I Feel Like The World Wants Me Dead ...

[bell]

I'll say what I said to someone else here this morning, what kind of response are you seeking with posts like this? Am guessing like most of us, you just want someone to hold you and tell you it's okay.

I've been where you are and it sucks. But you have to *want* to change. And we all resist it because it's easier to stay in the same old stuckness, because we can handle it, we know what to expect.

As for new stuff, we don't know what's going to happen, so it's best not to go there, right? Am guessing you want you dead so you don't have to face the change. But dead is the easy option. You survived the trauma, you can survive this.

It's all down to you. Scary road or same road? In moving forward, you need to drop the storyline that you're telling yourself and let it go (not forget) because at present, it's trapping you like a wild horse in a barbed wire fence.

 

[joeylittle]

Can anyone answer me this: HOW can I process the trauma and stop the flashbacks if I can't even remember what the trauma was?

@NovemberStar , I want to echo something Anthony mentioned. Clearly it's a top priority for you to retrieve the memory of this specific event. This is exactly what MDMA in trauma therapy is used for. It's also what hypnosis is used for. I bet there are other very specific techniques for memory recovery.

Focus on what you can do. Become an expert in memory recovery. Talk to your therapist, research the heck out of it, and just start trying methods.

I know it's scary - but in reading your posts, I don't think the fear of more intense flashbacks outweighs the benefit of just diving into it full-on. The only way out of this one is going to be through, not around.

And you can do it. You've conquered PTSD before. Your relapse into PTSD really is involving new memories from long ago, and new traumas from the present. So you have to work out these ones, just like you processed the others 12 years ago.

I just think you can put all your focus on using specific techniques to recover this memory.

 

[NovemberStar]

I only survived the trauma because I was too young to know about suicide. The flashbacks have given me that much insight at least - whatever happened, it was so terrifying and so overwhelming and felt I had no escolar from it and death was the only option. I know on one other occasion I did try to die - I was in the bath and I put my head under the water, truly believing I could just stay there, not come up and die. I remember getting out of the bath and feeling so incredibly depressed and trapped because it hadn't worked.

I don't know what you mean by I have to want to change - change what? How I feel? Of course I want that. I know it's "'possible' to live free of PTSD - but at the moment I have lost hope of it being possible for a second time.

I do feel 'better' having posted and having some support and being able to just express my feelings in an open and honest way. It has helped a little. It's nearly 2pm and - so far anyway - I haven't felt suicidal today. I've felt depressed, exhausted, had some flashbacks and felt frozen in fear, but so far, the utter despair and hopelessness hasn't made an appearance. This time yesterday I had gone through it already for hours. But I also haven't challenged myself by getting out of bed or getting dressed or having a shower. I'm going to do that soon though.

When I posted a few days ago it did really feel like the universe was sending me a message - ie - that it was my time to end it all; because I was running out of options. Today I'm not sure how I feel. Guess I'm staying in the moment. Bit better and not looking into the future.

 

[NovemberStar]

Merging posts too many after each other sorry

 

[NovemberStar]

I just googled MDMA. I must have missed the part that explained it is a hallucinogenic drug - I was thinking it was a type of therapy like EDMR! I fail to see hint would work or if the drug is even legal where I live? It sounds terrifying - I can only see my T once a week. The study I looked at had those giving it on extended therapy seasons and overnight stays to ensure they kept safe. That's not even a possibility where I am. You can't just book herself into the hospital.

I will ask my T though when I see her tomorrow. I'll resist the urge to send ANOTHER email and just wait until the morning to talk to her about it. I would be very very very surprised if it's a possibility or if she would support it.

But if I could try it and if I was able to be somewhere secure / safe for monitoring after being given it (I've had dreadful side effects from common things such as imovane - spaced me out and I self harmed - although the benzo I take hasn't had the same effect) then hell yeah, I would do it!


......

EDITED - class b drug in my country and illegal. Great. I actually felt some damn f-ing hope.
Feeling really pissed off now. It's all very fine to make suggestions and I do appreciate the time people have taken but I don't see how it's helpful to suggest something that isn't even possible?.

 

[joeylittle]

I guess I'm of the theory that not remembering is protecting us from what we really cannot cope with - of what we are not yet ready to deal with.

I don't disagree; my observation is that you are ready to deal with it, but because your psyche/brain needed it to be buried rather deeply due to the nature of the trauma, you are having trouble uncovering it now, even though you want to.

I don't know if this is what you found; I was surprised, honestly, to find that Australia and NZ were still very slow to run clinical trials. They are seeking approval for one, to be run on vets: http://prism.org.au/research/mdma/

Here is an article that you might find interesting, on the nature of repressed memory in childhood. It was part of a study commissioned by ISTSS (International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies): + QuoteQuote. Full disclosure, I only skimmed the document, so it might not be wholly relevant.

Here's where I'm coming from: the best way to get out of a depression/suicide pit is to find a way to slowly chip away at the walls that are penning you in - the walls are built of hopelessness, despair - and those feelings stem directly from there being no perceivable way to change your situation. To break those walls down you need to find something, anything, that will actively engage you in searching again for a way to change your situation. And when you are searching, you inevitably find and learn new things, things you want to try. And that's how you can move away from the hopelessness. Not into a place of hope, that's usually too far away - but just into a place of moving forward again.

This is something I have experienced a few times now, and it kind of lines up with some DBT principles, and it works for me, and so, it's where I'm coming from when writing to you. It's my bias. I sincerely don't mean for any of it to make you feel worse. I'm empathizing with what you are going through, and sharing thoughts that may or may not help.

Most important: you had a day without fighting off wanting to die today. That's really great. You've identified that living in the moment instead of getting overwhelmed by the future is key to you being OK. Also, really great. Anything else is gravy.

 

[NovemberStar]

@joeylittle I do appreciate the time you've taken to bother with replying and giving suggestions... I'll go through the things you wrote in the morning in more depth.

I'm not surprised my country is so far behind in looking at things -I'd be shocked if it were.

To put it in perspective - I live in a city of around 500,000 people and even though the research shows that between 10-20% of a population that experiences a natural disaster will get some form of PTSD, there is not one specialised centre for trauma where I live. Not only not in my city - the one that went through 2 years of hell via a 'rare sequence' of aftershocks not seen elsewhere in the world - but nowhere in my country, period. Even in a city traumatised by earthquakes there is no real help for trauma. All that exits that is new is an 'anxiety clinic' meant to help with 'quake anxiety' but all it is is a number of workshops or group sessions that deal with managing anxiety, but not trauma. Bloody great, huh.

(And no, I wasn't eligible to be accepted into their waiting list - because - I have PTSD!!!!!)

And I did get a bout of suicidal despair again. All I took was getting up, having a shower and getting dressed. Had to fight not to burst into tears while at work. Tonight, I've just gone back to apathetic. And hoping I will get to see my T tomorrow but I have a horrible feeling I will get called to work instead and not be able to see her until next week. I just want to stay in bed / on the couch, for the rest of my life. To never have to go anywhere or see anyone or do anything.

 

[digger]

hoping I will get to see my T tomorrow but I have a horrible feeling I will get called to work instead and not be able to see her until next week. I just want to stay in bed / on the couch, for the rest of my life. To never have to go anywhere or see anyone or do anything.

I think given how you're feeling you need to prioritise therapy over work at this point. Don't allow yourself to get called into work - if they call, you are sick.

With regard to not knowing the full extent of your own trauma history. I just wanted to let you know, while I don't have the answer you want, you're not alone in that. Personally, I don't think trying to force recovery of memories is a particularly safe thing to do, but that's just me. I understand how difficult it is trying to come to terms with things without having all the facts to work with. For me, I am working with and on the bits I've got. Work on the feelings it's left you with, even if you don't know what the 'it' was fully.

 

[NovemberStar]

I'm self employed and work on call with a caseload of pregnant women. I don't have a choice to call in sick. I can ask a colleague to cover me once I'm in my therapy session or about to go to it and I'm called, but I cannot leave a client halfway though having her baby to go to therapy (even if it was logistically possible I would not be in the mindset for therapy; and would def not be in the mindset to go back to work after therapy).

It's a null point about the forcing memory with using MDMA - it's nowhere near having even the vaguest beginnings of clearance as a drug to be prescribed where I live and I doubt it will be anytime in the next decade or more if ever.


I'm so desperate right now I would have tried it though, despite any risks - if staying somewhere with 24/7 support was also an option. Years ago I swim my then T about hypnotherapy and she said she would no longer see me if I did that - because she did not want to be reasonable for picking up the pieces after it.

The only 'feelings' I have from the flashbacks are: wanting to die, wishing I was dead, feeling something really really awful and beyond comprehension happened, feeling death is the only way to escape the pain, fear, horror; feeling my life is over; realising there is NO ONE ever to 'help me' or 'rescue me'.

Over and over - 14 months of that. but especially bad right now.

 

[digger]

I'm self employed and work on call with a caseload of pregnant women. I don't have a choice to call in sick. I can ask a colleague to cover me once I'm in my therapy session or about to go to it and I'm called, but I cannot leave a client halfway though having her baby to go to therapy (even if it was logistically possible I would not be in the mindset for therapy; and would def not be in the mindset to go back to work after therapy).

If you were currently throwing up, or had injured yourself, or were infectious, I assume you could get around this problem. Personally I think you need to prioritise your own health right now. If there is a chance of being called in, surely you can ask in advance for the colleague to cover you as you are already unavailable/sick.

My point about the memories, and not having them or being able to process them was more to say, that there are still other things you can be working on that could help you feel better and more in control. Working on the feelings of helplessness would still be valuable I think, even if you don't fully understand what caused them.

 

[bell]

@NovemberStar, this is probably going to sound stupid, but I know it works, so I'm going to suggest it. Have you tried hobbies like knitting or sewing, something that you can do that is productive, but once you get going, it becomes meditative? My knitting practice literally saved me when I needed it and there's both contemporary and historic research that backs it up. It could be another type of hobby, like fly fishing or something, it doesn't matter. What does matter is that you don't get sucked into such dark thoughts and your brain is given the freedom to wander a bit.

For me, I haven't blocked out things as much as I was too drunk and blacked out. There are events I will never remember. Sometimes I get weird flashbacks and am not sure if they are real or not. I've come to live with the fact that I will never know the details. And yes, some days that super sucks. But for me, I like to think my brain is protecting me from remembering and that bit of "kindness" is okay.

I am not what I don't remember. I am all the good things I do remember (although I have flashbacks of some incidents where I wasn't wasted that suck, too). I am more than my PTSD. And that's why I'm working on textile projects that help others deal with their own PTSD, to show them, too, that we are more than it. We are survivors and we are good.

Also, just a thought, what about volunteering with animals? That can be highly therapeutic, too.

 

[greenleaf]

I totally agree with the folks who feel that forcing memories is not the way to go. My experience is that a deeper part of our brains lets us see things when we're feeling safe enough.

My sense would be that to realize mentally that you are actually tolerating these old feelings, that you believed were intolerable, might start to help you feel a bit safer. Your brain might be letting you feel parts of it so you can integrate it bit by bit. A flashback might be your deep brain's language of "look at this!" "look at this!" "please feel it (slowly) and let it "digest" and let me relax!"

An old therapist told me that fear of these feelings is often worse than the feelings and memories themselves for us... so far it's true for me. The fear of feelings is based on what was intolerable for me as a kid with no support; these things are not intolerable for me now, though they are very difficult. I am try to put them into my context now but it is slow and very weird.

But the memory of the feelings being intolerable is sort of bound up with the feelings, so I tend to get feelings and thoughts that they must be intolerable too. Does that make sense; does it resonate at all with your flashbacks?