Piecing things together

[somerandomguy]

I feel like a failure for needing it.

Do you take aspirin for a headache? If so, do you feel like a failure for needing that?

 

[HealingMama]

Do you take aspirin for a headache? If so, do you feel like a failure for needing that?

Heh, no. In my head I should be able to fight through all the mental health stuff because I know the things I'm supposed to do.

But the part of me getting triggered knows none of it because she doesn't have access to all this fancy grown up reasoning and resourcing I guess.

 

[HealingMama]

Trying to piece together why I get so upset.

I have a deep need to feel loved, accepted and taken care of. Some of that is normal adult relationship stuff. Some of that is based on idealistic fantasies pushed down the throats of girls. Some of that is leftover childhood stuff.

The feeling that I could die when he just gets exasperated and stops trying to solve a problem is not a normal adult reaction. That is a child part.

The feeling of being so full of overwhelming emotion that I can't stand it, that I want to cut myself or hit my head, is not a normal adult reaction. It is coming from trauma parts.

I long to be bonded to someone but bonding is the path of danger because (1) bonded to dad, he left me, and (2) bonded to emotionally abusive mother. So I have a war inside myself. It is so hard to make space to hope for the possibility of a connection, that it is devastating when the connection is gone.

Minutes are excruciating hours of pain.

 

[somerandomguy]

You're doing some amazing work here.

 

[Jade-]

I can feel your pain in your posts @HealingMama.

You've talked about "parts" and I'm wondering if you have tried to connect/bond with those parts of yourself. Have you tried giving to yourself what you are longing for?

What is it you need that can help you feel the way you want?What do those parts of yourself need?

There were times in the past I would wrap my arms around myself and talk to myself and tell myself everything would be ok.It did help calm things down.I started doing that way long before I ever started therapy or anything. I don't even know why I did it,I didn't know I had parts back then but I knew that I felt so miserable inside.

 

[HealingMama]

I can feel your pain in your posts @HealingMama.

You've talked about "parts" and I'm wondering if you have tried to connect/bond with those parts of yourself. Have you tried giving to yourself what you are longing for?

What is it you need that can help you feel the way you want?What do those parts of yourself need?

There were times in the past I would wrap my arms around myself and talk to myself and tell myself everything would be ok.It did help calm things down.I started doing that way long before I ever started therapy or anything. I don't even know why I did it,I didn't know I had parts back then but I knew that I felt so miserable inside.

Thank you for the idea Jade. I tried that last night actually. I was taking a shower and trying to use the soap in a loving way, telling myself it's ok I will take care of you. I think the problem is that part was basically in charge of everything so it felt like me just talking to me vs when I'm not so dysregulated, I can talk to her and it feels more like parenting the inner child.

I could definitely do more with parts work. I was trying to in the EMDR therapy but it was making me dissociate too much.

My brain literally hurts today from how much intensity I was feeling yesterday. I'm so exhausted. Meltdowns are the worst.

I tell you sometimes I feel like I have no business on a trauma board. Today is not one of those days. I came by this mess honestly even if I don't feel like my known experience is "bad enough."

Thank you for the encouragement @somerandomguy I wish I could feed my adult self knowledge to the parts that feel like they are going to die over relatively insignificant situations.

 

[HealingMama]

I have an autoimmune condition and it is flaring up after the meltdown I had. That means yesterday afternoon all my joints started hurting so badly I couldn't walk, and this morning I am breaking out in hives from all the inflammation.

I sent him a few articles on cPTSD and wrote in a message here is what I need, and if this is more than you feel like you can do, or more than you want to do, I understand and we can separate.

My therapist is going to send me some pages from a cPTSD workbook.

My husband said yesterday he wanted to spend some time together after we put the baby down, that he loves me and thinks I'm great, but doesn't like the different person I am when I am living my baggage. He knows that I can't help being that person sometimes. He's a good man. I told him he's a better person than I am because he's so gracious about these issues and I show very little tolerance by comparison. If I did not need safety so much it would be much easier to show that tolerance. I don't want to be mean. I just want to feel safe.

 

[HealingMama]

More info to help me integrate my regressive episode, from Pete Walker:

Flashbacks strand clients in the feelings of danger, helplessness and hopelessness of their original abandonment, when there was no safe parental figure to go to for comfort and support. Hence, Complex PTSD is now accurately being identified by many as an attachment disorder. Flashback management therefore needs to be taught in the context of a safe relationship. Clients need to feel safe enough with the therapist to describe their humiliating experiences of a flashback, so that the therapist can help them respond more constructively to their overwhelm in the moment.

Without help in the moment, the client typically remains lost in the flashback and has no recourse but to once again fruitlessly reenact his own particular array of primitive, self-injuring defenses to what feel like unmanageable feelings. I find that most clients can be guided to see the harmfulness of these previously necessary, but now outmoded, defenses as misfirings of their fight, flight, freeze, or fawn responses. These misfirings then, cause dysfunctional warding off of feelings in four different ways:

1. fighting or over-asserting one's self with others in narcissistic and entitled ways such as misusing power or promoting excessive self-interest;
2. fleeing obsessive-compulsively into activities such as workaholism, sex and love addiction, or substance abuse (uppers');
3. freezing in numbing, dissociative ways such as sleeping excessively, over-fantasizing, or tuning out with TV or medications ('downers');
4. fawning in self-abandoning and obsequious codependent relating. (The fawn response to trauma is delineated in my earlier article on "Codependency and Trauma" in The East Bay Therapist, Jan/Feb 03).

My emotional fear of death when he gives up on our conversations is a flashback. He is not abandoning me because he wants to take a break from conversations. And if he does, I'm no longer a helpless child.

I am feeling really triggered as I write about this. There is a feeling of anguish rising up in me, wanting to scream, absolute terror. I need to face whatever this is so I stop destroying myself and my marriage. So that if the marriage does end it will be for appropriate reasons not lashing out trauma reactions.

Today is a day when I will sit with this terror and listen to it and try to help that little girl feel better.

 

[HealingMama]

Resisting the urge to text my husband for reassurance that he isn't mad at me or disapproves of me just because he woke up cranky and withdrawn.

It's not about me.

My survival doesn't depend on his moods the way it did when I was a child. I'm ok. If he isn't ok I can still take care of myself and try to help him with the energy leftover after that.

 

[HealingMama]

I shouldn't have gone to work today. I am sick, and need to practice some self-care. Unfortunately we are understaffed and my schedule is tight so calling out causes issues. But I totally should have called out today.

I am trying to save money from eating out but I think I will go get myself some soup during my break. I can love me whether others love me or not.

 

[HealingMama]

Went home sick, got some rest, husband watched the kid so I could go to yoga, came home feeling good and eager to connect for physical intimacy as we had previously discussed. Then we had a miscommunication that generated anxiety on both sides. I needed him to make an effort at emotional connection with conversation because I'm a woman, and it was stilted and weird and not working.

Then I was talking about how his passivity and how I'm taking the initiative for everything in our lives including sex makes me feel unwanted. He says, effectively, that due to all the fighting I am unwanted.

I got sad and said I was going to bed. He tried to stop me. I don't blame him for feeling like that.

Needless to say it created more stress.

He tried to talk it through later in the evening. I had actually told my protector part to leave my marriage the f*ck alone last night so I could hang out with my husband. I kind of want to kill my protector. It is making my life hell and I hate it.

But telling it to back off worked, so communication worked better once it did happen. He even acknowledged his own attachment issues. And that he was only talking about sex when he said I'm unwanted.

In other news I'm crying at work because word traveled that I went home sick yesterday and everyone is worried about me and it is reflecting back just how much I have going on and how hard I've been pushing myself, and I don't have time to be in my feelings right now. I have a job to do.

Story of my life. I don't have time to be in my feelings so I push them away then they come out way too strong in totally inappropriate situations.

 

[HealingMama]

Attachment Disorder is commonly being seen in the professional community as a diagnostic feature of complex PTSD. I've been asked by a therapist before to label my own attachment style. Honestly I don't even know. I guess it's probably avoidant with the general public and disorganized with those that try to get close to me. I have friendships and we share pretty intimately but that's not the same.

I never used to get attached to boyfriends growing up which made them chase me. I was shut down through most of middle and high school and early college. I had some friends with benefits but didn't really engage on an emotional level.

Then I had my first EMDR therapy round and suddenly was less dissociated and numb and could access more of my emotions but did not know how to manage them.

The next person I dated was a stoic avoider and I was anxious in response. My husband is an avoider who presented himself as emotionally available before we got married. I miss being the avoidant one but having been the avoidant one I can see how that is actually in some ways an even more painful space. If you avoid then you have no sense of ability to handle your emotions and no hope that your emotional needs will be met.

But f*ck I miss the freedom of being the one who cares less.

I wish that my abuser wasn't a psychologist. I could probably tolerate attachment with a therapist better.

Last night my husband admitted that if we started the marriage with me acting like I am now then he would not pull back like he does. He sacrificed himself to help me heal some of my attachment trauma and doesn't have anymore energy to give that endeavor. He said that what bothers him even more than the conflict is knowing that what he does to deal with things now is hurting me badly.

In some ways I wish I'd never gotten any treatment at all. I could have survived numb. I would have been a terrible therapist but I could have gotten a different career. If I had never taken the lid off my chaos I wouldn't be making myself sick from the stress of trying to heal my wounds with someone that has finite resources and shouldn't be expected to do that anyway.