Quote from: Blueberry on October 23, 2023, 11:12:02 PMI was reading Ghost's post about PNES and started googling it. One thing led to another and I saw "conversion disorder" which was mentioned in my latest inpatient report in combination with what they're labeling as OSDD atm because they're still not 100% sure where I am on the dissociative spectrum. ...
"Conversion disorder involves the loss of one or more bodily functions. Examples include:
Weakness or paralysis
...
Difficulty speaking or inability to speak
Difficulty swallowing"
... and some things on this topic feel a bit nebulous or as Hope wrote on my OSDD thread, they're still hidden in a tunnel.
Difficulty speaking - yes in the sense that when things are really hard and/or I'm trying to talk about something very triggering in therapy, it can be that I can only speak in a whisper.
Difficulty swallowing - it feels that way sometimes when the lump in my throat is particularly large but I'm not sure if that would be included here. I actually had a lump in my throat for years, it was called 'post-nasal drip' then; maybe it still is. It was annoying, I was always swallowing trying to make it disappear. At the same time I also assumed that everybody had one and it was there for keeps, bad luck sort of thing.
Now I'm wondering if Difficulty breathing might belong on this list too? I am having difficulty breathing atm (past day or two at least) due to the size of the lump in the back of my throat, even though it is probably not a real physical lump. I swallow from time to time but it doesn't go away, just like I wrote above. I notice difficulty breathing particularly in singing lessons and in choir practice but the lump itself almost all the time.
I know from my previous trauma T that my shallow breathing is a result of trauma. He explained that I obviously cut off the connection between my head (cognitive stuff) and my emotions by stuffing uncomfortable and non-allowed feelings down into my body, throat on downwards, cutting off at the neck basically. Since breathing more deeply can bring emotions up, I automatically breathed in a shallow way for years at least a majority of the time, enough to have shallow breathing my go-to method. He worked long enough and often enough with me on these stuffed away emotions - for this purpose not actually directly on the emotions themselves but on allowing them to be and helping me allow me to stay in my body and not numb out - for me to eventually be able to feel something like an open pipe going from my throat all the way down to the base of my spine rather than everything from the neck on down feeling like concrete. It did take a few years, though of course we didn't always work solely on that, but it hasn't stayed. Could come again though. Anyway, today I have an internal image of
*** TW violence *** (whited-out)
something tied around my neck, though more as a symbol of there being an emotional cut-off point at that place than somebody having committed physical violence to my neck since I've never been choked physically that I know of, but emotionally yes I say as images of F and B1 turn up . Not meant to exist, not meant to have feelings Not meant to thrive. How can you thrive and be your best person if you can't fill your lungs?
Well, now I have more idea what's behind the difficulty breathing. Maybe it doesn't belong under Conversion disorder after all, but I'll leave it here at least until tomorrow when I'll re-read it and maybe have some more clarity and can then decide to move it to my Recovery Journal or somewhere.