Messages

Hello Trace,

I'm not qualified to say, and I don't know if this helps, but I can relate to something that woodsgnome expressed:

What I definitely recall is that the sensations produced what felt like an enormous pressure, like something was in my head that was so heavy...but light at the same time. I wasn't epileptic, and I didn't pass out, but definitely felt dazed, felt like maybe I would.

I experienced times of "zoning out" as a small child. I've never been told what my behavior was during those times, but I have memories from inside the event.

My body would feel immobilized (not restrained), as if I had hardened into a plastic army man. I would see only white brightness with edges, suggesting a massive form. It has a particular smell with it. The massive form (the size of a football stadium) would be consumed by me. I have a clear sensation memory of "taking in", kind of like eating. But it was all white, empty blankness.

The sensation would return in a mild, controllable form when I was a teenager. Sometimes under duress, and always in a seated position. It's vague, and I've not met anyone who has shed light on it. I considered it no more than an oddity, because it didn't hurt and wasn't unpleasant. By that time, if I wiggled a finger the spell would be broken. Today, if I sit still in perfect quiet, I can conjure a memory of how it made my arms feel, and a memory of the absorption of blankness directly into my chest.

I do not know if seizures are experienced this way. Might have been head trauma, and then the implicit memory rippling forward through life. I'm obviously intrigued by the subject.

Hello Dutch Uncle!

Thank you for sharing the story of your name, and it's evolution I love how our sense of identity is something to discover. This thread has really touched me. For most of this life, I've assumed 'identity' to be something one adopts and grows into. (Like a child playing dress-up, or a teenager mimicking peers). Consequently, for most of this life, I've assumed identities while suppressing the true self.

And thank you, woodsgnome, for sharing! Especially this:

I fell into an acting gig at age 24 that facilitated adopting a new name. It stuck, for lots of reasons, but what really felt cool was, even if it was associated with an act, that not just the name, but the role it represented brought out my soul like I'd never experienced--for the first time, I felt like the real "me" was accessible--to me.

I am most known by a performer name, as well The persona shows me at my best, when I'm summoning all I have for a performance. This has liberated my authentic self to believe in me. Like when Harry Potter casts his successful "Patronus Spell" (because he's already done it).

Others generally see me when I'm at a practiced and concentrated best, striving and vulnerable. The performance really gets good when the perfectionism gives way to a few curve balls, and stays on course, regardless. Difficulty is later, when one learns I freeze, and won't answer the phone because of the soul-crushing criticism I'm certain is on the other end. Misunderstandings, missed opportunities, anguish, and a vortex of shame.

So very, very, very, very, very hard to get out of my own way.

Thank you for bringing this up. I didn't know I had so much to say when I started typing...

Hi fairyslipper,

I have been sick for a couple weeks now and am just now starting to feel better and these types are all about the time THEY got sick 5 years ago.

I think we have some of the same 'friends' 

It is wonderful and inspirational to hear you "listen to that little voice inside"! You are so right. Those folks have their own row to hoe, and their method of coping--demeaning, belittling, or depersonizing can take over a relationship.

It is personally timely to read your post, since I just put the brakes on a friendship when a 'friend' responded to my recent sickness not with, "Do you need anything?" but with, "Oh yeah? well I was a lot sicker than that once, twenty years ago, let me tell you all about it..."

We've been 'friends' for a long time, and I see how--now. With this particular person, I let them do that. My primary function was to validate Ns. In fact, the old me seemed to only attach to proxies of my FOO. The new me doesn't give them the sugary validation they crave, and doesn't deserve the back-handedness.

Thank you for sharing I'm new, and all this support is helping me realize I'm hardly the first or only one to enforce new boundaries.

Hi Indigochild!

I like to get out of the house and ride a bicycle. It usually stops the EFs pretty quickly. I don't pretend to understand the link, but it is there. I'm bigger and older than many other riders, and the social conundrum of public exercise kept me away for years, just from wishing to not be seen at all. But they aren't paying any attention to me. I can choose to interact with a wave or a word, or I can pedal on my own path. I never thought about it, but it's been a safe place to develop boundaries.

I also would like to encourage creativity! Dover Pub. has a series of coloring books that are really fun and design-oriented.

A few months ago, a friend loaned me a little box of Legos. They are an auxiliary supply of the millions belonging to her son. I built a car...just like it was thirty-five years ago. Sometimes I just stick them together by color. I'm alone and there's no wrong way to do it!

I hope this helps

Do you ever feel like you are too tired about talking about all this anymore? You can't see beyond today, just getting through the day is struggle?

Yes.

A resounding yes.

I see myself turning in to my Dad and the end result wasn't good. That turning point is just not coming around.

Yes.

I'm deeply sorry for how you experienced the loss of your father. It compounds a reliance on your memory of him, and affects that memory. We internalize our parents and know what they would think in the present. But we aren't them. My own father didn't act to seek a turning point, so some part of me denied a turning point for myself.

Sometimes, I only see turning points when I look in the mirror and realize I've passed them. My road changed direction while I was worrying what dad would have done. It started with a wish to not be dad. It's becoming a wish to be me.

Even in the "fog" you're still you, and your being here makes a big difference

Thank you for your kind welcomes.

I ordered Pete Walker's book today. I have seen it mentioned many times here. In fact, when I read the page on EF Management on his website, I knew then that I must order the book and introduce myself to the forum.

All through childhood, I assumed that what was true in my life was true in everyone else's. I would be in the home of a friend and think, "These people aren't fooling me...I know what really goes on..." That type of thinking worked into my interpretation of EF's, as well.

I figured everybody else had constant intrusive thoughts, too. The only difference is that they were so much better at dealing with them than me, for one elusive reason or another. I only began to face them for what they are within the past year. Which makes me a Newbie to emotional management.

Thank you, VeryFoggy, I have been in a comparatively safe place for some time. When I left my ex, I began to stay at a friend's. He soon after moved in with his fiance (now wife) allowing me to inhabit a house alone. My T and I agreed that such an opportunity was rare and to be seized. I've allowed myself time to grieve and process-to step forward a little and step back a little. It has been a painful and a fruitful time. I am grateful, grateful, grateful. I'm ultimately grateful that my ex moved on to another man (another supply) right after I left. It made leaving easier. It hurt, but that was really just ancient hurt finding a contemporary outlet...

A few months ago, I started to venture back into the world, beyond minimum interaction (the things I do for $). The level of trials we all face are sending me to exacerbated levels of anxiety, depression and anger-my three oldest friends. I'm no longer faking it from day to day, which means I'm pretty raw sometimes. I'm drinking in Pete Walker's 13 behavioral techniques!

Trees, I look forward to exploring the site! So much here to discover!

Thank you, Thank you

Hello, I am new to this forum and I am already grateful for it

I immediately identified with others' introductions. There has been so much pain absorbed by so many. And there is so much triumph in life's consolations.

I am a 45yr old male. I entered counselling when my short marriage disintegrated two and a half years ago. She was an abusive N. She began by identifying with me, then depersonalizing me. I left, and I sought help.

My FOO is a mess. My father was an angry, violent, alcoholic N. He manipulated the household, mostly my schizophrenic mother. I have two much older brothers. Both express CPTSD; one is diagnosed with PTSD, and I respect his limited contact. I stay in low contact with family. That works best.

My mother rejected the infant me. She had a psychotic event at my birth, and her own trauma expressed itself through dissociation. She became another her. One that hadn't been pregnant and didn't want this baby foisted on her. She was institutionalized for most of my first five years, starting immediately after my birth.

Her presence has been an impenetrable mix of disturbed logic. There were many, many episodes. Both parents were terror. Neither could trust or be trusted. There were no "I love you's" until I started handing them out in my twenties.

I cannot discern a timeline of my first five years, because everyone gets caught in their own trauma. I stayed mostly with one set of relatives, and it is there that I must have received whatever love it was that has preserved my life.

I don't have an articulate memory of home life, other than the oppression. It was daily violence, threats of violence, yelling, screaming and broken glasses, lamps, doors, windows, and walls. There was no mercy.

Everything was sufficiently covered up for family or friends, but my brothers and I each found our own ways to act out the violence. My own memories of dishing it out are not accessible to me. I've had to piece it together through therapy.

I was aware of dissociation as a child. I'd snap out of something, knowing time had passed. I asked people right then, and I've never been satisfied with what they tell me. Sometimes I was violent, and I have no working memory of that.

To look deeper is to associate that I likely could not bear the experience because I was BEING an overpowering violence that had already happened.

I've recently discovered this part of myself that has been locked away. I was 5 and 6 years old and now must forgive the child I was.

I've 'coped' for decades. Moving, moving, moving. A doormat. Helpless, entirely at others' mercy. Always in poverty. Financially and spiritually. I sought and found answers in literature and music. I lived out the invisibility and worthlessness that was programmed into me. I can see how my hunger for connection opened the door for abuse. Over and over.

I've been candy to any N's I'd meet. When I began to recognize their foulness, I had to leave my job (N boss) and limit a number of my professional contacts.

I have nowhere to go but forward. No task but to survive, and sometimes I even thrive. But the EF's are so numerous and pernicious. I can't always drown out the voice that hates me. My dedication to healing requires more.

Two long-time associates and 'friends' recently colluded to steal from me. I handled it professionally, and it's all over. But my triggers were pulled, and I can't get through to the emergency vehicles in my head to stop. Stop running the sirens, stop ramping up my heart rate, stop focusing on defending against a threat that will never arrive.

Again, I am grateful that this forum exists, and that I can safely say all those things I was warned never to tell anyone.