Messages

Thank you all for your input and sharing your experiences they are really supportive and make a lot of sense. It sounds like it can take time, and although I'm no longer with my ex he is still my son's dad - so still kind of around but I engage with him as little as I can. I guess it took me many years to get into this state of numbness, so it may take me a while to get out of it - it just becomes harder to validate my own feelings when I'm not in it anymore and there is 'no reason' - though maybe this is an echo from my childhood emotional neglect.

Chart mentioned the extremes of emotion, a couple of months into therapy I had a week of intense emotions - some I just couldn't identify, they were overwhelming,some were even warm pleasant feelings, but it was all at once (like someone turned on the taps) and I couldn't manage the intensity or understand it - and I numbed out again. Sounds similar to your experience, nice to not feel alone in this experience.



 

Hello, I've been feeling emotionally numb now for a good few years maybe longer. I'm a few months out of an unhealthy 15 year relationship which I believe to have been emotionally abusive. I still feel numb, disconnected from myself and others, sometimes I feel intense pain, usually nothing. I am highly functional - to the outside world - I'm perfectly fine keeping up with a demanding job. I've been going to therapy for a few months now. I'm at a point where I'm questioning whether I'm making up my experience of the world - am I anhedonic and numb because I've convinced myself? Am I actually ok now - because the source of my stress is gone - so why am I still feeling dissociated? Or maybe I'm not dissociated, maybe this is just life? I'm just so confused about what's really happening to me. I've been tempted to quit therapy because 'im ok now, I'm probably only going to therapy for attention or something and should really give this space to someone else's. But then I feel so empty.

Sorry I've waffled a bit. But the bottom line is, the source of pain is gone, and I'm still not feeling anything, alive/connected etc. Am I making it up, because I can't remember what 'normal' feels like, maybe this is it?

Thank you all this is very helpful, will certainly try asking inner child

Thank you for sharing your story Cascade, I can't imagine how intensely difficult it was being faced with a flashback like that. What a cruel thing to happened to you.

The body truly does keep the score, I want to understand why my body reacts a certain way in a specific context, at the moment I don't understand it. As you say, when it's the right time it might release the memory.

I was wondering what people's experiences are of childhood (partial) memories which seems significant but you can't quite recollect?

I have this recurring memory around the age of 4/5, telling my mum that I wanted to quit ballet, I was sitting in the car feeling distressed. I said it was because I felt cold, but I recall thinking very clearly and repeating to myself 'don't forget the true reason'. I felt shame. I forgot the reason just a few weeks later when I checked in to try to recall the reason. My only image of ballet that I have is of a wolf (??), but that's it, no other memory of the classes. I have a sense that something impactful happened, I can't shake it, but I can't recall it. Perhaps it was nothing or it was something.

Anyone had such memories you can't pinpoint but you just can't shake? What did you do about them? Did they eventually come to? Did they explain anything?

Thanks!!

Thanks all for your insights. Indeed it is so complicated. I wonder whether it was related to a feeling of emotional safety for the first time, being heard and validated by the therapist. After living in a family were feelings were not spoken about and shamed or denied, and then replicating this pattern in my relationship. I am so used to numbing out and being guarded - my body may have 'opened up' to feeling again, at least for a bit.

I'm curious to know what experiences people have had of being out of an emotional flashback.

I think I've been in an emotional flashback continuously for at least the last 6 years, I've been in a chronic state of tension, hypervigilance, feeling disconnected, invisible, disassociation. Triggered, I now come to think, by my relationship. A few weeks following starting couples and some individual therapy something strange happened - I felt connected - colours seemed vivid, smells were beautiful, my brain went quiet and calm except for a single internal voice, the chaos was gone, I felt centered, my muscles were relaxed, I could feel emotions again and felt excitement, joy, and motivation. This lasted a week, unfortunately an argument with my husband triggered me back into a state of tension and disconnection - and I've been this way since.


I've been wondering whether my week of feeling connected with my brain and body is what it feels like to not be in a state of EF? Has anyone experienced anything similar?

Hello,

I'm new here. I've only recently learned of CPTSD after reading Pete walkers book and childhood emotional neglect. I've identified with this, though my thoughts still torment me with minimisation thoughts which make me invalidate my own feelings and responses, which is what I've done my whole life and not known it. Reading the forum posts has already been such a help .