Can’t identify progress

[NightSky]

Three and a half years I’ve been working hard at healing from cptsd. I’ve gone to therapy once a week and read every book imaginable. I’ve learned so much.
I think I’ve made progress because I can feel emotion sometimes in session. I don’t shut down as much. My T tells me my eye contact is worlds better than it was in the beginning. I see the cycles I go through more clearly. I can identify many of my triggers. But I still go through so many of the same cycles and use the same terrible coping mechanisms.
I’m starting to be more honest with my T about how hopeless I can get and it has made her up her support sometimes. And I don’t know if that’s progres or regression. I’ve never been honest with another human about the pain I feel. Now I am, more so, and it makes me feel like I’m moving backwards.
I have had a few very good two week stretches when I felt calm and stable and present and symptom free this past year. That’s about as good as it gets. Other than that, I feel like my therapy revolves around putting out fires (triggers/self harm urges/cognitive distortions/etc) to stay afloat so I can remain working and parenting and doing life.
I know it can take “a long time.” But I worry that these constant cycles mean I’m not making progress. Like I should go longer periods symptom free.
When I’m in a triggered/flashback-filled state, I’m absolutely convinced no one could want to hear this anymore. It’s the same old dead horse. That’s where I am right now. And I’m questioning everything. Three and a half years feels like so long and I should have more to show for it, so I must be doing something wrong. Am I doing something wrong?

 

[Friday]

Three and a half years feels like so long and I should have more to show for it, so I must be doing something wrong. Am I doing something wrong?

The first time through it took me roughly 5 years.
This time through I’m 7 years in and counting.

 

[NightSky]

The first time through it took me roughly 5 years.
This time through I’m 7 years in and counting.

What happened at the end of 5 years? Did you feel significantly better?
Will there always be a “this time” again and again?
Is there any way to know we are doing the right thing and have hope for a better future?

 

[Friday]

What happened at the end of 5 years? Did you feel significantly better?

I was virtually asymptomatic. Roughly 92%, which I liken sometimes to ‘an orgasm of sanity’ ;) I might’ve nixed the remaining 8% except by then I didn’t particularly care about what was left. A little insomnia in the fall, the occasional panic attack, nightmares here and there? Pfft. No worries.

Will there always be a “this time” again and again?

My understanding, and limited experience, is no.

PTSD is a cyclic disorder that is highly reactive to stress, so it very much can, and often does, but doesn’t have to. Nor does it have to come on full strength.

I didn’t actually do therapy or process most of trauma the first time through. I have another disorder I was born with, so I simply treated this like that, figuring this was just the cost of doing business & how I was, now, so better learn to live an amazing life under new rules. Accentuate the strengths, minimize the weaknesses, improvise/adapt/work-around. Could have knocked me over with a feather when symptoms actually moved, changed, reduced, then went away all together. :eek: How f*cking COOL is this???

So I sorted myself, in just going after symptoms and things I didn’t like about myself, and building a life that suited me right down to the ground; but I also made a major mistake in not trauma processing, because I didn’t know any better. I processed some of it, purely by accident, but it wasn’t something I set out to do.

10 good/great/amazing years later?

- All my unprocessed trauma came flooding back, right to square 1. Symptomatic as hell, and just as hard to get a handle on as it was the first time.

- All my processed trauma? Didn’t. Not only does the old sexual assault stuff not bother me one bit, but I’ve been raped a few times since, and I was mostly fine same day, and totally sorted within a couple days.

My understanding is that’s exactly what happens for most people... sort root cause AND symptoms, and it doesn’t come back to bite you in your ass. Don’t? It will. Either sort of randomly, or with new trauma, stressors, stress, or loss of coping mechanisms. Bang! Pandora’s box wide open, again.

That maaaaaaay be in part why it’s taking longer this time. I’m not just working on symptoms, but also root cause. For damn sure it’s largely because my life is different. My first time through I was far more symptomatic, practically feral, but also highly functional. This time through I’ve managed to keep myself from lashing out, living by the seat of my pants, and bad coping mechanisms... but in return have been virtually nonfunctional. As without those outlets? Things got dark fast.

Is there any way to know we are doing the right thing and have hope for a better future?

I don’t personally believe in hope, but that’s personal philosophy... I don’t know of a faster way to be miserable and miss out on everything that could be amazing... right now... than by hope. I think Hope is vicious, cruel, and blinding at best.

I know I did it once, so by that logic, I should be able to do it again.

I know most people manage it, so by those odds, I will probably not be a special little snowflake but just one more face in the crowd of countless people who had a hard time, once, and sorted themselves out.

I know that even before I knew “this” was PTSD (and therefore studied it, and knew the odds), and before I had already gotten myself back in hand once, but was my first time through the PTSD Badlands... you could have knocked me over with a feather... because the symptoms weren’t something I just had to learn to live with, but could actually chip away at, smooth out, and move on from. Which is really f*cking cool.