Am I Just Crazy After All?

[maryel42]

I've been dealing with ptsd since... forever, it seems like. In some ways it feels like a family condition. At least two of my grandparents had it. Both my parents had it. I have it... and while all that sucks most suckfully, it really makes me more determined not to pass it down to my kids. Among some of the more normal memories of my earliest childhood involve how my parents coped with their symptoms. While to a certain point I can't avoid exposing my kids to my issues, I can avoid a lot of it. And that means I've got to stay on top of managing the worst of them.

I guess that part is not as important in this post, but I put it in to help remind myself of a bigger picture.

So anyway. The most unmanageable of my issues right now is when all the latest round of flashbacks start and I don't realize that I'm dissociating until I'm already mostly gone. I can push it all away when I really have to- when the kids get off the bus at the end of the day, until about five minutes after they're in bed for the night. Then everything crashes in again.

It's been about two and a half years since the last time I fell apart. I feel like I maybe just now, this last two months, got back on my emotional and mental feet. The last time around I had a new incident come out; something that had always been too traumatic for me to reveal to anyone, and it was pretty crushing to me. This time around I'm dealing with it again, and with the memories of my first rape. Mix in, I'm seeing a new therapist, a new psychiatrist for meds, my marriage is in a wierd not-quite-together and not-quite-separated state, I have two high-needs disabled kids (who are doing absolutely awesome in terms of recent progress!), I just started being seen at a pain management program to deal with the everyday, all the time, pain in my body...

the friends I've had, they wonder why I'm still not over my past. I wonder that too. I mean, I've Dealt with it. Over and over and over. I peel back layer after layer after layer, year after year. I've been in and out of therapy since I was fifteen and had my first nervous breakdown, inpatient a lot of times, I feel like I've processed and dealt my past to death and yet it keeps coming back like a ghost I can't shake.

And over and over again, beyond all the not-so-good coping tricks I've picked up, I leave my body. I leave it to avoid the pain, to avoid my emotions, to avoid the memories and the not-sleeping. I started joking about it to the physical therapist last fall, when I started trying to get a handle on my pains. Yes, I hurt pretty bad that day, but I'm also 70% not in my body sooo... whatever.

All of this, I can deal with. I have done it for years, I'm not excited about doing it forever but I can. The part that is making me crazy right now is that I'm starting to pry up all my deep trauma issues with my therapist. The ones that make me want to freeze in place and go off... there... and get lost in the pattern on his couch. Or the sunlight on the rug. Trouble is, I sometimes get so lost in that space that I forget that I used to have a bit of split personality. (Or broken. Or shattered beyond fixing.) I'm afraid that I'm digging deep enough into bad places that one of those bits is going to come out in session.

I realized tonight that this is the reason that I only go to see therapists who have extensive experience in children. I guess that it's good? That I'm on some level making sure that if that tiny broken hidden bit ever shows up in session, there will be someone who can handle her gently?

It makes me feel crazier though. Like I've been subconsciously preparing for it all this time. Like I've known all along that sooner or later I'd have to deal with this layer, and it's going to be messy, and either I'm going to have the mother of all episodes or just feel like a fool.

But am I crazy? For judging my pain by how far out of body I am? For cycling through the same old stuff year after year after year and never getting over it? And how will I ever get over it? How much is enough, trauma wise? Will it ever stop? Will I turn into my parents in the end (god I hope not) and is there ever any hope that I would have escaped this?

 

[franciemarnie]

Could I ask - are you doing talk therapy only? I did that for decades and had nothing to show for it at the end. Though he did prescribe meds that kept me functioning.

But no progress was ever made for me just talking. So I was wondering if maybe you had tried Somatic therapy or the various other trauma therapies.

For sure there is hope. No doubt. You might need to try something different though.

You are not alone in this. Nor in wanting to leave the pain behind in your body.

 

[maryel42]

I've tried cbt for a lot of the early stuff and emdr for both childbirths; talk is very effective. And meds. Perhaps because the abuse was all so under wraps? I believe it's all so much. Like, I never seem to get all the way to the end.

I was abused from about 2 through 15 by one family member, which included him trying to kill me. Another family member molested by for a few years, ended when I was 17. I nearly died from childhood cancer in grade school. I just recently came out of an emotionally abusive situation that lasted since I was very young....

There is just so damned much of it. It seems that I never hit bottom. I think I'm done. I get through another round of flashbacks and nightmares and re feeling the hurt and pain and despair. I get through putting my life together again. And I really think every time that finally I'm done with how bad it was. Every time I think it just couldn't get any worse than this.

Then I wake up one day and it starts again. I get ashamed to talk about it because there's too much to believe. I don't know why. I don't know why they hurt me. I still don't know how I will ever be done accepting it.

Last time around somebody asked me how I could even get out of bed in the morning. I thought about it. It's because I am more than the sum of my disfunction.

I hope that stays enough. Cause I'm worn out. Again. I don't know how and where I can find the inner strength to keep going.

 

[a3a2]

the friends I've had, they wonder why I'm still not over my past. I wonder that too.

You probably already know that abuse in childhood physically changes your brain. The pathways that were created in your brain in childhood are permanent, from what I understand. They can however, be bypassed. Unfortunately, forming these new pathways is more difficult in adulthood, and takes far more time and effort. "Getting over it" is unlikely. Your brain has been changed!

Will I turn into my parents in the end (god I hope not) and is there ever any hope that I would have escaped this?

maryel, simply the fact that you recognize the ptsd, and are aware that you don't want to pass it onto your children is a huge step in NOT passing it on. The next step is being able to talk with them in an age appropriate manner about your own ptsd and its symptoms, and having a t to help you through the tough times.

I have four beautiful children. They range in age from elementary to soon to be college age. I tried to keep it from them at first, but as time went on, I realized it could not be stepped around. Only yesterday, my youngest asked me "Mom, did you love your parents back then?" Two of my kids have had some therapy...one takes low dose meds. Not sure my ptsd was the cause of that need, as my husband's side suffers from some serious hereditary anxiety issues as well. My meds and my t have helped me A LOT!! My kids and I have a great relationship and talk about EVERYTHING (this always comes as a shock to me, because I never would have considered asking my parents anything!!).

I'd love to recommend a book..."How to Talk so Your Kids Will Listen, and Listen so Your Kids Will Talk". It has had a HUGE impact on my life and the lives of my children. I had never learned how to communicate anything, so this book was a real life changer for me.

 

[maryel42]

Thank you for the recommendation. I do worry about explaining it to them. Right now it's hard because my daughter is autistic. her communication is still very delayed. She is super sensitive to nonverbal communication and emotional states though. Her little brother has speech delays also. I know they understand more than they can communicate back at us.

I remember being their ages and my mom being tired a lot. We never talked about how my dad was. Ever.

I don't think I knew about brain changes. Maybe it's something that every doctor assumes someone else told me about. I know that it was a lightbulb moment when I was being seen at a base hospital, navy wife, and the psychiatrist explained the difference between chronic and simple as if simple is ever simple. And he told me to expect the cycles, and that they would always come although symptoms managed could make it not a hell every time.

He made me feel normal in this. I was very glad to see him then. They were gearing up to deal with a new wave of vets returning from overseas at that point. I felt so much less of a freak being around people who shared a lot of my symptoms.

 

[maryel42]

I think that maybe this time it's not just the "new" layer of trauma coming back up to the surface. I'm starting with a new t this time around, only been seeing him since the end of last summer. So there's a LOT of old stuff and history to fill him in on. I'm also doing the pain clinic stuff for the first time ever, which is getting me off the painkillers and into figuring out more where the pain actually is and how to treat it better. The pain journal is what's flipping me out on that front. I'm already hurting pretty much everywhere all the time, and right now I'm supposed to be writing it down, where and when and how bad. Seeing that laid out on paper where I can't pretend I don't hurt as badly as I do; that's pretty triggering.

I already feel like I'm broken. Mentally, emotionally, and I know I'm broken physically. I've spent many years consciously Not Thinking About It at the same time. Keeping each part of that very carefully separate.

Well, I don't know that I can do much to manage the pain journal. I have to do it. Doing it will help give answers down the road. The emotional stuff, it helps that I'm really clicking with this guy. I've got the trust in that relationship, and I know that I can open all the way up in session. Between times I'm writing out these long, long, long emails and sending them. I told him, I don't expect him to ever reply to any of them, but they're really helpful as background. Getting years and years of background info (I want to say, out of the way) so that we can use session time to focus on what is right there immediate.

That's a start, right? I know it's got to be. I don't feel any sort of accomplishment in it. I should; I've got stuff that's so beyond issues. Forget issues. I've got bound volumes in nicely archival quality slipcovers.

My eating disorder is creeping up on me again. I started self-injury again after almost two years clean. I'm not sleeping. I feel wrung out. And yet by writing those emails I feel like I'm bleeding off the pressure in my head. It's really troubling me that I've picked a therapist for his early childhood experience and that it seems that I started trusting him more just because he's also worked with some more seriously non-functional clients. I'm not second guessing the trust. I'm glad I have it.

I'm just very worried that the reason I do is because of some of my deepest underlaying issues, that maybe this means that there's something even worse coming up, and that the level of my current worsening symptoms is only going to get worse before it passes. Because yes, I get that the worse what I'm about to confront, the more severely and back I reach for my coping mechanisms. Right now I'm falling into the patterns of my early teen years. I don't think I'm strong enough to do that again.

So maybe I'll spend a lot of time this weekend posting endlessly on this thread and unloading my nervous energy. Before emailing the therapist again. And again. And again...

 

[maryel42]

Here's a question I'm worrying over too, and I think I'll throw it out here before I take it to my therapist, since I know he's almost certainly going to politely not tell me what to do.

I did not sign a release to let the pain clinic talk to him. Or vice versa. Oh, I'm sure the reasons I have are perfectly good ones, but I know they're not the complete reasons, and the complete real reason at the moment just won't come out of my head. Offiicially, I don't trust the pain doc on the same level I trust my therapist, and I don't want to get railroaded into a therapy setup that I'm not willing to go with at the moment. I think that what I'm currently working through in session is more important than what the pain clinic doc wants me to be doing in therapy.

There's also the kneejerk response that I do not trust that degree of discussion over my psych records. I'm a bit possessive of them. Three times in my life, my records have been compromised. Never the fault of the psych. Just overly nosy and nitpicky bureaucrats on a medical-side, who have no training or insight into why I'm taking the meds I am, and are making assumptions based on google about what my issues really are.

When my psychiatrist changed practices, I made sure I had all the releases in order for him to talk with my therapist and vice versa. Cause that's important to me. If it ever comes up where they should and I'm not really functional, I want them to get together to help deal with it.

So... the question is... should I sign the releases? and risk it? aside from being nervous about it, is it really better if I give them permission to talk about me behind my back? And how do I bring it up with my therapist?