Do You Ever Feel That Your Feelings Are Invalid?

[Healing Survivor]

Sometimes it seems like I make this all up. Even though I know PTSD symptoms are real, I feel so crazy. I know I'm my own worst enemy because of how much I invalidate myself. Is that just a symptom of avoidance?? I am very good at avoiding.
This last week I went to a great concert--my first one ever. I really let go which I never do. And now it's like the emotions won't stop. Even though that was a positive thing, I've been depressed and haven't been able to function at all. What's up with that?? Is that normal? Will these feelings ever stop? I feel like I need to let them out but I'm so good at practicing avoidance that it's really hard for me. I don't know what I'm doing...

 

[UConnclar]

Hi Healing,
I,too, go through periods of wondering if it really is as bad as I think it is. I wonder if these events really happened in the first place.

The only thing I can offer is that it is part of the healing process. It is part of starting to accept the memories for what they are. It's also part of finally starting to feel the emotions we've kept bottled for so long.

All the best to you in your journey!

 

[a3a2]

Healing,

I could have written your first paragraph....or maybe my t could have written it about me as that is what she is constantly telling me that I am doing. I wish I could tell you how to sort it all out, but instead I will sit back and try to glean from what everyone else tells you.

 

[darkskies]

I was dianosed with ptsd 4 and a half years ago and when I went to the first of my group therapy sessions last week I felt like I'd made a bigger deal out of my incident than what happened, despite it being very real and significant. I think it's to do with feeling guilty for having ptsd and frustaration of not being able to move on as others think I should be. I'm kinda stuck in my journey. Lack of confidence also plays a part I think and denial of apsects of what happened clubbed together with missing parts makes me doubt it to sometimes yet at the same time it's all too real. Your not alone with this but I don't know what the answer is, sorry.

 

[sisyphe]

When I first started getting all the weird PTSD symptoms, I found it hard to understand how the experiences I went through affected me so much. I often felt like what I went through was so minor compared with being in a war or some horrible catastrophe that there wasn't really any excuse for being so traumatized, and so I felt like I was somehow making up the PTSD and everything. It wouldn't surprise me if it were common for people to try to minimize the extent of their trauma by having a certain disbelief about it or thinking it wasn't really that bad.

 

[cragger65]

HS, I think we tend to discount and devalue our own feelings because that is how we've learned to see ourselves in many cases... as unimportant, so our feelings "don't matter".

The negative feelings following positive events I also experience. I make sense of it by figuring, if you open a bottle that's filled with noxious fumes, even if opening it was a positive thing, what comes out is still poison. I hope you can make better sense of it all as you go. I know I need to, too.

Good luck

 

[Dylan]

Hi HS,

I have had this experience: I'm in just the right situation where I feel safe enough, happy enough, relaxed enough that I really let go and the guard is let down, I'm present and then.....I get the fall out.

For me, I think it's the whole protective structure reacting to it being temporarily circumvented. It's as though my brain, very temporarily, gave up its protective vise but then, after the fact, thought better of it. I don't know if I'm explaining it well, but I relate to what you're saying. To me the experience is similar to how "normal people" have a close call in an accident; it's only afterward that people start to shake and meltdown.

-Dylan

 

[Charon]

I have been to war and I feel guilty every day of my life for being how I am. While I was in Iraq I worked in a morgue, not round the clock because people didn't die round the clock (it was more like one here, one there, sometimes a few there...) but I know I was only there for five months and I only did one tour. I know it wasn't up to me how long or how often I got deployed, but sometimes I think what right do I even have to feel this way?

I knew some mortuary guys in the Army who were over there for over a year doing nothing but putting people in body bags. I pale beside them and am ashamed of myself.

I think about all the dead soldiers I saw (to give you an idea of how personal it was I'd put the American flag on their transfer case, ride in the back of an ambulance with them to the air strip, where I'd help lower it into the arms of the pall bearers, who would carry it past the chaplain and all the other soldiers) I think about all these dead guys and I think, "what the hell man?! They're dead, they're dead and here I am alive and feeling this way?!"

I owe it to them to be better than this. To be better than some jangled collection of nerves and tears. Who am I to be sad, anxious, depressed or whatever?

 

[Healing Survivor]

Thanks

That's all very helpful and I wanted to thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts with me. It's just nice to be heard sometimes. Dylan--I really appreciated your insight, I understand what you meant. I'll post more later, but for now, just thanks...

 

[BrownEyes]

Charon:

Who am I to be sad, anxious, depressed or whatever?

That describes my feelings perfectly. In fact, I've said them to myself a thousand times. I feel such guilt when I'm having a hard time with my PTSD. I think that I have no right to feel the way I do.

I'm blessed and people would give anything to have the life I currently have. But underneath it all I have a past that haunts me every day.

And when I'm having a hard time I get so down on myself for it all. I invalidate my feelings and think that my past was no big deal and that I'm just over reacting.

Healing Survivor:

I feel like I need to let them out but I'm so good at practicing avoidance that it's really hard for me.

I've held my feelings in for so long that sometimes I feel like I'm going to burst. They're just under the surface aching for expression. I want to release them so badly, but I don't know how to do that yet.

I don't have any answers yet, but I can definitely relate to what everyone is saying.

 

[Yumeko-chan]

I think part of it is sometimes, we don't feel like we have the right to be happy. We've been in misery for so long, how DARE we even try to be happy...stuff like that.

My PTSD flared up majorly earlier this year. Others here can attest to that. But I've barely said anything out loud about it to my b/f. If I told him every single thing that was going through my head during that period, he would think I'm psychotic. Fact of the matter is, it's very real to us, and we try so hard to not let it get out of hand, so we don't (verbally) acknowledge it. And so while that pain and those thoughts are very real to us, no one else is gonna have the slightest clue, so to them it looks like we're ok.

I'm not even sure if I made any sense there.

 

[sink or swim]

Listen buddy, don't you dare put youself down. You were there, you took the queen's shilling, signed on the dotted line, and however far back or forward the front line, you were in it. If seen by the enemy would have been shot, or bombed. You had a job to do. There were loved ones waiting at home for their sons or daughters to arrive. If not you then who would liked to have stepped into your shoes?

Oh, you say, some saw worse. Do you know where they are now - sitting on the sofa having a cup of tea? I doubt it...they're suffering like you, maybe, or maybe even worse. Perhaps in prison, or dead. You're a survivor. You suffer because you did your job. You got PTSD because you care. You were part of a machine, a war machine. The living go in, not all come out, and you did your bit. Hold your head up high, for without you and your team of men, the relatives of those loved ones could not cry and lay those to rest.