I Think I Have Terminal Ptsd

[zaniara]

How is it going, @littlelostchild ? I was thinking about you and your 'little girl'.. Maybe you can try to reassure her that it's okay to be angry? Sort of validating her feelings? And maybe make her do a house of play dough and then let her destroy that instead? I don't think you need to be afraid of this. (Even though I tend to freak out my self by the 'madness' and struggle with it all inside me. :D )

Painting or drawing can help too..

 

[littlelostchild]

Thank you Zanaria. I believe you are right - the anger is about moving forward. She won't talk to me right now, but it is ok. Every day I spend time with her. She is especially angry with me right now because I told her how much she deserves to be loved and cared for. This is especially true because of what she has endured. She has had to endure horrors that no child should ever have to endure from people that should have loved and cared for her. The fact that she has held on and endured is a miracle. In my view, this makes her even more deserving of love, caring and compassion that the average child who has had a less complex childhood.

This has made her stop talking to me again, but it is ok, I keep visiting with her every day. I am the master of the 'slow play'. I have worked with families and children for months and years to get them to agree to specific referrals, so tenacity is a strength for me when it comes to kids who need me.

It is strange - when I think of her a some other child, I can bring my skills forward and leave my bias behind. When I think purely of myself, I can't make the belief happen. I understand that is why she won't talk to me right now - it is like I am having to convince myself that I deserve the love and compassion by using this child that I am visualizing. The logical part of me is finding this very interesting and strange all at the same time.

 

[zaniara]

it is like I am having to convince myself that I deserve the love and compassion by using this child that I am visualizing. The logical part of me is finding this very interesting and strange all at the same time.

Oh! Thank you for writing all that! It is so similar to my situation.. And when you wrote exactly that you made me feel less crazy! :laugh: But you are doing better at taking care of your little girl than I am with my little girl. I somehow can't handle it that well all the time. Besides her reactions are hard for me to handle somehow.. Not sure how to do it all the time. How nice to hear that you have so much knowledge about how to deal with these kinds of things(when it comes to other people/kids): it must be helpful. I have to ask my therapist about what to do sometimes.. :D But somehow, sometimes, I do feel as if I get a bit lost in the intellectual parts of it all..

You're really doing some great work and progress in it all! :)

 

[littlelostchild]

Hi Zanaria - you are not crazy at all! About a year and a half ago, my psychiatrist asked me to visualize myself when I came home from a visit to my grandparents which had been upsetting for me. I had cried shortly after arriving home and had been unable or unwilling to tell my mother why I was crying, simply saying that I was missing my grandparents. I believe that this was a visit that had involved sexual assault, entry by my grandfather into the bathroom through a locked door when I was expecting privacy, and inappropriate photography. When I first visualized her, I was completely unable to hug her or provide any comfort to her at all. It has taken me about a year to get to a point where I can comfort her and even longer to begin to talk with her.

It was only last week that I was able to tell her how deserving of love and comfort she is and it is only because I view her a someone other than myself. I am actually feeling ill typing this and considering that she is me. The progress is difficult, but it is coming along. I share this because I want to encourage you to keep working with your little girl - you and she are worth it!!

 

[littlelostchild]

Maybe someone can help me. I can feel myself slipping again because I am getting angry and I don't know how to process it. Due to scheduling and a conference, I didn't see my P this past week and won't see him until mid November.

If you read above, my little girl told me that our first house should be burned to the ground - very angry - and this has been upsetting to me. While helping my daughter at her store this week, I watched a creepy father have his 9 or 10 year old daughter try on an inappropriate costume and tell her that the age appropriate costumes were stupid. He had her put on the woman's costume over her clothes and had to pull at it to make it look like it came close to fitting and that was the costume they bought. At closing time a father was so negative to his son about the costume that he wanted that he bullied him into a different costume while keeping us in the store 20 minutes past closing, ignoring all of our polite efforts to get him to cash out. After asking my daughter if she was worried about losing his sale, I finally went up to him and told him that we were closing and he needed to go and pay now or come back in the morning - I was so sick of how he was treating his son and having to watch it for half an hour. When I unlocked the door to let them out, I saw that he had parked at the curb in front of the store, not in a parking spot. This was the kind of thing my father did all of the time, from the bullying to the sense of superiority and entitlement. Yesterday, I received a card from my supervisory staff at work saying that they miss my leadership, etc. At first I had my usual - I don't deserve it - reaction, but this morning I am pissed that this is the first time in a year and a half that they ever sent me a card. Previously I would get a call asking when I was returning to work and that I needed to get back. There was no recognition that I was sick. If I had cancer or some other illness, they would have sent me a plant or something, but if you have a mental illness, they want you to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and carry on.

Can you tell I am getting pissed? They I had a visualization this morning that my 'evil twin' came out and talked to my P about how I won't let her come out because I know that if she gets out she will be big trouble. That she would kill people. I am going to stop there.

Somebody please tell me how to process some of this anger - I have to make it 2 more weeks before I can get to my P and I don't want to implode!

 

[littlelostchild]

I have settled down and recognize that the 2 little girls are just the 2 aspects of me that I needed to find a way to deal with when I was too young to really process what was going on and stop all of the forms of abuse that were occurring from the various people who were perpetrating it. A friend told me that she isn't afraid of the angry girl - she is sending her love and toys in her concrete and steel enclosure, because she is a product of her abusive circumstances just as much as the little one that I cuddle with. I have talked with my husband about all of these events and feelings and he is helping me, but I will be happy to see my psychiatrist this week. The really good news is that although this has been really painful, I have not been suicidal. I have wanted to drink at times - and not given in to temptation, but no desire to self harm.