Strange Star

[Hope4Now]

Thus, in the meantime, you still need to try and live life, which is important for helping to resolve trauma as well, because it strengthens you.

I'm struggling with this. It is about balance, but I'm in extremes.

The physical pain, the memories, dreams, and flashbacks -- these are not going to stop just because you don't put so much conscious effort into research and processing, as long as you're not doing anything to specifically repress these things.

I think I'm afraid that if I stop focusing on it, I will dissociate from it/repress it. It is a well-founded fear. When I am "functioning" at least in my old ways, it is like I shut out everything but what I'm doing. I emerge from writing or whatever it is only when something compellingly physical happens--either I suddenly realize I desperately have to go to the bathroom and probably have for hours, or someone interrupts me and requires me to get up and do something, or the pain is suddenly too profound to ignore. Or, I go on auto-pilot (especially in social situations). I'm good and then the Mack Truck hits me and I need to collapse. I come out of these odd states with all kinds of shakes and terrible exhaustion... It is a kind of functional dissociation I think. I wish I could balance this better so I don't feel so caught in these extremes. Haven't learned those skills yet.

It all seems so illogical that you are the super-human task-completing angel of organization all of your life, then, suddenly, you hardly want to get out of bed. This is a message. You've told me to listen to the messages my body gives to me, right? :D

Yes. Yes. Thank you, Pietro. I need to tune into my body more frequently so I can get better at this. I think this will help me balance the extremes better, if I can feel things before I'm completely dissociated/depersonalized or completely triggered into some sort of flashback.

it sounds like he's mitigating what you're going through

This is more my fault than his insensitivity. I've hidden most things except the pain stuff (which I cannot hide). It is easy to do because he teaches all day and is often out late into the evening with various groups he belongs to. And I am unable (and unwilling truth to be told) to articulate the severity of what's happening to me. I realize that part of me trusts him, but another powerful part of me doesn't want to reveal that the person he has been with for 24 years is really not my whole self. I don't know...it is very confusing, and that's why I'm quite nervous about the possible joint appointment with my therapist on Monday.

 

[Pencil]

I countered: "How do you heal physical needs when the entity is not physical?" He said, "It is in your body's memory." We need to explore this a lot more. It gets at one of the core issues I have regarding the need for physical connection.

Exactly. It is in fact a lot simpler than therapists would have us believe. Have you read the Webster (I sent you links)? I'll send you a whole book!

 

[Hope4Now]

@Pencil I got the link but I haven't read beyond the abstract yet. It seems there's more and more research coming out on the need for touch to heal in the past 15 years or so, yet it is still (understandably) so very controversial. I suspect the field of psychology moves at about the same glacial pace as education. In 20 years, nurturing and therapeutic touch will probably be an obvious part of therapy and the "contracts" for it will be well established. I think we're seeing this movement toward it with all the focus on somatic work and mind-body meditation. The links between the physical self and the emotional self are inextricable. I don't know what it's like where you are, but both of these are BIG in the northeast US and on the west coast.

 

[Pencil]

what it's like where you are

Behind the rest of the developed world by about 20 years! :(

I find it ironic, hilarious, infuriating and ... that 'patients' sit around impatiently waiting for the profession to wake up to give them what they know they need, and that it has nothing to do with 'boundaries' or ethics or transference, or .... all the ghosts of Freud. I think research in neuroscience will go a long way to prove WHY it is desperately needed by some.

 

[Hope4Now]

(sorry if this posts twice...I thought I posted this, but it doesn't look like it worked so I am doing it again)

I think research in neuroscience will go a long way to prove WHY it is desperately needed by some.

Yesterday, I watched a TEDx talk about a brain imaging technique being used in the field if psychiatry now. The guy (Dr. Daniel Amen) made the point that psychiatry is the only medical field that does not look at the organ it is treating...that basically they still "shoot in the dark" not much differently than 100+years ago. It's worth a watch...stunning results. Just google Tedx and Dr. Daniel Amen. It's the one called The most important lesson from 83,000 brain scans. It does not relate to touch but I think you will make the connection. I haven't watched the other one yet.

 

[Pietro]

It seems there's more and more research coming out on the need for touch to heal in the past 15 years or so, yet it is still (understandably) so very controversial.

I think it might be "controversial" in the US largely because Americans are such damned prudes and puritans. ;) And American men often view touch, beyond a basic handshake, as a form of weakness (although this is beginning to change some).

For me, it's signifies "need" and "dependence", and, thus, I've always been very cautious about it. Historically, I've avoided anything that involved me "needing" anyone else for anything, because it went against my self-perception of having to be stronger than everyone else, ultimately being a matter of trust. I've gotten a lot better about this, at least cognitively; physically and emotionally, though, it's still a little difficult.

I think working on this specifically, during something like group therapy, would be highly useful for many people who have such issues.

 

[Hope4Now]

Vent. Vent. Vent. Don't read this. It will put you in a bad mood. Or make you worry about me or something. I'm having an angry pity party for myself. I don't even know why I am posting it here except I feel like I will rip up my stupid paper journal if I try to write with a pen and I'm so bloody frustrated that banging on the computer keys feels better than trying to hold a pen.

I am so frustrated and angry with my body and my emotions and all this PTSD crap crap crap. I can't stand it. I am NOT in my "self" tonight. Haven't been all day. I have tried every friggin' thing I can think of to pull it together. I get it together for a short time and then I'm off again. I don't even know where I am. Meditation. Tea. Shower. Grounding. Food. Writing. Dog petting. Music listening. Yoga. Breathing. Ice. Hot water. I'm ready to tear my skin off.

It is horrible. I didn't go to work today. Thought I would work at home. Not. Worse, my husband and son are home on vacation. My cheery husband kept coming into my little workspace and trying to engage me. I was barely there. One time he came in and found me with my head on the desk and not much able to talk. Hah! He hasn't seen that before. I just forced myself through family dinner and a conversation about some road trip everyone is excited about taking this summer. Arrgh. The thought of it makes me want to run a thousand miles. Nobody understands this. I hate myself for being so negative.

I know enough to know I am dissociating in every way possible today. Like some weird semi-flashbacky state all day. Cold. Shaking. Twitching. I have no idea why. It's not like anything awful is happening to me or any hideous repressed memories have surfaced. Can't break the fixed stare. Pain, pain, pain. Drinking too much right now. Pinching myself. Scratching myself. Stopping short of doing something really stupid. Just imagining it. Cycles back and forth between involuntary tactile/visual images of being beaten bloody in the face and head and neck and shoulders (where the hell does that come from...99% certain it's not real) to imagining all sorts of horrible things I might do to myself. But trapped too because the self preservation parts of me are too too protective to ACTUALLY do it. Ineffective as always. I can't even do what I want to do. I just have to imagine it.

Go from feeling like I am terrified and want to be held and comforted, to wanting to rip myself and everything around me to pieces. I'm angry today. Not just at me. Irritated with everyone and everything. For no reason. I hardly ever get angry. I don't know why I feel this way today. I've stirred something up in my psyche and it's not happy. But I don't know what it is. This is crazy-making.

WTF is wrong with me. Oh, yeah. I have this shitty thing called PTSD and no idea why. Maybe this is how people feel when they're diagnosed with terminal illness. Helpless. Angry. Railing at the universe, "Why me?" Devastatingly sad. Betrayed. Thinking just end this bloody mess now. But no, no, one needs to be strong and noble and courageous, lest she somehow let people down. What people? Really? The world goes on and on. Always has. Can't do it. Fighter part says no way. Be strong no matter what. You know what...I'm so messed up that I won't do anything to myself because I would be too ashamed to take any action to end this stuff (how twisted is THAT?) and I'm too hyperfocused on making other people feel okay to take myself out of their picture. And somewhere, deep down under all this muck is maybe a little tiny voice saying that there might be some way out of all this without screwing up everything.

None of this makes any bloody sense at all. I read and read and read but it doesn't really help except that I have words to use to name what is happening. I don't trust myself. I don't trust my body. I don't trust the people around me. I don't trust the world. I WANT TO but I can't. Sometimes I can. But when it's like this it is awful (in the true sense of being filled with awe...the dread/fear kind). I am so sick of waiting it out. It is so hard to feel like this. I know it comes and goes but I dread the coming part and grieve the days like yesterday when everything seemed like it might be okay.

This is WAY TOO BIG for me. All day I have felt like this. Fighting against something sticky and suffocating and thick all encompassing and I just can't get free of it. It's a fear part and something else too. It's all around me and inside me and I can't get it off.

 

[Pietro]

I'm sorry you're struggling so much now. The anger is probably a good thing; I would guess that you never let yourself get angry, that you always make excuses to avoid anger, and suppress it. Now you're starting to let it out, feel it. It means you're recognizing you have boundaries and recognizing that they are being violated somehow. I have learned about having anger that is not full of bitterness and resentment and other things -- just anger that propels me to act. Eventually, you will likely find this also.

The rest of it just sucks. No way around it. I hope today is better for you. :)

 

[Echo]

Hey Mrs Strange Star, I hope you are feeling better today. I don't know if you really want a reply to your last post or just the 'privacy' to vent, but may I intervene briefly with a sackful of whatever you need right now? I won't offer hugs in case you need to punch someone (fair enough if you do), but you get to decide what's in the sack.

Heaps of fellow feeling from Echo x

 

[Hope4Now]

@Pietro and @Echo...you radical risk-takers...you ignored the warnings about reading that post. It was a long miserable ugly day. Got worse as the night went on. Let's just say that I'm glad I have some protector part that pulled me out of doing something really stupid and self-abusive. I stood there for a long time in a very strange emotional place, ready to hurt myself, then...abracadabra...came back to a more sensible place, put the implement away, and went to bed instead.

Today I am better. Back into control a little more. Did some intense grounding this morning. Realized that in spite of the physical pain I am really not grounded in my body at all. My "self" lives outside of me as do all of what are supposed to be my inner parts. My body feels rather like a hologram. It is quite strange to become conscious of this. I think I have some real work to do to try to stay connected and present. It is really hard to do. I seem to vascillate between being "flooded" to being dissociated to moments of being present...at least intellectually and spiritually.

I am better enough that I managed to take my mother clothes shopping and to the grocery store. I managed, for the most part, to keep from getting too overwhelmed by her. (Other than the fact that I spaced out a bit and drove around 15 minutes in the wrong direction before I realized where we were...it was kind of humorous actually that I am the only one who noticed this). I was extraordinarily grateful that my 17 yo son opted to join us. He is very good with her, and she treats him pretty well. He was able to carry all the groceries and support her as she walked (that would have been hard for me today because I'm having such a hard time walking on my own). Tonight, we all go to dinner with old friends from our neighborhood who have returned from a move to Texas to live about an hour away. I hope it will not be too overwhelming for me. I'm trying to prepare myself.

Tomorrow...big family Easter Dinner with my mom, my husband's mom and step-dad, and around 8 other people.I think I will plan to shelter with my brother-in-law who is my favorite person in the family. He likes to talk about quantum physics and black holes and strange stars :)

Thank you for your supporting comments. @Pietro, you are right about the anger thing. Hopefully I can magage to access it without hurting myself or anybody else too much!

 

[Pencil]

during something like group therapy

Nope. Worst place imaginable. I need to be cloistered, safe, private.

 

[Pietro]

Nope. Worst place imaginable. I need to be cloistered, safe, private.

I didn't say I liked the idea of group hugs in group therapy. ;) In fact, when I've considered this possibility in my mind, my emotional reaction, in the past has been off-the-charts rage and distrust. I don't think it would be like that now, but it wouldn't be all puppies and flowers, at first. I typically like to be cloistered as well. :)

I stood there for a long time in a very strange emotional place, ready to hurt myself, then...abracadabra...came back to a more sensible place, put the implement away, and went to bed instead.

I have to say I'm a little concerned about this, particularly that this involved and "implement". I was hoping that this was more an imagination exercise, but I didn't get that from what you wrote. If this is what's happening right now, this is serious. I hope you're mentioning these things to your therapist. My therapist often has to spend some time keeping me from teetering over too far into this side of my emotions, reminding me why there's hope, etc.

Tomorrow...big family Easter Dinner with my mom, my husband's mom and step-dad, and around 8 other people.

Hope you had a nice Easter today (@Pencil and @Echo, you too, if you celebrate it!). :D