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Messages - helliepig

#16
General Discussion / bleh
October 31, 2017, 06:45:16 PM
Today just feeling sad and dispirited again.
It's like something heals and I feel better again, and then something more gets triggered and the next wave arrives.
Today I'm feeling bleak about the loneliness that permeates me from my childhood.
I'm starting to get out and about and that feels good because I'm doing it trying to really be present, (whereas before i'd go out and stay defended - almost as if I were just going through the motions and ticking off that I'd done it and feel no better after)
However it doesn't take much to make me feel like it's so pathetic ... spending time with people who take for granted family and belonging or who are discussing their mother cooking for 25 on Christmas day and it hits me how little I have or know of that kind of world, or of anything really.
Likewise people like that wouldn't be able to conceive of my absence or lack of comfort with people, lack of belonging.

I realised yesterday how little I think i'm entitled to really love someone or really be able to trust and relax. It's almost as if somewhere I told myself don't ever love, don't feel, don't need, don't be enough... and I don't. I don't feel it, I can't compute it, I don't get it.
Momentary connections here and there but soon lost in the mire
The concept that I could be among people who love and like me, where I could be enough without doing or saying or being something unacceptable, that life could be safe, is an alien one.

And always when I'm with people I feel like they like and want each other more than they want me. It's a wretched, shameful feeling.

I think I'm waffling. One of those days when you try to describe the bleak winds swirling within but you can't.
Sorry if you're reading this!


#17
General Discussion / Re: now the good news
October 29, 2017, 09:26:43 AM
I LOVE THIS :cheer:
#18
General Discussion / Re: Mourning
October 29, 2017, 09:22:01 AM
Thank you James. That all really hit home. :hug:
#19
General Discussion / Re: I'm ready to leave him
October 28, 2017, 02:01:39 PM
It does get better, honest. :hug:
#20
It's ok to write this!

Sometimes it gets too much, not just the big journey of trying to heal, but living with the daily stuff that is made harder by having issues - and then the frustration and pain at seeing yourself still (or yet) not being who you want to be with it all :hug:
#21
General Discussion / Re: Mourning
October 28, 2017, 11:41:08 AM
Wise words James.
I hear what you're saying. I guess my forays out are me trying to learn what IS me and what isn't and dropping the latter.

I've socialised a million times before but not from a place of the real me, vulnerable and undefended, (or relatively!..... ) and willing to learn rather than poised to run.

One problem I have that a fair proportion of my trauma was preverbal, and extremely formative eg not being wanted, or celebrated from birth - they wanted a boy so abandoned and blamed me - and Mum not connecting with me right from word go. Not that she was able to connect much anyway I think. But my memories are of her bright and elegant and capable and always with someone else not me (that was probably her false self) and hating me. The very word "mother" conjures up instant cold, hard, distant images.

So not being seen, mirrored, held, soothed, celebrated or even seen. She seemed to blame me for her life. (The rest of it sex abuse as a baby and so on I've detailed elsewhere)

So a lot of what blocks my fire escape is deep rooted visceral fear and behaviours that are from very early hardwiring and thus hard to withstand, let alone override, that date from the earliest parts of my life. They have over the years of therapy created nightmares, neurological and physical symptoms of such intensity I would not have believed it if it hadn't happened to me. I have literally run away from people and things because something inside suddenly decries it, with no comprehension of why,  and there are a lot of existential dread- like feelings and a deep emptiness which is hard to define.

So it's not just about dumping off what I have that isn't mine, it's all the loss and absence and the shame of not knowing "how to do it all" ie, be enough. i find it really painful when others talk about family, belonging, who they're doing what with, the ordinary stuff of life that they do without thinking that makes me feel so empty and inadequate. Even when I myself do those things it usually feels empty and "not real" because a tiny part of me only wants to do it with "mummy" and my family.
...........Odd how much you can yearn for something that was dreadful - or is it just the absence of not having it. Damn it's confusing........

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/tech-support/201703/daughters-unloving-mothers-mourning-what-you-deserved

Although I've healed a lot of stuff,  the very early neglect and lack of love and mirror is definitely the hardest to heal. It's so amorphous and vague and in every pore of your body it's hard to see it let alone understand it.

At the moment I am trying to stay with this layer of feeling rather than dismiss it as depression and fight or medicate my way out of it and run back to the happy part of me. I know that other part of me is there, I just gotta find a way to connect the dots between those two sides of me and heal the young damaged parts.

I carry it around and try and feel it and let those parts know it is ok now, and hope that over time it will sort itself out.

Bit by bit I think I am starting to clear all this out - but it is hard to know who the real me is beneath all this as it wasn't defined in the first place, it wasn't allowed to exist with any value at all not even in the simple task of being welcomed into the world or given basic safety and connection at the beginning - let alone something as lofty as love or caring!

There's a part of me that simply does not understand living and actually is afraid to be conscious. I sit at home trying to figure out what I want to do and all I feel is this emptiness and the desire to hide away from life in permanent sleep,




#22
Symptoms - Other / Re: being productive
October 27, 2017, 10:25:27 AM
I get that Rainagain
It feels like a big mountain to pull yourself up.
I wonder sometimes if I feel angry at it all and i'm rebelling by not doing it or because I feel ashamed of my space as if it's not good enough.
But yes the pointlessness.
#23
NSC - Negative Self-Concept / Re: Approval
October 27, 2017, 10:22:40 AM
Totally.
I approve of myself when alone (sometimes) but with people I'm off balance, always trying to be good enough and mortified if I mess up
The approval or attention need is like a big ache inside without which it all feels empty
Trying to figure out how to convince myself my own approval is enough
#24
General Discussion / Re: Mourning
October 26, 2017, 10:41:41 PM
Thanks for the link James, and your words of support. I like the notion of the fire and the fire escape.

I kind of known this about my family for a while - I've had very little to do with them for years and years other than the odd foray there for family funerals which only serve to show me how shut down self centred and basically weird they are.

But that understanding alone doesn't really cut it - what I'm struggling with now, and what I think you're describing, isn't so much "them" as much as the wounds I'm left with, fear of people and confusing contradictions.  I've been aware of it all for a long time but just at the moment I'm feeling the pain keenly , and like you say, the frustration. I think I am feeling it all at a much deeper level, the mourning level. I've been here so many times before and seen this so many times before, but in a less intense, way. I'm letting myself feel the full force of it and it's hard. Despairing and intensely painful.

Beneath all the crazy stuff inflicted, the primary wound is one of feeling  not valid, wanted, seen, chosen, noticed, important. Always feeling left out, unnoticed. Walking in a crowd of people and seeing why they are all lovable but there is no space for me to be noticed, Valueless, invisible, always feeling I'm not real or what I do doesn't count. Unable to find my place or my people.

And another equal part of me not wanting to be noticed - because that bit meant abuse or contradictory crazy *. People and families are not safe to be near. I cannot trust myself as anything that comes out of my mouth is bad, wrong, inflammatory, inspires hate or attack and people ganging up against me. That is the bit I am trying hard to reprogram, to weaken that belief.

Being trapped between "terror or isolation" and "terror of closeness" isn't nice. There isn't much comfy space in there!

I know it has to be baby steps to avoid over facing and triggering the scared children that sit either side of that precipice. Going back to the notion of fire escapes, it's as if I can't escape the fire as either way still the fire escapes seem to lead to more heat and flames.  One day I hope I will see a way down that leads to safety but never having had a notion of  being safely alive as the real me, that's a hard thing to imagine. I hide in pretence and achievement for a while and feel artificially safe but it doesn't hold for so long before the cracks appear and I realise it's all been smoke and mirrors.

I now where this comes from but it's so hard to find a way to pierce that inner wall to get in and heal it.  There's something really yukky and stuck and existential terrifying underneath it.

I know there is so much more. I've achieved a great deal in my life in reality - but none of it really counts compared to this stuff - when you've built your life around being a success, an achiever, it's hard when you feel none of that matters a damn because actually you've not got any nearer what you really want What I want now is to lose this constant existential dread.

The hardest thing at the moment is knowing I am not reacting like a normal person. I know I overreact to things and I can't explain it cos it's too complex and contradictory and I'm tired of being that person!!

#25
General Discussion / Re: Mourning
October 25, 2017, 08:58:49 PM
thanks Blueberry :hug:
#26
Symptoms - Other / Re: being productive
October 25, 2017, 08:56:35 PM
I so agree. I'm hoping eventually I'll understand what it's about x
#27
Symptoms - Other / being productive
October 25, 2017, 02:51:58 PM
Does anyone else struggle with being productive?
I often sit at home overwhelmed by stuff to do. Wondering how "normal" people motivate and interest themselves. Feeling my space is not good enough.
And then I start to tidy and everything feels messy and dirty and I run out of steam. It feels so sad and angry and pointless and causes a deep bleak sadness I don't understand. Who cares anyway?
And I feel ashamed. It's so hard for me to have people in my space. My T says it's a great defence to keep people away.
Yet outside at work I am organised, effective and tidy. Seems like I have my stuff together. If only they knew......


#28
AV - Avoidance / Re: No dissociation?
October 25, 2017, 01:48:47 PM
Dissociation is sneaky. I didn't know I was and yet I'm very dissociative. I guess what I'm saying is it isn't easy to know or spot.
On the other hand not all trauma causes dissociation.

If you think what dissociation is, it's a split off part of you holding feelings or memories or parts or you. "They" watch what are going on and are still reacting but separate to you so they can be buzzing quietly a lot of the time just below the surface and it can be part of your normal feeling for you. Say for instance if there's an angry raging part that you are unaware of, it can be raging quietly inside a lot but you just don't see it or feel it. Just the ripples of it but so so faintly.
One day therapy starts to make it safer to bring it out and the volume turns up.
Sometimes it's like vague white noise somewhere deep in my head or a slight buzzing in my chest or a slight feeling of apprehension that later down the line I realised meant I was an echo of dissociated feelings. Sometimes it's just a fullness in my head or suddenly finding myself slowed and heavy.  A lot of the time it's just my normal. It's only something I've understood on hindsight and even now I find it hard to spot when i'm dissociating. I can see the different parts of me most of the time now (co-consciousness) but stuff still comes up to surprise me.

I remember my therapist saying he thought I was dissociative and I was like, what? Eh? It sounded so silly.  I read lots of stuff and to start with just couldn't see it in myself. Then he asked me to do a timeline of my life and I literally could not remember whole chunks of it. It shook me really deeply. It has still taken me years to get my head round it and what it means generally, and specifically to me. It's very clever and very sophisticated and a damn good defence network for survival but it does get in the way of a normal life.


#29
General Discussion / Re: Orchids in the ditches
October 25, 2017, 11:41:04 AM
Quote from: Metanoia on October 11, 2017, 05:12:14 PM

It really does hurt looking back on all the time spent crying, sad, alone and scared that could have been happy memories. It even sucks looking back on all the years not knowing I had cptsd and the people I got defensive with or lashed out on or the things I would have done if I had more confidence. I mean during that time I have done cool things and accomplished goals but it just probably wasn't with the spirit that should have been there.

So completely true,
#30
General Discussion / Re: Getting diagnosed in UK
October 25, 2017, 11:29:38 AM
what about finding a therapist who specialises in trauma and go and talk to them ? would be a lot cheaper than a psychiatrist.
In my experience as a patient and also a health professional, I'd say NHS mental health services are stretched far too thinly and often what patient's need is simply not available. My personal feeling is also that many mental health professionals in it don't understand trauma at all,  let alone how it presents or how commonly it underlies so many presentations.

CPTSD is so complex I'm not sure unless you work in it all the time you really get it, so i'd start there??