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Sufferer Don't think I'll ever stop breaking.

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goblin

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Hi, there.

I've never opened up about trauma before this year. I've been working with a therapist for a while who has helped me to see a lot of things I was denying. Although I've had many other therapists (treatment-resistant chronic depression going on 20+ years), somehow this year is the first time I've been able to recognize that the sadness, fear, and pain in me might be worth looking at. I'd never so much as discussed sex or abuse with a therapist before. Sometime last year, I began thinking about it, progressed over months to sometimes crying about it, and now I'm (tremulously) approaching the point of speaking about it.

My life has been a jumble. I'm 38. I've had many "good starts," interesting career changes, moves to new cities. Clean slates. Again and again. But I've never been able to rise to the challenges at work or in relationships, and I end up failing and floundering in a short matter of time. I feel like my brain falls apart whenever "finally getting it right" is within easy reach. I've been out of work since last year. By the time Summer, 2020, rolled around, I had stopped leaving the house completely. Nowadays, it's rare for me to leave my bed. I don't know how it got this bad, but it's bad. I don't sleep because of nightmares, don't want to go out of the house because the most unexpected things trigger me, and I can't stand that everything reminds me of the thoughts and feelings I am trying to stop having.

Last month, after a few weeks of full-blast suicidality that I couldn't overcome without intervention, I started a course of ketamine infusions. As an emergency option to prevent imminent death by suicide, it was basically a miracle. The change in that impulse was immediate and enormous. As I continued with the infusions, my mind has opened up in a way, almost as though I can feel new pathways growing. I'm literally having brand new thoughts I've never thought before; I had forgotten that was possible! I'm looking at childhood sexual abuse in ways I've never considered it before, and while that is a good thing, it's also really damn hard. A lot of things I've "always" thought turn out, quelle surprise, to be constructs of trauma. The truth is worse, and the truth is more painful.

I suppose that's the dreariest introduction I've ever written for myself. Makes me want to tell a joke and laugh it off, but I can't think of any way to get there from here.

Eek. Nice to meet you.
 
I spent a good while reading posts here, and I have been so impressed by folks with the ability to just "come out and say it," to write about their memories as memories without clouding their experience with vagueness, emotions, and word salad. I meant to try doing that when I posted my intro, but I'm so used to talking circles around trauma instead of communicating just. plain. facts. (Well, lookit that ... I am doing it again right now.)

How do y'all do it? Talking about what's happened to me without diminishing, deflecting, and dismissing the events or their effects, well ... it's like trying to balance on a greased beach ball or something. My thoughts and words just slide all over the place. I end up feeling quite stupid.

I've also been incredibly moved by many of the responses I've read here on all kinds of topics. It's so valuable to see people actively modeling compassion, caring, and decency. So many examples that contradict my assumptions about what happens when the truth comes out.
 
Welcome to the community! 😁
How do y'all do it? Talking about what's happened to me without diminishing, deflecting, and dismissing the events or their effects, well ... it's like trying to balance on a greased beach ball or something. My thoughts and words just slide all over the place. I end up feeling quite stupid.
Some of it is practice, some of it is THIS >>> Reading Forum Increases Symptoms! , and some of it? Is that what’s being talked about ISN’T someone’s big-bad hard to talk about shit. Which is one of those giant benefits of a worldwide community... not only is there usually at least someone (if not many many people) who “get” you... but what’s hard for me? Might be easy for you... and vice versa. Because hard? Changes. What was impossible 5 years ago may be easy now, and what’s hard now may be easy in 20 minutes. People being at different stages in dealing with their shit? Gives us all the benefit of sooooooo many different perspectives. Dealing with with it, dealt with it, not even willing/able to think about it... all flows. Into freaking useful.

Again... Welcome!
 
Welcome @goblin ! Sorry for what you have been through, bit super happy to hear that the last few weeks have changed things so positively for you.
Your introduction is totally fine! Totally understandable and not vague. Some people write things in graphic detail , some don't. Nothing right or wrong about it.

And I totally resonate with what you say about changing the way you think about what the past was and the truth and how painful that is. Been there (am there).
 
Welcome to the community! 😁

Some of it is practice, some of it is THIS >>> Reading Forum Increases Symptoms! , and some of it? Is that what’s being talked about ISN’T someone’s big-bad hard to talk about shit. Which is one of those giant benefits of a worldwide community... not only is there usually at least someone (if not many many people) who “get” you... but what’s hard for me? Might be easy for you... and vice versa. Because hard? Changes. What was impossible 5 years ago may be easy now, and what’s hard now may be easy in 20 minutes. People being at different stages in dealing with their shit? Gives us all the benefit of sooooooo many different perspectives. Dealing with with it, dealt with it, not even willing/able to think about it... all flows. Into freaking useful.

Again... Welcome!
What a fabulous point. I've been thinking all my life that there are just two kinds of people when it comes to "getting over" the scary stuff: Either someone is superhumanly capable of healing because they are strong, mature, and undoubtedly a delight at parties, or they are a wimpy, sloppy little basket case like me. And yet! Yet here I am, seeing incontrovertible evidence in every thread that the ability to heal is not, in fact, anessential trait that only some in people have, that healing is a process and not a product, that people who aren't "over it" can be -- are --- incredibly strong and downright appealing. I may have known this all before (or known that it was the nice way to think), but it's striking me on a new level right now.

I've never seen or heard what emotional processing looks like before. I just knew I was supposed to do it. I gathered that healing probably had something to do with imagining waterfalls or journaling or new age music, that there was a lot of homework, and that it I ever met its eye, it would drag me to hell. Actually getting a glimpse of real brilliant people doing real hard work on scary shit that I *recognize*? At all different points in the process? From different backgrounds and different perspectives? It's mind-blowing.
 
Welcome @goblin. Happy to see that you are realizing that this is a place for healing. A place to get support, encouragement, validation, and people celebrating with you when you hit a milestone. People who 'get it'.

Very glad you are here. Hope we can help with this very hard journey. You are not alone any longer.
 
Welcome to the Forum! I'm happy you are in treatment and that you found us! It's a lifelong journey that we can make better and healthier choices for to be the best we can be...for ourselves.😊 It's worth the work👍🏼
 
I appreciate all of your welcoming words so much. Thank you all for being kind and inclusive. It's hard to accept how alone I've been, but I surely can feel the contrast here -- *not* being alone in this thread clarifies how alone I am (both literally and figuratively) in my life, now and for decades past.

I'm reluctant to hop into any other threads and feeling like I don't "deserve" to write out diary entries. That's an old fear, a feeling that I'm interrupting the real people with my own unimportant whining. I'm trying to get past it, call it what it is: emotional reasoning ("I feel unworthy = I am unworthy").

But I already made *this* thread. It's already here, so I feel a little less awkward posting on it. It might not be the right place, but it's the place where I'm typing the words into the box ... so that's a start.

I had a rocky weekend. I barely slept at night, then slept all day on Saturday and Sunday, unable to manage facing the world. I keep having these bursts of adrenaline. If I'm sleeping when it happens, it wakes me up like a shot, fully panicked, completely alone. When I'm awake, it comes on more slowly because I'm pushing it back, stuffing the thoughts back into the box for a while before the panic wins. This has been happening for years and years, but something about it has changed recently. Now, it's not just anonymous unspecified panic ... now it has names and faces. It has sounds and smells and feelings that flood in with it. It's not just adrenaline "for no reason," it's actual memories. Not the FACTS of what happened, but the feelings. Should I write those feelings down? Should I shut them out because they're irrational? Are they irrational? I don't know anything anymore.
 
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