I Feel Like Day 3

[Leigh925]

This is my first post. I joined about 8 months ago but have always been too afraid for some reason to post. I will comment from time to time when I get the courage. I have learned so much from what everyone else has had to say and have often found comfort when needed. So thank you.

I am hoping someone can relate to this. Sorry this is so long.

Also not sure where this goes. It definitely felt like a panic attack but I guess it could have been a flashback. Sorry if I posted in the wrong place.

Last night I was really triggered by my son. He is 19 and in an inpatient facility for addiction and bipolar disorder. It is a short term 30 day program. He is there because of his past behavior....it was either that or jail. After spending a week he jail he decided he would try the program.

He called very upset. He told me that it is my fault he is there and that I have been lying to him. That the judge would have accepted a 14 day detox and he is tired of all the bull crap and lies.

I actually can handle what he is saying. I know it is not true and that he is just feeling stuck and frustrated and needs someone to blame. I have always been the target of his frustrations.

It was weird though. As soon as I heard his voice and I knew he was angry....I felt my heart race and felt the desire to run away. I started feeling shortness of breath and extreme fear....unrelated to him. He is in another state and there is no reason to be afraid.

In the past he has been physically and verbally abusive but once I started therapy I started calling the police and standing up for myself and that behavior has mostly stopped.

I went years being numb to my child neglect, molestation and rape. I thought I had dealt with all of that and was fine. It wasn't until my son was a teenager and started acting out that I began to be seriously triggered and I realized I was not doing well at all. I was just numb.

Last night I started to dissociate....which is common for me but even that didn't take away the panic....usually it does. I couldn't shake the physical symptoms of being in extreme fear....yet my mind was somewhat calm and numb or maybe it was just stuck and frozen.

I did all of my usual tricks.....read some books, called a friend, listened to music, took a drive. I tried to take a nap and sleep it off but the adrenaline was too much and I kept having a memory of being in sheer terror hiding under the covers of my bed at around 3 or 4 years old.

I finally emailed my therapist and he called me....which is usually helpful. This time not so much. He made the comment that I was getting upset or worrying about things with my son that hadn't happened yet or may not even happen....except that wasn't the case. My brain wasnt working at all...it felt empty and like it was being held hostage by my body.

My therapist who I think is great for me and is usually spot on....kept making it about my son....in the moment I could not string enough complete sentences together to actually explain to him what was happening to me.

I was scared to go to bed because when I get that panicked or hyper-vigilant it means nightmares but I took medicine and actually slept decently.

Here's the weird part. Today I feel like day 3. Let me explain. Day 3 after the rape when you are exhausted and your body is sore but the pain is not as bad and you can kind of convince yourself that it didn't happen.....maybe you have the flu.

Day 3 after being molested as a child when you wake up and your body has not forgotten what he did to you because you ache but you try and convince yourself that it was just a nightmare.

Day 3 after finding your mom dead on the floor from an overdose. You wake up and for the first ten minutes you can almost pretend that it didn't happen. The sun streams in the window and it is a beautiful day but only when you try and get out of the bed does the extreme exhaustion and heaviness of your body remind you....today is the day we go make funeral arrangements.

It is not as bad as day 1...you aren't in the terror of the moment....you do not physically hurt as much like day 2 when the adrenaline has worn off and your body reveals the injuries.....but day 3 is exhausting and you feel numb and your body feels so weighted you can't get out of bed.

Today is day 3.....but nothing happened to me two days ago!

I hate the numbing and the exhaustion and I am really feeling stuck. I am disappointed because I just had a major breakthrough in therapy and was feeling so good just a couple of days ago.

I just can't shake the gloom. Has anything like this ever happened to anyone else?

Scared to click on "create thread" but doing it anyway!!!

 

[Friday]

My very first post online ever (2000 something, awhile ago) created the personal meme "Brazenly hit send". Combined with not editing. If I edit, it won't ever get finished. I still do it. Don't edit, and brazenly hit send. Or post reply. Whatever the button is. Almost every single time. And a smart man Anthony is, with limited edit times!

As far as knowing my own patterns, and also finding me'self smack dab I'm the middle of one of them with no "reason" to be? Absolutely. Jokingly I'm becoming more convinced that my brain has a time machine, and isn't sharing with my mind or body. Seriously, I think what's happening is that I'm actually starting to get a grip. (Touch wood). Instead of having to start the cycle from the beginning, and ride it out to the end, each and every single darn time? My body and brain are starting to adjust and compensate. Some things are starting to get better regulated. Which means that sometimes I kick into a cycle, but it relaxes out without having to ride the wave from start to finish... And other times I find myself in the middle of a cycle, without having to go through the first, second, or third bits. I'm still having to ride those ones to the end... But I'm also skipping pieces here and there.

This is my 2nd time "in the badlands". The first time I got a grip on my PTSD, it was entirely by accident. I wasn't self aware at all and you couldn't have paid me to be paying attention to all of the interim steps from completely effing nuts to ZOMG I finally feel normal/sane. It was only luck and hindsight that let me link things. Heck,I wasn't even aware of mos of the accidental stuff that worked (much less why) until this round. This time, 15 years later, I'm hyper aware of all of these little steps. All of these patterns. And it's all intentional. So instead of simply being grateful for a "short" meltdown, I'm looking at where I'm dropping into a pattern, and where I'm exiting. And why. What's different? What's changing it? How can I use this next time?

 

[KwanYingirl]

@Leigh925 our sons would be best friends. My son was so strong willed then he has dyslexia and that made school a trauma for him. He partied all weekend, getting arrested, kicked out of two schools, terrible temper. Fortunately he is a gifted athlete and sports got him through school and college. Our walls had so many fist holes in them. He threw things too. But was a calm friendly guy when exhausted or with our animals.

He is 32 now and he still triggers me. He is so aggressive. Then I blurt out an insult and he shuts down. We discuss the next day. His personality was very popular he ran away all the time.

He just got worse and worse. The happiest day of his life was going off to play college football. His grades improved and by the time he graduated he was getting all A's.

But with me-well he just always fought and threatened and defied me. I avoid him. He came up to move me and was a total jerk.

It took a real toll on me and that's when my PTSD really kicked in. This man/child scared me. But I still called the police to find him. He thought it was all a joke.

I don't know what to say except I feel your pain. Once my son left for college (I cried when he left and went to his room every day for awhile just to smell him) I finally relaxed. College saved both of us. I still get intrusive memories from him, I worry he'll hurt his girlfriend. Gotta let it go. He is not going to push my buttons anymore. Best wishes-and luck!!

 

[scout86]

"Brazenly hit send".

I actually contacted my therapist the first time exactly that way. There's no way to re-call an email, once it's on its merry way. I realized a couple of weeks later that I could have done a lot of other things with exactly the same degree of forethought.

@Leigh925 , I don't have a clear answer for you, sorry. (BTW, you don't have to apologize for posting something!) I can remember reading others remarking on how things seem to fall apart after a therapeutic break through, so maybe that's a factor. Something I HAVE noticed is that my T often has a better idea what's going on than I do so it pays to think about it when he says things that seem to not make sense. (He says that's why I pay him the big bucks!)

 

[Leigh925]

Thank you @KwanYingirl for you response. My son is very gifted athletically and actually had scouts looking at him but has kind of wasted it away. He smokes too much pot now to self medicate.

It is a difficult thing to love someone so much and be afraid of them at the same time. We have repaired many holes in walls as well as door frames and even car panels that he has punched.

He has worked hard in some respects though. He never gets physically intimidating with me anymore and hasn't in a year or so. He feels guilty that he triggers me so much. I am sure he sees it on my face even when I am trying to cover it.

Even in the rehab center he is so popular that every time we visit people come up to us and tell us how respectful he is and what a great son we have raised. Of course he would never treat anyone of them like he has treated me and the thought always crosses my mind that if I did such a good job parenting him...how the hell did he end up in jail and a rehab center?

I have often wondered if he knows that I am the only one that will never stop him and so he expresses all of his hurt and rage towards me. I had to set a boundary though because he would feel horrible if one day he actually hurt me and I don't want him carrying that around his whole life.

@FridayJones Your post is both helpful and thought provoking. I am going to look at this as a breakthrough instead of a setback and try and figure out where in the cycle I jumped in....because I certainly did skip some things this time. That is an interesting point of view that I think I can learn from. I gotta give it some more thought though. This whole thing wore me out! I am exhausted!

 

[Leigh925]

@FridayJones and @scout86 I send my emails before I read them so I don't edit or chicken out. I love the "brazenly hit send comment as well".

@scout86 my therapist is usually right and I can almost always see it a few days later. I just don't think I could squeak out enough info to give him the information I needed to. I did email him later and explained it a little better and I do feel like he gets it.

This time was just a little different for me. Don't get me wrong. My brain will work overtime to get me all riled up. I obsessively think and it loops. It makes me nuts. This time though I had all the body feelings but my mind was kind of blank so I was kind of confused by it.

 

[Deleted member 1860]

Maybe emotional flashbacks?

Honestly, the chances of your therapist knowing a damn thing about emotional flashbacks are slim to none. I'd say that 99.9% of therapists don't know what they are, let alone have heard of them. (I went undiagnosed for 25 years because therapists never understood my emotional flashbacks as almost all of them believe in the typical visual model of a flashback, nothing else.)

I'd look up Pete Walker's website and see if any of that helps you. He's pretty much the go-to guy when it comes to emotional flashbacks.

 

[Leigh925]

@Solara thanks! Actually my therapist sent me an email today and described that very thing....Emotional flashbacks. He recently had me read the book called The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel A. van der Kolk, who I noticed Pete Walker refers to a lot in his articles.

He has given me articles to read by Pete Walker before so I think he must at least have an idea about that but I will ask him at my appointment tomorrow. He seems pretty in tune to that compared to any other therapist I have ever worked with. He is a trauma specialists and only treats patients with PTSD. I wasted a lot of money on other therapists who had no clue. I am so glad I decided to try one more time!

Honestly I didn't give my t very much time to talk last night and I don't know that I was in much of a position to hear what he had to say. I just wanted to run!

I did read the article on emotional flashbacks. Thanks for recommending it. It gives me a lot to talk about tomorrow and I am feeling some better.

 

[Deleted member 1860]

Woohoo for a therapist who knows about emotional flashbacks! So awesome!

I guess I'm a bit bitter about the whole thing....I even went to Sheppard Pratt, a top trauma hospital, and they didn't know diddly about emotional flashbacks. My dad pretty much found Pete Walker while I was inpatient and printed out his entire webpage for me....which was a lot more info than they were giving me in the hospital! (But in their defense, I did learn a lot of skills while I was in there that I was never taught anywhere else.)