Please Read - Overwhelmed Emotional Wreck....

[kath314]

I'm posting this question in this forum after being a way for several weeks. I haven't really been diagnosed with PTSD, but don't know where to go to help people understand what I'm dealing with.

The reason I joined this forum and posted a question originally, is because I wasn't sure where to go or to understand what I"m dealing with. I'm Pretty Overwhelmed right now, filled with great anxiety, fear, and can't stop crying. I'm in need of help understanding what's going on.....


BACKGROUND: I'm a married mother to 2 young boys (11 and 4). I just recently turned 40. Last year, at the beginning of 5th grade, my older son was getting bullied quite a bit. This brought up a lot of unresolved issues with my own past bullying....

As a biracial kid raised in a small midwest town, I couldn't fit in anywhere. Without the attention the bullying issue that exists today I was left to fend for myself. The experience is best reflected in the following quote:

"Psychiatrist R.D. Laing said that when we invalidate people or deny their perceptions and personal experiences, we make mental invalids of them. He found that when one's feelings are denied a person can be made to feel crazy even they are perfectly mentally healthy"

I left for college thinking my issues would be behind me. Ironically, I ended up in a situation which left me in the same emotional spot. I entered into a four year abusive relationship that started with my losing my virginity to rape. All these years later - just shy of 20 - I've removed myself from that situation, and learned how to be a partner in a healthy relationship. I'm married to my best friend, and my kids are happy and healthy....

WITH ALL THIS IN MIND, HERE'S MY QUESTION: I notice a pattern of past unresolved hurts and feelings being brought up by various triggers. All these years later, at times the old hurts as well as anxiety and anger come up, if and when when I encounter certain triggers that produce those feelings.

What first got me into the counseling, was when my son was bullied like me last year. When he told me I started to cry uncontrollably and my own son ended up consoling me. I determined then I needed help....

I'm in group and individual therapy that's using Dialectical Behavioral Therapy Techniques... What has really helped is the mindfulness, and consciousness observation and break down of my feelings and their underlying causes. We're also just starting EMDR. My therapist is on break for 2 weeks, so I'm without her to go to to understand. I don't think I can wait that time to understand what's up..

With the background out of the way, here is a snapshot of something that has sent me into an emotional tailspin....

• THE EVENT: THe mother of my son's best friend called me to discuss something her son told her. There are kids at school that say my son has some annoying habits they find offputting and that's why they don't want to be his friend. She suggested I help him with these so he not further ostrascize himself. She know's I'm trying to help him preserve his self esteem, while helping him with his emotional maturity/social skills..
• MY THOUGHTS: I sat there and listened. While I realize now, she was being kind and helpful - I didn't take it this way. I remember a stream of racing thoughts going through my mind accompanied by a feeling of extreme anxiety and sadness. The Thoughts and beliefs I ver well know are not logically correct, but yet at some level still define my perceptions, and feelings about myself in the world:
  • Its my fault, I don't know how to teach my kid how to fit in and be "normal". I created a wierd oddball like myself...
  • What if what they said about me growing up was true? Maybe they were all correct??? Am I really as flawed and unfixable as they made me feel???
  • What if my son is what they think he is too? Is it my fault he is this way? What if he as to experience what I did???
• THE FEELINGS: My mind was wash with overwhelming fear, anxiety and pain. I feel like I did growing up and in that relationship with that guy. I went to the bathroom and balled. I tried to gather myself together, since I work nights as a nurse, and try to stuff the emotions so I can do my job, but it isn't working too well. I spend that day a tearful mess. I felt like a horrific valueless flawed thing.
• THE ME WATCHING MYSELF: Since starting the DBT stuff, I try to imagine a secondary observer looking at me. She gets angry and can't help but realize the idiocy of what I'm feeling. I full well realize they are based on the past and not the current situation, yet right now they feel very real. They overcome my thoughts, feelings, and very being and there is nothing I can do to make them go away....
• MORE THOUGHTS & FEELINGS COME UP AFTER A DAY OF ENDLESS OBSESSING OVER THE ISSUE ABOUT HOW TO "FIX THE PROBLEM: It becomes too hard to stay with these feelings of fear, hurt and anxiety the way DBT teaches you. So I then turn toward what I perceive to be the cause of these feelings. I see the mother of my son's best friend as the cause. She is the enemy. As time progresses, its the school system, as well as anybody at school or in the neighborhood who has played with him. A stream of scenarios, situations, and events go through my mind. I analyze them in detail for confirmation of my worst fears and worries, that my son is in an unsafe world, where he will be made to feel the way I did with nobody caring they did so....
• ANOTHER WAVE OF EMOTIONS PLACES THE FEAR AND SADNESS: AN UNEXPLAINABLE RAGE. I - a unassuming nonconfrontational shy woman, wants to hit the wall and punch a hole through the drywall. I for a while consider (1) home schooling my child (2) Not letting him play with anyone (3) cutting off contact with any of his friends parents (and relationships I've developed with them)....
• THE ME WATCHING MYSELF: I realize this is all insane, I observe the thoughts while saddened at how crazy my past experiences left me. I'm angry to be left all these years later with this stuff...

AFTER MUCH CRYING AND STRESSING: I talk with my husband and he gives me a good shoulder to cry on. I take the impossible action of engaging n opposite action, in complete contradiction to all my feelings. I choose to look for a safe forum in which to better understand these feelings (HERE). I don't attack this lady. I act - despite my shaking hands and tears in my voice, to stop by and talk with her to get more of the facts. I thank her for taking time to inform me of all this. I realize now she was just trying to help.....

HELP ME GET IT.....DOES ANYBODY RELATE TO ANY OF THIS???? WHAT JUST HAPPENED TO ME??? AM I CRAZY.

Until now, I hadn't seen outside of how I'm seeing. I'm realizing beyond the fog of whatever is this, a reality that isn't what it now feels to be. Is it the case that threats to my well being are misperceived. Is it the case that what I feel is based on what was but now isnt?

I WANT SOMEONE WHO UNDERSTANDS TO HELP ME. PROVIDE ME SOME LITERATURE TO READ, HOW TO MOVE BEYOND THIS UNHEALTHY PATTERN....

P.S. PLEASE RESPOND - I'M A BIT OF AN EMOTIONAL WRECK....

 

[Ted Moen]

Sometimes people who have experienced trauma are able to block out the thoughts and feelings (temporarily) focusing totally on their current situation. A classic example would be the WWII vets coming home to become workaholics. The problem is that as you age the brain processes that block those memories from consciousness tend to break down and intrusive thoughts and feelings begin seeping through. It's sometimes called a delayed stress resonse, but it's really been there all along.

It's not an unhealthy pattern. The hostile environment in which you did what you had to do to survive was an unhealthy environment. You are fine, but you have a set of intrusive thoughts and feelings related to the old stuff that is starting to intrude and make your feelings seem out of whack with your current situation. Time for therapy and working through the old stuff and learning to live with ptsd in your current situation.

There's lots of stuff around to read, some of it good, some not so good. My favorites would include Beck's (both father and daughter) stuff on cognitive-behavioral-therapy (CBT) and Kabat-Z???'s "Full Castrophe Living" but a real live clinical psychologist specialized in trauma is probably the best place to start.

Ted

 

[kath314]

Thank you Ted!

I have been an emotional lately. People in my lives don't seem to understand. They simply see things as they are now, and they do not understand the response in connection with the situation. They berade me for feeling and reacting as I am now.

Is there a way of "getting better"? What has that process been like for you?