Trying to do the Work

[Tulip17]

Hello Everyone,

Short story long... I've been thinking about posting for a few days now. I finally cracked under the pressure of realizing I see my therapist tomorrow morning and I can't show up without having done my homework! Apparently you have to "do the work" on the healing journey.

For many years, I thought my traumas were normal. As I got older, I felt something wasn't right. I lost my temper easily, I struggled with my alcoholism, I remained in an unhealthy marriage, struggled with depression, an inability to regulate my emotions, etc. After making the decision to see a therapist and sharing some of my stories, I realized there was nothing normal about my childhood.

My very early childhood and adolescence included regular sexual and emotional abuse from my caregivers. In 3rd grade, we finally moved away from those caregivers because my parents were getting divorced. My mother got injured at work and battled an opioid addiction through my childhood. My father battled alcoholism and struggled to show up as a parent. His next marriage was to an abusive alcoholic. I became really good at dissociating.

My social anxiety is one of my biggest challenges, which is part of why I'm here. I don't have friends. I've struggled my entire life with friendships and relationships, only having about 2 close friends. I get so much anxiety talking to people, my mind goes blank, I avoid social situations as much as possible. I will sometimes literally pray that I don't run into someone I know before going into the store. I freak even when meeting or talking to my sons friends (high school age). Just thinking about it gives me anxiety!!

Anyways, thanks for reading. That's a little bit about me. It's nice to meet you all and thanks for being here.

[Armee]

Aw, that all sounds so tough. Hugs, if they feel safe....down at the bottom. .

I'm glad ypu found your way here and hope we can support you through and along the healing path.

[woodsgnome]

Hi, Tulip17  Welcome to this place of hope.

No, it isn't a panacea with all the answers, by any means; yet it can provide some much-needed support which is hard to find elsewhere. I hope you can find some glimmers of hope here, as many on OOTS also experience a high degree of social anxiety.

[Papa Coco]

Hi Tulip17,

Welcome to the forum. From your short-story-long, you sound like someone who shares many of the same trauma induced lifelong struggles as most of the members. Many of us struggle with the same issue that when we try to talk about our situations to "normal" people, we get flustered and tangled up. It's like we have to defend our trauma reactions to people who simply don't get it. For most of my life, friends and family used to routinely call me "Too emotional for your own good" and "Why won't you just get over it and get on with life like a real man?" It's humiliating and causes my brain to spin to the point that I sound like a blabbering idiot when I try to explain my quirks to the non-sufferers.

But here on this forum, with all these like-minded souls, we don't need to explain ourselves. We all get it. That has been the most powerful part of joining this forum for me. I can tell about my trauma reactions and No one says "oh just get over it" like a million people did to me outside of this forum. So when I have issues I want to air, I don't need to "explain myself" first, the way people in the outside world make me do.

I like to say "It's easier for a woman to describe the sensations of pregnancy and childbirth to a man than it is for a Trauma survivor to explain the sensations of CPTSD and trauma and Emotional Flashback to non-traumatized people. For me, getting all confused and anxiety-riddled while trying to explain myself to non-trauma survivors kept me dissociated and in a dream world for decades. It kept me from realizing how bad my childhood really was (I minimized it for years, before I FINALLY accepted the severity of it...that's when healing began).

I hope your therapy appointment went well and your therapist was happy to hear you'd done your homework.

There is a lot of connection on this forum. A lot of beautiful souls whose childhoods turned out to be confusing and difficult to come to terms with have joined, and there seems to be a strong sense of empathetic connection between many of us.

Healing from childhood traumas is best handled with a multi-pronged approach. It's good that you've started therapy. And joining this forum gives you a place to talk when you feel safe doing so.  There are great books out there that the members of this forum will often share information about with each other. It's good to do therapy, and connect with like-minded people, and read up on the new, emerging treatments and social attitudes that are promising to help us get through this. It's good to do all the things that are within our reach as we learn to navigate life with a better understanding of where we came from and how it affected us.

I'm a 62-year-old grandfather whose life has been lived more inside my head in a dissociative state than out in the wild with eyes wide open. Life was too confusing for me to stay engaged in it. So I lived most of my life in an imaginary world where I was stronger, wiser, handsomer, safer, richer, and able to trust the people I loved. Which was not the case in real life. My family was religious and badly traumatized themselves by wars and religion, and they passed that trauma down to me and my 4 siblings.

I hope you find the forum to be a healing and safe place, as I have found it to be.

Welcome, welcome, welcome.