Bermuda's Memories - Overflow Journal 1

[Bermuda]

Thank you two,

Armee, you are really on to something with your presumption about instincts. That is it. People act instinctually, they act and react. I see it all the time when I don't understand why people behave how they do, and it's also exactly what I am talking about here. I don't understand when something is a joke, or know how to just express what I feel would be my natural expression of self. I am missing natural instinct and intuition.

I learned not to react, not to express, and not to desire.

Now that I have made this connection to instinct, I hope it's something I can work toward mending so I can get to know myself better and maybe share that with others. That's all I want after all, connection. ...And how can someone connect to someone who expresses themself so... incomplete? 

[Armee]

When everything we did as a kid was potentially wrong or dangerous we stop trusting ourselves, don't we? I'm constantly doing this...doubting myself.  It's interesting that the instinct part called out to you. I think I only meant it about your instinct to play and climb but you are absolutely right about how important instinct is and being able to hear and trust our instinct....how vital that is to everything...feeling our emotions, joking, connecting, maintaining boundaries...everything really. It's almost like that is the bridge piece that connects this all. We learned to not trust our instinct and to shut it down. So we are trying to logically figure everything out and that leaves us robotic and three steps behind.

[Bermuda]

On the same topic of instinct, intuition, boundaries, and reaction... I can't think of what it is I want to express here, aside from expressing it in a common dialog that has happened several ways over the years. It's something I feel sums up what it's like with cPTSD related to long-term trauma...

Them: Hey, how are you doing?
Me: I'm doing great. [Big smile] Feeling energetic, and I accomplished that thing.
Them: [Looking confused] Are you sure?
Me: Of course, why?
Them: Because that one thing that someone made happen/said/did.
Me: [Realisation and panic] Oh, yes, that. I'm fine.

I walk away shattered, triggered, and shrunken.

I don't realise things are wrong. I may have a feeling deep down, but not a conscious recognition. It's as if I don't have boundaries, because I don't have expectation. I just have my own feelings and they are many and often conflicting anyhow. I am triggered when I have this delayed cognitive recognition. It does seem to have it's foundation in a lack of instinct, or with cPTSD often rather a misplaced and heightened instinct in other facets.

I could probably rewrite this in a more comprehensive way, but I literally have no time these days. I can only hope that this somehow makes sense in the order it naturally came out.

Additionally just wanted to say that the other person either thinks I'm pretending to be OK, or that I am really ignorant or naive when these things happen. I have been told several times that I am the most intelligent idiot someone has ever met. ...It may be true, but I'm neither pretending nor naive.

[Bermuda]

Hello, I haven't posted in a while. It's a good thing. I have been doing really well. I owe a lot of it to this forum. Sometimes, things happen and I wonder if it was all real, and I can read back over things here and remember.

I just want to get out a memory that just surfaced out of no where. I won't write details because it just resurfaced, and I don't feel comfortable with it. Sometimes I get triggered by things like opening Netflix and they have a clip playing already, and you can't stop it. That happened today. It was a clip from a new docu series which is (seemingly) about cyber sexual extortion. It made me immediately sick, and I closed it. Sometimes I get this feeling like I can relate to people even though I can't recall an instance, I just know it is there. This memory was not like that, it just flooded me in an instant, and I know I will be feeling sick all night because of it. Yes, that happened to me too, and at the time I played along and pretended I enjoyed it, just like I do in my night terrors. I acted and manipulated my way through it.

I also have this feeling lately that I want to write out, maybe someone understands. My son is three, and he is non-verbal. He wanders. I recently got him a bracelet with his name and our phone numbers on it. I live in a very safe country. One time he ran happily out of a shop, and luckily this man unloading a delivery truck caught him and picked him up. My son was so happy, and the man just smiled and asked if he wanted to help unload boxes. My son loves trucks and nodded. I was there at this point, and the guy was being helpful, but oh my goodness. The horror. All of my insides turning all at once. My son loves everyone, and is adventurous and non-verbal. I have started having concerns, extreme worry. He goes to preschool, has a nanny... Any time he is sad and doesn't want to go to school, I have this sick feeling that something terrible could be happening to him and he couldn't tell me. I don't know what I would do.

[Armee]

I'm sorry you went through that, related to the Netflix preview. I relate to that.. pretending to like something. It makes healing really confusing and difficult.

Your son...if something happened to him, he'd tell you through behaviors and emotions. Your mother's instinct and nonverbal communication would carry you two. 

[Bermuda]

It's almost as if your mind tells you when someone threatens you if you act not threatened and instead play along that somehow you're taking THEIR power over you away... but that's not really true is it? It's just what your mind tells you to lesson the desperate nature of the situation, to save your brain.

[Armee]

Reading that just made me cry (don't worry that's a good thing for me). Yeah, it's like that.

[Bermuda]

I question myself a lot. I question myself in ways that I don't think other people do. The little things that hinder my progress run so deeply.

An example: I injure myself. I question if the pain I am feeling is actually real. If I am crazy. I seek outside opinion to validate if what I am feeling is consistent with how one should feel in such a situation. I feel dramatic if something presents differently than it "should" so I just ignore it because it's not real.

That's just one example of a really deep rooted issue that I just don't know how to address. I was overhearing a business meeting and a female employee was leading the conversation on a professional topic and I just felt shocked. How is it that other women can voice opinions and speak with authority on anything? That's what triggered this thought. I can't offer my opinion as anything other than just an opinion. I can't present my experiences as fact. It's not that I lack competence in anything, but I just don't know how to speak when I'm not spoken to, to speak when a question hasn't been asked. I don't even know how to feel until I am told how I am supposed to feel.  I don't know how to just be. 

[Armee]

Yeah that, exactly, Bermuda. You aren't alone in that. Even huge things...how am I supposed to feel? It's no big deal right so I should be fine? Then i read a book or watch a movie about something similar happening to someone else and i feel sad or angry or whatever for them. Maybe even intensely and I wonder wait...does that mean I should feel that way? Cause all I  feel is numb or "it's fine, I'm ok."

It's protective I guess though we'd do better to be able to feel those emotions. I'm curious if once you know how you're supposed to feel or have permission from someone are you then really able to feel it? Usually that makes me feel ok to feel that way but the feelings never actually come. I dunno. You're not alone.

Weirdly a lot of people saw me as that outspoken person at work even though I felt deeply uncomfortable to the point of needing to SH later. I was often admiringly referred to as a bad a**. The thing was it was because I was speaking up for some injustice perpetrated on someone else. That was how I could use my voice.

Our parents took our own voice away if we ever had one. It was dangerous to speak up. I guess we keep reminding ourselves in other situations that we have a right to speak as much as anyone and these bad things that happened in the past aren't what is happening now.

Hugs to you. You have good things to say. It's sad that the right to say them is one more layer of damage done.

[Bermuda]

It's true. I also feel deeply empathetic and emotionally invested in the injustices of others to the point that it can feel overwhelming. I can't watch graphic movies.

And like you I have wondered... My own SA is something that I had literally forgotten. Maybe it just didn't make my top 500 worst worth-remembering traumas. At the time I got on with life. My brain filed it in the "Nothing can be done, sort it out later" pile. I always related to that type of trauma, even though I couldn't place why. I couldn't question the situation. I had no power in it.

It's hard to watch other people go through things. I would never treat their experiences as I do my own. "There's nothing you can change, so it doesn't matter or exist, or even effect you at all." ...But that's what my brain reinforces for myself all the time. Sometimes it's the most insignificant things that I wish I could simply let exist that I can't (until the facade crumbles, of course). Medical things, I am so afraid of authority and of someone telling me they see nothing wrong that I would rather not check, not ask, not experience at all. I can't allow myself, or will myself to experience things with certainty, and quite ironically people take me as a liar because of this. I have been accused of lying about the strangest things just because of how timid I am.

There was a fuel fire in the harbour where a boat I owned was. I upsettedly told my coworker that I needed to call and check on my boat, and she looked me in the eyes and told me I was lying and that I don't even own a boat. So many examples of this kind of thing. Every time I am shocked and confused, and you know what, I never stick up for myself either. I just shut up like a good girl and move on. My yacht was covered in black soot but was otherwise fine by the way. What emotion was I supposed to portray, and to what extent? My very presence usually feels like too much. (Just like the length of this text, sorry.)

I look up to people who are unabashedly themselves. People who have a distinct style, or speak up about things they're passionate about even if I am not. I see someone walking down the street with wild hair dancing while they walk, I just want to celebrate, but I am not that. I am wishy-washy, shifty-eyed, I cross my arms (which I've been told makes me come across as arrogant), I speak about myself as if I don't even believe me. I want to be powerful. I want to command an audience... I can't even tell you if my shoulder hurts because that's relative and experiences can never be objective, and I don't want to take your attention away from real people with real problems.

[Bermuda]

I am heading back to university. It has been causing me a lot of anxiety, and not in the ways people might expect. This will be rambly.

I have studied a lot. It's something I do, but it's extremely difficult for me. I was studying at this university (remotely) during the pandemic, and I stopped for a life detour. Now I am resuming my studies and had to go pick up a new student ID. I put it off for two weeks. I walked into the university and felt overwhelming panic. I am older, but it's not because I am going into my late 30's. It is this extreme feeling of being found out. I am so terrified that someone will speak to me, or ask me a question. I walked the stairs up and down just to avoid orientation. I felt like I was floating, close to tears, close to fainting. I did not orientate myself. I was just breathing and trying to keep my facial expression neutral as I walked up six flights and then directly back down. I just got an email saying my class has been moved to a different university building.

Educational trauma. I tried so hard growing up. I was never the best, and even if I had been it would never have been enough. I had an older brother who was always the smart one, even though he was not at all that. I worked so hard to be noticed and recognised positively. I did everything I was told, even tried to do the things I was told were impossible. I was made to write essays about my life goals only to be told that they were unreasonable and unattainable upon presenting them to my parents, and that I wouldn't be getting any support. I changed my dreams over and over again. I graduated two years early and was forced to apply for my own diploma. I applied to universities internationally but my parents told me to sign for them and refused to disclose any financial information. I had to figure everything out on my own and just make up what I didn't know.

After I had been homeless and on my own a couple years they found me. I was having a police officer escort me to my place to get clothes and bring me to a safe hotel. A note had been slipped under my door. I gave it to the officer and told him to read it for the record and not to tell me what it said. I told him it would likely start off nice and end manipulative and threatening. He told me that was basically correct. He said there might be something important I should know, and that is that I had beeen accepted to two very prestgious international universities. This was years later.

Once I wasn't just trying my best to stay alive, all I've done is study. I keep a binder full of certifications for no reason. I'm not driven. I don't work. I just collect papers, and I'm so terrified that someone will ask me why I am studying, what my goals are, what career I am in, and the thought of walking into a different university building makes me want to vomit. All I can do is try to be invisible like I did my whole childhood and hope no one asks me any questions and maintain a neutral expression. When I am floating around I am like a ghost and cannot reply anyhow. 

[rainydiary]

Best wishes as you embark on a new university journey.  I resonate with loving to learn and getting a lot of knowledge but without a clear purpose or reason that others can see. 

[Bermuda]

I can't relate to others and especially not to "single path people", but "single path people" are the only acceptable societal normative. They are the ones who have both defined success and assigned that title to themselves. That path was robbed from me and nothing I can ever regain, but I keep trying. My studies are inherently social and I will have to speak about myself. I either have to uncomfortably lie or be exceptionally vague and aloof as not to disrupt the point of the lessons. I am so scared of introducing myself. I am scared of panicing publicly, and freezing when someone inevitably calls me by my "slave name". If that offends someone, I was a slave.

[Armee]

Gently gently present with you, Bermuda. What you've gone through is something most people can scarcely grasp but it's your reality.

You've also put into words something I experience regularly. Even rehearsing professional presentations alone not just at home but locked in my car I stumble and freeze just over the first slide, introducing myself. It's deeply unsettling. You aren't alone even if the severity of your traumas sets you apart.

There are many who are on that single path path, and they may be the producers in this world and we need them but they aren't the change makers. You have that in you.

I guess I find myself wondering with the predicament you are in in class if the teacher feels safe to strategize with in a very vague and general way, how to approach the self-disclosing parts of the assignments. I can understand if there's a well-earned hesitancy to do that knowing that there are many people who are expolitational.

I read a book, heartberries, you might like.

[Bermuda]

Thank you for the book recommendation. I would love to read a book sometime just casually. I may fit it in just for that in and of itself.

You are right. WE are change makers. I can't help but notice more people talking about how social anxiety and other mental health concerns have been treated, medicated, over the years. This is not just me being anxious. It's not just me being uncomfortable in front of people. It's complex layers of bleh that is intertwined into everything I do. It's conditioning. People are listening, the world is changing. The next generation of people living with complex trauma may be treated differently. They may be heard, helped, encouraged, and not simply drugged and drug onward.