It's all coming back...

[SeekingAfrica]

I had to sort out through old stuff in boxes from our old apartment to free space, and one of them was a box from the summer my PTSD began, and I learned a lot when I opened it, I realize I finally have some perspective on things...

But it also brought this wave that I can't fight, this wave of memories and sensations. Of the first time my PTSD started and I thought I was going crazy, the nightmares, the constant feeling that everything is too loud, too bright, too close, and that my chest permanently has something heavy on it, burning, and making it hard to breathe. Constant desire to throw up or hide, and jump if anyone touches me, but still feeling like I'm overreacting and making things up. Constant feeling like everything is final and I'm failing the worst way I can fail and everything is my fault. Constant headache like a ring of thorns around my head.

It's winter now and there is snow outside, but nevertheless suddenly it feels like it's this dry hot burning summer time, and I have to look outside. I don't feel like I am where I am, I feel like I was dropped back suddenly. And everything then is so much brighter than everything now, more important. It took me years to start feeling present and not like I'm perpetually living in that summer. It took me years to stop turning in my sleep and waking up with my heart beating like a hammer in my chest. And now I can't breathe and it's all coming back.

 

[Anarchy]

Are you able to hold on to the present and to the adult you and the coping skills that you have learned?

Reminders that take us back, are little sods. I hope that you are able to stay in the present and congratulate yourself on how far you have come since those days and nights.

 

[Joan]

I am so sorry that this box of stuff has stirred things up. Great job though on realizing that you need/want to be in the present. What are some things that have helped before? Sometimes for me stepping outside to feel the cold, picking up some snow is enough to at least temporarily jolt me back to the present. Journaling? How did you get to be in the present before? Take sweet care of yourself!

 

[SeekingAfrica]

I am so sorry that this box of stuff has stirred things up. Great job though on realizing that you need/w...

I'm doing small things to keep me present. I did journal, it sort of poured out of me spontaneously, but I'm not coping much better than that. Everything else I was supposed to do today has vanished from my head and I'm trying to give myself time and forgive myself for that. (thankfully it's nothing that can't wait another day). But everything feels so bleak and pointless and there is this need withing me to feel safe. To be at home, which I'm too far from. To get some things that comfort me, but it's night and it's too late to get far in the city where these things are. None of the things that calm me usually feel like they are what I need now- this is a different feeling, different than just anxiety, and I haven't felt this in a long while and I feel...shook and I don't know what will help with this, it's a new territory, that is how long it's been since I've had flashbacks..(but hey, I guess that's a win- there was time when I had them weekly)...

Are you able to hold on to the present and to the adult you and the coping skills that you have learned?

Half-way. I'm trying to hold onto the present and I'm managing as far as knowing I am here, but everything in me wants to be asleep so I don't feel so suffocated. I'm managing to hold on to the present, but I am not managing to hold back the emotions. I am coping in some ways. I drank really hot drink and I spend some time hugging a plush toy I found in one of the boxes. It's something, it keeps me here, but I feel like I'll faint or something, and there is that feeling, like things are hopeless and it's useless to try- even though nothing bad happened today...I'm trying. Everything in me wants to be at home(which is in another country) and to be in my room, in my bed, where I feel safe.

 

[SeekingAfrica]

And I'm fully down the rabbit hole. It seems like now that I have opened the subject my brain is insisting on thinking about it excessively. Like it wants to compare my memories and the way I thought of myself then(like it's all my fault..) to what I know now, to realize things that are actually healthy, I guess...but it also brings wave after wave of memories which I had conveniently pushed aside for a while.

I feel vulnerable and overly sensitive and I can't breathe. All I can think of is, that may be a good time for extra self-care. May be I have learned something after all. But this hurts constantly nonetheless. Like something had broken in me and it broke again now. It feels like a door to more healing and discoveries. It also feels like hell. A part of me just wants to curl in a ball and slip away from reality.

I make no sense. I'm sorry.

 

[Anarchy]

Seeking,
Are you familiar with Pete Walker 's stuff on "emotional flashbacks" and how to handle them?

What you are feeling and experiencing has different names in different paradigms. In transactional analysis it gets called "rubber banding" where we go boing back into old feelings from the past.

It's actually something that everyone can do, it's not a specifically ptsd thing. (Neuro surgeon penfold even reported triggering the effect artificially by mild electric stimulation of the temporal cortex of his patients )

I think that you are doing the right thing with increased self care and being gentle and forgiving with yourself.

@

 

[SeekingAfrica]

Seeking,
Are you familiar with Pete Walker 's stuff on "emotional flashbacks" and how to handle the...

Actually no, never heard of him. I'll check it out. I am always from the people that remember everything in detail, and I usually love that, but it can make it hard for trauma memories. Anyway, sorry I haven't written back, but I'm kind of wrapping my head around what I feel. It's like the memory stirs and rearranges everything in me. I have managed to ground myself- feel what I feel in the present- and I realize now that I've built something since then, I'm a lot stronger, and I have a lot more understanding of things. I'm not going back.

But this does bring something in me, it's like it puts every cell in my body down to the bones in shock. Spinning around, looking for answers. And that will take some time to wrap my head around. It has happened to me before too, when I think of it. Some more stressful situations put my brain in that state. Like I still...I'm present, I take active part in my day, but my brain is constantly rethinking the memory and rearranging the pieces in my mind, and it's like I'm in a haze, a little further from everyone, trying to figure out what's going on...I think it might be because my first trauma was when I was 6, so I always had that sense of feeling stressful things stronger than I should, being more "impressionable", and then it came down to the real stressful things and...PTSD...May be I'll read this in few days and it will make sense only to me, I don't know, but I thought I'd share.