Can You Help Me?

[Justmehere]

Saying these four words out loud to any authority figure or helping professional terrifies me. It makes sense why. The worst trauma I have survived was at the hands of people in positions of power, authority, and trust that were supposed to help, not commit crimes against me that hurt beyond words and nearly caused my death.

So now, those four words - "can you help me?"- terrify me.

I am struggling with flashbacks in public over the past month. I break down crying and shaking. It comes and goes in minutes. I'm terrified the police will be called and that fear is making the flashbacks worse. My therapist wants me to be able to say, "I have PTSD, I'm having a flashback, can you help me?"

I can say to anyone around, "I am not feeling well, I need to go take care of myself. Please just let me be and I will be fine."

This has worked ok so far. The police have never been called but the fear is still there...

In general, I am extremely interdependent. I had knee surgery recently and I walked to the scheduled surgery alone just because it was easier than asking for a ride there. (I did ask for a ride home, instead of walking home, but honestly, it was only because the doctors required it - like they do for everyone.)

Anyone else find this terrifying? It's screwing up all my relationships...

 

[PureDogs]

@Justmehere

I can relate with that because I do get that lot. Sometimes I would want to cry but couldn't.

The flashbacks and memories can be painful that I can bear. There are times I would want crawl in bed and be in dark to be quiet.

When it happens I would keep myself distant and I do know it is not good thing to do instead of doing that - vent out but afraid to do that.

 

[Jersey3]

I have the exact same issues and thought I was alone with them. I suffered terribly as a child at the hands of authority figures and even though I had successfully compartmentalized the trauma for 40 years, the lingering fear of authority figures haunted me. And the thought of the police taking be somewhere can put me into a panic. I was triggered in July 2012 & all my memories came out of their compartments and flooded me. I'm currently in therapy where I'm learning coping mechanisms for when I get triggered. I've just started EMDR which seems to help once I figured out the concept. I have to wonder though if I'll ever Really get over my fear of authority figures.

 

[Justmehere]

@PureDogs I'm so sorry you struggle with this too. I try to stay away from people too in these times.

@Jersey3 It helps to know that you can relate and that I'm not alone in this! It is a tough battle. I hope the EMDR helps. I'm doing somatic experiencing therapy with other types mixed in.


Ps my original post was supposed to say "I am extremely independent" not interdependent. I wish I was interdependent! (darn autocorrect!)

 

[Echo]

@Justmehere - I've just had a week of the worst panic attacks and flashbacks in public. I have felt very vulnerable. The last thing I want is to be seen to be having this happen to me. One of the worst outcomes would be for some uncomprehending person arranging or precipitating action that would take my personal power away. So far, no-one seems to have noticed my violently shaking legs, my crazily whirring heart or my streams of sobbing tears. I've got away with it. People are generally thinking about their own stuff, I guess, thank goodness. I didn't plan it to be like this, but I had to complete what turned out to be a 7-hour drive in this state. My greatest fear of all was being stopped at the wheel of my car in this condition. Luckily, the motorway was about 80% roadworks during my long drive (which made it two hours longer than it needed to be in all). I felt great frustration that it seemed never-ending and I just so wanted to get off and get into bed at the other end; but in reality that speed restriction probably helped me really focus, gave me time to try and control my breath, and maybe even saved my life and those of other people. I had no idea I would end up in this state, but had some authority figure intervened, I would really have lost it completely; I don't think I would have known what to say. Your solution is really helpful. I don't think I could chose to say what your therapist suggested, though.

Exhausted Echo

 

[Justmehere]

@Echo I'm so sorry you had to go through that! 7 hours in construction zones would drive me nuts! I'm glad my phrase I say when I am panicky in public could be helpful to you too. So far, it has worked ok. It seems to give people just enough info, and assures them I will be fine, and also tells them to please leave me alone! People want to help, they want me to be ok, but usually their efforts would just trigger me more and leave me all the more overwhelmed. My therapist says she has been there in person when the police responded to a mental health crisis call in a home and it really discouraged her about their ability to respond well. She is hoping that if I say I have PTSD, it will help them know I am not crazy or psychotic. She explained that many of them likely battle PTSD themselves, even if they don't realize it. Sigh. It is a scary thing - hard to deal with when already scared!

 

[Justmehere]

This whole thing ties into how much I fear being helpless. I am SO overly independent and I rarely tolerate a single unsolved problem. If there is a problem, I feel compelled to find a solution. It is like the opposite of learned helplessness. I am so scared to let go and so scared to let anyone else have any control.

I was at the grocery store the other day and there was something on a shelf I could not reach. There was a stool down the aisle in one direction and a staff member in the other direction. I seriously almost asked the staff person if I could use the stool myself to get the item. I wanted to ask for permission to help myself, and I paused. I figured maybe this was a moment to ask instead, "can you help me and get that box off the shelf for me?" I did not even want to ask this! I ask for things all the time, but I ask for tools to empower and help myself... not to ask someone to do something for me. This small incident felt safe to journal about and it made me realize that by asking for help, I am saying "I can't do this" and I am asking them to have control, instead of me, to accomplish a task. I have been thinking of the many ways I hold on to control and how deeply I feel like I can't do anything and I am terrified to admit it in any way.

 

[Echo]

@Justmehere - well, I could have written that. Someone once challenged my fierce independence and inability to accept help or even ask for it. She said, just because you can do a thing, it doesn't mean that you cannot allow people to show you love and caring by doing it for you. I am so used to having to do everything and I can normally. PTSD means I can't so rather than ask for help, I have let too many things slide. When I've tried to practice asking for help, it hasn't resulted in help at all, so I'm still not doing it right, I guess. Changing the habits of a lifetime, and realising how we contribute to our own situations, is so hard. But the key thing you mention is the fear of authority (perhaps stemming from untrustworthy parents, or something similar, originally or a traumatic experience with someone who you would expect you can trust, like police officers/medical professionals). I think it comes down to a fear of being judged or having our needs disregarded or needing to be perfect and whole to stay safe, and/or a mixture of all of those things. Being vulnerable and out of control has had bad consequences for us in the past, I suppose, and now being vulnerable or allowing intimacy, which of course means showing our vulnerable sides, is so hard. I am sure there'll be a way through this in therapy, but maybe only when the fear subsides. How does your therapist try to help you deal with it? I am just at the beginning with mine, so we haven't really talked about it yet.

 

[Justmehere]

@Justmehere She said, just because you can do a thing, it doesn't mean that you cannot allow people to show you love and caring by doing it for you. I am so used to having to do everything and I can normally.

I read your post just before I had to run out the door and this thought has really stuck with me today.

I too have let too many things slide and I can so relate to what you wrote about authority figures. It is about being vulnerable. As I have thought through it today, I think asking for help triggers the same fear I would feel if I had to tell the authority figure of other vulnerabilities, like things I can't do or things that would really hurt me. There is a fear of betrayal for me as well, as I was supposed to be able to trust the authority figures in my life as a child but they were anything but trustworthy or safe.

I am not sure what the way is to get through it and heal this. My therapist does a mix of somatic, cognitive, and relational therapy. She also teaches classes on how to use traumatic transference (both negative and positive) as a tool for healing. Her way of dealing with it seems to involve all of this.

We talked about this very issue at my session this week. She said that it makes a lot of sense why it is so hard for me to ask for help, and she wanted to start to make it less scary. She thinks this is actually one of my hardest and most key trauma related relationship problems. She said that part of working through it will involve asking for help from her and a few safe friends of mine, and experiencing that she is reliable and there for me, and won't intentionally hurt me, but will actually try to help me.

She wanted me to do an exercise to "practice" asking for help and to begin working through the somatic element. She asked me to imagine asking a bored police officer stating on a street corner for help, and to make it "easy," to ask them for directions. My therapist wanted me to be sure I used the actual words, "can you help me?" Intellectually, I was willing to give this a try. So I did. I felt terrible. I felt somewhat silly doing the exercise. I also felt a little bit mad and a little bit horrified. I felt like I was doing something horribly wrong. I began to get nervous. We talked through some more of the trauma that happened that made asking for help so scary... The session ended, and I went home. I had a call from a doctor, and I called the office. There was a problem with a prescription and I felt suddenly very angry again. I started thinking it through. I ended the call and broke down in angry tears. I called my therapist and while on the phone, telling her I didn't want to ever think of asking the police for help again, and that I "hated that exercise and I sort of hate you a little bit." I thought about what life might have been like if I had been helped when I really needed it. The grief was tremendous. I asked her to call me. She did. I rarely ever ask for anything, and it was hard to talk to her on the phone, but it did help. She told me that she had expected me to hate her at some point, "it's part of what you need to work through to heal." She was very steady on the phone. It helped to experience her that way even though I was so scared.

It is just as hard to face this today as it ever way, but I am able to face more of it than I could in the session. I am thinking that changing this will take a lot of time for me...

 

[Hope4Now]

@Justmehere thank you for this thread. You've articulated something that I've struggled with for most of my life. I am almost incapable of asking for help. Even when people offer it freely, I am really uncomfortable accepting it (my neighbor carried my grocery bags in a few weeks ago. Instead of just plain old gratitude, I felt ashamed for not being able to do it myself as well as an overwhelming sense of being in his debt. I baked him a pie to say thank you. I am fiercely, pathologically independent. It is very upsetting for me to ask for help on even basic things--e.g., the other day my husband found me crawling up the stairs behind a basket of laundry. He was aghast and had a really hard time understanding why I hadn't asked him or one of the kids to do it. It's almost as if I will die if I can't do it for myself. @Justmehere, I've had the same issues in the grocery store.

As I think about the comments on authority figures, I've just realized that almost everyone feels like an authority figure to me. I am still the child whose parents hijacked my identity, who knowingly or not abused their authority over me, devastated my ability to trust that people could and would willingly help me. I am still the child that asked for help in so many ways from so many people who just didn't help me. I really did try over the years to find someone to save me from my parents, or at least to validate my experience. I finally gave up. But that's different from just the practical requests for help that we're talking about here. I have just realized that for me, it was this pattern of abandonment that created my do-it-yourself or else mentality. Hmmm. Will need to think about that more. Thanks!

 

[Justmehere]

@Hope4Now - your post has made me think! I'm so sorry you struggle with this too, and so glad for your post. The things you bring up are linked for me too - my identity, abandonment, authority figures and trust, and asking for help with practical things...

I can so deeply relate to the sense that almost everyone can feel like an authority figure. For me, that means someone I am just waiting to be "in trouble with" in a very childlike sense but with adult level consequences...

I ensure that I will never really depend on anyone, so that no one is ever really there for me. I ensure that I do it alone, so that no one can ever abandon me and leave me stranded like I was when I was a kid. As a kid, I was expected to never be my own person, and yet somehow care for myself. If my bike was broken, I was given a book on how to fix bikes. If my knee was scraped I was told where the band-aids were. A hug from a teacher after I tripped and fell in the third grade totally shocked me. And when my parents hurt and abused me, and my extended family (who all had day jobs in helping professions like medicine and social work) looked the other way. When I was a child, my family joke of how if my mother was cold, I had to go put on a jacket. They told me to run track and became furious when I joined the swim team instead. They told me to stop making my father angry so he wouldn't hurt me. I failed.

Somehow I internalized that it was all up to me... even the impossible things, like making my father happy.

Even with past therapists, before this one, I have sought to learn skills and tools that I could use on my own, not ever to really depend and count on anyone. It was just to figure out how to be more self sufficient and do more on my own.

 

[Echo]

@Justmehere and @Hope4Now - I think we are coming between us to some really fundamental understanding in this thread that had eluded me so far, at least. Thank you for your/our joint thoughts. It really all makes sense now and helps me see how the mechanism of being so independent stems from fear generated by abusive relationships. And all the attendant stuff. I'm not able to respond more fully at present, though I will come back to this thread when I am feeling better, but I am sure it's going to be mulling around in my head and consciousness in the meantime. A real case of several heads being better than our individual, locked-in-a-loop ones. Thank you both so much.