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Three years ago I was in a heavy place. Nothing new there, but an old inner message kept telling me, "if only" I'd get it right this time, find the fix, I'd be over the hump. Back to where I should be. Albeit I'd never reached where I should be in the first place, if I even knew what that was. Still I forged ahead; I'd already done so much work on myself, I had to be close. Right? Please?

So I signed up for another round of therapy. I'd been in lots before--some good, some not, some neutral, and some dreadful experiences. But this time I was determined it would be different, no matter what.

Well, the therapy itself was of the neutral sort, and when the T moved what followed was the chit chatty sort of fill-in-the-blanks therapy. Meanwhile I'd run across some books on self-acceptance and they turned out to be the better therapy, more what I needed to learn. So I've chosen acceptance as the starting point for my healing journey.

Acceptance doesn't mean resignation to fate, because part of what one accepts is the ability to choose options. But it does reflect the reality of "that was then, this is now" thinking. I found acceptance wasn't a tacit form of "just get over it". That can't be done; but neither can one change things that happened, or even the thoughts that rush through about them. How can one not accept what already happened? And the thoughts rush in all the time, unexpectedly, despite one's best efforts to ignore or undo them.

The pain, the failure, the sadness is all there whether we choose it or not. The "positive" thinkers by insisting on constant upbeat thoughts can't do it any better. They set themselves up for disappointment and failure when, inevitably, they have a "bad" thought, an angry one, etc., and realize they're not perfect. It's stress of the highest magnitude; brought on by the need to be always positive.

But when you accept that it's okay not to be okay, it releases the tension of having to always get it right. It doesn't undo any of the "stuff" from before, but in accepting even those unpleasant thoughts it's easier to find a path from which we can move forward.

Acceptance doesn't need a goal, requires no program, and makes no grand promises. It's a healing journey, not a destination, like recovery implies. Within acceptance, one retains that spark we all started with—the curiosity to discover new ways of being. 

Along the trail of acceptance, we can feel okay, and learn that it's okay to accept our healing, its good and bad parts, the tears and laughter, joy and pain. By doing so we can unlearn the "happiness is everything" mantra that sounds wonderful, but doesn't reflect our true nature.

 

Wow, what a great idea--I live 1 mile from one of the greatest wild rivers left. My canoe waits and the weather is ideal. 

Missbliss quoted Judith Herman's observation:

"Many abused children cling to the hope that growing up will bring escape and freedom.

    But the personality formed in the environment of coercive control is not well adapted to adult life. The survivor is left with fundamental problems in basic trust, autonomy, and initiative."

Indeed, that rings true for my experience in what I call "the graveyard of lost illusions". I still feel like I'm 12 and looking forward to the teen years...what the hey, I missed 'em the first time around. Another poster here once remarked that if "arrested development" is a symptom of cptsd, bring on the second childhood.

Except I feel like I'm still 12, stuck. Maybe there's a novel in there, but it's truly nonfiction with all the horror film memories to go along. Oddly, I use that image--my life as movie--often as a means to cope. I mean, if my life is a movie, the screen goes blank, the projector is shut off; I exit the theatre, and realize that the movie is over. Unfortunately, I still remember every scene.

Pure fantasy, again; it happens when one loses the "real". Missing something, but I already knew that. 

Partly due to my remote residence, I've given up formal "live" T. Although there is a group counseling setup just 15 miles away, where I had 3 T's, they seemed pretty "cookie-cutter" in their approach. None of 'em had a clue about cptsd; I ended up teaching them about it.

One did EMDR (seemed hung-up on it), but similar to your experience, it was done-and-out. For her, it seemed like a game; for me, it was just confusing, and I was also discouraged from talking about it after.

I've cycled through periods with T's, long stretches without 'em. Funny thing I feel like I make more progress alone, reading lots, etc. Perhaps I could better structure my approach. Come to think of it, though, many T's I had weren't very structured at all, just darting around. I'm sure there's good ones; Long ago I had one pretty good T (out of 9) but back soloing now and feeling okay about it. No driving and no bills for glorified "chats" either.

DU wrote:

"NO WONDER I RUMINATE ALL* THE TIME! It's for my bloody survival!"

Oh yeah. A favourite author had this to say about the ruminating dance: "Regret is the longing to change the past. Fear is the desire to control the future. Peace is the surrender to Now." Your m and s seem to have high regard for the "regret" tag as they cling to the history they want.

I've a slight side-story about history, okay? In my work I dealt with history a lot (that acting stuff I've mentioned). I invented a character who often used lines referring to historians as "hysterians--they study the past and go hysterical". Maybe you can re-label the fear-mongers as "ye olde hysterians". Hope you're okay with my using slang words here, despite your second-language filter.

I have 3 words from the FOO that have haunted my ruminations:

1...the m said "shame, shame, double-shame" to me, usually after molesting me; interesting twist, that one. Freudian slip, I think they call it.

2...the f was fond of reminding me "it's not what you say, it's how you say it." Whoa! No wonder I never felt understood, but I bet his "blame the victim" stance honed my acting skills for the "how you say it" parts.

3. Religious schools actually made it kinda easy--they just told me I was a sinner all the time.

You conclude by calling your ruminations time-wasters. Nah, they're only thoughts from the mind's vaults--what shows up, shows up. But now you get to clean 'em out and design your own mind-vault.

Just remember to install dustbins in your memory vault; for discarding what's no longer needed in building your new self. That's where you can put m and s, those hysterians so hysterical about the past.

So while all they wanted for you was: 

you're now free to: 


                  



 

This kind of floors me. You wrote:

"the lady made me do the pulmonary test like 6 times before I could pass"

...if you failed that many times but passed just once, it sure seems like that should indicate the presence of asthma or some pulmonary stress, not its absence. Whatever her thinking was, it has a funny feel--like maybe she thought your intent on doing the test was like an academic one, and you'd be happy to pass, so let's keep on going? Maybe she didn't understand that you weren't trying to pass or fail, but was curious in a search for possibilities? And after 6 tries, oh good you passed? And you had used albuterol that day, which should skewer the test favourably, but it took that many repeats to do so?

I'm very leery about giving med advice of any sort; med stuff freaks me out anyway. But as an asthmatic, and having been around these tests, I don't get that one. At all. If you'd had 3 passes, 3 fails it would obviously indicate a neutral result...but the 5-1 score? Too weird to come up with a "pass" on that.

But I only write this to point out what seems incongruous in the testing outcome. I do so hoping it doesn't trigger any more anxiety than you already have about this.

I hope all goes well with the T...you deserve a break on this, and a truly caring, understanding human seems what's most needed. You're showing remarkable poise; it's bad enough just to be dealing with cptsd, let alone all this added stress. Anyway you can, find ways to relax, confident you are really doing the best.

Take good care.     

Do you have a way to contact your T outside of the regular appointment times? This seems like a time when you should insist on it, if you don't have it. You mentioned the T does EMDR, but surely there's more help there, associates or other T's? Or it can be found through the T's contacts? You indicated you regarded her highly, and you need that sort of personal help as much if not more than the docs. 

As to the psychiatrist, if a second opinion is an option, that seems worth checking into when you can. Regarding the asthma, if that test you had was the "breathing tube" one, they can be wildly off sometimes, depending on lots of factors like time of day, pre-test diet, etc. At the very least, there's chronic pulmonary stress going on and it can be helped.

You've been resilient with this before, and can be now. There are incredible highs/lows with all that's happened. It's all lonely and no one cares--it's my involuntary nightly mantra. It's all very maddening, and oh how I wish I had more than words.

You've friends...right here.  We care...right here, right now.
We treasure your friendship, your generosity, your noble spirit even in times like now. We all wish we could help more, but we do the best we can. Your incredible spirit will find a way through.

                     

BigGreenSee123 wrote:

"Animals can easily be the blank slates on which we project our fears, etc. I do it with people all the time - assume the worst, think I'm being judged, feel like I'm threatened."

Very intriguing, that sense of being observed, and the need to step away from the imagined threat. I feel totally like that around humans, not at all though around most animals.

Perhaps the difference is your family dog experience, the wary reaction of it to you, and being as he was identified with the other people, perhaps you extended or thought of him in that vein--as an associated threat. And perhaps transferred that to all animals in general.

My experience was different. While the m had cats, she was weirdly antagonistic to them; seemed to hate them, but kept them anyway. I felt more allied with the cats than with most humans, especially the m, who treated them about as awful as she did me. So I developed a sympathetic bond, I guess, which I probably translated into animals and wildlife in general. Nowadays, I live in an area with more wildlife than people; and while I didn't end up like this because of the wildlife, they're just a part of the neighbourhood, so to speak.

Hmm, so whereas you projected your fears of judgement onto animals, I seem to have projected my hopes of acceptance onto animals. Or something. It's stark, though--I'm petrified of people, all the time, even though I'm outwardly as social as needs dictate.

That said, I don't feel very safe around wild turkeys--they can be vicious. And red squirrels have no sense of boundaries. 

from a book by Stephen Levine, the quote refers to Buddhist groups, but it really applies universally...

"...the mind has a tendency to project perfection on others in the same way it projects imperfection on ourselves..."

and

"Here and there you will hear a teacher who selectively quotes the Buddha as saying that '90 percent of practice is sangha, (the company of fellow travelers on the path). And indeed there is considerable value, at times, in 'together action' with others who too are struggling toward the surface. But 90 percent?!? I think not. All our work is done 'alone' in the heart. Perhaps a teacher's desire for position and our common wish for the perfect family, cause us ever so subtly to be attached to that particular statement." 

We can live without religion or meditation, but we cannot survive without human affection.

                                                --Dalai Lama

...perhaps even if it's just the dream of human affection...

Arpy1 wrote:

"i think not being able to receive is more about humiliation and shame. and not feeling worth anything. Maybe? don't really understand why that should be."

Arpy1, I read your cult recollections and this dovetails with what you wrote there. It's a time when your trust was manipulated and twisted to where you didn't recognize it as anything you'd want, or if you did once, not want anymore. So if you were made to feel that way once, it sets up the fear that "here I go again"...once the trust bond is broken, it's hard to receive it without that inner shame/humiliation memory colouring your reactions. I was probably in the same state with religious schools I was in--I trusted (even when I should have known better) and wham--the shame was total.

I was looking at a bit of Walker's book again tonight, and hit one of the frequent reminders that recovery is slow, requires patience, and hey, we end up with advanced understanding of human nature en route to picking up the pieces of our lives. But Southbound said it even better:

"Can we at least agree not to dwell on what hideous miscreations we are or might be? Probably not, but I think it could be somewhere on the list of goals."

Agreed.    Swap out "miscreations" for "humans" and that's a good start.

I think I just developed the habit of figuring I'd always be misunderstood. In my schools, if I looked at someone in a FRIENDLY way, it was cause for suspicion. Although the real feeling was constant fear no matter what; *, if they didn't catch my sins, the g-man up in the sky would. At home, I was always frightened of the m and knew the f was nicer, but very conditional.

So, being continually misunderstood, but needing to function, required lots of travail and somehow enough gumption to survive, let alone ask for practical help. However, as an adult, this pattern continued; I continually ran into people I trusted, then they let me down big-time. I'm so bad I have trouble asking someone via a simple anonymous phone call ("are you open Sunday?") I fear the judgement always set to come my way. My childhood lesson writ large: Love hurts, trust kills.

Frustrating? More debilitating, but I'm old enough not to worry about it anymore (so I say, but only halway believe). Being mindfully aware I go from there, and give up grandiose schemes to "improve". Do what I can, is all.

Not sure if I have anything useful, but being as I live in a huge forested area full of deer, bears, eagles, wolves (some years coyotes; this year wolves), lynx, and lots of others, I thought I'd venture a thought or two.

Deer usually aren't aggressive...they're more hyper-vigilant than the worst cptsd variety (I count myself in that category). Your deer probably would have bolted, once he knew you were there.

I hope it's okay to venture a humourous take (I hesitate 'cause my humour tends to be subtle and often missed; cptsd connection--my sublety was developed living in a den of religious/serious zealots who had no humour whatsoever). So have you considered acting like a turkey? The most frightened I've ever seen a deer was when a wild turkey surprised one in a clearing out my window once. That deer leaped and was off in a flash, snorting and trumpeting his panic for all to hear; while the turkey just kept gobbling its way across the clearing. Generally, though, deer are pretty benign. Freaked by turkeys, though.

Probably my most interesting encounter was walking straight into a bear one day. Too late to formulate any plan, the bear sauntered right across the trail in front of me. For some reason my dogs weren't with me then (don't have dogs now), 'cause bears are easily spooked by dogs--the big ones, that is; mine were huskies.

Anyway, there we were, just crossing paths. Black bears usually are okay, unless startled. And as I just seemed to be sauntering along, and the bear doing likewise, we each just became aware of each other at the last second, within a couple feet of each other; the bear kept going where it was headed, as did I. If cubs had been involved, different story, but there wasn't in this case. Once in a great while one will saunter up to the house, then it's just tell 'em to scoot, usually. The obvious no-no is not to have garbage outside and it keeps us neighbourly, I guess.

Gosh, never thought I'd be telling wildlife tales on this site.
Makes up for the nasty human ones, maybe.

I've taken lots of personality tests, but today when I got to all that family stuff, my head started spinning, and I lost it. I felt chilled, needed a blanket (on a warm afternoon), actually went to bed early, and will be back there as soon as I'm done with this. Realized maybe I should explain.

I couldn't detach from the horror movie that was in my head. I was totally unwanted and unloved. Not unique, just hurts; as everyone knows, this isn't always some smooth ride over the bumps. As I wasn't wanted anyway, I don't even qualify as lost. The only category that fits any of this is heartbreak.

I dunno, I'm resistant to ever dredging up the FOO follies, but the *, I gave it a twang of the old emotional rubber band but still come up too confused and/or too angry to really know if my vote was accurate.

If I understood right, you vote for what you become, correct? So that's "lost child" land, alright. But I think it matches well with the FOO all the way through. One glaring gaffe in the poll is that I was in pretty steady trouble with school, but much of it wasn't anything I ever actually did either; it was just a disaster, period. I think the m was emotionally ...

umm, well you know what...I really have to bail out of this--it's too upsetting...but if a vote was requested, yeah the lost child fits, at least at the end, once upon a time. I know what happened, every stinking detail, and analyzing it all leads me to just one big cry; I'll have to leave it at that. Sorry.