Feeling strange

[Bermuda]

I haven't been posting lately because I've been feeling very strange. I find that question "How are you?" baffling. I feel so removed from everything. I do feel sad, passively, but it's not depression. It's just meh. I don't feel expressive, but I don't know what I would express. I don't feel interested in things. I feel very withdrawn in a sense that I am not engaging with others, which is honestly not too abnormal for me, but I'm not engaging with myself either.

I feel really aloof the past couple weeks. A couple weeks ago, I went out with some students. The conversation was very serious, and went in a direction of things that are very traumatic for me. In person I did a really good job of "keeping it cool" on the outside, but inside I was quite hurt. It was one of these social topics (like most) that are not hypothetical to me.

I will be vague intentionally here, but sometimes I have thoughts that aren't connected directly to a memory. For example it's easy for me to absolutely say me too, but that sentiment is not tied to one specific incident. This conversation went in the direction of social norms and pulled up a specific incident in my mind, which would not have been appropriate conversation. This incident that was in the pits of my mind is now stored somewhere directly behind my eyeballs. I have no idea if this metaphor makes sense to others, but that is the best way I can describe it.

I don't know if this is what has triggered my weird aloof detached feeling or not. I just feel really uninterested and ghostlike. Maybe it's some sort of traumatic avoidance, or maybe it's completely unrelated, but if anyone has any ideas... I'd feel mediocre hearing them, which is the best I've got right now.

[Kizzie]

Sorry to hear you're feeling this way Bermuda    It sounds like you've hit the nail on the head in connecting your aloof, detached feeling to the incident that came up for you when you were out. 

If it's right behind your eyeballs  (and I get that  ) and you're distancing yourself from it, it may be you're afraid it's too painful to be fully consciousness of it at the moment.

I don't know but perhaps journaling about a piece of it or sharing a bit at a time here would bring some relief?  When you think about it, in posting about what's going on you've started to talk about it.   

[Bermuda]

Thank you Kizzie.

I took your advice and typed it out. It did feel good to "say it" in a way. It's strange, this particular trauma occured well after I realised I had CPTSD, and somehow at the time did not seem like a traumatic event, and when I look back at it now, I can logically realise that none of it was normal or OK, but I just feel ambivalent. It feels so distant, like a bad dream.

So many people talk about their traumas as if they're really traumatic and maybe because I have been accused of my life being unbelievable so many times, it just feels unreal. ...And also my life now is so removed from what it was.

[Kizzie]

Referring to it now as traumatic seems to me to be a step forward given you didn't think it was when it happened. Perhaps feeling somewhat ambivalent may be another way of pushing it away? 

So sorry things feel unreal though, I know how distressing that can be.    Just my opinion but little steps in letting something into consciousness seems like good self-care.