Menu

Show posts

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.

Show posts Menu

Messages - ah

#31
Hi Mercury, welcome! :heythere:

The way I see it, maybe "safe" may be too good to be true. After all, life isn't totally safe. Neither are people. And our brain is so habituated to feeling unsafe so changing all that may be beyond our power. Maybe life feeling safer may be a huge goal in itself.

I was thinking as I read your post that maybe recovery is a lot like mercury. It has its ups and downs. Sometimes you're very triggered, other times it's easier. Sometimes things catch you by surprise despite your best efforts. It doesn't seem to go in a straight line.
Information really helps me. Reading about trauma and the brain.

And there are good people here who understand.
I'm so, so sorry you went through so much. No wonder you're feeling the way you are! I can relate to that very much. You're not alone.
#32
Hi Ketayl, welcome :heythere:
#33
General Discussion / Re: Feeling Vs. Numbness
June 29, 2018, 03:34:35 PM
I agree with all that's been said, I just want to add:

I've been thinking lately about victim blaming, how prevalent it is and how we do it to ourselves. We're excellent at it. Seems to me sometimes that the battles we wage with pain may be a subtle form of that, somehow.

Because your feelings are just as natural as your numbness, there's not much difference between them. Numbness can sometimes be more dangerous than pain, we both know it far too well. Maybe it's a wave that keeps turning so sometimes it's this facet, sometimes it's the other that can be seen above the water. Behind both there's the same Woodsgnome standing there, looking out. So in a way, I sort of wonder, why do we tend to favor one over the other?

It sort of comes back, in my mind, to current society's dislike toward and fear of negative emotions. Numbness seems sort of bland enough to be acceptable (society seems to be dangerously ignorant about the dangers of numbness and what it means when animals are numb in nature) but anything more pungent, like anger, is a no-no. It all keeps me puzzled.

If that makes sense.  :Idunno:

If you said the bag burst open and then you just hobbled out and looked for any living being you could find and took revenge on them and didn't feel better till someone else was in pain, I'd say "oh... that's... that's really bad. Maybe go with numbness, okay? Or with sedation." Also if you said it was constant numbness or constant strong feeling, I'd worry, I guess. But not this. This sounds to me like waves that come and go, like you're very human, a full fledged, multi faceted human being. It's what it tells me about you. There's no value judgment beyond that just because some rouge garbage got the better of you. Bad, bad garbage!

P.S. moving a crippled arthritic body to pick up things is :fallingbricks: not just really triggering with the helplessness involved, but just physically painful. I'm really angry with my body when it happens. I think it'd be worrying if you were numb about that. Just saying.  :whistling:
#34
Family / Re: Positive force in FOO
June 29, 2018, 01:16:31 PM
Quote from: Blueberry on June 29, 2018, 11:08:09 AM
I wrote spontaneously on Elpha's thread "I'm not sure I would have survived as intact as I have without her. Though god knows I'm not very intact."

I had a cat who was like that too so I can totally imagine how you felt about your dog. My ex cat died decades ago but I'd sometimes dream about him and in my dreams he wasn't always a cat, he was just himself, someone I loved long ago and still missed. He was a person to me, just a person in a small furry body.

Much of my dreadful, hellish teenage years when I didn't say a word to anyone he kept trying to feed me with dead mice non stop, and spent curled up on my knees during the day / purring across my neck at night and grumbling if I moved. He kept me tethered.

The only time in his life he ever scratched anyone was when he was a baby and a passing car terrified him so much he burrowed into my hands, but after that he spent his life purring loudly with his claws hidden deep inside his paws so as not to scratch anyone else, he was one very sane cat. No PD there... so he was my anchor, the only thing that kept me from total dissociation and splitting into complete madness and the unreality of constant violence.

Without him I'm sure I'd have been totally nuts. I don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing, but for what it's worth he kept me alive. None of the humans did. He was a better person than the human people I knew, and I guess incidentally also a cat  :Idunno:

I'm so glad you had one sane friend like that growing up. Excluding you is beyond cruel and insane, to my mind. She was the normal one. No wonder you thought of her, maybe in some way she really was your FOO..?
#35
Please Introduce Yourself Here / Re: Hi!
June 27, 2018, 04:03:25 PM
Hi Wobbly  :heythere: I love your nickname.

I'm glad you found the forums and took the plunge and wrote, and I can absolutely relate too. Everything you wrote is totally coherent and sad and familiar sounding. I'm sorry you had to go through it. I bet learning to parent yourself and regain your own sense of self in therapy can be harder than dissociation at times. Looking straight at pain without turning away from it can be like looking directly at the sun, for me at least. So I totally relate.

P.S. I think you've done the replying thing just right. Anyway, if you had done it wrong then I'm doing it wrong now too, you're not alone :whistling:)
#36
Quote from: LittleBoat on June 25, 2018, 03:16:20 PM
CPTSD ..... does it dig in deeper as you get older?  Realize and remember more childhood trauma?  Leave you fragile and exhausted?   

I've been wondering about that too lately, I thought surely accumulated wisdom leads to being able to cope better with pain but maybe it's more complex. When I was younger I had more illusions, and now as I look back at my life (and tend to make sense of it with the "kind" help of self hatred and guilt) my disillusionment hurts. I'm grieving things I still dreamed would change 20 years ago.

Besides, I can now torture myself in wise new ways I never thought of 20 years ago. I improved. I got a lot of practice :Idunno: :whistling:

LittleBoat, I'm so sorry you feel such an endless weight on your shoulders.

Quote from: LittleBoat on June 25, 2018, 03:16:20 PM
Please don't offer advice for doing and feeling things I'm not capable of.  Like "enjoy the beautiful sunshine, reach out to friends, exercise, etc.  if I could, I would.

I couldn't agree with you more, I get an immediate allergic reaction to this sort of advice. There's such a clueless assumption behind it that says everything is chosen, controllable and changeable. But it isn't, and that may be part of the grieving. I know it is for me.

Another part is that this sort of shiny-happy advice leaves me feeling invisible and bad. Like it's saying I don't just suffer, I'm also a bad person for "choosing" to suffer. What a weird culture we live in :blink: in which pain is seen as avoidable and if you don't "avoid" it that's your "fault". We're all a bit insane, seems to me those of us with ptsd and cptsd may be the sanest of all in some respects.

Reading your words and the deep chord of pain and self awareness that's visible in them, I respect you. And I also love what Woodsgnome said about self compassion. So much easier said than done, I'm incapable of it these days but I still value it.

Radical,
I have a physical disability that keeps my world extremely small. I got the worst of both worlds, I guess? I think any serious physical illness or disability can be traumatizing for anyone, and doubly re-traumatizing for anyone with preexisting cptsd. It can make everything cptsd-related worse.
If I can help with my sad experience of living with both, feel free to PM me.
P.S. I think triggers that burn and burn is a perfect description.
#37
Plantsandworms,

I can totally identify with what you write and I notice I have more and more triggers too. These days literally everything is a trigger.
Or more likely (just my guess about my own mind, this may not be the case for you): I think I recognize more, so I'm more aware of my triggers. Where in the past I'd just jump straight from an unaware, confused, self-destroying triggered state to a full blown EF, I'm now a bit more able to recognize the process as it's happening: trigger -> hypervigilance, self hatred, the lots -> stuck in an EF.
It gives me a chance to stop the process in the middle, to try to slow it down or counteract it before the 100% EF has arrived. So I catch myself often thinking "Oh no, a trigger! I'm hopeless!" I do think it's progress but it absolutely feels like deterioration. I guess awareness of pain feels bad, but isn't bad.
Or something like it?

Awareness of pain and triggers is a huge thing, enormously huge. It enables you to then test different ways of managing triggers, rather than being stuck with the end product (pain that's intolerable and for me, unmanageable at that point).

I think there's something to be said about simplifying your life temporarily, like partial hibernation. I totally agree that a world that's getting smaller and smaller for the wrong reasons can be a worrying thing, but it can also be for good, healthy reasons. Maybe it's extremely hard to stay in the same environment, with the same habits, and still make big internal changes. To take some steps back, then develop new habits and ways of seeing things before you venture out again may be wise and cautious. Seen in that light, a smaller world for the time being may be part of self care and safety.

Go back out too fast, and you may just relapse and also be in danger of not recognizing dangerous people. Do it too slowly and you may forget the world's still out there, with new things to explore. I think it takes self awareness to do it just right, and to do it very gradually and be kind to yourself as you do anything, alone or with others.

You have every right, I think, to be cautious. It doesn't make you weak, it makes you wise. People can be dangerous, situations can be exhausting, especially social settings... and learning to separate danger from safety (relative safety, yeah? No one is perfectly safe, no experience will ever be either I guess) is a crucial skill for recovery and building healthy relationships.

Maybe.
#38
-- TW --

San,
Kids were forced to take *psychotropics*?!
I feel physically sick... yes, "throw-away children" seems to fit. :blink:
Ain't that exactly what all abusers see when they hurt a living being, eh? That we're all throw-away people the moment we're inconvenient?

I bet it hurts you like it hurts me right now but for what it's worth, I'm grateful you're not a much shallower person.
#39
I don't know if this helps but for me, therapy has stopped being a goal. I don't look for it anymore and don't want it.

Granted, I've been hurt by therapists in the past so I have trust issues with them but it's more than that. I find books to be very therapeutic in their own right. Books on trauma, the psychology of it and physiology of it, can be very hard for me to read sometimes. Not all theories will resonate with me; some things click while others absolutely don't so I inevitably read more books than I keep, but the ones that do make sense to me really help me understand myself and others. I develop new ways of seeing myself and my pain as a result, in the same way I imagine good therapy might accomplish.

And the forums here complement the books by reminding me I'm not the only one experiencing these horrible things. (Books are far less interactive than talking to others, after all)

Maybe don't give up on good, knowledgeable therapy. Keep looking for it. It may take some searching tough so maybe don't wait for it, either. Educate yourself, become your own expert in exactly the same way you read about cptsd and ended up here. 

I think we live in weird times nowadays when information is more prevalent than in previous generations. You can read books on trauma that the average trauma therapist may not have read at all, either because they have no time or no motivation. Use your drive to get better to learn more and more about cptsd and what you're going through and as you look for therapy, also become your own therapist, so to speak.

Maybe.
#40
Hi Mourningme  :heythere:

I'm glad you're here, and I'm so, so sorry your life has been filled with so much pain and betrayal.
Your post's title caught my attention, I've been trying to run away from mourning the death of myself for a long time now. I guess those of us who knew pain from such a young age never got to know who we could have become if things were different.

All that I've read and learned about complex ptsd seems to indicate it's very strongly physiological. It's a fight-or-flight reaction in our body that's so strong and chronic that it's become our baseline. Do you maybe have a therapist? Any way to look for a trauma therapist? There are things that can help, lower its intensity here and there and understand better and better what's going on.

I wish I could take this pain from you. Yes, you were just as precious as your daughter, and you deserved protection and love.
You're not alone.
#41
Seems to me the idea of healthy boundaries is just what San said, it's not just one way of doing things. It's about self care depending on your conditions. What may seem unhealthy in one situation may actually be healthy in another.
The key is maybe what would help you be as safe as possible, protect yourself from dangerous people, help you recognize dangerous people vs. people who can be trusted, know how to react to disappointments and hardships without too many EFs... that sort of thing.

I think if it's seen as a one-size-fits-all sort of idea then it's bound to be unrealistic. Look at "old age", for example. 150 years ago 40 was old age, but now 40 is young. Still, "old age" is a term we use.
Maybe "healthy boundaries" is necessarily just the same, it's a useful term that should be applied wisely, taking all of your circumstances into account?
Otherwise it means very little. To really help us it needs to be deeply rooted in the reality of our life. Not in a non-existent ideal life we wish we could be living, but in our life with all of its problems.
#42
P.S the book is very psychodynamic, leaning heavily on Freud's legacy. So it has a explanations about the abusers' psychology and why they ended up abusive. It was written by a psychoanalyst, I guess that's her language.
She sees emotional abusers as hurting, so they abuse to relieve their own pain, but I don't know if that's true. The sadists I know abuse because they enjoy it. It doesn't relieve their pain, it just brings them pleasure.
Maybe.

Now that I think of it, here's another excellent book (I think...) on emotional abuse, written a generation ago as well. By an American therapist this time. But he takes the opposite viewpoint on the psychology of abusers.

In Sheep's Clothing: Understanding and Dealing with Manipulative People
by George K. Simon Ph.D.

He says:

What our intuition tells us a manipulator is really like challenges everything we've been taught to believe about human nature. We've been inundated with a psychology that has us viewing people with problems, at least to some degree, as afraid, insecure or "hung-up."

And:

Unfortunately, mental health professionals and lay persons alike often fail to recognize the aggressive agendas and actions of others for what they really are. This is largely because we've been pre-programmed to believe that people only exhibit problem behaviors when they're "troubled" inside or anxious about something. We've also been taught that people aggress only when they're attacked in some way. So, even when our gut tells us that somebody is attacking attacking us and for no good reason, or merely trying to overpower us, we don't readily accept the notions. We usually start to wonder what's bothering the person so badly "underneath it all" that's making them act in such a disturbing way. We may even wonder what we may have said or done that "threatened" them. We may try to analyze the situation to death instead of simply responding to the attack. We almost never think that the person is simply fighting to get something they want, to have their way with us, or gain the upper hand. And, when we view them as primarily hurting in some way, we strive to understand as opposed to taking care of ourselves.

... Not only do we often have trouble recognizing the ways people aggress, but we also have difficulty discerning the distinctly aggressive character of some personalities. The legacy of Sigmund Freud's work has a lot to do with this. Freud's theories (and the theories of others who expanded on his work) heavily influenced the field of psychology and related social sciences for a long time. The basic tenets of these classical (psychodynamic) theories and their hallmark construct, neurosis, have become fairly well etched in the public consciousness, and many psychodynamic terms have intruded into common parlance. These theories also tend to view everyone, at least to some degree, as neurotic. Neurotic individuals are overly inhibited people who suffer unreasonable and excessive anxiety (i.e. non-specific fear), guilt, and shame when it comes to acting on their basic instincts or trying to gratify their basic wants and needs. The malignant impact of over-generalizing Freud's observations about a small group of overly inhibited individuals into a broad set of assumptions about the causes of psychological ill-health in everyone cannot be overstated.6 But these theories have so permeated our thinking about human nature, and especially our theories of personality, that when most of us try to analyze someone's character, we automatically start thinking in terms of what fears might be "hanging them up," what kinds of "defenses" they use and what kinds of psychologically "threatening" situations they may be trying to "avoid."

Might be very interesting to compare the two, if you've got spare time to read both  :whistling:

Blueberry,
Thanks so much  :hug:
It's very hard for me but I'm trying. My default is to be silent but I'm trying... unrelated to books, sorry.
#43
Called Stalking the soul (translated from French, written in the 90's I think?) by Marie-France Hirigoyen.

It's not a new book but fascinating and unlike others I've read.
The writer describes this type of abuse when it happens in the family between partners / by parents toward their children, at work, everywhere. She calls emotional abusers "perverse" which I think may be the most accurate description I've come across.
She says a lot that really struck a cord and made a lot of sense to me. Very interesting book.
#44
I'm sorry if this is going to be a bit dark... well: my F ruined my relationship with my siblings beyond repair by telling lies, declaring I'm crazy, telling a similar sob story, pretending to be caring and to call and write me daily (in reality he hasn't called me in a decade, and only wrote once a year to invite me out to lunch so he could remind me he's rich and I'm penniless and dying and he'll never lift a finger to save or help me, to curse and threaten and call me evil, 'the problem', waste of oxygen 'etc.) and it worked perfectly with everyone. Everybody buys it to this day... everybody.

Abusers I met as an adult have done the same with the same level of stellar success.
At some point I'd meet someone new who also knew the abusers, we'd become friends but then next time I'd see them they'd ignore me like the plague, having been warned I'm evil. This has happened more times than I could count.

I hope your Nm hasn't done anything this extreme, but I think if I were you I'd trust that gut feeling. With a narcissist, my bet is you aren't being paranoid at all. You're fearful based on past experience. Your worries are realistic, sad as that may sound. It isn't something you imagine, it's real even if most people can't grasp it.
I guess people who haven't gone through it have a hard time imagining it. The level of deceit is beyond belief to them, it's too far from their experiences and that's exactly what the abuser wants. So now if we try to open up we seem crazy and paranoid, not them. :doh:

In my experience, trying to talk about it can sometimes make it worse.
The other person doesn't understand it's one-sided abuse, they interpret it as a fight and they think "Not my problem. I'm not getting involved" and withdraw even further. What you share sounds so nuts to anyone who hasn't gone through it that they easily label you as paranoid.
I've tried befriending people who heard lies about me but everything I said and did was distorted by the lies.

I hope none of this is similar in your case, I hope your friends are just busy with their own lives and that's all. But I also wonder, do you have friends who don't know your Nm at all? I think of it as people who 'didn't get the email' about me.

Please know others here understand what that's like, even if people who have been spared this pain won't always be able to get it.
#45
Symptoms - Other / Re: Body memories TW
May 29, 2018, 12:49:27 PM
Here's something very interesting I found about it:

https://www.aconsciousrethink.com/6158/gray-rock-method-dealing-narcissist/

To me I guess it's about being less involved emotionally, less invested. But without dissociating. (Which is the tricky part) Then as a result I can also behave in a more dull way when it's with other people, as it says above. So I try to do this with dangerous people, and also with my own feelings, physical pain included.

I feel whatever I'm feeling but I try to be more neutral about it. I think "This is just a feeling. Yeah, this one is nasty. But it's just a feeling." sometimes when I manage it intense physical pain is more bearable because it becomes a sensation that I don't have to interpret. I don't have any opinion about it. It just hurts, that's it. I don't feel a strong need to get rid of it or fix it on the spot. I accept being helpless about it. I guess it's all about distance, how close I am to it.
Sometimes I can manage it. Other times I can't.
If that makes sense  :Idunno:

This is only my subjective understanding of 'grey rock' technique. Maybe others here have far more experience with it than me. Or see it totally differently.
I started reading about it and applying it to other people, but as I started realizing my biggest enemy was my own self hatred and loathing I tried using it inwards too and it seems to be just as effective at times.

It's much easier said than done though  :Idunno: