Strange Star

[Hope4Now]

So. I emailed work. Told them I wasn't coming in today. Shit. Bad choice on one hand...I will miss important meeting, have used up yet another sick day, will be yet another day behind with the overwhelming amount of stuff I need to get done...but parts of me really don't care. I am exhausted. I have not slept more than about 6-8 hours in the past three nights. I always have sleeping issues, but this new pain in my neck and shoulder is awful and I cannot get comfortable. I did a good job on my trip with networking and making my presentation. I made an excellent connection with a venture philanthropy organization that is very interested in collaborating with us. My newest book is getting picked up for distribution by a well-known national publisher. Isn't that enough? Isn't anything ever enough?

I want to leave my job and get myself healthy. Parts of me are convinced that is what it will take. That I need to get that stress out of my life, and make space for my writing and painting and photography. But I don't know. And the ramifications of leaving my job are HUGE, not just for myself but for my family as well. I am terrified to even contemplate the possibility of taking disability leave which could still leave the work option open for me later. But then other people would have to pick up the fragments of all the undone projects. Don't know if I would qualify for disability. How does that even work...because unlike a physical illness, this PTSD is so incredibly unpredictable in me. I can have uber-productive times paired with completely dissociated times. Don't know how we will pay our bills. Don't even know if it would be the best thing for me to do, or if it is EPs pushing. Or if I should listen to them. I've been stuck in this indecisive place for a year now. I took the summer off, and that was good. Went back to work in the fall and did pretty decently for a while, but now I'm back to the exhaustion level where I was last year at this time. I understand myself better, but I still have all the same symptoms.

I wish someone could tell me what I should do. I mean someone outside of myself. What I fear most right now is that if I don't make a real decision that my body will do it for me and I will become physically ill to such an extent that the choice will have been made for me. I have been very lucky so far in this life that nothing like that has happened to me. I know the chances of it happening are pretty high if I don't deal with all this stuff. I've read the studies. Why, oh why am I so terrified to make a decision. I am still frozen. Frozen like I was when I was a baby, and a child, and a youth, and an adolescent...

 

[shimmerz]

Go to work NOW. No, take a shower, you have to take a shower. No, keep writing in your journal because you need to sort this. Stop being lazy. Get your shit together. Go to bed and get warm and rest because you're exhausted. No, you're imagining all this. You're crazy. Yes, if you don't go to work NOW you will ruin your whole life. Stop being irresponsible. Run away. No don't. That would be bad. Hide. Yes, better. Where? How? No place to hide. You're going to explode if you don't pull yourself together. Hurt yourself. Yes. That would help. No it wouldn't. Stop it. You have choices. You're nothing. You don't exist. Give up. No. Go get another cup of coffee. Smoke a cigarette. Call in sick to work. Take care of me. I'm scared. And on and on ad nauseum.

Is that what this is???? I have been doing this quite often. It is new for me.

but my therapist caught them and helped me re-focus and I was able to get everything else to step aside for a bit and really connect with that baby part. It was so amazing. And it taught me something about how my usual memory loops get in the way of processing.

Do you remember Hope what he said to you about getting the looping stuff to stand aside? What if numerous parts are up? Which one is attended to first?

 

[Hope4Now]

Is that what this is????

Maybe. I call it being "scrambled." It is a different experience from being completely flooded by a part (taken over). And both of those are completely different from being blended with one part (like a flashback of sorts but with awareness).

I'm not exactly sure when it started, or if it has always happen but I just shut it down by either going into full throttle ANP mode or dissociating into nothing mode. I started using the word "scrambled" a few months ago I think. I think it was when I started "buying in" to all this parts stuff. Something in my awareness of myself and my system started to shift.

You have mentioned some similar shifts yourself. Perhaps this is why it is happening to you too. I wonder?

 

[Hope4Now]

Do you remember Hope what he said to you about getting the looping stuff to stand aside? What if numerous parts are up? Which one is attended to first?

Yes, I remember. I'm not sure I can do it for myself. Sometimes I can, when the SELF energy is a bit clearer. It hasn't been since then. Mostly I cannot do this by myself. Sometimes not even when I am in a therapy session, even with his help. He is very patient, but it does make for slow going.

It was being there in the office with him, hearing his voice and his reminders to breathe that helped. Doing some mindful movement. It's like I need an external and trustworthy presence to help me stay grounded most of the time. I am not good at doing it for myself, although I am learning slowly.

Once the loops get going, it is really hard to get out of them without giving over to one part or another. It worked in my session on Friday for a number of reasons I think. One, I had some decent self-energy going when I arrived. Two, I like and generally trust my therapist (although I have parts that are scared of him still). Three, the memory we were working with was a happy memory.

What happened when stuff came up and stuck to that happy memory...My arms went over my face in a protective move, I closed my eyes, I started shaking. I felt myself sliding into the vortex. He got me re-focused and I was able to pay attention to my breath flowing through my body and open my eyes to SEE where I was in the present (very hard). Knowing that my breath is my self-energy is a good grounding anchor for me IF I can stay focused on it. He asked, "Is there a lot coming up?" I nodded. He asked me if I could ask those parts to step aside and just look on for a little while so that I could be with the baby in the happy memory. He said what was coming up were other parts with different memories, and to let them know that I would be with them at some point too, but that right now I needed to be with the baby. Somehow it worked. I didn't get overwhelmed. I didn't dissociate. I was able to talk to those parts without even fully knowing who/what they were...imagined them sitting under a tree nearby and witnessing me being with the baby part.

It all sounds so nutty but it actually does work pretty well with practice. It is a sort of visual/kinesthetic/auditory construct for rewiring your brain.

 

[Hope4Now]

It has been a long day. One of those writing here and in my journal obsessively days. I'm not sure if writing is a way to control my overwhelming feelings (aka dissociation), or a way of being mindful (aka being with my feelings). Probably a bit of both, depending on what part I am in when I am writing, I guess. I was in bed for a long while. Slept a little (the pain eased up a bit once I'd decided not to go to work). Did some reflective work. Spaced out a bit. Realized that being in bed, under warm covers, with my eyes closed and nobody around but the dog, is the closest I come to feeling safe. I don't have to pretend anything...just be. Just that is an interesting insight. That perhaps I am misreading my need for safety as exhaustion and wanting to sleep. Or maybe it's my lack of safety that is making me exhausted. :confused::banghead::arghh;. I AM tired of trying to figure all this out and what the right thing to do is. I miss the days when I could just disappear into a good book. Sigh.

Am I sick? Really? Or am I just having a midlife existential crisis? Was I really, truly traumatized and just never knew it? All the outer signs are there, but parts of me just refuse to accept it. I say I am doing this to myself. But that's my mother talking, not me. Except it IS me. :wtf::yuck::wtf:. Is it just too frightening to acknowledge that things happened to me and I don't remember them? That I am NOT as in control of my life as I thought I was. That's what the literature says. It is so hard to believe, though. Okay. enough. I suppose I am overthinking again. :hungover:.

 

[Deleted member 12723]

I do not think that you are overthinking but being in pain just plain messes with your mind. Being under the covers with a dog sounds so restful and cozy and mabe you just needed that. Mabe you have been overdoing it.

I understand how painful it is to know you have trauma that you do not remember and I remember for seven months when I first began therapy I so needed the memories.

In time I managed to retrieve a few branding experiences and I realized that the brain is a wonderful guard to keep us safe while we are growing up and we do not need all and every painful memory to get healing and recovery. Of course this process started for me in the mid eighties.

It does get better in time. But please take it easy on yourself and if you need to be safe and cozy pay attention and meet those needs. You will feel better in time as you learn to give yourself what you did not before.

 

[Hope4Now]

Interesting weekend. Friday night was a complete and total wreck. It was what I used to call a panic attack. But I don't think that's really what it is. I think it was getting flooded by an exile. When I went through that stuff a decade ago, they called it panic disorder. I got it under control. But now I know differently. I don't know what the part is, exactly, that came up. It's a child part. One of the fragmented pieces of the child from the recovered memory which seems to be at the ground-zero of all this chaos. These fragmented pieces/parts seem to send their own fragmented communiques to me. Some visual, some auditory, some kinesthetic. Friday night and again on Saturday in the middle of the night, it was pure emotional overwhelm. Nothing else. Think I was having the emotional experience of the memory...a simultaneous desperate and panicked need to run and fight and cry out and disappear all at the same time. Maybe this is the "freezing" they talk about.

It's different though. I had the experience of freeze one time as an adult when I was camping in the mountains. There was a bear nosing around outside my tent, inches away from my head. I could smell and hear and sense him/her. I was fully cognizant but completely incapable of movement. Completely frozen in terror. Basically gave myself up for dead. I knew enough that I should get up and make a lot of noise to scare it away, but I couldn't do it. It was a hideous, horrible experience.

The experience on Friday and Saturday night was different. It was much more confused. I couldn't have identified what was making me react the way I was. Like total white noise in my head and body that went on for hours until I finally managed to move and get up to take ativan, which I'm not even supposed to take any more. Maybe it was different because it was a young version of myself who did not understand what was happening to her. Maybe I am just laying a story on top of all this physical experience. I just don't know. All I know is that something is terribly, terribly wrong with me and I am at wits' end trying to figure out what more I can do about it.

I hate all this. I wish I could just extract all these fragments of my self and lay them out on the table to look at and try to fit them together in a way that makes some kind of sense and that will allow me to free myself from this prison of chaos I live in.

 

[Hope4Now]

I have been at work for 2.5 hours and done NOTHING. This is crazy. Crazy.

 

[Hope4Now]

I took sick day on Tuesday and today. Lots of rest and meditation. Lots of emotional parts processing. Intense but good, I think. Not sure. Was in and out of SELF but mostly in, I think. Except that I have a dislocated rib that is really painful. Tonight, I walked down the stairs and across the kitchen with a normal gait and pain free. I feel clearer and more in SELF. I'd feel ready to conquer the world if my neck and shoulder didn't hurt so much. I think there's something to this rest thing. I need a LOT more rest than I am getting. Guilt-free rest. Maybe I will get better if I just can manage that.

The insurance company has denied my new med that is supposed to help with dissociation. Sigh. Maybe it's a sign that I'm meant to not go further down the med path.

 

[Hope4Now]

I am feeling very discouraged and pretty frightened. Although I've gained a lot of clarity over the past month or so, my system continues to be at war with itself and I don't seem to be able to broker much in the way of treaties. I feel like a deer in the headlights...not sure what to do.

Therapist and psychiatrist tell me I am doing everything I could be doing. Therapist keeps saying his mantra..."it's all a practice." And,,,"we have to go at your own system's pace." It takes a long time. He's right. I know he is. But my life is falling apart around me.

I see my regular doctor today. I'm worried that there is something else going on with me besides the psychological stuff and physical pain. I am unbelievably exhausted. I don't know if this is because I am starting to accept that my whole system is in chaos, and that I do actually need a lot of rest if I'm not going to completely collapse physically, or if there is something organically wrong with me.

My parts are yelling all sorts of different things to me. There is so much NOISE in there, it's hard for my SELF to hear much except the alarm cries. The parts just continually overwhelm the SELF. I am pretty aware of this at an intellectual level...although I have to be very focused and mindful to hold that awareness (otherwise different parts refuse to see other parts existence). It all feels so crazy. My therapist used the metaphor of a house of mirrors. It was dead-on. That's what it feels like inside me. Nobody inside is sure of anybody else's existence...lots of denial and fear...but each is absolutely certain of their own existence when they're up front.

That doesn't even make any sense. The three dimensions of reality we live in don't map to my internal system.

I asked my boss to work up something to let me know what would happen if I needed to take 3-6 months off from work. I haven't been to work in a week. Just cannot do it even though parts of me are wildly alarmed and upset about this. Yet I don't even know whether taking time off would help.

My husband talked about whether I should consider an inpatient trauma program. Hmmm.

Oddly enough, I seem to have more symptoms of depression now that I am on anti-depressants than I did before. The meds have allowed a lot of clarity to come in, and have, I think, helped me with learning how to be present in my body more often. But along with that have come a lot of emotions. I don't feel particularly depressed usually...discouraged like today, yes, but that passes.

 

[Valentino]

The common ideal most people have toward healing is that it starts out small and gradual, and with time it gets bigger and harder.

But, the opposite tends to be how the natural process actually works out.

Consider how the process works with physical wounds or injuries. With a serious injury, there is a lot of immediate attention, care and urgency placed towards prevention, stabilization, investigation, cleaning, etc. then there's treatment, tending, and care. There's a big surge of initial energy and focus, then things get easier.

This seems to be similar to how traumatic wounds integrate, process and unwind.

Maybe ANP's are like psychological walls, setting up like a big dam to stop, limit, and control the flow and intrusion of EPs and unresolved emotional wounds.

Once these walls are established, it doesn't seem like it takes much energy to maintain the wall. But when life stressors increase or particular stresses trigger EPs, that can push the limits of the walls, create cracks or even knock down walls. Then a flood of emotions can temporarily knock down an ANP.

The natural healing process can also create a similar scenario. With integration and understanding, walls naturally can come down, and initially there's a surge of energy because every wall held up takes effort. While there an initial sense of freedom with dropping a wall, later on it can lead to some inner chaos when emotions start flowing in and out through that newly exposed and sensitive area.

This new sensitivity to a more natural flow of emotions in and out, can feel quite foreign and unfamiliar, leading to triggering defense mechanisms. Or just increased flow of emotions might be indirectly seeking out and connecting with other unresolved emotional traumatic wounds and memories.

Within spiritual practitioners, it's also a very common by product of meditation and spiritual practices, that it increases awareness and sensitivity. And with feeling more blissful highs there's also higher capacity to notice and feel intense suffering lows.

But the potential good news is that it is quite normal for it to start out very intense, chaotic and difficult, then it plateaus, then it gradually gets easier and better, then later on it even reaches a point where it becomes automatic and smooth, like going downhill with momentum.

That doesn't even make any sense. The three dimensions of reality we live in don't map to my internal system.

So maybe this is the process of making sense of the obvious disconnects between external reality and internal distortions. In the past the push/pull dynamic of ANPs and EPs held a balance to keep your internal world together. Now with some walls dropped there are imbalances exposed which is causing initial chaos and confusion leading towards a 'new normal' re-organization.

I'm reminded of Eleanor's description of the confusion process, maybe it helps the type 5 in me, who naturally has a hard time dealing with being in the dark and confused:

One of the things that often gets in the way of my students learning is their impatience with/intolerance of confusion. What I have observed is that whenever we really deeply learn anything (mental, physical or emotional) we go through a stage of confusion. Things get all mixed up (con-fusio - "poured together") and then they get sorted again in a new order. Really, confusion is a most hopeful state, and the harbinger of new understanding and skills. The disorienting part is that while we are re-ordering stuff old skills and knowledge fall apart for a time. In school, this means that when students are assimilating new knowledge they tend to forget how to use commas and that a single sentence shouldn't have three subject and as many verbs.:whistling: So I am often heard to say in a cheery tone of voice "Confusion is good!"

As for some practical things to consider:

Space: Holding space, creating space, allowing space, giving room, staying open.

Space can be healing in and of itself. It's sort of a non-action, or maybe it's like a softer type of attention and focus. The survival response is defensive: FIGHT -- resist and close space or FLIGHT -- run away to safety escape from space. Somewhere in the middle is creating and holding space, staying open and conscious instead of fight/flight reactive.

Deep Listening: Making sense of feelings, felt sense, embodiment, talking things out, express yourself.

Feelings were dangerous in the past, so there is a habit of avoidance and numbing. This likely was adaptive survival strategy in past chaotic trauma environments. But it's mal-adaptive in that it created unresolved emotional traumatic memories stored in the body, and then managed by ANPs and EPs. Learning to re-train the habitual survival instincts from threat conditioning against feelings to 'calm conditioning' with feelings and the body, starts with direct experience of consciously staying in the body and listening to feelings. The mind 'intellectually' knows that feelings and emotions aren't dangerous, but it takes a bit more effort, practice and repetition for the body to 'know' that feelings can be safe.

Journaling and writing out your inner stories is quite helpful to many people. Artwork, music or role-play might work better for creative types. "Noting" or "Name it to Tame It" is a mindfulness type practice, of simply noticing and labeling whatever feeling, sensation or emotion that arises.

Talking with others and sharing your stories works very good too, but when inner world is so chaotic, it can be difficult to communicate it to others in a way they can grasp it or hear it. Also most people have limited capacity to relate deeply to raw suffering or chaos, so deeply sharing with others often ends up being counter productive, and might be better left as a more advanced practice, or limit sharing to select people.

Attitude: Selfless service, childlike curiosity, honor, respect, gratitude, appreciation, learning.

Sometimes we get in our own way with expectations, assumptions, and entitlement. That's part of the current social norm. But it often ends up with the prideful mind leading from above and behind, in a tug-of-war stale-mate fighting the body which is leading from the present and in the trenches. It's not about taking sides or winning over the other. It's really about learning to work together, collaborating towards greater good, a shared goal. Changing our perspective and attitude, can make things much easier.

Like: Service without expectations, asking questions instead of dictating answers, honoring instead of devaluing, respecting instead of dismissing, appreciating instead of feeling entitled, and seeing experiences as opportunities for learning instead of rigidly holding onto beliefs.

Physical health: Sleep, diet, exercise, walking, hiking, nature, massage, breath work, shaking, stimming, deep pressure, touch, hugs

The breath is a common anchor in many spiritual practices. Deep slow conscious breathing in itself can trigger the autonomic nervous system (ANS) to switch from sympathetic (SNS) 'fight or flight' mode into parasympathetic (PN) 'rest and digest' mode. When triggered this can be hard to consciously do, so physical exercise or activity is a good distraction that gets the body moving and also forces deeper breathing. I have recently been incorporating extended hikes (3-4 hours) in nature, which is good for the body but also something about the environment and activity overwhelms the senses. There might even be an EMDR effect with hiking, the rhythm of left/right in both leg and arm movement and natural eye scanning forward. I also use walking, jogging, yoga, pilates, karaoke, singing, chanting, etc.

Being with animals (dogs, cats, pets, etc.) can also help calm and ground the physical body. Animals can be more accessible and open to touch, and physical touch directly can trigger oxytocin (bonding feel-good hormone) release in the body of both (win/win).

..... anyway, this ended up way longer than I had intended. I can relate to where you are now, as I've also been lost in chaos in the past. But mine with an Asperger's brain flavoring of experience and approach.

Maybe it's simply you're going through a bit of a 'catharsis' and 'healing crisis'? Or it could even be a bit of a 'dark night of the soul'?

I'll end this with a Rumi poem that might resonate:

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.

Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

-- Jelaluddin Rumi,
translation by Coleman Barks

 

[Hope4Now]

Thank you @Valentino