Putting On "normal"

[Sammie]

THANK YOU FOR STARTING this important topic.

I feel like I am always "wearing the mask" unless I am alone, and even then I am often hiding how bad things are from myself. In therapy, I have been trying very hard to let her really see and know parts of me, but it is very difficult. My T watches me very closely and is one of the few people in my life that "really" listens to my words and looks past the false affect that is almost always smiling, laughing, and making light of the horrors I've been though. As I have begun to trust her more, she has started gently reminding me what I look and sound like when I describe events or daily life to her. She has been my mirror at times, quietly crying for me when I could not, or telling me that what I'm talking about IS NOT funny. It's a horrible thing to have lived through.

I also use the smiling, joking, everything is 'fine" mask to deal with my chronic pain from migraines and cluster headaches. It used to (and still does to some extent) make me angry with myself when someone could/can tell I am in physical agony. I always want to know HOW they can tell I have a headache; like F*#K, how did I screw up and allow them to "see" my pain. I think developing the mask was part of survival while I was working. If anyone could see my pain, mental or physical, it could affect my job. I was happy that my physical disability was a hidden one, because I didn't/don't want people to know unless I choose to tell them. I haven't been able to work (from my headaches, not my PTSD) for almost ten years now and it has just been in the past year or so that I have started to go out of the house using a cane when my balance is off due to days of unrelenting excruciating pain and the resulting exhaustion from the headaches. I just didn't want anyone to see me as disabled, or to accept that fact myself. I just got a disability parking placard this past month, so that when I am too exhausted or unsteady to walk more than 100 feet I am able to choose to park in a handicapped parking spot.

I hate using it and only do so rarely, but it does enable me to do errands when I really need to and find it does help some with conserving my energy. I've been able to be more open about my physical pain with some close friends, but it is hard because even though I want to share that burden sometimes, I don't want anyone to feel sorry for me or do things for me that I'm used to doing for myself. Luckily, I have two people in my life that I feel comfortable with enough to let them see me with an ice pack strapped to my head. (Great, so I look insane as well as disabled by pain). I think I have to laugh about my situation sometimes or I'd be crying all the time.

My family has exacerbated the problem, because if they can't actually see the pain, then it must not exist. For example, I scratched my cornea (extremely painful) during a visit once and told them I thought I'd done something "really bad" to my eye and needed to go to the ER. Because I wasn't screaming in pain or writhing on the floor in pain, they told me I was fine and ignored my repeated pleas for help. And, because it was my family and I am used to them ignoring me in times of need, I didn't think to call an ambulance (the cost of a cab was WAY beyond my means). I lived with that pain and the resulting migraine it triggered until the next day (Christmas) when my sister (who also has migraines, but not cluster headaches) either recognized the severity of what I was experiencing OR was finally able to listen to my words and took me to an urgent care clinic. They treated the migraine but could only give me antibiotic ointment and some ointment that lessened the spasms I was having in my iris to help with the pain. They could not give me any lidocaine ointment for it because they were afraid that without the pain I wouldn't go to the specialty eye emergency room that would be open the next day. I coped by isolating myself as much as possible from the rest of the family. No one even offered to help my sister help me to get to the hospital the next day. The scratch was on my left cornea and as I am legally blind in my right eye, the Doctor was very concerned about the state of my eye and told me I needed to have it looked at again to make sure it was healing within a couple days (after I got home; I was out of state). It just confirmed HOW screwed up and dysfunctional my family is and how much I need to learn how to trust people outside my family in case of an emergency. Not easily done, when I don't truly trust ANYONE due to childhood sexual abuse.

It's a catch-22 situation. I need to be able to trust a few people in order to properly take care of myself at times, but I don't trust anyone due to PTSD. Through therapy, I am starting to let some people in closer; but IT IS SO HARD TO DO when I don't really trust myself to make good decisions about who is trustworthy.

I don't know how much of this is really coherent, since it is past 3AM and I have a really wicked headache right now. I shouldn't really even be on the computer, but my headache woke me up and I'd been wanting to reply to this post since reading it yesterday.

Anyway thanks so much for listening and I think all of you who are struggling to live "as they are" without putting on a false face are extremely brave. I am trying hard to do this in therapy, but am too scared to try it with many other people right now. I am so grateful that I stumbled across this forum for some support.

I have more to say in reply to some of the earlier posts, but they'll have to wait until my head feels a little better.

Goodnight (hopefully) for now.
–S

 

[Reclusive]

When I look inside, when I pay attention to my "gut" reaction, a lot of the time it is saying "what are you doing?" "why are you doing in futility?" "Just stop" "Enough already" "This isn't worth it" "People are getting hurt" My gut is telling me to let it all go, let this life go, essentially "go home." Recovery is telling my gut that it is not finished looking yet, not finished exploring and checking things out to see if it can be a different way. Does this make sense? Do I believe what I am saying? I think so.

Have you had conversations with your gut? If not, you might want to try. Best to do it in written form. But when it says "What are you doing?" give it an answer! When it says "Just stop" ask why. If you're hurting people, how are you hurting them? Question what you're thinking and feeling. Why do you feel that way? What gave you that idea? Does it make any real sense? Dig in deep and see what you find. Some things you'll be able to toss as rubbish, but other things you can see are yours and you want to keep.

When you feel something in your body, if you're comfortable with doing so, touch it. It's your body. If your knee feels funny, hold it, touch it, reconnect with it. This is your home for the time being, you might as well get used to how it feels.

Sammie - I understand what you mean about the physical disability. My mother was physically disabled and it was obvious to everyone - she was an amputee. She hated the pitying looks and everyone trying to do everything for her. Worse were the people that ignored her, out of an inability to understand how to behave or looking down on her as lesser and therefor not worth the time of being polite to. I've been dealing with this lately as my medication lowers my blood pressure, which would be fine except my blood pressure is low to begin with. I have trouble just putting cat litter in the grocery cart anymore. I finally just said 'F!ck it, I'm gonna get a bagger to do this.' I guess I have no problem bothering people whose job it is to be bothered. Maybe that's a first step you can take? Not just "bothering" anyone, but specifically those people who are being paid to be "bothered". From there, maybe you can branch out? I dunno. As you know, it's late (4am) and I could be talking nonsense. I'm certain I missed an important paragraph break.

 

[LaurenRose]

I feel like I am always "wearing the mask" unless I am alone, and even then I am often hiding how bad things are from myself.

I think developing the mask was part of survival while I was working.

I don't want anyone to feel sorry for me or do things for me that I'm used to doing for myself.

I am starting to let some people in closer; but IT IS SO HARD TO DO when I don't really trust myself to make good decisions about who is trustworthy.

For me it is so true as well that I am hiding from myself. Emotional lying is how I explain it. I look for evidence in my discomfort by looking for what makes me uncomfortable in the world and apply it to my own self. Why is that happening? What's going on inside me? Sometimes that depth of truth has the danger of throwing myself into mass confusion which can in turn make me weary of life.

Not wanting others to do for me is a big one. It is one of the factors that keep me away from the world. I have limited my interactions as I am yet to be strong enough emotionally to handle the upset of people seeing how broken I am. This is ridiculous as I have great compassion and empathy when I see someone struggling. For some reason I am still not able to turn that onto myself. I try to cloak it up with the knowledge that Anxiety is not a rational disorder. Progress is being made, but it is "potentially terminally" slow. I am so embarrassed and distressed and confused and so very sad that the things I used to do with ease in the "before" life are next to impossible now. I sometimes wonder if I will be able to adapt and learn to do it an alternate way.

Who is trustworthy. A paradox. I find myself sharing with others who don't have the capacity to understand. They have not either experienced it themselves or have no experience with someone who has. There is an exposure that is necessary. I don't know where the line is to healthy sharing. I blurt. I "dumb down" what is happening so they don't have enough context and fill in the blanks with their own filtered information. I often am left with knowing I have given them a wrong impression, and to correct it sometimes makes it worse. I do have a couple friends, well one friend now (he recently passed as he was unable to cope with his PTSD) who I can share on a deep deep level. There are still guards up but I am pleased that I have enough trust now to have support in sharing and in receiving their experience with them. It has been a lonely path.

 

[Sammie]

Dear Jelly,

Thank you so much for sharing as well as for starting this important thread. I relate SO much to both your words and your pain.

I agree that the progress we make with PTSD does seem "terminally" slow. I find I OFTEN need the feedback of others, who see tremendous changes and growth in me that I don't see unless it is pointed out to me a number of times, just because of how I view myself, how harshly I "grade" my progress, and how much I downplay my accomplishments. This is made even easier because I tend toward isolation (due to BOTH physical and mental pain and the resulting exhaustion from pain AND from masking it, ironically) so I don't get as much feedback as I would if I shared more of my true self with others.

I think that this is where a therapy or support group would be so helpful to me. I was in a general woman's therapy group for a while years ago, and it helped a lot. Though it was also painful to accept how positively others viewed me, because I did not share that view. It was SO very difficult to accept the other women's "liking" me and appreciating how I reacted to them and what they were going through, when I was so invested in seeing myself in a bad light or as a burden to anyone with whom I shared parts of myself.

I hope that you never give up on yourself; because you are a bright light in a dark, dreary world. I have been suicidal to a greater or lessor extent since I was 13 (35 plus yrs ago) and was suffering through my 2nd abuse from a family member. BUT, for some reason (insane optimism, maybe) I have never actually attempted to kill myself. I have always told myself that I could suffer through ONE more day of torture. I HAVE done things that are self-destructive, but never anything that would really put my life in danger. I try very hard to remember that I am a very strong person (though I often lie to myself and tell myself how weak, pitiful, useless, ugly, etc, etc I am—OH, the terrible lies I tell myself in order to fit into the person my abuser told me I was) AND that if I have lived through all that I have lived through, I can get through anything, any day no matter how horrible I feel, or if I have to sleep through that day in order to just make it through to the next.

I think that if I give up on myself and DO kill myself, I will never know if the NEXT day (or hour) would be when everything started to change for me. So, I always keep on trudging along, even if I do it hiding in bed, in the hope that things will get better. And, for me they have. It's not often a straight linear path, but if I keep moving I do keep growing and healing.

I don't know what the end of the road will look like; but me hope is that I will trust more and share more of myself with others without it hurting so much.

This past Wednesday, after struggling so much with my T (of about 4 yrs) and feeling like I couldn't get her to understand something that was really important to me. So important that on Monday I told her I didn't think therapy was really helping me much and I wanted to start seeing her much less often than the 2x/wk I see her now, I tried once more to explain myself and my process to her and she SUDDENLY "got it." It felt amazing and transformative, and even though I think that I will cur down on our sessions in order to get some much needed bodywork done, I know feel that the sessions we have can be much more productive than they have been feeling.

So, again, it feels like if I just keep trying, keep pushing past the pain, it will all be worth it in the end and maybe, just maybe, I can have the life that I want and deserve to have instead of the sometimes terrifying and traumatic one I am still surviving in right now.

Peace to you jellymint. You have given me much to think about.
Sammie