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Messages - helliepig

#1
General Discussion / Re: celebrating the light
December 22, 2017, 02:25:10 PM
thanks guys xx
#2
General Discussion / Re: progress
December 20, 2017, 09:57:52 PM
You are fab James :hug:
#3
General Discussion / celebrating the light
December 20, 2017, 09:56:44 PM
I've had a hard week dealing with huge EF and really scared of the triggering effect of Christmas on top, then a difficult situation involving my teenage son tonight.
But I made a decision to ring someone and tell her how bad it truly has been, (really unheard of for me). When badly triggered I hide and stop and usually want it to end at any cost.
But this lovely person (who I met at a therapy group) listened and helped and guided and healed and for the first time the really really disgusting stuff inside of me was not just my burden alone. I was nearly out of my mind before I rang her with incomprehensible panic and somatic symptoms that were strangling me and now I feel almost normal. Then as if by magic another lovely friend rang me and suddenly I am ok. Not great, but ok
Huge for me, huge.
Taken me a long time to be able to feel the love and to find good people. Here's to the next chapter. xxx
#4
Thank you.:hug:

I've read Pete's stuff before and know he knows what he's talking about but finding it a touch too theoretical at the moment and kind of needing resonance with where I'm at rather than a construct to understand it. It isn't easy to find that. Little phrases people right sometimes are all it takes to make you realise other human being know what this is like.

Growing up with this "stuff" that I thought was my innate badness, I thought it was me, just me, mine, my me-ness.  I know it's common and lots of other people must struggle  with this but not people I seem to know. I always feel so isolated and uncared about and no one notices, not even those I've tried to tell. I hate them at the moment for that.

I'd just like to experience what its like to not feel like this, to feel safe within life and for life around me to not feel disappointing, distant, not mine and like it does at the moment - not something I even want.
#5
General Discussion / Once more round the mulberry bush.
December 10, 2017, 09:35:42 PM
This week has been really hard.  Basically I've been trying to get out more and face my fears of all the things related to it and had been doing ok. Last Saturday night I went out with a group of people and for one reason or another got really triggered. Now this isn't unusual when socialising, and usually it retreats back under the dissociative walls once I return home. But with all the work I've been doing I guess I've eroded those walls and there has been no hiding place for it to retreat to.
I'm not even sure I can put it into words really, the experience I've had. I know it's reliving something very very early.
It is a mixture of terror about being alive and conscious, and hopelessness at finding anything or anyone safe. I feel paper -thin and beyond hope. There seems nothing but pain and weird dissociative experiences around me, in the past, present and future, and absolutely no rescue. It is existentially frightening.

I feel so sorry for the little infant me who experienced this and quite literally had no rescue. There feels to be no point in trying to be with anyone because it is meaningless and I don't belong anywhere, not even to myself.

I have to hope that somehow this stuff will clear and the way out of this crazy stuff will materialise because right now I am empty and scared and going through motions that aren't worth going through.
I've read enough about Mastersons description of abandonment depression to recognise what it is . He says you have to work through it. Funny how nobody thinks to tell you how.

All I know is I'm sick to death of being so broken. I have to go this route even though right now to hope it will heal something fundamental that I am always missing, always scared of, always lost about. Except it doesn't feel like I'm on a route at all. More like a way to the end of the world.
#6
General Discussion / Re: dealing with conflict
November 21, 2017, 04:31:20 PM
thank you guys  :hug:
Just being heard is so validating.
Feel like I've lost the plot this afternoon as I let all the feelings come up. So glad I was able to share it here xx

#7
General Discussion / dealing with conflict
November 21, 2017, 01:29:30 PM
I wanted to write about the difficulties I have with conflict because I've just had a silly little run in with someone that is typical of how I react.
it's like someone says something and instead of being able to hang onto my sense of proportion I just end up reacting defensively, triggered into a bit of a mess and then I have feelings of rage or hopelessness or shame that last for ages and make me play it over and over in my head.

Just by way of example, (a bit silly and really no big deal, except for how I feel - and because it's silly you can't really talk to anyone to make you feel better about it cos they think you're making a big deal out of nothing..)   this morning I'm walking my dogs in the country and one of them starts to do his business. A lady I know  was riding her horse down the lane and before the poor dog had even finished she started with "let's see if Helen is going to use a bag to pick this up" . No,  "hello, how are you? ". It was almost as if she couldn't wait to get in there with her snarky comment...

Now the silly thing on hindsight now I can think I realise I wouldn't have just left the mess there and was feeling a bit embarrassed at my dog doing it in front of her so was on the back foot a bit. I was also taken aback.  (Not that it was even any of her business.  Who goes around saying that to people anyway, it's just silly? )  But immediately I felt guilty. Even more than that something weird happens, which is hard to describe. I completely lost sight of the fact that i was going to clear it up and just totally reacted like I was guilty as charged, as if  i'd been caught red handed. I've noticed this before. In my family for example my sister would say something like "you're this and you're doing x for y reason" and would refute anything i'd say. It would be all her projection and blame and bear no resemblance to my motives or thinking but I'd believe her - i wouldn't be able to hear what my real motives and thoughts are. It's like i allow myself to become the bad person I'm being made out to be. It's like I've learnt to feel ashamed and disregard my own feelings and motives as irrelevant and bad so totally. That makes it damn hard in any conflict situation!!!

Anyway today I didn't feel able to just carry on as usual with her watching or just ignore her. It felt like I'd be "doing as I was told"  like a naughty child but actually it wasn't that logical. I just stood there doing nothing and started to argue with her about how dog poo was no different to fox poo out in the country which obviously a) invited her to criticise and b) me to feel stupid and shameful and wrong like now she thinks I don't care about leaving poo littering the countryside !!!!!

So why do you end up arguing something you don't even believe or pulled into an argument that doesn't need to happen? It's insane. Why can't I just let people and their snarky comments wash over me?

So to end it I sort of lost it  a bit and somewhat childishly said "how do you know I wasn't going to pick it up anyway" and stood there fuming while she rode off. So now I feel even more stupid and like I overreacted and was just totally weird.

Ok, like I say, no big deal.
Except why is it so complicated? It's occupied this great big space in my head since and made me crumble emotionally, I'm sitting here trying to understand "who" feels "what" internally, but basically I just feel angry and sorry for myself and have an intense urge to just give up. I felt awful afterwards like I had nowhere to go with the feelings inside. Sometimes if people yell at me or if I have a run in with someone it makes me panic like I can't bear it, the feelings are just literally unbearable. It's gotta be a traumatic memory being triggered right? Overwhelming shame mostly, rage, white rage, tightness in my chest, tight confusion in my head and self hatred all rolled into one. I literally curl into a tight ball of no escape. It's horrid.

Does this sound familiar to others?  I hate that silly things are such a big blooming deal to me.








#8
General Discussion / Re: CPTSD stage 4517/B
November 19, 2017, 09:33:54 PM
cool, you sound very clear about what you need and if your heart and soul are telling you to do this then you should
:hug: x
#9
Thank you James. For that sheer effort of compassion and wisdom.

See, in a movie, someone would take the time and trouble to sit down and write that! (lol)

All heard and understand. I do get all that, I really do. It's just hard. It's like you said in one of your own posts, its hard to figure your own damaged brain out using your own damaged brain.
It's hard to work out what is pain and abnormal when it's all you've known. It's hard to understand love and security when you've not known it as a little one

That's the frustrating thing, all the reprogramming of positive experiences I try and achieve just gets blown away by the bombs of the past.

I probably will go and see my therapist at some point in the not too distant future. But this stuff I'm trying to deal with is odd and I'm not sure I can take it all there - can't somehow get it there!, They  are fleeting moments of almost experiences or atmospheres- not memories, not body sensations, not emotions.  Nonsensical, incomprehensible but very powerful and create a huge visceral reaction. I can't take them to therapy because they aren't something I can hold onto, visualise, remember. They are there, and then they aren't. A twisted mass of just...stuff.

I suspect they are dissociated fragments. I've had similar before when I was in pain but I could not tell you where the pain was or even IF it was. A painful ethereal non pain. So weird

So I'm tackling them myself using techniques I've done a 100 time with my therapist, cautiously, a bit scared but so determined.
Realising largely that the terror within them is the terror of the child and not that something awful will happen if I face it.

So yesterday I it all made me cry a lot. Started over something silly I'd  done then waves of crying Some of it nameless, most of it heart breaking. And because I'm tired and afraid and it's all  just so hard to make sense of any of  it.,,,Just the sheer complicated nonsensical craziness of all the spits in my head and the 100s of crazy dissociated fragments and all the sodding fears and difficulties in my present life that seem insurmountable because of the poison still held in all the child parts. I still fear there is no one for me and no one who isn't weird and crazy out there and no one who would love me in a good way and everyone seems disappointing, as does life. It's hard not to let it overwhelm me. Thank god for getting out into nature and my animals as they ground me,

So I hear you J, I'm taking care of myself, exercising when I can make myself and trying to rest. Telling myself it's the past and that one day it will be better.
Thank you x
#10
General Discussion / Re: Safety first
November 19, 2017, 09:41:13 AM
I think removing yourself to heal is brave and sensible.
One day when you're ready you can examine the running away bit and maybe you'll be clearer and stronger and able to stay in the vicinity of your trauma without avoidance.
When the cPTSD is more healed the situation wouldn't be as painful, wouldn't hook you the same, wouldn't trigger you the same and you can sit outside it like someone else might be able to do.
Or maybe you'll look back and realise it was crazy and you did right to get away.

Avoidance to me is about avoiding your feelings. Getting away from nasty hurtful and crazy people isn't avoidance it's a healthy choice as long as you don't leave your feelings behind too.
#11
General Discussion / Re: CPTSD stage 4517/B
November 19, 2017, 09:35:16 AM
sorry to hear that James. It's hard trying to deal with your own stuff when you are in a bad environment.

It sounds like it would make anyone stressed, not just because of the PTSD!  Also, like many families. groups find the most sensitive person to be the scapegoat instead of examining the root causes, looks like that condescension is providing that outlet for them.

I know I have no idea what it's like there for you so these are just general suggestions, that may be wide of the mark for you.
Can you make any changes to your boundaries or something that refuses this role and the impossible demands, and pushes stuff back where it belongs? Like sending the stress back to the idiots that created it?  Horrible though it might be, is there any opportunity to use it to try something new? Sometimes I think it's uncanny how we end up replicating our traumatic family life in groups we're in  - either through initial choice of something familiar, or later, our own behaviours and we become almost paralysed, walking the old familiar steps we learnt to do in a family. So staying with it sometimes can be very useful to learn to be different - even while it's hard and frustrating.  I think we often try complaining or trying to point out what's wrong, and mostly other people don't listen. I've done tons of that and then it occurred to me that I was going to stop complaining and just take charge of how I behaved and I stopped doing something at work that I'd felt compelled to do. Quietly, no explanations, no show boating.

At first it felt very provocative and anxiety provoking and then I realised I was simply learning to hold a boundary and  that generally I would never get support or permission to do this - I had to learn to do it myself, with my own permission, for myself, because setting a boundary often makes things harder for others. Of course they weren't going to run around and make it easier for me until I put my own foot down and said no - and then they had to listen.  I've since seen how important that is generally, making my own choices and statements amidst disapproval  but that that gets far more attention and changes more things around me than all the moaning and complaining I used to do  (which was my lazy option as it was less scary than setting that boundary). More respect too - from me and them.

I find when something in the way I am changes then the situation at work starts looking, or even becoming, something a bit different. Even if we're not able to obviously influence things it's weird how often we can do just that , just by changing our steps in the game. We do have more power simply because we're part of the dynamic and much more than we think which is sometimes lost to us when we've grown up in a crazy situation we had no power over.

Am I reading you right that you're thinking of leaving and going on benefits? Just thinking that work - even bad work  -does give you things that welfare doesn't  - routine, company, a purpose, other stuff to think about, ( at least) and that maybe those things are worth preserving?  And that being on benefits might bring up a whole raft of things you aren't feeling or worrying about now?

Just random thoughts.x
#12
I've kind of made a pact with myself this year not to avoid the underlying stuff, knowing "feeling your feelings" is the way to healing.

But that's not so easy really, A lot of it is incomprehensible and frightening and drives me with such weird beliefs that I am controlled by, even whilst I know they are illogical. It's very hard to explain, being preverbal.

So clear to me, the beliefs and what they mean, so familiar and strong yet there are no words to describe the contents or concepts. They relate to reality itself and are very very frightening.

At the moment I'm struggling to afford more therapy and in any case, feeling like I need to poke around in here and see if I can find out what's in here, otherwise I try to explain this stuff in ways that are hopelessly inadequate, and sit once more while people - even my therapist - just don't understand. It drives me crazy and makes those very little parts of me really panic. Easier to face them alone.

It is frightening, the sheer isolation of those existential thoughts. They've never been understood. I kind of know my only hope is to keep listening, keep feeling, stop this terrified running away from them and their confusing, contradictory surreal nature .
Then maybe I can do something with them.
I wish I could put it into words

There's something about a hopelessness because I'm not real somehow. Or that no one around me is real, maybe that's it. That connection is illusory.

There's some terrible fear of just existing and being real because that means death somehow.

I've built my life on chasing improvement, attainment, being the best, being good enough, trying to connect and yet it all feels like a wasteland- so many lonely painful memories. So much that could have been different - if only. Underneath, now I've stopped, is just a barren wasteland.

Underneath is a frightening brokenness and despair.

I am tired of feeling fizzy scared weird things instead of ordinary emotions and ordinary worries.

I can't conceive at the moment of what it must be like NOT to have this fizzy weird surreal stuff, the limits, the fears. That frightens me, how little I understand about how to live and how other people just do life. That they can't understand how frightening this stuff can be. That aloneness is terrifying

I believe I am worthless really underneath. I cannot believe anyone really cares and then  equally strongly I panic because on the other hand I don't see anyone to care for, not out there. They are all seem scary or disappointing or vapid or weird.

Or I'm scared of anyone coming close because it reminds me of something awful that I can't bear.

Sometimes I think it's because if they are ordinary they not rescue and swaddle me in love and safety and I have to keep functioning in this dreary life without hope. That the rescue fantasy (logically I know is rubbish) but emotionally it is shattering and beyond the ability of those frightened parts to understand.

They don't see anything for themselves as them. They don't see any point. They don't want anything. they just want to be held and sleep and not be conscious. I think they are very very young.

So I am caught between a rock and a hard place.

The fear is visceral and irrational but very powerful. It's as if the fabric of life is splitting and I'm left trapped in a nightmare.

I remember as a very little child thinking I didn't want to live but if life was this bad death must be worse.

I have spent a lifetime horrified by this stuff when it is triggered, totally dissociated and running like crazy. I have tried so long  to figure out all the impasses caused by these fears and beliefs and surprise surprise, never got anywhere with it.//. Now I know I cannot figure them out. I have to feel the stuff, think the unthinkable and try and remind myself it Is  old stuff. But the present feels so empty and so full of despair.

I know my mother hardly ever spoke or looked at me other than in sneering contempt or out of duty. Dress all her little girls alike and pretend to be a mother.
I know I was left alone as a tiny baby.
My family knew nothing of love or genuinely liking kids, let alone protecting and nurturing them.
Noone protected me from the paedophiles or the attacks from my own siblings.
no one even noticed. they just joined in and blamed me.

Sometimes I think my life is over because NOTHING seems like worth having anymore if you don't even feel real. It feels like I'm always on the outside looking in and run away the minute someone comes near. And that even includes myself.

#13
good for you and good for the Samaritans.

Sometimes it takes so much to get to that grief and then it all comes tumbling out.


#14
General Discussion / Re: Bit of a mental mess...
November 03, 2017, 08:33:40 PM
EMDR removes the blockages and fused parts of your brain and allows processing, after which you get a lot of insights and things seem subtly different. The thing you did the EMDR on has shrunk or just disappeared. It really is amazing.
But you also need to learn all the stuff you didn't learn, integrate the experiences and make sense of all of it with someone. And a CBT- like approach to get past the things you have learnt to fear and to re-experience life and people differently, learn relationship skills, connect and find who the new you is meant to be.
And then grieve it all. Once the trauma is cleared and your system is no longer on red alert there is room for rage and grief and that is hard because often you've never known how to feel either, let alone cope with all the losses and regrets at how you life has been so hard.

But EMDR is the powerhouse. It has been a life saver for me and reached things that I would never have been able to tolerate experiencing for long enough to get at it via other therapies.
It's also exremelly powerful and has on one  occasion for me broken down so many dissociative walls at once I experienced flooding- for 3 months -  which was beyond terrifying. This was with a therapist who is an internationally known EMDR consultant but who, I now realise, knew little of dissociation and child development and who was probably dissociative himself.
Subsequently I found a specialist who had trained also in those areas and her skill and ability to see what I need is incredible.
I have learnt the hard way It has to be done by someone who knows what they are doing and knows how to reach the child parts of you and keep them safe alongside it and how to help the arrested development of those parts.


#15
General Discussion / Re: bleh
October 31, 2017, 11:05:11 PM
Thanks Dee - yes I recognise the value of trying to love myself and how that has to come first. At the moment for me it's just withstanding the feelings without caving in. At least I can say something to the despairing part if it's only yes I hear you I know you're there.
Thanks too James. Yes despair as habit. That's good. I get what you mean. It's just a learned response.
It's profound knowing you guys get what I mean, have suffered and suffer similar, have felt the awful pain. For so long I thought it was my awful cross to bear alone.
I have faith I can change this pain into so much more - overall - it's just in the harsh moments of coming face to face with it when it takes your breath away and undoes all the positive in one ugly sweep where you flounder and despair. Those are the moments to remember you guys and others like us are out there and that there IS love and acceptance in the world, even for me.

You guys rock.