I'm not bound by any roles either and I realize that.
And that is a brave knowing.
But if simply growing up to an adult and knowing I have "choices" was enough to change everything, probably I wouldn't need therapy.
This is true, but there is wisdom in Alba's advice and statement. She is doing it. She practices challenging her own throughts and all that we have experienced, and it is not easy but she does it. Some of her thinking is outside of that PTSD thinking that we have and if we can shift just a little over to the other side of the disco floor we can see what she is saying. (I am disco themed at times, when I am not being Star Trek themed. :cool:)
Denying my needs FEELS GOOD. My whole body-self gets past and present glued together.
How is it that I can be here for so many years and not get the past and present glued together? I don't know. But your honesty is what is leading you on a healing path, value that.
Tell someone in a flashback they have "choices."
Well they do if they have choices throughout their flashback/panic attack if they have practised breathing, yoga, meditation, mindfulness, exercise, touch, smell, taste, feel and visual stimulus. I can come out of my father being on top of me and actually enjoy sex. I can stop my having things in the past glued to the present. I don't do it all the time. I still lose the plot but less so than I did, by a long shot.
You do have choices once you have really built up your skills toolbox. The DBT site is a good one.
http://www.dbtselfhelp.com/
Sometimes I watch
http://www.dbtselfhelp.com/html/instant_mindfulness.html one of these and I don't need to ring the suicidecallback line which I was ringing a bit a few weeks ago.
So though at the beginning it does seem insurmountable, and it might not get easier, so many factors influence the getting better or not, but one thing is that you can get better at managing your ability to manage your PTSD symptoms.
One way to start that is to start looking at other people's point of views and understandings. Look at mindfulness, exercise, Star Trek, disco dancing, nutrition, meditation, boogie boarding and do things that make you feel good and do them when you are crap and feeling like shite and over time you will shift what your family laid down in your body and in your brain and seriously the sooner we get rid of those toxic family dynamics out of body the better. The people who will save the planet are people like you and me and those who sincerely know what trauma, suffering and adversity are like, because once we heal ourselves - there is so much to be done to make sure that there is a planet for the next generation and that intergenerational child sexual abuse is not passed on and violence and so forth.
I am not saying if you have a panic attack tomorrow you will be able to manage it totally well. But you might manage one more minute better, and in six months you might be able to use a skill to distract yourself so you only have an anxiety attack rather than a full blown panic attack, and six months further you might use smell and touch to manage the anxiety.
This doesn't stop the need to name what happened in your family or understand it. That is important. It is important to build up a relationship with your self based in the reality of now, but also the reality of neuroplasticity means with a hell of a lot of work, practice, patience, prudence, perseverance, persistant and (if you do it) prayer you can make small incremental changes.
And it means instead of me demarcated by the people who abused you so horrendously you stay a big NO to them by leaRning to do self care and self emotional regulation bit by bit.
I am perhaps not the best person to give advice as I got stuck in avoidance and trauma based thinking for many, many years, but I am improving now and it is important to see what people are doing what, and how they share what they are doing and then taking some of the bits of their daily programs and modify it for yourself.
I will not give into my family's scapegoating of me. I will stand on my one two feet and I will treat myself differently than they treated me - not saying it is easy or anything like that, but it is doable.
Early trauma for some people is sort of an ongoing gluing of time like that, but often on a body or deeper personality level.
Yes so it is crucial to work out what works for you and what strategies you need to put in place. We have to work harder on our self healing because there is no person "before" the trauma so we have to heal and create a personality and self at the same time. This is unfair. It is hellishly difficult but it is so important to do. Those abusers can't win by us spending the rest of our lives stuck in the trauma, hoping like little children that if we freeze, fawn, fight or go into flight that some how we will get some crumbs of love, care and connection. It didn't happen and it won't happen if we don't step up to the plate and really take on what is inside of ourselves. We have to build a relationships with ourselves and we have to do if for ourselves, as hellishly disappointing as that is - when we grab our own power we can have love, care and TLC that we were on a stravation diet from throughout our childhood.
Knowing I have choices helps.
It does indeed.
But it's not like I knew how navigate them.
Me neither and I could use some choice swear words describing how frustrating it is not to know how to negotiate my choices throughout my life. What a waste of my time and energy! Oh it is so sad. But practice is the key here. In small and mindful ways, practice 5 minutes per day. 1 minute at 5 times per day and really notice that and then build up on it. It works - it really does. (Quite hilarious that I am writing this as I was totally frozen on the couch most of last year. But sincerely don't waste your life the way I did by getting stuck in all of this. It is important to understand it, to sit with it and to grieve it, but don't let that be it - then the next step is action. Nothing comes of nothing as my psychiatrist says to me most sessions. If all my pain and suffering could help even one person avoid the years and years of being stuck like I was, it would make it worth it in some small way.
I chose to be in relationships. I didn't have boundaries.
Oh sweetheart I so feel your pain. I had disasterous relationships and I was so all over the place I lost many good people. I also didn't have boundaries. I am learning now. A little bit of a boundary each day builds up over 30 days to a significant boundary. I must be honest that I am slipping and sliding more than I am walking but gosh it is so much better. (Very messy at times, though!)
I chose to have boundaries and isolated myself.
I did that last year and spent most of the year on the couch. It wasn't much fun.
Call me a dumbsh#t, but I've needed help navigating all of my options and finding my "self" within them.
I struggle with this each day. And there is no need to call any one a dumbsh#t, just challenged because you didn't get the basics. It takes time to assemble the basics.
I chose to take better care of myself and the energy turned into chronic pain...so that, combined with not wanting to space out so much (never my choice), helped me choose to ask for help.
That is great. Chronic pain sucks - been there as well. And asking for help is very important.
But also seeing that the creativity as a child that you used to survive such a family - well you can use it as an adult and change your life, not overnight as it could take a year or two but you can do it.
You are brave to talk about such things.
And if none of this is helpful then discard the content and keep the TLC that underpins my writing today, and perhaps the content will be more relevant in 3 or 6 months. You are on the journey, we each have to find our own way.
