Shame Of Asking For Support

[Intrepid]

I can keep my worst sh*t or my crazy sh*t to myself and I can manage on my own better.

Getting out my worst stuff often seemed as traumatic as the stuff itself. But with time it did come out. If this is not the right format, I hope you can find it. If you don't trust your therapist to survive your worst stuff (I didn't for the longest time. I thought it would burn her out, or just make her kick me out of her office) then I hope you can find some other way. I used a lot of delay tactics. I hid, dissociated, threatened myself, and just got crazy, all to forget. I hoped for a miracle, or a short cut. But nothing worked.

One thing I've been helped by is letting my self be done. I actually used the words "I'm over it". I get tired. I get really exhausted. When I'm like that some people will give me pep talks, but pep talks aren't really the point. I want t be okay in my own skin. I try to be okay, but sometimes it just doesn't work that way. It's okay for me to give up on what doesn't work. That's what I needed in order to grasp onto what does.

 

[Chava]

If you don't trust your therapist to survive your worst stuff (I didn't for the longest time. I thought it would burn her out, or just make her kick me out of her office) then I hope you can find some other way.

oh my god, I will not start over (pretty sure I'd die first). I might quit, but I'm never going to start this therapy thing over. I think the really hard part is I kind of started to trust my therapist and this process, but lately I feel like my stress is too much and I've been left to flounder...my therapist thinks I'm getting better but I'm burning myself. She thinks I'm grumbling or whining when I think I'm asking for help. I don't know how to do therapy, even good therapy, which seems to be slapping me in the face with a feeling I can't get better and I really am f*cked up beyond repair. Maybe she's forcing me to figure out a better support network or maybe I'm not clear, or maybe she really just doesn't care. Anyhow, I'm really confused. I feel sometimes like she sees me drowning and turns around because she's exhausted, knowing I'll go to ER right before I'd actually die. ?? Which is true, I'm pretty comfortable with ER.

I wish I didn't notice patterns so deeply...like her unresponsiveness (or less responsive or friendly) once I started getting really crazy. Makes me feel a little borderline (which she doesn't agree with), how I notice these changes (though I notice patterns all over the place). But I'm not mad at her, just myself because I feel like I've wrecked this. I feel like I've gone beyond her consistency limit, even though she's a good trauma therapist, which makes me feel impossible. I'd rather not have re-learned that about myself.

I had the guts to ask and she said she's been busy (but this has been months, and it's been going downhill). So it feels like she just doesn't care or is putting up with me and thinking I don't notice....vs maybe tell me yes, the e-mailing is too much, let's figure out something else. Even though that would make me feel initially really shitty I wouldn't feel so confused and like she's waiting for me to just disappear. I probably do need "pep talks" only to know anyone cares. It's pathetic. Or maybe just direction. I'm a lot better when stress is low, but it's not been coming down...just escalating and all this shit coming together. I've quit and un-quit and might quit again but know I'll never start over. It's too difficult. I feel cut open and bleeding and just have to find my own way to pull together a little bit just to get by. But because of all this risk and shame at this point, I also need to find a way to do that by myself just to even continue working with someone. I can't risk telling her anymore how shitty I feel because the response situation feels painful and I know I'm just burdening her more, and I just feel worse about myself (I'm impossible). I think I'm trying not to feel like I'm not real. Rambling here might be a last ditch effort. But I burned up my legs last night and feel like they asked for it.

I've told her I don't have any good feelings, I'm burning myself, I feel like i'm getting worse and it feels like she's unresponsive, maybe hoping I'll go away. I think she doesn't want me to panic, but also wants me to believe everything might just be hormonal. Hard to trust someone in this situation but I think she's a good therapist. I just can't do this. I've had too much stress I can't seem to de-stress from and feel trapped and also left alone with it to fight by myself even though I don't know what the F*ck is happening or what I'm doing. Sleeping with a knife, stuff like this helps, but I can't access my own self-care anymore...the stress and added burden of trying to reach out in the right way has been too much. I do feel like I'm "done." I'm honestly trying to find a safe addiction or way to harm myself without scars. I just need something.

Sorry that was long too. I just need to write in a f((ing journal but that seems too self-affirming. I can't do artwork or writing or anything right now. I'm too ashamed and disconnected...it's all shit because I'm nowhere. I don't know what to do.

 

[Chava]

(maybe done here too because I have to erase my mind, but I really have appreciated the support...means a lot, thanks for putting up with my rambling...holy crap, I don't know what's happening to me, but I need to get myself sedated or extremely distracted somehow, so that's what I'm looking for at this point)

 

[KwanYingirl]

Chava, so you quit therapy and drop out of the group. Then what? Don't you think part of recovering from trauma is to face it as reality? It hurts like hell. Mind f#*k, body screaming, feeling like ripping (or burning) the acid out of your soul. I make corn bags. I get cheapo washcloths at Target, sew em up and fill them with 3cups of feed corn. Microwave for 3 minutes if you're normal, I heat them for five so they're so hot they burn my skin. My thighs are permanently dis colored. Then when I'm watching TV I pick at the skin of my right foot, never the left. It's all scabby.

Therapy might help if I could go three times a week. I've had two others that got me nowhere. Now I'm with a trauma specialist. I like him but he keeps a healthy boundary. But here's where he differs from the run of the mill therapists: he knows how trauma consumes the host of it. Nothing shakes him. When I tell on myself for SI or overusing my sleeping pills, he's like-well sometimes you handle overwhelm by emailing me and using DBT skills and get back to baseline without self abuse. Sometimes though I just have to burn it out or rip my skin off. Then I hate myself because how long is he going to put up with my slip ups. It's his opinion that these difficult coping techniques we use work fast. I am well aware of how it feels to self injure. When will it end? Forever in one form or another. If you quit this therapist try to keep an open mind for the next best thing.

 

[Chava]

@KwanYingirl I don't know what. Probably a non-solution, but I need to just not go backwards anymore. I need something to look forward to, something to distract myself, even just to get through. I'm considering some big changes because I can't get away from my trapped feelings. Move to Texas? (not really). I'm going to start running, exercising more, probably over-doing that too, but I'd rather get a nutritionist and over-do exercise a bit than injure myself. I semi-starved for many years but had really gotten away from self injury. I have to lower the stress and create any shred of positive feeling, even if small boosts of endorphin highs...I'll take anything.

I don't understand what's normal or how this therapy works. I thought I'd release some trauma, heal the pain, move on. My therapist took time to respond thoughtfully early on then just sort of one-sentence quick responses...I think in a way it also felt like I was supposed to be better by now. Like, "You'll get extra support for a year or so, then you should be better.." ...that's really what it feels like. I wish I would have known that or something. It takes me forever to even warm up to a person, and pretty much never happens. I think I set myself up with too much hope because this therapist seemed to really understand me but I'm feeling like I'm way too far broken and want to forget all about it. But really, I need too much. Makes me hate myself. I was having nightmares and sleeping with my knife and it was like my time was up...time to get tough. Felt like I was too disturbed for my therapist. I think I've felt a lot of pressure to be better. I also want my therapist to feel good. Can I help that? Not really. Worse when I think she's sick of me. The pressure to better is inadvertent I'm sure but I get the feeling neither of us knew what sort of pit of crazy I had. But also the pain doesn't stop and I'm sick of it. I should be better at tolerating it by now, but the combination of lows is too much. Really big losses plus too much stress. I feel like I'm losing. No good feelings, like there is nothing good in me. Just darkness, burden, pain, bad feelings.

Can't believe I'm still talking. Time to knock myself out. Thanks for the extra support here.

 

[Chava]

Pain getting worse, can't take any more tramadol since now I'm on ambien and can't take any advil or Tylenol for a while. I'm out in the middle of nowhere and don't feel like I can call anyone late to take me to ER if it gets worse (telling myself I could call ambulance and beg them to not turn on sirens or flashers)...mainly because I won't drive there on my own on ambien. I don't have the kind of friends that I think would drive way out to get me at midnight. But in an emergency there are always hospital and emergency people and I have in my head that i can call the hospital if pain gets unbearable. Heating pad not helping either. This is my life. Feels like god is stabbing me in the stomach. I'm such a piece of shit I don't understand why i'm still here. I do okay with my work but I can't offer anything else to others. I'm relatively unapproachable and have just been climbing into a hole for months. I can't even take care of myself or manage. just trying to hold out for next painkiller.

 

[KwanYingirl]

Many losses? Didn't know this part of your life, sorry. I kind of hope you did go to the ER.

 

[Chava]

Made it through with ambien, midnight advil, now better painkillers...will call my regular doc tomorrow if pain doesn't decrease. Carving my cuticles neatly with my knife. Feels like everything good in me has been extinquished or got smothered by loss/stress/pain. I think that's the worst feeling, feeling zero good feelings or no good in me (and I've felt a lot of bad shit). Really impossible to access anything useful, doesn't feel like it's okay. Afraid if I find anything good left in me it will break, so I'm just doing stupid stuff to avoid my inner self. Feel like a piece of shit. Just trying distractions.

 

[joeylittle]

Distractions are fine - especially when you are really, really in a bad way. It was a revelation for me when I learned that the worse off you are, the simpler you need to keep your way of dealing with it. So instead of thinking "I need to meet this level 10 hopelessness with level 10 getting-shit-done-ness", now I know that if I'm medium-bad I can challenge myself, but if I'm very bad I need to keep it simple and easy - that's all I can expect of my brain. So distraction, simple ones - that's great. You're not supposed to be able to do more than that when it's bad.

I don't know if you feel like you can do this - but can you try separating out your responses by cause? So, what is environmental/situational, what is biochemistry or physical, and what is the PTSD? Right now, you are mixing them all up together and so they are feeding each other (which is pretty common).

From what you've written, I might say that the pain from the recent medical procedure and all the associated stress with that (regulating pain medication) is actually situational. It's a result of something currently happening, but that thing - that specific thing - isn't always happening, and it's not actually tied to your work in therapy, for example. It is of the now, and it will pass.

But you have fibro (if I recall correctly) - and that is a daily physical problem. You are likely feeling symptoms of that along with the pain from the recent procedure. Try and recognize what is the fibro and what is the recent thing, they go into two different columns. And the psychological stuff about having constant physical pain - that goes in this column as well. Like, if you had to pick where your "brokenness" identity comes form, I wonder if it's this stuff more than the PTSD.

This way of thinking does not actually make anything "better", and it's not meant to make one kind of pain bigger or smaller than another kind of pain.

All it does is, when you are having a perfect storm of symptoms - it lets you identify which ones are mental, which are physical, and which are temporary. So then, the temporary stuff isn't adding to the big pile, the mental stuff for therapy isn't a huge pile, and the acceptance of and dealing daily with the physical stuff - well, that's in a lot of ways the biggest challenge. But it has nothing to do with your value as a person. It's shit going on with your body.

So instead of one big pile, you have three smaller piles, and that can be much easier to manage.

I'm probably contradicting myself - saying don't do anything too hard and ps I recommend this mental exercise - so please, don't tank it on if just the thought of it makes you sick. But if you can remember it for another time - it could really help you be more in control of what parts of yourself you are working on, and knowing how to push some to the side for later is a good thing.

Thinking of you.

 

[Chava]

So instead of one big pile, you have three smaller piles, and that can be much easier to manage.

I don't know if you feel like you can do this - but can you try separating out your responses by cause? So, what is environmental/situational, what is biochemistry or physical, and what is the PTSD? Right now, you are mixing them all up together and so they are feeding each other (which is pretty common).

Thanks @joeylittle my therapist did respond (I think I sent her about four short e-mails in last couple days, ranging from insane things like I'm burning my legs to I'm selling my house and I am pretty sure you're mad at me). She thinks I'm having lots of past and present "glued together", which makes sense. I can't actually sort it out, but it helps to think that the deeply "trapped" feeling might not be fully current reality. Right now I could go for a walk (on painkillers...just need to call doc tomorrow to ask what level of sleeping meds are okay while I'm on a higher dose of painkillers). Part of me feels really unable to access some of the no-brainer stuff...so even if I just make myself do it, I'm not really present or getting the benefit. But it's sunny, a walk would make my dog happy, I'll try again and try to feel how right now I am NOT trapped.

Not fibro but chronic regional pain and also endometriosis (stabbing cramps from recent procedure...I went in really positive but I go to crap so quickly if pain doesn't subside and I feel more immobilized than I probably am). Anyway, I don't think my therapist is dumping me. But I have to move out of my helpless trapped feeling and try to do more for myself. Even just baby steps.

 

[joeylittle]

She thinks I'm having lots of past and present glued together, which makes sense. I can't actually sort it out, but it helps to think that the deeply "trapped" feeling might not be fully current reality.

This is so true, and important, and even if you don't buy into it 100%, just keep repeating it. I don't even know you except from your posts, but just from the way you write, it is very, very likely that the trapped feeling is not your situational reality - it's your psychological reality, which is different.

Part of me feels really unable to access some of the no-brainer stuff...so even if I just make myself do it, I'm not really present or getting the benefit. But it's sunny, a walk would make my dog happy, I'll try again and try to feel how right now I am NOT trapped.

This is great. Also, it doesn't matter if you're doing it super-mindfully. Just being out, that's huge for you right now. Focus on your dog - they are the most fully-present creatures. Sometimes paying attention to an animal is the best way I know to re-connect to the present moment, because they are present.

Even just baby steps.

Baby steps are huge steps when a baby takes them - and sometimes, that's just where we are at.

Sending you lots of support.

 

[Chava]

Focus on your dog - they are the most fully-present creatures

So true!!