Food For Thought---taking A Long Time To Process Emotional Stimuli = More Trauma

[maryiscontrary]

I have recently been through a ridiculous situation with a huge pile of Epic Bags of Dicks (EBoD) people who tried ruining my life (fat chance!). It is not like the jacked up like threatening incidences I have had in the past, but it was expensive and traumatic.

I really watched myself during this whole process. I see a big difference between myself and an average, non CPTSD person is the fact it takes a long damn time to process the emotional salience of a jacked up situation.

I am not talking self pity, or stoking rage or a grudge, I am talking about just digesting a very over stimulating situation. I am pretty good about protecting myself, but when a sneaky bastard gets in there and really screws me over, I can do mindfulness all damn day, but it does not take away from the fact that it will take a long damn time to process and detach. Similar to a dyslexic person reading War and Peace.

Now, just like picking a scab, if another trauma hits me when I am trying to digest the last one, my functioning gets severely impaired and my thinking becomes temporarily disorganized (slightly psychotic, but I have total insight into the fact my poor brain is terribly fatigued at that moment).

So what about you guys? Do you think that some of your symptoms are worsened by the long latency of emotional digestion? This is real predictable and mechanical for me, personally.

 

[Airedale 48]

Wait, what a great post. I'm new here though so I hope you don't mind if I try to catch up a bit.
Are you talking about situations that you have no time to prepare for or are you talking about situations that come up and then you need to kind of reflect and make sure your perceptions were correct or something else. Seems like theres a great bed for learning here. Thank-you.

 

[maryiscontrary]

Thanks much Airdale. Well, depending on the person, or situation, probably either. From my prospective, a big difference that I have with most other people is the fact it takes me a long,long time to digest heavy emotionally laden content. Like a lot of folks here, it comes on as a Tsunami and if I don't watch it, I go into heavy dissociation, which lasts a long damn time..

 

[kagamine]

I can definitely relate to this. When things get complicated in my life it takes me a lot longer and more effort to deal with it than the average person, especially if it's to do with people being a-holes. I can barely trust people who've been in my life for years and given me no reason to think they'd ever hurt me, so when people objectively hurt me or do messed up things to me I shut down and go into hibernation until my brain can reboot.

Right now I'm in a kind of messed up situation myself, and my way of dealing with it is to hide away in my shell and use unhealthy coping mechanisms. I think that's at least an improvement on ways I used to handle bad situations.

It reminds me of something my therapist told me, sometimes shutting down is the safest thing we can do. Eventually the ideal would be that we'd be able to handle things more efficiently, but complex trauma changes the brain and that's not feasible for everyone. I only see it as a problem when I can't function. If I need to curl up in a ball at least I'm not hurting myself.

 

[Airedale 48]

Man, you guys ( ladies) I am sooo happy to have stumbled on to ths group. I knew there were people like me but until my counselor told me different I'd always though of PTSD as the sort of reaction a vet might have to a bang.
My counselor explained that not all stress disorders are the same.
Lately I've been falling back into my old coping mechanisms. Staying in my house, either zoning by the TV or on the PC ( generally kind of ,well you know) ( something I hate btw, for obvious reasons) or eating. My house gets to be a disaster and it almost feels like insulation.
When I know I'll be in an uncomfortable situation I can generally deal with it. I reframe my thoughts " no one here is trying to hurt me" repeated over and over and when some one says something that starts what for me is go into attack mode I try to reframe my thoughts. Wait Dan, what did that person really say? most of the time people don't want to hurt us. No matter what our abusers did to us. Those people were sick ! They hurt us. On the other hand they hurt us because they were sick. Doesn't let them off the hook but it kind of reminds me that I came from something.
BTW, please don't think I'm trying to advise or that I think I am an expert. By talking this out I am reminding myself what my counsler and worked on.
Thank you Kaga and Mary. I kind of feel a little ( only a little) like crying. Kind of sad but more cause I am happy I found the list. sad though cause of the pain you/ we have dealt with. Thank you

 

[Friday]

So what about you guys? Do you think that some of your symptoms are worsened by the long latency of emotional digestion? This is real predictable and mechanical for me, personally.

Oh yeah. Ooooooh yeah. Matter of fact, my mantra in life has been pretty much to "keep moving". Reason being: I'm calm and cool in a crisis. I'm good. Really, really good. It's only later, once I'm safe, that I fall apart. The most consistent way I've dealt with this? To keep moving. If I slow down or stop, the wave has a chance to knock me over. So my MO is to keep jumping from crisis to crisis to crisis. Stay ahead of the crash. And when the crash comes? Bury it in sex & chemicals if possible, if not, to find a flat space I can tune out the world for the (typically few weeks, but as long as a couple years) it takes to wash over me. Failing both options, to simply walk around like a robot, disconnected from the world. Because if I connect at all, there is going to be damage. To myself or others. I don't know if any of the above makes sense. I'm thinking in pictures at the moment, and those translate badly sometimes.

The idea of processing as they come, little venting instead of waiting until I get bowled over? It's both completely foreign to me, and also what I'm trying, at present. There's an anger thread over on the other forum I use fairly regularly, and it's kind of amazing how... Venting even just typing... Means I'm far less likely to want to take a brick to anyone's face later. Similarly, using controlled methods on a daily basis (exercise related, mostly), talking to people (mmm, not my forte), all these little vents... Just makes the big explosion less and less likely. I don't have to white knuckle through anywhere near as often as I used to. Go figure.

 

[afuneralinmybrain]

Yep, I'm actually feeling super depersonalized right now and have been since yesterday. I hate it. Apparently my mind doesn't want me processing things.
Interesting -- on Thursday I saw my therapist and he made me talk to him about a trauma that occurred 7 years ago and only just then did I realise that I'm angry over it.