My Hypervigilance TW (Thoughts of Suicide)

[Aish]

So when I analyze my life I think of 'the good times' when I had the energy to be hyper vigilant and the now times when I am so overwhelmed I can barely function.

At the very least when I was hyper vigilant I was functional and doing things.  Now it is just sleep.  Sleep, paranoia, and whenever someone walks behind me a chill runs down my spine.

My transition from hyper vigilance to just overwhelmed and nonfunctional was pretty awful.  During the transition I blamed myself for my life choices and felt that I was choosing to be lazy.  If I could just manifest the energy I could do what everyone else was doing.  So when I resigned myself I thought it was a choice, a thought process, a fault.  I was in complete denial of anything being mentally wrong with me.  And because I denied my mental health condition, everything was my personal responsibility.

When I resigned I became so overwhelmed by vigilance that was when I was my most suicidal.  When I wasn't paranoid I was sleeping.  When I couldn't be my vigilant self any more, I started to change to be so inactive and depressed that I couldn't keep up with everyone else.  When I would compare my value to everyone else's , my value seemed to plummet.

I really wish I could have told myself back then 'don't blame yourself it isn't your fault'.  I know that is so cliche.  But I really wish I could have communicated that with myself.  It can be really hard to get that idea across because people sometimes think you are just patronizing them.  To overcome the self blame much faster than I have, I would have told myself my life story, compared it to others, recognized that it was fundamentally different.  Recognized that the physical and emotional abuse put me in a different category mentally than other people.  It changed me, and that stress is something I deal with every day that many people do not even recognize.

[Blueberry]

Aish, I want to let you know I read. I can't sort most of my feelings into words rn so the only thing I can write is that in your final paragraph it's clear that you NOW know what you wish you could have told yourself then. So you've made progress

I bet most of us on here wish we could have done things differently in the past (said No, stood up for ourselves, been able to tell ourself something and even believe it etc etc) but we couldn't because of this beast called cptsd and ultimately because of what was done to us in the past.

You're not alone in the sleeping and depression when not hypervigilant. When things were at their very worst, I spent a lot of my teen years asleep to escape many things including the wish to not exist anymore. I think the sleep saved me. I was suicidal at the time though never attempted anything, partly because my energy, my willpower disappeared. My T said it's a bit like going into hibernation. But at least this way I survived and still have the opportunity to learn to thrive as Pete Walker puts it.

I'm glad you survived and that you are here on this forum. Gentle  if that feels safe otherwise I'm just sending compassion.

[Aish]

What is crazy is you start to reanalyze your whole life, understanding yourself because of CPTSD.   It gives me a sense of peace, of course I don't want to be labeled a victim, but I do want to orient myself with what has actually happened to me. 

Being lied about abuse really sucks, especially when it comes from a parent figure.  At the very least I understand my emotions with a CPTSD narrative, when I really didn't at all before.  Hopefully that leads to more peace and freedom and self control.  Who knows.  But reading other stories and being able to share mine is cathartic.

Thanks for taking the time, wishing you well.

[bluepalm]

Thank you for what you wrote Aish and Blueberry - I read it too Aish. The sleep, the paranoia, the shame about failing to function, the self-blame. Please be gentle with yourself.

I've recently finished reading a wonderful book, 'The Boy Who Was Raised As A Dog', about which I posted in the 'books' section of this Forum. It brought home to me afresh how complex our brains are, how the circuitry of our brains is vulnerable to external trauma, abuse and deprivation, and how even highly skilled psychiatrists and other trauma specialists struggle to understand what has occurred in our brains and how to heal the harm that has been done. 

I feel we people who live with the effects of relational trauma response or CPTSD, need to consciously try to relieve ourselves of shame and blame and, listening carefully to our minds and bodies, go with whatever we feel is right for us at any particular time. And if that is withdrawal and sleep, well that is what we do. As Blueberry experienced, I too feel that withdrawing from the world through sleep played an important part in saving me from self-destruction in my childhood and adolescence. It was a sensible strategy to deal with my situation.

[Jazzy]

Thank you for sharing this Aish! I'm glad you have realized these truths and are sharing them with others.