Tolerating Good Feelings (or Just Feeling "okay")

[Chava]

I seem to have two personal states of "normal" (my normal): depressive, fatigued, in pain...or excited and like I'm pushing my own gas pedal. If I feel "good" (like no pain or exhaustion) it's easy to tip into feeling a little bit inwardly high...and instead of just staying where I'm at I actually feel a strong compulsion to smoke a lot and get further wired. I over-do it all, and crash.

It's like I can't handle feeling good. Or even just "okay." On a scale from 0-10, if 0 is dead and 10 is super-manic-vibrant-alive....I actually prefer being somewhere around a 2-4 because it feels like a sort of inner tone I can control somewhat. I can't handle uncontrollable pain well...but constant dull pain and sense of blurriness seems to help me just "be." My therapist is helpful for understanding this and not pushing me to have good feelings all the time. I am consciously working on creating some more positive experiences, but also making sure they are subtle.

I know this might sound sort of bipolar. I've never been diagnosed with bipolar and I don't really relate to it. I'm really this low level 2-4 for years at a time, suffering somewhat from some kind of pain or self-destruction, with manic-like good days just scattered quite randomly and in response to being just healthy. So it's pretty well controlled, I'd say...but I just don't know how I'd handle being "happy". Feeling healthy also feels very uncomfortable. Partly all related to really old feelings about not feeling like I deserve to be alive or feel alive (or have typical good feelings like joy, happiness, comfort, love, etc). I feel like the beliefs are changed but all of this weird stuff is stuck in my physiology. All my cells resist feeling okay. "Okay" is feeling nothing at all, or some kind of suffering.

I'm also working on tolerating small bits of typically negative feelings like sadness. Basically I could sum this up by saying I prefer a certain amount of numbness and when that subsides for some reason....I go into some kind of flight and add to it with more stimulants until I'm numbed out in the other direction...just buzzing and crashing into walls, pacing, gladly distracted by 1,000 things, and disconnected from my body again...just at a different spectrum. Like inner collapse vs floating outside myself. Not sure if any of this makes any sense (feels very hard to describe). But it's a thing i'm working on....and helpful to say that no, I don't really want to feel good...and I don't need any pity because my constant pain and numbness does something for me.

 

[ms spock]

I seem to have two personal states of "normal" (my normal): depressive, fatigued, in pain...or excited and like I'm pushing my own gas pedal. If I feel "good" (like no pain or exhaustion) it's easy to tip into feeling a little bit inwardly high...and instead of just staying where I'm at I actually feel a strong compulsion to smoke a lot and get further wired. I over-do it all, and crash.

I am either hyperalert or hypoalert. I get it.

It's like I can't handle feeling good. Or even just "okay."

I cannot handle feeling good either. I can't allow my self to accept gifts. I can't take anything good into myself. I am unworthy of having something in me. Having stuff in me is scary as the parents will come and strip it away from me.

My therapist is helpful for understanding this and not pushing me to have good feelings all the time. I am consciously working on creating some more positive experiences, but also making sure they are subtle.

These sound like sensible things to me - good support and practice.

I feel like the beliefs are changed but all of this weird stuff is stuck in my physiology. All my cells resist feeling okay.

I don't think I have the neural pathways to contain the charge of the good stuff. Taking anything in is really hard, and I ask the same questions over and over again. I think about the same things again and again - because nothing goes in.

"Okay" is feeling nothing at all, or some kind of suffering.

Yes that is my default avoidance, numbness or agonising over something.

Like inner collapse vs floating outside myself. Not sure if any of this makes any sense (feels very hard to describe).

I so live this. I am relieved to read that someone else gets it. I just don't know how to manage the feelings or states of being. I just check out, space out, eat, do obsessive stuff or just disappear, the world feels unreal or I feel unreal so I don't have a sense of time or things to be done.

I don't really want to feel good...

I feel it is all so overwhelming. I just don't have the physical capacity to hold the charge of good feelings for more than a few seconds. So it is really hard.

I also tend to over think things.

That Laurence Heller youtube video - and there is only one on youtube of his that I found - that you put in another thread was most helpful for me to understand the Complex Trauma a bit more.

 

[KwanYingirl]

As my therapist says-I work hard to be sick. As my ex used to say-I'm only happy when I have a crisis. You make sense to me. I don't pity you although I wish you could be pain free if only for a vacation from it. That requires some numbing agent. I like what you say about tolerating some distress. All this business about living with PTSD has taught me to be completely amazed at the lengths we go to find a 'normal'. as if there is such a thing. Keep sharing!

 

[Ronin]

All of it makes sense & in trauma-recovery roads, not 'bipolar sounding'.

Have you tried transforming that bad (and comfortable) into different activities than usual though? See if it changes anything? Playing around with what triggers bad, and how bad it triggers bad, and how much energy you have to use in whole the process.

Or too long didn't read: Finding less energy / emotional draining shade of bad, for starters?

 

[Chava]

Thanks for all your thoughts @Ms Spock

I can't take anything good into myself.

This is such a weird thing to realize, but I think very helpful....because it seems like I'm always chasing feeling good, but really I'm pushing myself to feel the way I think I'm supposed to feel...or just trying to get numb. Feeling "good"? No, that's not actually what I relate to or want.

I'm also very aloof towards support or "good" coming from others. I distance myself to extreme degrees. But in therapy I'm sort of there to be seen and helped and supported. That in itself is overwhelming sometimes. I appreciate that my therapist doesn't respond to my distancing or wanting to just curl into myself by becoming distant herself. I have had therapists do this, leaving me feel sort of abandoned with some really confusing states. Current therapist seems to know how to give me space but not disconnect on her own part, like act bored or irritated by me. That helps a lot. Also helps me accept where I'm at so I can learn something about it vs always try to numb out or dodge what's really going on.

p.s. (ETA): the Laurence Heller stuff helps me frame quite a bit of this

 

[Chava]

All this business about living with PTSD has taught me to be completely amazed at the lengths we go to find a 'normal'. as if there is such a thing. Keep sharing

Thanks @KwanYingirl ...yes! The constant push to be normal is exhausting. I'm sort of changing some of my perspective on "normal" (I mean I've always been fine being a weirdo...but now like going out of my way to find a sound meditation group that nobody else wants to go to because it's one good feeling I can tolerate...like a little crack into my version of feeling okay)

Thanks @Cashew ...I have tried many different activities and am finding things that make some more sense...either in terms of healthier ways of responding to feelings or having an outlet...or finding little activities that actually help me tolerate feelings, like being peaceful or relaxed (a big part of this, I realize, is not feeling "okay" just slowing down)

 

[Mallaky]

Thanks for that post. I can relate. I just consider myself borderline manic and try to see myself like that.

It is just overflowing confidence and numbness towards feelings of others, and it really sucks. I often do stupid shit in this mode, getting drunk, arguing, spending money. Feeling all around invicible. It is no good. No other personality state has caused me so many regrets, because this is the most active one. The others just dont do a lot, but man I can do embarressing shit those times.

I feel, for me at least, it is just another kind of dissociation and altered personality state. I think, I am basically a arrogant teenager during those times. I feel super good and healthy, but its just an illusion.
Now that I think about it, since I excercise regularly it has not really occured anymore. Not so much overflowing energy I presume. I only just realize that, its good news. :)

 

[KwanYingirl]

Do you have a feeling of impending doom?

 

[Chava]

Not so much overflowing energy I presume.

I need to remember regular exercise for that extra energy. I have a hard time not feeling like I'll type into hyper, which becomes sort of detached and numb too. But I feel better with movement...just has to be mindful and not frenzied...wish I didn't have to put so much thought into it. Other people seem to just go for a run and feel good. Not crazy.

Do you have a feeling of impending doom?

Me? I don't know...or it's there to the point I don't recognize it. I'd say definitely constant feeling on-edge, even if I'm actually feeling very fatigued and sluggish. I don't feel anxious but I can't actually just settle down and enjoy the moment unless I really zone out in it....why I need music and art. If it doesn't absorb a lot of my attention, forget it...I probably do feel vaguely doomed.

 

[ms spock]

I need to remember regular exercise for that extra energy. But I feel better with movement...just has to be mindful and not frenzied...wish I didn't have to put so much thought into it.

I have to put a lot of thought into it as well. Because I am often so dissociated and numbed out I often am at great risk of harming myself. So I am sticking to walking and the Alexander technique.

I have to put a fair bit of thought into my mindfulness and my meditation.

Haven't managed to get the theory and the practice together with the eating or the self care yet. But I am very slowly improving.

why I need music and art. If it doesn't absorb a lot of my attention,

I won't let myself have the art and the music - or mostly I don't. I won't let myself have things that make me or might me feel better, so I sabotage myself a lot. I think about doing stuff but never do it.

I really admire that you let yourself have the music and the art - something to be proud of.

 

[Chava]

I won't let myself have the art and the music - or mostly I don't. I won't let myself have things that make me or might me feel better, so I sabotage myself a lot. I think about doing stuff but never do it.

Have to say I don't allow myself the good music, but I know it helps. I can't listen to much (like let it help me). But I do like to actively play instruments...the doing part. It's part of my "job" so fits into some bracket of work in my head...but it's good for me. The active part absorbs my attention. I haven't been doing well with artwork lately at all, which is probably related to not letting myself feel even this kind of attentive okay. These things do help me be in the moment and have often felt "okay" when any other form of "self care" or enjoying life does not. I'm in a funk with the music stuff but not giving up...working on finding simple sounds I find calming and allowing myself that. I respond to it on an extremely primitive level if it's right...so it's not even about good feelings but really basic self-regulation, like allowing myself to breathe.

Thanks @Ms. Spock...I don't think of it as something to be proud of but there is a part of me that doesn't give up and it feels most access to the world through music...it's the least destructive version of myself, and most alive. But sometimes I tolerate even that aliveness in small bits (had to quit playing one of my instruments because of injury and for the first time music got lumped into the group of "alive" things I felt I couldn't do...so I had nothing left. That really made accessing good feelings harder than some of the trauma because music was always safe and then I lost the biggest piece of it. So I'm sneaking my way back in, I hope, through sound...like singing bowls and stuff, less active so it's harder in some ways but more primitive and regulatory in others....seems like the most logical route to work on tolerating good feelings because there is a normalcy to me, like my ability to access sound and use it internally has never been tainted or wrecked

 

[ms spock]

I respond to it on an extremely primitive level if it's right...so it's not even about good feelings but really basic self-regulation, like allowing myself to breathe.

I have a real struggle with basic self-regulation, like allowing myself to breathe or even remembering to breath.

I do a lot of breath holding is maybe a more precise way of naming it.

So I'm sneaking my way back in, I hope, through sound...like singing bowls and stuff, less active so it's harder in some ways but more primitive and regulatory in others....seems like the most logical route to work on tolerating good feelings because there is a normalcy to me, like my ability to access sound and use it internally has never been tainted or wrecked

Totally awesome!