Living As All of Me

[SenseOrgan]

I hate blending with the inner critic. It happens to me too sometimes HannahOne. It gets really ugly and hopeless. Usually it includes looking back at my life and comparing it to a meritocracy flavored standard that doesn't include the massive accomplishment it is to survive/navigate CPTSD.

Recalibrating is fine. Perhaps you would make different choices now than you did before. That doesn't make you stupid. To the contrary. Where is the past? What are your options now? What do you value? I hope these questions don't exacerbate the midlife stuff! You're a wonderful person!!!   

[sanmagic7]

You aren't hopeless, that's just the negative self worth we all seem to struggle with reacting to feeling good.  I think it's a natural part of getting better.  Healing isn't linear.  Maybe it's even proof that you are healing.

i completely agree w/ this, and w/ NK"s allusion to a bump in the road.  i know a lot of hit this particular bump, and there's a saying i've read here that has been too true so many times:  this, too, shall pass.  i'm not one for platitudes, but i believe this saying is not like that.  i've seen it played out too many times.

so, hang tough, ok?  we've got you.  love and hugs

[Marcine]

Hannah, I'm just a beginner at learning self-acceptance, so take these thoughts with a big grain of salt, ok?

I've found it hardest to simply stop running. The mind running, the body running around. To just pause. No need for answers or doing.

Nothing to fix (I learned that in a meditation class offered by the CPTSD foundation that Kizzie recommended here on the forum).

It's radical stuff and difficult as heck for some of us, certainly for me.

But slowing down seems to allow more of me to catch up and then there's a chance of staying connected moving forward.

I hope you feel some solace soon. You've been working hard and processing a lot. Maybe a true rest-and-recharge on your terms is in order?

Sending love

[Hope67]

Sending you some love and hugs Hannah 

[HannahOne]

Thank you all so much for commenting. I read your comments and took time to respond and in that time I felt less alone. Marcine, yes slowing down. SenseOrgan, yes it's blending with the inner critic. Just being reminded of that helps. These are both part of TIST therapy, slowing down and recognizing that I'm blended. ZenRacer, sanmagic7, NarcKiddo, SanMagic7, thank you for the perspective that this is a bump in the road. Hope67, thank you for the love and care.

This is a recurring EF, a blending with the inner critic, a frantic protector. If something isn't right, if I feel upset, it starts questioning my choices from the most recent like where I drove to today, to the larger about career, all the way back to when I was a teenager, to the choices I made at age nine such that they were. Pretty quickly it's despair because I can of course never fix or change those things from that long ago and don't have enough time left to take a hard left or right turn. More life is behind me than in front of me.

It's hard to describe the feeling, shame, self-hatred, regret, doom. Shrinking futility.

What I'd like to do when I notice that feeling is turn toward it and comfort it.

I have been waiting to see if what's behind it will show. Younger me felt the weight of the world, I had to make the right choices or everything might fall apart. That young me didn't want to make any choices at all for fear of making the wrong one.

Often my little choices couldn't change anything at all. Whether I stayed up late to do my math homework or not wouldn't prevent whatever chaos or violence was about to unfold. Whether I had all the clothes folded didn't change what would happen later. And then this feeling of futility, self-reproach, self-hatred.

It was useful then, to think my choices mattered so much. To feel a sense of control. To feel a sense of purpose in my choices. To feel I had autonomy and power. Otherwise I would have done learned helplessness and curled up in a corner.

It's not useful now. Middle-aged me knows much of life is a given, not made, and I made what I could of what I was given. Middle-aged me knows what happened wasn't my fault and no result of any choice I made or didn't make. Even as an adult, my choices only go so far. There's a lot of I can do, and a lot I can't control.

So many of my protective parts are basically introjects of my abusers. That's how it works, right, we internalize the aggressor to keep ourselves in line, to stay safe.

Whatever bad thing happened was experienced by me as punishment, that's the theology that was beaten into me twice a week for years on end when I barely had an active left brain and a limited prefrontal cortex.

This part has been very active lately. I'm think it's because I"m in this transition away from intensive parenting, so parts of me are worried, what's my purpose, why am I here, and was it "enough"? I'm feeling a lack of purpose. Having young adult kids is an experience of powerlessness I have to let go, step back, and see what they do. I can do that, and, it's hard to watch sometimes.

And also the health stuff is just causing fear of punishment and bringing up the old programming. I'm feeling out of control, feeling powerless.

I tried explaining to myself that I'm an adult, in a transition, and I can handle it, I"ll find more purpose. And the health stuff is not a punishment. Still working on my non-dualism studies toward a no punishment model. With my kids it was so easy because it was so obvious punishment was worse than useless. The kids sometimes experienced the results of their choices with more or less buffering by me based on what I thought would help them learn and at a level they could manage. But no punishment.

The punishment model is still running in me. I'm still reacting to fears that if I make any choice but the perfect one, someone/the world will punish me, with intent.

My feelings and EFs aren't a result of a choice I made, they're just feelings. They don't mean anything about my choices, I don't think.

[NarcKiddo]

Often my little choices couldn't change anything at all. Whether I stayed up late to do my math homework or not wouldn't prevent whatever chaos or violence was about to unfold. Whether I had all the clothes folded didn't change what would happen later. And then this feeling of futility, self-reproach, self-hatred.

This is so poignant, HannahOne. It brings a lump to the throat thinking about little HannahOne solemnly making her choices and hoping they would help. Sweet girl.

 

[sanmagic7]

What I'd like to do when I notice that feeling is turn toward it and comfort it.

this really struck me, hannah1, and i hope to remember it.  what a thoughtful, caring, loving thing to do for ourselves.  i want to do this.

i do not believe feelings and EF's are due to our choices.  as you said, they're just feelings, and the EF's are traumatic hits because of our feelings.  those aren't choices.  feelings are a natural part of us - trauma is what someone did/said/reacted to negatively because of our feelings.  but, we certainly didn't choose any of it, not how we felt nor how it was received nor what came after as a result.  nope, no blame for us.  love and hugs

[HannahOne]

NK and sanmagic7, thank you for reading and commenting.  No blame, sweet girl.

Here people understand struggling, CPTSD. It's something that feels real and solid. I want to comment on other people's journals. I can't seem to focus or think and don't know what to say. I think I'm a little lost in myself.

TW death

I'm struggling. I feel like I'm at a dead end. Typically that means I'm too much inside my own head and I need to go do something for someone else. It's just not working right now.

I've seen the new therapist twice, three times? and I'm just not sure. At all. I almost feel a little paranoid. I don't think I feel safe with her. She seems off. I can't read her. I don' know what she's doing. 

Not having someone who understands me to connect to is making me feel alienated and a little paranoid. I feel a bit derealized. 

I am not sure what to do for myself. I could do a PHP IOP but it's just more DBT. That feels so incredibly pointless I'm not even sure I could make myself do it. I think I can't make myself do it.

I feel at a loss. I'm also unsure why things seem to be disintegrating in front of me, what was the trigger. Nothing is making sense. I know I'm in a huge transition. Having kids becoming adults is almost like having babies the first time but the reverse, it's a huge change. I know my health stuff feels hopeless I hate all of it and can't make myself do that either. I know my relationship is alienating. I know I lost my friends in the pandemic. The one friend I had seems to be moving in another direction due to her own situation. And I get that I don't have a daily job for structure. Both kids are aware and there's no structure of school, or kids. I'm doing my routine but I think in some way the kids and their schedule was a big anchor.

All of that seems like a real mess of a life. Sigh.

I know I don't want to face the next six months. And I don't have, having trouble making, anything to look forward to, or a larger goal, motivation. So I've got a present that is alienating and I can't find the future.

I know I've lost perspective. This sounds really depressed.

I know I need to keep working on an antidepressant. The medication for my pain was working as an antidepressant but the needed dose was sedating and this lower dose ain't working. I think I will increase it, even though I'll be sedated. At least for a few days.

I'm eating, working out and trying to sleep and be outside some.

I had a tragic young death in my wider FOO, no one I knew or cared much about, horrible as that sounds. I've been no contact for a long time. Yet it's shaken me a bit, old stuff from when others in the FOO were dying as I was making my escape. I'm not going to the funeral, which also feels like I'm a crap person but I don't want to see anyone. And it will do me no good or anyone else. I'll just feel awful and be triggered for weeks. It's very sad that the tragedy continues into the new generations. Some kind of curse in our DNA. And there's nothing I can do about any of that.

Right now I can't see a future or make sense of anything. Nothing means anything and all the stories I had are threadbare. I can't find any meaning, everything feels like banging on a pot and pan. I feel like there's glass between me and the world, or like I'm not actually a person like everyone else. I feel no one knows me or cares about me. And that's derealization and depersonalization and it's a defense and an emotional flashback. And not true. People do care. It's just care is not a cure for CPTSD. So I won't feel it right now.

I'm going to try to wait it out, because I don't know what else to do.

trying to name it, know what it is, realize I'v been through these feelings before and they are just feelings should help me. Acknowledging howI feel should be helpful. remembering that I've lost perspective should help. Recognizing that my thoughts are lying to me right now should be helpful. Knowing that there's nothing actually on fire right now, even though my life is a bit of a shambles, is important. The emergency is only in my emotions, luckily I don't actually have to go make something happen or stop anything from happening. I just have to tolerate this unpleasant feeling of futility and darkness until it passes. And it will.

When it does, I'll see if there's any useful decisions or plans I can make, anything I can do that needs to be done.