I promised many of you I was going to write a bit about a crisis I had a year ago in relation to my adult life long quest to find my feelings, my true self. Here it is.
Because of the length of the story, I will post it in two parts.
WARNING: What follows may sound frightening to some. That said, I survived whatever it was that happened and the event was, in retrospect, a very good thing. I feel better than I ever have. I feel again.
PART 1:
What happened to me a year ago only happened once before, around year 2000. I didn’t know what had happened back then and simply fell asleep and forgot about the event.
And it all came to a head in the summer of 2005. I just couldn’t do it or take it anymore: The anxiety, the traumas, the deep depressions and despair, chronic suicidal ideation and a few attempts, the hypomania, the sleep and concentration problems, life, relationship and work-related stresses – it had all become too much for me and my nervous system - and superhuman I was not.
I went off work and it seemed to take forever to get better. I went back but I just couldn’t cope, and so retired on medical grounds in 2007.
It was probably the first time in my life where I had the least amount of stress. And when I got depressed, I stopped fighting my feelings and just sat there like a veggie until either I figured out the answer or it went away (non-resistance).
Last year, I agreed to do a testimonial at the annual general meeting of a childhood trauma center. Thank goodness I didn’t then. What would have come out of my mouth would have sounded ridiculous. That’s how emotional I was.
Although I’d be fine doing it today (and have offered to do so), something foreign, something very emotional was brewing inside of me for about three months before that. And I didn’t know what it was, nor why it was happening. But I suspect "non resistance", or accepting my full feelings, even if I didn't like them, may have played a role.
My theory as to what led up to the event that I will talk about is as follows:
The energy of emotions associated with experiencing fourteen years of: multiple traumas, witnessing violence frequently, medical traumas, living in intense fear/terror and with extreme anxiety (for a child) that couldn’t be released inside had to go somewhere, as did all the stress caused by the long term “after-effects” of such experiences and brainwashing ie. verbal and emotional abuse.
According to my understanding of what I’ve read, the brain/body unconsciously responds to overwhelming situations differently from one person to the next. Some brain/bodies suppress emotions, some repress them, others compartmentalize neurologically, etc. And the younger one is, the more pronounced it can be because brain formation and psychological development are in early development.
In my case, no matter what or how much thinking, writing and analysis, no matter what book or what therapist I saw, nothing, including trauma and other type workshops, seemed to cure me of the general numbness I felt all my life at my solar plexus.
I was working very hard on my testimonial and it was making me think deeper than usual.
In Judith Herman’s book Trauma and Recovery (1992 - this is at the time C-PTSD was starting to be recognized), she stated that traumas should or must be integrated into the personal history of a victim.
And I was deeply discouraged because my first memory in life was a trauma that occurred when I was, according to my mom, 30 months old, when my dad threw his cup of fresh tea all over my mom’s bare legs. I was sitting next to her and she screamed.
So how could I possibly integrate that, as it was the beginning of my consciously remembered history?
Now, and this is going to sound funny to some, and a lot of people mock Dr. Phil, but he was instrumental in what follows!
He states in his book, Self Matters, “you don’t have to analyze every single event of your past to find your authentic self. It comes down to five to 10 critical people and events for age group 1 to 5, 6 to 10, 11 to 15, etc.
And although I analyzed to death the events in age group 1 to 5, it gnawed at me for years. I kept coming back to it.
To be continued in next post.
Please do not post under this thread until I post Part II, to keep the story flowing.
Because of the length of the story, I will post it in two parts.
WARNING: What follows may sound frightening to some. That said, I survived whatever it was that happened and the event was, in retrospect, a very good thing. I feel better than I ever have. I feel again.
PART 1:
What happened to me a year ago only happened once before, around year 2000. I didn’t know what had happened back then and simply fell asleep and forgot about the event.
And it all came to a head in the summer of 2005. I just couldn’t do it or take it anymore: The anxiety, the traumas, the deep depressions and despair, chronic suicidal ideation and a few attempts, the hypomania, the sleep and concentration problems, life, relationship and work-related stresses – it had all become too much for me and my nervous system - and superhuman I was not.
I went off work and it seemed to take forever to get better. I went back but I just couldn’t cope, and so retired on medical grounds in 2007.
It was probably the first time in my life where I had the least amount of stress. And when I got depressed, I stopped fighting my feelings and just sat there like a veggie until either I figured out the answer or it went away (non-resistance).
Last year, I agreed to do a testimonial at the annual general meeting of a childhood trauma center. Thank goodness I didn’t then. What would have come out of my mouth would have sounded ridiculous. That’s how emotional I was.
Although I’d be fine doing it today (and have offered to do so), something foreign, something very emotional was brewing inside of me for about three months before that. And I didn’t know what it was, nor why it was happening. But I suspect "non resistance", or accepting my full feelings, even if I didn't like them, may have played a role.
My theory as to what led up to the event that I will talk about is as follows:
The energy of emotions associated with experiencing fourteen years of: multiple traumas, witnessing violence frequently, medical traumas, living in intense fear/terror and with extreme anxiety (for a child) that couldn’t be released inside had to go somewhere, as did all the stress caused by the long term “after-effects” of such experiences and brainwashing ie. verbal and emotional abuse.
According to my understanding of what I’ve read, the brain/body unconsciously responds to overwhelming situations differently from one person to the next. Some brain/bodies suppress emotions, some repress them, others compartmentalize neurologically, etc. And the younger one is, the more pronounced it can be because brain formation and psychological development are in early development.
In my case, no matter what or how much thinking, writing and analysis, no matter what book or what therapist I saw, nothing, including trauma and other type workshops, seemed to cure me of the general numbness I felt all my life at my solar plexus.
I was working very hard on my testimonial and it was making me think deeper than usual.
In Judith Herman’s book Trauma and Recovery (1992 - this is at the time C-PTSD was starting to be recognized), she stated that traumas should or must be integrated into the personal history of a victim.
And I was deeply discouraged because my first memory in life was a trauma that occurred when I was, according to my mom, 30 months old, when my dad threw his cup of fresh tea all over my mom’s bare legs. I was sitting next to her and she screamed.
So how could I possibly integrate that, as it was the beginning of my consciously remembered history?
Now, and this is going to sound funny to some, and a lot of people mock Dr. Phil, but he was instrumental in what follows!
He states in his book, Self Matters, “you don’t have to analyze every single event of your past to find your authentic self. It comes down to five to 10 critical people and events for age group 1 to 5, 6 to 10, 11 to 15, etc.
And although I analyzed to death the events in age group 1 to 5, it gnawed at me for years. I kept coming back to it.
To be continued in next post.
Please do not post under this thread until I post Part II, to keep the story flowing.
