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Doubting reality

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EveHarrington

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I am having a hard time keeping my mind planted in reality.

Someone innocuously questioned my motives for doing something and now I feel like I'm headed for a free falling tail-spin. (Gee, doesn't THAT sound fun?!?)

It scares the ever living crap out of me because it is toeing the line of psychosis symptoms (drug fueled, not trauma fueled) and that is a hell I NEVER want to revisit, not knowing what is real or what is fake, not being able to trust anyone or even my own mind.

I feel like I can hold steady but at the same time holding steady isn't going to cut it in the long run.

So here's the story.

I can be a terrible flirt. It's how I relate to people. It keeps the mood light and airy without any dreaded seriousness. It's also why I have zero female friends. Flirting with females doesn't have the same effect as flirting with males. Blah.

So the question posed was in regards to my flirting. Do I flirt because it's something I want to do or is it to fill a role and make others happy?

Seems easy enough, but the question sent me to a very bad place. Am I flirting to fill a role? Or is it just part of my personality? I don't know why this is causing emotional flashbacks for me. I can't pinpoint what's going on. Maybe I am the biggest fraud on the face of the planet? Take away my diversionary flirting and shit gets real, FAST. I can't handle that kind of vulnerability!

Bottom line, I'm starting to question the reality of how I relate to the world. I can't handle questioning reality. No, no, no. Not happening again.

I know this probably sounds like an incredibly stupid post but I'm f*cking scared. I don't have professional support on the weekends (even though I have a ton during the week.)

I'm just going to post before I can chicken out.

How can I steer my mind back to reality? WTF is going on. I'M SCARED!
 
So the question posed was in regards to my flirting. Do I flirt because it's something I want to do or is it to fill a role and make others happy?

I can only speak for myself and I have a long-standing history of promiscuity...just me...and it nearly killed me and I am trying to swing that particular pendulum back from that one-sided extreme and learning now (failing so far) to relate to single men on a purely platonic level...WT? but I won't give up trying to do so. As a very young girl acting coy and being flirt-ish' stems from being raised by two fathers that were both pervs, just sayin'. Was given cues and did react to said cues by being flirtatious and again promiscuous. Yukk! Makes me sick to realize that two pervs raised my little girl child to relate to men in terms of only my sexuality. Grrr! And only me here...I flirted because I was taught again by two pervs how to utilize flirtation and promiscuity to get their (not mine) f*cking needs met. Haven't thought all of this through yet, good thread here.

Am I flirting to fill a role? Or is it just part of my personality?

So I was flirting throughout the decades with men because I was trained, was raised up to tap into my sexuality at way too young of a very immature age...and therefore never fully (if at all) developed my personality and character traits of becoming and being a woman. I was trained to become promiscuous and only relate with men in a sexual and very harmful manner. Hope this helps. Another thing currently I am working on and that is not allowing my thoughts (without my T) to get too very far ahead of me as I've driven myself nearly insane on many occasions doing so. Caring.
 
This is just my opinion, but it sounds like you might be using flirtation to avoid something else. Flirting with people is fun and makes you feel good. Other people might choose a different distraction, whether it's endless TV or over-eating, to make themselves feel good when something else is stressing them out.

Remind yourself that it's okay to be afraid. Whatever you are afraid of, I'm sure there's a valid reason for you feeling that way. If you're freaking out, focus on something around you that's part of the ordinary (it could be somebody mowing the lawn next door or the corner of your table, whatever's in front of you). It's a moderately effective way of reminding yourself that the world isn't crashing and that you just might be okay. You could hold something cold or squeeze a stress ball to snap out of those moments too, if that helps.

It sounds like you do want to live closer to reality. I definitely think that's possible while you practice ways to calm down. It's always easier to think about how you're feeling and how you can help yourself with a clearer head.
 
Well, the good news is... that's not psychosis. That's naturally questioning yourself and underlying motives behind your actions, possibly you're attaching a bad conotation to your intentions, making you question your entire relationship history (or lack of) from way back when.

I do the same thing, flirt and question my motives, and I also have psychosis, they're two different things and one will hardly leads to the other.

Psychosis means delusions (like believing your house is bugged, that you're being followed by the CIA, that you're Jesus, etc) and/or hallucinations (senses, hearing voices or whispers, seeing things that are not there, tasting things, etc), and you'll certainly not go psychotic for flirting or question why you flirt.

What can happen is the answer to that questioning being something that brings you overwhelming anxiety, that makes you think you're going psychotic, because you already have that fear inside. It's natural to be anxious about going crazy, when we had such a difficult time.

Given that I actually went crazy, I can attest that I get a lot of anxiety over going crazy again when an emotional flashback comes. It's obsessive really, not fun

:hug::hug::hug:
 
Someone innocuously questioned my motives for doing something and now I feel like I'm headed for a free falling tail-spin. (Gee, doesn't THAT sound fun?!?)

When people are brave and insightful enough to question my motives/thinking/feeling HOOT! then I think if they only knew what was truly secondly going on up inside of my brain right now...they would re-think their innocuous questions regarding my motives...and put the f*cking focus back on their ratty and stinky selves for I came through multiple violent gutting trauma injuries, abuses, etc. and things up in my brain aren't always running on all cylinders and brain checks out from time to time during a day. Just sayin'.

I know how f*cked up my brain really is now...being honest with myself and not because others' have/are questioning my thinking, motives, etc. I could give a flying flip what others think...unless they are relating and sharing their ptsd experiences in relation to my mental, cognitive, emotional, thinking serious ptsd issues/struggles and are also sharing advice on how they "fixed" their own ptsd issues. For, I'm always ready and willing and able to try and listen and learn from my peers/others as I continue to change and grow re 2012 cptsd diagnosis. And since I finally now know my cptsd diagnosis I am living up close and personal with ptsd symtoms/aftermath

Even still, however, I am not so ready and willing to take negative in-my-face destructive, tear-down criticisms from others, though. Just not havin' it no mo. I'll have very little (if anything) to do with others who try and unsuccessfully to take my ptsd inventory without working hard on themselves and so far I don't believe anyone has graduated from PTSD College as of yet as I've learned here in forum that no one is ever cured (incurable disorder). And everyone with ptsd are in different recovery places/status and this needs to be factored in, appreciated, and respected when others are taking inventory/stock of everyone else instead of looking deep within themselves and seeing how much work they still need to do on themselves. For I have been taught that ptsd recovery is a journey not a f*cking destination. And when others are am making unsolicited assumptions and uncorroborative predictions and taking the inventory of others and of me - well, I often wonder when did this person get so f*cking healthy to the point they have now put out their Ph.D. ptsd shingle and are now unsolicitiously taking the f*cking inventory of those around them. I must remember to continue focuing and be working on my own ptsd recovery and not making innocuous unsolicited remarks about others ptsd recovery status.

Flirting with people is fun and makes you feel good. Other people might choose a different distraction, whether it's endless TV or over-eating, to make themselves feel good when something else is stressing them out.

I very much appreciate your personal opinion regarding "flirting" @Kaira Senka and comparing/contrasting same to watching TV and over-eating. Hindsight now regarding my extreme and self-damaging sexual flirtation and sexually fueled coquettish behaviors/mannerisms taught to me by sexual pervs/preds never culminated into any "fun" nor "feel good" = self-gratification nor self-fulfillment again since I'd been so artfully and deviantly taught by extremely seductive monstrous sexual perverts and sexually depraved excrement manipulators how to by them using their groomed into me sexual deviant behaviors to get my basic core needs "met" by using only sex as a means to that end (meaning I almost successfully committed suicide on multiple occasions because I felt like such a whore which I'd been called all of my life by one father and had been treated as such throughout sick and demented relationship by/with other father). I worked in many, many jobs and did well on each one, and left before I could be promoted and "found out" back then I didn't know I had cptsd and was so scared that I was going mad and used sexual acting out as a way in between jobs to meet my basic financial core needs. None of what I'm sharing here may make sense because this is history I'm now working on...and at the tip of the tip of the iceberg on this.

So because sexual acting out brought to me the very sick seedy and filthy dirty self-destructive elements of harmful to self/others sexual feelings vs. healing, loving, caring, etc. (no), sexual perversions I acted out throughout my life especially when I needed someone to keep me financially above water. I also weaved into my maladaptive thinking that sex was love, and love was sex because I didn't know any better. Those I used were collateral damage and felt they were using me as well. I couldn't see that others loved me and wanted a life with me I only saw them for personal and financial gain (oh so sick to have to admit this to myself. I'm as sick as my secrets and am trying to figure out all of this craziness.

Also feelings of S/I, due to feeling absolute worthlessness, filthiness, and self-degradation due to same because that had been instilled in me since a very, very young little girl child while I was being repetitively sexually molested by predators/pervs as a young little girl-child and coming up on into puberty, adolescence, womanhood, etc.

So @Kaira Senka, I was coached, groomed, and masterfully taught by at least two if not more sexual predators as a little girl child that if I ever wanted ANYTHING! I was conditioned and trained by them to only use sex as a means to an end to obtain anything!

And having nothing of healthy living values, morals, etc. to compare what they'd taught me to I thought this is what all girls, women did so I never even questioned this crippling sexual behaviors. So throughout most of my developmental stages of life, I acted out and used sex to get all of my basic needs met because sexual predators' step-father and bio-father taught me VERY WELL how to be sexually coquettish and sexually beyond provocative. This was never fun or self-gratifying on any level @Kaira Senka for I used to believe that sex was love, and f*cking love back then was sex which is why I became extremely self-destructive for my not being able to tap into anything but sex as a basic and fundamental way live and to meet ANY of my human basic needs. No mother in my life and a drunk father, and sexual molester step-father and only female step-monsters who beat and physically and psychologically tortured me then, and so I was then left to unhealthily and near self-destructively utilize sex (having been taught by two sexually-perverted master sexual manipulators) to get EVERYTHING I needed in life. Just sayin'.

After multiple suicide attempts I began extremely abusing food in place of sex to satisfy my unmet and unfilled goals i.e. college completion, husband, children, healthy ongoing relationships with family of origin, friends, etc. (was misdiagnosed for nearly 30 yrs. with bipolar/meds) and thus I continued abusing food for a few decades after sexual promiscuity almost killed me and last year severely abusing food wound me in the emergency room and then in surgery to have part of my colon removed due to abnormal eating habits and abscess lying inside of my colon that had dropped my colon into my vaginal cavity. And that was no picnic either pardon the expression.

Where am I now? I'm struggling like hell to eat healthier as I peer back into my past at the insanity thus meltdown and learned unhealthy and nearly self-destructive repetitive sexual then eating and living habits/behaviors I'd been taught and I'd also mastered (pervs used to cram food in my mouth which had turned to vomit many swallowing attempts ago and pervs did this over and over and over ad nauseum while I was forced to sit in kitchen alone and eat my food turned to vomit) and now I am so desperately struggling with trying to stay present and forgive myself and am trying not to dissociate, and leave. I can't leave...I've come too far in recovery...and I know just enough about ptsd and recovery to make me want to remain in the here and now, present and most of the time accounted for...so I must stay here and deal now with how I perpetuated what masterful sexual predators instilled into my psyche, then how I've also used food, people, things, places to unsuccessfully try and fix me. I must live with the factual knowledge and my reality of how I continued to act out myself, and although I did not know better then and did not have the knowledge back then that I was killing myself. And that I'd been so powerfully, skillfully, and manipulatively sexually taught by extremely sexually and psychologically and physically abusive devoid of feelings for others - predators how to willingly self-destruct.

And I must for my own sanity and safety and well-being now learn how to now live without abusing sex, food, drugs, money, people, places, and things (which nearly killed me because I abused them to excess and also created myself a sick, demented, and void of love, feelings for self/others world (just my needs were tantamount - and not others' needs, wants, desires) in order to get my basic needs met. Am learning now to unlearn these taught to me by pervs/perps maladaptive sick living mannerisms, and malfunctional cognitive and feeling and acting out behaviors. I am studying hours each day now to try and be less self-destructive (mentally and physically) and more self-nurturing, self-caring, and hopefully self-actualizing (becoming a loving, caring, giving, receiving, accepting, committed (vs. admitted to another psyche ward) human being (boy that's a hell of a lot to ask of my f*ckcing self). And I currently am protecting my little girl child within me with serious veracity and boundaries, also trying to deeply emotional self-love and self-nurture her (my little girl child self) back from the brink of hell.

I'm in recovery now and have undergone grueling hours of EMDR and now am continuing on in weekly therapy sessions to unlearn what was so cruelly and violently taught me and also learn for the first time how to self-soothe, self-like, self-love, self-care, self-protect, self-nurture, and someday begin to self-actuate into what was so viciously stolen from me when I was just a little, little precious, innocent wide-eyed girl child. (sigh)...
 
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