• 💖 [Donate To Keep MyPTSD Online] 💖 Every contribution, no matter how small, fuels our mission and helps us continue to provide peer-to-peer services. Your generosity keeps us independent and available freely to the world. MyPTSD closes if we can't reach our annual goal.

Confused consciousness or a new part arriving

Status
Not open for further replies.

grit

Not Active
I am trying to gain some perspective of things I have or have been experiencing for a while. I feel today I can put into words in sort of coherent way but who knows.
As some of you already know I have been diagnosed with cPTSD few years ago and have been in therapy intensely since and feel I have progressed to a point (will come to it later). I wonder if any of you have had similar experiences or can articulate this better than me or can correct if I am out to lunch in the collective consciousness of the internet. I am just throwing some ideas out there and hope some of you have had similar experiences or even better can understand my jumble bubble brain waves and help make sense out of it.
Presently, I am super procrastinating about some work I must finish on a deadline and have been super stressing out about it; but, I am also doing good at work and cooking quite nice lately so there is that counterpart. Extremely unproductive on side and super comfortable and productive on the other side. Keep this duality in mind as I go deep into the well of confusion.

A while back (which I feel may have instigated my state of mind as of now), I made a mistake about my therapist’s address and went to the wrong address and realized darn wrong and then had to run back and went to the right address. I was running late in the first place so making this mistake just added more lateness and I ended up at her door about 10/15min out of the 50min session. I did not have her contact information easily, so it was all haphazard day to say the least. I recall two feelings: Being super angry at myself for not planning better and confirming the location and super angry that this therapist changes the location in what at the time seemed random to me and I was like who does that to clients like me? So I was crossed super deeply but at the same time, I was also super composed to the point of OK I have had couple weeks to confirm, plan and this is not the first time she changed the location due changing the therapy time and therefore, I should have known better. I was holding both feelings fairly square in my body.

Now as we started to talk, of course, in five minutes she said OK five minutes left. I was a bit confused because to me it seemed like 10 min left. After few discussions because she said the last 5 min is for administrative planning – payment such, I let it go but I guess it must have lingered, if I am still talking about it here.

Moving forward, during the ten min or so session, she kept asking me in more or less this way that how she could have helped me? What could she do now? She wanted to write down her phone, but I was like I get it now because you just called me ….so I thought her trying to write down the phone number was kind of weird activities since the last call on my phone is hers and if I should be smarter next time, I could have save it today. I do not know if I am making sense here. She was focused on how she could have helped me in my lost and disorganization and missing 90% of the session today and I was focused on how I captured the moment that it could have derailed me but here I was super aware of that and coping truly as an adult – with the understanding that no matter what the therapist could or could not have done, if I did not put the right address or confirm, no one else but me could have prevented this, not withstanding if the therapist is psychic! (-;

So in essence, we spent the last few minutes basically she talking to me (or talking to my inner child part that was dysregulating) and me trying to regulate my inner part and trying to have conversation with the therapist in the here and now.
If I could draw a picture of this it would look like this:

Therapist talking to inner child
Therapist dismissing or ignoring or unaware of adult part
Me as inner part – raging
Me as adult part – acknowledging the rage and coping
Me as adult part – engaging the therapist

I think the fact or my experience of having the therapist trying to bypass me when I was superconscious did a number on me and I have been a bit of fog since. Actually, writing this down like this is having an amazing effect on me.

At the end, weirdly, since like I said I was conscious of the experience not PTSDing because I can recall so vividly, she had the audacity to recommend a therapist who focuses on shame (this was our last session). I said audacity because that was not a topic that ever came up with her. Now, if I left that session feeling a bit weird. I started, I think to feel really enraged since then and hence why I fell into epic procrastinating and unable to finish a project that has a hard deadline (gosh writing this down is truly cathartic here).

When I read the bio of the therapist she recommended, I realized couple things: This therapist had some inclination that my shame was palpable and was the barrier to some insight or transformation or recovery angle, BUT she never brought it up until I was leaving. I am sort of grateful that recommendation fell out of her mouth and took me into the path of looking up about this new therapist and realizing this is a GREAT barrier for my recovery, but I am also holding hmmm why did not she bring up before? Also, I cannot help but feel one of the reasons I am leaving her is precisely that feeling of she is looking at me but only my inner parts and disregarding my adult parts. Like she did above, she would talk through me but not at me in the present.

My question and my purpose of writing this here is this:

I feel I am waking up from a fog of PTSD in such that I see when I am fully in it and I can get out of it fully utilizing conscious coping mechanism of pure consciousness of knowing what I am feeling is shame from the past not from here by myself sort of and bringing myself back to my present consciousness. I did this now for while and it is quite powerful and why I did not dissociate or dysregulate when I was running around from one address to the next for that session. I was strongly one foot in the past and one foot in the present and was held up by conscious coping mechanism of seeing both foots and holding them the same.

Where I ended up after the session is another story and much longer space that I am still in half fog and half out but not truly out enough to be productive and finish this project. The session fiasco was shorter hold of past and present consciousness. But now I feel past and present and confused and even though I am not 100% PTSDing on the high note, maybe this is depression. I feel I am PTSDIng but on a lower scale level that I am not 100% familiar or trying to understand.
Or maybe there is a new inner part in operation that I am not fully aware of or familiar with.

If anyone could shed having similar feelings or even understand this, that would be grateful.

PS. Since that session, I have hired another therapist and as a matter of fact, shame has been accompanying me during all my interviewing of therapists and I have even run into my former therapy since and I am holding/containing a lot of shame…. unbelievable amount…maybe I am still blinded by that.

Thank you for reading and I am sorry it is long and probably disjointed thoughts and feelings.
 
Last edited:
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top