Fluctuating States?

Feeling different and thinking differently. Like if you are depressive you feel and think different and you might have ups and downs, but it feels more complicated than that. It is exhausting. Because I never know how I really feel about something. Maybe you could call it mood swings, I really don't know. It also involves different roles for different social situations, and then when you are home or over the next few days you feel completely different about encounters compared to when you were in them. Which is normal to a degree, but currently it doesn't feel normal to me. I can't describe these states when I'm not in them.

Another example: Therapy has just begun. The last session was good but stressful, with high inner tension and muscle trembling. In the evening there were so many different and contradictory moods and opinions, so much so that it felt like my system was collapsing. Therapy will be way more difficult than I thought, because over the last years I just focused on surviving. It feels like there is much more going on than I have perceived in everyday life. But it also frightens me. There are also parts that want to prevent me, or that watch out that I don't engage too much with certain things. It feels risky even talking about that but I try to avoid avoidance.

Hiya, I also use different roles for different social situations. It's quite a skill, however it's also very draining. I use it everyday and will continue to do so until a greater sense of equilibrium is reached. It does work and also shows you care alot.

Calmdown said:

when you are home or over the next few days you feel completely different about encounters compared to when you were in them.

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in my psychotherapy we called this, "ruminating." i believe i am rewriting the experience as i ruminate. i have wondered if it is a form of self-gaslighting.

dunno if it is the same thing you are experiencing. just sharing.

steadying support while you figure what it is for you.

Sounds like classic structural dissociation to me.

Calmdown said:

Because I never know how I really feel about something.

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Did you have to put trauma away as a child? Or weren't allowed to express yourself? Or adults twisted reality for you? I'm just giving those examples as they were what happened to me to feel like you did. I wouldn't know what was real and what wasn't, or what I felt as I reality was changed and I had to surpress everything. It creates internal conflict and self doubt and not understanding yourself.

Calmdown said:

It also involves different roles for different social situations, and then when you are home or over the next few days you feel completely different about encounters compared to when you were in them.

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This sounds like an adaptive self. Which is draining and exhausting to keep up.

Calmdown said:

In the evening there were so many different and contradictory moods and opinions, so much so that it felt like my system was collapsing

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Totally understandable. Therapy stirrs everything up. It upsets the survival strategies. So there is intense backlash (therapy hangover).
I felt like it was throwing everything up in the air and just seeing how it landed. Or worse: like free falling off a cliff.
Very unsettling on so many layers.
But....it gets better. Trauma therapy is brutal . It's learning to let in what your brain pushed out. Hard hard stuff.

Movingforward10 said:

Trauma therapy is brutal . It's learning to let in what your brain pushed out.

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What to do though when a logical part that has access to the trauma teams up with your phobia to say that letting it in is a really, really bad idea? Even raising the prospect is very dysregulating.

gorgonzola said:

What to do though when a logical part that has access to the trauma teams up with your phobia to say that letting it in is a really, really bad idea? Even raising the prospect is very dysregulating.

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Yeah, it's incredibly tough when everything is screaming not to do it. And those parts have very valid reasons (from the past) not to. It wasn't safe then. And they will get very very distressed with doing something they feel is fundamentally unsafe.

I don't know if other people have better/other ways of managing. What helps me is recognising what part is activated. Then working out what the fear is that they hold. Then working out what they need to trust that adult me has got this (if adult me has....).
It's trial and error.
It's disregularion to get to the more regulated state.
It's incredibly hard.

Movingforward10 said:

And those parts have very valid reasons (from the past) not to. It wasn't safe then. And they will get very very distressed with doing something they feel is fundamentally unsafe.

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This one has a very valid reason from the present and knows what year it is.

Thank you so much for asking this question. This has been on my mind so much recently since, like you, therapy has stirred things up. For me I think it might come from having reality shaped by someone else so much as a child, and told what is normal and what isn’t, that it seems impossible to know who you are and how you feel. But I don’t know. It makes me panic that I’m overreacting. Thank you for writing this.

Therapy is exhausting but amazing, and I hope it creates a safe and warm space for you.

I've got a different, more spiritual take on this (and of course, one can take it or leave it). We are collectively in times of change... a lot of people are feeling "loose sand under the feet", so to speak.

I think I know exactly what you mean by "flux states" - I get into states that feel really strange, a bit otherwordly, and it's not quite the same as dissociation. It literally feels like energy is shifting.