Overwhelmed

[Voice]

Hi

I have been in therapy for the better part of 35 years.

It was only suggested to me about 2 months ago that CPTSD is my experience.  I immediately related to what was explained to me & since then have set about trying to understand CPTSD. 

As I have learned about the Central Nervous System & the Autonomic System, the Sympathetic & Parasympathetic systems & how individuals react to traumatic events (in this case, repeated abusive behaviour) I have realised that I need to 'get out of my head' & allow my body to expel a volume of negative energy/emotion stored there.

So......I researched how to do that & started Pilates at home. I learned about breathing (and discovered I hold my breath as an unconscious habit) & started a simple breathing technique.  I found some meditation videos & have tried several of them. The first one talked about reconnecting with 'the inner child' & the resistance we can feel towards that.  The first time I did it I cried, the next time I got angry & realised I am ashamed of them & my family of origin & I just want free of all of them!!

I launched into all of this & continued to explore YouTube watching different practitioners sharing their knowledge & expertise on these subjects.

However in the last 48 hours or so I have begun to feel kinda overwhelmed by it all.  I grew up in a Faith based environment. I am beginning to feel that the approach to healing from CPTSD is the same as the evangelical Christian's approach to Faith.  Just listen to one more sermon, go to another meeting, read a book by the latest hot preacher on the rank, go see this person for prayer or that person.  Just adopt THIS practice or that practice.  Give up this bad habit or that one............& on & on! (And for the actual courses offered beyond the initial information videos one is lured in by the promise of freedom from our 'stuckness' as long as we cough up a lot of dosh......now where have I heard this before?!!!)

Like those days, years & my experience with Christianity, I feel that there is truth in what I am learning about CPTSD but how do we find it amongst the plethora of 'voices' telling us, " just do this or that and your healing is just round the corner".........just like that proverbial pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

It is an overwhelming feeling to me that I might spend any more time 'doing what I'm told' only to find myself still stuck in years to come.

Alongside this dilemma the 'soothers' (addictions) that I discovered as a child/young person gave a modicum of relief to my sadness continue to remind me that THEY are there for me & will provide the relief that all these other 'promise a lot but actually deliver nothing' snake oil salesman won't!

The priority of HEALTHY 'self care', (which I'm just beginning to learn is a thing), I realise is always being undermined by a determination, even though I know better, that I need these 'soothers'. 

Last night as I explained all this to my therapist he had the audacity to suggest that I live in my head & spend my time in research as an avoidance technique designed to avoid actually taking responsibility for myself.........not actually DOING anything to help myself!!

I kinda think he's right.........I'm just overwhelmed is all 😫

[Blueberry]

I'm sorry you got overwhelmed. It sounds like you've been making a lot of recovery steps and it's easy to get overwhelmed unfortunately. Healing from cptsd is complicated and long-winded. Even my own healing steps sometimes overwhelm me, so you're not alone there. It is perfectly legitimate, necessary even, to take a break!

I also really get how guru-type answers to healing (just do this and you will heal) can be really triggering, even without all your history. I had a really good trauma therapist for 8 years and he spent a lot of time trying to reverse the damage done by some previous therapists who knew it all especially one particular faith-based one.

fwiw I'm in my head quite a lot too but my good therapists incl. the one I mention just above work(ed) with me to bring me back into my body and from there I can better access my emotions. Cognitive-based conclusions other people come to, especially a whole row of them the way your therapist did, are not always especially helpful, certainly not for me.

I hope some of the above may be helpful, if not ignore.

[Chart]

Voice, I learned of the existence of Cptsd in the summer of 2023 by a random click on a YouTube video by Tim Fletcher (who actually I find kinda annoying, but have still learned interesting stuff from). I really think I've  experienced pretty much everything you described above. And I agree it is pretty overwhelming. It's really a rabbit hole that seems to have no end. There's a common metaphor on the forum of the onion of Cptsd and how we seem to keep coming on deeper and deeper layers as we struggle and stumble on this path. When does it end? Like Ed Norton in the movie Fight Club, have I become "addicted" to healing? Ultimately I think all these are great questions. And as part of that, questioning the process itself becomes part of the process. My current big question is: Am I just reinforcing my trauma? Or do I need to work more on "letting go". Very quickly I've realized that words can have different  meanings, and so I can all too easily get wrapped up in semantics as apposed to something I kinda call the "deeper understanding". For me, each and every time, the answer seems always to be, "a bit of both". Every coin has two faces, but it's one piece. So the flip is so often just the symptom and an invitation to "turn it over". Neither on their own are satisfactory, but the whole is always more than the sum of the parts. Feeling what is the "extra" is what I've come to think/feel is healing "progress".

Thank you so much for sharing your experience. It helps so much to reflect on these ideas and then try to relate back what they give rise to.
 

[Kizzie]

Hi Voice     I too have found myself overwhelmed by all the info out there about what to do/try to move forward in recovery and which voices to listen to. One important area that seems to missing from this smorgasbord of advice is looking at how and why we can trust ourselves, what we are good at already, what are our positive attributes ... I guess the point here is at a certain point in recovery maybe we need to spend time identifying the positive parts of ourselves versus what needs to be "fixed".

Trust and belief in self, compassion and pride, our own voice, all those things we've likely never realized we do have skills in, they're important to look at and acknowledge IMO. Maybe that's where you're at right now?   

[NarcKiddo]

I am very wary of anyone who says "just do X and you will get better". I am very prepared to listen to people who say "X is what helped me". It's not that the first group are necessarily charlatans, because X may very well have worked for them and they have now got all evangelical about it and think it is the one true way. I am into fitness and I see it a lot in that sphere.

Kizzie makes a very strong point about identifying what actually needs fixed. My own experience is that I don't actually know myself very well, so part of healing for me has been taking a close look at myself. Bad AND good.

Your therapist may have a point, as you have acknowledged. Did he have any suggestions about what you might actually DO to help yourself? I think research is necessary, because in my experience no single approach is a perfect fit. I think healing is a complicated recipe that changes over time. The more you know about things that might work the more you can try different things. If you know what tools are available you have a better idea of what to reach out for next if you get stuck. Do you tweak what you are doing or conclude it is not for you and try something different? Of course it is important to actually try things at some stage. It is certainly possible to get stuck in research forever but I don't think it's wrong to want a decent basis of theoretical knowledge before deciding which approach to try first.

[Dalloway]

Voice, I can ditto everything that others wrote, I also struggle with overwhelm, especially when I read something somewhere and like it, then start to research it and often I don´t even realize that I´m going down a rabbit hole. In my case it´s because I´m desperate for finding a path that will be the ONE, a certain method that will help and fix my problems, that´s why I´m grasping at straws. I´m not blaming myself for that, too much information can get overwhelming sometimes, especially at the beginning when you haven´t figured out things yet.
I think research can be very useful, it´s part of the healing journey imo, we just have to learn how to navigate in all the information we find.
Wishing you good luck with that! 

[Papa Coco]

Voice,

I grew up in faith-based environment too. I swear to you I tried very hard to make it work. It didn't. Not for me. At age 40 I walked away from it all.

But I remain true to my sense that we are all connected through some reverent source. I don't pretend to know what it is, but I do recognize and feel it all around me all the time. I now believe that having the question, "I know something binds us but what?" is a good question to leave open. Once I think I know the answer, I stop asking the question. But we humans cannot know that answer, so why not keep the question open indefinitely? The open question keeps my curiosity turned on. It keeps me always searching for the answer to feeling peace in a chaotic world. Always trying to learn. Always moving toward peace. And that's a good way for me to live. I like it.

Last summer I changed my prayers from asking for world peace and started asking instead for inner peace so I can live in Love despite anything happening in the chaotic world I'm walking through. Two weeks ago, I reached another new milestone in my spiritual life. I stopped praying for God to fix my problems. Now I pray for God to show me how to fix my own problems. It's working a lot better.

EF's still hit me. They're a bit less intense now. I have a long way to go, but living a life in pursuit of the Love that I know our connection can provide is really fun for me. It's better than looking for who to blame for my misery, which is what I did for 64 1/2 years. Right up to two weeks ago when I decided to just focus my thoughts on what I want to be, rather than what I don't want to be.

We are all trying to help each other as we help ourselves, and it can be extremely overwhelming to hear "You should try this or that".

I'll tell you that the things that work best for me are any treatment that works with my body, mind and soul together. My body, mind and soul were all affected by any abuse I've endured, so my body, mind and soul need to be together to grow into who I want to be.

I have come to believe that what I connect with is what I become. And I've spent 6 decades connected to my past abuse. Now, I'm learning how to connect with healing. And as the wise people have said, "when the student is ready, the teachers appear." It's working for me. The more I focus on the life I DO want, rather than the one I used to have, the calmer I get. It's not a fast process, but it's progressive, and each step brings a little bit of healing.

[MountainGirl]

I agree that the "just do this or that and all will be well' is simplistic and often not only not helpful but actually , for me anyway, can make it all too much to handle . I sometimes think these simple answers that don't help me much are just a way for the medical industrial establishment to avoid me and my problems. I'd give a lot to have an MD honor my experience instead of throwing out canned answers.