A Life I keep Undoing and/or Keeps Coming Undone

[kocean]

Can anyone relate to this and/or have any experience navigating this? I feel like I go through these cycles working really hard to create my dreams, getting to a good enough place and before I get steady there, I blow it up, whether directly or the way I react/respond to circumstance etc

I recognise I have this destructive/regenerative cycle thing I go through but even if its a part of my make up I could more compassionate, or maybe that is delusional, likely!

Anyway, I'm just at a place where I'm reviewing my life and there is nothing...nothing....is this common for living with (c)PTSD?

 

[Friday]

In my case it (???) seems to be (???) mostly bad luck.

2012 Divorce
- 2 years to get back on my feet after divorce
2014 PTSD smackdown / lose everything
- 2 years to get back on my feet
2016 Perky little case of the flu / lose everything
- 2 years to recover + 1 year of starting to get back on my feet
2019 Covid = 2 years of lockdown / lose everything
- 2 years to get back on my feet
2022 CNS infection … year and a half later… today/still dealing with.

And those are just the BIG things. (I’m not even gonna get started on the sheer number of 1 step forward, 2 steps back).

For the past 10 or so years? Every time I START to get my life back? BAM! Rug yanked right out from under me. And every single time I start over? I have less to lose. (800k, my house, education, career, and maybe another 50k in personal property, friends/contacts/etc. the first time; to the last time where all I had were a few changes of clothes, a few hundred bucks worth of personal property, and the 15k I’d saved to move with). So each time I’ve gotten back on my feet? That means I’ve been able to achieve/acquire less in the same time period / am worse off then the last time. Just to lose it all, again.

Except for that second one, PTSD has only had a contributing factor, rather than the causal factor.

 

[kocean]

@Friday
Thanks for this Friday and the distinction between contributing and causal. Witnessing what you’ve been/are dealing with, that is much. Wishing you continued healing

Sense in my case it might be more causal as it in informs the way I react/respond and/or perhaps the situations I choose which are undoing. I want to be careful not to use it as an excuse while not being in denial, which I am prone to do - the this has nothing to do with PTSD it’s me. I’m also coming out of denial/reflecting on how ASD combined with complex trauma has impacted things, the goals I set, the way I approach them etc. The state of my life indicates something is very wrong

 

[Ecdysis]

Yeah, this sounds familiar to me too.

Personally, for me I think it's related to: If my outer life is all neat and tidy, then it feels like I don't "belong" there, it feels fake, because I know inside I am "messy" from childhood trauma. As an example: I don't feel like I'd fit in, living in suburbia, amongst the Joneses, with functional families who have 2 cars and 2 jobs and a picket fence and a neatly mowed lawn.

So I think that I consciously but probably more subconsciously keep disarranging my life to keep it "interesting" to me, to have a sense of challenge and because if it were neat and tidy, I'd feel claustrophobic and out of place.

I feel like at the end of my 40s, this pattern may be getting a bit tired....? Like, it still resonates with me and I have no Plan B that is less untidy, but I'm starting to get annoyed with the high level of work that's involved with this constantly juggling things and repairing them. I feel like I *have* to work out a more balanced, stable, boring routine (which still feels like a trap - but I guess maybe that's the point that I have to work out a way to make it feel less like a trap.)