This is probably going to come out like a book. Lots of posts to comment on. Welcome to the forum
@jameson .
Has anyone here managed to dig themselves out of this kind of ultra catch 22? ...usually people only have the motivation to try to change in their middle ages after their lives have fallen apart from divorce, death, alcoholism, or any number of terrible things that can happen.
By the way, something terrible doesn't have to happen in middle age to give people the motivation to change. For me, they were good things. And good things like marriage, having children, moving away from your family of origin are usually what precipitate people going into therapy. And for me, the first time I entered therapy was because I went on vacation with my best friend.
I've been in therapy for over twenty-five years and have gone through several episodes of what you have described. And I have dug myself out of those times. The first time occurred when I was 25 years old and all I could do was cry in therapy. I had to function outside of therapy and I barely did that. I was in nursing school at the time. I flunked out of one semester because of my inability to function. And because much later I learned that it triggered me. Yet in the end, I graduated from nursing school. It took everything within me to do it. And it took more years than I had planned to do it in yet I never gave up. I pushed myself to overcome whatever had derailed me for several years.
Jump ahead eleven years to 1988, I found myself in a worse situation. No terrible thing happened to me to cause it. I was doing the normal things in life and wham something set me off. Back when I was 25 it was traveling to the East Coast where my abuse occurred. Though at the time I had no memory of it. Eleven years later, it was going on a boat ride with my family. I saw a puddle in the bottom of the boat and had an anxiety attack. A little puddle.
This time my slide into the abyss wasn't a easy ride to get out of after a couple of years of therapy. I spent the next 18 years in therapy, 4 of those years recovering from an abusive, controlling therapist. I was diagnosed with PTSD and poly-fragmented MPD (now called DID). For the first 8 years, I could barely function at the junction as used to call it. Yet I persisted. Back in 1988 there were no breathing exercises, no mindfulness, and no special "techniques" to help me overcome my difficulties with anxiety and panic attacks and the symptoms of PTSD. I just slogged on through. Believe me it was a slog.
At various times I was given antidepressants. Their good effects didn't last with me. The side effects weren't that bad. One doctor gave me a sleep medicine. I went from sleeping 2 to 5 hours a night to 12 to 15 hours a night. Ridiculous. So I had to stop that.
Long story short, I made it through that time step by step. What I found helped me the most? Getting involved in other survivors' lives. With the help of another survivor of abuse, I started support groups for survivors of sexual abuse. That person went on to graduate school to become a therapist and I took over completely. My format and rules were so successful that they were adopted by every survivor-assisting organization and therapist in the city where I lived.
Later what helped me was becoming a Christian. I had grown up in an atheist household. It helped me to later break away from an abusive therapist.
Flash forward 22 year to 2010, I took another nose dive after my mother died. Her death triggered off a landslide of memories about something I never knew existed in my past. I had complete amnesia for those memories. During that time, I tried Prazosin for nightmares. It's an alpha-blocker blood pressure medication that is used to treat high blood pressure, anxiety, and PTSD. It worked well for me, but, and this was huge problem for me, it lowered my heart rate too much. I've got bradycardia already, 56 beats per minute, and the medication lowered it to the mid-40s. I had some other serious medical problems arise from having nightmares about a father I never had known existed before that time. My cardiologist confirmed that the shock of discovering your father was/is a serial killer would be enough to cause an arrhythmia and tachycardia.
Your post reminded me of some things my T has said about the dangers of trying to do too much too fast.
That was one of my biggest problems when beginning therapy the second time in 1988. I pushed too hard. I wanted to find out why my life had come unglued by seeing a puddle in the bottom of a boat.
I have since learned that my healing is a journey not an event. And grieving is the same way. When I first started therapy I thought to myself this will be like before and I'll overcome it in two years. Surprise! I'm still working on things which happened to me and I'm 64 years old!
I can count the amount of times I've been below an 8 stress in the last year on one hand.
I couldn't count any times I could function at that level when I started therapy again in 1988. I went from going on boat rides and enjoying my life to zero functionality in six months time. And I stayed like that for roughly eight years. Part was due to a flooding of memories and the other to an abusive therapist.
I have all 3 times I felt decent in the last 2 years marked on a calendar.
Congratulations! And I don't mean that sarcastically. That is a start. For me it wasn't like that. I had no functionality outside of therapy and yet I went on to start support groups for survivors of sexual abuse. I pushed myself to do it. I found it helped me to become involved in the lives of survivors.
My strategy? Do it anyway.
Yes! And I still do this. I'm doing it right now with some alters who got the piss scared out of them, literally, by my serial killer father because I tried to tell someone about what he was doing.
sometimes you have to push through your own resistance. Demand it of yourself.
My own resistance wants to put the brakes on and not deal with alters. I'm not putting the brakes on though, I'm doing it, I'm going to therapy...again. I finally found a trauma specialist who has dealt with survivors of Satanic Ritual Abuse, Ritual Abuse, and Mind Control. She's got no problem dealing with my memories which involve murders.
where my inner child is effectively a monster tormenting me 24/7/365
I had to lay down the ground rules for my alters and at the same time give them what they needed. The "I" who originally did that wasn't the me who is out now. It took a long time to find the real me in therapy.
I gave my alters a journal without lines in it to write or draw whatever they wanted. That gave them an avenue to express themselves.
The monster symbolizes the people I grew up around. It's not really my inner child but its also the youngest part, apparently being ageless.
Yes, my monster type alters were ageless as well. Usually though they turned out to be younger alters. All they wanted was to protect me and to be loved and cared for. I told them they were now safe enough to allow me to lead the group of alters. It took awhile to convince them. No overnight solutions. Eventually it worked and they believed me.
I have become a virtual recluse
That's what happened to me this time that I crashed and burned after my mother died. That's exactly what I'm going to work on in therapy. I now know why it happened; my alters who were created by the terror tactics of my serial killer father retreated indoors for safety.
There is no magic toilet fairy.
You've busted all my fantasies. Darn. So that's why I have to clean the toilet and sink myself.;)
I have wanted to go to church for a long time but that will have to happen after I've got over this hump of severe constant stress, right now any new experience is pretty terrifying, and I wake up at 3pm, so I can't go yet.
For a long time, I attended evening services at a church because other services were too triggering for me.
It's not possible to process trauma effectively without first being a whole person and present
Not so. I've done it. I'm living proof. I didn't commit suicide like I planned years ago. I'm alive. And I'm not a 100% whole person. I still have alters.
This is a hell of a problem and I don't think It can change without my circumstances in general changing first.
I thought that way too. Yet I managed to stay married for 32 years while going through all of this crapola! So things don't have to be perfect for us to change. My marriage wasn't great because of my PTSD yet my husband never gave up and he's still not giving up.
Man I've been doing this for a long time in a room with a professional and it just isn't getting anywhere. Going again today though.
Not long enough by any stretch of the imagination. When you can share here on myPTSD forum after being in therapy for ten years and seeing zero improvements than maybe we'll take notice. Two years is a drop in the bucket compared to many of us on myPTSD. And the money? Don't get me started there!
For someone who is dissociating 24/7, you are concentrating, reading and writing quite well. I can't do that while dissociating.
Some people are highly functioning. I'm one of those. My T I stayed with for 14 years noticed that right off.
This is about your distorted view of being a uniquely untreatable case and how that view -- I.e. seeing yourself as more severe and separate from others in your position...
I used to see myself this way until I started to heal in small ways here and there.
you came on here to get a question answered. Is your condition too complex to be treated.
@jameson In a word, no. I thought my situation was hopeless and that Humpty Dumpty could never be put back together again. Hundreds of pieces and alters got integrated so far so I know that's a lie.
difficult, expensive, risky, time-consuming.
Oh yes on all accounts. Especially monetarily. At last count $30 to $40,000 at least. And then if you calculated all of the time consumed into dollars... wow... lots of money lost there. Yet... it was all worth it every last dime.
People who can't and won't address their issues develop personality disorders, because they sure as hell weren't born with them.
Unfortunately that's not true. Some psychopaths are born that way and part is environment. There are other PDs like that too. Some are nature and nurture. And others not.
I have traits from lots of mental disorders that are individually categorized differently
That's because usually PDs are not fully able to be diagnosed until a person's brain reaches full maturity. And you can reverse many traits of PDs before they become full blown by working through your issues.
The therapist I stayed with for 14 years reversed his PD traits when he noticed them during school to become a therapist. The moment he recognized himself in the traits he did something about it and went to therapy. He doesn't exhibit any traits of that particular PD and neither can any psychiatrist diagnose him with that PD. That gave me so much hope when my T told me his story.
Okay, the book is finished. :)
