Making More Of New Traumas To Diminish The Intensity Of Past Experiences.

[user27357]

I have been lied to all of my life. We all have. People try to sway our beliefs, control our actions, get us to do what they want us to do. I’m an adult, lies should be like the weather, like traffic, like any other negative thing that happens to us that we cant control any part of except our response to it.

But I am affected by it, and am losing my control over my reactions to it. I carry around 8/10 level anger because of it, all day, all night.

The lies are just lies, once they are exposed they carry no weight. But the duration, the lack of concern for any consequences for the lies, the arrogance of continuing the lies after being exposed, it just starts to be more than the sum of the weightless parts of the individual lies. It starts to traumatize me. It starts to cause panic attacks when I think about them.

When my other traumatic experiences continue to bring on the same attacks after years of therapy and processing, maybe having a new source of trauma is a way around the recurring symptoms of the old stuff. Maybe this is the same kind of control that draws others to self harm. Maybe I have found a way to feel something different that draws me away from the same old endless symptoms.

I be am going to bring it up with my therapist of course, I need a way through this and I dont see one.

Does this parallel anyone elses experience? Does this sound familiar?

 

[arfie]

the name which resonates best with my own symptoms is, "normalizing." we don't seek that which is good for us as much as we seek that which is familiar. i had been traumatized my entire life. it was familiar to me. girl howdy, i am grateful to put that familiarity in the past tense. finding a new normal was a challenge, but the gain was worth the pain. i am much kinder to myself these days and have more kindness to give as a result.

i agree that we all lie. too much truth has gotten me into trouble more than once. still. . . the meanest lies in the world are the ones i tell myself.

 

[Tinyflame]

@enough Idk if this helpful, but I do relate. Though I don't carry it around with me except in protracted moments.

But the biggest thing I have found for me is, they exactly do relate back to previous traumas. Whether it be initially a subconscious or unconscious reaction, and whether they either shake or invalidate my trust in someone,, and make me feel at risk, or otherwise defenseless, or trigger me (and I say trigger on purpose, because it seems my brain has equated it to that), I get the alarm bell 'here we go again'. I guess it's interwoven in to many traumas.

Kind of miserable, because it's hard to remain objective and weigh it for what it's (not) worth, or consider alternate explanations for the reasons behind it.

 

[Weemie]

maybe having a new source of trauma is a way around the recurring symptoms of the old stuff.

Unfortunately, this is counterintuitive to how human neurobiology actually functions. By introducing new traumas, you will only further be destabilizing your capacity to process future events, as well as past events. This is because trauma is damaging to the brain, and causes alterations in your brain's ability to function optimally. A cruder example would be akin to saying that you have a brain injury, so you are going to deal with it by smashing yourself over the head with a baseball bat to create a new brain injury. It only results in more deficit, not less.

 

[Friday]

Does this parallel anyone elses experience? Does this sound familiar?

Stressors? FFS Hell, yes.

The past drawing parallels to the present is a sonnuvabitch.

 

[user27357]

thinking about assigning more value and psycho mass to things that on their own carry none. This is how I get past a lot of things, being totally pragmatic about them, being very aware of the true value and mass they carry. My wife used to put the kids out our back door with the warning that they shouldn't do anything that will draw blood or eat anything that moves, being fully aware that the trauma that would send them scurrying back inside would be something along the lines of "he won't share". I used to get into team sports mode where the next play was the only thing that mattered and if my throw caught the runner off base I was ecstatic and if I missed a catch I was downhearted and unable to be around my teammates. It was a ball, it was a game. It was two numbers on a scoreboard. I cant remember any of the numbers today.

Being 100% in the moment and focused on a task to the point that nothing else matters is a valuable thing in life, when it matters. And it is a horrible thing to lose control of when it doesn't. No blood? No living creatures eaten? No problem. That's pragmatism where it matters most, when panic over not sharing the swingset makes no difference in ten minutes when everyone is throwing sticks for the dogs to chase.

Taking a pragmatic approach to life's twists and turns gets me past a lot of things that seemed to be the only thing that mattered when they happened and were of no consequence by the end of the day. I get lied to, a lot, without shame or fear of repercussion. But I get paid, and I get health insurance and a retirement contribution and a cash share bonus every year. Next year when I am filling out the tax forms and looking at balances, there isn't a place where I get a deduction for tolerating lies and BS. No cash bonus for tolerating or withholding anger over being lied to. Unless the lies are given a weight and mass beyond their actual value and it upsets the whole balance and everything goes rolling under the workbench. I hate when that happens. Let's burn the workbench! No, let's go play a guitar until learning that new chord progression is more important than the desire to grab my boss by the neck and go looking for open windows.

Old wounds heal, but with the memory of the pain of the last healing process still in our memories our hypervigilance becomes stronger and our ability to control our defensive mechanisms becomes weaker, becomes a lost skill. When it looks like everything is aligning for a re-injury of a healed wound, stopping the chain of events becomes the only thing that matters and things like lies, just vibrating air, just a series of sounds become heavy and massive and more important than they really are.

 

[user27357]

bouncing this one back up, I seriously need some help with this. I am kind of amazed by the level of anger i am feeling from when lied too, and the lack of anger i am also starting to feel after I settle back down and look at it pragmatically for what it is, jyst vibrating air.
Who is doing the most self harm, the person that tolerates the lies and shows up the next day for more, or the person that goes to bed every night with the memory of having been a liar in their heads?
Or does that matter? Do i win because the liar is suffering deeper wounds?
I post this all because it matters to me. I think i am allowing myself to wear this new feeling of low worth, I am so low that people can lie to me like my feelings dont matter. And my best way through this to just shut off the care, make my feelings disappear.
I still have some pride, but all it does is cause me pain when it is assaulted by the lies.
Is this all just my new normal that I cant change in any way short of just moving on to a different life?
I am not suicidal, but I want to end this one, no hope here anymore.
they lie to me at work, she lies to me at home, if the truth is hard, they tell me a lie. Same as my father and step mother did way back when, same as the community i live in, same as my government, its all just blatant bold faced lies to keep me moving along, doing what they want but no way they get me to believe a word of it.
The side effect of losing hope is getting unbearable.

 

[scout86]

or the person that goes to bed every night with the memory of having been a liar in their heads?

I'm not sure that person actually perceives any harm. At least not to themselves. I think the people who lie the best and the most don't think of it as a bad thing. At least not when THEY are the ones doing the lying. They have ways of justifying it. Or maybe they just think of it as "telling stories". Are they harmed by it? IDK I don't think they're bothered by it, but I don't think it's a practice that leads them to become better, higher quality humans either.

I think anger when someone you should be able to trust lies to you is justified and normal. At least too a point. But I also think it would be worth picking your anger apart a little. Any ideas why it's as intense as it is? It sounds like maybe lies in the present are tied to lies in the past. There's a thread that's fairly new on "betrayal". You might want to check that out if you haven't.