Cptsd And Marriage

[Thizette]

I guess I'm looking for support. My question would be, "am I alone in this?"

You are not alone. I often experience life as a child; sometimes I hear it in my voice, and my partner will ask why I'm talking that way. My sentence structure and cadence turn into something you might hear from a distracted first grader. I'm in this different emotional state, what you describe as an emotional flashback. I used that exact phrase today to try and explain something to him. I don't think he gets the childishness. He just tells me I'm funny. And I haven't figured out what it is that triggers that part of me or if some part of me is just stuck there.

 

[rosey]

You are certainly not alone. In the process of an exhusting clump of flashbacks and yes it affects everything around me. It is hard, exhusting and heartbreaking. I am sorry you suffer the same.

It is good that you are in counselling have you considered having your husband join a few sessions so you can explain fully in a safe place with support what happens during those times, what you need and who you feel he can best support you. It also would give him the opportunity to say how he feels about it.

 

[Gaining-clarity]

You are certainly not alone. In the process of an exhusting clump of flashbacks ...

My husband and I have really good communication. I started seeing a counselor because I wanted someone with experience with helping to know how to stop having flashbacks because I don't like how they interfere. I've grown to the point where I'm now able to see how this is happening a little more objectively and clearly, so I'm ready to take some new growth on. I'm very blessed in that I'm able to talk about everything with my husband just in the context of our marriage.

I describe it like this to my husband, what abb emotional flashback is like: it's like when you feel searing pain, like when you smash your thumb with a hammer full force, and all you see is the pain, and all you can do is think to relieve the pain. It's a very intense focal point, and sharp, and demanding. And it's just not possible to behave like that pain is not there. It would be absurd to ask someone who has just smashed their thumb with a hammer, I mean really smashed it and broken bones, to look at you without tears in their eyes, or to sit down and cuddle, or to attend to your relational needs. There is something that takes precedence for the time... a painful wound that's consuming attention.

It's not a perfect analogy, but only meant to describe how these things can consume attention and interfere.

 

[Gaining-clarity]

@Gaining-clarity I'm sorry that you felt hurt by what I said. Sometimes things that other people say/suggest can upset us....

Thanks She Cat. I hear what you're saying. I appreciate your feedback.

 

[Gaining-clarity]

Do you understand that you are joining together the child in you that had to cope and bring her out, give her acknowledgment and understanding and forgiveness for feeling what she feels. Then you can move forward.

Aut555, thank you.

 

[aut555]

@Gaining-clarity I'm sorry that you felt hurt by what I said. Sometimes things that...

@She Cat. After l re-read your post again, l realized how true it is. I tried once something, and it was subconsciously, and l survived. You took a very tough subject matter and brought it for us to see using yourself as the "this could happen to you". I am glad nothing happened to you and that you are safe and sound, and even trying to help people out. You are remarkable person, proud that l got to bump into you on this forum.

 

[Deleted member 541]

@Gaining-clarity Also, have you ever done any work with your therapist on your inner child???? I have with a therapist and it was so empowering. That is after I cried my eyes out for about an hour. But, very healing too.

 

[Gaining-clarity]

@Gaining-clarity Also, have you ever done any work with your therapist on your inne...

My counselor encouraged me to start writing about her. And while the emotions were high I could have. I was preparing to, but I needed to feel safe. It feels like a very dangerous thing to do. I mean that. I feel like I'm in danger when she gets too close. I have all sorts of mixed feelings about her. Mostly I hate her, but I also feel for her. I also don't believe her. She is a liar. I don't know who she is, really, even though I know she must be me. She is a very dangerous little girl because if I accept her... I'm in a whole new world of lies. And these are very dangerous lies. They ruin people's lives. They change reality. It makes me feel sick to think of who she is and what she means. Or how crazy I am

Once I feel safe, she's gone. And I don't know how to proceed.

I would really appreciate feedback and more about your own experiences with this.

 

[watundah]

@Gaining-clarity I am sorry that you feel badly toward your IC. There is the source of hurt and pain and a place that must heal to move forward. It is extremely difficult to hear about the past and I think she probably isn't lying but maybe you do not care for the message? A lot of things are happening all at once, it sounds like.

My spouse also has trauma baggage but not PTSD. While she understands much of what's happened, she doesn't understand my irrational behavior sometimes! It's got to be hard to comprehend why your spouse has been hijacked. While we can learn about new behavior, it, to me, takes a long time to implement. Long entrenched reactions in the brain are like taking a familiar path in the woods...well worn.

I'm glad you are going to therapy in spite of limited options. Keep going!

 

[Deleted member 541]

@Gaining-clarity if it's possible, could you explain why you feel so much animosity towards your inner child???? If I understand correctly you were a child when abused, so I'm confused.

I too went through abuse as a child. Physical, emotional, mental and sexual. Grandmother and mother abused me, and my 2 brothers sexual. Then I was gang raped at 15 or 16 by a bunch of college assholes. I felt shame for many years, with the sexual stuff. Anger about my mother and grandmother. Anger with my community for not believing me, and my mother for always saying I was just nuts and nothing ever happened.

But I never blamed my inner child for any of it, even though with the sexual stuff, my body responded, while my mind did not. Although with one of my brothers, he groomed me from a very young age, telling me how much he loved me, blah blah blah.... for years as a young adult and for many many yrs later, I associated SEX with love. I thought if a man wanted to have sex with me, that he must care about me. I was groomed that way for yrs by my brother. It much deeper than that, but that's the short version of the shit.....

I worked with my therapist on releasing the blame, and then on one of my flashbacks that has always bothered me. To this day I have never been able to resolve it, but have learned to let it go. My therapist had me visualize me as a child in my flashback and take her by the hand to a safe place where no one could get to me. Once there I was to hold that child and tell he all of the things she needed to hear, and that I would always protect her and nurture her. It was way more in depth that what I just wrote out, but I'm sure you get the picture. It was empowering and was so healing. Yes, I cried for awhile after, but it was tears of relief, and saddness and of letting go....

So, if you can.... please explain why you feel your inner child is so dangerous????

 

[Gaining-clarity]

@Gaining-clarity if it's possible, could you explain why you feel so much animosity...

I'm 47 years old. I started on this "I was abused journey" when I was in my late teens/early twenties. I only had what seemed to me like fantasies about abuse, meaning, I made stuff up in my own mind. This is how I see it. In my late twenties I had strange experiences that could be called flashbacks, like I was getting body work done and I had a vision of myself floating up against the ceiling watching myself be abused as a very small child by two men. It was all incredibly confusing and distressing. I was depressed. I struggled with anxiety. When I look back now, I believe I existed in a dissociative state - always spaced out and barely functioning. Always overwhelmed. If I looked at my life, and all the troubles I had (and still have in many respects), and all the things I did (drugs, alcohol, who I hung out with, the relationships I had, what I did to other people) it made sense to me that these experiences (flashbacks) could be true information, or at least hold true information in them. I have nothing really closed-case-solid to go by about my early childhood. But I do have solid memories from my teens, which I had forgotten until about 5-7 years ago, which I had actually remembered a few times during my life, and forgotten again..

When this "inner child" appears I'm distrustful of her. Some of my thoughts:

1. She would be the only witness that I have to my early childhood about abuse.

I have verified some non-traumatic memories from very early with family members, which tells me that I have the ability to remember things that happened very early on, like as early as a year old. But the best outside evidence I have is the admission that my parents left me with a babysitter almost everyday whose husband was a shady character, untrustworthy.

2. This inner child witness is in my head. It seems a very strange thing to me to be talking to someone inside my own head, who isn't really real, and who doesn't feel like me or seem like me, even though she appears to be a younger me, who tells me disturbing things. She is a stranger to me. And I don't want her. I reason that it must be me because I see her in my head, and she looks like I looked, but I do also tell myself that there are other explanations for her appearance. I don't really know who, or what, she is. Is she from my imagination? How can my mind generate such a thing that would seem so disconnected from me? How can knowledge be held inside a mental little girl? It's hard for me to trust this, especially since I made so much stuff up in my youth.

3. The curious thing is my emotions. I have these very intense emotions about her. If there was nothing to it, why would I have such strong emotions about it? Why would I hate her and be so afraid of her?

4. I hate her because of what she means. If I don't accept her as real, then I question where she comes from. And I don't really hate "her" but the things she is telling me. If I don't know where she comes from, then neither do I know where all the things that she tells me come from. If I don't know where these things are coming from, then I don't trust them. If she is not me, then these things are not mine. If she is me, then I don't trust her anyway. She's a girl in my mind telling me very serious things. I do seriously entertain the possibility that she is a demon who wants me to believe lies. So, while I have these strong emotions towards her that tell me there's something real about what she's saying, I also feel a great apprehension about believing her. I feel like if I believe her, then I could be crossing a line into mental delusion where I'm believing demons, and really bad things about other people, and this will change everything, because I have relationships with these people, and they seem like people who would never do these things that she's telling me. I like these people and have compassion for them. Believing "her" will disconnect me from my current reality. It will change everything.

Not only will it change everything, but I start putting forth more mental effort to resist. I don't want to believe demons. I don't want to believe lies. I don't want to hurt myself. I don't want to hurt other people. I don't know how to trust her, and I feel very unsafe. In this respect, this little girl comes with a lot of danger. There are serious, adverse consequences to accepting her as me, and the things she tells me as mine. There are serious, adverse consequences if I believe her before I accept her as me, and as what she's telling me as mine. My experience intensifies, and causes me distress. I just want her to go away, but at the same time, I know that my struggles will not go away because I cut her off. She does seem like a little bit of hope towards resolution and understanding my life. Yet also very dangerous.

If you have done inner child work, why did you trust it? What are your criteria for trusting your "inner child"?

 

[Deleted member 541]

@Gaining-clarity I think what you are going through is much more involved than what I have experienced. I don't hear the voice of my inner child, I have never had an out of body experiences you described floating above yourself and watching 2 men abuse you.

What I have had in the past are flashbacks with huge amounts of emotions. Like whilwinds swirling inside of me. I "See" myself as a small child and the emotions hit me like a ton of bricks. They are like clips of films, that just flash on, then repeat over and over again. These film clips (as I call them) are very short, but vivid. I see everything around me, I feel everything and I know exactly where I am, and what I'm wearing. I'm very young, 5 or 6 and I'm stiff as a board, fist are clenched, and I'm angry, and scared, very scared, possibly anxiety. But that's all I get. I don't know anything else.

My therapist at the time, wanted to do age regression on me, my Psychiatrist, didn't think my mind could handle it, so it was recommended I not do it. So we worked on my inner child. I had no apprehension about doing this. There wasn't an issue of not trusting her. I felt I needed to do this to be able to move forward. I was so angry all the time. Just miserable.

I too drank, did mild drugs, pot, and speed. But I drank heavy and I used sex as a coping skill. I wasn't a nice person at the time. I have done shit that I regret doing back then, but I also know that I can't go back and change any of it, the only thing I do now, is I strive to be a better person every day....

I hope that whatever you choose, works for you, and you can come to some kind of resolution that will allow you to move forward in your healing process.....