Body memories

[mamachick]

I am hoping you are able to get to bottom of all of this, and so glad you are able to advocate for yourself. I hope they do needed tests for a reliable diagnosis.( I know I went a couple years in constant pain from a torn rotator cuff and they hadn't done tests.) It does not sound right that things are getting worse if its a strain.

 

[Stephernovas]

Thanks. I'll have to keep you all posted once I finally get some answers. You know when even though they make you feel like your crazy, you keep advocating for yourself because internally you know it's right...? That's how I feel now against physio and worker's comp. I never trusted what their doctor's said (even my crappy physio identified an impingement in my shoulder and worker's comp surgeons brushed it off as 'I'm normally healing' lol). They really must think I'm dumb. Anyways, thanks for the vote of confidence and support everyone. I love the gym too much to stay down. I want my muscles (and positive coping skill back)!!!!

 

[mamachick]

Glad for your strong attitude because thats half the battle. You are young and was strong before this and that is worth fighting for! Keep us posted

 

[vikingr24]

Try talk therapy, not CBT or anything behavioral. Just find a psych-therapist who is willing to listen and talk it out with you. No fancy acronyms or anything. A trained therapist should help get you focused and at least get those wounds to forget where they came from.

Wounds do have memories. Just keep them under your control, not theirs.

 

[Freida]

I'm not sure if this matches but one of the things that comes up for me during EMDR are body memories that derail me. I want to ignore the pain and move on-- but according to the T I have to accept the pain, because that means accepting the reason for the pain, which has to happen before I will be able to heal. It's a catch 22 from hell

 

[recoveringfromptsd]

Wow @Freida your post sort of hit all my buttons, my EMDR experience was overwhelming because of the body memories, it is like reliving the abuse physically all over again. I could not handle it, it lasted so long, and created so much stress, it actually changed my brain chemistry and threw me into a severe bi-polar depression which required hospitalization and taking abilify to restore my brain chemistry.

As for accepting the pain, I don't think i am equipped to ever do that, I tend to want to get rid of the pain (hence often s/h), for me getting accountability I feel will help me heal, as it may signal that the world is a little safer for me because responsibility was taken. Without It I am 24/7 hypervigilant of what goes on around me situationally as I feel I can never feel safe.

Even now the pain is 24/7 and unbearable but I am stuck with it. It never goes away, and I can't do anything about it but to bear, and trying to shorten the paid always get me in trouble and hospitalized.

So I just have to suffer, and it seems I always will.

 

[Freida]

it lasted so long, and created so much stress,

This shouldn't happen if your EMDR person knows what they are doing. We do my processing in seconds. As in I go 60 seconds and stop, determine how I feel, how much pain I'm in, if I'm ready to go again. After a year I'm still only up to a couple minutes at a time. It's about releasing the pain that you blocked so you can get rid of it. So yep - it can be painful during the emdr, I'm exhausted afterwards and sometimes I'm achy the next day. But over time the normal day to day pain I feel is coming down a bit as the old stuff gets worked out. Her eventual hope is the emdr will take it down 80 - 90% in the end

T keeps telling me - its a marathon not a sprint. I would love to just jump in and solve it - but that's not how it works....sigh.

 

[recoveringfromptsd]

@Freida Thanks for caring, you and others have been great to me on this side, I don't think I would have made it this far without you all. The contact is a bridge that sometimes gets me through.

My experience with the therapist was much different, nothing like what you describe, she would go thru cycles of the emdr stimulation (in my case auditory worked best) while recalling specific trauma memories that would come to mind, one would lead to the context of the next. While we were working on a time period that was very distant from the trauma I ended up processing later.

It's like my mind found that trauma we were working on less significant and would go right to the worst trauma time. I always ended up there. And it always ended up with a particular moment which I can say is the single moment that my trauma had its worse effect. I several times asked about a break, and was told it does not work that way.

Even if the EMDR was done wrong, I am stuck with it, and the results, I don't have any options to try again. And I don't have the energy or motivation to even look for alternatives. Besides I asked about alternatives, my next path, and ended up with more vague answers than what i had going in. It just confirmed what I already thought which is there is nothing out there for me to deal with this.

Today, I feel I am unsalvageable, untreatable, a lost cause, too much to overcome, and no time left to my expected life to fix anything, and at the rate things happen even baby steps take years or decades.

Yes, you got it, I have given up, I hurt and can't stop hurting, and there is nothing I can do about it. And yes, I discuss it with others like my therapist, it does not change anything, and all I get is minimization as if it does not exist, my feeling is they are stuck not knowing what to do, but not wanting to feed into how I feel as it will make things worse, and lead to a safety crisis.

What they don't know is since the EMDR, I have had s/i passively, even thought about it while a little manic, which is unusual. my thoughts are more of a nature of just wanting out of life. I try not to think further as that tends to get me in trouble and hospitalized. Although I have shared this with my trauma group which is facilitated by someone who works for mobile crisis. But because there is nothing imminent she has nothing actionable.

So for now I am just existing.............

 

[Freida]

I several times asked about a break, and was told it does not work that way.

This is appalling!!!! I am so very sorry this happened. EMDR can be such a good thing - it breaks my heart that you ended up experiencing it like this because of the damage it has done.

It just confirmed what I already thought which is there is nothing out there for me to deal with this.

There is help out there -- but i can completely understand why you would want to just rest for now. Can you think of this time as a stopping point to let you regain your strength before you try again? Would inpatient help as a place that you could rest?

Today, I feel I am unsalvageable, untreatable, a lost cause, too much to overcome, and no time left to my expected life to fix anything, and at the rate things happen even baby steps take years or decades.

No such thing as unsalvageable and you will never be a lost cause. You just need to find what works best for you to help you heal. Which can be exhausting. Is there a chance of changing therapists or groups?

 

[recoveringfromptsd]

@Freida

Would inpatient help

I ended up inpatient afterwards for a week but it was because 2.5 months of the stress of body memories changed my brain chemistry enough to cause one of the worse BI-POLAR Depression episodes I haven't had since decades ago.

Inpatient again is probably likely whether I like it or not. I say this because I have had passive S/I since that 2.5 months, and it's a daily thing, almost an obsession, I know how i think, and acknowledge this is happening, and I have told some people about it, I also have asked some to do certain things to sabotage the opportunities that come with the future planning with such thinking. So that I remain safe when those times come. I guess you have figured out from my words I have sort of tossed in the towel. In time that only leads to one path which in today's world requires inpatient intervention.

Can you think of this time as a stopping point to let you regain your strength

After D/C from inpatient I immediately took a stopping point, met with my regular therapist and the DBT therapist together, stopped DBT for the present for at least a year if not indefinitely. With my regular therapist I immediately requested revising treatment plan, with a new focus on taking a break on trying to just get thru each day and not work on anything for now.

I can completely understand why you would want to just rest for now

I did not have much choice, it was the only response left, I got crushed by this, high expectations means a higher fall. My brain could not handle any more, as it was disassociation was a huge problem during those 2.5 months, so bad I had to have someone with me when I drove to keep me distracted enough to not dissociate while driving.

Is there a chance of changing therapist

My regular therapist which is paid by Insurance and me, is not trauma qualified and she won't even venture into trauma stuff at all. For that she referred me to life crisis who does trauma therapy as they are the local rape/crisis center who also run a battered women's safe house, be with people who are victims for ER and Court, etc. They are funded so its free. And changing therapist there is not an option. My therapist there is the one who works with adults with past abuse. The others work with children, current victims, etc. as each therapist has there niche. There is a difference between current abuse and the therapeutic approach and the approach for those with long past trauma. I feel they have given up on me, and I have given up on ever getting better.

 

[recoveringfromptsd]

I wish I had a better outlook on everything, but the only measure I can go by is past experience, and it does not give me much reason to feel positive, I don't even know why I am still alive, for some reason there has been hope at times despite nothing to inspire hope. But I lose that at times too. I wish I felt better.

I know where my head is at, its a matter of time before I am inpatient again, maybe as soon as wednesday as I see my T then (it depends on what I tell her, I may not say anything as I have lost trust in her recently, but that too can set of alarms).

 

[vikingr24]

In reading your rece3nt posts, I see some differences and a lot of sameness in combat PTSD. Most warriors think combat is highest on the list of damaging effects of trauma, but it is not. And we are talking averages, not individual cases. Trauma caused by violence to a woman is the most severe and takes much patience (I want to spell it patients) on both the therapist and the patient. For the therapist, that part is fairly easy (although I quit counseling because of it). But for you with bipolar adding to the mix, makes it very difficult.

My deepest point was similar, and I felt it multiple times. I was numb. I felt as though nothing could get inside me and make me smile or laugh or even cry. No event, a sunrise, a sunset, a beautiful picture, even the smile of a small child. It got nowhere. But somehow I kept walking. And to this day, I do not know enough about what happened to pass it on. I stared down the barrel, as we say in the military. I was very close then to taking my own life. But I knew that would not be an answer. I did feel as though I found the definition of hope -- that which is beyond possibility.

I literally followed the barking voice of my drill instructors to take one step, not two or three. "Don't eat the whole elephant." One bite at a time. Reduce a problem to its simplest terms and you can figure it out. Let go of everything else.

The last part helped me tremendously. I learned to drop things that hung on to my shoulders and legs for so long. Memories, voices, commands, explosions. visions. See them. Let them go. And some of the drugs too. The ones I knew were confusing me.

The honest feeling though is I cannot explain how I felt so much better after a while. I thought if I got this far, I could go farther. I know there is no trick to it.

I am a reader and I love poetry the most. We were taught to use mottoes (and we had ours) and aphorisms to give us some spiritual support. Even grunts became a kind of motto: Hooyah. Hoo. My faavorite camr from T.S. Eliot. "The only way to conquer time, is to conquer time." I still spend time trying to figure it out. But i worked for me.

For a time anyway...hehe. It is truly only temporary.