How do you manage helplessness and hopelessness of complex trauma

[ms spock]

Thanks @Lola Nocheprieta that was really helpful reframing for me.

I feel so vulnerable and not good enough. I feel so much shame and humiliation so much of the time. Your comments to me and this thread is really helping a lot. I was doing my Mindfulness this morning and these intense feelings of vulnerability came up. I couldn't really sit with it but I am at least not blocking it out entirely!

I can do the work. I can be alive. I can get through this. I can keep working the insecurity, helplessness, hopelessness and vulnerability and I will tend it with curiosity and do the practices. It is just going to take time.

 

[Lola Nocheprieta]

I'm glad my comments were helpful, @Ms Spock. It's an honor to witness and be some small part of your journey. :hug: Writing to you, and reading your posts and others' response to you, is helpful for my own healing journey.

I know, I know how painful it is, to be alive, to exist, to be in our bodies, to feel the sharp stab of shame and the exquisite ache of visibility and vulnerability. I've barely started prolonged exposure (PE) therapy, and I put myself into a sleep coma for 2 days just to let time pass and not have to feel so much. It's such hard work, but we are doing it, we're in it, we're steeped in it. It might feel like we don't have a choice at times, but we do. And we are choosing life, and curiosity, and healing. It's painful as f*ck-all, but I guess life is a mix of joy and pain. This is living. And we have survived worse. Much worse. In fact, we have a 100% survival rate! That's pretty good odds. I'd put money on us, with those odds! :tup:

 

[ms spock]

Yes putting money on us with those odds is not a bad idea at all!

It does feel so bad in that moment. Sometimes I avoid so much and so often because I don't want to feel the uncertainty and the discomfort, but the only way is through, is being present, is being there.

I am back to it being bone crunchingly hard once again. I went online and sought help last night and I rang one of the crisis lines the night before as I read someones diary and I got triggered - it wasn't pretty but I got help. I soothed myself. I did it.

I am so stuck over doing this work that I have to do I don't see how I can get it done.

I am so scared to say what I really think. I want to obfuscate so no one knows what I am saying. I don't want to be connected to other people as it is too hard.

I am struggling with focus and procrastination.

Complex Trauma is so Complex.

I want to get to the point where I can have stuff within me and not be scared of it being ripped away. I want to get to the point where I can stay with my feelings. I want to get to the point where I be more in my body - like 25% per day that would be great and so helpful as well I would imagine.

I just want to get to the point where I can just do the work and not have a melt down about end results and my fears of them. I am safe right now. Right now I am safe, but it doesn't really compute.

 

[Lola Nocheprieta]

Hard, hard work, @Ms Spock. Painful, freaking painful and complicated. Feelings always are, especially for a Vulcan. And lonely. But life, with all its unbearable uncertainty and bone crunching pain (I like that one) and messiness and danger and grief and rage ... Life is good. Life is not easy, but life is good.

 

[Rani G2]

Ms Spock,

my thoughts today hardly come out making sense. I feel that extreme, bone crashing, blood sucking hoplesness today. I could cry 24/7, stuck my head in water, just so that I dont want to feel this pain.

I feel the fragility, as if things can fall apart in a second. There is no such thing as 100%security.

Its hard to BE today.

 

[Lola Nocheprieta]

Ms Spock,

my thoughts today hardly come out making sense. I feel that extreme, bone crashing, blood...

Hang in there, @Shankara. Hugs if you accept them.

 

[Rani G2]

Thank you Lola. I feel a bit better now.

 

[Nevermore]

Ms Spock

I feel the fragility, as if things can fall apart in a second. There is no such thing as 100%security.

Its hard to BE today.

Boy do I relate to these words! I'm glad you're feeling better @Shankara

And @Ms Spock thanks for posting this. I couldn't read all of it, but it's good to feel not alone with it all.
I have returned to study too - in my 50s and chock full of cptsd.
It's not easy /-; as sometimes I just want to be home hiding under a blanket, invisible and anonymous.
i never expect where the triggers will be...
i just think, keep on going regardless. I'm claiming back some of my life as you are too. It's excruciatingly hard, but worth it!!!

 

[ms spock]

((((((((@Shankara))))))))))

To even sit with those feelings are so very brave from my way of thinking! Hang in there!

 

[ms spock]

This is a really hard journey and I just keep on working on it. I really do. I am going to get there! I went today for my first day of prac and it went really well - when I went last time I was so dissociated, this time I was there some of the time. I did my Mindfulness this morning and it was important for me to do that. I also jumped on my ruminations, my all or nothing thinking, my emotional reasoning and my jumping to conclusions - it made the day easier. It is a real long hard slog this one.

 

[Rani G2]

This is a really hard journey and I just keep on working on it. I really do. I am going to get there! I went today for my first day of prac and it went really well - when I went last time I was so dissociated, this time I was there some of the time
thank you for your words.

 

[Lola Nocheprieta]

This is a really hard journey and I just keep on working on it. I really do. I am going to get there! I...

Good for you! That's a lot of hard work in one day.