Corrosive Self Doubt

[ms spock]

I am experiencing corrosive self doubt on and off - even when I am more than capable of doing a thing or have done that in the past. So I keep going to learn the same things over and over. It is really hard for me to manage to be present in my own body sometimes because it is so full on.

Laurence Heller writes about it a bit in his book "Healing Developmental Trauma". He writes about kids that were taught to give themselves away. That book is dense reading though.

I am feeling that I am so wrong. I read a bit of a book by a woman with OCD tonight and it got boring and I skipped over a bit of it but she has repeatedly asked for reassurance over and over again about certain things.

The corrosive self doubt is a bit linked for me with helplessness and hopelessness as well.

I struggle with this quite a bit and I find it very hard.

When I talk about it people say don't feel that, well if it was that easy I wouldn't feel like it.

I plan to go back to CBT and DBT but I am struggling at the moment.

My supervising head teacher said to me that I am way too hard on myself and I don't trust myself and I have to back off on being hard on myself and I need to trust myself. Great advice I know but how to do it.

I have let my Mindfulness practice slip in the last 7 weeks due to being on prac, so I want to get back to that but the feelings are so overwhelming at times and I slip back into it so easily.

I am experiencing corrosive self doubt in many ways and it is really hard going for me. I am really struggling.

I tried to do the Self Compassion from Kristin Neff today.

The self corrosive doubt is kind of linked to some dodgy thinking about if only I had made a better decisions before this then things would not be so bad - loss of family etc, but that is not reality nothing I could have done could have made it different - but I don't believe that.

And it is away of making myself quiet and not noticeable - so I stopping myself from being a target.

My parents were destructive and all my siblings struggling in major ways to get through the day. It would have been nice to have a quarter nice parent. The thing about starting to accept my parents as they are - well that is good. The thing about this is that finally I am learning to give myself a little bit of a break - I am not alone in my struggles - most of my siblings have PTSD, all have depression and anxiety, there are a few eating disorders, OCD,drinking, self harm and so forth. So I am slowly coming the realisation that yes of course things are the way they are for me because radical acceptance, given I was the eldest that copped it full on - well of course things are they are and everything is as it should be - but I am still learning radical acceptance.

I stopped taking the half in the morning and half of the anti depressants at lunch and the other three at night and it hasn't been working for me at all. It was not a good change for myself at all. So I am going back.

The great thing about this is that I am present enough to be feeling my feelings and that has taken a huge amount of work to do that. So that is big progress. I feel a bit tired and I don't want to feel like this but it is the way I feel and acceptance (hopefully radical) will come.

I found this link which is good http://chocolatandco.blogspot.com.au/2013/11/self-doubt-is-incredibly-corrosive.html

Coming out of hypervigilance is hard going for me as well.It is that if I had been on guard more maybe as much abuse wouldn't have occurred which is little child thinking. I still do a fair bit of little child thinking.

Have you solved your corrosive self doubt? How did that look like for you?

 

[Upside Down Eagle]

I´m not sure of how much help I can be, because I tend to be very hard on myself too. But I can try.

First of all it´s okay to go through cycles... I go through them too. You make some progress and then you go back to being overwhelmed by the emotions. Just remember that it´s not permanent - you will go back to being less overwhelmed. Mindfulness is really good for this.

But I know that it´s kind of difficult to just observe emotions when you´re right there in the middle of them. Affirmations might also work. Or mantras. I do mantras by catalyst yogi (on youtube) he has some great ones, also for self acceptance and healing. I find it can be hard to do them, but they do create a shift in my energy.

Sometimes I can really break through on being so hard on myself by doing that. I really still blame myself for a lot of stuff that happened, I don´t know if you do too but it´s worth thinking about. Personally I feel the need to be on guard too so something like that will never happen again.

Doing something physical also helps with the being on guard thing. If you try to relax the tension in your body, your mind is bound to follow at some point. You could possibly combine it with awareness/breathing exercises and realize that you have emotions but you are not defined by your emotions as a person.

Well, a lot of bla bla from me, if it doesn´t help then I will just have written as a way of supporting :)
I hope you can make the emotion more manageable soon. :hug:

 

[ms spock]

I guess it comes down to the fact that I am not as bad as my head makes me out to be, and I need to hammer those distorted cognitions.

My parents were/are wrong and all that unconscious stuff within I need to drag out into the light.

I also need to work on my attachment disorder stuff, which my psychiatrist says is very severe - but I can do it I can keep breaking it down. Tiny bit by tiny bit!

 

[ms spock]

I dreamt last night of going through Pete Walker's Emotional FlashBack process and it really helped so maybe I need to focus on this? Focus on those 13 steps?

http://pete-walker.com/flashbackManagement.htm

and Kristin Neff's "Self Compassion"

Maybe I have enough skills and it is a matter of just practising them over and over again until they become like second nature?

 

[ms spock]

So yes lots of CBT and DBT and just repeat and practice and repeat. I guess that is the answer along with self care and self compassion.

 

[ms spock]

Another thought I had is that I need to pay attention to my aversion - the rumination, resistance and avoidance.

 

[Saria]

Hang in there! :) @Ms Spock Sounds like you're really working with some core belief stuff and really changing the way you relate to yourself, and that sure takes a lot of energy. I'm working with this at the moment myself.

Maybe I have enough skills and it is a matter of just practising them over and over again until they become like second nature?

I think you're right. Practicing the skills over and over again. But remember that change demands more energy, so try to give yourself some rest and patience if you can. When I struggle a lot it helps me to go back to the Tara Brach videos that I know you've already seen. To remember and to rewatch the RAIN of self-compassion for example, I've seen it several times already. Recognize, Allow, Investigate and Nourish - over and over and over again.

I also struggle with placing the blame where it belongs. A therapist told me that for children to suvive in an abusive family they often contruct a world where they are the ones at fault. That it's easier to be a devil in heaven than an angel in hell. You're not a devil. You lived in hell.

 

[ms spock]

Thanks @Saria

I watched Tara Brach's Beyond the Fear Body (Part 2) and she was talking about working with someone in therapy that wasn't able to take the next step until she had resourced up - and had more skills. Watching her makes me feel like I am not alone - as the fears that she talks about are the fears of many people - and also the fears of mine.

I need to reread David Burns as well.

 

[Saria]

Yeah, that makes sense. From what I've read from your posts and during the challenges etc. you do seem to already have a lot of knowledge and skills that you are familiar with which has been useful to you in the past?

I agree. She kind of makes me feel more connected and like a human being with understandable fears. She also has a video called "Healing self-doubt" which might be even more relevant to this thread than the other videos. But when working on complex trauma I feel that almost everything is related to everything, if that makes sense, so a symptom might easily decrease (or increase) even if I'm not targeting that specific thing. Or maybe that's not just complex trauma, maybe that's life.

 

[ms spock]

I am still really stuck with the corrosive self doubt. I searched "corrosive self doubt" and this thread came up which I don't remember starting. It is such a big problem for me as it means I can barely be present in my body. I have got on top of my disordered binge eating. I am not dissociating as much but this is like being electrocuted by these feelings, they intrude into my day. I just kept going to day and even though I just wanted to stay home tonight I made myself go out.

 

[ms spock]

I am still struggling with this one, it is so hard to get out of it. It is such hard work.

 

[Friday]

A few Trends I've noticed for myself when I'm really struggling with this:

- Things are going too right for too long. I start waiting for the other shoe to drop... And then I start looking for shoes. Then questioning whether maybe it already dropped & I just missed it, so I start reexamining every choice, decision, action, inaction, and tearing them to pieces looking for where I f*cked up & didn't realize it. Because, dammit, it's been too long since everything has gone to hell. Something of a combo of hypervig, mistrust, & paranoia merged together with control freak, criticism, & territorialism (mine, my responsibility, my job).

- Something goes REALLY right. Total pain in the ass, this one, and almost always an after effect. As an example I was almost killed a few days ago. It was a very close thing... And craaaaazy fun. I haven't had that much fun on years. Because I did everything right. Split second timing and reactions, no thinking required, and I pulled it off effortlessly. Walked away with a smile on my face and a spring in my step. Since then? Nothing even comes close to comparing. Everything is hard. I can't even manage simple things I've done a thousand times. I just feel stupid, and slow, and inept, useless, worthless, old, fat, broken. I can't do anything right, much less perfectly right, and forget about effortless. It'll be like this for a little while, and then it will wear off. It's just an after effect of Nailed it! :sneaky: ..... :banghead: :mad: :bag: :sorry:

- I'm making decisions I don't agree with / doing things I don't want to be doing. I've done a lot of this in my life. From following orders to handing my child over to someone I'd rather see dead on the ground than entrust with a goldfish. I will do things I don't agree with, but I will both rake myself over the coals about it, as well as be looking for every possible out. The whole "I didn't have a choice" thing? Doesn't apply, just because I don't like the choices I'm making.

^^^
These 3 are on my mind (there's maybe half a dozen other things that will kick me into CSD) because they all happened in the last week. Which means my head is royally f*cked, right now. Any one of them will kick up self doubt, but I can usually thunk logic & some reality checking down to counteract most of the effects, whilst limiting decisions I need to make to keep the area of effect fairly limited. When they mob up? Pfft. Forget about it. I don't just start 2nd guessing myself, but 12th guessing myself. I can't tell what's right from what's wrong, what I'm f*cking up or just beating myself up over, can't prioritize/lose all sense of proportion, don't know if I'm overreacting or under reacting (or even reacting just fine), start kicking into paralysis by analysis... My judgement is just gone. And I know it. So instead of limiting decisions? I remove them. Take a few days off (call off sick at work, send the kids to the g's, cancel everything that's going on) and give my head a chance to unf*ck itself. It will. It does. But it needs the space to do so.