Armadillo's Not So Trigger Filled Journal

[Eidolon]

Whenever you feel awful, remember where the original thought came from. You're an incredibly compassionate person! If you were triggered, you were triggered. It's sort of like comparing traumas- whatever triggered you was significant enough to begin with, so it's best not to hide it. Great job on letting yourself feel things, Armadillo, and you're absolutely right about feeling both the negatives and positives. proud of you.

[Jazzy]

 

[HomerJ]

Well done on the recent progress! The decision-making worksheet is a great idea.

I want to try and be active in other people's threads but I might say the wrong thing

Whenever I am doing well and have a couple of bad days then the shame starts to creep back in I try to make fun of it. 'Oh what a coincidence, how convenient is it for your narrative that I am the worst' then I exaggerate it to make it seem ridiculous. It makes me laugh sometimes...you have to get your kicks somehow 

[Armadillo]

I worry about the same thing Homer. But if you say the wrong thing we have a safe place here to learn to speak up about what we need, and don't need. And then we all learn. It's cool.

Thanks for the encouragement H, J, and E.

***
I'm finally feel better after my sneak attack dissociation Monday. Those suck. I don't like not having control. It's like some giant vacuum cleaner in the sky decides to just descend and suck me up...nope. you don't get to feel that, sorry. Sslluuurrrrpppp....

Anyway I often can't tell my husband when these things are happening and I am suffering I guess because the symptoms that it triggers are things like shame and self hatred and needing to hide. Once those subside I'm in a better place to share. So I'll try to do that sometime this week.

It really does piss me off though that I can sit here fully present, knowing everything is absolutely ok, and yet my brain will decide for me it needs to protect me.

Anyway...all better now. We took it pretty easy in therapy yesterday didn't do anything too threatening. I went for a long trail run (walk + jog) with my friend today and that was tiring and felt good, then had a mommy daughter lunch with my 9 yr old. Now we are at the beach with her neighbor friends.

[Eidolon]

I'm so sorry you dissociated Monday- but am very proud you managed to get out of it! I hope the beach is fun for you! Dissociation is the worst.

[Hope67]

Hi Armadillo,
Glad that your therapy session was ok, and that you've had some time with your family today.  The beach sounds very nice, I hope you enjoyed it.

Sending you a supportive hug, re: the dissociation 
Hope 

[Kizzie]

Hey Armadillo     OMG the beach sounds wonderful, hope you enjoyed it 

Just wanted to pass along that my T is trying to help me with the whole vacuum cleaner in the sky thing (good analogy  , and has suggested embracing that I may not be ready for some things and it is a protective part of  me preventing me from knowing too early.

I don't know if this is helpful but it has helped me to relax and let the process unfold versus trying to force things as I am wont to do.  There are actually times now when I want to dissociate and can't and find myself longing a bit for the 'good old days' when I could go away from something painful. On the plus side I do know I can get through more than I could before, just by going a bit at a time.

[Jazzy]

Glad you're feeling and doing better now, Armadillo.

I agree with Kizzie, being patient and respecting the process is important. It helped me to think about how many years the traumas happened to me, and how short my recovery (once I really started) was relative to that.

[Armadillo]

I was trying to reply for awhile there Kizzie (and now Jazzy)...

I wanted to say I don't think my dissociation is about my brain deciding it's not yet ready to remember things. That I haven't had the exposure to the severe types of traumas other here have had. That I have trouble with accepting the dissociation because I don't have those types of traumas that would make it necessary for me to need to protect myself from the memories. Except...my memory is pretty bad so how do I really know that...and it's bad because I dissociated during much of my childhood..

That my dissociation is more about keeping myself from speaking up so I don't get physically hurt, from feeling connected to my body so I don't get physically hurt, from feeling emotions so I don't get psychologically hurt, and so my feelings don't cause others to attempt suicide.

Then I realized that would be a pretty bullcrap answer. And this exercise of trying to blow myself off in this response was pretty eye opening, so thanks Kizzie. Here's where I landed as I tried to wrestle with beating myself up for dissociating even though "it wasn't that bad."

I think I am extra sensitive to dissociation and that it has less to do with trauma and abuse than for others here, and more to do with the more biological risk factors I have for dissociation like being raised by a severely mentally ill parent who was under excessive stress and trauma while I was an infant and was probably quite dissociated while parenting. In fact I still can't even look at her because it makes me feel like I'm looking at a ghost. But even though the stuff wasn't as bad, clearly my brain needed to develop dissociation to cope.

** Begin TW, you all can skip this**

The physical abuse wasn't much that I recall. An incident here or there of being yanked, spanked, then thrown across the room; knowing (because she told me) but not remembering I witnessed my sis being pinned by the neck against a wall by our step dad and screamed at for sticking up for me (cookies were involved); witnessing my sis get hit (but rarely bruised) by our mom for standing up for herself against some crazy behaviors; not being able to feel things lest I express them and mom gets upset and cuts up her arms or worse. A single bad incident (or maybe a couple more) with a fundamentalist boyfriend who seems to have decided he was not being intimate with a girlfriend but instead was in spiritual warfare with the devil and treated me as such...

**End TW**

So yeah...ok. I need to dissociate. I haven't suffered the level of chronic abuse that many have, but my brain developed a tendency to dissociate out of necessity. That brain was made when I was just a little child and now I need to retrain it. It doesn't matter that it wasn't the worst of the worst, it doesn't matter that it may be more biological than trauma related. I might know that I don't need to dissociate anymore but that is a very recent discovery and I am in a long process of teaching this brain new tricks. When dissociation strikes I can't slow it down and reason with it. It sucks me up in an instant. All I can do is keep practicing especially when I'm with my T so we can catch it, slow it down, and reverse it. And of course, try to accept it and let it go as soon as I can when it happens instead of beating myself up for letting it happen, when I have no control over it.

Thank you this was extremely helpful.

[Kizzie]

 If it caused and causes you to dissociate, I do think your trauma was bad Armadillo.

I grew up within an N family but to look at us you'd think all was good. My F was a high functioning alcoholic, my B a jock and my M Mother of the Year.  In reality they were emotionally abusive, critical, manipulative, unloving and unsafe.

I used to think my trauma wasn't severe enough but over time I realized if I have the symptoms of CPTSD, it was.  There is a core wound in all relational trauma; that is, being unloved, unsafe and attacked in overt/covert ways by those who are supposed to love us as a child.  We don't have to be assaulted physically or sexually, it's enough to have been repeatedly emotionally abused or neglected.  In the end that's what it all comes down to, what the abuse does to us emotionally, to our sense of self-worth, trust, safety, etc.

Hope this helps 

[Jazzy]

It's okay, take your time and reply how it's good for you. You don't even need to reply if you don't want to, this is your journal.

I think you're doing great figuring this all out. It's good that you're realizing what your mind needs to do, and why.

I didn't skip your TW part, because that stuff has had a really big impact on your life, and it's really important. I'm really sorry you've been treated that way. It's no wonder your mind is sensitive and feels the need to protect itself, and you.

Honestly, that stuff sounds pretty bad.... but I also realize that me saying so may not mean much when you don't agree (which is fine).

I agree with what Kizzie says too. The emotional abuse is just as bad as physical abuse!

In the end that's what it all comes down to, what the abuse does to us emotionally, to our sense of self-worth, trust, safety, etc.

If you feel emotionally healthy and stable, know that you're very worthy, are able to trust others and yourself easily, feel safe in your day to day life, and are happy with who you are... then, that's great! If not, then maybe your trauma is worse than you realize, or at least still has a big impact, which is what is most important to me.

Either way, I'm glad you found things helpful, and are moving forward.

One thing I'd like to stress, if it doesn't bother you, is how helpful it can be to listen to what our subconscious is trying to tell us, even when our logic mind doesn't easily agree. For example:

...that my dissociation is more about keeping myself from speaking up so I don't get physically hurt, from feeling connected to my body so I don't get physically hurt, from feeling emotions so I don't get psychologically hurt, and so my feelings don't cause others to attempt suicide.

This is absolutely the right answer to why people dissociate. It is a protective mechanism, and this is how it starts... but later on, when that danger is gone, our minds still use the tools it has developed (dissociation) to keep it safe from other things, like remembering traumatic events. Memories and current actions are very different to us logically and physically, but mentally they are very similar (actually they are literally the same on some level, according to what I've read). In a way, remembering the traumatic event is being re-traumatized all over again, though perhaps to a lesser degree. It only makes sense for the mind to employ a time tested working method to keep safe.

So, "pretty bullcrap" is certainly not the words I would use to describe that answer.

There's more I want to say here, but I also don't want to be writing too much in your journal, or overwhelming you or anything.

Good job on working through this, keep it up!

[Blueberry]

If it caused and causes you to dissociate, I do think your trauma was bad Armadillo.

I used to think my trauma wasn't severe enough but over time I realized if I have the symptoms of CPTSD, it was.  There is a core wound in all relational trauma; that is, being unloved, unsafe and attacked in overt/covert ways by those who are supposed to love us as a child.  We don't have to be assaulted physically or sexually, it's enough to have been repeatedly emotionally abused or neglected.  In the end that's what it all comes down to, what the abuse does to us emotionally, to our sense of self-worth, trust, safety, etc.

all of it!

It seems a common misconception among us cptsd-ers: My trauma isn't/wasn't bad enough; it wasn't really abuse  It took me years in therapy to stop believing that. I was told by FOO for years that it was my own fault and actually nothing had happened anyway, I had invented it all Abusers (or 'just neglecters') saying that seems pretty common so no wonder it takes us a while to start to really believe otherwise, deep down.

I read the physical abuse done to you and/or witnessed by you in childhood. It sounds awful to me, terrifying. Witnessing abuse is also enough to traumatise btw. It's the terror it causes and the fact that you can't escape except maybe by dissociation. Also if it's happening to a sib, how are you to know that you're safe?? And done to a sib who's standing up for herself?? - that would give you a pretty good reason to not try to stand up for yourself so it could have been deliberate to have you witness that.

Anyway, that's enough on that topic for me. Sending you support and 

[Armadillo]

I cried a bit yesterday. Just a few stray tears but I feel myself thawing a bit. Actually thawing isn't the right word. Connecting is. I've noticed if my T looks at me and says "you look sad, are you feeling sad?" it is starting to have an effect. Before I'd be like "no I don't feel sad at all" (and I'd believe that, I'm not trying to be tough).

I also felt a tiny voice of anger rising up yesterday.

I just am in so much awe right now. I cannot believe I've spent my whole life looking at things in 2D and this beautiful 3D world has been here this whole time. And I can't believe it was so easy to fix once I noticed what was happening. Last night I was riding in the car as we drove down the hill from our suburbs and through the nearby city. And seeing the city for the first time really in all directions, up down sideways... instead of just what is directly in front of me...I gasped. It's so much.

Everything looks and feels different. I feel anchored in space and not lost. In my house I feel big. Outside I feel small but secured, anchored.

So anyway. I'm feeling all these things. And I'm ust so grateful.  And sad that this has been here the whole time. Sad that I've felt so so stupid this whole time not knowing that massive chunks of my brain are not talking to each other. (Not just the vision thing, there's a lot of impact dissociation has had on me). Relieved that I can now see so much that I don't think I'll get lost as easily. And then that little anger. I thought: it's not my mom's fault that I am not looking at things. She didn't tell me to shut off the world around me. But then that little bit of anger rose up and protested that no she didn't tell me to not look at her, to not let her see me, to not let others see me. But her behaviors and my step dad's behaviors were such that as a little kid I had to come up with drastic ways to cope. That's not ok. It is what it is. She wasn't trying to be mean but it wasn't ok.

It was really fun though to be able to share this new development of having depth perception with my T yesterday. We've been doing therapy outdoors on hiking trails since COVID and explaining to him how I was seeing everything and what that was like to look at the trees, the houses below, the ridges in the distance...it was kind of magical feeling.

Today I am going to go to the town my grandparents used to live and see if I can find their old house. That was my happy secure place.

And I'm going to be driving past a major major city to get there and I can't wait to see what it looks like in 3D! 

[Armadillo]

Oh and thank you Jazzy, Kizzie, and Blueberry for acknowledging the badness of my "not so bad" for me while I work my way to it. I've only stopped blaming myself a couple months before I found this forum so I have not yet really gotten to the place of seeing things for what they were. Right now I've sort of pushed all that stuff away forcefully to work on myself and heal my brain which is healthy for me right now to take advantage of some distance.   

[Kizzie]