Real Or Flashback

[PreciousChild]

I've been reading a lot about developmental ptsd, like Healing Developmental Trauma and am finding it helpful. But in the moment, I still find it hard to have enough perspective to know what is real and what is part of a flashback. I feel like everyone is turning their backs on me - my family, colleagues, friends, and even folks I volunteer with. I've felt this way before, and brought myself to the brink feeling like the world was crashing around me, and then I'll learn in the next moment that my fears were not real.

I keep scrutinizing my behaviors in the past few weeks and am finding all sorts of things to criticize myself over. I'm feeling so exposed and vulnerable. My biggest traumatic moment was when my family left me home alone for a whole night and part of the next day when I was just a toddler/very young child because my dad was offended about how I was chewing my food. My offense was so slight, yet the punishment was so big. There were many other such moments. I've lived my whole life in fear that the slightest rude, off-handed behavior on my part could bring down the sledge hammer. I know that this must be at work, but all the criticisms in my head about what I've done recently is so real, so truth-like.

 

[Justmehere]

I struggle with something similar from time to time. I endured severe neglect and big punishments as a kid for loading the dishwasher wrong and very small things like that. I get scared at times that everyone is going to leave me all of a sudden, and I will look and find ways where I think this is for sure going to happen in my present moment as an adult, only to discover that no one is mad or leaving me at all.

Do you have a safe friend you can "reality check" with? Someone where you can say "I am thinking this.... because of...." and then they can help discern if this is real to this moment or if this is the past intruding upon this present moment?

The past fears are probably partly playing a role, and even if everyone is turning their back on you, the more you can manage the past fears, the better you can get through whatever is real to this moment. The more you address the past fears, the more it will be easier to tell what is actually due to the present.

Internal family systems / ego state / e-parenting therapy techniques have helped me when I have had similar developmental fears come up in the present that seem to be about both the past and the preset. It's about identifying the needs of ourselves back then, and finding ways to work through the pain and meet or handle the needs in this moment now. I do this by writing letters to the kid that I was back then, and finally telling myself what I should have heard when I was a kid. It makes the picture of this present moment more accurate.

Another way to look at it is to write out what you are saying to yourself when you criticize yourself, and to write out what your abusers said to you. The way you are criticizing yourself now, I am guessing, may reflect things perhaps your abusers said to you, or mild unintentional agreement with them. It's unspoken and sometimes subtle thought that "they were right..." that needs to be challenged. They were not right then, and whatever you have done in this moment now, you don't deserve to beat yourself up so harshly for it now either.

I don't know what you feel you have done to deserve being abandoned by everyone. It is my guess that the fear is more from the past because of how you describe it now, in this moment, is very black and white. Ex: "Everyone is turning their backs..." Non-trauma based fears tend to be less black and white, less all or nothing. Another reason I think it may be more trauma based is because you write of it in a very shame based way, and less like someone who just made a mistake and feels guilty about it and that guilt is fueling change, and more like someone who feels they are bad and it's hopeless. Perhaps you have made a mistake. Perhaps some people will turn their back on you. Perhaps some relationships can be repaired and some won't be. But you don't need to keep repeating to yourself harsh negative self talk about it to yourself. It's not likely to be deserved or even if you feel it is deserved, it's probably not helping you change in the way you want. You can learn from the mistake and do better in the future, and I doubt you have made the kinds of mistakes worth total abandonment by all those who care about you. You are of great value. Try to be as kind to you as I believe you would likely be to others in your shoes, and that may help sort out how accurate the fear is, and what should be done about it.

 

[PreciousChild]

Thanks so much Justmehere. It's nice to just hear that someone can relate. You make really, really good points, and understand that there could be a reality component here. I am all too painfully aware that having had trauma in my life has left me with quirks that can be alienating. The more I recover, the better I am at being okay most of the time, but once in a while, I'll do something that feels like a reaction to the ptsd, maybe even self-sabotage. It's hard to figure those things out though when I think anything and everything could be possibly offensive, and I walk around thinking everyone has a problem with me.

My biggest crime this week was that I wrote an intense email arguing my point a little too strongly to a friend, and that might have been alienating. But this friend has always said how much he thinks I'm awesome and he's known me for several years. Could he turn his back because I argued my point a little too intensely? I know better than to criticize him or say anything that is inflammatory. It was just a little too long and a little too strongly argued. He has always been very supportive and flattering, which makes any possible loss of good feelings extremely difficult to imagine.

I don't have much else to confess. My self-criticisms are pretty subtle and revolve around the idea that somehow I did something quirky or wrong.

I remember when I was a teen, I once walked into the dining room of a restaurant I worked at, and it slowly dawned on me that everyone in the room hated me. It was so real, it was like a blanket covering the room. I could even feel the weight of it on my chest. Since I took it for a fact, I decided to get out of everyone's way and brooded in a corner. When another busperson came to me to start a conversation, I was so taken aback that I could barely focus on what he was saying. He kind of stopped talking and just gave me a quick hug and walked away. This is not someone who was particularly affectionate to anyone, but he must have seen something and took pity. I think my current panic is like this restaurant incident and so many others. I am swimming in self-loathing and drama about people hating me, and it usually turns out that people haven't even given me a second thought.

I'm realizing also that even if this friend is irritated with me to the point that he wants to distance himself from me, what does that mean to me? It's so much more important for me right now to forgive and embrace that part of me that had to be right, that had to argue the point. I still put that part of myself at a distance as something wrong and shameful. I'm trying to use this opportunity to choose her over my possibly lost friend. I choose her, me.

 

[PreciousChild]

I just wanted to post an update that there were no lost friendships. My overreaction to the email was the only thing my friend expressed concern about. I was reading in the Healing Trauma book about how any perceived rejection is experienced as catastrophic to someone with c-ptsd. I felt like I did so much healing in my life, but I'm feeling at this moment like I'm only just at the cusp. The level of distortion of my reality is so overwhelming, it's hard to know where to even begin.