Fears about recovery (general tw)

[goblinchild]

TW for hopelessness about recovery. Also TW for suicide ideation - adjacent statements.

I realized I've been harboring a fear for a long time, about how some people seem to be able to face their demons (not that it's easy) and for others it's like you're asking them to drink the whole ocean. My brother is like that, it's like the sum of his experiences, trauma and coping mechanisms is so great he can barely process it. So much of his identity and ability to function- not just as a competent adult but as someone who has any small will to live- is tied up in those thoughts and behaviors and the ability to shut out his trauma.

Or like, my grandmother. She has a rare brain condition. She genuinely can't process emotional stuff sometimes. Or my mother? (Wow I've never written all this out, no wonder I have such a fear  ) My mother gets so completely overwhelmed and unable to process, she can barely handle seemingly small emotions of guilt. It REALLY messes up her life. It's hard to believe she wouldn't fix it if she could, with how extremely she's suffered.

No matter how far I've come, I'm terrified I'll hit a wall one day and find a trauma that's so dissociated, so blocked out, with such enigmatic emotional turmoil that I just won't be able to process it. I'll just have to live with it for the rest of my life. So much of me has become this person who can chart a course through any kind of trauma or hurt even if it's the most petrifying thing I've ever done. I don't know how I would deal with it if I put all these years of work into this just to get stuck and ...not be that person? Essentially.

I'm not sure what started it but just before Christmas I started having emotional flashbacks and more sensitive triggers that I don't understand, which is weird for me at this point. I feel in my gut that some big trauma memory from childhood is trying to re-surface but it's just so blocked. I feel so stuck. I'm having nightmares every night and I'm very scared and very tired. Nothing I usually do seems to put a dent in figuring it out and I think that's bringing these fears out of me.

[marta1234]

Goblinchild, I feel you. I'm sorry you're in such a tough place right now.
I wanted to come by and say that you're not alone in this, I've had these same thoughts for a whole year, when I started to look into healing. A week ago, I found myself thinking, would I be able to still function if something from my past came up (memory), or if I was put in the same past situation: how would I deal with it? I have a lot of fears of this. Although they are a bit different from what you're going through, I thought that there were still some similarities.
Sending you support