Living As All of Me

[sanmagic7]

hannah1, it just sounds like a lot.  having all those kinds of things to look forward to would wear me out just thinking about it.  getting up enough energy to actually do them would be another thing entirely, especially after what you've been through.  and then there's frank.  hope he's better soon.

i hope you can keep taking care of you as best you can.  love and hugs

[zen_racer]

I'm not certain how recent the procedures were, but unless you've had a lot of experience with anesthesia, I wouldn't discount it as a possibility.  The first time I ever had anesthesia, they got it wrong and gave me too much.  When I should have been sent home after my emergency appendectomy, they kept me overnight because I just wasn't coming out of it well enough and was having other side effects.  From a surgery that should've had me up and walking around in a day or two, it took me a week to even begin walking around.

I'm sorry Frank is having issues as well.  I have a cat named Oliver, and he means the world to me.  He was a rescue, and then didn't get along with my ex friend's animals, so he gave him to me.  Oliver got separation anxiety after he was dropped off, and never trusted that friend again, and doesn't trust other people easily.  He's got trauma like I do.

The poetry reading sounds fun.  I used to write poetry a lot in my paper journals back when I used to write.  I had a few published.  It's something I gave up because of trauma, and have a fairly negative self view of because of that trauma.  I sometimes miss it, and feel like I lost a very valuable outlet for what's going on inside of me.  That part of my past made it very difficult to decide to start a journal here.  The way you wrote about doing the reading, and the travel, and wanting a studio ... it makes me nostalgic for when I used to accept that part of myself.

"How can All of Me know I am safe here now?"  I relate to that more than I'm comfortable with.  I haven't started thinking about parts of me formally yet, but the only way I view safety is physical therapy.  I think I'm coming to realize that I don't even know what safety means in a mental or emotional sense.

I hope you feel better soon.  Sending warm thoughts your way.

[Blueberry]

About how to find a good therapist, my post here might be interesting:
https://www.cptsd.org/forum/index.php?topic=17174.0

This might be useful, especially the info-video about Brainspotting in the link: https://www.cptsd.org/forum/index.php?topic=17004.msg161572#msg161572

It might also be totally uninteresting, it's hard for me to judge. I did note that Dr. Grand talks about brainspotting being a frame approach rather than a protocol approach  - so he used your word "protocol". He explained that when he is doing brainspotting with a client, he doesn't know where it's going to go so to speak. That comes from within the client. It might be helpful for you to watch, but do note the trigger warning I explain in that post for the brainspotting session applies! I understand that my OT and I are working with frame approach. Neither of us know what is going to come up when I do tasks with my hands which are emotionally difficult - this can include loading a dishwasher, frying potatoes, using my bike pump... Really basic stuff. I notice they are difficult tasks because they are exhausting, I put them off, I hold my breath when I do try to do them, I freeze doing them and can't move forwards etc etc. My OT is totally open to what comes and totally open to how I deal with it.

Some of this possibly interesting too including other people's comments: https://www.cptsd.org/forum/index.php?topic=16811.0

[HannahOne]

TW FOOD ISSUES, TRAUMA

Dollyvee, thank you for circling back, reading and commenting. I saw a NARM therapist briefly and am thinking I'd like to go back to it, I didnt' get very far. I'm so glad you found NARM helpful.

SanMagic7, thank you for the support!

NarkKiddo and ZenRacer, maybe it was still the anesthesia. I'm definitely getting better. It's a long weekend which isn't helpful, no structure. ZenRacer, if the idea of turning back to poetry or art rings any bells, consider the possibility of being open to it. I hope that if it's life-giving for you, it will find its way back to you in a way that feels boundaries and safe enough. And yes NK, guinea pigs, like rabbits, go into stasis!   Frank is still not back to normal, not normal poop, not eating enough, but he is eating. Maybe his labs will tell us what's going on. Most expensive rabbit ever.

Blueberry, thank you for reading and sharing. I checked out the links. A difficulty is I can be very skeptical. I grew up in a kind of cult and so anything that seems like a protocol or has a guru or makes promises is scary, anything that I'm unsure is scientific? Everything now is a training, a modality, a lifestyle. I just want an old fashioned shrink, I just want a therapeutic relationship with a psychologist. But I've heard about brainspotting and I checked out the links. I'm going to poke around, thank you for that. It's something I haven't tried, which is something!! It's very interesting to hear what works for people, and remembering I'm not the only one with these difficulties, we're all out there finding our way to what can make the next step a little easier.

I am so interested in how your OT works with trauma. A lot of my most difficult moments are doing basic daily tasks. It's something thirty years of in office psychotherapy hasn't really been able to touch. Some of my "Staying in bed" behavior is avoiding the emotions involved in cooking, cleaning, doing dishes. It's so strange because when I was being a mom, I rarely had difficulty. I loved seeing myself at the sink doing dishes, I felt good cooking, I felt like I was doing the right things, being a good mom. I was highly motivated to cook, clean, I enjoyed that motivated, virtuous feeling and I enjoyed the feeling of caring for my children. I made homemade pot pies that took hours. It felt right and easy.

Now that the kids are so grown I don't feel that way. They prefer to make their own meal, which is wonderful, Or they are often out at dinner, or need to eat in their room to study, they're their own people. All of that is fine and good, it's awesome--

But that means I'm cooking and cleaning for myself. And without doing it for the kids, I seem to feel like a kid again. When I was eight or so, I determined to have a cooked meal. I was tired of eating crunchy pasta right of of the box, with an apple for dinner. I opened the jar of sauce and put it in a pan, turned on the stove, scared to turn it on. After the sauce was warm, I poured the box of pasta into the sauce. Stirred. Waited. Stirred. I hadn't thought to read the instructions to boil the pasta in water. Of course, my cooking method didn't work. I was crushed, embarrassed, and tried to eat it anyway, it was disgusting but I was hungry. And angry at myself I guess. So I made myself eat it.

I was often as a kid quickly and silently cleaning up, hiding all evidence that HannahOne Wuz Here. I washed the pan so quietly. My mother was usually sleeping in her room, my father rarely there. Very quietly. In an altered state of panic, pretending I wasn't even there washing it. I didn't want her to come in screaming. Put it back exactly as it had been, handle turned at 36 degrees... so no one would ever know.

I often open the fridge, see only ingredients, feel horrific shame and sadness, and close it. I'm trying to eat three meals, and do meal prep to get around this. But even the prepared meal, I heat it, sit down to eat it, and feel horrific shame and sadness, feel like no one cares about me because I'm a horrible person, and this food is evidence of that. Then I can't eat, my mouth won't work or my throat feels tight, I can't chew.

And these are the modes I'm often in again the last year or so. No bueno.

It wasn't always this bad. When I Was working, food was just fuel, it was easy. When I was pregnant I LOVED eating. When I was raising kids, it was fine. The pandemic and initial difficulty getting food triggered the current problems. I'm not sure why it's gotten so bad the last year or two except ... that I"m not in "mom mode"? Or maybe I've been more in relationship with these younger parts of me, maybe it's another level of healing, LOL! Put a positive spin on it. I really don't know, but I guess it doesn't matter if it's a sign of regression or a sign of progress, it's something I'm confronting three times a day now, and more.

This is a messy post. I look crazy. Oh well. I don't know how to tie it up with a bow. But the idea of having an OT there to coach me through the steps, or help me be more present, is very interesting. I suppose in a sense I am looking for a mother figure, to teach me to cook properly. I never learned from anyone, I taught myself when I married. I suppose I would like to feel someone is supervising, I would like to feel safer in the kitchen. And I would like to feel calm doing dishes, not like I'm guiltily hiding evidence that I ate something. I would like to feel dishes are just dishes.

Bringing a clinical occupational therapist eye to it could really help. I did this with movement. When become too scared to move around, I hire a PT. Then movement becomes clinical, an exercise. When I'm too scared to be touched I hire a massage therapist and then touch becomes clinical, with a purpose. When I'm too triggered by cooking, maybe I need to apprentice with a chef. What an interesting idea. Or take a cooking class and learn how to properly use a knife.... when too triggered by doing dishes maybe I need to get a cleaning person to come and do it with me. I have a friend who actually is a cleaning lady. Maybe I need to overcome some pride and ask her to come do my tasks alongside me, and that would make it more clinical, more professional. I feel so much safer, bigger, stronger in the professional realm.

I realize ultimately I have to integrate all of this into All of Me and not escape into professional or role modes, mom mode.... but sometimes I need a bridge to get there. Right now there's no part of me that can do dishes calmly and without sobbing and hating myself.

I am also trying to strengthen the parts of me that want to live for me. Mom mode is cool, and, I'd like to just be a middle aged person who can calmly and happily make myself a quiche, without EFs of self hatred, humiliation, feeling unloved and uncared for, feeling rage that I have to do it. That is all old stuff. It's super sticky stuff though. I became someone who could hold full time jobs and commute and run things, but I've not been able to become someone who can calmly and happily make myself a quiche. It's so much harder in the domestic space, where the abuse and neglect happened, it's so much harder with the actual needs of my physical body, which was ground zero for the suffering.

It's also abundantly clear that avoidance won't work here. The consequences of not eating are all over my body now. I am going to look for a chef to apprentice with, a cooking class, a baking class for bored housewives, these exist, even the natural foods grocery store has a calendar of one-off cooking events. I've just never done it.

I have to say sometimes it feels so awkward to be living life in reverse, to feel so out of step with time, to feel so developmentally delayed, despite thirty years of trying to catch up. To be able to work a job and struggle to make a sandwich. To be able to make a marketing campaign and unable to wash a dish. It's like I have to play strange tricks on myself in order to exist, but those tricks no longer work and I no longer want to do them, the mental gymnastics is boring... and as I'm coming down to earth the last years, I have to learn how to do things without magic, without the gymnastics. Without the magic, I feel so young and vulnerable. AND, I'm middle aged, I have washed a million dishes by now, I can do this! It's the EFs that are getting in the way, but, as the Tao of Pooh would say, the EFs ARE the way. What I may need to do is spend some time with these younger parts so scared to clink a dish, so scared and hungry and not knowing how to cook. Not wanting to feel any of that, but, will start by considering the possibility of someday considering the possibility of doing so. LOL. I'm feeling it anyway in these constant EFs. Might as well feel it more directly with All of Me, so parts of me are not so alone with it. No technique, no modality, no protocol for this. Just an old fashioned relationship of myself to myself.

[zen_racer]

HannaOne, I'm sorry you're having such an issue with eating.  I feel guilty in a sense for finding inspiration to try and make sure I eat enough because you've mentioned it so much.  I can relate to what you said about looking in the fridge and only seeing ingredients.  I relate to that so much.  I remember when I was living in the Northeast that I'd sometimes go to the grocery store starving, but also not in the right mindset and with no motivation, and walking around the store and only seeing boxes, cans, and jars without any recognition of any kind of food.  Every time that happened, I'd leave the store empty handed and just go home and wouldn't eat again.

Sometimes it's so hard to understand or get past issues like that, at least for me.  I know this isn't a magic end to any of that, but I think you're the opposite of a horrible person.  I've already been uplifted here by your compassion and empathy more times than I can remember.  I have no medical background, and have so far only been to one initial visit with my T, so if this is a horrible idea, please ignore it or ask me to delete it.  You mentioned multiple times having issues with dishes clinking and trying to be super quiet in the past.  Is there any chance of trying to reframe that?  Maybe something like trying to play a song by tapping glasses filled with different amounts of water with a spoon or something?  Use paper plates because they make almost no sound?  I'm sorry if those are bad ideas.

As far as me turning back to poetry or art ... it's complicated.  There were several things I liked so much about it.  I think to me, it was ultimate freedom.  I didn't have to follow any rules, not even grammar or written english rules.  It was an excuse to stay connected with how I felt.  I think I'm normally very analytical, and poetry felt like my only link between logic based analytical thinking bridging to emotions and chaos to create art that had meaning in every world I existed in.  But I ... I guess I have a bunch of highly charged emotions about why I quit, and a LOT of toxic shame regarding everything about it.  I actually typed a lot of it in, and then realized I didn't want to sidetrack your journal.  If you're interested, or think it would be good for me to explore, I'd be happy to do so in my own journal.  But I am a little bit envious that you enjoy it.  I'd say good envy rather than negative.

I offer hugs if that's okay. 

[sanmagic7]

hannah1, i'm so glad you wrote all you did.  i could see your mind working at figuring out what's your next step, what's going to possibly get you a little further along this road.  i loved seeing the process of it, and i'm so glad you were able to land on something to start with.  i actually smiled with every suggestion you came up with.

the idea that we weren't taught how to take care of ourselves, weren't taken care of in the first place, is another one of those losses of something we never had but needed.  i remember asking my mom if i could help her bake or cook or something and her response to me was 'you'll have plenty of time to do that when you're married'.  she'd already set my course in life for me, but sent me off in that boat w/o a paddle.

by the by, i didn't think for one minute that you looked crazy in your post.  i saw a mind working hard to figure out the most efficient way to solve a puzzle without having been given guidelines.  and you finished with the idea of having an old-fashioned relationship with yourself.  i like it.  you can be your own best friend, a support system for yourself, a hand-holder, an encourager - all the things.  sending love and a hug filled with a non-harming spray to blow those EF's away.

[NarcKiddo]

Oh, HannahOne. I feel so sad for little HannahOne trying to make a nice warm pasta meal and not knowing about boiling the pasta. It just tugs at my heartstrings so very much. I had to try to learn so many life skills just by quiet observation and of course it doesn't always work. It makes me feel so sad for our little ones that they had to go through all that.

I like your idea of considering some cooking classes. It seems like an excellent way to bridge the gap and give you confidence to experiment. It sounds to me like you have amassed the skills because you had to in order to look after your kids but it's falling apart when you apply them just to you. If classes help you experience that differently I think that would be wonderful.

 

[HannahOne]

Thank you all for reading.
ZenRacer, you know what's best for you, so if art is not right at the moment, trust yourself. I'm so sorry you can relate to some of the difficulties I'm having, and so glad and grateful that someone can relate! That's one thing so great about OOTS, we can relate to each other and be seen and heard, and learn from each other. 

NarcKiddo, thank you for commenting. You're right---I forget that, I totally have all these cooking skills... I chopped every day, I made 21+ meals a week for thirty years, ended up being 42 meals a week because one kid won't eat meat and one kid won't eat vegetables, LOL.... yet yes, when I apply them to me, or when I'm not in "mom mode" I lose the competence, confidence and what joy there can be in such a daily chore. Thank you for reflecting that. Maybe "mom mode" is ok, I just need to extend it to myself. Maybe mom mode is better than trying to go professional, LOL.   
 
SanMagic7, thank you for reflecting your experience of reading. What you shared about your mother and how she set you off in life in a. boat without a paddle resonated so much. That's a great description. And I'm so sorry.   And thank you for the virtual spray can You always send such thoughtful gifts    

[HannahOne]

TW TRAUMA, WAR VIOLENCE, MISCARRIAGE

It was all just a dream. But the dream content could be triggering.

I just had a dream that sums up my life dilemma.  My unconscious can really serve up a metaphor. The last few days I struggled to eat or sleep. They go together, hard to sleep when hungry, hard to eat when off schedule/jet lagged for no reason. So embarrassed to have this little setback. So frustrated to still be struggling with the basics like an infant. Been trying so hard for a long time now to improve this. .This dream speaks to all of it.

In the dream I was at my old job, the job I love the most, the job I was best at in my life. It was the perfect fit for me IRL. But the boss was a bully. Of course. Eventually IRL it got to the point of illegal harassment and I had to leave, I had a miscarriage and I felt the stress of the job was partly to blame. Probably it wasn't, I had just hit a breaking point, I had a baby at home, a baby dead in the ground and I wanted another baby and I knew I couldn't go through another pregnancy like that.

In the dream, I was at that job. I couldn't remember what I was supposed to be doing. I called my most recent therapist in the dream and told her the difficulty. Then I remembered oh yes I Was working on this super creative aspect of the magazine, I'd created a section for people to share their memories of the institution.... and in looking thru old photos to add to it I came across a metal trunk, with photos of my boss as young woman in Vietnam. Photos of her dead husband, and the lover she found after, also killed in the war.

Then I was in Vietnam hiding as helicopters were coming to bomb the place. I was lying atop some Vietnamese kids to try to protect them, tried to hide behind a bedroom dresser, nowhere to hide. Soldiers started coming in the window. I had a pistol and shot them. I was surprised at myself and pleased it had worked. No one else seemed too happy and I was confused why they weren't also shooting. Then more soldiers started coming in. I shot the first, then was out of bullets. He was going to shoot me point blank, so I grabbed his arm and turned his gun on himself and pulled the trigger, took the gun... but there were ten more soldiers right behind him now all looking at me, and so many more soldiers pouring in. It was futile. I realized I should not have fought. I'm female. I should have befriended them. Now everyone in the place was going to die.

I struggle so much with self-hatred, survivor's guilt, shame, moral injury. In the dream, it was my fault everyone was going to die. As in real life, I felt guilty, I feel guilty, I feel it's my fault All of Me is traumatized. But of course in the dream, the place was already going to be bombed by a helicopter. It wouldn't have mattered if I fought or didn't.

In the dream as in real life, I had the best job for me, used all my skills and talents, I could have stayed there my whole career.... I left because I wanted a baby and the boss was a bully, she told me I should have had a n abortion. She never had kids, because her loves died in Vietnam.... her trauma. I had to give up my dream job, my life at work, in order to protect my babies. In real life as a child I had to give up parts of me, the competent respectable independent creative parts, to save myself as a kid. That's why in real life, I was so obsessed with getting those part back and actualizing them, having a career, a creative career, being independent. In real life, the insane logic was, if you do these awful things, you can become a person who would never have to do these things. If you give up those parts of yourself, that's the way to get them back, if you are someone with no choices good for one thing, you'll go on to college, get away, become independent and never depend on a man for money again... very warped logic.

In the dream, I fought back. And that guaranteed my death. In the dream I realized I shouldn't have fought, I should have befriended them. In real life, I have guilt and shame that I very rarely fought. I never could, I always froze, couldn't move my arms or legs. Or I just submitted.

In the dream, the soldiers just kept coming in the window. There were so many of them. In real life that's how it was, it just kept happening, they just kept doing it, over and over and over and over. Fighting one day would make no difference, tomorrow was another day. And another day. And another day.

The dream validates my "choices." That I hate myself for. That make me sick to my stomach. That make me not want to eat. That make me hate myself for being female, for being in the female role now of the one who has to do the dishes, the one who has to cook. Not the one in the office. Even in the office, being a female was a problem, even with a female boss it wasn't safe to be pregnant, to be female. Being female cost me my dream job and I blame myself for that too, I left my first career over harassment, then chose to leave the second because I wanted another baby.

IRL I have no regrets about leaving the job in the sense that I know it was the right thing not only to be able to carry a pregnancy but because I wanted to be with my children and having them at daycare all day was killing me, I couldn't do it, I wanted to be the one to hold them, feed them, sleep with them. Every day I got home and immediately into the tub with the baby, washing the other woman's smell off the baby's head like I Was a dog, reclaiming the baby, nursing the baby both of us naked in the warm tub, back to the womb... then in the morning putting my suit back on, bringing the breast pump, dropping the baby off... it was untenable, unbearable and felt every kind of wrong. I couldn't make the switch every day between boss lady and mommy.

We couldn't survive without my salary so gave up our house and moved to a rental. I do blame myself for giving up my career. I never got it back in the same way. Five years later I got another similar job but it only lasted a year before I quit, I was very unhappy and couldn't "go back" into that role, couldn't find my way into the role, still wanted to be with the kids, couldn't switch roles every day from earth mother to tough worker. The job had just lost its sparkle... I guess I no longer needed to be that person in order to be ok. And I loved being a mother.

It's easy now to think of all the things I should've done, easy now to try to rewrite history. To wish I'd somehow kept the job and been supermom, too, to think I should have been been "Stronger" "tougher" "independent." Like what I became at that job. But a six year old can't be "stronger" than an adult man, can't be "tough," can't be "independent."

Part of the dynamic was that as a child I did have to be tough, it was all about toughening me up, rubbing my face in the snow, him wining every game, outrunning me every time. But I wasn't tough. I wasn't.

And that's not my fault.

I have had dreams like this before, in the past it was rodents. In the dream I forgot about my rodents, and when I remembered, they had multiplied horrifically, starved, crazed, the aquarium full of them, inbred and horrific. I had those dreams when I was at my first office job, afraid of the salesmen and the photocopier, learning to answer phones. After my first career crashed and burned due to sexual harassment, I started over in another field at the bottom. And worked my way to the dream job. And at that first job I was constantly having this rodent dream. I remember calling my longtime therapist from that job in the early days of cellphones on a flip phone in the stairwell asking what in the hockey stick this dream meant, it was torturing me and making it hard to work. It means it just kept happening, she said. So many times, so overwhelming, a force I couldn't manage, I tried to forget about it but couldn't...

I have been working on eating. Not eating is tough strong and independent. Doing dishes is female, degrading, hopeless and forever a victim without independence of making your own money. The one without the job does the dishes. These are very polarized parts, very extreme views. I was raised in a cult with extreme views on gender roles, but in real life now, I embrace both masculine and feminine parts of me. As an adult, I don't need these polarized views, I certainly don't think this way about anyone else on the planet. Men do dishes all the time. A mother can be tough and strong. And independence is mostly an illusion, we are all dependent on each other, on society, the planet, we are all temporary arrangements, and as an adult, I can embrace my vulnerability.

It's not Vietnam. I'm not in a war. These rules don't apply. That was then, this is now. Eating is safe enough, it's safe now to be not tough. safe now to be dependent on a man for money. That man depends on my labor to be able to go make the money, he couldn't get out of the house if I weren't taking care of the kids, making sure he had clean clothes and getting everyone fed. Doing dishes is not "female," it's just part of life, it's what happens if you eat, there are dishes.

Yes, and. That was then, this is now, and I need to remember more the felt sense of then. So that I can better validate my feelings, own them. I can't own what I don't know. I can recite the details of then, but I need to remember the felt sense: utter futility. I've emptied my bullets and killed the enemy and he just keeps coming. I can even turn his own gun back on him, and he just keeps coming. There will never be enough bullets. I cannot fight. I must submit. Befriend, even. Not just for me, but for all these innocent little kids.

And then also remembering what is not mine. The boss's behavior: not mine. Mine was the choice to leave that environment to pursue what at the time felt like a higher calling. It certainly was a more cosmic calling, to create life. A more lasting calling, these kids should outlive me. The magazine folded months after I left. Maybe my kids will have kids. Life is full of tough choices. And, I'm tougher. I can make tough choices.

It would be preferable if I could stop relitigating my choices. I see why I am so grieved about my career if I think it's the only way not to be a helpless female only good for one thing. At the same time, I made the best choice I could at the time and I'm so glad I didn't spend my kids younger years away from them in an office. What a huge loss for me personally that would  have been. I needed to fully be their mother full time. I wish I could've been a working mother, that's healthier in many ways for all... but I just couldn't. I am not the healthiest specimen I've ever met, LOL. I'm a bit more limited in how much stress and strain and role conflict I can handle. And that's ok. We made it work. I made it work. It took some compromise and it's not as ideal as I imagined as a child, but as a child I didn't know how complicated life could become.

Thanks, All of Me. I guess. LOL. Thanks for sharing. Thanks for giving me the picture. I get the picture. I got it. It's wrong of me to hate you. To blame you. It's wrong of me to second guess you. Here I am, after all. Whether you didn't fight, whether you quit your job, whether you do dishes or eat, the war was not your fault. War is h*. You didn't start the war. You were born into it. Now the war is over. You have some PTSD. LOL. Get yourself to the VA and get some treatment.

Still looking for that therapist. Any therapist want to work with this? LOL. Frank help me.

Someone will. I will find them. In the meantime, I"m my own therapist, serving up the metaphors, making myself confront what was and helping myself embrace what is, what still can be. Sometimes at this midlife juncture all I can see is loss, all the bits I've had to drop along the way, all the ways the image didn't come together. I have to remember the story about the famous violinist. He went on stage and played with the symphony. In the middle of the piece, a string broke on his violin. The audience gasped. How would he go on? He seamlessly transposed the piece onto the strings he had left, and continued to play. At the end of the performance, he said, "To be an artist means to play with what you have left." That's what I'm doing. I'm playing with what I have left.

Now, to eat. And to clean. LOL. Clean out the fridge. Take charge of the kitchen. In mom mode on my own behalf. When parts complain, fret that I should be at an office not at the sink, I can turn to them, oh little one, I get it, you had big plans for me. Thanks. And guess what, I executed all of them! I was at the office. Now, it's time for me to be at home. Look at the home. A little messy, but safe. It's my kitchen. My dishes. I'm hungry and I Want to make food. Want to help? You crack the eggs. I'll stir. Well done. All is well, and shall be well. Every little thing shall be well. St. Julian said so, and I know it to be true.

[Blueberry]

I am so interested in how your OT works with trauma.

Noted, and I'll try to get back to you on this. But I simply don't have the wherewithal atm.

[sanmagic7]

And, I'm tougher. I can make tough choices.

this is heavy duty recovery thinking, hannah1.  i believe part of those tough choices is to negate somehow what we were taught when we didn't have the ability, didn't have enough ammunition to stave off the guns, bullets, the hurtful beliefs, admonitions, words and actions that just kept coming at us, causing us to make choices then to save ourselves. and then there's the present, making those tough choices that now serve us rather than serving someone else's choices against us.

sending love and a hug filled with as much ammunition as you need to keep up the good fight - the fight that's good for you.

[HannahOne]

Blueberry no need to follow up! You're on your own journey.

Thanks, SanMagic7!

[HannahOne]

In looking for a new therapist I've been having to take screening tools. Anxiety, depression, anxiety, depression. I don't really meet criteria for those. Today one of the tools was a PTSD screener. I was so surprised, validated, overwhelmed, every question spoke to me. Duh! Have you avoided reminders of the event. Do you relive the event. Do you avoid talking about the event. Do you worry the event will happen again. Repeated disturbing dreams about the event. LOL. Trouble sleeping. Feeling of foreshortened future. Have physical reactions when anything reminds you of the event.

Except it's not an event. It's a whole situation. It's... me.

I avoid reminders of my entire first eighteen years of life. I avoid myself.

I avoid feeling hungry, by leaning into hunger until I don't feel it anymore.

I avoid going to sleep. Wasn't safe.

I avoid showering. Wasn't safe. 

I avoid exercise, anything that makes my heart race.

I avoid sex. Obvi.

I avoid relationships! Weren't safe.

I avoid competition.

I avoid social situations of all kinds.

I avoid feelings, wasnt' safe to have them.

I avoid my memory, wasn't safe to know my own history.

I avoid life. I avoid myself.

Kind of a tough way to live, no? No wonder I"m slightly depressed and a little anxious.

CPTSD.

I have a few initial sessions set up, we'll see. One does AEDP, which SenseOrgan had mentioned. Some say they're psychodynamic and attachment oriented. I'm skeptical, we'll see how dynamic they really are once I start stretching! Some say IFS/EMDR and trauma informed. We'll see what they say if I won't "do" the protocols.

I don't want to keep avoiding myself and my life, relationships, sleep, food... And it doesn't work. I'm still caught up in the EF of it all much of the time. I'm still not in the present as much as I want to be, I"m still preoccupied.

How to not need to avoid? How to not do a double negative?

How to embrace all of it? How to live as All of Me?

[sanmagic7]

and that, hannah1, is the real difference between PTSD and C-PTSD.  PTSD is an even, it's situational, it's a thing that can be focused on.  C-PTSD is relational, it's about relationships and all the nitty gritty never-ending minutes in each one, even tho they may have their own situations in them, those don't account for the looks, the dismissals, the humiliations, the neglect, the empty spaces that lacked what we needed, the very atmosphere we lived in.  there's so much more to it.

i do hope you find a therapist who is aware of this, who is creative enough to do what's important rather than simply going by the book, who speaks and listens to you and adjusts themselves accordingly w/o expecting you to adjust to them.  i know there are some like that out there, and i hope you discover one of them right off the bat.  best to you with this search.  love and hugs

[NarcKiddo]

I wish you well in the search for a therapist. I'm glad you have some sessions set up and hope they go well.

I'm grateful for your comments about how it would be preferable if you could stop relitigating your choices. I need to bear that in mind for myself.