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How do you carry your trauma? or where do you carry it?

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grit

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HI everyone,
once again going through the tunnel and realizing something I did not realize before.
This is how it goes.

Lately I have been becoming super aware of my body - weight, flexibility, texture, pain, and many other feelings that are hard to put into words like fullness, lightness (different than weight) and spatial or movements...etc. It goes on and on.

I am not a scientific person in this arena, but I feel I am not going through alone, and others probably experience.

As I listened to my dreams too (I had a dream about a tight red dress - three different women were wearing and if that was not enough I woke up and went back and a friend of mine was there wearing same dress in green)...I thought maybe vanity like being in shape or losing weight but it was deeper...what resonated most was the body...the dress drew me to the bodies.

Anyhow this body dream or wishful thinking has been going on for a while. I feel for the first time seeing my body as flesh that needs nurturing, love and attention like a human. I am sad and ashamed I treated my body like a robot - a machine to move me around and lift me up and make me walk. I sound more like schizoid, but I probably had some features. I have read a lot and cannot find anything that comes close to what I am thinking or feeling but I found few things I can summarize somewhat how they relate to me.

These are the areas that I carried trauma or my childhood trauma most: think of this all-in spectrum - too far off is too much and too far off is too little but the impact is the same. balance is more homeostasis.
  • The body – damage areas: feeling of heavy, tight muscles. lack of movement or flexibility, pain in joints. Hard breathing. To offset: I eat well and sleep well and exercised a lot in the past and walk a lot now.
  • The emotions – damage areas: In denial about trauma (deep helplessness/overwhelmed), depression, shame, and anxiety. Offset recognizing all other feelings especially heavy ones like rage, apathy, abandonment, and procrastination. Also acknowledged the lack of light ones – love, joy and harmony. Internally acknowledged most feelings but externally hid. Not aware of though.
  • Cognition – Perception – damage intellect, ambition, intimacy. Offset: rationale, acceptance of limitations, overcompensating in other areas like taking much longer to do everything or learn anything but had that push to keep going – hopefulness.
  • Identity/Character- (or what is called object relations or internalization)- damaged areas absolute belief of who I am, difficult, unloved, not good, everything bad I was. The world is hostile and BIG I must manage. Offset, complete acceptance of I am so bad and dangerous and living my life like I do not want to hurt others, kill or blow up and die.
  • Consciousness (time and space): damage to my coping mechanism fundamental ways. Offset, avoidance, isolation, hibernation.
Now the question is how if I was damaged but managed why was not that enough to keep living? Because my offset skills were just reaction and not things I was aware of. It was like I am bleeding, and I put a Band-Aid rather than going to the doctor to see what it and it is was a tumor. My trauma was a tumor that I have been treating with Band-Aid and sleeping when under stress.

Now that I am in therapy, I am learning the areas that therapy is helping me but also, I am expanding my own understanding spiritually because I do not think one person who is not related to me can truly help a damage caused by the most important person in my life persistently for almost 20yrs. I think this is the blind spot of therapy. They can help one area great and it takes more active role by me to see other areas inside of and assist myself along the way. This is now bordering to spiritual or philosophical but anything to help me see myself out of the fog. I know it is a fog because I had glimpses of it over the years even as a child.

The biggest area that therapy helped me is #4 – identity and character or personality. There were things I felt were for certain me and I am learning nope. Just internalized mirrors of what I saw in my mother. If my mother was dysregulated and unstable or extremely overwhelmed, then I saw that as a child and internalized it as part of me and feel to this day I am just exhausted! For no reason really. So, in therapy, it happened, and I allowed it afterwards that I dissociated so much – that the cracks of my psychic showed me what is mine and what is given to me like a shirt. I listened to this guy on America idol (cannot remember his name) something like Jeremiah Harton or something. a young gay man who was born into pastor family and he said something like there are things my family gave and things I am born, and I am figuring out which one is which one. Apparently, his family do not accept he is gay so that is where he is seeing his own cracks of what is his and what is theirs. It just opened my eyes the same way. How I see myself is not really how I am. It is strong, but it is a shirt I wore so long I thought it is my skin.

That is what dissociation did for me. I cracked and picked up the pieces in therapy.

Now as I put it back together, other areas are shining that I never notice. Consciousness.

#5 is a side affect of therapy since they do not deal with this area at all except in coping mechanism which most therapists do not know how to teach really but always ask stupid question of how did you deal with that or this? I hate that question. I know what they want to but if you do not know the answer truly and you are suicidal. Just dump! How do the parents teach this? I did not have that. I learned in my own way of drinking, f…ing, and sleeping it off.

But now since my internalizations has improved, I can see clearly when I am hurting there are three spaces I am hurting: in the past as PTSD, in the middle some PTSD and some today, and purely today as here and now.

When I can see it is purely in the past – it is really crazy how I can be there and hurt now. It is fascinating for me to watch myself and this is when I ask the body/inner child how can I help? I know clearly today, I am hurting from the past and it is so easy to visualize and breathe and take care of me as a child. My coping mechanism are working wonderfully so far. I have had few misses often but when I get to work hard, it is really not as difficult as I used to think --- avoiding and hiding or doing something crazy. What makes it easy for me is I feel as a child I was overwhelmed for taking care of a person who supposed to. I was so busy in the mind and was feeling so helpless but yet trying to be loved and helpfulness. So I can see that is how I felt as a child not how my life is today for me. It feels the end of the world x1000.

The hardest one is little bit of the past and little bit of here and now…which is often what woke me up during therapy. I am crazy and scared and shaking and next I am in the room. What just happened? And this can happen to me outside of therapy room too and it is sneaky, and it is just bad. It is depression/anxiety, procrastination, overwhelming etc. I am learning or working on pinpointing this one but not there yet. I have it now…as I write this. There is a pain a new job and it is all mixed. It feels the end of the world most of the time until the fog it lifted, or I fall so far off to the past completely.

The best pain (if there is any) is created by today – here and now. And this is the one I find my coping mechanism from how I deal with the past work wonderfully. I am sad because I can see a b or c happened and that is why. Not because I am internally a bad person. It is clear to me and I find I put my adult hat and get to business of talking about it and taking my time or finding support or solution. It is not the end of the world.

Now after all this weird internal processing of my PTSD. I am feeling other areas falling into place like the lightness in my body. This is crazy thing.

All sudden I am dreaming of honestly doing some weird yoga things like a child - rolling all over. I see my muscles are loosening up. And I want to do handstand on the wall! Of course, I am not losing my head and need a lot of work before, but it is existing in my head and in my breathing and in my legs…I am feeling the itch. I sound I am losing it right? But I am not …this is just a thought, a deep feeling of freedom.

So, I thought I would post this here. The only place I could to express my feeling and see how alone or how much it resonates with others.

I always suspect my body was in a shock but never thought it can be freed.

After all these, I am truly feeling a grip is loosening.

How do you carry your trauma and how do you know when you are dropping some of it, maybe not all but big chunk of it?

Please share or discuss or teach me more.

Thank you for reading this long free consciousness streaming.
 
Sometimes I am not easy to understand or even relate-able but I can see this post is even hard for me to understand...(-;

I am going through some sort of transformation and it is really hard to put it in words. I feel or at least I am coming to terms that my trauma impact is deeply more about deficit and things I did not learn that are so natural in most people but my internal conflict is not damaged or at least I have overcame that area. I do not know who I am or what I do not know but I can acknowledge all my feelings good, bad and the ugly and contain them. So I am safe in relationships to others and can maintain relationships easier but my internal deficit is high. It makes no sense.
The only example I can give is like if a person wants to self harm and the therapist is focused on why? and keep hammering on the why, I do not think the therapist will ever understand that person and that person will get better in therapy. but if the therapist goes behind the whys and tries to understand where in the human development a person/child learns do not do that or you will get hurt ...and then tries to understand the client maybe get stunned at that level and no matter how much cognition, defense or talk therapy you bring...it will not work. What will work is the amount of empathy that mother must have to teach her child, it hurts when you do that. it hurts you and it hurts me. and how do you convey that deep caring and love to a person? How do you teach love? is the ultimate question.

I feel what is helping me is I am working from up to bottom. I had no love as a child but I got lucky to find true love as an adult and I am not taking it for granted. I am using the love I have for my husband as a way, a journey, a path to see what I was like when I was a child.+ and try to re parent seriously. Teach myself all I should have learned as a child. there are a lot of deficit but my adult journey gave me some great tools and experiences to deal with the fall out of finding out how deficient I am.
 
What a great way to try and heal a part of ourselves that never had the opportunities to grow!! You have some wonderful insight into these issues of not having what we needed as children, to develop into adults with the skills we need.

I have never thought about it like this, except for the inner child work I have done. But in all honesty, if I didn't have it as a child, how could I, with heart and soul, teach it to my little self? Going to think about this.

And you made perfect sense to me. I needed to read this today. Exactly as you presented it. It has opened a new avenue of thought.

I do always wonder, for those of us who never had love and support, how did we manage to even know what love is or be able to express it? Whether to our selves, or others.

Very thought provoking thread. Thank you for sharing!!

I am happy you have found love with someone who honours and cherishes you. That is beautiful.

Sorry, I didn't answer your question, I got sidetracked with the new perspective.

Right now, I don't have an answer to that. I am having such a confusing and scattered time in my life. I can't even think clearly enough to answer. Sorry.
 
Sorry, I didn't answer your question, I got sidetracked with the new perspective.

Right now, I don't have an answer to that. I am having such a confusing and scattered time in my life. I can't even think clearly enough to answer. Sorry.
Please do not feel the pressure to answer to this post. I find sometimes having a post is truly healing for me. and if it gives you hope, even better.
 
Thanks, @grit, I didn't feel pressure to answer. But that is how crazy I am feeling right now. The need to explain myself. But thank you for understanding and support.
 
@ladee
I have been thinking about your comment: if you did not learn as a child how do u teach yourself as an adult?
What a great question or thought.
I think because no one can take your nature. They can impact your nurture and consequently blunt the nature but not destroy it---the energy. This is my understanding. I did not learn love as a baby but since I grew up my experience showed me what I did not learn from mom in other people and I opened myself to learn from them... Another reason this kind of sites help. The intelligence part knows what I did not learn and investigated or ING... And I let the body flow so it can reunite to connect with the mind-full integration.

It is my belief that the biggest form or indication of trauma is: not learning things we know already they exist like love-from other people-and the survival side codes this as do not trust. This is I think people say trauma makes you lose connection to humanity. This is for me how I differentiated me loving a person versus allowing a person to love me. Where am I damaged more?
I was damaged more giving love. But by recognizing this and acknowledging open my heart in a weird way of eventually experiencing both types of loves simultaneously.

So what is the problem now?

It is like I finish the book but I have no memory of significant chapters so I am still learning more about my deficiency for life.

Hope this shed some light around that curious thought you put in there: how do we learn what was not taught? It is same token as who can I be if I was abused so early in life? Who is asking that question hid under the beauty side human dissociation... That is who you are.!
 
I have always been a loving compassionate person. One of the many reasons I was targeted by the family. I guess for me, I simply became a fighter to maintain and protect myself. And by 'fighter' I don't mean physically. Tho I did that also.

I want to believe that it is always within us. It just takes a spark from something, to ignite it. It could be kindness from a stranger that actually looks us in the eye, smiles and acknowledges our existence on this earth. And yet it does disconnect us from humanity. But there is something there that kept me searching. Grateful I am curious.

You have great insight! Insight helps us on the healing journey. Gives us the courage to try to get out of our comfort zone and explore possibilities.

Just because we had horrible beginnings, does not define the rest of our lives. I personally believe the people here and in the world with PTSD, are the most tender-hearted and loving people on the planet. We do have to learn to give a lot of that to ourselves to heal. But we are some awesome and strong humans.
 
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