Knowing Your Own Mind

[Eleanor]

I hear what you are saying. Hmmmm. Something a bit odd here: it sounds like the pattern is an oscillation between over and under-reaction (to compensate.) ? So the PTSD causes you to way over-react, and then you've learned to compensate for that in bad company (they didn't give you the right feedback) and so now you overcompensate and make yourself vulnerable. Is that right? Maybe a helpful principle for finding the line for you is:

My feelings and interests count just as much as others do.
In cowboy terms "Be tough, but fair." (emphasis on "be tough" for you.)

If you find yourself minimizing your interests or stuffing/disappearing your feelings: red lights and sirens "danger Will Robinson!" dark side approaching!

Oh rats, now we are right back where we started, aren't we? Because you are having trouble understanding your interests and recognizing WHAT you feel. Ok, this might help a little, but only as a kind of dashboard warning light.

Have you ever done a meditation or mindfulness class where they do a guided "body scan?"

But wait (she says, hitting the edit button) there's more! Ok, I'm still wrong, and missing the obvious too boot. Here is the thing, in order to overreact and then under-react to compensate you have to have at some point felt the over-reaction, is that right? Is this all on auto pilot, or do you (and I'm assuming you do) get the whole adrenaline jolt? If so, THEN you do get what you feel - at least then - just turned up too loud, and then you "interpret them down" too low? The problem might be the opposite with good feelings - that they are already a bit low, and turned down even lower are barely audible.

Ok, I am now starting to feel like I am just really slow and stupid, and not adding anything here, so I'll shut up. :notworthy:

 

[712xx]

Oh Eleanor, lol, you are very well meaning :laugh: (but not slow or stupid). You sound like me sometimes -- getting caught up in the analyzing and rationalizing things that aren't really rational to begin with -- emotions, lol. The reasons and explanations can be as elusive as trying to explain quantum physics. The act of measuring it will change one or more of its properties.

I saw a piece on one of the news biography shows; they were talking about kids with OCD, et al. They showed a girl afraid to go into a department store because it had been "contaminated" by her school peers. She was so afraid, she didn't want to even put her feet outside the vehicle onto the pavement.

The background narrator was talking about desensitizing ... and how if we take small steps and repeatedly expose ourself to what we fear, the act of repeated exposure will decrease and eventually take away that fear. I've done this for other things outside of therapy -- crawling under my house was a huge fear, mainly because I didn't know what was under there waiting for me (to bite me). I had to fix some plumbing (quite a few times before I learned to keep the water trickling in the winter). Every time a pipe froze and broke I had to fix it myself. It was just too expensive to call a plumber.

The first winter I went about 4 months without water, because I was too afraid to crawl under there. I worked up the courage and did it ... did it wrong and had to do it again. I found the biggest light I could find and placed it under there and skirted out making lots of noise ... then went in the house and stomped around on the floor making more noise to get any critter that had teeth out from under there -- or scare it to death. Either one was fine.

I kicked myself the next winter when it happened again. But, I had an ok experience doing it the previous winter, so tried some of the same things ... light, and noise ... it only took me a week to get up the courage.

I don't know how to desensitize for verbalizing trauma events or for working through finding yourself -- but a big light and a lot of noise has helped me in many situations -- it may help here. :D

 

[Muzikluvr]

As an example, if someone was mad at me, I might react to the possibility that they might kill me. It doesn't mean I've imagined that they are mad at me, its just that I've anticipated something much worse coming out of their anger.

I do this kind of thing too, and it's difficult to correct when reacting to someone without practicing correcting it when you're alone and thinking through things. What you describe, sounds to me like an unhelpful thinking style; I'd say it's

Jumping to Conclusions

Interpreting things, usually negatively, when you do not have all the facts; for example, mind reading; you think you know what others are thinking, or fortune telling; making predictions that things will turn out badly.

Question: Am I presuming what others think or feel? Am I predicting a negative outcome when I cannot be sure of that?

and also:

Catastrophising and Magnifying

Exaggerating the importance of the problem may consider everything a “disaster” or “tragedy.” Also think in “what if” terms and anticipating some disaster.

Question: Am I making this problem bigger than it really is? Or, am I interpreting an undesirable event as something that could happen to me?

Others can be found at: [DLMURL]https://www.ptsdforum.org/c/threads/unhelpful-thinking-styles.13778/#post-174045[/DLMURL]

I really do these two an awful lot of the time, as it turns out. When I'm thinking about how I relate to other people, I tend to think for them, predict a negative outcome, catastrophise it and then completely freak out until I hear back from them that everything is okay. It works the same way when my husband is angry with me, but it feels different because that is usually an intense burst of fear from which I often explode with anger of my own before realizing that I've just escalated the situation tenfold. I have to go back and dissect my thoughts and feelings afterward in order to understand that I catastrophised a negative outcome based on my fear of what his statement means he really thinks of me. :eek: It's a little screwy! :cautious:

I think I'm getting better at putting the brakes on this issue by recognizing it when I'm not in a heightened reactionary situation, but am alone and thinking for others and starting to freak out about it. I stop thinking for them. Accept that I won't know if they're upset until they tell me. Believe that I can handle their anger, because I trust that the people I surround myself with aren't abusers. I have rejected others for being unscrupulous, irrational, and abusive.. and I will continue to protect myself by rejecting people who tend toward these responses.

Then, when I find myself in a situation where someone is angry with me, my anxiety spikes and I stop myself from exploding as soon as I possibly can... so I can ask the person questions that will give me understanding. Sometimes, I explode... and then apologize for overreacting, and then express my sincere desire to understand. It works well enough for now... as it is the best I'm currently capable of.

I hope this helps. It's a process I'm currently working through and it seemed to apply here.

Wishing you well,
Muz

 

[Meadowsweet]

Eleanor, you're not at all slow or stupid, it's my mind that's disordered.

If somebody was mad at me and I thought I was in immediate danger, my inner reaction might be over exagerating the situation, but my outward reaction would more likely be an under-reaction (becoming frozen) or submissive. So the over-reaction and under-reaction can be simultaneous.

I'm quite isolated at the moment, so am unlikely to come across anyone who is mad at me for anything.

But I've experienced reccurent abuse from different people in different circumstances and this points to there being something wrong with what I do, how I think or see things.

I would like to respond more, and really do appreciate all the replies. but I'm struggling to take it all in at the moment. So will have to come back another day.

 

[Meadowsweet]

Muzikluvr, catastrophing and magnifying is a big problem for me. But Im not sure if that is more to do with me being unable to control flashbacks. Because when I can think about things, I tend to minimise them, but when I've been faced with certain interactions or particular people, I think something awful is going to happen.

Thankyou for the link. I think these ones effect me:

Mental Filter

Take a single negative detail and magnify and dwell on it excessively so that all other aspects of the situation are ignored, for example, if you received one criticism and 10 positive comments, you would ignore the positive feedback and obsess over the criticism.

Question: Have I blocked out my any positive aspects of this situation?

Personalisation

Believing that everything people do or say is a reaction to you. Involves comparing yourself with others and holding yourself personally responsible for an event which you did not have total control over; for example, “It’s my fault.”

Question: Do people want to deliberately frustrate me? Is this about me?

I think also, that these thinking styles are quite relevant to the feeling like I don't know my own mind.

Sometimes, its like I feel so overwhelmed by everything thats apparently wrong about me, that I feel like nothing I think or feel is of any worth. I get to feeling so incapable that I should let someone else tell me the 'right' way. Thats the dangerous bit for me.