Learned Helplessness/Demand Resistance

Started by spryte, September 30, 2014, 01:47:23 PM

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Sasha2727

flashbacks contribute forsure and I have to laugh at the persons ex who would ask " why " questions. for me, any demand creates either pressure, good pressure or shut down. If the anxiety of the demand is too great I dissocate witch causes my attention to shift to exstitential " why do people do this " or " do you think I do this because... etc. " I shift to neurotic obsession with my own exsistance and the way I or other people relate to each other. I believe this is due to the fact that all of my senses are dulled due to the dissocation steming from the panic and anxiety caused by the emotional flashback of the original trauma of intermitant random abuse at any time for anything but as a child trying to find reasons as to " why " it was happening.... this becomes a rumination based avoidance coping style and a symptom of depersonalization and derealization which are dissocaeative states caused by anxiety.

My question is I sometimes get unconsciously passive aggressive, I do not always catch ,yself until its too late! but to give example I will be late right when its most important not to be! or forget important things when I promised I would do them. I think for me its a mix sometimes I do this due to not being able to access anger but sometimes its just because my memory sucks and flashbacks, and aviodence... lol its a lot, so to say its always aggression is not the case... but I do believe sometimes ....heck yes it is, but I never consciously choose this.... and being female lol....it runs with a cycle if you know what I mean lol any thoughts? I also seem to unconsciously self sabatoge! and self harm! I am an " accident prone " person.... but that needs a whole other thread....

schrödinger's cat

Wow, so many interesting things said in this thread... I've just grieved a little and am a bit under the weather, so I might not be too clever right now, but here goes.

Toby, I've done something like that. My iCr turned out to have good intentions - he wanted to be something like my inside man, echoing and pre-empting abuse so I'd be prepared. So it was possible to come to some kind of understanding with him. Like yours, he seemed to be a fighter, very hyper-vigilant and very conscious of threats. So your way of seeing your iCr as a good little soldier sounds helpful.

Quote from: WhobuddyIn reading about Demand Resistance I was wondering if any of you experience what I call Reveal Resistance.

Yes! For example, I told someone about a new radio station I'd discovered, and now I can't listen to it anymore. I'm wondering why that is so. When I was a teenager, I realized slowly over the course of a few years that anything I mentioned would get me scornful / dismissive / patronizing /critical reactions. (The same thing said by another person might be met with praise, or with politeness. It took me years to see that pattern, and seeing it was quite unsettling.) So the only thing that was truly safe was something I kept secret. Maybe it's that?

Quote from: alovelycreatureI had this horrible depression for years on and off, but it was worth experiencing because depression forced me to slow down. I'm very task oriented (as I'm sure many people on here are) trying to beat perfection to the finish line. Depression helped me see that taking care of myself was most important, and that I couldn't take care of anything else until I took care of myself first. I still struggle with this, but to develop a new understanding of yourself feels good! Feels like you hit a corner stone.

Oh wow. That's true. I never looked at my own depressive periods that way, but yes, that's true. Thanks for letting me see things in a sunnier light.

Sasha, so if I'm getting this right, your ruminations on the "why" is both a coping strategy and a symptom of derealization / depersonalisation? I do that too, think obsessively about the why and wherefore, so this rings a few bells. Derealization and depersonalization rather feel like problems, and it's so startling and mysterious when it happens. So you ruminate obsessively to try and fix things. As one does. I mean, if something weird and inexplicable happens, your thoughts start running around in hamster circles going "what happened, what's wrong, where has this come from, why am I like this". That starts the rumination. And when you look at it properly, this rumination itself is just another aspect of the problem. It shows that you can't be in your body, you can't be in your emotions, you can't even be in your Self, but hey, you can still be in your head. You're doing the only thing that's left for you to do. So the coping strategy becomes the sign that there's something wrong.

About the passive aggressiveness - not sure if I do that, you'd probably have to ask everyone else around me. But I notice often that I'm fatalistic. Self-sabotage, maybe that's a good word for it. "Oh, I won't get things done anyway... I'll mess things up anyway... I'll be late anyway" - so why not be even later, why not let the mess accumulate even more, why not push it to the extreme? There's been a few mentions here of self-parenting our inner child, praising ourselves for jobs well done. That seems to help. The problem is remembering to do it. But whoever suggested that method, I probably owe them a virtual hug, it's made a difference already.

Whobuddy

Quote from: schrödinger's cat on December 29, 2014, 10:45:40 PM

Sasha, so if I'm getting this right, your ruminations on the "why" is both a coping strategy and a symptom of derealization / depersonalisation? I do that too, think obsessively about the why and wherefore, so this rings a few bells. Derealization and depersonalization rather feel like problems, and it's so startling and mysterious when it happens. So you ruminate obsessively to try and fix things. As one does. I mean, if something weird and inexplicable happens, your thoughts start running around in hamster circles going "what happened, what's wrong, where has this come from, why am I like this".

About the passive aggressiveness - not sure if I do that, you'd probably have to ask everyone else around me. But I notice often that I'm fatalistic. Self-sabotage, maybe that's a good word for it. "Oh, I won't get things done anyway... I'll mess things up anyway... I'll be late anyway" - so why not be even later, why not let the mess accumulate even more, why not push it to the extreme? There's been a few mentions here of self-parenting our inner child, praising ourselves for jobs well done. That seems to help. The problem is remembering to do it. But whoever suggested that method, I probably owe them a virtual hug, it's made a difference already.

This thread is really helpful to me too. I do the "whys" a lot and no one at my work seemed to do the obsessive why-ing like I do. Now I get it. It is my cptsd. That helps. Now I will try and observe myself and my whys and try to make sense of it.

Also, the pushing things to the extreme. Sometimes I feel like I am trying to create drama where there wasn't any. Maybe to make things even more challenging? Or more interesting? Don't really know.  ???

wingnut

Trying to create drama..because we are used to it and it's.normal to us.