Feeling Vs. Numbness

[woodsgnome]

Triggere warnings? I guess the end of paragraph #1 might warrant that.

As if these things could or should be ranked, in general my therapy session yesterday was going well, touching on what seemed to be helpful strides in my psyche. And then I blew it up just by touching on the sorest, saddest, worst episodes of my life--the one constant of my youth, the 9 years of molestations from the m (albeit she was hardly the only one) combined with her as-fierce emotional neglect.

So with about 10 minutes to go I brought it up; hardly for the first time, of course, but with an intensity of...gulp...feelings. For the couple of years so far with this therapist, she's always nudged me towards feeling more; at the start I admitted to not feeling much of anything, just a sort of steady-state numbness.

So, okay--I let go with my feelings, and anger was revealed as deep-seated bitterness built around loads of grief. Understandable, but as I dived in it just felt worse than I could have imagined. Somehow I straggled out of there...to the next bit of *.

Per the day's wonders, arrived home, decided the garbage needed dealing with, and then a full bag of refuse busted open, spilling over my leg onto the porch floor, and my seething bitterness took its revenge on my already crippled body (intense constant arthritic pain to the point of immobility).

Poor me? Not the point. I'm just wondering if it's so great to even have feelings, why not go numb? At least it's consistent. The ups/downs of accessing my feelings isn't doing so well. Or maybe I'm just ranting. Then I can't sleep and flip on the radio; and I need to go numb again just hearing that blabber known as 'the news'. What's left? Once again I'm loving the safety of numbing out; at least it gives my life consistency.

[radical]

I wish there were words that could do justice to what you've been through.   I'm so sorry.

Are feelings worth it?  I think they are and I think it is a paradox that getting out of that numbness does lead to our feeling pain less acutely.  If our motivations are 90 percent avoiding pain and 10 percent seeking reward, that ramps up our experience of pain because pain is what is most relevant to us.   (This isn't original, it was something someone explained to me recently when I asked why becoming less 'adhedonic' would lead me to have greater tolerance for physical pain.)

I guess this is of little help in the way you are feeling right now.  This morning I tried to stretch across the bench to reach something, a movement that once would have been pretty simple  But due to my disabled body sent the coconut yoghurt i was trying to reach flying across the room.  The yoghurt splattered across the floor and getting down to clean it up really hurt and I so wished i could cry because I really felt like crying with frustration and pain. (and coconut yoghurt is so expensive but I've gone vegan to try and help my own arthritis.)

You're not alone, Woodsgnome. I'm so glad you come in and talk here.  I feel better because you are here.

[sanmagic7]

o w.g., having been someone who didn't have access to my feelings (alexithymia), i have only begun feeling things like anger, fear, happy in the past few years.  one thing that i'd always felt was sad, which covered up the rest of them.  sadness was consistent for me.

however, not having feelings meant that i never felt the joy of motherhood, didn't feel compassion for others' feelings, couldn't feel loved, had no sense of empathy, never felt the emotional pain of a break-up, and did dangerous things cuz i had no fear.  but, i was consistently sad, cried at the drop of a hat, and had no idea why.

so, i lived in a state of confusion, floating, unlike others.  once i began realizing what was going on (thanks to someone here), i set out to re-connect those parts of my brain that had been distorted out of reality.  and that's really what it was - i lived in a state of unreality.  there was no truth about me because i wasn't like most human beings.

is it worth it now as i've begun rounding out my feelings palette?  as painful and scary as it may be at times, i finally feel like i've joined the human race.  feeling afraid is the worst, but it's a warning signal that i'd been missing.  feeling loved is the best, because i don't think there's anything better.  and feeling happy is something that is beyond description.

i think that to feel the pain is a worthwhile trade-off for the rest.   i recently got dumped, and actually cried about it - first time in a long series of being the dumpee.  and, i was so very glad to be able to put that sadness in its real place.  if consistent is what you really want,  go for it. 

i want the rainbow, but that's just me.  it's a relief to me, as difficult as it may be sometimes.  i've written in my journal about traversing the different colors of feelings, and it's been maddening, frightening, euphoric, sometimes all at once.  at the same time, when first beginning delving into that world of feelings, it's probably a bit easier to go slowly, stick a toe in here and there, give yourself time to absorb and process. 

this stuff ain't easy, that's for sure.  my heart is with you, sweetie.  we just do the best we can, but we're doing it together, so i think that counts for something, too.  sending love, warmth, compassion to you. 

[Blueberry]

woodsgnome, just wanted to let you know I read but don't feel up to an answer. if a  is good, I'm sending hugs.

[Sadie48]

Thanks for sharing, woodsgnome.  Therapy is hard precisely because it forces us to confront and feel feelings that are scary and uncomfortable.  Cut yourself some slack.  Ask for your therapist's support in handling the bitterness as it comes out.  We with cptsd learned to numb out when trauma threatened to overwhelm us.  But it's not a great strategy in adulthood.  I think I dissociate on and off throughout the day.  Give yourself a hug and credit for surviving what you survived, and for the courage to face it now in order to heal.

[woodsgnome]

Thanks, Radical , Blueberry, Sanmagic7, and Sadie48 for reminding me that the journey inevitably wanders through pastures of pain along with the comfortable parts.

Not avoiding pain was actually a primary motive of mine when I resumed therapy a couple of years ago after a brief interlude. My previous therapies, and therapists, tended to stay on the comfort side while the dark and deep was easily shoved aside. This time, I felt compelled to plunge as deep as I could, especially once I knew I'd finally found a skilled therapist willing to witness with me, wise enough to know the route might indeed involve pain, in addition to locating points of comfort and strength.

But while avoidance of pain will usually never get one far, there are times like yesterday was for me, when it seems those hovering demons threaten any stability and then panic seizes my reaction. I start losing my will to see this through, tell myself this shouldn't be so hard; and it only gets worse. Shouldn't matter, I say; then it rises in importance anyway. I fall back into thinking therapy should be this steady upward progression, and learn again that it's really more like a spiral: back/forth, up/down, around, back again, and totally unpredictable.

So thanks, friends, for helping me see through this easy but formidable trap. Seems I often mouth the words 'be kind to myself'--it's time I match actions to the words.

Thanks again--I needed the boost you've all been kind enough to offer. 

[ah]

I agree with all that's been said, I just want to add:

I've been thinking lately about victim blaming, how prevalent it is and how we do it to ourselves. We're excellent at it. Seems to me sometimes that the battles we wage with pain may be a subtle form of that, somehow.

Because your feelings are just as natural as your numbness, there's not much difference between them. Numbness can sometimes be more dangerous than pain, we both know it far too well. Maybe it's a wave that keeps turning so sometimes it's this facet, sometimes it's the other that can be seen above the water. Behind both there's the same Woodsgnome standing there, looking out. So in a way, I sort of wonder, why do we tend to favor one over the other?

It sort of comes back, in my mind, to current society's dislike toward and fear of negative emotions. Numbness seems sort of bland enough to be acceptable (society seems to be dangerously ignorant about the dangers of numbness and what it means when animals are numb in nature) but anything more pungent, like anger, is a no-no. It all keeps me puzzled.

If that makes sense. 

If you said the bag burst open and then you just hobbled out and looked for any living being you could find and took revenge on them and didn't feel better till someone else was in pain, I'd say "oh... that's... that's really bad. Maybe go with numbness, okay? Or with sedation." Also if you said it was constant numbness or constant strong feeling, I'd worry, I guess. But not this. This sounds to me like waves that come and go, like you're very human, a full fledged, multi faceted human being. It's what it tells me about you. There's no value judgment beyond that just because some rouge garbage got the better of you. Bad, bad garbage!

P.S. moving a crippled arthritic body to pick up things is not just really triggering with the helplessness involved, but just physically painful. I'm really angry with my body when it happens. I think it'd be worrying if you were numb about that. Just saying.