Chitoshi
MyPTSD Pro
Hi everyone!
I wanted to share some news yesterday from my therapy appointment. After a five or six week hiatus because of scheduling (I had my tonsils out and my therapist was on vacation for a month), I met my therapist again today. We went over how my summer has been going, the latest issues I've been having (body memory triggered by a Juvenile Sex Offender social investigation I had been asked to type up (subsequent bad week since), the fall out from my supervisor because the officer whose social it was has it out for me [this is not paranoia, my coworkers have confirmed, haha] thought I was skirting my duties because I dislike her or something and told my supervisor I was avoiding her work in an effort to do nothing while I had a job to do, but whatever).
I brought up to him that I've been angry a lot, and he asked me why I thought that, so I explained that I've been getting angry for "stupid" things like my boyfriend forgetting the dishes and getting either verbally nasty or yelling at him because I'm upset. I did post a thread about this, and my therapist confirmed what everyone here was saying to me on the thread, that I was probably getting angry because it is safe to do so now and it's doing "something" rather than "nothing" because when my traumas occurred, I froze both times and did not do anything to defend myself because I felt I had no other choice in that moment.
My therapist said that this is a good thing and that because it's safe to be angry, even about the small things, that I am beginning to heal. He also offered another perspective. Maybe I'm not getting angry so much as I am advocating for myself, and it feels bad because I'm not used to advocating for myself, so as I assert myself to others on behalf of myself and my values and morals I will get better at explaining how things work.
For example, I felt I was being manipulative when one of my boyfriend's friends who we invited somewhere ended up inviting someone we didn't want to go with us because his wife doesn't get along with the friend I'm bringing, so I modified our outing so that me and my friend were going in a separate car and would not hang out with my boyfriend's two friends and thus avoid the wife feeling like she was singled out because this way it's not that we're excluding her, it's that it's a completely different outing (for the record, we were planning on doing a double date with this friend and wife in a few weeks because at this point my friend and the wife don't mix so we wanted to avoid a bad time for all). My therapist said this wasn't being manipulative in the sense of a bad thing, I was just avoiding a problem and he felt I handled it really well, and that I should have been upset.
TLDR Version: I'm angry, but it's good that I'm angry because it means that it's safe and OK for me to be angry, which is the first time in four years that I've allowed myself to be angry at anything, and my T feels that this is a huge step in my road to recovery. Bonus: I have been able to get angry (sometimes unfairly so, but T says we shall work on this) without having a panic attack directly afterward. He's excited, and I am, too.
I wanted to share some news yesterday from my therapy appointment. After a five or six week hiatus because of scheduling (I had my tonsils out and my therapist was on vacation for a month), I met my therapist again today. We went over how my summer has been going, the latest issues I've been having (body memory triggered by a Juvenile Sex Offender social investigation I had been asked to type up (subsequent bad week since), the fall out from my supervisor because the officer whose social it was has it out for me [this is not paranoia, my coworkers have confirmed, haha] thought I was skirting my duties because I dislike her or something and told my supervisor I was avoiding her work in an effort to do nothing while I had a job to do, but whatever).
I brought up to him that I've been angry a lot, and he asked me why I thought that, so I explained that I've been getting angry for "stupid" things like my boyfriend forgetting the dishes and getting either verbally nasty or yelling at him because I'm upset. I did post a thread about this, and my therapist confirmed what everyone here was saying to me on the thread, that I was probably getting angry because it is safe to do so now and it's doing "something" rather than "nothing" because when my traumas occurred, I froze both times and did not do anything to defend myself because I felt I had no other choice in that moment.
My therapist said that this is a good thing and that because it's safe to be angry, even about the small things, that I am beginning to heal. He also offered another perspective. Maybe I'm not getting angry so much as I am advocating for myself, and it feels bad because I'm not used to advocating for myself, so as I assert myself to others on behalf of myself and my values and morals I will get better at explaining how things work.
For example, I felt I was being manipulative when one of my boyfriend's friends who we invited somewhere ended up inviting someone we didn't want to go with us because his wife doesn't get along with the friend I'm bringing, so I modified our outing so that me and my friend were going in a separate car and would not hang out with my boyfriend's two friends and thus avoid the wife feeling like she was singled out because this way it's not that we're excluding her, it's that it's a completely different outing (for the record, we were planning on doing a double date with this friend and wife in a few weeks because at this point my friend and the wife don't mix so we wanted to avoid a bad time for all). My therapist said this wasn't being manipulative in the sense of a bad thing, I was just avoiding a problem and he felt I handled it really well, and that I should have been upset.
TLDR Version: I'm angry, but it's good that I'm angry because it means that it's safe and OK for me to be angry, which is the first time in four years that I've allowed myself to be angry at anything, and my T feels that this is a huge step in my road to recovery. Bonus: I have been able to get angry (sometimes unfairly so, but T says we shall work on this) without having a panic attack directly afterward. He's excited, and I am, too.