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Makes No Sense, Again

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Sandstone

MyPTSD Pro
Several weeks of being very functional, able to deal with people, do stuff, be a person. Then a crash, back to hiding, self hatred, running away, need to keep my arms clasped in front of me.

I had convinced myself I was OK, and had only ever been faking. Then back to an urgent need to find an answer, searching reading but not able to take it all in. After running away from a tai chi class yesterday I asked my self what it was all about, and saw two images. First of a jumble of wooden legs, and the edges of a carpet square leading to lino - the view of a child sitting under the table; then one that was wider sensory, of the smell of an old open back bus with the smoking section upstairs and the very technicolour rough texture upholstery with grainy red leather edges at eye level. Would be before I was eight, when we got a car.

So what use is that to me? I'm seeing the world through the eyes of a child. This morning I was woken by a child calling for Mummy. How is that supposed to help? I'm so angry with myself.
 
You honestly need to chill out, this is the recovery process. You're not understanding PTSD which is causing you frustration.

As you heal, exactly this will happen. As you keep working on the problems, you will find this period gets longer between crashes. You will reach a point where this crash becomes less, you become better at self management and knowing when to rest to negate / minimise the crash.

It is actually a positive sign that you are interpreting negatively.
 
I'm not really sure how your reply relates to my question. It sounds as if you are saying that if I just keep on doing nothing then everything will be OK. But it hasn't been OK for more than five years. If I'm reacting like a child, then how do I go about growing up, except by applying my mother's recurrent advice not to make a fuss? It isn't OK to run away from a harmless situation just because I'm frightened. That isn't getting better, it is just closing down my life.
 
It sounds as if you are saying that if I just keep on doing nothing then everything will be OK.
I'm not saying do nothing, I'm saying that if you have a couple of good weeks, then crash, repeat and rinse, then you have made some strides in your healing, and this cycle is normal. As you continue forward and continue working on the smaller issues in your present, then the good weeks become longer, the crash becomes smaller.

You have reached a point that is positive, now you need to keep enhancing it. Everyone has negative stuff in their head to some degree, things you can improve... and that is what you focus on to stretch the good, reduce the crash.

I did all my trauma, dealt with it. That isn't my issue today, PTSD is. PTSD negatively affects me at times. Years ago, it affected me constantly, so I looked at the effect and then began looking at how to change the cause of the effect. As I changed things, how I do stuff, how I think, how I behave, progressively changing the negatives into positives... thus over the last 10 years I have increased this good / crash cycle up to months of good, crash for a week, providing I continually manage my PTSD.

If you have dealt with trauma, then it is PTSD causing the good / crash cycle. PTSD will try and pull you down constantly. It is PTSD that you have to fight after dealing with trauma.
 
But I haven't dealt with trauma, I haven't got anywhere near it. So if I have a better patch it is because I'm managing to hide from the bad stuff, not because I've dealt with it in any way. It doesn't stay hidden though, it comes bursting or crawling out and I find myself back in another slump. Wherever I am in
the good / crash cycle
it just seems to confirm my lack of worth. If things are OK then obviously this stuff really is so trivial as to be unimportant, I've probably made up all my symptoms, and I don't need help, which makes sense of the NHS. If they are bad then I am no use and should shut up and go away. I don't understand how it can all be so inconsistent.
 
But I haven't dealt with trauma
That explains the inability to get out of the very specific cycle you mentioned then. You need to deal with the trauma, face it, go through it, resolve it, understand it, let it sit with you and work out the finite aspects of it.
 
I know I need to, and I've ben trying to get a T who will. T1 started EMDR, said I was too unstable and needed meds. NHS chaos meany i had to stop seeing him in order to see a Psychiatrist to get those meds. T2 was just odd, and when I did get her to let me talk about it I OD'd. T3 said I was too unstable, but eventually agreed to talk about it, I OD'd and crashed the car. T4 started EMDR in our second session then terminated me in our fourth. T5 worked with me for a year, approached the most minor trauma, then drew back saying it was too great a risk and that I needed treatment for dissociative stuff first. NHS have done nothing since, and I'm the formal complaints process.

Sitting here, now, I can't comprehend how it could possibly be a problem to deal with the trauma, except that it is embarrassingly trivial compared with what most on here have encountered. I rather suspect that all those Ts have built it up in my mind to be some big deal.
 
@Sandstone,

My heart hurts for you. I'm so sorry you're feeling lost and overwhelmed and that you seem to judge yourself harshly for it.

Please don't compare your trauma. It's not "small" if affects you this way. No one else's is "bigger" or more "trama-y." Comparing like that diminishes the validity of your experience. But your experience and the effects ARE valid by virtue of being yours.

Please don't be angry with yourself. Your brain is trying to help you. I hear that it's frustrating when you can't understand how what it's doing is supposed to help. I've felt the same way many times. Your brain may even be wrong. It's trying to help you, but that doesn't mean it IS helping you, which sounds like what happened when you left tai chi. Your brain associated something with danger and "triggered" you -- it's like a broken burglar alarm -- even though there wasn't danger. It wasn't helpful because it was an incorrect assessment of danger, but it was still your brain trying to help you.

It may be that the flashbacks are emotionally linked. That what you're feeling now is what you were feeling then and that's why the vision returned when it did. My experience with something similar is that it was caused by feeling of powerlessness and helplessness. Working toward internalizing the fact that I'm bigger, that I know more, that I have more resources and options now helps me separate the feeling of helplessness and powerlessness I felt then from what I feel now. The visions may just be guiding you back to your emotional experience and letting you know that the emotions are the outcome of the trauma you need to deal with. It's the impact of the trauma that we work through ... not the trauma itself.

It may also be that the instability is because it feels to you like you're working on healing, but maybe what you're doing is fighting against needing the healing in the first place -- like seeing a spider on your arm and reacting in a flurry of activity to brush it off. It seems reasonable. But it's going to take more than brushing the spider off ... that just deals with the trauma. Being able sit still, accept the spider, endure the emotional sh*tstorm and learn to cope differently is the outcome of accepting how you feel because of and in relation to your trauma.

Maybe you aren't denying/avoiding the trauma, but could you be denying/avoiding how you feel about it and its impact on you? If so, the instability would certainly make sense.

I know that, for me, I started out thinking that I'd just take care of it and put it behind me. I was in a hurry to just get it done. That's what the denial and avoidance I just mentioned can look like. I never denied the trauma. I denied that I was as deeply affected as I am. I avoided the depths of it by minimizing it and thinking I "should" be able to deal with it in a couple of sessions.

It's the "should"s that often bring us down. The "should"s are what we compare ourselves to and feel inadequate against. We think we should be able to just cope or get over it. We're frustrated that we can't. "Should be" is a judgment. Acceptance is "I am." Accept that you're in pain and that pain is a normal part of human existence. Accept that you can't control the fact that you feel pain. The trauma cause the pain. You deal with the pain (or fear or whatever emotion you're feeling) not the trauma. The trauma does not go away. It's something we make peace with by accepting that the trauma has affected us and learning to deal with the emotions ... and it's NOT easy.

Please be gentle with yourself. Please be patient with yourself. Please be kind to yourself.

So glad you found us ... best wishes for you on your journey.
 
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