My brain barks at me?

[Armee]

Ok.

So sometimes in the early morning hours my brain seems to let me into a part of it that is normally closed off. When I am there I hear things like dishes shattering, children crying, women screaming, or weird little scared thoughts that come out of the blue like "choked! Choking!!!" And "r___!"

But then sometimes when I'm there in that part of my brain another part of my brain barks at me (like I hear a dog barking but the sound is in my brain, not outside of it) and it startles me out of the other part. It's like my brain is calling me out of that other spot and distracting me with an alarming but safe sound.

I feel like this sounds super crazy but I also don't think I'm crazy.

Do other people's brains here have weird ways of keeping you out once you wander in? I mean normally it's dissociation for me. It's like once I sneak past the guards at the gates there's another layer to keep me out.

Ugh. It feels so weird. It's not hallucinations it is clearly inside my brain not outside.

[Papa Coco]

Hi Armee,

What a great topic to introduce to the forum. I agree that you are likely not crazy. Even my therapist tells me that when he meditates, he hears voices talking to him. And my T is very, very sane.

I've not done any research on our brain's tendency to hear voices, but I've experienced small doses of what you describe here. Even in small doses, it sounds like the same phenomenon. So, if I think about it, I come up with this: What we do know is that as trauma survivors, our brains have developed a bit of compartmentalization. EFs happen to us when a dormant compartment in the brain is triggered to wake up and bring our consciousness back into the past with it, usually against our will. During EFs, our best course of treatment is to calmly accept our EF reaction as just that: a trauma reaction. Then sit down and consciously wake up the other parts of the brain so all the compartments of our whole brain can work together to calm down the panic of the part that's giving us the EF.

This tells me that my brain is living multiple lives at once in my head, and when an EF happens, the traumatized part wakes up and takes full control until I consciously wake up the non-traumatized parts to help balance the load. I do this by imagining my 61-year-old calm self sitting down with my panicking 7-year-old self, hugging him and promising to live through the fear with him. It usually calms the 7-year-old part of me back down. It also functions to start merging these two fractured compartments back together so that I get better and better at not going into EFs so quickly or so deeply.

I find that when I'm most prone to hear the doorbell, or knocking, or something falling, or someone calling my name is during those times when I'm closer to my trauma triggers, OR when I'm having some really good therapy that's working really well to help me release more of the past. I'm not a therapist or anything, but to me it seems possible that these voices, barking, doorbells, etc, are memories from my past that are parked in one of the compartments of my brain that just suddenly woke up and got a few seconds of airtime in my consciousness.

It happened to me last week. It can be kind of frustrating to be relaxing in bed and hear the doorbell, and then wonder if I have to get up and answer the door. Was it real or imagined? For me it's almost always imagined, but sometimes I get up to check because it sounds So real. Or I'll hear my wife call my name, but I know she's 165 miles away at that moment. Or I'll feel someone sit on the edge of my bed, and when I can finally wake out of the stupor, I find I'm still alone in the house.

These voices and senses don't alarm me anymore. I don't worry about them like I used to. For me, like with you, I don't believe I'm crazy either. I just think it's a phenomenon around how the various different parts of the brain interact.

Thanks for having the courage to ask this question. As for me...yeah. I hear the barking dogs and doorbells too.

[Dante]

Oh wow.  I read your note earlier today, Armee, but didn't have anything I could add.  Until Papa Coco mentioned hearing his name called.  And yeah, that I've had all my life.  I remember it clearly when I was about 15, in the shower.   It's amazing the stuff I do remember when there's so much I don't.  I hear door knocks too. 

So yeah, doorbells and barking dogs here too.  Thanks for having the courage to share this.

[Not Alone]

I don't think you are crazy. It makes sense that you have multiple layers in your defenses.

[woodsgnome]

It's entirely plausible that trauma survivors end up with hyper-active states of mind, and that even a slight noise can be taken personally.

My own response to my traumas resulted in this capacity to regard any and every sound as being indicative of some potential threat. I regarded even the most innocuous sounds as signifying that "the other shoe" was about to fall and further disrupt my life.

I still react to those, but rarely am I unable to put them aside. This didn't happen overnight, but it did, and I'm okay with it. In many other aspects I've even been satisfied to have experienced this hyper-vigilant capacity, regardless of its probable origin as a negative reaction to real danger. It did, for example, at least heighten my sense of awareness.

There's one huge aspect that still bothers, and that's the unexpected but recurring series of angry, shame-inducing voices directed at me. I live alone so any notion of 'reality' in those vile, usually threatening and demeaning and disembodied voices can startle and terrify me. They can rise to the volume of a radio cranked up to max sound with several 'stations' (other voices joining) screaming at me, to where I could only dive as far into the bedclothes as possible, cover my ears, and fearfully hope they would somehow subside. I reacted, which is natural, but the mental anguish in turn made me literally sick, very scared, and wanting to hide (hiding has been a life's theme of mine).

Though this still can happen to an extent, the drama and frequency of these episodes has dropped some in recent years. In part this is due to my therapist's sage observation that it might help if I don't hide, even if just under the covers, but that I actively shout back. This has seemed to help along with something else -- mentally surrounding my bed with imaginary (but effective) protective beings. I realize that if anyone did actually hear me (highly unlikely as I live in a very remote region) they might indeed think they were hearing one crazy or off-the-edge person.

So yes, there are these sorts of phenomena that seem to go on; even, or especially, around what's called recovery. 

[Armee]

Woodsgnome
Thank you for sharing your experience. It could feel very frightening to have voices screaming max volume. That takes a lot of strength to be able to from hiding from them to even being able to whisper back let alone forcefully standing up to them. I'm in awe that you've been able to do that. I agree with you about our brains coding innocuous things as threats. This has happened to me a bunch. I've never thought to be a little grateful for the heightened awareness.

Not Alone
Thank you for the reassurance. It made me feel understood.

Dante
Thank you for sharing your experience, too. It's nice to not feel alone.

Papa Coco
Thank you for sharing your similar experiences and especially the timing of them being near an EF. Come to think of it I've gotten the door bell one too it just hasn't stuck in my head because it doesn't make me feel as ridiculous as having my brain bark at me.

I like the way you think of it as activating different little pockets of stored material in the brain. It does have that feeling. I think what bothers me most is that it happens when I feel close to accessing stuff that's been closed off, so it's like I've finally gotten in to this compartment when my brain startles me out of it with the dog bark sound. Because that sound is coming from a different part of my brain. So it almost seems that my brain is like "nope! Don't look there! Ooh dog bark!!!" And it makes me feel frustrated to think my brain is intentionally keeping stuff from me.

But maybe it is that this sound is just connected neurally to that part of my brain that stores certain types of memories and it gets activated at the same time even though it seems to be in a different part of the brain. Don't ask me how I can tell or think i can tell that but I seem to be able to tell where in my brain these and other sounds come from.

And when I get into a state of accessing things that are normally closed off it feels like my brain is scribbling, which I interpret as a lot of different neural pathways are starting to come online. That's what it feels like, at least.

Anyway thank you for eloquently sharing your experiences, for helping to interpret it in a way that doesn't make me feel crazy and for helping me not feel alone in this.

[Kizzie]

I have this a lot when I wake up Armee, and I also think of it as snippets from parts of me I don't normally allow out during the day.  I try to listen to them more but truth be told I can't wait to get out of bed because the moment my feet hit the floor, adult me takes over.  I am happiest when I am in charge of me but I believe I have to give the deeper parts some air time.  A work in progress like so many things with CPTSD.

[Papa Coco]

Armee,

I want to say it again; Thank you for having the courage to admit you hear barking dogs in your brain. You've opened up a new dialogue between all of us, on a topic I've never broached before with anyone, ever. Nowhere in any of the books I've read about CPTSD have I seen any hint that we might hear dogs barking, people talking, doorbells ringing, but the corroboration from the OOTS members on this topic leads me to believe that hearing audible memories is likely a pretty normal aspect in the healing progression of trauma response. I guess I just assumed it was just me, and I didn't realize the sounds were connected to healing from CPTSD. I'm not sure what it would have taken for me to get up the nerve to openly admit I hear voices and doorbells.  You've created a safe place for us to explore this phenominon together. And I'm glad we're talking about it, because it's even more information for me to explore in my quest to understand why I am who I am.

I'm intrigued by your comment that the dogs might be barking to keep you from accessing certain memories or feelings. My therapist has always said that he's a fan of how the brain does us this favor of repressing memories until we're ready to face them. It's cute to think that you have places in your brain that have set up actual guard dogs to keep you from entering.

I've noticed that as I continue to heal, more and more of my previously guarded brain compartments begin to open up for me as I become ready to explore them. It's like when we first start healing, we're just not ready to dive too deep into our subconscious, but as we slowly accept the first layer of information, we then become ready to explore and accept the next layer. Then, when we are comfortable again, our brain allows us to dig into the next layer yet. And so on. So maybe one day, when you are ready, your brain will call off the dogs and allow you to wander into the now-guarded compartments.

So interesting!