Recovery Framed By Failure

[Springer80]

Im writing this on a phone so keeping it shorter than I would otherwise.

This is bothering me and undermining my self esteem. I have put a super human amount of effort in to achieving 'normal' things. These things were what I wanted to be but disconnected from what my true emotional state and physical capabilities.

In parallel to this I did my absolute best persuing and recieving treatment.

All those externally driven efforts not suprisingly didnt do much for bringing resolution. Even when I achieved the goal it failed to bring what I needed.

So when I look over where I am now and how I got here, I feel a litany of desperate, misguided full throttle events which ultimately saw me crash.

Sometimes the crashing was good because it was needed and was the only way I could be released.from the current phase I was in.

My issue is I feel like the goalposts moved after each round and what I thought would be success wasnt. I feel like a failure.even though Im physically better than ive ever been. Even my successes feel empty because of it. Its effecting my ability to move forward cos I shrink from any more distress and creating more fragmemted chapters in my life.

 

[Deleted member 12723]

You are not a failure nor have you failed. The journey of healing and recovery in my opinion is a very long one according to our traumas, false beliefs. false guilt, illusions, and a ton of false beliefs about ourselves.

You are better than you think you are and you are not as bad as you think you are.

My therapy is not over and I have been in and out for breaks to learn how to think for myself started in 1985. I was a complete basket case when I first started and I had so many painful and costly lessons to learn.

Our mistakes are not failure but learning experiences in my opinion.

I hear your discouragement and I find you to be an excellent real human being. You sure have made a difference in my life.

I really hope you are not beating yourself up.

Healing and recovery will come to you if you perservere and keep on trying and do not give up. You have a future and a hope.

Therapy process is so hard and long drawn out. But you will one day begin to have more and more good days. I promise you that.

I understand that you are expressing how you feel right now and I hope this feeling passes with some good coming out of it. I wish you the very best.

 

[Springer80]

Thank you gizmo, its pretty upsetting being told your better than you think. Its really nice of you to say :)

 

[Deleted member 12723]

You are most welcome. A friend told me that years ago, and after struggling for so many years, I wished I had gone easier on myself with the beating up of me by me. I had so much false guilt for being a failure as a wife and a mother. My daughter tells me that I am a good mom and I believe her.

I am sorry it upset you. Not my intention at all. Just food for thought because it is true.

 

[Pencil]

cos I shrink from any more distress and creating more fragmemted chapters in my life.

I get that. I want to think about this and get back later.

 

[Hope4Now]

@Springer80 I have read your post about six times. It sounds like you have worked very hard on healing yourself. I well understand the "moving goal posts." So many of those are created by some notion of what we think we should be/accomplish. Yet when we accomplish them, they still don't make us feel good at a core level. Other people may see the accomplishments as progress or admirable, but inside of us we feel empty...maybe even disappointed in ourselves for investing time and energy into the achievement, and it is still not enough.

We need to heal the underneath beliefs about ourselves. The ones that tell us we are not enough, inadequate, unloveable, destined to fail so just give up...and a myriad of other possibilities--just fill in the blank.

Addressing these beliefs cannot be done on just an intellectual/cognitive level. We cannot just "talk" ourselves out of them. If we do, we will continue pushing ourselves to achieve ever different/bigger goals in an attempt to resolve the emotional pain caused by these beliefs. Somehow we need to get in emotional touch with what we believe about ourselves...connect with them in a compassionate way and heal them.

For most people...even those without PTSD...these beliefs were formed in childhood, and are deeply ingrained. It's part of our human condition, really. When you have PTSD there are such complex and painful layers that it can take a really long time to access the beliefs and feelings that go along with them.

There are some good resources out there that can help as can certain types of therapy (some much more than others).

I am sad that part if you feels like a failure and another part is afraid to keep trying. You have obviously accomplished a lot through a lot of hard work. So another part if you feels proud of all that work and recognizes some progress. That is really wonderful. It sounds like those parts are in conflict with one another too. If you are in therapy, I wonder whether that conflict/disconnect would provide what is often called a "trailhead," a place from which to start exploring how and why these parts of you are relating to each other?

I am sending you supportive and cheering energy. Don't give up on you...

 

[Pencil]

Whenever I think of this post, my mind shuts off all intelligent thought and returns to one incident. I'll tell you what it is, as something in me tells me that it makes sense:

As a kid I could not knit - my efforts for domestic science were a sweaty sticky tight mess. So my mother usually did my knitting the night before it had to be handed in. She could knit and read / chat / watch tv, and she knitted perfectly.

Last year, a friend's daughter was in tears - same story, mess on the needles, had to be redone. I knew so well what she was going through and said I'd help her. Unraveled the lot and started over. Ten minutes later I realized I was knitting - perfect tension - while chatting. Multi-tasking at its best. And it hit me that I never knitted beyond the last detested domestic science class when I was 14. But somehow, magically, miraculously something in me gelled. It's as if completely unrelated skills developed, and the knitting skills developed in tandem. This does not sound possible in theory, yet it happened in practice.

I wonder if being 'driven' is not detrimental. And I wonder if the 'fragmented chapters' won't someone come together.

 

[Springer80]

Thank you so much @Hope4Now and @Pencil. Im crying again! It really means alot from you both. I feel very lucky to get such considered answers.

Im not in therapy as such. After years of talk therapy I finally found a trauma specialist, so although im an active client, in reality shes so far away I barely see her.

Last time we.met I went to face some deep stuff. Attachment based things, as I knew it had been steering my rudder for me all this time. I curled up in a ball and said to her 'I want my Daddy'.

It was a strange sensation, its where I go when I dissociate. Obviously I don't mean my actual father but a sort of archetype of values that I needed.

It's been tough realising that I havent achieved personal external goals because I was.bending them toward that need but I didnt get that met because I was too fearful ashamed and ptsd ridden to discover it and admit it.

Thanks very.much for your support. X

 

[Pencil]

We're siblings - I want mommy.

How did your therapist react? What happened to the whole 'touch' issue. 18 months ago it was on the agenda, but in your interim posts the issue seemed to have 'disappeared'.

fearful ashamed and ptsd ridden

You're in good company :)

Attachment based things, as I knew it had been steering my rudder for me all this time.

I know, it does steer the rudder. Was it through romantic relationship waters?

 

[Springer80]

I havent expressed the touch thing to my T. Just getting the words out was enough at the time. I did ask for a duvet or blanket though, which I got.

My rudder has been very efficient in knocking over everything! Its like some inverted trinity. Career wise I wanted to work with trauma narrative in the museums sector, to give myself a voice and a honest platform for weaving life, ie. people into. I started to get ill and after qualifying realised I needed to rest. Also I was scared of starting afresh somewhere new and I had this incling that what I really wanted was acceptance.

I then meet someone who does accept me and makes me feel safe enough to be that little girl at heart. I however am still caught up physically by the relentless pushing, the belief im not good enough, the shame of my ptsd and the need to connect to my voice and do it in a public or altruistic way. He goes into self protective mode and I cant overcome my symptoms to explain.

Eveything goes horribly wrong. I then think ill walk to the estd conference to raise money and achieve a freedom from my condition and past via blogging.

A hilarious notion really as I was on the verge of cfs and chronic vitamin d collapse. I am actually ashamed of this, it really dented me. I didnt want to be regarded as one of those hot air people who never see ideas through. It was about self belief.

 

[Hope4Now]

After years of talk therapy I finally found a trauma specialist, so although im an active client, in reality shes so far away I barely see her.

Yeah, talk therapy doesn't do it. I did 3x week talk therapy for four years when I was 18-22 and while it got me to calm down the suicidal ideation and some of the self-destructive behavior, and helped me through some tough decision-making, etc., it did NOTHING to heal any of the underlying issues. I didn't know that then, and the next 28 years is a long story of continuing dissociation, denial of pain, numbing of emotion, toxic self-criticism, and push push push to be some kind of ideal person that made me highly productive and functional but still devastatingly empty inside and feeling alienated from myself and everyone else. In the trauma therapy I'm doing now, I'm trying to untangle and deal with some of this stuff. Every time I go all cognitive, my therapist helps me drill down to the feelings in the body and my heart. It is terrifying and excruciating, but I think it is going to help. I'm sorry your T is so far away! Even seeing mine 2x week is not enough. I wish I could go every day (but then, that's an extreme part of me too).

I curled up in a ball and said to her 'I want my Daddy'.

We're siblings - I want mommy.

LOL. Can I be your sibling too? I want BOTH! See, never enough for me! It actually horrifies me when I am curled in a ball wishing for Mommy and/or Daddy--they (the real ones) are about the LAST thing I want. But what I want is that comfort/trust/security/strength/guidance...as you said, sort of the archtype. Sigh. Unattainable. That's where figuring out how to heal all those hurt little kids inside ourselves comes in. I wish there were some magic for that. I asked my therapist if he could wave his magic wand and make them all feel safe and happy again.

I however am still caught up physically by the relentless pushing, the belief im not good enough, the shame of my ptsd and the need to connect to my voice and do it in a public or altruistic way.

Yup. It is extremely frightening for me to slow down and stop pushing myself. In a bizarrely helpful way, the only reason it has happened is that I ended up with a disabling chronic pain condition that has forced me to slow down physically...but even then, for 18 months I pushed through it and finally really started to fall apart this past fall. Because of that, I have had to learn to tolerate having people do some things for me (very hard) and express concern for me (also very hard)...both make many parts of me feel very ashamed.

I am intrigued by your drive to connect to your voice in a public or altruistic way. I would really like to know more about this if you are willing to share. I think I have this same drive (but wasn't really thinking of it consciously until I read what you wrote). But then it is shut down by another part that does not want vulnerability and doesn't trust anyone...so the voice gets displaced into other things. For example, my new book for teachers has a surprising amount of stuff about the toll trauma takes on students' learning.

 

[Pencil]

First, your posts are always so dense to the point of being almost cryptic, so I want to make sure I understand. But first I want to ask you a question you obviously don't have to answer.

From your posts during the last year and a bit, I get the impression (and I could be wrong) that you go from extremes: you are totally immobilized, then you slowly recover and you go out there and you do really interesting things, boundary-shifting things, and then you collapse. Is that correct or have I read incorrectly between the lines / posts / riddles? :cautious: