Feeling Empowered

[SinkorSwim]

Yesterday at therapy I felt like I was on top of the world. I was able to get out everything I was thinking about for once and it felt amazing. My therapist even pressured me a few times to see if I would talk more about my trauma. I had the courage to tell her I wasn't ready yet and she was very respectful of it. I started to dissociate a couple times but was able to get my thoughts back on track during therapy and focus. I started dissociating pretty bad at work in the afternoon as it was a slow day and I let my thoughts wander. Then I got home from work and I just laid in bed all night feeling overwhelmed by my thoughts. I am starting to remember pieces of my trauma but I can't connect the dots in between and I think I keep trying to think about it to try and understand but I can't. I don't understand how one minute I feel super empowered and can conquer the world and the next I can barely get out of bed.

 

[ladee]

Unfotunetly that is how it works.
The beautiful thing is...you know what feeling empowered feels like and that will keep you motivated to feel it more often...because that's one of the reasons we work so hard...
You ARE empowered...tell yourself that everyday!..
Hugs across the miles if you accept.

 

[Jadie Rose]

Interesting for me that you feel this way, my third day online here at this forum - I also admitted many things last week, too, and was scared for six hours each, for two days, afterwards. I could not move either, nor pay attention to a movie I kept starting and finishing, then starting over again but still not paying any attention to at all, and that just kept happening for two days (two different movies I REALLY wanted to see), I had to lie in bed and just stare at the TV but I was crumbling inside and I couldn't even stop it with deep breathing. It's scary opening up about deep dark secrets, even with awesome trauma P & T. Have known them for months, too. I felt elated the day of opening up but then I, too, sank into a spiraling hole of who knows what the heck was going on because I don't even know what I was thinking for six straight hours each day, for two days.

I came back to this site for my second time, right after that happened, and realized I need to have this page open quite often now. I just started doing key word searches here for posts related to whatever word came to mind, to read others' experiences, and keep posting here, too. I am so sorry you are experiencing all this and I wish I had magic words for both of us...I hope your day today is getting better and you are not alone in your thinking. I suspect there is fear because I know I have not truly opened up to anyone as much as I am opening up to the two of them. I'm scared of sounding crazy to them, or maybe I'm scared of admitting the truth to myself, or maybe both?!

I can't wait for the day I am a seasoned member and able to offer the great advice so many on this website have offered me thus far. It so makes a difference knowing others understand and are going through the same things. Hugs!

 

[Freedomfighter]

Yesterday at therapy I felt like I was on top of the world. I was able to get out everything I was th...

That is very common for PTSD. Happens all the time, it means that your brain is broken and needs time to connect the dots. That is what I have been doing the last 6 years and must say that I am learning a lot. Now that I am getting better, with my mental health improving, I can make much better decisions and can protect myself as well.

However there are those predators that even I do not expect. Such a predator walked into my workplace one day, mental health field person, and totally freaked me out. I was triggered so bad I went into psychosis and had major physical symptoms as well. That person knew about my condition and attempted to over power me, attempted to over power my mind.
I have never had a mental health field person try to do that to me, but now I totally understand how easy it is for a mental health care person to take the life away from a person that is mentally impaired. People with that kind of knowledge can abuse a mentally handicapped or impaired person very easily. I am scared for the people that this person is coming into contact with and would turn that individual in if I knew the name. There were a couple of mental health patients this person brought to my workplace, I noticed a young african american girl in a wheel chair that was in the group, the girl was beautifully innocent, it was easy to see. For the past couple of days I have been wondering if that pig would do anything to that girl.

It is so scary to know how much damage a mental health care person on the wrong side of the law can do. Very scary, the person that attacked me from the health care field will be the first and last person of that profession to ever do that to me again. I am already trusting the person that is helping me, there will be no other mental health care people that will ever get within 100 feet of me again.

 

[ForgotToLive]

There is a need I think we all have to understand why what happened to us happened. Were we bad/unworthy? Did we create this? Could we have stopped this if...? Etc...

Those dots once connected become our "narrative". This is the story that we use to make sense of things that we experienced and we then use it to make sense of the world around us.

If our narrative is not making sense or if it is otherwise not bringing us peace then we need to change it. Therapy can help give us the courage to remember the WHATs and help change how we feel about the WHYs... but it cannot change the facts of what occurred.

It is terrifying to recall horrors of the past. So we are triumphant (elated) when we become brave enough to face their existance. But the aftermath of trying to fit them into our narrative is not pretty because the experiences are ugly... and that is when we try to figure out "WHY me..." and "if THIS than THAT means XYZ..." and such. Which can leave us devastated, unable to get out of bed... subconsciously saying why in the world did we believe it was a good idea to release that horrific memory into our present day reality!????!!! Plus now we might have to change other things as a result... (like if we suddenly realize our father is a pedophile how do we keep our kids away from grandpa - what do we tell our kids?)

The good news is that while therapy cannot change the facts it can change how we feel about the facts. EMDR is an excellent tool for this. It guides us back through those traumas but makes us experience it from a healthier adult perspective... As a result not only do we become physiologically desensitized to the memory (our jaw stops clenching, etc) but we also take the things that happened to us less personally... We now realize important nuisances our child brain could not realize at the time the trauma was occurring. (Like mom was probably an undiagnosed narcissist or whatever...)

So connecting the dots is a long and painful process but as humans we just need to make sense of it all. I don't think there is any other way to do that is there?