What are some activities that you find helpful in dealing with trauma and emotional regulation?
I love ho...
I'd had to put together and piece a journal & timeline of events since making the healthy decision to leave an abusive partner nearly 4 years ago - I was required to do it for legal purposes & because it was confusing and stressful to remember everything that I had been through.
A new psychologist, I had started to see this year after finally being diagnosed with PTSD, suggested I put it together so that we could work through the issues. I was able to pull most of the trauma from all the writing and affidavits and documents - it was painful again and exhausting but I turned it into a "workable project" and built it into a powerpoint presentation, with estimate dates and a brief explanation. Maybe it was my way of disassociating again i don't know, but it somehow now helps me, if i am having a bad day, i simply work my way back through reading the events and then tell myself: "see, thats why you're allowed to have a bad day sometimes" - its a type of acknowledgement i guess, that my reactions/symptoms are normal considering the abnormal shit i have been through. I also find by viewing the documents/presentations i somehow don't get stuck anymore, coz instead i just read through it!!!!
What it enabled me to see is the enormity of events, of how the PTSD occurred because I had no reprieve or break from the trauma, it was coming from everywhere: the d.v, some business bullying, harassment online, car accidents, other stuff too that i was trying to work on to get ahead, a course, building a website, social media growth/learning - (i think i wanted to try and outrun it all still and not face the music so to speak) but what it didn't allow, is that I had no opportunity to really rest, recover, repair, Ialso couldn't shut down, its like we get caught on that different cycle again- the looping back & going round and round.
Anyway, i used the same method/tool to tra and trace right back to the very beginning of my abuse - it may have ended from my marriage but it didn't start there - it started in my childhood. Everything overtime has come flooding back, i have been able to write the names of all my perpetrators (horrible to have to admit, that i experienced quite a few) and that for me it started around age 6.
This process has now moved me into more acceptance. I understand what the "resistance" means and the comment: "we continue to experience the same pattern until we have discovered the lesson, i'e: how the same things keep coming back to us until we resolve it.
Since March this year, is when my world really came crashing down, I just couldn't move, my brain shut down, I was moving in and out of psychosis, I had intense body shaking, i couldn't sleep, I kept reading messages/signs into everything & everyone had become the enemy - it was very frightening all over again. From March until July - I barely struggled to get out of bed, to get dressed, I struggled to cook/clean, I kept breaking down, depression kicked in very badly, migraines were lasting 2-3 days and so intense, any daylight was hurting my eyes, I kept getting a burning sensation in the back of my head, dizzy spells, my jaw was always aching from obviously clenching my teeth, I couldn't sleep before 4 am (still can't some days) - people think the D.V is hell, but you know us lucky ones, we survive that, what's tough is the constant struggle afterward to keep standing back up, to continue to bounce back, to just cop and "deal with it" - that we are no longer anything even close to the person we thought we may have been.
and see straight away i become paranoid, coz i think/hope maybe you are the nice lady that tried to help before - i take your name as a sign/symbol - is that really stupid? have i completely lost the plot? am i nothing more than an absolute headcase? - but then i think i must just be still really messed up. Emotional abuse, messes with your mind so badly, all the things they tell us we are, it may just be a case that we do become like that with time. Thats the price we pay for the damage they do.
are you who i think you are? i.e: Nsw DV?
