Living As All of Me

[HannahOne]

Hello HannahOne, a belated welcome to you to the forum and it sure sounds you came to the right place. I'm very sad for you having had these experiences and feeling the way you do now as a result. And it makes so much sense to me. Most everything you wrote resonates with me so much it's unbelievable. Me, I have 'known' I have CPTSD for a while now but still part of me wants to forget that and reading your story is extremely valididating to me too, so I want to thank you for sharing. Yes, these are normal responses to a terrible upbringing.


Including what you wrote about your wardrobe, I have similiar 'interesting' features and feelings surrounding that, repeating patterns I know so well and that were useful/necessary before and other parts not wanting to do do that anymore. Stuff I used to wear for years, wanting to hide myself in them. And a tiny part of me not wanting to be so 'modest' at all! Stuff I still wear because I know my mother would have approved of them (if not of me) and even still I'm wearing her clothes too.

And I also do something similar to your counting things. I make lists in my head of houses I lived in, cars I owned, places I visited for holidays etc. And I really want to finish these lists in my head as well. It seems to be some coping mechanism, I'm thinking it's OCD-ish (for me that is). I recently discovered this and now, whenever I catch myself, I try telling myself I'm safe instead. (Not to be taken as advice, only sharing what it's like for me.)

Hope I'm not crowding your journal, please let me know if I am. I hope I'm not trespassing. It all just resonated to much I wanted to share.

I'm sending best wishes for you and a hug if that's okay.

Thank you DesertFlower for commenting! Thank you for sharing what resonated with you, it feels so good to hear what makes sense to others.

No I dont' feel anyone is crowding my journal but thank you for asking. I don't really know how these should be done or how I should be replying but I really value hearing what other people think and feel on here. I am trying to understand myself and I can only do that in the context of other people, because I am a people   I am trying to remember that I am a member of the human race. I am very happy to clutter my own journal with comments It's a community document and I hope it may even be helpful to others too.

I am looking for commonality with other people and also interested in their uniqueness so I appreciate hearing what resonated for you or how it differed, I learn from that too. Thank you for sharing your experience with taking delivery of what it means to have CPTSD, and your experience with clothes!

Thank you also for commenting about counting things. I was interested in what you said. I do think I have a touch of OCD, as hoarding and OCD run in my family. I also wonder about the relationship of OCD in my own case with trauma. There are many ways counting functions for me.

I think one reason is that in my early childhood years I experienced neglect. My parents were young. They told me they would go play cards with the neighboring apartments, beers. Fun, where was I? Oh, in my crib. For hours of cards and drinking. Standards of parenting were different then, but yikes. I was a three pound preemie, guys...My first memories are sitting at the sliding window in the apartment as darkness fell. Alone in the apartment, I must have been a late toddler. Seeing all the twinkling lights knowing there were people out there and I would find them someday. Add in that we were quite poor, my mother wasn't mentally well and also didn't drive so couldn't get groceries, my father was working 80 hour weeks on commission and extremely rigid and controlling about what could be purchased... there just wasn't much of anyone in the house even when they were home, and wasn't much food in general.

I count to have a sense of control. My narc dad wanted me to be a genius so he taught me things very young. My first memories of food is counting bites. Later I counted the apples in the fridge and figured if they didn't come back, I could eat one per day and survive four days. This was before kindergarten so I must have been about four.

I count because OCD was made worse by religiosity, which my parents got deeper and deeper into as I grew up. So I had fear and a sense that I needed inner control, to keep track, monitor.

I also think that I count because I am very concerned that I don't hoard. Counting makes sure it's a manageable amount of things.

I find that when I'm doing a behavior the causes are always multifactorial, and because it works for multiple reasons and for multiple aspects of me. You could say counting meets the needs of multiple parts of me: parts that want control, parts that want security, parts that want to make sure it's enough, parts that want to make sure it's not too much or fear being overwhelmed, parts that need to monitor. Those all sound similar but they're coming from different experiences, of lack, of hoarding, of religion, of fear.

You use parts language, and I do too. I've found it the only way to make sense of my contradictions, and the best way to be authentic about my experience. I need to be able to say, "part of me thinks this, but the other part thinks that..." if I just say "I think this," it's not true and it can't be, I have no way to be honest in that way of expression.

The poverty changed as I grew my father was able to pull us to the middle class and by high school I went to a private prep school (at which point my mother learned to drive, yay! began to hoard, boo!, and we had TOO MUCh stuff). The prep school was awesome and gave me my path out. However, it also made me hyperaware of class, and my place. I had to learn a lot of new customs, ways of speaking, topics to speak about and not speak about, mannerisms, ways to dress and do hair, BRANDS, lol.... and of course I couldn't ever pull it off, and not only because my father wouldn't buy me the expensive things. I think that's part of why I love the fashion mashup! I am a mashup myself, of cultures, class, place, style, values, a mashup of experiences of poverty and privilege, abuse and care, extreme neglect and extreme support. There are so many oddities in my life experience, I mean, who doesn't make sure their toddler has food, but buys them books and teaches them to read? A narcissist! Who knocks their kid down, then carries them to bed? A narcissist? Who sends their abused and neglected child to an expensive prep school!? A narcissist! How could such a frugal man who wont' turn on the hot water heater and made us take icy showers in a 55 degree house in winter spend money on private school? Because he's a narcissist! It's really a lot of contradiction to manage. Counting is simple

The clothes is how I'm trying to bring it all together right now, to express the contradictions that make up all parts of  me, so that I can make sense to others and myself...so I can connect. I can't be a person alone, we are herd animals

[SenseOrgan]

This clothes thing, absolutely amazing! I particularly like the playful aspect of it. Freedom to be who you are at any given moment. Lightness around it. Fun too? This is empowerment in practice. It's genius on many levels at the same time. Unapologetic. I think you have invented a therapy. Ever thought about guiding others with this? I'm really enjoying the inner strength and dignity that shines through your writing! Reading about your traumatic history makes that all the more impressive.

I think I also recognize "being strong and independent" as a survival strategy. I know from experience that's incredibly lonely and challenging to address. It took a complete collapse and some ontological shocks for that penny to drop for me. You are also welcome when you are not strong, or if you need help or support yourself. That is not a crime, and if there's shame around it, that too is welcome. It's all human. It corrodes isolation and loneliness to share. You know all of this already. No advice. An ongoing invitation if this resonates.

I'm so happy to hear you got such good news from the doc, despite the panic that kicked in!
 

[HannahOne]

Thank you so much for commenting, SenseOrgan!

The clothing thing is a kind of therapy I think! There's a term I learned "visual cultural criticism", studies how images shape identity and culture. And thats kind of what I'm doing, I'm learning another language to use to shape my own identity. That's a very powerful thing, to shape, to express, to be visible, to be participating in the culture. I feel that as a neglected traumatized child I struggled to participate in the world, did not want to be visible, didn't feel I could shape interactions and struggled to learn social rules, social interaction, human culture. I felt like a lone wolf, a wild beast in exile! I had a recurring dream that I showed up at a party wearing a Cookie Monster suit, a blue furry thing with google eyes... LOL. I was both hidden within the suit, safe, and also completely inappropriately dressed, not very comfortable. So it's really exciting to feel like I'm learning the language of fashion/clothes. Also since this is something I eschewed and downplayed all my life as "silly" or "not me", it's interesting midlife to turn around and embrace it as "part of me" and "worth spending time on if I enjoy it."

I agree, being strong and independent was a survival strategy--a mental strategy as much as physical. I needed to think of myself as that "lone wolf" in order to tolerate the isolation of no one knowing what was going on. It can be scary to not be independent and I'm definitely scared to feel weak. And this is something I'm working on becoming more comfortable with or just embracing the fear of it! Thank you for the invitation to try out different ways of being.

[HannahOne]

I had a good day, hanging out with fellow OOTS'ers here, getting some housework and cooking done, taking kids to appointments. For the last few years I spent too much time lying down in bed in a freeze, if the kids weren't home I was flattened on the comforter. In the last six months I've been putting all my strength into getting up, dressed, and out of the house, and staying out of bed until night.

Still once I get in bed at night, anxiety descends. It's physiological. I don't feel upset emotionally, but physically the anxiety is intense. I am itchy, I can't be still, I'm too hot, my teeth are clenched, my muscles tense. Inside I have way too much energy and my stomach is in a knot. It hurts. I writhe around and sigh.

Nothing seems to help. I can't focus to read, TV is inane, the internet is dark. Suddenly I regret every choice I ever made and the future seems doomed. I feel certain that my life will reveal the horrible truth about me, that I'm cursed, that I shouldn't have been born, that my FOO was broken and I'm the evidence of that brokenness. That someone with a childhood like mine can never be happy or successful. That my life will end in tragedy and reveal that I am incurably flawed. Of course, all life ends in the tragedy of death, or old age and death if we're lucky, so this metric makes no sense. If my life doesn't end with me eternally young, fabulously rich, saintly generous and contributing lasting gifts to human culture, then I'm fatally flawed and everyone will know I am the crime of being an abused neglected child? Ok, HannahOne. LOL.

I'm physically uncomfortable and want to crawl out of my skin. I feel like I'm suffocating, which is just panic. I feel like there is not enough air, but of course air is all around me. Sometimes I go outside at times like these, even in the freezing winter. My dog used to trot after me. Now she's older and pokes her head out from under the covers, and just waits for me to come back. The cold air is one thing that almost always helps. The night sky. The moon. The tree branches click-clacking in the wind. The neon eyes that trot across the yard, probably a fox. He's living out his fox life, looking for food, staying warm, resting, traveling, deciding in the moment when to change his state. If he gets tense, he shakes from nose to tail. If he feels anxious, he rearranges his shoulder blades and sighs. If he has stomach pain, he curls around the pain and waits. If he feels like screaming, he yowls into the dark.

I'm trying to live more in the moment, more naturally, more instinctively. The places I feel the best the last few months are walking in small towns, hiking, and the forum. The more time I spend in these places, the more in the moment I seem to be. I was only reading without posting on the forum until a few days ago. It was incredibly helpful to read that others also experience these kinds of struggles. So thank you to all, even though I didn't respond, I was reading.

It's important to remember, especially in painful moments, that this is part of the human experience. I'm a human. So I'm having human experience, suffering is part of the human experience. The fact that I'm suffering right now doesn't mean I've done anything wrong or that I need to do anything to change my experience. I can just wait for it to pass, without effort and stress. Or I can travel, move. Or I can look for food, nourishment. Or I can curl up with my tail over my nose and wait for it to pass. I blink my eyes in the dark, rearrange my shoulder blades, and twitch my ears to listen to the tree branches click clacking in the wind.

[Marcine]

Hi fellow human being, from me in my den on this rainy, blustery winter night to you, in your den.  May we be safe and warm and dry, resting well.

[Chart]

Hey HannahOne, your description of evenings in bed make me think of my mornings. There's a thread on the forum, Mornings and Fear, will try to find it. A constant trigger for me is the waking moments of the day. I know now it has to do with being horizontal and the bulk of the trauma I experienced as a baby. This connection has been "in my face" my entire life, but when I finally put everything together with Cptsd, I suddenly had the understanding that has changed all sorts of things around my morning fears. Funny, what you described sounds so similar to my morning experience. I'll try to find that thread and post it below. Thankyou for sharing all that, it does really help.
 

[Chart]

Here it is:
https://www.cptsd.org/forum/index.php?topic=15819.0

I'm gonna try and reread it out of curiosity... but my daughter's making a cake right this instant... :-)

[NarcKiddo]

The fact that I'm suffering right now doesn't mean I've done anything wrong or that I need to do anything to change my experience.

We would all do well to remember that. Thank you for putting it into words. I hope the suffering eases soon.

[HannahOne]

NarcKiddo, Marcine, thank you for the solidarity! Chart, thank you for the link, that is interesting. I'm sure it is a form of EF. Night was difficult growing up. During the day I was super busy super achieving, but once I stopped the quiet was scary and unpredictable. Your comment makes me consider that I need to spend more time on the exact nature of this nighttime emotional flashback and see if I can process it more. Yuck  more processing. Sigh. But it will likely help. That's an important connection to make.

In the morning I have a different response, also not ideal , I wake up happy, and then gradually reality dawns on me, oh yes, I have this difficult past, oh yeah, I'm someone who wasn't loved, I can't be happy because of it, people like me can't be ok.... I feel reality settle afresh each morning. But that's much more manageable for me especially if I can get up and start playing with clothes and focusing on what _I_ want to say today about myself, not what other people said. At night it's hard because in order to sleep you simply have to be still.

 The night upset just seems intractable, but it's also not every night. I had many good nights for years. I was retriggered by the pandemic stress reliving my father's unemployment, mother's breakdowns. For the last year I was improving again...then recent illness got my nervous system all wound up again. CPTSD can feel like a washing machine, I just cycle in and out of hot water! LOL.

Tonight I'm going to be sure to take a bath with magnesium before bed. I also was rereading the book "Potatoes not Prozac" (although, por que no los dos?!) and I'm going to have a potato before bed. It's supposed to help push tryptophan or some other neurotransmitter that helps you fall asleep. I know it worked in the past for me.

[HannahOne]

I got little sleep so had some trouble functioning. Put away the Christmas tree and split my lip doing it, dropped the dog bowl and it shattered, burned the eggs.

I think I'm a little dissociated. I enjoyed a quiet house as both kids were out, and I mean I enjoyed it, savored the quiet, the dishwasher, the heat turning on, off, Frank the rescue rabbit thumping around.

Frank! the miracle bunny. Frank was born in February 2020 in a snowstorm, the farmer found him blue and frozen in the snow and put him in her pocket to throw away while she finished her chores. When she pulled him out of her pocket, he was slightly less blue so she put him on a warming pad for chickens and when she came back an hour later, found that he survived! He lived in a hutch on the farm for four years, his ears covered in scars from fights, a moldy water bowl, and in the winters, packed in with his poop and straw for warmth. That's what the farmer said, "oh, you just pack em in with their poop!" So now when the kids and I ask how we are doing, we will sometimes say, "Oh warm as toast and packed in with my poop!" to express survival, in less than ideal conditions. LOL.

I digress. But not really. Frank brings a special spirit to the house. He's a survivor. As a prey animal, he's always a little on edge. I can relate. He didn't have to trust humans after his terrible start in life, he has no reason to trust. But he does. He's never bitten. He comes running when I open his door (he has his own room, and roams free during the day). He potty trained himself! He bumps my leg with his nose to say hello. He picks up his food bowl and flings it when it's empty. He eats six heads of lettuce a day, very intensely and with great focus.

I often marvel at how he goes on with his bunny life regardless of anything, eating, pooping, sleeping on his crepuscular schedule while we turn lights on, turn lights off, take phone calls and shuffle around he is sleeping, waking, eating and then resting/digesting on his own terms. His survival instinct and his inner clock is indomitable. He's an energizer bunny. He just keeps going.

He would sorely like a bunwife, but that would require being neutered. He and I frequently debate the merits of a bunwife vs the merits of remaining intact. I feel responsible that he's a bit isolated and the only one of his kind; at the same time he is so covered in scars I'm afraid to try bonding him to a lady and afraid he might not survive the neuter surgery. I also can't afford another bun. Frank has to see the dentist every 8 weeks. When he came to us his teeth were so bad he could barely eat and was in severe pain. Poor stoic sir, he never complained. But if his bun wife had similar dental issues I couldn't keep her. So, he continues on his own and we are sure to speak bunny as often as possible with nose bumps, freezes, side-eyeing and co-breathing.

Connecting with an animal is so easy because there is no language. There's no story. I don't have to explain. And I don't have to hide, you can't hide. He knows if I'm upset ,he can feel my heart rate variability. His survival depends on reading my HRV, knowing if I, a predator with eyes in the front of my head, am hungry or not. He will lie next to my dog when she's eaten. If she's hungry, he runs. He scans me for the smell of fear chemicals, and will come close and hop into my lap if I'm calm.

So he's like a biofeedback device in my living room, a fuzzy biofeedback device with a puffy tail. I want him to want to be around me, so I have to regulate myself. Right now he's stretched out like superman with his big hind feet out behind him, it's called a "sploot." Or a "flop." I sploot next to him and we face the same direction, breathing together, me studiously looking away so as not to bear down on him with my eyes in the front of my face, him taking me in with his eye on the side of his head, moving his head up and down to create a three dimensional image in his brain. He blinks, licks his lips, and breathes. Hanging with Frank is pretty great because I don't have to talk, or think, or make sense, I can just be. B

But I'm a human, not a rabbit. I have an entire prefrontal cortex that he doesn't have. My brain produces language like my nose produces snot, as they say in ACT. And like Frank, life is good but also, I'm lonely. And bored.

And that's good. Because being lonely means I'm alive, I'm coming back to myself, and I have the energy, for the first time in five years, to live. I'm just not quite there yet, so I feel restless. I need to go more places, meet more people, do more things. Mostly meet more people. I feel dumb--how? I don't know HOW to meet people, where to find them? How to do this as myself? I could put on a costume, get a job, do the job. But that's not how I want to do it. I am open to getting a job but it has to be a job for the HannahOne I actually am, not the one I imagined I'd be as a neglected child in the rural midwest. It has to be an up to date job, an up to date life, that works for the life I've actually lived. Not sure such a thing exists. But I won't find it lying in bed.

I am committed to spending some time this month looking for clubs, meetups, groups. I'm still a bit leery of COVID and now may need to avoid getting sick even more. And, I need people.

May people come into my life speedily and soon. May Frank find his bunwife, or be content with me and my translations and approximations of "Hey, good lookin." May I go out and about tomorrow in camo pants, pink sneakers, a National Park T shirt over a men's button down and a green beanie hat and find something that makes me feel alive. Light on water, light on metal, light on snow. Any light in a storm.

[Armee]

 

I haven't been active since you joined to forum so just saying "hi" nice to meet you for now. Frank sounds perfect and amazing. And I relate very much to the clumsiness and forgetfulness of dissociation. Mine has gotten a lot better. I rarely set off our smoke detector now or drop things. Still smash into walls though.

[HannahOne]

Hi Armee, nice to meet you! 

A fellow wall-smasher!    I'm so glad your dissociation is better. I have to be extra careful right now and try to pay attention. I just went to bed for the night---leaving the sliding glass door wide open when the dog came in twenty minutes ago....

I look forward to seeing you around the forum! I'm still figuring out where people hang out on here.

[Armee]

Oh yeah definitely relate to that! My husband still remembers in high school when he had a crush on me and I drove away with my car door, driver's side, wide-open. He thought it indicated I was equally smitten with him. 

It's nice to have the right explanation and to know it can get better as the underlying traumas get processed and the underlying parts do better at integrating or at least sharing consciousness.

Good luck in your journey! I'll try to stop by here and there. I mostly hang in the private journals section these days or where I've already responded to a thread as those pop up first.

[HannahOne]

No sleep again.

I realize that my symptoms are a medication I just started. I just read the insert. Sweating, severe belly pain, stomach upset. No wonder I'm anxious and tossing around the bed, my stomach isn't just in an anxious knot---the medication can cause ulcers in the GI tract. The "knot" I feel is pain.

This happens often. I assume my symptoms are anxiety or EF. Then they turn out to be something physical. And because of the delay the physical problem is always worse by the time I realize what's going on.

Of course, as soon as I get any physical symptoms,  the anxiety and emotional flashbacks start up. So, it's both at this point, both an EF and physical. But the initial cause is the medication. So that's good, I'll call the doctor in the morning and see what can be done, and I'll feel better.

Meanwhile tomorrow is going to be hard again because again, NO SLEEP TILL BROOKLYN. Dread. Day 3, or 4? Of no sleep.

I want to become more aware and able to navigate physical symptoms. It's not helpful that I don't feel pain until it's severe, that I can't figure out what I'm experiencing, that I assume it's emotional, I end up making myself worse that way. I wish I would've realized three days ago and asked to stop or change the medicine, instead I've caused more damage. But this is my automatic response to pain, I just don't notice it, and then experience it as anxiety, and then assume I'm hallucinating or having a flashback. And then I'm actually having a flashback....

My response to pain is itself a flashback.

Now that I know it's the medicine I can not take it in the morning, call the doctor, and in the meantime I can use my skills of dissociation to "dissociate better" as Joanne Twombley says. I'll try to put the pain in a magic container, and put up feeling proof walls in my mind so I have a place to chill until morning. I am certain I won't need the ER, so it's fine to do. I just have a bad stomach ache.

I already went to the ER last week for a similar ridiculous situation where my bandages were so tight I couldn't get a full breath, which cause my intercostals to be strained, and my O2 to drop too low.... but I didn't realize it was the bandages when I went in. I thought I must have pneumonia. I had no clue that the bandages were suffocating me and I'd been wearing them for OVER A WEEK like that. The instructions said "do not remove until you see the surgeon," and I was seeing the surgeon two weeks after surgery, so I religiously followed the instructions, left them as they were, and it didn't occur to me, I couldn't feel, that they were too tight. I only knew something was wrong after a week when my O2 was low. I felt so silly in the ER, although they didn't criticize me and thought the bandages were ridiculous, not me.

This all could be CPTSD. Not knowing what's going on with your own body, misreading signals, lack of awareness, confusion, doing things that don't really make sense, mindlessly following instructions. I hate the confusion, the slow dawning of reality, and the scary feeling of realizing your understanding of reality was so messed up. It's hard to trust oneself. 

My plan for tonight is to keep the TV on, pet the dog, and wait for the sun. Tomorrow night will be better, I will be off this stupid drug and on something else.