Nameless dread

[PreciousChild]

I got some bad news recently and it has sent my ptsd into overdrive. I've been trying to meditate and am re-reading Heller's Healing Developmental Trauma. I was reading the section on how trauma is freezed and stored in the body. I swear that in one episode of feeling fearful and catastrophizing (sp?), I could feel my hippocampus throb and pulse, as well as my stomach empty. I've been having vivid images of my child self looking at me with big eyes full of horror and she's inconsolable. She's in a panic because she knows disaster is coming and that's all she's been doing for 40 years inside myself - looking for the disaster to hook her nameless dread on.

There is a reality component here, but I'm starkly aware that I'm repeating a pattern that has long exhausted me. I'm trying to convince her that she can relax now, that no matter what happens, we'll be safe. I thanked her for her vigilance for 40 years now, but when can she finally put down her guard, play, and pay attention to anything else but the looming threat that never comes? But nothing can convince her that she'll be okay. The trauma is deeply ingrained in the brain, so far deep where words can't penetrate. I'm exhausted about the years that have been and will be of being on high alert over a threat that happened long ago and will never happen again because both of my parents are deceased.

 

[Starfish]

Ptsd can be so tough, preciouschild. keep keeping on!

 

[Friday]

I'm starkly aware that I'm repeating a pattern that has long exhausted me. I'm trying to convince her that she can relax now, that no matter what happens, we'll be safe.

I was just saying in another thread recently how being told I’m safe? Does nothing for me, except convince me that -in most circumstances- the person telling me that is an idiot, and should be utterly ignored.

“You don’t need a seatbelt, I’m a good driver, nothing is going to happen.” Just makes me think the person is an idiot and a fool. “You’re safe. No ones coming after you.” Gets exactly the same reaction.

I couldn’t give a flying f*ck about being safe, for instance... but you read over and over and over in the forums how important it is for a lot of people. Shrug. It doesn’t even inform my decisions, much less shape my life. To me? It makes about as much sense as shaping my life around the Easter Bunny. It’s not a real thing. So why would I care about it? Danger, on the other hand, IS real, & does very much inform my decisions. NOT to be safe, again that’s total bullshit, but to be prepared to meet it as well as I’m able. I have neither need nor desire to be “safe”. I have a very strong desire to be competent & capable

So if you’re getting no traction attempting to convince someone that you’re safe, now? You might try the other direction. Not that there isn’t danger, but that you’re well able to handle anything that gets thrown at you.

 

[PreciousChild]

Thanks @crushed.

That's a really interesting perspective, @Friday. I actually have been thinking about how much my hypervigilance is responsible for having accomplished the things that I have. I am usually over-prepared because I think things will go wrong. While I was going through the panic attack or whatever you want to call it, I think first and foremost I wanted to feel okay. I'm sick of feeling like I'm going to die every time something bad happens. I see what you're saying that feeling prepared is good and hypervigilance can be motivating, but isn't it important to feel secure and safe? Don't we need that to thrive and be happy and not merely survive to the next day? If my parents had been intact and healed from their own shit, they would have been able to make me feel like I belong to this world and not feel like a hunted animal. My quality and quantity of life is at stake.

ETA: in a way, feeling safe is like a fiction, I guess, like you're saying because it's not a guarantee. I think hope is too because the reality hasn't actually happened yet. But it's a kind of fiction that is like a self-fulfilling prophecy that makes the belief in it more likely to happen. And I think it's the most realistic to believe in feeling safe and hope because usually things do turn out okay.