Hi - Hold My Hand A While, I'm Scared Of You

[Helliepig]

Hi Ms Spock! thank you for connecting with what I wrote and for your comments. They stir up so many things I want to say! It definitely does help to know other people are strugging with the same stuff as you, especially dissociation, as it is such a strange thing. IIn terms of what I've done to deal with it, 've started a trauma diary if you want to look there, called 3 steps forward, but it's in its early stages as of yet! I will think about what you've said and maybe try and get my head round my experience of dissocation.....

I can't write much as I'm at work (!) but I really connected with your comment about "craving that primal belonging". Such a good way of putting it, and exactly what I am feeling, big time, today.
Thanks for taking the trouble to respond x

 

[ms spock]

I believe we are hard wired for it Hellipig,

It is part of our evolution as humans to be part of the group, tribe, family, clan, gathering party to stay safe and to belong has so many multilayers in our genetic, biological, social, environmental, psyche and psychological.

To not have that is to be falling in space or in fog with no way out or frozen in time. So frozen in time am I.

Good to read you today Hellipig,
ms spock

 

[ms spock]

Disassociation is something I connect more with intellectually rather than in reality. Though I do notice more and more gaps as time goes on. I am mostly gone somewhere else.

It reads to me that you are dealing with disassociation in a more visceral way.
ms spock

 

[Helliepig]

My dissociation was something I was completely unaware of for a long long time. I had episodes, starting as a teenager, where I would get flashabcks, and time where I felt "not me" and surreal in a really frightening way. It often came as part of depression and anxiety and was overwhelming, crazy, unbearable, reality seemed different and I had to get out of it at any cost. But I also had the occasional evening feeling like I couldn't think and was confused. I thought it was normal and that everyone had those!

A psych I saw at the time told me it was depression and "I was very anxious" He really p***d me off as he was so disinterested and dismissive and how on earth you can pupport to understand someone after half an hour of structured general questions, god knows, (but don't get me started on that!, that's the subject of another post!!!)

Somehow I knew it was more than that. Maybe it was that I did not want to see myself as someone anxious and depressed, or I was reacting strongly because my family had written me off as highly strung and I couldn't bear anyone else doing it, or maybe, just maybe, a part of me knew the truth. The more of this work I do, the more this seems to be true.

Years of therapy later, we just weren't getting there. I had learnt all sorts about psychotherapy and how the mind works, but just opened up more and more pain with nowhere to go with it. And it was all "in my head" - an intellectual understanding, rather than an emotional journey. I now understand counselling etc only really deeply helps if it hits the emotions - first order healing - but unbeknown to me, my dissociation wasn't letting anyone near that part of me!!!

I struggled with terrible times, hanging on, making myself feel "it" whatever it was, because that's what I'd read you had to do. On hindsight I was just miserably lost, and retraumatising myself because you cannot heal this kind of stuff in a vacuum, however brave and determined you are. My child had no way out so how was my adult psych supposed to see one? I tried everything under the sun - throwing myself into work, sport, relationships, rescuing... you name it. Trying to heal with a positive mental attitude.

I also noticed I had times - usually in social settings, (which I both hated and desperately yearned fo) where I would get overwhelming "white noise" and pain and desolation and thoughts which were familiar and relentless in their hopelessness. If i got out of the situation it would lift - and it was as if it never happened.
All sorts of similar "swtiches" went on with relationships too, but I didn't see it - cos it was all I'd ever known.

I knew there were lots of bits of me, so I couldn't choose to be or commit to anything - to choose one path when in touch with one part then seems terribly wrong when in touch with another!! That's one of the reasons I've never been able to belong - apart from all the trauma around intimacy and trust. Dissociation from a baby leaves you with no sense of the real you, no idea how to do things others do, an empty swirling feeling where there should be a sense of being ............so how can you belong ANYWHERE?

My first EMDR consultant made the diagnosis. I remember being stunned - something at last made sense about their being 2 sides to me, and hallejuh, maybe a way out of it all - but my understanding was very rudimentary and simplistic. It also seemed a bit of a novelty, walking around thinking "i'm dissociative!" with no real idea of what that meant for me and the future. Or for the past.... I read about about the fact that it is highly correlated with sex abuse as a child, but could not relate that to me. I knew I had had a horrid upbringing but that was all ( -I had no idea of the horrors it really contained. My dissociation had kept that the best secret of all time.)

It was a long slow process of familiarisation. In the beginning, it was just an intellectual construct for me. All the many many things I read on the internet slowly led me to recognise bits of me in their descriptions and discussions, but a lot of the time all i could feel was an intensely beating heart and a agitated feeling. I started to recognise these as clues but that was all I had. But at least i was recognising it. I began to recognise the spaced out, dizzy, "missing something" agitated feelings I had, at the time i didn't understand what they were, but I now know so many things were triggering me, I was dissociating away. I hadn't spotted I'd felt like that before. I'd been so brainwashed into thinking this was "depression". It takes you to drop your preconcieved notion and just notice and listen, and allow yourself to discover how you feel and what is happening, rather than rushing to explain it and avoid it.

in my trauma thread I have talked about how I messed around with EMDR and caused myself to "flood" Looking back, part of me doesn't regret THIS foolhardiness, because I honestly think so much of this would have taken YEARS to get at, had I not done so, because i didn't even know what was in there. In actual fact, part of me HAD seen it , those few times it had broken through.But I had forgotten that, discounted it,. It was "not me", not real, another me experienced that, not this me. Confused? You bet. It is confusing beyond description, beyong understanding.

I believed with sheer trying i could stop being the person who had "those episodes":they were so frightening, so other-wordly, they were truly bad nightmares. My ow personal horror, somewhere only the devil and I went.
I thought they were my inherent badness, my weakness, my unacceptability. would make progress in therapy and then some of this would come up and I'd honestly believed I'd overdone it and my wierd brain was once again broken ! I didn't understand they were the feelings of a trauamatised child.

However, when the dissociated stuff broke through after the EMDR meddling, armed now with some knowledge and insight, it was a real surprise to realise that this stuff, although still unbearable and beyond tolerance, was dissociated stuff. Took me a long time to see that. Each time new stuff breaks out, the initial belief still reverts back to "oh no, here I go again, I'm bad, pathetic....etc" and now I understand it's because each dissociated fragment contains a part of a small child who REALLY BELIEVES THAT IS TRUE

more later

 

[Helliepig]

It's funny, all you're doing is relating what happened, and you carry this stuff about in your head, so why, then, when you write it all down does it stir so much up? Sort of like connecting all the dots and seeing the bigger picture.
I feel very full of nameless stuff today

 

[Rene']

It has also been suggested to me many times as well to journal. I discussed discovering this site with a friend and explained that I could write things here. He asked about the privacy and I explained that there is some comfort in sharing with others who understand what you are talking about.
You discussed your thoughts about fitting into someone else s life. My main issue is being alone at night so, I tend to stay in relationships longer than I should and with people that don't understand my PTSD. My trauma happened when I was much younger. I can tell people that I was kidnapped. I can tell them that I was raped and abused. I can explain that I have nightmares and that sometimes I might wake up praying, screaming, or crying. The only problem is that they can only see the adult and not the child who is in panic so, they never really get it. My current husband goes away for a few weeks to a few months every year and stays with a female friend. He doesn't understand what I go through during these times alone. I don't want to make him 'responsible' for my issues so, I deal with the fears but, it would be nice to have someone who was supportive and understanding in my life.

 

[Roline]

Hi Helliepig

I can relate to so, so much of what you have said. I feel so much like a child that I am unable to put my thoughts into words, and I thought I was the only one that seems to spend all my time dissociating. I feel so lonely and ashamed of my past, that i'm frightened of people thinking bad of me.

I'm not convinced that EMDR is helping as it is just bringing up so many memories that I dont know what to do with, and is just over-whelming! I told my therapist that I needed extra support immediately after and she just said that I need to sit with the feelings:( Is that normal??

Any way, thank you so much for your honest writing, it's good to know that you're not alone

R

 

[Helliepig]

Hi Rolline
EMDR is powerful but is does bring stuff up, big time, sometimes overwhelmingly so,(plus as I mentioned I messed with it on my own which brought up alot of stuff I just wasn't equipped to deal with!)

After an EMDR session i inevitably get a couple of days where I feel uneasy, confused, sometimes overwhelmed by feelings, sometimes panic, sometimes feeling awful in an unbearable way. I have learnt that it feels like this because this is how it felt "back then". The difference is now I can tell myself " this is being stirred up by EMDR" and sit and wait it out. It can be hard, so hard, sometimes I feel like it's taken me to a different planet, one of no return, and that is frightening, and you can't really TELL anyone, it's beyond words.

But lately i've started to take comfort that it means things are moving, coming up,, the brain is shifting through something. You don't have to figure it out (if like me you spent your life desperately trying to figure stuff out ) your job is just to sit with it. My T says it's like a drain being unblocked, all the stuff comes up and then goes back down the clean drain, and this time gone for good. Sometimes you can see this more clearly than others. But after the pain of the reorganisiation, something often has changed. You expect a certain sinking feeling but it doesn't really happen anymore, or it's a shadow of its former self . "First order" healing, - rather than what I used to do, which was to try and think my way through things = waste of time.

My therapist also does work with the inner child, and TFT - tapping therapies, that can help calm the nervous system down. It has also brought me insights and realease lots of pain, I do some of this at home when I am overwelmed. Can you talk to your therapist about something like tha

Experience helps too, going through this process over and over allows a tiny part of your brain to be able to recognise earlier and earlier in the healing cycle that it will settle down, cos it always has before, although I must admit there is always a moment before then when I feel trapped and panicked in an existential way - like there's no way out of myself. But do you know what, I think THOSE are the most important moments to let yourself experience fully, it's almost as if those existential moments represent the real crisis moment that the child had that provoked dissociation, and these NEED to be experienced and processed, awful though they are. With EMDR they are usually just momentary. I read somewhere about resoloving dissociation involves resolving existential crisis, maybe the moments I describe are part of it....?

Dissociation is wierd and scary and really hard to describe. I would advise getting to know as much as possible about it - not the formal descriptions, but the tiny details the experienced trauma therapists write about. I often read articles and find one or two phrases that hit home, that describe exactly some wierd thought or belief I have and they would explain it. I spent days frantically searching to hear someone else talk about the neurological type dissociative symptoms I had, which were hellish - I now understand those to be symptoms from the baby ( when trauma is so overwhelming it causes neurological symptoms in the immature nervous system) People need to write lots about what it is like, because there is not enough out there for sufferers to relate to.

But the bottom line is, dissociation iISsplit in the personality, it is called "structural" because it is hard wired. It's bit like having a really really tall wall between parts of yourself, you have no inkling the other part is there. The wall has to come down but then you have to resolve the shocking clash between two disparate parts of yourself. Dissociation is so wierd and painful , the healing almost HAS to be untterly wierd, painful and frightening also order for such a massive change to occur in your brain, if you see what I mean. And you have to FEEL it in your body, because that is where trauma is stored. Thinking is a waste of time.

So next time you feel overwhelmed, wierd and frightened, take comfort in the fact that something big is happening,all in the right direction XX

 

[Roline]

Thank you so much Helliepig, you have been a great help x

 

[CraftyCath]

Hi Helliepig,

Maddog and Ms Spock have said it all really. I, too was traumatised as a child, through my teenage years and into adulthood when I became a nurse. It is difficult to know which part of us is kicking off at any given time. I am only just learning that when I end up with friend that hurt me, (not in the normal way people do, you know over something silly and then make up) but when they are cold and callous - it is the little me that chooses these relationships and clings to them because it is what she is use to. I have a deep sense of abandonment and injustice from my child and this spills over into my adult life. I, too, dissociate at times and even if I don't I am always aware of that 'shift' into the little me when I'm around members of my family.

I have also realised that although my siblings are part of my distress, they never received the love, encouragement and guidance that we should all have had. I'm not making excuses for them, sometimes when I'm with them it is like 3 kids having a scrap and seeing who can get the most control over little Cath, but I'm beginning to understand them. My parents didn't physically abuse us and they loved us the best way they could. WW2 families often didn't know how to raise their own children and that seems to be the case with me. They just seemed absent and uninterested and I brought myself up (a bit like Matilda). I was physically and emotionally abused by others (one was my Grandmother, I thought she was a witch). I also wanted that close family that loves and supports its members. I have grieved for what might have been and know that my child is the one that still dreams of that wonderful 'Little House on the Prairie' thing. I lived in a world of fantasy, magic and dreams and I know my child still does that. I am only now getting the help that I need and deserve after all these years (I'm 47) but I have made real progress like yourself, Maddog and others. I have a way to go yet and at the moment I am very confused as my child/children vie for attention and my adult self screams 'I don't know what to do!' Fragmented? You bet! It makes me feel :sick:

I will follow you and your posts as I feel you and Maddog may shed light on some of the stuff I am going through and If ever you need a chat, a moan or a laugh I'm here. :)

 

[maddog]

I think we all have so much to learn from each other CraftyCath, that's partof what makes this place so special. I'm in the middle of what I truthfully feel is one of my greatest plummetting crashes to rock bottom right now, it's hard to imagine being of any use to anyone. But what I do know is that coming here, sharing with you all and learning from those who are at all places along this journey, is offering me more comfort and security now thanI'd find any other way. And it's safer than walking the neighbourhood in the middle of the night, or doing any other of the wreckless things I'd probably be doing if I wasn't sitting here.

You also made me reflect just now on the fact that in so many ways, it is the positive, healthy, nurturing relationships in my life right now that bring out my children more than the negative or dysfunctional ones do. I have more or less estranged myself from all of my family this year, and while there is some ongoing backlash and threatening behaviour at times from a couple of individuals, mostly, the negative influences from my past are gone on a day-to-day basis. I guess I hadn't realised how much the support and kindness of new people in my life, good people who are trying to help me, would trigger my children into action, or bring them screaming and crying and fighting for attention and validation, yet fiercely and frightenedly reject it all at once. Honestly, nowhere do they cry and struggle more than in the presence of safe people right now, and it's horrible, because the same situations and contexts that bring me the greatest security, also cause me the greatest pain and suffering. Is that why I can't be near a safe person right now without dissolving into floods of uncontrollable grief? Is that why I actively avoid and shy away from these people the stronger my need for their security becomes? Is that why the toxic irrational sense of isolation and abandonment and isolation fester and swell even more with every additional show of support that I receive? Is that why my ability to explain and articulate myself grows more and more inhibited with every day that I am supposedly learning those skills and concepts of connection? Is that whyI find myself falling faster and harder, the more I should be healing? Is that why it hurts now more than ever, and why I can't see the light anymore?

I'm seeing T this morning, something which has brought me grounding and calm and perspective and security at every step along this journey. But suddenly now it fills me with only fear, fear for the impending gut-wrenching meltdown of despair that I know will come, along with the hopelessness, and humiliation, and aloneness, and the horrible broken abandonment that will come afterwards. Is this what insanity feels like?

Sorry... how did I go off on such a self-absorbed tangent, something else that seems to be a feature of who and where I am right now.

Thanks all for listening though, for anyone who has.

Maddog

 

[CraftyCath]

Is that why I can't be near a safe person right now without dissolving into floods of uncontrollable grief?

I could quote all of your post MD and it's not self-absorbed, we all need to vent. I can control my tears around the 'bad' people but as soon as I see my T, even if I'm determined not to let it out, it just does. I guess I dissociate around the bad ones but don't around my T so everything is hinged in reality instead of pretense. No judgement, not character assassination, just constructive criticism, understanding and empathy.

I'd be dead if it weren't for my T. I get so scared and frightened when all the dark stuff comes up and I want to run away and hide - it hurts so much and I feel, like you Maddog, that I am falling apart, disintegrating instead of becoming whole. I have to ask myself, 'how badly do you want to be whole? Will you go through the pain to come out the other side?' I guess the answer is 'yes,' but it doesn't make it any easier. Like surgery, sometimes it makes you feel worse but it is for the best.

Love and hugs to you (((Maddog))))