Eerie Anne's Journal

[Eireanne]

@sanmagic7, you say, "perhaps problem-solving for one or two things at a time" ...that's just it.  I can't seem to solve for any of my problems, I'm just aware of what they are.  I'm desperate for help solving...I feel like I keep saying the same things over and over again, and everyone says, "that's hard".  But I don't know how to get out of this feeling of helplessness.  I've been doing all this work for so long on my own and I have no support.  I keep saying the same things - I can't solve my problems with the same brain that created them.

Is it just writing down everything until there's nothing left to write, so I've said it all?  Only the more I say, the more comes up and it's just too much to bear alone.  That's what I came back to this journal to do, because I've been on and off crying all day about how bleak my future is about to be and how I don't have the tools to change the course or the advocacy I need so I don't have to go it alone.  I can barely breathe and I don't know how to get out of this. 

Focusing on one thing - work - which is the priority, just brings up every time I was in this situation and didn't have the support I needed to create a better outcome.  Nothing is different now, except for the fact I have absolutely no energy left to go on. 

[Moondance]

 

I can't seem to solve any of my problems either.  I am doing what I can at the moment and that is, therapy with a trauma informed therapist and I am on this forum for a month now or thereabouts.

I am very isolated, not working, no contact with anyone but T that understands about trauma, occasionally speak with insurance company reps but that send me into crisis and I am working through Peter Walkers book on CPTSD.

I am having to accept, for the moment that I am where I am but even more important to know that CPTSD is complex and it will take a long while for me to heal.  One small step at a time.   It is very frustrating, I agree but if I don't accept it, I  will get worse.  I really don't want it to get worse and I'm almost certain you don't as well. 

I don't know if this helps you at all Eireanne. 

I do hope you eead this as intended - caring and supportive.

to you Eireanne if acceptable, if not please disregard

[Armee]

I'm sorry, EA. It's a really overwhelming stage to be in. I agree with Moondance acceptance of our symptoms is the first step. I have lots of empathy because I've been where you are, and it's a lot. It does get better. It is not hopeless. I do have some speciifc advice but we are generally encouraged to provide support not advice here. If you want a solid step to consider I will share it. Either way we are here with you and get it. 

[sanmagic7]

EA, i'm sorry i couldn't answer your question w/ anything helpful.  perhaps, like many of us, just keep doing what you think you can do, like writing until everything comes out.  we're here for you, you're not going thru this alone,  c-ptsd is a beast in my mind, one with many tentacles.  if it's any consolation at all, we are hearing you.  we get what it's like to have so many thoughts and triggers running thru our minds at the same time, and, yes, often one will bring up another and another, ad nauseum.  hang tough, ok?  i've seen a change already.  small steps count.  love and hugs

[Eireanne]

I've been writing it all out for years, writing doesn't teach me how to do things differently.  If I KNEW how to heal I would, but there's no information out there on how to actually HEAL trauma, just stuff on how to alleviate the symptoms. I'm in this 100% alone.  Teaching my therapist week after week all the stuff I've learned is exhausting, when is it someone else's turn to take the reigns and tell me what the next step is? I'm so tired of waking up every morning already defeated because I'm still drowning and nothing new has changed except more memories of how bad things are about to get for me. 

[Armee]

 

It does feel like that, for a long time. That there's only steps to alleviate symptoms without healing the trauma. But in my experience and I offer this gently: alleviating the symptoms is the first step.  Stabilization. Then trauma processing. Then growth. The reason is because I couldn't and most people with trauma cannot actually process trauma and grow until there is a stabilization of symptoms.

I had to learn to stay calm and grounded in the face of the trauma, before I could face it. That is why practicing grounding and self care is so important. And even though that alone doesn't heal the trauma it can start to help you feel a little better. Better enough to take a deep breath and to start to process and heal. It takes a long time, a lot of practice, and a very strong will to feel better.



We are hearing you. It is not fair and no you absolutely shouldn't have to teach your therapist all this.

[Moondance]

I am sorry Eieranne you are so alone and hurting so much. 

You may be physically alone, but you are not alone in it - we all are here supporting each other as best we can given the fact that each of us are all on this journey of healing from traumas.

Eieranne, I'm pretty new here and forgot the guidelines about giving advice.  I sincerely mean to be supportive on this forum.

[Blueberry]

I'm sorry Eireanne that you have to teach your therapist. I agree, it's her job. That stuff is soooo exhausting. I had to do that in the past too. Even if the therapist does learn from you, it's still exhausting.

I have had a similar experience to Armee. Most important is stabilisation. In fact, in my country that's the mantra for healing from cptsd: stabilisation, stabilisation, stabilisation, look at something, process a little, stabilisation, stabilisation, stabilisation, look a bit further or look at something else, process, stabilisation, stabilisation, stabilisation,... and then integration starts happening and maybe growth in a form that you can see for yourself. Looking back, I would say there is growth beforehand too.

Atm a lot of mbrs on here are writing Journals and writing out what happened to them. Everybody needs to know for themselves whether that's a good thing. From what I have been told in inpatient trauma therapy, you can retraumatise yourself writing that stuff out when you're not ready or you can just frustrate yourself because it doesn't seem to work. And reading other people's accounts can retraumatise too. When I was first told by trauma-informed therapists maybe 6-7 years into my real intensive healing journey, that I needed to get really stabilised before I mentioned anything more out of my past, I was shocked and disgusted, but I followed their stipulations  - it was a healing retreat and I didn't have much choice in the matter - and it worked. I can't remember how long I was stabilising before processing, but it was long - a few years probably. I wasn't in continuous therapy though, I just had these healing retreats.

Anyway a lot of mbrs are writing Journals atm but that hasn't always been the case on here. I would gently suggest trying out https://cptsd.org/forum/index.php?board=49.0  The stuff pinned at the top is there because it is so important. Not all threads are possible or even useful for everybody. So if "grateful" makes you see red, maybe try Three Good Things a Day. Even reading other people's posts on it still helps me. And I still write on it. It's not in order to deny all the bad stuff that happened or is still happening.

Another thing that might help is reading up on brain research and how it pertains to traumatisation - amygdala, pre-frontal cortex etc because it can help us understand why healing is so long-drawn out and why it doesn't really take place on a cognitive level, which you probably know. I still re-read that stuff because I need to remind myself all the time. Unfortunately my brain is too numb to point you in a useful direction on the forum atm, where to find useful reading matter I mean.

I'm sorry if I wrote you something you already know or that you've written about in your Journal ad nauseam. I haven't read all of it, so may have missed.

[Eireanne]

When I reach out for help and I do not receive it, I internalize the message I've received since childhood.  I am a burden, an inconvenience, and I'm so filled with shame and self-loathing it has prevented me from putting these words onto paper.  Time and time again, I'd write paragraphs, trying to put into words the feelings and emotions I was having, desperately needing to reach out.  I've been doing this for 20+ years.  I read back to the things I wrote 20 years ago, I'm still saying the same things.  I can't remember a time where I truly had someone I could depend on. 

My entire life, I've craved someone I can let my guard down with, be my authentic self with and confide my deepest fears to.  Countless times I'd make a connection with someone and realize I had someone that would fill the void I had from not ever having a family of my own, or someone to love me unconditionally, only to have them stop talking to me without fully explaining why.  What is it about me that drives everyone away, that each time I make a new/potential friend, I walk on eggshells hoping I don't say the wrong thing that will cause them to stop speaking to me.  People have always sensed there was something "off" about me and it would make the air fill with awkward tension to the point I'd be too overstimulated and really needing to be in a quiet area for a bit to decompress...

Now, I spend so much of my time in my own head that the second someone talks to me, the thing that is in my head comes out and I can't attend to the other person I just need to feel seen/heard.  And that isn't enough...because I'm still not getting the HELP I need.  And while yes, there are wonderful people who can hold space for me and let me know they have been in similar situations, the fact is, the current situation I am in, the one I desperately need help with - I cannot find help and I AM alone in this...it's terrifying.  It's like watching a car crash in slow motion, I don't have the defenses to protect myself from this. 

I spent the past 24 hours calling one resource after another, repeating the situation and the support I need, only to be told that the number I am calling - I'm out of area for that support, or that isn't a service they provide.  I've been doing this since my leave started 2 months ago, and now it's almost up.  I'm no closer to solving for my problem than the day I went on leave and I'm in the same/slightly worse mental state.  I've completely regressed back to not being able to get out of bed.  No one understands what I'm trying to say the way I mean it, and everyone keeps giving "helpful" suggestions to things that aren't my problems (not this community - I mean IRL) which makes me feel even more unheard and invalidated.  Then I get angry and feel helpless and just start crying.  I don't have the answers and I can't find anyone that will help.  I truly am alone in this.  The system is failing me. 

[Eireanne]

@Blueberry - thank you for that. I do feel bad I'm not in a place that I can read other's journals yet and it's hard for me....I'm so appreciative to the people that are taking time to read my words, hold my pain with me and tell me I'm not alone.  I feel like I'm invalidating their responses sometimes by venting how alone I am when they are telling me I'm not, and I'm scared they will not feel appreciated and stop reading.  I know I don't have the monopoly on feeling like this, and that other people have it far different than I do and I am grateful to have stumbled upon this community as an alternative to journaling in a vacuum. 

I have spent the past two months better understanding what has been going on within my brain and Gabor Mate has really helped as well. I understand what happened and why it continues to happen, what I don't have is someone mirroring the correct behavior.  I feel like a kid, and I need an adult to show me how to respond appropriately to situations.  Like my work situation.  I want to sound empowered, when the reality is I AM a victim of my situation, and I'm slipping through the cracks.  I do not have the resources or support needed to get the help I need.  I feel very alone, and I have felt this way all my life.  I truly am the little kid I was, hiding in my closet listening to my parents argue about how every one of their problems was my fault. 

@Moondance, I am new here too.  I still struggle to navigate and understand guidelines, and struggle to find the words to respond to someone in the way that truly resonates with how I'm thinking...I just tend to come here when I'm thinking something that needs to be vented, and then I feel as if I'm not letting YOU know how much your words really do resonate with me.  I am sad for us both that we are struggling with similar feelings of isolation and lack of support.   I appreciate that you are taking the time to share words (and hugs) of encouragement.  You really are a balm to my hurt feelings...like someone that is kissing a skinned knee before putting on a bandaid.  Your kindness gives me comfort - thank you. 

@Armee - I hear what you are saying, but I am constantly being wounded by things happening to me that I feel I have no control over.  Things that are exacerbating wounds I haven't healed from.  Things like financial insecurity, food insecurity, knowing I have no capacity to get my own basic needs met and that soon my situation is going to get a lot worse and there MUST be a way of saving myself if I only knew what it was...and then remembering all the times in the past I haven't been able to help myself, and I probably wouldn't be in this situation if I were only...and then giving  myself grace for that, but still having NO answers, no knowledge, no ability to articulate what needs to be said in a way that gets the help I need...exactly like being an child and crying and having a parent let me "cry it out" instead of attending to me.  I'm not seeing how there can be a stabilization of symptoms when the symptoms are being triggered by me not getting the help I need. 

I think there's this...thought? That if I can calm myself down when I am dysregulated that I will magically understand the right way to communicate effectively with people that are not capable of hearing me.  I'm needing the actual words that need to be said to get someone to respond the way I need and I can't do that when I'm being made to feel invisible.  When I say I need autonomy and respect and the ability to set boundaries and I'm told that they don't have time for my drama, I don't know how to explain that this is NOT drama, this is a basic human need.  I can point out all of the science behind why I am responding the way I am, but unless that individual is willing to understand a concept that they have no personal experience with, I am dismissed as being melodramatic.   

All the suggestions to help me stay calm and grounded still doesn't teach me the right way to navigate a system I am not thriving in.  Especially when I put my trust in authority figures and am vulnerable with them and expose my weaknesses and they betray me and use those weaknesses against me. 

[Armee]

I'm sorry I got that wrong, EA. 

[Eireanne]

When I feel like I'm in danger - like, of being fired - I immediately panic and my panic looks like anger.  I'm desperate for help to get out of this situation and it LOOKS like I'm lashing out in anger, because I never learned how to get help.  My entire life.  And that's why it's traumatic for me, and why I'm so effed up and on medical leave right now, because I literally brought up every other instance of a situation where I didn't understand something and asked for help...and I've legit never had anyone I could depend on consistently. 
I live in complete isolation.  I have for nearly my entire life.  To try to explain that, the voices in my head want me to be semantically correct, because "everyone" is always correcting me, instead of just allowing me to NOT WORRY ABOUT SEMANTICS and just say it messy and wrong, so what needs to come out can.  But no one ever allows that. And that's invalidating.  I can't expect anyone to understand when they are too busy trying to FIX instead of listen. 
This happened the other day, and I feel this is important to share...so a part of me wants to tell a story.  Only the story completely contradicts my first statement - I live in complete isolation....Well, How can you say that and in the next breath tell me you had a friend over!? See?? 
And this actually happened at work.  Which is why it's a trigger.  IN MY OWN HEAD, because I've heard it from everyone my entire life, the invalidation - that I invalidate myself, because you all will read it and think it's helpful to remind me I'm not alone.  This is the other tactic that's been done to me my entire life.  EVERY thing I feel invalidates itself.
@sanmagic7, I can have as many boxes or crates or whatever as I need, I can have a running tally of EVERY trauma that comes up from me just trying to get through a sentence when the fact of the matter is, I need people to TALK to.  Like, regularly...to be able to get ALL the trauma out.  If everyone I asked for help would have just stepped up and helped me carry a piece of it, it wouldn't be this big...but it is, because it's trapped in my head and the only way to get it out is to tell someone, but the more I try to talk to people the more they invalidate me before I even had a chance to share.  I'm too busy defending myself, then I sound defensive, then I sound angry, and all they do is say "that sounds frustrating" Yes, It IS, all of this is, and I don't know how to SOLVE for it.  It's like a scream trapped in my chest.  Making a "shopping list" of all of them, even trapping them away in boxes...what is the point of WHERE I put it, it's not....they are all just multiplying.  So much so that I open my journal to talk about one thing and I end up talking about 15 other things. 
This is what I did when my friend came over.  He sat and listened to me for 2 hours.  I just don't understand my other "friends" and why they can't just show up for me.  So it goes back to even in childhood, when I needed desperately to feel connection, and all I knew was isolation.  Will telling someone about it make me feel better? Yes - In the short term.  But it doesn't change my situation or give me the answers I need.  I need to learn different behaviors by having them mirrored for me.  Then I need to practice them in a safe environment, but I don't have a safe environment, and I have no one to practice them with.  And a lifetime of living an isolated life means I do not know how to survive.  I'm begging everyone I know for help and they are all just standing idly by waiting for me to figure it out on my own and invalidating me along the way. 

My initial aim was to figure out what was wrong with me, so then I could find a therapist to help me, but I'm STILL doing that, I'm still telling everyone what is wrong with me and trying to get the help I need, but everyone's assumption is that I should be getting it from a therapist - what I'm lacking is a sense of connection and social support.  I cannot expect to wait until I have my therapist's attention to discuss every single box holding every single trauma, when most of them wouldn't even BE trauma if someone would just listen to me. I have felt invisible my ENTIRE life.  And it's excruciating now because I desperately need help and I have no one.  I'm slipping through the cracks and no one cares....because I haven't had anyone to depend on my entire life.  Which brings up EVERY instance when I desperately needed someone and there was no one...and a reminder of how much I lost. 
My friend pointed out how resilient I must be that I've been able to hold onto as much as I can, how many times I've been able to pull myself through...but I NEED someone else...and I don't know what I ever did wrong that I've never experienced that.  I need it so bad.  I told my friend...do you know it's been about 5 months since I was touched by another human being?  It was my birthday, and my friend invited me over....I ended up watching a movie with his 9 year old.  We watched Disney's Alice in Wonderland.  I don't know that I've ever seen it.  he snuggled up next to me.   Prior to that...the first year of the pandemic, someone gave me a hug that felt like home.  Between that? Abuse and neglect...Isolation and lack of psychological safety.  Of course everything feels like trauma and I have no sense of psychological safety. 
I've been barely surviving under the weight of all this trauma.  Along the way, I've been told I'm just angry.  Depressed.  Anxious.  Suicidal.   Attention Seeking.   Dramatic.   A Victim.  All from people I was desperate for a sense of connection with.  That's all I need.  To be seen.  Heard.   Attuned to.  I have one person in my life that can do that for me, and to be with him is traumatic in itself.  I told him, "this is the healthiest relationship I've ever had" He replied, "this is NOT a healthy relationship".  Yes, I know that too...but by comparison. 
I told him about my parents.  I left out so much.  I told him bits about my brother.  And the time he broke my ribs.  And just enough vignettes to paint a picture.  But there's another picture. 
I'm watching Dr. Gabor Maté: The Myth of Normal & The Power of Connection on YouTube and he says, "the infants brain requires the mature function of the adult's brain to regulate itself, but what if the adult's brain is not functioning maturely because that adult themselves never got the right conditions for the healthy development? Now you have an immature adult brain regulating or trying to regulate an immature infant's brain - the self-regulation never develops. 
I was crying on the couch...thinking, at my age, I have no idea how to help myself.  I have no idea how to say things the "right" way to get people to hear me.  It brings up the conversation I had with the one that said I should "join a co-dependency support group or AlAnon" - I said to her, "I need to be able to figure out what to say" and she said, eff those people, you don't have to tell them anything! You don't have to EXPLAIN yourself!  She didn't get what I was asking.  No one really listens to me when I talk.  When I ask for things, I never get it.  I am told I need to set boundaries.  It's all *.  Who am I setting boundaries with? I'm completely invisible, I always have been.  I've never gotten anything I've asked for.  To be heard.  How am I supposed to set a boundary for that?

So here I am, on the couch, helpless, isolated, crying that my life has always been like this, all my memories of are me, alone, struggling to survive...and my mom opens the door and says, "how long are you planning on being miserable for?"  But it's learned behavior - because she never taught me HOW.  I learned by watching.  I didn't know any different.  I still don't.  And I think, she didn't know what she didn't know.  So if I don't know how to find the "right" organization that will provide me an advocate to get the services I need to survive,  how was she supposed to know how to teach me something she herself had never experienced? 

I imagine she also didn't know what to say, what to do, didn't learn that from HER mom, so how was she supposed to be able to figure out my needs when her own needs weren't being met? And that's what I learned...that's what I did, I repeated the only thing I understood how to do, and it's NOT WORKING.  But that's all I've ever learned - what doesn't work.  What drives people away, what makes me end up alone.  But now how to find someone who won't leave, someone who will say, I will help you with the things you need help with until you can do it on your own, and even then, I'll still be here.  Then, when I see other people have that, I wonder what is so lacking in my own makeup that I can't receive that as well.

[Eireanne]

@armee - you didn't get it wrong.  You are reading the incoherent thoughts that aren't coming out the way I intend and doing your best with what you are reading.  That's not on you to get it "right".  I'm not, in any of these posts, saying what it is I'm meaning to say.  I'm just "venting" in a way, and not really saying ANYTHING.  Not even sharing what actually happened, which I think would help, because I'm just purging. 

It's not fair of "me" to sound like I'm dismissing your suggestions by saying, "that's not what I need" when I'm not even expressing to you what my needs are, and you are trying to piece them together by my entries alone.  You are awesome and I appreciate you holding space for me.

[Eireanne]

My mom only had two friends.  It makes sense that I only had two friends. 

But I read tons of articles that say, If you have two close friends, consider yourself lucky, most don't have that many....so all this time I thought I was lucky....until I asked those two friends to hold space for me.  And they are so deaf to my cries of help it's painful to get texts from them now...which I'm sure validates everyone's assumption that I am "self-isolating" and makes me question reality. 

It's easier to check in with another person and say, Hey, is this really happening the way I am thinking it?  But when I go without that person for too long...it all just gets trapped in my head and there's nothing to do but word vomit them out. 

It's not that most people aren't equipped to have "these" conversations because of the topic itself, it's because most people do not want to go that deep. They want to avoid messy, feely conversations at all costs.  And I've never been that way. I think most people numb and distract themselves instead of digging deeper, and for me to want to dig deeper, it makes them want to distance themselves from me.

I start cognitively rehearsing what I want to say in my head as if I'm already talking to someone, because that's what I do. I have conversations with people in my head I wish I could talk to. It's so hard because nobody else is getting it.  I feel like the people I have asked for help don't understand what I'm asking, and to me the most simple and obvious thing would be to say, "HOW CAN I HELP?"  and instead, they say, "oh, she's feeling down, I should do something nice to cheer her up...what should we do? Oh, this might be nice -she'll love this - because it's something I've I asked for when I was venting, or something I said I've never experienced - so they're like oh I will give her this and it'll make her happier!

I'm not trying to be happy. I'm trying to get help with specific things that I need help with right now, like my work stuff - I can't even explain it to somebody else without bursting into tears and I don't want to do that to somebody I don't even know, and I can't do that in front of HR...but I go to people I actually know and say, "hey, I could really use your help with this thing" but because it's been so long since I talked to another person, I get distracted, or my inner child starts ranting about everything I need and how I can't do it or I'm talking to another human and I would rather talk to them about anything else or my inner child takes over and starts begging for help with the chronic isolation instead - because that's what I realize is in every single thing that I've been reading over that I've written - it's that I need for conversation - but it comes out wrong and I ask for things like, "maybe you can ask me a question every day"

I don't know. I don't know how to get people to want to talk to me, because nobody seems to want to talk to me and that's all I need is for more people to want to talk to me and nobody does. And yes, I completely get that when I act like this, it's draining and people get tired of hearing me say the same things, so they bounce...but even when I hold it all in and just ask about them and don't bring up any of my own needs - I'm still not getting that feeling of reciprocation.  All the times I've held space or showed up for my friends in crisis, and I'm saying, TAG, I'M it - Show up for me the way *I* need now!! and recognizing I'm not being heard, my needs aren't being attended to, and these people aren't getting why I'm still upset and and "rejecting" their help.

I tell people I'm chronically isolated, and I really could use them coming over and talking to me. And they don't understand why I am upset when they want to organize an Easter egg hunt for me. like, it's just tone deaf to me and my neighbor tells me, well you can't say that because it'll hurt their feelings, it'll make them mad...you can just say thank you. I'm like, thank you? for what? thank you for ignoring me? thank you for making me feel invisible? thank you for making me feel like I have no autonomy? because I don't know how to get what I need.

When this friend (the one that thinks I want to have an easter egg hunt as a way to make me feel....no clue what she thinks....) was in crisis and at her breaking point, I drove two hours to her house and did 8 loads of her family's laundry that her cats had pissed all over.  I want her to come over and go food shopping with me, help me meal prep, then have her and her husband sit down with me so I can recount what happened at work and they can say, "what is it you're trying to say, let's help you put that into words" but instead....easter egg hunt. Yeah.  Thanks. 

But apparently, I'm not supposed to correct people when they offer help I am not asking for, I'm just supposed to be grateful to them for trying, because to reject the offer of something that frankly, sounds humiliating, means I am "self-isolating". 

[rainydiary]

Navigating relationships to support healing is really difficult.