Armadillo's Not So Trigger Filled Journal

[BeeKeeper]

Armee, I noticed this, along with other things, and really thought the irony was great!

I told my T I'd feel very cheated if I went through 3 yrs of therapy and never once needed a tissue.

[Armee]

Snow drop...thanks for the warm welcome back. I like that...and I like your name. Snow. Drop. It feels solid but ephemeral.

Bee 🐝

You should definitely try paddleboarding! It feels really good and the rental boards are very wide and stable. I never fell and I am not athletic. Terrible balance and a bit overweight. You can also kneel and paddle. It's very grounding and mindful and whole body.

Thank you for affirming my priorities and the hard work I put into being present. It really did take a lot. I'm sorry zoom calls are painfully difficult for you. The curse of the pandemic.

Thanks for laughing at the irony of my never needing a tissue for therapy!

[Armee]

Well. No tissues necessary last night in therapy. Except to wipe dog slobber off my hands. Love that therapy puppy I get to play with but good lord she slobbers. 

Still I think it was a good therapy session. He took things very very slow and mindful and for awhile I felt frustrated like "can't you just make me cry?" But he made a couple points that stayed with me. Interesting it's always the things he punctuates with something physical that stick.

One point was that I can't feel my emotions until my body is connected to the present moment and then my brain is connected to that present body. He firmly patted his own body to show me he is here and connected and body and brain are on the same page.

He also made the analogy that completely sums up how I feel. He said "it's like you're here in [x town] but your brain has a map of death valley." He was getting at the complete incongruency between how my body reacts, the emotions on my face, and how I feel about my current present life (perfect). 

He also talked a lot about how these reactions I have are the past. Which made me feel understood , especially because he's a CBT therapist and I feel so much of that is trying to talk sense and logic when I already know that my reactions are not logical. And it's because it's the past showing up.

Finally when I expressed a little frustration that I want to feel my emotions but we're just talking about mindfulness and being present he made the point that what we are doing is rebuilding my nervous system brick by brick.

So overall even though I didn't cry I feel respected by the snail's pace, understood, and like I am in good hands, still, and that he has my back as long and as slow as I need.

This is the poopy thing about CPTSD though...well one of the poopy things...my present life is exactly as I want it. I wouldn't change a single thing. And yet I feel so blah and numb and not here to enjoy it. 

[sanmagic7]

 

[BeeKeeper]

Armee:

one of the poopy things...my present life is exactly as I want it. I wouldn't change a single thing. And yet I feel so blah and numb and not here to enjoy it. 

You're waiting for all your parts to connect.  they're coming.......

[Hope67]

So overall even though I didn't cry I feel respected by the snail's pace, understood, and like I am in good hands, still, and that he has my back as long and as slow as I need.

Hi Armee,
I really like your description of your relationship with your T, and what you wrote here about that.  Good to know that you feel like that about him and the work you're doing together in your therapy.
Hope 

[Armee]

San

Thanks for the hug to let me know you're there, and for taking care of yourself. 

Hope

This is my first therapist ever and I am really lucky to have found him. He has his flaws as a T, and yet he is exactly the right T for me and I trust him enormously. I could go to someone who is more trained in trauma treatment but I like that we are learning together. I've suspected I'm his longest term client for awhile and he confirmed that's true last week (his training is in a rapid results style that just isn't for complex trauma). But also the person he consults with has affirmed that there just is not a timeline for complex trauma and it's not a failure on either of us and to keep going. The progress doesn't lie. 

Bee

You gave me a lot to think about with your succinct comment. I think my biggest remaining problem is there's no connection not just between parts but really at all. I feel sad or down or frightened but without the actual emotion, and there is just no thought or event that is tied to it. It will just sit there all day. Clearly somewhere in my brain alarms or memories or thoughts are happening that cause these moods, but they are completely hidden from me. Not just parts but like the whole kit and caboodle. I don't even know how to go about fixing it. But I guess I'll trust my therapist and put some effort into yoga to start.



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Yesterday was tough. I don't remember my dreams but know I had some. But I woke up very blah depressed but without any thought or feeling or memory that would explain it. It didn't lift until this morning when I woke up. Also all day yesterday I had a tight swollen feeling in my throat and head and was very tired.

TW


There's nothing else below the possibly triggering content so just stop reading if you'd like.






Weirdly, I realized late in the afternoon that it felt like I was being choked and when I had that thought, the sensation released. Once the thought floated away the feeling came back and everytime I would think "it feels like I'm being choked" my throat would loosen and I could breathe again.

I don't have a memory of being choked, but i get very scared when my (sweet) husband (who has never and would never hurt me) touches my neck, or breathes near my ear, or even when my therapist had me imagine my husband behind me in a circle of supporters. I don't know if there's anything to it or not but it's not outrageous to think it could be a body memory since my sister got the chokehold treatment from stepdad.

[Armee]

Sigh. I think I get why I don't really feel emotions....because I never know what emotion I'm supposed to feel. It's not one emotion it's like this crazy mix of sad and hurt and anger and confusion and guilt. I think that's probably common for dealing with people with severe PDs. I might start to feel sad but then all the other stuff crops up too and crowds it out or reminds me my role in it all.  I watched it happen tonight. Faint sadness and anger that then petered out to a fuzzy numbness then confusion and self blame until the whole thing was too confusing and I put it away, numb and confused and guilty.

My sis has also been trying to be kind to my mom and has been calling to talk and gently offer support. Her kids...one in college one a HS senior...wanted to come see her this summer because they want to make sure to see her before she passes so my sister asked if she wanted them to come visit this summer. She responded with a cold indifferent "no." There was other stuff too it's just hard to explain and my brain gets confused and I know we should just stop caring but we always end up feeling guilty like we've done something wrong and we end up thinking we are mean and unkind and unloving.  But here if I pause...and let this sink in and though I can't put myself back as a kid living like this I can still imagine some other kid growing up with this and imagine how damaging that would be and that makes me feel sad. Not for me but for this hypothetical kid.

[sanmagic7]

hey,

i know the idea of confusion, not being able to discern one emotion from another, a whole bunch  landing at the same time until, as you say, you have to put it all aside, put it all away because it becomes overwhelming and you go numb from it.  i think i've lived like this most of my life, and am only now being able to tease apart some of the emotions inside in order to actually feel them and resolve the issue that's causing them.

personally, (and this is what my t suggested), i think it's been a survival mechanism for some of us.  i think our level of sensitivity wouldn't/couldn't cope with the intensity of the emotions we felt.  besides which, when we'd express them as kids, we got shot down somehow - they weren't the right ones to feel, lots of shoulds and shouldn'ts areound our emotions, we were punished for feeling how we felt, etc.  we had to survive that environment and our brains and minds chose the mechanism best for us.  that's how i see it, anyway.

may i please reassure you that as you continue to recover your true self, get more tools for battling the old messages under which you had to survive, and begin feeling safer within yourself, you'll eventually become more sure of yourself, your emotions, your feelings, boundaries - all that good stuff - and you'll begin to feel stronger within yourself.  as this happens, the feelings will become clearer, make more sense,  and you'll know more and more about who you are and how the true you reacts to whatever comes your way.

give yourself time, ok?  i'm passing this along from a wise person i recently heard this from.  your patience, persistence, and determination will lead you to where you want to go.  of that i have no doubt.  love and hugs   

[Armee]

Thank you, San, for the empathy and wisdom based on experience. I feel a lot of hope when I hear this from you because I know we both struggle with the alexithymia and i see how far you've come and I see it in myself, too, even though I have a ways to go.

------

My T signed up for EMDR training and certification!  I'm really excited because I am hoping this will help with connecting parts of my brain that don't seem to talk to each other, and with regaining some memories.  I also really really hope it helps me be able to visualize stuff.

[sanmagic7]

i am an emdr therapist, and so is my t, and, for me, it's worked wonders.  i've been able to have visualizations and emotions come up i hadn't known were there, and from that i've been able to carry on to resolution some things i've carried for years and didn't even know it!  i hope you have the same happy results, armee.  you're getting there!  and, very cool that you can also see the progress within yourself.  that's huge, to my mind.  love and hugs

[Armee]

This weekend my aunt (my mom's sister) and uncle watched my kids and DH and I got to have 24hrs without kids. It's been more than a year and a half since we've had kid free time together, other than a quick dog walk or a couple times we grabbed a drink for an hour while the kids stayed home.

It was lovely overall and good for the kids to have some time with them. And vice versa since they do not yet have grandkids. It gave me some mix of sad and happy feelings.

TW


Sad that the kids don't have a relationship with their grandma here (even before...my mom cannot be active or social), that their two grandpas are dead of suicide, and the other grandma lives across the globe and speaks a different language.  But happy that we have so many beautiful substitute relationships in our lives.

It was weird...because I get these physical impulses that I don't quite act on and am not even aware of the thoughts... but as I was getting ready to go I had both my usual sensations of SH...its not my usual SH that I do (not knowing that's what it was until recently)...but these very strong intrusive impulses with something else that is much more clearly SH but that I don't act on? I don't want to get too graphic or triggering.

But s inwas getting ready to take my kids to my aunt's I was bouncing between these intrusive impulses of SH but also caught myself hugging myself too around the same time unconsciously. Not in a scared way but like self compassionate. And that is something that has been very very challenging? But then it was just happening automatically but in the midst of these other impulses.

Overall I took it as a sign of really good progress that these impulses toward self compassion are breaking through.

Then I also went hiking with DH while the kids were gone, and hiking with my DH is my favorite and hiking is very grounding for me. But I kept dissociating for much of the hike. I finally got myself out and grounded but it took about 45 minutes of effort. The thing that bugs me is I have no conscious triggers. I don't know why I was dissociated. I don't know why it was so hard to come back.

Sorry I know that this writing is all over the map.

[BeeKeeper]

Dear Armee. it's really hard for me to read your story because I see a lot of my old story. As I like to go overboard on affirmation: Yes, yes and more yes. That tornado's mix of emotions, feeling it a little, then taking cover. Trying to connect with yourself when it's safe to do so.

san has put it into words beautifully, I'll take a verbal shortcut and say, "Yeah that."

About SH, I am going out on a limb here and saying, I think your awareness of your impulses and urges were good things. Why? Because you allowed your conscious mind to steer you for those moments. I'm a big fan of "awareness" because much of life has been lived submerged. You can't learn from or control what you don't "know."

Additionally, I've got another opinion about SH urges and impulses- Just an opinion. We share the same gruesome inter-generational trauma choices (life ending) and just like our brains are differently wired to process stuff, those urges and impulses may have a biological component. Not that you can "Do" anything about it, other than observe and hopefully restrain yourself. but these thought patterns have been consciously and unconsciously embedded in your cognitive processes. Mine too. Hello!

As far as hiking, and then spending time grounding yourself, it's probably not how you envisioned it would go. I do see all kinds of growth in you and right now, your willingness to be open emotionally to pretty much everyone, to allow yourself special time alone with your H, to reflect on all this here.  Very much forward movement and to be cherished.

[Armee]

Thanks, Bee. I'm sorry my journal is hard to read for you. Many journals are like that for each of us, and yet here we are. 

I had to work my way up yesterday to returning a call from my mom. Luckily I had a therapy appointment between the time she left me a message and the time she told me to return her call. The call was to tell me she is stopping chemo. 

Anyway, I worked through an approach with T of how to manage between now and the end. Acknowledging that there will always be a cost to interacting with her and then deciding what I want to do and "surfing it" or deciding I want to play her game to the end and "surfing " on that too. Just skate along ride the waves on the surface, paddle back to shore when I get pummeled, not going in when I'm depleted.

It all sounded good. I got back to my car and picked up my phone to call her and ended up dissociated and digging my nails into my skin to be able to do it. So much for progress. Then I got really sad thinking just to call her I have to dissociate, hurt myself, and bury nearly every ounce of myself. But then I don't HAVE to do that to myself. Surfing is harder than it sounds. I called 5 minutes late and she didn't answer. Leaving me wondering if shes angry I'm calling 5 min later than she told me to, if she's getting back at me for giving her windows of time to call me, if she hates me and doesn't want to talk to me, or maybe I'm being cray cray and she fell asleep etc.

She called me back 45 minutes later just as I was getting home. It went fine. Working up and recovering is worse than the actual time. She put in a lot of little digs that made me go a bit colder than I wanted (she is pretty negative but passively toward the boy grandkids. Both of who have struggled with SI but she doesn't know that. But it's a sore spot when she makes those digs).

But yeah...lots of dissociation and shame and self hatred that I wasnt kind enough or didn't do it right or shouldn't think the way I do or maybe she didn't mean x y or z, even though I know she did but if i didn't think like that I wouldn't be so miserable but I know her patterns and the alternative is to blame myself for not being nice enough but i shouldn't do that either. Just a nice little circular trap I build.

So anyway. Lots of the yucky feels today. Lots of time dissociated in the bathroom. Lots of physically aggressive body sensations.

Speaking of. I did try to explain the day I felt like I was being choked all day to my T last night. Instead of being dismissive or treating me like I was over-interpreting something he praised me for naming the sensation and said that he wished I would call him when something like that is happening and even better to see him in person to work with it.

It reminded me of a time he helped me through a really awful time...hallucination or flashback and body memories or I don't even know what to say. But it was embarrassing and he handled it really gentle. And remembering that and how he talked to me last night about the choking feeling.

It just reminds me that he is safe and has my back and isn't jumping or leading me to conclusions but also isn't dismissive just because things don't make sense.

Anyway I am really lucky. Despite not having good parents, everyone else in my life is awesome. Including everyone here.

[BeeKeeper]

Armee

Speaking of. I did try to explain the day I felt like I was being choked all day to my T last night. Instead of being dismissive or treating me like I was over-interpreting something he praised me for naming the sensation and said that he wished I would call him when something like that is happening and even better to see him in person to work with it.

I'm so glad you have "someone" that accepts whatever you bring; and is gentle with you respecting everything about you.

he is safe and has my back and isn't jumping or leading me to conclusions but also isn't dismissive just because things don't make sense.

This is so encouraging. 

P.S. please don't ever say "I'm sorry" about whatever is in your journal.