1, and another ditto to not being alone.

the idea of not having to struggle so much now that we're older is profound to me.  but, true in some sense.  we're out from under some terrible burdens, and can now make our own decisions, state and hold our own boundaries, and ponder over a number of choices that weren't available to us in the past.  on the other hand, we struggle w/ the aftereffects of what we went thru before this time in our lives.  at least we have more resources to deal w/ them, so that's on the plus side as well.  and we made it to here, which is always a plus.  keep going.  love and hugs