Is This "normal" Re Flashbacks/dreams

[shimmerz]

suppose all this is positive progress.

Yes. It was very helpful for me when I started seeing support groups like these pop up. Back when I was diagnosed it was all just an uneducated guess as to whether my therapy was helping or hurting me. I recall my son insisting that I stop going to therapy because he felt it was making me worse.

It was not. Worse had already taken up residency in my body and I absolutely could not ignore it. People don't understand this if they haven't been through it imo.

 

[MesaRock]

Yeah, I have a lot of regret that I wasn't diagnosed and treated decades ago, in part because I chose a 20 year career in a line of work that radically advanced its severity. On the other hand, twenty years ago there wasn't as much knowledge and support like this forum and SE and alternative modalities so perhaps it's just as well.

and regarding the "don't know it til you've walked it..."

Two things that catch my attention are

(a) me going into treatment has made almost all of my former friends/colleagues run for the hills and want nothing to do with me. Given my job, I know some of them are avoiding their own PTSD. For the others, it's not as though I'm a horror to be around or needy, I just say I'm going through a hard time coping with trauma and I never hear from them again, or they invite me to high pressure events and parties and think I'm being cowardly when I say it's too much right now. I don't know anybody personally who is or who has gone through this process and it's lonely and strange to feel off the map and into the wilderness with this. I try not to get caught up in feeling angry or betrayed... Days like today when so much wisdom and comradeship emerges here in the forum helps immensely with that isolation.

(b) the once-upon-a-time-I-thought-were-friends who say things like, "Doesn't this seem to be going on for too long? I had ptsd for two weeks when I got laid off and it was really no fun but I got over it by staying positive and getting a new job." or "I had ptsd and ultimately realized I needed to get on with my life. You're spending too much time with this and should start living a normal life like you used to" or "call me when you're normal again." Argh.

I suppose and hope that on the other side of this I will find people who feel good in my life, who know trauma and faced it in a way in which they have emerged with empathy and compassion and strength and wisdom...so many of us are all so traumatized in our way, you'd think as a species we'd be farther along in making healing space for it.

 

[Chava]

(Interesting you mention hunger cues - I've lost a LOT of weight (way too much) and keep trying to explain to my regular [clueless] doctor that I don't notice I'm hungry until a day or two has passed, and she has, well, a very low and unenlightened response to my explanation. Another time I fractured my ankle and walked on it without a cast for two weeks until someone finally forced me to go to the hospital where again they did not react positively to my explanation that the pain wasn't so bad.)

This all makes perfect sense to me. It also makes sense to my therapist that part of how I survived past traumas was to disconnect from my body. I had to gain weight (diagnosed anorexia, though I think an atypical form). As I made myself eat like a normal person, hunger cues started returning. I also felt full and all sorts of shitty sensations. I went from numb to noticing I had a body. Right around the point my weight was normalizing, I developed chronic pain. My eating disorder therapist didn't know what to do about it. I did some research and ended up with my current trauma therapist. She describes some of this as my nervous system coming back "online." It's really disorganized in there. My body senses a small discomfort as torture. It's hard to go from numb to normal processing on a neurological level. My pain sensors are seriously messed up. I also used to hurt myself and feel nothing. In some ways that is still the case. But where I have pain, it becomes intolerable. So it's interesting my meltdowns relate to only certain kinds of pain (back pain and cramps). I could break my arm and maybe just laugh about it.

i suppose all this is positive progress.

Yes, I think so! Being numbed out forever wasn't going to work for me. My body crashed and started screaming at me. The process of listening to it or staying connected is slow going. I still disconnect as needed, but in safer ways (distractions, like getting absorbed in reading instead of getting super drunk).

 

[MesaRock]

"But where I have pain, it becomes intolerable. So it's interesting my meltdowns relate to only certain kinds of pain (back pain and cramps). I could break my arm and maybe just laugh about it."

Ok, THIS is another a-hah moment. My menstrual cycle has gone completely batshit since all this started...cramps are as you say intolerable! and back pain is the other of my two nemeses! (I had a household accident a few months ago and my finger had to be reattached - everyone was puzzled that I was calm and as you say even laughed about it, whereas during my menses I just feel like it's the end).

This is making me feel so much less off the wall. And yes to the not drinking. I stopped my strategic alcohol drinking immediately after starting therapy and books seem like the only alternative, which is oddly hilarious. Sobriety and literature - unlikely companions. I just had to add three new bookcases last week because, well, reading. Although it's tough to find books that are truly diversionary. I seem to only be able to read astronomy books and vapid early 20th century novels for teenage girls, like Anne of Green Gables. I used to be such a tough hardboiled little cookie. Ha.

 

[MesaRock]

"But where I have pain, it becomes intolerable. So it's interesting my meltdowns relate to only certain...

p.s. I thought I had the stomach flu the other day and my partner pointed out maybe I was just full because I'd made myself eat three full meals. Turns out of course that was it. So bizarre. Almost funny. But definitely bizarre. But also kind of funny.

 

[SabrinaB]

You are all so amazing!! Everything you've shared is spot on and so relatable. Sadly though this insight is far from common knowledge. I think there are many of us high-functioning folks who looked like (and believed) we had it all together until crashing in our 40's, 50's and beyond. Breaks my heart that most won't find this solid path to healing. Not an easy journey my any means, and it's understandable that not all want to embark upon it, but the option and resources should be available for those who desire it.

Therapists and physicians in my area are clueless in regards to somatic symptoms so I've had to forge my own healing plan. My therapist is at least open minded and willing to integrate Pat Ogden's workbook.

@MesaRock you are so fortunate to have somatically informed practitioners! You also have an impressive degree of insight for someone new to the journey! My life turned upside down at 52 and I still can't describe my symptoms snd reactions as well as you do.

Continue to trust the instincts of your core self. Your degree of connectiveness is notable. This is a rocky journey as you are finding out, and I caution that it will probably get much bumpier. My advice is to be very patient and compassionate with yourself. Think marathon versus sprint. There's no quick way through this, especially if you are seeking true integration and healing. Attunement to symptoms helps isolate emotions, which sparks insights that become revelations that lead to transformations, in your body, belief system and worldview. There will be days when darkness overshadows your mind and body. Practice leaning into the pain instead of fearing it. Prepare ahead of time though with lots of grounding and nurture your faith in the process and outcome. And continue to turn here when you need validation and assurance.

 

[MesaRock]

You are all so amazing!! Everything you've shared is spot on and so relatable. Sadly though this insigh...

"I think there are many of us high-functioning folks who looked like (and believed) we had it all together until crashing in our 40's, 50's and beyond." Yeah, the age thing is peculiar...times are changing, too - there were zero resources of any kind available for me in, say, 1983, when the initial inciting incident occurred, nor were there any substantive resources each time more events accumulated over the coming decades.

I was a human rights worker for most of my life - It's become truly jawdropping to me that at no time in the work I was doing was there a shred of PTSD support or acknowledgement for me, my colleagues, or even our clients. Similar for many other trauma-intensive lines of work. I hope that as the understanding and efficacy of trauma treatment increases, the brain's response to trauma is taken as seriously as a broken leg or critical bodily wound. Too many of us walking wounded around the globe.

I sort of suspect that I crashed at 42 because there are now more substantive resources available to me. I tried to get help almost every year between ages 19 and 42, and was never able to find anyone capable or knowledgable enough to even agree to treat me.

In a sense - a sad sense - those of us who crash at 40s and beyond and find treatment are the first wave, the first generation to have these resources within our lifetime, albeit decades later than what would have been ideal. The woman who sees my therapist before I do (she's at 9:30, I'm at 10:30) is 82 and she said she just kept waiting until the tools arrived. leaves me speechless.

I send so much hope out into the world that the next generations get help faster, sooner, smoother, with much more kindness and compassion directed towards their journeys....

 

[tontoe]

Thanks to @MesaRock For starting this thread, and to all of you have who have responded so insightfully. I have been feeling increasingly alone and desperate during the last few months (despite working with a very good SE-based Therapist here in the UK) and I guess one big thing I am missing right now (we have discussed this in sessions) is external validation beyond the therapeutic relationship.
The themes of loss of relationships, fear of the changes that brings, and the onset of a crisis that throws up early trauma ring bells of recognition for me, and it's especially heartening to hear I am not alone in what often feels a peculiarly-devised personal hell that I can't really talk about with anyone but my T and partner. Here in the UK, the characteristic "stiff upper lip", cynicism and reserve means it is very difficult to talk openly about this sort of thing, and lots of people would run a mile on broken glass rather than discuss it
Two quotes from the posts above ring particularly true, but I could have picked many more. Suffice to say I can see lots of common ground.

sometimes in the midst of losing that old belief system we don't know what it needs to be replaced with.

Relationship losses may lead to stirring up abandonment issues, which are huge in and amongst themselves. Sometimes crippling

As I hit my 61st year, three years into working with my T, but 22 years after the crisis that kicked me out of a "normal" life, I often wonder where the discovery I have CPTSD and the (sometimes very) rocky road to recovery will lead, and if it's a case of too little, too late (gulp!!)... No, surely not...
So this forum gives me some much-needed validation in between sessions with my T (can only afford fortnightly, and there are long gaps over holiday periods), and helps me remember that I am not crazy - even if that's how I feel when another wave breaks.

 

[tontoe]

What I found helpful was believing that the brain could be rewired

Hi @shimmerz , I've found two Norman Doidge books on Amazon.Can you remember the exact title of the book? Like the idea of trying to use my over-developed cognitive side (which gives me so much trouble with its constant barrage of thoughts) to "trick" itself into rewriting the ole neural pathways...

 

[MesaRock]

Thanks to @MesaRock For starting this thread, and to all of you have who have responde...

@tontoe Definitely not too little too late! Not at all. I think that too is a universal concern, regardless of our respective ages...there's never a good time to do this work, but then again any time is a good time to do this work. Another of those quirks to this process, I suppose :-/

I resonate with what you say here:
"Here in the UK, the characteristic "stiff upper lip", cynicism and reserve means it is very difficult to talk openly about this sort of thing, and lots of people would run a mile on broken glass rather than discuss it" - probably most of us come from communities in which the stiff upper lip is requisite...or else we would have been helped earlier. That's my humble opinion. If I could get rid of that whole way of thinking...

I keep trying to approach my friendships and relationships - well, there's that Kafka quote about art being an axe for the frozen sea inside us. I think trauma definitely breaks apart the frozen sea. there are people out t/here who are similiarly sick of the superficiality of the stiff upper lip. This forum is a good place. I've started the onerous process of going through my friends one by one and sorting them into spheres. I finally have about six people to talk to about this stuff. Never had that before ever.

hugs to you and all on this thread. It's gotten me through this week.

 

[MesaRock]

Hi @shimmerz , I've found two Norman Doidge books on Amazon.Can you remember the exact...

ps I took @shimmerz advice and ordered Doidge - I just took a gamble on "the brain's way of healing" which appears to be the second book. It constantly short-hand references (with little asterixes) concepts that are discussed in more detail his first book, which is frustrating to me for obvious reasons. Argh.

Maybe start with the first. I'm going to order it, then return to "the brain's way of healing."

 

[Jessicak]

I have never tried acupuncture therapy for my ptsd but I did notice that the longer I healed and went to therapy the more different memories or triggers that I had buried deep inside began to resurface. Sometimes to the point I thought I was getting much worse. Over time though they have lessened and I have found that once I processed those memories with my theropist they gradually lessened till they became like most other memories. Still there but without the major triggering effects. My theropist said that it was my brain processing and working through everything I had been through.