Screaming

[Powder]

Had a bad experience today when crying the room started spinning down into darkness. A child part made me hide. Only until I curled up and hid did my crying stop and the room stop spinning. I thought of leaving the hiding place, but I heard a voice inside say very firmly and urgently "You Hide!"

Anytime I tried to leave, I heard her yell "You Hide!"

I ended up hiding in a locked room for hours feeling this has happened before, maybe several times, when I was a kid. I remembered hiding and then not being able to come out of hiding, same as this. Something in me won't let me stop hiding once I start.

Finally, I seemed to snap out and was able to later talk to my husband/supporter about what happened. In relating the above, I started flashing back to a fear experience that is totally unclear to me. All I know is I was afraid I and someone else (mom? sister?) was going to be killed. I cried out.

Then, I started screaming like I was being killed, and my husband couldn't calm me down out of flashback. He opened a window to get cold air in but I didn't notice that. I kept looking out the window looking (for help?).

The worst thing is I have no memory of what happened.

This is not the first time I got this same flashback of being killed and screaming in terror. I am sure it'll keep coming back because I have no way to figure it out. Other things that I could figure out I could process and resolve.

Not this one. It makes no sense yet.

Has anyone found a way to process a stuck terror memory without context?

 

[Nam]

I wait. Normally it comes.

I'm sorry you went through that. With your DID, I'm sure it's more complicated to process through a memory.

 

[Powder]

Thanks, Nam. I have to be patient. It's come back after being gone for years. I'm not too happy about that. I feel like a prisoner to it.

I don't have a DID diagnosis at this point. I've been screened for it, and didn't get the label, but I am aware that I have structural dissociation. My Structural Dissociation kicks up and takes over when my main self gets too exhausted. I just worked six days in a row and had a couple hard work weeks with not a single good night of sleep.

It may be a flashback and not a part, but I say part because it "took over" and made me do something I didn't see the point of doing (hide). But maybe flashbacks make you do things, so I don't know.

I don't have a T. to help me to pick it apart into the DSM. I feel like child traumatized parts took over today. It has been a hard day.

 

[Nam]

@Muse Now that you've explained it, I have done this in the past. I know exactly what you mean by main self gets too exhausted. I don't know what you should do. If you have something to help you rest, take that. Sleep, rest, eat well, and exercise. See if the visual comes. I haven't had just terror before a memory. It's usually pain and fear. Then a visual/understanding comes fairly quickly, within 24 hours. There is nothing I do really to make it come. It just does. I am no help at all.

 

[Powder]

Not at all, thank you. I'm sure that even in PTSD an EP, emotional part, or walled off traumatized part, intrudes upon the consciousness.

My supporter has told me that he can sense that "I'm working hard to repress" more stuff trying to surface. :( I know that it's healing, but it is horrible to go through so roughly. When I get run down from fighting it, it's just worse. I should just let it come up. :(

 

[ButterflyBean]

Most importantly, I want to say that I am sending you support. That must've been very difficult, but I'm glad your supporter was with you. I do have one question, which you don't have to answer of course, but I am wondering why you do not have a therapist? I really think it may help, especially when times are so difficult. I wish you the best on your journey!

 

[Nam]

It is scary when they come. I had one come up recently and I was so shameful. So disgusted and horrified all at the same time. I tried to ground by taking a shower. It did help. But sometimes they are just awful. Make me want to die. If I let myself cry and yell until I don't feel the need anymore, I feel better. Then I go high with energy until it fades back to my normal self. It was just one. I can't imagine getting more than that. Maybe that is what your body is doing? Giving you just bits and pieces.

A book I'm reading says suppressed memories is like trying to keep a cork underwater. It takes energy and effort. and that takes a toll.

 

[Powder]

Thanks @Nam and @HollyBeans27
I'm still in it. Cold, shaking, can't eat, keep thinking about it. All that stuff. Somehow I got through work and forgot to drink water. Should definitely drink water soon.

On my way to work, what Nam said, is right, the connections start to show up and pull together. I look at what I felt and did in detail and it makes a kind of sense to other memories. It fell into place somewhat on the drive to work. Why being out in the rain was sooo triggering this last week at my daughter's elementary school. I was so shaken after that. So drained.

Here goes to glue them together.

When I started screaming, I was reenacting what happened in a traumatic moment. It began as a cry of protest, and upset, and as I watched with increasing alarm, it escalated into screaming, which is all I could get out of my mouth.

I began to reach to my left, and my Husband didn't understand why. I was grabbing for her, I was trying to pull her back to safety. I was screaming because our mother was trying to remove her from the car and we were in a parked car by the bridge, over the river, at night in the rain.

Now I see the memory that was triggered long ago and the screaming and pulling go together. They are two sides of a coin.

Long ago a smell triggered a memory of my Dad not coming home from work, my mom cooking dinner (it was the boiled peas smell that triggered this) and her getting quiet and sullen. Something was wrong. My little sister had already went to bed. I watched helplessly and hyper-vigilantly. I already had PTSD.

My mother put on my boots and coat. It was after 8 pm, bedtime. She slid these onto my sleeping sister and carried her to the car. We were put into the Bronco, my sister asleep to my left on the back seat. I was afraid. It was pouring rain, and the wipers were going fast. She drove silently to the bridge, and parked, facing the bridge. I thought maybe she was expecting my father to come across it and wanted to confront him there, maybe to prove something. She parked and left the headlights pointed to the path down to the river, that was odd. Now I see.

Now I see that she needed to be able to see her way down to the river, taking us with her. That didn't make sense until just now. It was not about trapping him, seeing his car coming; it was always about going down to the river under the bridge.

But the visual part of the memory stopped abruptly there.

The screaming part picked up there. I believe: that is when mom got out of her seat and went to take my sister from the car. I was on alert that night, and I sensed that something was wrong. I don't actually remember what happened between the above memory and then my screaming and pulling my sister to keep her in the car.

I was screaming and pulling my sister back into the car, for what seemed a while, also looking out the rear view for help. During the screaming, I reached out and was pulling the fabric of the couch toward me for dear life, not my life, but my little sisters. I thought "going to kill us!" and that is all I can remember. I was also frantically looking out the rear windshield, hoping someone would come along and see this and help us.

Now the reenacting I did while screaming makes sense.

Now you should also know that my sister tried to kill herself a few years back, on the anniversary of an abortion, by drowning herself. She also tried to bang her head and go under. She had a near death flashback experience in the tub. I think that "killing" her own baby daughter--it would have been a girl--made her feel too much like the perpetrator, our mom, in her trauma.

I believe that my mother was successful in taking my sister from me and the car and that she tried to drown her. I have no idea what I did, if I followed her down to the water, or if I fainted, or what.

The horrible thing is, that after remembering all of the violence and rape from my father, this violence about my mother is just a baptism into hell, a new low. I now understand why I felt so unsafe being left alone with either of them. And after this incident, I hid a lot from my mother when she was alone with us at home.

As I type this, I feel like there is water stinging my right ear, like an earache. I feel all wet and cold, and like I had to fight to save my sister's life. I feel exhausted and like "what If I am not strong enough next time?"

And perhaps this is why my sister accuses me of trying to kill her. If she woke to my screaming and pulling on her, she may have recorded me as the attacker, rather than our mom, first, before my mom tried to kill her. Somehow, maybe she blames me.

Also, I became hypervigilant of my sister, and I believed that only I could save her after that. I began to lose my marbles, and I began hiding in the basement, only feeling safe when in the woods or grandparents, away from home.

 

[Nam]

You are doing perfectly. That's it. Work it through.

I have a unique story of "now I know" kind of situation. My father liked to fish and he would take me with him many times. I remember these times as happy and joyful. It's a special occasion to have fish. He never let me on the boat and I remember being upset. He told me to sit on the grass and I remember looking at the clouds and seeing bugs...I blew into blades of grass trying to make that squeak that my father so easily could do.

It wasn't until I was 13 that realized why he wouldn't let me on the boat. He couldn't swim. It was for my own safety. His drowning was the beginning of a terrible time. So many times I wished I was on the boat with him.

@Muse You've got moxy. Even in your memories and during the toughest time in your life, you are fighting. Fighting for what you love and fighting for your life. You're still here. And so am I.