Emotions Are Hard to Find

[chief]

Hi everyone. It has been along time since I have posted on here, have been through a difficult time with my sibling. If you read my original introduction it explains all about it.

Recently my sibling who suffers from paranoid schizophrenia lost his best friend to suicide which has left him feeling down, which in turn has put my anxiety levels up and hypervigillance, just feels like i am waiting for a call to say he has done something to himself. I posted here because I've always struggled with feeling close to people, just feel like I am a robot sometimes and feel shut down which does not make me feel good about myself :dontknow: I have a partner who is wonderful and understanding but deep down I know it's unfair on her, I do show I care with hugs and kisses but deep down I feel like a machine. We have even stopped having sexual intercourse which does not make me feel good either. Also suffer with OCD obessessional thinking which normally consists of looking at a woman and wanting to sleep with her which is not me and then kicks in lots of self doubt. Wondering if anyone has or does feel like this, thanks for reading.

 

[Blues in NYC]

chief,

some responses to a few items in your post:

When my hypervigilance really kicks in, I start numbing pretty hardcore. My assailant got let out of jail early. My wife and I saw her in the hood. Numbed for about 2.5 days after that. During this I even caught myself committing a small act of self harming (just with my fist--for which I paid the next day with a nasty purple bruise on my thigh and a mother of a charlie horse).

The part that hurts/non-hurts the most in this strange emotionally numb state of mind is looking at my wife. I look at her and feel nothing. And that sucks.

During these times, the most I can feel are meta-meta-emotions, such as frustration at not feeling angry for not being able to feel love for my wife. Lots of layers preventing the insides from reaching the outsides and vice versa. Numbing, at least when I'm in it, is one of my least favorite symptoms.

As far as OCD type thinking, I get very controlling of my environment when my symptoms are flaring up and I'm lacking self awareness. It got really bad this past year prior to my diagnosis. But now that my doc, wife and I have pieced together that the trauma of the last two years was not the first, but only the latest after a troubled youth, I now see patterns of obsessive desires to control my environment as a back-asswards means of managing my symptoms. And I've been doing this on and off for almost all my life.

Lastly, thoughts of infidelity: I love my wife. So very deeply. I might not be here today had it not been for her patience and generosity as I work towards recovery. But when my symptoms get pretty bad, I have some problems with romantic fantasies. Any woman I see that is my type--i.e. I find both sexually attractive and simply interesting--becomes fodder for fantasies. These fantasies are not just sexual. They are entire idealized lifetimes with random strangers imagined at high speed.

Prior to being with my wife (almost ten years now), I was a serial monogomist. But I was more than that. I serially reinvented myself. Moving from city to city, circle of friends to circle of friends, corner of my profession to corner of my profession. Through the lenses that treatment for PTSD has provided me, I can now understand that I was giving in to a form of my own flight mechanisms when symptoms would flare up. When the going got tough inside me, I'd try and run from myself by moving and basically becoming someone else. It worked for a while, but it's cost me a lot. Professionally. Interpersonally. There are times when I wish I'd learned about my disorder sooner and made some different decisions. But I am here and it's now. And I am thankful that my breakdown which lead to my diagnosis happened BEFORE I acted on any of these fantasies to be with someone else, someplace else in an attempt to be leading any life but my own.

I'm not sure if any of these things I've described sound familiar. But these are the things that came to my mind while reading and thinking about your post.

Be well and take care.

~ Blues.