Freida
VIP Member
Yep! I started an online french class with a company called rocket language. It's a great distraction
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Reached a point where Im Extremely concerned for the safety of others, want to report my abuser to the police. help/advice/personal experiences wanted
- Post starter Sweetleaf
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whiteraven
Diamond Member
Hi @Sweetleaf - just wanted to let you know I'm reading and want to offer my support. I don't have anything different to offer that others have, but you have lots of good feedback here.
I love languages, too, and picking a new one is the hardest thing. LOL I finally settled on Swahili. I wanted a non-European language and I've been studying Hebrew some, but really wanted to try something else. Best of luck to you on that!
I love languages, too, and picking a new one is the hardest thing. LOL I finally settled on Swahili. I wanted a non-European language and I've been studying Hebrew some, but really wanted to try something else. Best of luck to you on that!
blackemerald1
VIP Member
@Sweetleaf - I noticed the change in tone of your writing and you did too.
Is this from the trauma, something that is happening with you personally right now, therapy or has the realisation or prospect of the perpetrator doing harm to other's ratcheted up your anxiety?
Is this from the trauma, something that is happening with you personally right now, therapy or has the realisation or prospect of the perpetrator doing harm to other's ratcheted up your anxiety?
- Post starter
- #16
Sweetleaf
Diamond Member
@blackemerald1
Both me and my pdoc think this is all from the intense EMDR session I had.. So yeah, ratcheting up of anxiety and panic. But it stemmed from a -REALLY- intense EMDR session. Like, super intense. Like, I should have told her I wanted to stop but didn't, like a dummy, kind of rough EMDR session.
I forget the context precisely (have it written down though) - but basically, we were trying to work on the gun pointing at me kinds of traumas. They're pretty intertwined with each other in my head. So it's been a bit rough. It still feels rough but I feel better than yesterday or the day before (the day of the rough EMDR session). I'm still a bit teary, crying now and then.
Anyway, the end of my trauma got brought up during one of the reprocessing sets, so she kept the buzzers going but just asked me to describe the end of the trauma. We talked about it. I don't wanna elaborate but, the torture. The psychosis from the torture. My fears around that. She pointed out to me, for the first time, that it was torture. She compared it to the shit at Guantanamo Bay. I am too afraid to look it up, but I remember when it happened and that f*cked up shit happened and prisoners were tortured.
We were talking about the forced sleep deprivation, my fears of psychosis happening again, and she made the Guantanamo bay comparison. She didn't say torture. I said torture.
She said "they subjected them to sleep deprivation in order to make them go psychotic, intentionally" trying to make the point that, psychosis just happens eventually to anyone, with enough sleep deprivation. That I have nothing to fear in regards to psychosis, that it won't return for me, because it was only caused by extreme circumstances that would cause any person to go psychotic.
But when she said that line, in the middle of it I think, before she finished saying it. I said "sleep deprivation torture" and then I don't even know what, and then I hear her calling my name repeatedly, I'm crying and she's extending her arm with a tissue held in her hand from a couple fingers, my hand reached out and took it slowly, and then I put it to my eyes and kinda cried into it for a while, whimpering and stuff. That's where the talking about trauma ended. Me crying in front of her for the first time.
Anyway though. It was just a whole lot to take in, a very VERY hard pill to swallow. It's still working its way down my throat, metaphorically speaking. I don't think I'm going psychotic though, as much as I worry about that shit. I think I'm just on an emotional rollercoaster, and a PTSD rollercoaster, from that session.
It's one thing for you guys to say I was tortured, it's one thing for me to admit to being tortured on an anonymous forum. But it's very, very heavy hitting, or it was for me - to have my own pdoc, someone I have come to trust, someone who is really f*cking good at her job and knows what she's talking about, tell me that I was tortured. Confirm that I was tortured. At that moment, I think I finally could no longer deny that it was real. As much as I wish, so badly, that it wasn't real. You know? It's like. I can't deny it anymore. I can't go "nah, torture is medieval dungeons and shit" in the back of my head anymore.
I'm just having a hard time with it. Having a hard time with the reality that the sleep deprivation, and the things done to keep me awake, hurt me, and break me, were all torture.
---
Today I sewed up a tether for my bear spray holster (many bears around my house, frequently in my yard, I have pictures of them next to my damn car so, I don't leave the house without bear spray). It's like, adjustable, can hang higher or lower, I used carpet/upholstery thread to sew it together. It's got a buckle so I can detach it, but also has stretch so I can deploy it without unclipping it (the plastic kinda clip you press both sides to detach, like you'd have on a bike helmet but bigger), and can do so one handed, without having to move clothing out of the way and stuff. So that was a good distraction. I love making things, and sewing takes a lot of attention to detail, carefulness, etc. Planning, too. Great distraction I think.
I went out for a walk today, after making the bear spray tether thingy. I don't even know wtf it's called but I made one hahaha. Had all the materials laying around.
My pdoc suggested by email this morning, that I go for a walk since it was so sunny and the weather was so nice. So I did, I felt like it.
Anyway, I walked for around about an hour, maybe longer. It was an anxious walk kinda, I was hypervigilant as f*ck. I felt like a nutter, turning at the slightest noise to see what it was. But, it was only an anxious walk -there-, not an anxious walk back. Walking back, I was tired, relaxed, a bit more confident and just feeling positive.
I walked to this place I remembered, from years ago, before my trauma, at the end of a street, like a cul-de-sac with no houses. I sat on a big glacial rock that was there. It was overlooking a hill, where the trees were cut down to clear room for power lines. It made like a corridor through the trees. I was staring right down it, the sun was just about in the middle of it. I just sat on that rock for a while, breathed, took my sunglasses off, closed my eyes and faced the sun, and just breathed and listened to the nature around me, the various different birds chirping, flying, little creatures climbing around through the trees and stuff (to one side was a forest) for a while.
Then I opened my eyes, put my sunglasses back on, and just looked around me for a while, observing the bumblebees and other bugs, the birds, the trees, the grass, all the wildflowers and stuff, and I just kinda appreciated the fact that I could even -do- any of that. That I was free, able to go for a walk, and just sit on a rock and think and calm down. I started to cry, not sobbing, but just like, crying. I dunno what exactly for. I think because of all the pain I had to endure, all the suffering, all the deprivation of freedom, the fact that for years, I was not allowed to go sit on a rock, go leave the house on my own, take a walk when I wanted to, bask in the sun and just enjoy nature, like I used to before my trauma, all the time, in the summer/fall/spring.
That is what made me cry, sitting on that rock. It was silent, quiet crying, tears rolling down my cheeks. Nobody around, nice and quiet and isolated. Only good neighborhoods nearby, bourgeois. So a bit safer of a part of town. I felt safe on that rock for some f*cking reason. I felt comfortable enough to cry, like I am when nobody is around, when I'm at home. Or I guess in front of my pdoc/t now.
When I walked back, I felt relieved though. I felt kinda happy, relaxed, somewhat at peace, the trauma maelstrom stopped whirling for a bit. I'm still feeling uplifted from doing that. My joint pain has also decreased considerably - I wonder if being high strung as hell, panicky as hell, and dealing with the most difficult therapy aftermath I ever have, made that pain increase, made that pain more severe? Maybe the body pains and stuff were body memories/flashbacks. I dunno. I just hurt all over the past couple days, but today I feel a lot better. I can bend my pinky just fine.
She said in her email that she thinks that I am making good progress. But, that I definitely should keep trying to take it very easy, to not push myself at all, use coping strategies, etc.
My emails to her were just as panicked, if not more so, than the posts in this thread. So, I feel like she has a pretty good picture of how messed up I felt yesterday.
I wanna ask - is my writing still off? Do I sound more calm and rational and normal than when I made this thread?
Thank you for your concern by the way, I really appreciate it because I really wanna know from other people, if they think I'm going psychotic or some shit, or if they're concerned about me. So don't be afraid to say something if you think I might be going off the rails, please. That goes for everyone, too, lol.
Both me and my pdoc think this is all from the intense EMDR session I had.. So yeah, ratcheting up of anxiety and panic. But it stemmed from a -REALLY- intense EMDR session. Like, super intense. Like, I should have told her I wanted to stop but didn't, like a dummy, kind of rough EMDR session.
I forget the context precisely (have it written down though) - but basically, we were trying to work on the gun pointing at me kinds of traumas. They're pretty intertwined with each other in my head. So it's been a bit rough. It still feels rough but I feel better than yesterday or the day before (the day of the rough EMDR session). I'm still a bit teary, crying now and then.
Anyway, the end of my trauma got brought up during one of the reprocessing sets, so she kept the buzzers going but just asked me to describe the end of the trauma. We talked about it. I don't wanna elaborate but, the torture. The psychosis from the torture. My fears around that. She pointed out to me, for the first time, that it was torture. She compared it to the shit at Guantanamo Bay. I am too afraid to look it up, but I remember when it happened and that f*cked up shit happened and prisoners were tortured.
We were talking about the forced sleep deprivation, my fears of psychosis happening again, and she made the Guantanamo bay comparison. She didn't say torture. I said torture.
She said "they subjected them to sleep deprivation in order to make them go psychotic, intentionally" trying to make the point that, psychosis just happens eventually to anyone, with enough sleep deprivation. That I have nothing to fear in regards to psychosis, that it won't return for me, because it was only caused by extreme circumstances that would cause any person to go psychotic.
But when she said that line, in the middle of it I think, before she finished saying it. I said "sleep deprivation torture" and then I don't even know what, and then I hear her calling my name repeatedly, I'm crying and she's extending her arm with a tissue held in her hand from a couple fingers, my hand reached out and took it slowly, and then I put it to my eyes and kinda cried into it for a while, whimpering and stuff. That's where the talking about trauma ended. Me crying in front of her for the first time.
Anyway though. It was just a whole lot to take in, a very VERY hard pill to swallow. It's still working its way down my throat, metaphorically speaking. I don't think I'm going psychotic though, as much as I worry about that shit. I think I'm just on an emotional rollercoaster, and a PTSD rollercoaster, from that session.
It's one thing for you guys to say I was tortured, it's one thing for me to admit to being tortured on an anonymous forum. But it's very, very heavy hitting, or it was for me - to have my own pdoc, someone I have come to trust, someone who is really f*cking good at her job and knows what she's talking about, tell me that I was tortured. Confirm that I was tortured. At that moment, I think I finally could no longer deny that it was real. As much as I wish, so badly, that it wasn't real. You know? It's like. I can't deny it anymore. I can't go "nah, torture is medieval dungeons and shit" in the back of my head anymore.
I'm just having a hard time with it. Having a hard time with the reality that the sleep deprivation, and the things done to keep me awake, hurt me, and break me, were all torture.
---
Today I sewed up a tether for my bear spray holster (many bears around my house, frequently in my yard, I have pictures of them next to my damn car so, I don't leave the house without bear spray). It's like, adjustable, can hang higher or lower, I used carpet/upholstery thread to sew it together. It's got a buckle so I can detach it, but also has stretch so I can deploy it without unclipping it (the plastic kinda clip you press both sides to detach, like you'd have on a bike helmet but bigger), and can do so one handed, without having to move clothing out of the way and stuff. So that was a good distraction. I love making things, and sewing takes a lot of attention to detail, carefulness, etc. Planning, too. Great distraction I think.
I went out for a walk today, after making the bear spray tether thingy. I don't even know wtf it's called but I made one hahaha. Had all the materials laying around.
My pdoc suggested by email this morning, that I go for a walk since it was so sunny and the weather was so nice. So I did, I felt like it.
Anyway, I walked for around about an hour, maybe longer. It was an anxious walk kinda, I was hypervigilant as f*ck. I felt like a nutter, turning at the slightest noise to see what it was. But, it was only an anxious walk -there-, not an anxious walk back. Walking back, I was tired, relaxed, a bit more confident and just feeling positive.
I walked to this place I remembered, from years ago, before my trauma, at the end of a street, like a cul-de-sac with no houses. I sat on a big glacial rock that was there. It was overlooking a hill, where the trees were cut down to clear room for power lines. It made like a corridor through the trees. I was staring right down it, the sun was just about in the middle of it. I just sat on that rock for a while, breathed, took my sunglasses off, closed my eyes and faced the sun, and just breathed and listened to the nature around me, the various different birds chirping, flying, little creatures climbing around through the trees and stuff (to one side was a forest) for a while.
Then I opened my eyes, put my sunglasses back on, and just looked around me for a while, observing the bumblebees and other bugs, the birds, the trees, the grass, all the wildflowers and stuff, and I just kinda appreciated the fact that I could even -do- any of that. That I was free, able to go for a walk, and just sit on a rock and think and calm down. I started to cry, not sobbing, but just like, crying. I dunno what exactly for. I think because of all the pain I had to endure, all the suffering, all the deprivation of freedom, the fact that for years, I was not allowed to go sit on a rock, go leave the house on my own, take a walk when I wanted to, bask in the sun and just enjoy nature, like I used to before my trauma, all the time, in the summer/fall/spring.
That is what made me cry, sitting on that rock. It was silent, quiet crying, tears rolling down my cheeks. Nobody around, nice and quiet and isolated. Only good neighborhoods nearby, bourgeois. So a bit safer of a part of town. I felt safe on that rock for some f*cking reason. I felt comfortable enough to cry, like I am when nobody is around, when I'm at home. Or I guess in front of my pdoc/t now.
When I walked back, I felt relieved though. I felt kinda happy, relaxed, somewhat at peace, the trauma maelstrom stopped whirling for a bit. I'm still feeling uplifted from doing that. My joint pain has also decreased considerably - I wonder if being high strung as hell, panicky as hell, and dealing with the most difficult therapy aftermath I ever have, made that pain increase, made that pain more severe? Maybe the body pains and stuff were body memories/flashbacks. I dunno. I just hurt all over the past couple days, but today I feel a lot better. I can bend my pinky just fine.
She said in her email that she thinks that I am making good progress. But, that I definitely should keep trying to take it very easy, to not push myself at all, use coping strategies, etc.
My emails to her were just as panicked, if not more so, than the posts in this thread. So, I feel like she has a pretty good picture of how messed up I felt yesterday.
I wanna ask - is my writing still off? Do I sound more calm and rational and normal than when I made this thread?
Thank you for your concern by the way, I really appreciate it because I really wanna know from other people, if they think I'm going psychotic or some shit, or if they're concerned about me. So don't be afraid to say something if you think I might be going off the rails, please. That goes for everyone, too, lol.
Freida
VIP Member
Yep -- that's what happens to me too. T says we know we will be done when my hands stop hurting and I can talk about it without coughing. It's all that stuff held in your body that you can finally let out because you now you are safe.
YES! Much more like you. I'll admit that was a bit worrisome - but I am so very happy and honored that you chose to come here and let us help you through it.
- Post starter
- #18
blackemerald1
VIP Member
Hey @Sweetleaf - so just so you understand - there is nothing in your writing that flags anything psychotic to me. So I think if people around you & your psydoc say it's not happening then you ought to believe them. There is nothing disordered about your writing. Your writing makes perfect, logical sense. But I understand your fear and it's good to be able to ask too!
I think your walk may have done you a tonne of good. :) Your description of the process of going to and sitting on that rock and noticing your environment around you, your feelings about safety and the difference between the walk to and from that rock in terms of your thinking show that you are in the 'present' and are calming down from that intense session with your Doctor.
Appreciating that when your Doctor uses the term 'torture' there is no term less fitting is definitely a significant event and it must be incredibly emotional to know that you survived and are now finally healing.
You are responding well to your Doctor's suggestions, you can concentrate on small and detailed things like sewing and your writing ^^ have shown an accurate and detailed level of focus that would probably be missing in big chunks with somebody who is teetering on the edge of psychosis.
I think you are coming through a tremendously difficult session with success. So well done Sweetleaf - :hug:
Yesterday there was a tone of panic, urgency & fear in your writing. (Just the tone)
Today in your latest post - your writing is much calmer and a completely different tone. So from what you have described would suggest to me at least, your progression from a very intense EMDR session to a settling of emotional and trauma turmoil. So completely normal!
Your doctor is very valuable and experienced and I am glad you are receiving some follow up care via email between sessions. Do lots of self-soothing and calming things just to help your body know it is safe. I too believe that we can tense up and hold ourselves differently whilst enduring extremely stressful periods making our muscles scream.
I've busted my abdominal muscles several times by holding myself so tightly. I try not to but I do it unconsciously and have to think to stop myself doing it all the time.
I'm so pleased you are feeling better today. :)
:hug:
I think your walk may have done you a tonne of good. :) Your description of the process of going to and sitting on that rock and noticing your environment around you, your feelings about safety and the difference between the walk to and from that rock in terms of your thinking show that you are in the 'present' and are calming down from that intense session with your Doctor.
Appreciating that when your Doctor uses the term 'torture' there is no term less fitting is definitely a significant event and it must be incredibly emotional to know that you survived and are now finally healing.
You are responding well to your Doctor's suggestions, you can concentrate on small and detailed things like sewing and your writing ^^ have shown an accurate and detailed level of focus that would probably be missing in big chunks with somebody who is teetering on the edge of psychosis.
I think you are coming through a tremendously difficult session with success. So well done Sweetleaf - :hug:
Yesterday there was a tone of panic, urgency & fear in your writing. (Just the tone)
Today in your latest post - your writing is much calmer and a completely different tone. So from what you have described would suggest to me at least, your progression from a very intense EMDR session to a settling of emotional and trauma turmoil. So completely normal!
Your doctor is very valuable and experienced and I am glad you are receiving some follow up care via email between sessions. Do lots of self-soothing and calming things just to help your body know it is safe. I too believe that we can tense up and hold ourselves differently whilst enduring extremely stressful periods making our muscles scream.
I've busted my abdominal muscles several times by holding myself so tightly. I try not to but I do it unconsciously and have to think to stop myself doing it all the time.
I'm so pleased you are feeling better today. :)
:hug:
- Post starter
- #20
Sweetleaf
Diamond Member
Lol. understatement of the year. Shoulda timed myself writing that.
It was fast. Don't think I did much, if any editing, and I usually pour over my writing for ages. Moreso when it is "official" kind of writing - where I am so much less casual than here, more grammatically correct (I f*cking destroy English majors in grammar knowledge, because I studied grammar. Grammar no English major would ever, ever need to be aware of. Because English is, on a -very- superficial but useful level, grammatically simple. Yet it has a bunch of cases - hard to tell just looking at it, knowing it as a native language. Many cases. But, just about as simple as conjugation of verbs can ever get. Pronunciation is probably worse than French to be quite honest, but my grip on French, though I can read it apparently with pretty darn good pronunciation for someone who can't f*cking speak it, - agh my horrible long sentences there... blame my knowledge of German and the papers I had to write in German... they have sentences that can run on for over a page, with all the motherf*cking goddamn important shit like VERBS at the end.
It's like, you are forced to read the entire sentence in order to understand it. Not so much in English.
Wish I could just teleport to Germany again. No bad memories there. Not one. Lmfao. Can't say that for the US. Okay. I can say that for California, but I went there for disneyland as a kid so how the f*ck could I have had bad memories? That was even before the sexual abuse from my dad! So like, yeah. I've also only visited -every- state that has coastline on the pacific. No others. At all.
Never been to Canada.
Never been to Mexico despite being RIGHT THERE AT THE BORDER. I still blame my sister for being an axious f*ck, and honestly, somewhat racist, for thinking that it was "too unsafe" to -visit- Mexico... to just... cross the motherf*cking goddamn border and turn around -just- to say "We've been to Mexico!"
I saw Mexico. Didn't go to Mexico.
Maybe when I heal from all this stupid shit, I'll do a world tour for myself. Would be fun as hell, I've been fantasizing about it since I was a kid. My guitar/bass instructor, every single February, took the month off to -go around the f*cking planet-
Different shit each time.
His biggest regret - passing up an opportunity to go do work in Antarctica. Only continent he hasn't been to. He had a map in his studio, a map of Earth. There were pins EVERYWHERE he visited, and the f*cking thing was covered in pins. Covered. I have no idea but basically, he's been just about everywhere to some degree.
I wanna be like that.
I wanna have that in my future. When I'm old. A map with a f*cking shitload of pins on it showing everywhere I've been, instead of this massive but tiny corner of the world I have visited.
Sorry kinda rambled there but it's nice to think about the -FUTURE- instead of the past for once - wow.
blackemerald1
VIP Member
:laugh: about the 'been to Mexico' - you may go back there one day :)
I just take my hat off to people that can learn new languages. I only know one :notworthy:
You are incredibly talented @Sweetleaf - I hope you know this!
I think it is very healthy and important to make plans for your future and with your skill's in language I'd imagine not only would it be helpful but also an excellent skill for employment if you did want to travel?
And..there is a lot of relief and even solace to think about your future.
I just take my hat off to people that can learn new languages. I only know one :notworthy:
You are incredibly talented @Sweetleaf - I hope you know this!
I think it is very healthy and important to make plans for your future and with your skill's in language I'd imagine not only would it be helpful but also an excellent skill for employment if you did want to travel?
And..there is a lot of relief and even solace to think about your future.
Freida
VIP Member
pick me pick me!!! There is a AAA world cruise that takes 90 days and hits all the good places. Last time I checked it was like $60,000 so we will have to win the lotto but sounds like a plan to me!
The one place I wanted to go that I won't make. I got offered a job working at mcmurdo as a dispatcher but they wanted me for the year and I only wanted the summer (90 day) gig. I still regret it. But I didn't want to be away from hubby that long.... guess love wins. dammit. :wtf:
blackemerald1
VIP Member
Oh come on @Frieda !! - he could have gone with you! Kept you warm etc? They do have their uses you know ha! :sorry:
Freida
VIP Member
that's what I thought! :) he, however, declined the opportunity.... something about....you want to go where???
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