Question to the admins

[Kizzie]

Please feel free to weigh in Mourningdove. It can be difficult when your opinion differs from others I know, but I (truly) believe that different perspectives are valuable in figuring out what is the best option in a given situation.  So, I will leave this open for the week and if others have some feedback please do add it as well.  It's OK and in fact better if we consider an issue from as many sides as possible. 

[mourningdove]

Thanks, Kizzie! I had a lot of things to say about this topic earlier, but I'm currently feeling a lot of derealization, and it's hard to think, so I'll have to try and come back to it.

[Three Roses]

mourningdove -

I hope later you feel better and feel up to continuing this conversation. It doesn't feel done to me, either.

[Kizzie]

Sorry to hear that Mourningdove - no rush, I will leave things as they are until you are able to post.    Hope the DR passes soon    

[mourningdove]

Thanks for keeping this thread open for me, Kizzie and Three Roses.     

I'm sorry that it took me so long to weigh in. It is a subject that is difficult for me to talk about.

I read the guidelines but am still unclear as I don't actually 'want to ' it is just a psychological feature of cptsd. My brain flashes these images but I in no way want to carry them out - in fact it is very frightening and I feel full of fear that it is happening and feel very alone with it .

***TW***

I experience something like this. Images come to me, and they scare me. Oftentimes it's impossible for me to be around sharp objects without it happening. Usually it feels like the images are coming from an extremely dissociated part of myself that wants to hurt me and I get afraid that it could take over and enact them (even though I don't think this has ever happened and I don't know if that is possible). I've wondered for a long time if there is any way to talk about this here and still be within the forum guidelines.

I also have intrusive violent thoughts - maybe some sort of catastrophizing - and I also have found myself off on a mental tangent, into daydreaming (daymaring?) about being in an accident or some other disaster. What would I do, what would happen, ways to avoid, it's amazing what my mind can come up with.

Definitely relate to this, too. 

Not sure if these kinds of intrusive thoughts count as ideation, but I also feel that the guidelines on talking about ideation may be too restrictive. It seems to me that there is a big difference between saying, "I want to die," and, "I am going to [insert method here]." The same can be said of ideation of self-injury. I don't know if there is an optimal place to draw a line about what can be said safely, but it seems strange to me that we can't even say that we feel like dying or hurting ourselves, when that is such a common experience for people with C-PTSD. Kizzie's idea for a trial thread seemed reasonable to me.

[Kizzie]

No problem holding it open MourningDove, we all know what it's like to not be in a place to be able to focus on what it is we have want to say    Anyway, glad you're back and we can pick this thread back up. 

How do others feel about a trial thread?

[Blueberry]

Trial thread sounds like a good idea to me.

I agree with / can relate to quite a bit of what mourningdove says.

TRIGGER WARNING


Beyond that, i.e. speaking only as myself, I've endured years of an inner voice suggesting I .... without mentioning any particular method. Now, I've always known that I wouldn't actually do so, but that didn't make it particularly easy to put up with this voice. Sometimes I mentioned it to friends-in-healing, always adding "I'm not going to do anything, don't worry, but this is the voice."  but I didn't want to burden friends all the time. Mentioning it however did reduce my agony with it, and reduced the strength of it. (Like saying "I'm about to dissociate" helps me not do so.) It wasn't a topic for ER or a doc because I wasn't in any kind of danger, no more than in any other EF.

I also used to get intrusive images of me self-injuring, but these are much reduced. Probably others do too. I mean it's a well-known symptom of C-PTSD, why worse than drinking, smoking, over-eating or whatever? When i write or speak about it, it's not to glorify it in any way, but to reduce tension. Docs and Ts say that my self-injury method was about bringing me back from dissociation, I certainly couldn't end my life with it, and now it's an ingrained habit. 

I can of course appreciate that admins and moderators might be quite concerned, wondering how much to delete and maybe also worrying that the supportive atmosphere might deteriorate here. I'm glad I wouldn't have to decide. But for these concerns, a trial thread is good.

[Kizzie]

Tks for weighing in Blueberry. 

[Kizzie]

OK, we have a trial forum here - http://outofthefog.net/C-PTSD/forum/index.php?topic=5897.new#new.  Let's see how it goes.