Zen_Racer's Recovery Journal

[zen_racer]

I don't know what I'm doing here.

I'm not sure what I hope to accomplish by doing a journal.  It's only been a couple weeks since I was introduced to the possibility that what I was having an issue with was cptsd.  I didn't even know what that meant then.

That was when I was feeling a bit more manic than I typically ever get to.  But it happens.  The person that brought up cptsd talked with me about it, and the sincerity and kindness in how they talked with and the message they had caused me to freeze in a state of almost crying.

Then I found this forum, which seems pretty great.  I've been reading and reading here, and everything I'm seeing about the kinds of trauma I've had to endure, and the symptoms, and co-morbidities explains so much about my life.  And raises new questions.

I have a tendency to over do things, and I think I've done that here.  As I've read all the informative posts in all the different categories, it's caused me to have emotional flashbacks.  It's caused me to remember things that I had blocked out.  It's caused me to realize that despite remembering a lot of "isolated instances", my brain somehow blocked attaching any deeper meaning or understanding of what those memories meant.  For all my strength in pattern recognition, I mentally blocked my ability to look at my memories of growing up and recognize the pattern of actual abuse.  Now that I can see it, I can't unsee it.  On the one hand, now I at least have a name for what I'm dealing with.  On the other, it has been an avalanche of finding out I'm significantly worse than I would've imagined.  It's hard to accept.  It's rough finding out that it wasn't just typical problems, that it was multi-layered abuse, and that it's why I have always had trouble with any type of relationship.

I've had to stop reading about this for now.  It's overwhelming, and forcing me to recognize that I can't trust my own perception of events that I have clear memories of.  I can't wait to have my first therapy visit next week, but I'm also scared of how deep this rabbit hole goes.  I'm worried that therapy won't help because I won't be able to trust the therapist enough.  I can't bring up any ideas or concepts of what a safe space would look like to me.  That doesn't exist.

For the purpose of being able to track progress, I think it's worth adding that for a few months leading up to hearing about cptsd, I had switched from unconsciously avoiding people to actively, consciously deciding that I didn't want anyone in my life in any capacity anymore.

I don't know.  I'm dissociating enough that I can't keep coherent thoughts going about this anymore.

[Marcine]

Hi zen racer,
Congrats on starting a journal.
It's another realm of the forum to explore and a personal way to "track progress", as you said.

I was very unsure too about starting a journal, but I'm glad I did. Rereading past entries and the supportive comments gives me a sense of perspective with solid points of reference.

[dollyvee]

Hey ZR,

I'm sorry that these realizations are feeling overwhelming right now, but it sounds like it's a big step in starting to understand some of the things that maybe you couldn't get a handle on before.

I hope you find some space to deal with things as they come up for you.

Sending you support,
dolly