Plateauing & moving forward

[bigshadytree]

It's been a long time that I've been working on myself. It's been a shorter time that I've had names for my problems. I felt good, happy even, like I was doing well and being myself. Then the days started to feel empty. I started to feel exhausted. My family has been trying to interact with me more and more. I am less and less inclined to indulge them. Culturally my problems are intersected in more of a tangled web than I want them to be. I have been less interested in everything. I am grasping at straws, reading every book & article and watching every video. I want to be well. Desperately. I often wish I could go No Contact, but I know it would cause more damage than I am ready for or able to withstand currently. I feel tired of having to explain myself constantly. So I don't explain myself anymore. I just don't know where to go from here. I'm always sad. I feel like I drag down my chosen family, they don't always understand. I feel so tired. I wonder if anyone else has felt the hurdle of continuing through a confusing plateau. It was slow to creep in but it feels so permanent. I know it's not, but that doesn't make it any easier. I feel hollow and exhausted. And that makes me feel hollowing and exhausting to everyone around me. I don't know what to say to help them help me. I know eventually this will be in the past and I will be on the other side but for today I am here, and I need help.
Please let me know if anyone has felt a similar plateau in healing & growth. Please tell me how you communicated with your community to let them be there for you. How did you identify what you needed?
Thank you for your time friend.

[Dalloway]

Bigshadytree, your post resonates with me immensely. As I was reading it, I thought to myself, boy, this is 100% me. I have these periods you described, when I´m motivated, read and watch everything, try to be mindful and use different techniques, self-help tools and then it comes -- the mental exhaustion from all of the trying and I get very frustrated and depressed, because I feel like it´s a never ending story and that things will never get better, I will never feel better. Sorry for my pessimistic view, unfortunately I´m in a phase where I can´t really see the light at the end of the tunnel. 

I´m really sorry you don´t know where to go from there, I wish I could tell you something useful. Anyway, I just wanted to express that you´re not alone with this and that here, on the forum, you can find really understanding and kind people who will share their stories and experiences with you.

Actually, I remembered something that helps me to a certain degree. When I feel exhausted, I try to give myself a break from healing. I know it can sound weird, to stop the healing process, but it can be really helpful when you feel overwhelmed, to allow yourself a break from the hard work. It feels like you lift some of the heavy burden off your own shoulders, and it feels good. I read an article somewhere here on the forum about taking a break, but I cannot find the source, so I link it to you here. You can read it and maybe you´ll find it helpful. 

https://traumahealed.com/articles/take-a-break-from-healing/

[Kizzie]

Hi BigShadyTree - I am just putting this out there but when I first learned I had CPTSD it was such a relief and then depression hit, like "Am I ever going to climb out of this, recover, heal?" The feelings that I finally had a name for, and the reality behind them took a big hit and it kind of sounds like maybe that's what you're going through - the reality of your abuse.

It can help to talk here about how you're feeling because many of us have been through this. Posting here, reaching out and talking is a good step out of it all. What can also be helpful is a good therapist? Do you have one?

  

[Blueberry]

bigshadytree, I think plateauing is pretty normal unfortunately. I know it feels frustrating. But I do think that every time I plateau or even think I'm going backwards again, in hindsight it turns out that I actually had gone a bit forwards. If that makes any sense.

I agree with Dalloway on taking a break. I'm not good at taking breaks in the normal sense of the word, but taking a break can refer to taking a break from explaining or taking a break from reading every available article or taking a break from trying to help other people help you or...

It's a few days since you first wrote so maybe some of the frustration has lifted? I hope so. That happens to me sometimes, without my doing anything, whatever the problem is, it disappears all on its own till the next rears its face.

[Papa Coco]

I resonate also. This morning, I felt like taking a break also. I assume that, for me, the break only needs to be a short one. A time when I just decide to love myself for what I am, not for what I wish I was. I tend to feel like I'm not good enough, so every day I work tirelessly to improve. Today, I feel like just accepting what/who I am. I don't hurt people. By taking a short break I won't hurt anyone. It's like taking a break between meals. Eventually I come back to the table once I've digested and rested.

These days I have friends who understand me better than they used to. I did, however, have to go full No Contact with my FOO. They were completely unable to ever accept me. When I became vulnerable in their presence, they saw that as a way to take from me. BUT as I worked with friends and my own family, my wife, kids and grandkids, they were able to love me for who I am. They saw the abuse I took from my FOO and they ended up wanting to understand and support me.

It took time. I think that when we begin to accept ourselves for who/what we are, that other people start to pick up on that, and actually begin to connect with me.

It's a process that has to start somewhere, and it basically had to start with me. As I was able to provide compassion to my peers who were also suffering, they started to see me as a safe place to start sharing their problems with me, and to also believe me when I confessed my inner struggles to them.

I wish I was better at fully understanding how I got to where I am. The idea mentioned above to use this forum and this community to share yourself with, is probably the perfect place to start feeling accepted. I think that as we feel more accepted by more people, the momentum of that acceptance starts to leak out to the real world.

It's sort of like when my sons were in middle school and started getting bullied, I enrolled both of them into Tai Kwon Do classes. Within only a week or two, their personal confidence that they could defend themselves, grew fast enough that the bullies suddenly lost them on radar. Neither son ever had to use their fighting skills, but the fact that they had teh confidence, seemed to have shown on their faces and all the bullying stopped. So I'm thinking of that right now as I ponder how we, here on this forum, can give to each other that true sense that we actually DO care about each other. As I feel more cared for by my friends on the forum, somehow the world sees that in me and they start to care too.

Somehow we humans have some kind of a radar that we use to attract both good and bad energies. By building up our good energies with each other, the world outside the forum just might start to see our self-love starting to rise on radar, and they will respond with more love. That's just a theory that I put together after seeing how people responded differently to me after I started to feel loved by a few good people.

My rise up from total self-destruction, cost me a few friendships, and it cost me my entire FOO, but at the same time, it bought me some new, very good, loving friendships. I guess I'd rather have one or two loving friends rather than a hundred selfish friends.