How Do You Comfort Yourself When There Is No-one To Comfort You?

[Echo]

@xena21 - thank you for your kindness. I was also abused as an infant, and I wonder, too, whether that has led in certain ways to me being mostly alone in life. My relationships with men have not lasted, or lasted long, but then I have apparently attracted men, and been attracted to men, who have also, it turned out, had very rough childhoods. It takes a while to find these things out though. Now that I have PTSD, I am very uncertain about whether or not that will just make things even harder. I hope to get beyond it somehow.

I do still have some very good friends, though not local to where I live, and I have to say I do feel comfortable with those people. I feel my abuse has made me hyper-aware of other people's needs and ignorant of my own, so it is probably not surprising that many people come to me in droves for help and comfort, but haven't in the end offered me anything when I've needed it. If I don't know what I need, how are they supposed to do so., though?

I hope you find a way to become more comfortable with people. It is just such a waste that you experience this, when there are many other lonely people out there. I hope your therapist is helping you to achieve this. Maybe the experience of PTSD and what it brings with it really sharply mirrors our experience as small children. I am starting to see some of the ways in which I have kept myself busy and preoccupied, so as, unconsciously perhaps, not to have to fully face that loneliness.

What do you find comforting or more comforting than not, @xena21?

At least we have the forum and people here understand.

 

[xena21]

Thank you Echo. I have made friends in very structured environments like the military where I feel like I can be useful. The only problem is as soon as I was done I cut off all ties to people. I was afraid of any relationships, of any lasting bonds I could have. So my lasting I now have is with my dog...a wonderful shephard mix. I do see a great therapist who is trying to help with this issue, but so far it's just been such a roadblock in life. I am afraid of people to such an extent that I have corralled them off to me verse them. I have never experienced any relationship beyond Mother and daughter, no boyfriend or things like that. I do want to do something like that sometime. I am appreciative of all the help I've received and the posts on here. I appreciate the threads that have been posted. I do wish you the best!

 

[Echo]

Yes, animals are the greatest comfort. I spent most of my childhood outside in nature with my pets in a blur of dissociation, now, I realise, avoiding abuse and endless teasing by siblings who did not suffer abuse. Thank goodness we have these furry people - mine are two small twin cats, who don't really allow me to be fully alone ever.

Your dog sounds lovely. Maybe he/she can help you meet and trust other people. I once had a wonderful girl cat who answered the door with me/before me, growled at the postman (he wasn't very scared though) and greeted all visitors individually, even when I had 12 people at a time for workshops and the like. If she didn't like someone, she would do everything to distract that person's attention away from me and sit between us at all times. She really was always right about people, too. It is difficult for us, perhaps, to trust our own judgment around other people, but our pets probably know very well who we can trust and who not.

 

[Hope4Now]

I was a care giver for my husband for three years as he had severe dementia and I was so alone with it with no support except from the forum.

Oh, gizmo, my heart goes out to you. We helped my mother-in-law take care of her husband with Alzheimers, and felt helpless to support her in her pain and loneliness. It was so very hard for such a long time. Like you, though, she slowly began to rebuild her life...she is now married to her high school sweetheart!

I think you are right about taking it slow with new people. I realise I have just always trusted too much and too fast; and I have thought other people would wish to reciprocate, and I have given too much without waiting to see if they would. We owe it to ourselves to give it more time and more space.

I do this too often. I did it tonight. Probably will regret it. I shared with a sort-of-friend who hung out with me while our daughters were involved in pre-teen psychodrama on facetime. I don't know why I told her so much. Looking for connection I guess. Always looking for connection.

I have apparently attracted men, and been attracted to men, who have also, it turned out, had very rough childhoods.

Yup. For some reason, the people I am drawn to all seem to have had traumatic childhoods. I think maybe it does something to us...makes us different/more emotionally raw...and we recognize it in each other. Problem is, when both parties in a relationship are hugely needy it is hard to navigate any balance. The people who have abandoned me lately are ones who are dealing with so much of their own stuff that there's not a lot of energy left over for me. I understand and empathize with it, but I still feel abandoned.

If I don't know what I need, how are they supposed to do so., though?

Yes, I just wrote about this in my journal. Parts of me refuse to articulate needs, parts of me are so dissociated that I have no idea what I need, and parts of me are screaming out, "How in the h will they know what you need if you don't tell them?" It's infancy mode--we want people to intuitively know our needs, like a mother or father might!

It is difficult for us, perhaps, to trust our own judgment around other people, but our pets probably know very well who we can trust and who not.

LOL. My dog is on prozac because she bites people. She bit a mean neighbor last year. She bit my mother. She's of the approach, "I'll get you before you get me!" She used to be a sweetheart until she was attacked by a pit bull at around 18 months old. It is very sad. But she does sense something about people.

 

[Hope4Now]

I think this grief is making me feel even more the need for human comfort, above all. I just need to be around someone who loves me. And I need some hugs. Pretty basic, I guess.

Sending you gobs of love and lots of warm, cozy hugs over the Atlantic. Also below sharing a favorite song of mine by Dave Mallett (I wish there were a youtube of him singing it...this guy isn't as good, but the song is terrific.)

"You can be in my life if you respect and support me in the way I respect and support you. Any taking for granted or being sleazy, particularly when I've got PTSD, and you're out."

You go girl! You've got some good strong stuff in you...trust it!

More on mindfulness tomorrow. I've promised myself I'm going to bed before midnight tonight.

 

[Ryn]

Sending you so many huge hugs, @Echo. I'm so sorry things have gotten so hard, and that all this has piled up on you at once. I wish there was more I could do, but know I am reading/listening and here to support however I can. :hug:

You are in such an insanely difficult place right now with so many overwhelming factors, but I have to say I really admire the ways in which you are going about thinking things through and trying to care for yourself. You certainly shouldn't feel guilty or frustrated for any of the feelings and desires you're experiencing - I know I tend to beat myself up sometimes for wanting something as "basic" as human love and contact, but understand that the reality is - this is a really understandable thing to want, and we DO all need it. Don't ever feel that you are asking more than you deserve - you do deserve it, and I just am really hoping and praying you are able to find that comfort somehow. You are so worth it, you truly are. <3

 

[Echo]

@Ryn - thank you so much for your supportive words. I have to keep trusting that this is a process that is taking its course. I know I, like many others, keep hitting overwhelm and totally losing the bigger picture with all the pain, fear, horror and riotous bodily reactions, but in the end I do best when I can momentarily find a sense of soul.

I had a very interesting occurrence at my last session with my therapist. She knew I was feeling blasted to smithereens. I felt like I could not ground myself, centre myself or even find myself within my body. She got me to look inside using visualisations and Gestalt techniques. A part of me was hiding right down underneath my left ovary, cowering out of sight. No part of me could connect with my right-hand side. I was not inhabiting much of my body at all. In fact, I was pulling up and away the whole time right up and out of my body at the top. She got me to ground myself. All I could manage was a 10p-sized spot in my left-hand 'sitting bone'. Otherwise, I was feeling like a balloon straining upwards about to escape into the skies with only a fine thread holding me from doing so. I was feeling horribly panicked. Finally, she asked me to find any part of me, any tiny part, that still felt strong. Suddenly, very vividly, my perspective shifted to a sense of my greater soul. I was greater than this struggling, chaotic, self-lacerating self that had been smashed to bits. I felt much larger, a perspectival shift, like a big powerful cloud encompassing this terribly struggling me, and this larger self was utterly calm, gentle, entirely compassionate of the embodied me and was holding that smaller me very safe as it thrashed and screamed inside it.

I later had a really important phone call with a friend, who knows me inside and out and has seen me in relationship several times over. I told her about this loss of identity and purpose I was feeling and said that I didn't know who I was and what I was for. She said simply, "You are love; you are here to experience all aspects of love and to heal it in yourself." And I know she is right. Many people chose not to wish to engage with relationships after rape and abuse, and I have a great deal of understanding and compassion for that stance - God knows I don't know if I can do it. But I think I will know I am healed if I can get to the point of having learned how to be in relationship in a way that does not disempower, devalue and abandon myself. It feels immensely important to me.

I have started this weekend by dealing with the first ex who phoned me on that fateful day the week before last. I have refused to call him back but have e-mailed him and had some responses. I am slowly carving out the new boundaries for the relationship, to see whether he will accept them and to see what is left over, if anything. He has been kind and supportive so far, but I can see him shifting into casting me as a delicate victim, and I realise this is a way of distancing himself. He doesn't want to see the strength in me and I don't want his pity. I haven't wanted a romantic relationship with him for many years, but there has been great value in other aspects of our connection. I will keep gently stating my truth, and I will see where it goes. He comes back to me again and again, because the love we had just remains, but thank goodness, the in-love bit long ago died a death. He hurt me massively once upon a time, and due to all that had happened to me, I let him; I didn't know how to do otherwise - I was too marked by the abuse. I hope we can get to a position of loving kindness and compassion, without all the rubbish, and take that forward as a thing of value; in other words, chose to interact with no game-playing, psychodrama or such like. I hope it is possible.

It will be harder to deal with the man who left me a year ago and any members of my blood family who chose to approach me with respect and understanding in the future, but I know it is coming. If I can do the same with them, I will have set myself free to love again. I want to do this consciously and from a position of personal strength, and I think I will only be able to do it from that soul perspective.

I hope this doesn't sound unutterably idealistic, but it feels right to me and it feels empowering.

 

[Wyakin]

After reading this thread last night but not really taking it all in I just thought I'd pop back and see how you are @Echo?

 

[Abrasky]

I focus on my Pop. Although he isn't there in my life anymore, his spark which had and never stopped connecting with people in a friendly way never went out. His children were abused and his wife was controlling, but he never stopped being grateful for what little he had. He was my hero.

I never feel alone, because he is in me as part of my personality. I am a lot like my Pop.

 

[Echo]

@Maze - I am glad you have found something to help you. Unfortunately, my father was one of my abusers, so that's not going to work for me!!

 

[Echo]

@Wyakin - thank you for taking the time to ask.

I've been trying to suppress everything in order to get work done, though neither are working really well. I'm so numbed out, my brain isn't working well at all and I'm having to fight the staring into space and lack of concentration.

I'm also very aware that something massive is building in me. It is as if it is taking shape inside me and separating itself from the rest of my internal space. I can feel enormous energetic pressure coming from it. I know, at least I think I know, that if I were to focus on it, I would end up getting a huge thunder-clap of a flashback and remembering something that so far I have no conscious recollection of. My sense is that I am about to remember another attack, and, maybe with it, another attacker. I am also getting very disturbed dreams, so something is up.

I did make huge progress in my conversation with my ex. I was trying really hard to find my healing pathway through it. I am trying to do so with compassion for myself and for him. I realise I am too worried about the effect on him to accuse him outright of the pain he caused me, because I can now see that I was primed by my past experiences to be in a situation I should have left much earlier. He kept saying that he didn't realise then that I would be still so upset by having been raped. Whilst I think this is rather difficult to understand, I do know that then I, too, had no idea. But I was so numb then and trying to be brave in talking to him about in the first place. I have left things like this with him at the moment. I have asked if we could value what we have now - shared interests, humour, etc. and put the rest behind us.

However, having done all of this, I am now really aware I have failed to address the salient point with him, which is WHY he rejected me sexually and emotionally once I told him I had been raped. I know I am terrified of hearing the answer and I am also very scared of what it might do to him to ask. I realise that this pattern of being rejected for being raped and abused is a massive one for me; this loss of friends now that I have PTSD just feeds into it. It goes back to the time when I was a baby and my mother discovered me being interferred with by my father and made a trade-off with him. He could continue to do so as long as he didn't abuse my younger sister. I realise she would have done anything to hold onto him. It leaves me feeling utterly crap, though, of course.

The biggest issue in the present for me, aside from trying to manage all this (and make my living), is the effect all of this is having on my body. I am not eating properly. I am missing many meals and eating very little, even though what I do eat is good for me. Otherwise, I have eaten a lot of chocolate, which feels like a compulsion. I know it is comfort food (ha, ha!) but it consists of empty calories in the main. In my younger years this would have not been an issue; I never put on weight, but now I am ballooning and I loathe it with a passion. I was always so slim you couldn't see me sideways, but now my body is in crisis mode and thinks it is famine time, and is storing everything to fat. I know what is going on, and when I am calmer, I can eat to balance my blood sugar and weight drops off me again. It is just when I am stressed, and I am really stressed at the moment, I get into the same pattern and I just don't know how to control it. I realise I am essentially rejecting myself, maybe even trying to cause myself to die.

So I am left with realising that I am probably not ready to face the answers which would come if I were to ask the people who have rejected me, WHY? I would just use any answers, if any of them were able to give them or be honest if they did, to further beat myself up. I know I probably have to face all this at some point, but I shall have to get to a point where I ask as a researcher (if you like), and not care what any of them feel about me at all. Is that even achievable; I don't know?

 

[Wyakin]

Oh @Echo I completely forgot about this reply in the midst of not being able to keep grounded so I am so sorry for the late reply.

I hope you are doing better now. You have done so well with your ex even if you didn't manage to get to what you feel you need to talk about just making that initial link is so important. Comfort eating is perfectly normal but missing meals isn't good. I too am not very good at eating so I try to make sure every day I eat at least done decent cooked meal. I tend to skip breakfast and lunch then I eat a hearty dinner. I refuse to buy chocolate because I will just eat all of it!! To be honest at the moment you need to worry more about what your brain is doing than how you look, when you are feeling better you work at losing the weight it will give you something to aim for.

The building flashback is worrying, have you spoken to a professional about it? I know that I am build up to a big one but I remember everything that has happened to me so nothing comes as a surprise. Is it possible to try to experience it in a safe environment, I know that I'd I am trying to avoid a flashback it always gets me eventually so sometimes I give in to it when I am in a safe place however much I hate them it keeps it from hanging over me all the time. Just the stress of knowing one is coming tends to make everything worse!

Huge (((hugs))) to you. I really hope things have improved since Saturday.