Terrified By Good Things

[MesaRock]

<chuckling> to know as well / although you may already know a lot of this... Slightly less simple......

you mention the existence of tricks....

 

[Ronin]

I learned one can desensitize with how good things affect them, too.

As in take it super slowly. It fills your stress cup already and doesn't work, so getting used to it, baaby steps, and making it work for you.

I'm in the same bag. Good things are mind blowing and Just Too Much, enough that people warning me for them is le gasp so amazing & helping me accustom (grin). It gets easier.

 

[Deleted member 12723]

Good stress is so terrifying as bad as bad stress is I learned.

What I am experiencing in my own life is that I have become sabatoging of the the good things in my life after years of extreme pressures and was so burnt out and then my husband died. It took me two years to recover and I am now in the process of moving on with my own life and starting college again and I am sixty years old!

So I am underming and harming me in insidious ways now and am just now finally starting to nip that in the bud.

I am sad that for so many years you struggled alone and I can understand your anger. I went the other way and after finding good and healthy support I am beginning to thrive.

I do not know but what if you are just burnt out and need a time to heal and to recover? It sounds like but I could be wrong, misdirected anger which should go to your abusers not the people that are good in your life.

I congratulate you on your achievements. It is so understandable that you might now trust what is going on in your life now and perhaps waiting for the rug to pulled out from under you.

You are a very rare person, quite special and precious to have become so accomplished in your life. You took a very bad thing and you worked very hard and you deserve everything good thing coming to you because this is the resullts of all of your hard work.

This is what I think and I could be way off so please disregard if this does not apply to you ok? I wish you best with your healing process and recovery.

I think you sound very burnt out and exhausted right now. It will not always be this way for you. You changed your life for the better and most people do not. I am very proud of you and I hope in time you will become proud of you as well.

 

[MesaRock]

I learned one can desensitize with how good things affect them, too.

As in take it super slowly. It fills...

Ah, never thought of that. comprehensive desensitization. Funny thing about the kind of work I did (human rights, conflict zones, etc) is that i was TRAINED to be desensitized. Desensitization was a fundamental job requirement. Now it's..........training myself to appropriately sensitize? I was thinking about being desensitized to good things and that's definitely true. I never let myself feel them on any level - I think back to four or five major good things of past years and I was pretty numb about them.

 

[KwanYingirl]

What you describe sounds like what I've heard called the Emergency stage of healing from PTSD. All the floodgates we consciously or unconsciously erect to get us through living let go, usually triggered by extreme emotion along the lines of Friday's post. You will make room for happiness and calm and love, but now is time to let the floodgates go, to rid yourself of all the f*cking debris of a brave and tragic journey. Let that muck just flow into every crevice you can find-a good trauma therapist, your somatic practitioner, energy work, meditation, this forum, etc. I'm very mindful of who I speak my truth to. Just trusted allies for now.

You have truly been doing the work of the world and deserve admiration and respect for having illustrated it so well. You'll get there. Probably not every day, but in time it will empower you instead of devastating you. I think you're crying for every sorrow you have witnessed.
Namaste,
KYG

 

[Ronin]

Ah, never thought of that. comprehensive desensitization. ...

(nods)

I was thinking I'd take it from the same starting point: What of good things you can handle, in what intensity, and how often?

And expand on that. Step by step.

It's pretty possible you'll come appreciate one nice thing, and it will flow back twenty or more pretty Not Nice things, to the point of just being disgusted with the one nice thing again, but don't give up on those days.

It's like disinfecting a wound. Unpleasant as f*ck. Doesn't mean it's not helpful & good for one's health.

 

[MesaRock]

I like the word "stage" because that means I'll move through it. I should concentrate on tiny nice things to build up tolerance for it. Like all you wonderful people who have saved my day.

I beat up myself on floodgate days (stoic ideology says it's failure) and think of the wound cleaning metaphor. Or at least keep cleaning out every closet in my apartmeny

 

[MesaRock]

Oops - texting on bus en route to therapy and the thing hit post too fast. Was going to say will focus on positive concept of clearing debris. Lighter. Uncongested. Space to introduce new ways. A new self. A new belief system. A new behavioral ideology. Thank you.

 

[I have a username]

<chuckling> to know as well / although you may already know a lot of this... Slightly less simple......

That was VERY helpful! I have C-PTSD. Whenever something really good happens I start shaking completely out of control. My first response is to try to numb it, just like with bad stress. Actually, I always dealt with bad stress a lot better than with good stress so getting completely stressed out by good things might be a good sign in my case. I used to not even acknowledge or perceive when something good happened. At least now, I get terrified by it. I think that in my case, a bizarre distorted sense of self-image is linked to the constant survival-mode, so I struggle seeing and accepting good things. I get shocked and cannot deal with it.