I feel like my issues are too complex to recover from

[Deleted member 39476]

So you could become 95% healed with one pesky symptom that holds you back majorly and you’d kill yourself?

the amount of blatant ignorance in posts like this is kind of ridiculous, I specifically stated I'm not looking for perfection numerous times. I want to be at least 60%. Right now I'm at around 5%. That's where I draw the line, if I am ever in a position where there is no realistic way to get back to 60% functioning naturally, I'm out.

One of the massive benefits of inpatient is the removal of all responsibility. Planned inpatient - which is not the same as emergency hold - planned inpatient will just take every possible stressor in your current environment and reduce them to almost nothing. Your mind needs to unclench. If you:

• are unwilling to try other drugs to help
• are unwilling to push past your skepticism and fear to try physiological tricks to force relief
• would rather choose suffering, because you can't find a path through the pitfalls of your belief system

I would say that your only option is hospital.

It has pros, it has enormous cons. I can pretty much guarantee you beyond any reasonable doubt that not having freedom would not just cancel out all of the pros, but cancel them out at least 10 fold. I'm not skeptical of psychological tricks, I tried them and I can't get them to work. I really really dislike the language you and others are using saying things like "would rather choose suffering, because you can't find a path through the pitfalls of your belief system". I understand that a lot of what I do is self destructive. I understand that in a lot of ways I am afraid of changing, like most people. I am in absolutely no way choosing suffering though, and the pitfalls are not in my belief system at all. My refusal to try other meds stems from deeply held principal as well as deeply held mistrust of psychiatry, as well as real world examples I see all the time of people who are only made worse by meds. I have seen the stats. I know their methodology, I want no part of it.

The tolerance and maintenance exercises usually fit into one of three categories for me: I lack the initiative to actually use any of them because I spend the majority of my day avoiding doing anything at all (it's not an aversion to the exercises, its an aversion to anything,) for some reason or another they cannot work under my mental state (container exercises failing due to dissociation for example), or they just ramp up my stress instead of bringing it down. I have tried setting timers and usually after a few minutes of my stress rapidly increasing, it gets to such a high level that I cannot think or concentrate, and lose all conscious control over my breathing. If it made me feel even 2% better I would use the hell out of it, it usually makes me feel 100% worse. When I was in a healthier mindset a year ago, within a minute it made me feel significantly better, it just isn't working for me now.

As a result of incidental things I've felt a bit better a couple times in the last year, and in those cases I can use these exercises, but these exercises don't help me get to that place. I'm looking for a strategy to get to that place.

 

[joeylittle]

I am in absolutely no way choosing suffering though, and the pitfalls are not in my belief system at all. My refusal to try other meds stems from deeply held principal as well as deeply held mistrust of psychiatry, as well as real world examples I see all the time of people who are only made worse by meds. I have seen the stats. I know their methodology, I want no part of it.

That's a belief system, right there. And you are choosing to not take medication, despite it's potential to help. The end.

Look - I had very strong opinions, beliefs about psych meds the majority of my life. I refused to even think about going near them. I was 100% certain of how they would affect me, and I wanted no part of it - exactly the way you say you feel, I felt.

About 15 years after I could have used them, I finally had nearly no choice but to try them. I say nearly, because I could have continued to believe what I believed, which was informed by years of observation, study, research, etc, etc. Choosing to do that would have been choosing to stay sick. I was unwilling to take any of the other medical options, and unable to function well enough to benefit from non-medical options.

So I took the pill. Getting through that first week was incredibly hard. Beyond hard. And then, I had some response to the med, and it was a life changer. Did it fix anything? No, absolutely not. Did it create that little bit of shift I needed so that I could function well enough to start taking baby steps in doing basic self care? Yes. 100%.

You have a deeply held principle that is informed by your limited experience. You believe they are dangerous. You choose to stay away. Your choice. Totally fine - like I said, I think trying to get you to reconsider meds is a waste of time, it's not a thing you are anywhere near ready to do. Maybe you never will.

But then, what?

I have tried setting timers and usually after a few minutes of my stress rapidly increasing, it gets to such a high level that I cannot think or concentrate, and lose all conscious control over my breathing. If it made me feel even 2% better I would use the hell out of it, it usually makes me feel 100% worse.

Yep, that's that horrible feeling of it not working that generally consumes the time period between 5 seconds and 2 minutes.

So, you've never cracked how to get past those few minutes.

Have you tried external cues, to remove your requirement to concentrate so hard?

And seriously, have you ever tried the cold water on the face trick? It's science. It's hardwired. It works.

I'm looking for a strategy to get to that place.

Pretend you are trying to answer someone else's problem for a moment. If someone else asked you this, what would your ideas be, just the spit list of things that other person could try? You can include things that you don't believe will work for you.

 

[Sideways]

Your brain is working overtime coming up with incredibly compelling reasons why these things don’t work, can’t be done, or are flat out just going to make life worse.

That’s a pretty normal symptom. It’s a difficult one to get on top of.

My strategy? Do it anyway. People say that breathing, mindfulness, grounding, exercise, CBT, etc actually work. They say that because it does. Your brain having you utterly convinced that it won’t/can’t/makes it all worse in your case? That’s normal.

The strategy around that isn’t complex. But it’s one of the most difficult things you’ll ever have to do: while brain is telling you not to? Do it anyway. When brain is telling you “This feels worse?” Keep trying.

Don’t expect to feel better after you’ve practiced some breathing. Don’t expect to feel better tomorrow. You won’t. But 3 months from now, you can either feel better because you’ve done it anyway, every day. Or you can feel exactly as you do now, because you didn’t.

I don’t doubt how utterly robust your reasons are for why all this stuff doesn’t work for you. Intelligence doesn’t help. But you have lungs, a heart, a sympathetic nervous system, etc, just like the rest of us. So if you persist? It works. Painfully slow, but it happens.

This stuff hasn’t worked for you...yet. Doesn’t mean it won’t, just means it hasn’t worked yet. It just means that, like a lot of us, you’re in for a fight to recover. This is gonna take time, and hard work, and doing things that scare you. So bring it.

If you change nothing? Nothing will change. So every now and then, when your brain tells you not to? Do it anyway.

 

[ninja]

Have you tried any form of physical activity? Like pushups (or boxing, or running, or swimming or sit ups or biking). Sometimes when the anxiety would get really bad for me I would do lots of pushups (a strenuous form of yoga helped me a lot) for a few reasons: 1. the feelings that were coming up and overpowering me, I may not have had control over whether they were there or not but I sure as hell wanted to prove to myself and to them that I could in fact decide to do something and do it even whilst feeling those feelings, even when it felt impossible to do so I wanted to prove I was able. That took time though, and honestly (IIRC) it took me first experiencing those feelings with my T, and my T doing things that helped me begin to realize I was no longer actually in the past. 2. the physical fatigue and burn gave me something to focus on, get angry at or many times the physical feelings caused me to start shaking and crying, which was its own release and often not fun either.

When stuck emotionally I think it can be empowering to realize we may not be stuck physically. As much as the thought seems impossible, getting up and going for a 10 minute walk is physically possible (except, clearly, in certain situations). That choice is there, and you may not actually register it until you have done it, maybe a few times.
My gosh it sucks that the grounding techniques can bring the absolutely terrifying feelings on stronger. Are you safe from further harm? Is your home space a safe spot? If so, know you are safe and the feelings may be from awhile ago. The current moment may be safe enough to do other things whilst those feelings continue to play heavy on the mind and heart and body. You can do this. You can. Deep breathing is one I think can be helpful for all phases of healing and actually just living with normal stress too. Could you work with your T in sessions on deep breathing or some others.
I'm sorry for what you have gone through. Sending a bit of hope that things can be differently for you in the future. Take excellent care.
(I also second the shower idea.)

 

[Deleted member 39476]

Have you tried any form of physical activity?

I was told to do yoga, a martial art, and some form of strenuous exercise a few times a week, but I'm running into the same problems with physical exercise that I am with everything else. Very frequently I will feel highly stressed, try to exhaust some of the energy by doing some pushups or punching a bag, or perhaps go for a short run. Almost every time I will start doing pushups, and on the second or third pushup my mind just gives out completely, I collapse into the ground, and just lie there totally diconnected from my body for a few solid minutes. That's pretty much best case scenario too, the majority of the time I can't even motivate myself to try. I find when I try to run, usually at some point I give out a similar way, but instead of disconnecting so badly that I totally collapse, my upper body will disconnect, I'll start stumbling like a drunk, and end up pulling muscles in my ankles or knees because my body is just rocking about but my feet stay planted. Truly an awful experience.

 

[shimmerz]

I was always a pretty serious athlete. When the PTSD hit that had to stop. I am in terrible shape right now. I have spent literally years curled up in fetal position and shivering on a couch.

What I noticed about about my trying to exercise at the time was that every time my heart beat elevated, or slowed down, I would have a trauma-esq reaction. For me that was full on flat out fainting. Needless to say I lost a lot of friends during that time.

So, I had to start from scratch. I had to create a mindful exercise that had me 'take care' of my body. I woke up in the morning and repeated 'Time to take care of my body' and I would brush my teeth. That progressed to being able to exercise. Ever so slowly.

Swimming, for me, is still now about the only exercise I can do. The zero gravity thing is super helpful. Have you tried something like swimming? Something that will allow you to 'take care of your body'. It sounds to me like you are so busy figuring out PTSD that you are forgetting that your body and mind need something enjoyable. And you need to train yourself to believe that there is a moment in time, each day, that you will train your body to remember what relaxation feels like.

The body is a super important part of releasing stress and its reactions. What are you doing to help yourself relearn how to relax and chill out?

 

[Deleted member 39476]

I was always a pretty serious athlete. When the PTSD hit that had to stop. I am in terrible shape ri...

I actually can't swim, when I was a kid I would just sink immediately, so I became very afraid of drowning, ended up quitting swimming lessons because I would just panic whenever I was put in the deep end. As far as trying to teach my body how to relax again, I'm basically addicted to anything that has that physiological effect at all. I eat junk food like a mad man, masturbate way too much, avoid anything strenuous, etc. Besides those things nothing relaxes me anymore though, those things don't even do a very good job. I'm in a pretty raw fight or flight state most of the time which means my adrenaline levels are through the roof all the time, its extremely difficult to calm down that kind of visceral discomfort without resolving the source of the anxiety.

When you say fainting do you mean passing out in an experience similar to fainting, or literal fainting? I feel like fainting a lot of the time but have never actually fainted.

 

[shimmerz]

passing out in an experience similar to fainting, or literal fainting?

I go into an altered state of consciousness. Not sure what your definition of fainting vs. passing out is, so maybe if you could, clarify that question for me and I will be please to answer it in the best way I know how.

Besides those things nothing relaxes me anymore though, those things don't even do a very good job.

Those are serious addiction issues my friend. I wouldn't even use the word relaxing around those. I fear that you need some serious direction in learning how to change your lifestyle to break your addictions and add in things that truly help you to relax. What you have going on now is really just compulsive stuff. It sounds to me like you have to get back to basics.

Do you mind if I ask you what province you are in? No problem if that is too personal a thing to ask. I am wondering because provinces here in Canada are vastly different in their abilities to support someone who has PTSD.

 

[scout86]

Are you still in therapy? I ask because my first reaction to your first post was that you might be better off with a different T.

I've experienced a lot of the difficulties you're talking about. (Like a lot of the gang here.) There is a state of mind a friend of mine used to call "spinning your wheels", and I think it's where you're at. The first step in dealing with it is to stop. Seriously. You know what they say to do if you're digging yourself into a hole? Put down the E tool and quit digging. (I got that one from a former Marine.)

I'm not on medication. My T, as it happens, isn't a fan. We've talked about it. He's said other people would have suggested it, but he thinks we can manage without it, and I think he's right. That's me and him. (And I suspect he's got clients taking psych meds too.) But, there have definitely been times when things got messy.

On the subject of "doing stuff". The best thing to do is just do it. Pick one thing that seems important to you and do it. Go for a walk. Something. Accomplishing one small thing, consistently, can change the way you feel. Like others have said, sometimes you have to push through your own resistance. Demand it of yourself.

The thing is (and I totally thought this was garbage before I tried therapy) having the right person working with you makes an enormous difference. And I really question the wisdom of your T jumping right into trauma processing as fast as you did.

 

[Neverthesame]

I have only one request of you. Read the whole post. Even if I manage to really piss you off, just read it to the end. You don't have to respond, just read it through, is all I ask.

Going to be blunt again.
I will probably come off as being an obstinate old fool.
Here's the thing.
I'm in my thirties, I've got better things to do than torment some poor suffering guy on the Internet.

I'm keeping at this because I actually give a shit.
If I wanted to be mean to you, I'd just say to keep telling yourself it's hopeless. Because it isn't.

therapist recommended I talk to my doctor about some drug that helps control panic while sleeping, just so I can at least get decent rest, haven't tried it yet though.

Why not?
I have a pretty good idea what drug they are thinking of. Even if I'm wrong, I know it won't be an antidepressant.
Your doctor visit is covered by healthcare?
No one can force you to fill the script, or take the pill. There is no good reason to not at least hear them out.

Not interested in hospitalization, I'm functional enough to live, just have serious difficulty working or maintaining relationships,

That's not really very functional, to be honest.
Being unable as an adult (which at 21 years old. You are an adult) to provide for your own physical and emotional needs?
Food, shelter and clothing? Require money.

Relationships? Require maintenance.

If you can't do these? You're not functional.

If I started self harming or something I would probably consider that option.

Set your bar lower.
Until you start causing permanent damage to your body?
You know you need that to function right?

I'm still young, 21, and I have nothing. I can't work, I can't maintain relationships, I have very little of a social life, I sit inside all day browsing the internet. If I was married with kids and had a stable career I might consider some maintenance strategies like long term medication just to keep my life together, but I have literally nothing to keep together.

Woulda, coulda, shoulda...
Feed that crap to someone else, it's total nonsense.
If you won't do that for yourself, you won't do it for someone else.

Why aren't you worth it?
Hmm?
You don't need to have a job, wife, kids, porshe in the driveway and a holiday home, to be worth saving.

Every single successful person on earth. Had to start somewhere.
Did some have it real easy? Sure.
Did some have it worse? Yup.

Why aren't you worthy of good things?

I don't want to spend the next 50 years of my life battling mental illness constantly while on meds, to me it just is not worth it.

I said this once already. You can quit the meds when you are ready too!
You don't have to remain doped up forever.

In fact, that's a perfectly reasonable goal to start working towards in therapy.
Getting yourself to a place that you can throw away the meds. You can do that. You really can.

I'm not aiming for perfect I'm aiming for genuinely good health. If that ever was ruled out, I would consider my life over, just as it would be for a cancer patient who is past the point of hope.

You don't have cancer. Comparing yourself to a person who is dying of cancer is ludicrous.
That would be like me claiming my foot falling asleep is as detrimental to my future as poliomyelitis.
I have known several people who have died from cancer, not one of them ever gave up. Not one.

Accepting death for them, was not giving up. They never stopped living untill the very last moment.
They had shortened lives, but the made the most of the time they had.

This isn't a guilt trip because of a sensitive topic. I'm not offended by your comparison. This is (hopefully) correcting an error in your reasoning, by someone who has a better understanding of what you are on about.

that is my standard.

Why settle for substandard? Why don't you deserve better?

the amount of blatant ignorance in posts like this is kind of ridiculous,

I had the same thought to be honest.
How can someone surrounded by people who have been in their shoes. Still be arguing that they know better?

It has pros, it has enormous cons. I can pretty much guarantee you beyond any reasonable doubt that not having freedom would not just cancel out all of the pros,

Put your money where your mouth is. If you haven't done it, you can't guarantee shit.

saying things like "would rather choose suffering, because you can't find a path through the pitfalls of your belief system".

Because that's exactly what it looks like.

I am in absolutely no way choosing suffering though, and the pitfalls are not in my belief system at all.

You don't believe in pitfalls?
Whaa.....?
You've never had a bad day, when things just didn't work out in your benefit, for no apparent reason?
That's honestly never happened to you?
If it has...?
Guess what? That's a....... "you guessed it!" A pitfall.

as well as real world examples I see all the time of people who are only made worse by meds.

Because the people who have benefitted by taking meds come back to complain about it right?

I find when I try to run, usually at some point I give out a similar way, but instead of disconnecting so badly that I totally collapse,

How far before this happens?
Three pushups right? Ok. Stop at two.
Try again later.

Stop running before you hurt yourself. Wait a while, then do it again.

You don't train for a marathon by running a marathon. Baby steps.
Two pushups, is two more than you did yesterday. Work up to three. When you can do that. Do four.

You are young. You have time to work at it. So work at it.

I can't run a marathon today. Or tomorrow. But next year? Sure. But only if I start working at it today.

I don't fail at it because I can't do it tomorrow. I fail at it if I don't start tomorrow.

If I didn't think you could do it, I'd have done something else than spend all this time typing this out for you.
The other "ignorant" people here, likely see the same thing I do.
A person who is hurting and needs some encouragement to get over a hurdle. Because we've been over the same hurdle.
Why do I think you can do it?
Because I'm not special, there's nothing remarkable about me. If I can do it, anyone can.
Practice, practice, practice. You can do it.

 

[joeylittle]

If I didn't think you could do it, I'd have done something else than spend all this time typing this out for you.
The other "ignorant" people here, likely see the same thing I do.
A person who is hurting and needs some encouragement to get over a hurdle. Because we've been over the same hurdle.
Why do I think you can do it?
Because I'm not special, there's nothing remarkable about me. If I can do it, anyone can.
Practice, practice, practice. You can do it.

Agree.

 

[EveHarrington]

the amount of blatant ignorance in posts like this is kind of ridiculous, I specifically stated I'm not...

.......yet in your responses to me, you ARE looking for perfection. You stated that you are looking for something along the lines of full recovery, which is why I have replied in the way that I have.

60%.....? That’s still a considerable amount of struggling left behind. That’s nowhere near “recovered” and dare I say still not functional if you go by that psych functionality scale.

I honestly can’t keep up with this discussion as I think you’re arguing out of frustration without having the facts in front of you.

I’m still not sure why you insist on doing this the hard way. Your way or the highway. And if you can’t heal on your terms, it’s over?

No offense, but NOBODY heals on their own terms. It just doesn’t happen. I mean c’mon, if I had my way, I’d be healing by drinking pina coladas on the shores of Waikiki. Nope. I don’t get to choose how I heal, and neither do you. It’s a matter of throwing everything you can at this disorder and seeing what sticks!