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Feeling raw

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Suzetig

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my T and I have been really working on how I feel about myself and how that impacts the way I go about daily life. I tend to use keeping very busy as a distraction - a way to avoid feeling anything and from dealing with those feelings. Slowly but surely we’re unpicking that defence mechanism to try and process my feelings about sexual exploitation as a teenager - my feelings are very confused and there’s a huge amount of shame around what happened. I’ve also started toying with reporting my abuser to the police, which would be a massive thing for me.

This week we got to really explore how I process emotions, and recognised that my emotions come from a very young place, which is covered up by me being very strong cognitively (hence any kind of CBT/DBT is pretty useless for me. I keep busy because sitting quietly, by myself, relaxing brings up all the feelings I keep boxed away. I’ve had a couple of days off that I’ve just taken to do nothing for a change, I was feeling a bit tender but after seeing my T all of the feelings I’ve been fending off have flooded back again, it was a very sore session but I felt ok pretty much leaving.

Anyway, I’m feeling very raw about it all now. Usually I can pack up my thoughts and feelings from one session to the next but that’s not happening today - I’m really tearful and just going through the motions to keep myself in check. Which hasn’t been me for a long time. It’s like we’ve taken a layer of skin off something and I feel physically, emotionally, psychologically pained - I could just curl up into a ball and let the world pass me by.

I’ve got in touch with T and arranged to see her but need to get from here to next week with my kids and work and life making demands on me that I don’t have headspace for. I’m more than pissed of that after this amount of work on myself PTSD and bloody therapy can still knock my on my arse.

Feel free to sympathise, empathise, point and laugh or get in the boat with me - it’s going to be a long weekend.
 
Wow. I could have written your post. Your pain is palpable. I can certainly empathise. I am raw after having to describe the impact of the last 3 years (2 serious injuries and realising I had a lot of unresolved stuff to deal with from my childhood) to 4 different people in 10 days in order to request a leave of absence for Uni. I’m hoping my T can help me contain that after a month of not seeing her. I totally get the busy/avoid. Story of my life.
 
Sounds like you’ve been working on some very hard stuff. Sorry to hear you’ve been a bit floored by your recent session. Understandable that you’re feeling raw just now. Self-care as and when you can and keep on keeping on...anything you can do this weekend to help yourself through? .
 
@Suzetig
Yes, I've been trying to write in this space something, anything to help you and I am struggling for you, with you. :hug:
I know this feeling too you see.

You actually have a wounded soul. Wounded souls can stand together and be with each other when days like these come. So I am sending my battered old soul over to your's for a little while. You can punch it up and send it flying back if it doesn't help :unsure:

There are no words that can soothe & brush away that pain.
Well there are but they do not last long enough, don't really reach the right place or actually bring the comfort that you need right now.

I've written a whole bunch of stuff and deleted it. I am sending you this for now.

I want to tell you it will be okay. That today is just one rough day. That is all it is - really.
So deal with today. Just today.

It's okay @Suzitig to have tears. They are your tears. I have this feeling you have little time for your own. Let them come, feel the pain, sob your way through it. They will stop and the wrenching pain in your gut will stop. It will.

@Suzetig :hug: for you.
b1
 
Wow - I could have written your post -- it hits on so many things I struggle with also.

I had a bunch of feelings come up a while back and it totally undid me. I was almost unable to function. I talked with a fellow sufferer who has gotten past all this and he said ---

think about it this way.... You haven't felt feelings in a long, long time. So it would make sense that when they come up they will hit you like a freight train. On a scale of 1 - 10 they are a 45. But once you get through this it will be more familiar (you will still hate it but they will be more familiar). So the next time it happens it will only be a 25. Then as you continue to practice the number will come down.....

Not sure if it will work -- I haven't had a meltdown since. But it did make me feel better to look at it that way.
 
Thanks folks, I’ve kept myself busy today and have stuff over the weekend that will help me get through. I like the idea of things lessening in intensity and know that to be true but I strongly suspect this will get worse before it gets better. I’ll find a way through but just now it is what it is.
 
Well you are doing the distracting thing ok @Suzetig.:)

I saw one little bit about you OP that made me wonder if this may hang around a bit. That being you were thinking about reporting the abuse.

For me getting to that point in terms of whether you will or won't is sure to stir up a lot of stuff. It has enormous consequences and I am wondering if it's making this decision that is colliding with recovery work you have done?

This issue must come up so often in your head. It did with me.

When it all took off I because I did go ahead. I became quite unravelled at times.
 
It’s definitely part of it, mainly because reporting it would mean accepting that what happened was abusive. I mean in my head I know it was, I know what grooming and exploitation looks like but attaching those labels to me in this situation feels very painful.

So part of me thinks if I report it, and the police give it a crime number and investigate it must have been abusive and criminal and maybe then I’ll get off the shame/self blame merry go round in a “fake it til you make it” kind of way. But then I think about what that would do to his life and his family and that his behaviour might not have been intentional, that he didn’t know the nature of what he was doing - which brings me back to it wasn’t really abusive. And on and on we go while I fend off a huge amount of pain tied up in “if he did know what he was doing he’s an utter bastard and deserves to be reported, but I can’t believe he would knowingly be so abusive”. Don’t ask me how I think he somehow abused me by accident, but part of me thinks that’s possible. Until my T points out the facts of what happened and the whole thing starts again.

Yesterday’s session was good in lots of ways, we got into stuff I always avoid and I’m glad we did because it feels like progress, but so f*cking painful. I don’t know if I’ll report or not but thinking through the possibility is certainly contributing to how I feel just now.
 
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part of me thinks that’s possible. Until my T points out the facts

Yes it seems as if we attribute the abuser with our own moral code. In the end I kept telling myself it is impossible to rationalise the irrational behaviour of the perpetrator. I had to cut it off somewhere, anywhere in the cycle because I will never know really & truly what was in his mind because he pleaded not guilty from the outset despite overwhelming evidence that he did do exactly as charged.

If the perpetrator does this then expect to feel out-raged all over again. I did but I still don't know why. Of course he would deny it, he was never going to get a discount in sentence or anything short of a hell of a long time in prison. No sane Defence barrister would advise him to do otherwise. Academically I knew this but emotionally no. Dropped on me like a dead satellite.

I came to the conclusion I didn't need to understand why he did it but I did need to stop turning it over like a Rubic cube trying to make it sit sensibly. I don't know if that helped me but it was the most rational way of getting out of the cycle. Even now when it comes up with those I know who want to re-visit this I have to shrug my shoulders and not start doing it. It's a trap.

For a long time I attributed the perp., with mind reading skills too. I don't know why I did. Maybe bc I thought he was trying to outwit me before we even got to trial. But I had to cut that out too. I had to concede I was a mere mortal and he was a criminal. It's difficult though.

we got into stuff I always avoid

I think sometimes I am doing swimmingly well and I am in reality. When there is a break from the relative calm for any reason I am very pissed off with myself. I expect better I suppose. When I go down a little, I think oh no... but usually now I feel like I attach myself to a flotation device that will not let me sink right to bottom.

If it's stuff I have avoided I have to let my psydoc know I am not resurfacing and he usually knows already. Usually his reception have rung or do ring to book in an extra appt., I imagine he walks out after I am gone and say's she's f### move around my appts I will have to see her again soon. I'm sure he must. I have asked him. He says I go very pale etc., who knew? I'm not so sure I like him knowing before I know.

I can and sometimes do extrapolate this out to well, how much does he really know about me then? That's like the mad-dog cycle with the perpetrator...I have to stop chasing it. It's simply not worth it.
 
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