oh... THAT'S what it is

[seasaw_]

Hi board    this is my first post.  I just introduced myself on OOTF, and this forum was suggested to me... and I can see why! 

It's the 15 year anniversary of making a good change in my life (having to do with my diet and health).  I wrote a mini-essay about how it feels to have hit that mark and posted it on my social networking sites.  As soon as I hit "post" I started feeling WAVE after WAVE of shame, guilt, fear, anxiety HIT me, just slam me down.  'Why did I post that???  Why did I care what anyone knew or thought about my life, my decisions?  Why was I sharing my personal life and decisions with the world - my friends, their friends??  Did it make me more cool, less cool?  DID I PROOFREAD ENOUGH?  Did it sound smart, without being pretentious?  Well worded without being verbose?  WHY do I CARE?  Do I care too much?  What is wrong with me, why am I overthinking this? How much would I be judged for what I said - what parts, for whom, why?  Would I ever get any feedback?  Would I lose friends, gain friends?' Round and round it went.   

I started editing the posted draft - and because it was cross-posted, I had to do so on several sites, and got confused.  My fingers started becoming uncoordinated and my vision started to blur as I become more and more self-conscious - while sitting alone in my living room.  I started breathing in a shallow way.  I wanted to claw my way out.  I was having a fear response - why??  I started looking for ways to numb the sensations artificially. 

I finally forced myself to walk away.  I called a friend, who brought it up - she said she enjoyed reading it.  It's just a few paragraphs on the internet for goodness sake - why am I doing this to myself?  Why did I never go to college?  Why is my mom in my head?  Why did I always have a hard time finishing my homework - was it my fault, was a really a lazy child, or was it that my mom spent too much time in bed and never taught me how to complete tasks - was it because she always blamed other people when she procrastinated and things blew up in her face, and I learned to procrastinate from watching her?  Can I keep blaming other people for my shortcomings?  In a family full of academic success stories, shouldn't I be able to write three articulate paragraphs without faltering and falling into a state of panic?  Will my mother's shame of my academic failure always be my shame? 

I promise my posts aren't always so long.  I just wanted to express gratitude for this website and all the people willing to share their stories.  I'm glad I was pointed here and have this lens through which to see my overwhelm today.  It helped me calm down without doing what I usually do to hide from the pain and panic.  I don't have to be afraid.  I can find better answers. 

[schrödinger's cat]

Hi seasaw_! I'm glad you posted your story anyway. Those nagging doubts sound very very familiar to me. I'm reading a book called If You Have Controlling Parents, which helped explain things. Whatever I did, there was always someone to comment, correct, or smirk, so I'm now often extremely self-conscious.

I found the paragraphs you wrote above VERY articulate! Your style is clear, easy to understand, and you get your point across very well. Even if it weren't - did you ever watch The King's Speech? The part where the stammering King is asked why on earth his speech therapist should listen to him? And the therapist (who knows what he's doing) goads him so much until the king bursts out with the true reason why people should listen to him: "Because I have a voice!" And that's it, I think: a part of the answer for your self-consciousness and for mine.

The ironic thing is, I just now started to re-read this post, thinking: "oh, this is probably too blunt, this is too unintelligible, this is----" So I'll just press "POST" now.

[seasaw_]

funny that you just replied - i was coming to this thread to remove the post!  between this and my talking about the board format being my 'intros' to the board, and this post not having any replies, i was feeling like i'd really gotten off on the wrong foot here    so i was going to try to have a clean slate.

i was thinking the above occurrence wasn't even an "EF" and i had misunderstood the concept. 

[schrödinger's cat]

Hm, I can't spot any wrong foot, so I think everything's okay.   

About EFs - I'm finding it difficult sometimes to differentiate between mild EFs and normal reactions. EFs can be huge and debilitating. They can last for a long time, or they can be short and mild. There seems to be such an enormous variety. So I've been trying to find some criteria that would tell me that this is an EF.

Right now, my working theory is this. If it makes me feel the same way I felt back then, when I was a child, it's most probably an EF. So if I'm feeling helpless/small/overwhelmed in that same old way, it could be an EF. Or if I feel self-conscious and bad about myself in the way I felt then. Or if the same feelings and beliefs about the world overwhelm me.

And if we use those criteria, then your experience could well have been an EF. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like you were overwhelmed and swallowed up by feelings of total inadequacy, and by a fear that everyone would nit-pick your text or criticize it or reject you for it. You showed some somatic symptoms - blurred vision, lack of co-ordination, shallow breathing. You felt fear, almost panic. You instinctively wanted to escape into a Freeze type response. So it's not at all unreasonable to just go on the working theory that this might in fact have been a flashback.

I sometimes feel self-conscious about calling my milder flashbacks "flashbacks". But then I thought it's rather like going to the dentist, or giving birth. You get dentist horror stories, and you get the times when it's uncomfortable but not too bad. But dentist is dentist. If it's a person in a white coat holding up horrifying implements and smelling weird, it's a dentist. A harmless dentist story doesn't automatically damage the stories of all those people who suffered. There's a bandwidth of possible dentist experiences. Why shouldn't the same hold true for flashbacks? If something is caused by our past, and if it lets us feel the same way we felt then - why not call it a flashback for now? Flashbacks come in all kinds of forms. There are tsunami flashbacks and paddling-pool flashbacks and mid-size flashbacks. There are flashbacks that sloooowly drift in like horror-movie fog, and flashbacks that pop up as suddenly as a rat in a toilet. There are flashbacks that make you react visibly and clearly, with panic attacks or attempts to escape, and there are flashbacks where you're still able to function and be all stoic about it while silently suffering inside where no one can see. What I'm trying to say is, the word "flashback" doesn't talk about anything like size or duration: it simply describes something that literally propels you back into your traumatic past. So if your experience has done just that, then IMO it's a flashback.

And also, I'm sorry to hear that your family has somehow made you feel so self-conscious and ashamed. If you want to talk about that, we're here.   

[no_more_fear]

i was feeling like i'd really gotten off on the wrong foot here   

This made me smile when I read it, and I know you'll be thinking I was laughing at you, because that's exactly what I'd be thinking, but in no way was I. I was smiling at how similar we all are here. The more I read, the more I see how alike we are, and it's a great feeling to belong like this.

I would do the exact same thing with the internet and have done so on many occasions, but you don't need to worry, it was fantastic, as previously said. You're so intelligent and talented that you never have to doubt yourself again.

How are you doing now?