Hi Everyone,
I'm new here! Thanks for visiting my post.
In May I decided to go back to therapy after about a year long hiatus. I've been in & out of therapy for awhile, but this is the first time that I've hit so many breakthroughs at once.
I'm a survivor of childhood sexual, physical and psychological abuse. The last few months have been a deluge of flashbacks and recovered memories. I'm grieving a lot. With these memories it seems like my negative self-talk is amplified. Voices of my family, especially my main abuser, haunt me. This is especially the case in the morning. I find that I can spend hours arguing with them in my head. They mostly tell me that I'm lazy, unmotivated, and too sick (psychologically) to get anything done. They belittle my plans for the day and I find myself often wasting away, in bed, believing them. I do want to be clear here that psychosis is a real thing experienced by folks who are traumatized, and there's often a stigma placed around psychosis within and outside of recovery communities, but the voices I'm dealing with aren't psychosis. They're memories. I've heard them before in real life. But, I wonder, how is this possible? How can my subconscious be in a fight with my subconscious? Is this related to dissociation at all?
So I'm caught in this cycle where I have auditory flashbacks first thing in the morning, and then I end up not getting stuff done because I'm too busy battling the demons in my head, and it becomes like a self-fulfilling prophecy. Can anyone relate to the same sort of cycle? If you have tips to share, they're welcome, but I really just want some witnessing right now.
It was easier to not make the explicit connection between the auditory flashbacks and my inability to leave bed. Now that I have a better understanding, it feels like "wow, another thing to add to the huge list of the ways my family has f*cked me up. yay?" It feels tedious to do this work over and over again, and I feel really resentful.
I'm new here! Thanks for visiting my post.
In May I decided to go back to therapy after about a year long hiatus. I've been in & out of therapy for awhile, but this is the first time that I've hit so many breakthroughs at once.
I'm a survivor of childhood sexual, physical and psychological abuse. The last few months have been a deluge of flashbacks and recovered memories. I'm grieving a lot. With these memories it seems like my negative self-talk is amplified. Voices of my family, especially my main abuser, haunt me. This is especially the case in the morning. I find that I can spend hours arguing with them in my head. They mostly tell me that I'm lazy, unmotivated, and too sick (psychologically) to get anything done. They belittle my plans for the day and I find myself often wasting away, in bed, believing them. I do want to be clear here that psychosis is a real thing experienced by folks who are traumatized, and there's often a stigma placed around psychosis within and outside of recovery communities, but the voices I'm dealing with aren't psychosis. They're memories. I've heard them before in real life. But, I wonder, how is this possible? How can my subconscious be in a fight with my subconscious? Is this related to dissociation at all?
So I'm caught in this cycle where I have auditory flashbacks first thing in the morning, and then I end up not getting stuff done because I'm too busy battling the demons in my head, and it becomes like a self-fulfilling prophecy. Can anyone relate to the same sort of cycle? If you have tips to share, they're welcome, but I really just want some witnessing right now.
It was easier to not make the explicit connection between the auditory flashbacks and my inability to leave bed. Now that I have a better understanding, it feels like "wow, another thing to add to the huge list of the ways my family has f*cked me up. yay?" It feels tedious to do this work over and over again, and I feel really resentful.