Functioning "in public", collapsing in private

[Sandals]

Have you heard of this "repetition compulsion" thing?

Yes. I married my mom.    Minus the physical abuse.

Ironically, I was becoming aware of this before I discovered his infidelity. Just didn't get the chance to do anything about it, although I had asked him to go to counselling for his anger several times. 

[Sandals]

Yes. I married my mom.    Minus the physical abuse.

I'm laughing ...sorry, but I am.    It is so ridiculous what we have gone through, isn't it?

Onward!

It truly is! I laugh at it, too.    Especially when I think to myself, "Hey, aren't girls supposed to really marry someone who reminds them of their dad?" 

Now I can see the purpose that it served (pit a N against another N), but I had noooo idea what was going on before. Talk about being asleep! 

But now, I'm getting to be much more like this  and it feels great!

[schrödinger's cat]

Oh good. I was staring at your sentence and the three emoticons and telling myself: "mustn't laugh --- mustn't laugh---" - but it was very difficult. Glad to hear that you're feeling better. 

[Rain]

I am so grateful we have a sense of humor here........   

And, sleep is good too.   

[voicelessagony2]

Have you heard of this "repetition compulsion" thing? I read about it in this book a few weeks ago, and it was very eye-opening.

I have that exact same book, and it's still in my stack of recent things I've either read or planning to read. I think I tried to read it but maybe I just wasn't ready for it yet.

If I understand this right, the thing to distrust is this instant attraction, this instant sense of "oh, we could be friends": that's a sign that your subconscious has recognized a familiar pattern there.

Exactly - if my current relationship is an exception to this, I will consider myself exceedingly fortunate. It is really different in a lot of ways from the non-stop string of disasters that make up my entire history of relationships... If I had to rank it on a scale of 1 to 10 with 1 being healthy, and 10 being unbearable abuse, I would put it at a 3. I think it has a chance of surviving the changes I'm about to go through as I learn how to cope with cptsd. 

("Oh hey, a withholding person who has the social skills of a rabid boar! Why, we're practically family already!")

LMAO!! OMG you nailed it!

If that's true, then slow-build relationships should be okay? And it's probably also an advantage to know what kind of pattern tends to feel familiar, so we can double-check people around us to make sure they're safe to be around.

Yes this is something I need to begin learning to do. In hindsight, the warning signs were so obvious when I met my ex-husband #2. But I had absolutely zero understanding of mental illness at that time. I have never once experienced this - the only way I do relationships is to jump in with both feet and hope for the best. 

[schrödinger's cat]

Same here. The irony of it is: I knew I had to pick friends who were "safe" to be around - but then again their very similarity to my FOO and classmates made them appear safe when they clearly, ironically, were not.

Glad to hear that your current husband doesn't remind you of home. I wish the two of you all the best.

I can recommend the book, btw. The basic points are, more or less:
-- There's a handy little test in the first section. It lets you spot which lifetrap impacts you the most.
-- Definition of a "lifetrap" (or early maladaptive schema). Case studies that illustrate how differently the same schema can play out in people's lives.
-- How we react to a lifetrap (by ignoring it, falling victim to it, or overcompensating for it - VERY interesting, that: it made me realize that every time I'd thought I'd overcome a problem, I was really only overcompensating for it - which is basically like trying to get off a treadmill by running very fast.)
-- Possible causes. (Can be helpful if you're still hunting down possible causes of your CPTSD.)
-- Things you can do to fix it. Often rather general, but I found those tips to be good starting points.
-- Several lifetraps come with lists of things to AVOID in a potential romantic partner: "if you feel attracted to a person who does/is the following things, RUN LIKE H*LL".
The book cover is very garish, which (in my culture) looks less like "serious academic work" and more like "used car salesman flogs his wares", but the book is a lot better than it looks.

[voicelessagony2]

I have that book, just finished it recently! "Reinventing Your Life", and I have 7 of the 11 lifetraps in full color HD right now, screwing up my life. 

I did not see my current bf described in there, thankfully. He's not completely off the hook, but at least he doesn't seem to be the usual narcisstic psychopath I usually go for.

Now I'm working my way through Pete Walker's book, there is a lot to do there.

[flookadelic]

Once again I am stunned to find my experiences mirrored so precisely in the lives of others. I was undiagnosed for over thirty years and that is a long period of feeling alone and unique (but not in a good way). My wife finds it amazing how I can craft in exquisite detail, be so socially hypervigilant and yet be so unaware of my general surroundings. I always thought of it as scattiness until I read about dissociation and cptsd. But I digress.

When I'm alone my behaviour often changes. I shout insults at myself, often have strong physical tics or spasms and / or say or shout ludicrous off the wall statements. I no longer believe the insults that my neural pathways fire at me, btw. Thank God. When I did I often self harmed out of self disgust.

No one has ever seen me do this. I have never before told anyone I do it. It neither makes me sad or happy. Well obviously it's never going to make me happy! But I just see it as my brain firing off, and that my mind is just observing my brain thinking "there it goes again". I used to try and resist and suppress it. I used to feel ashamed of it. But all that did was exhaust me and eventually make the outbursts (I call them "blurts") worse.

Perhaps one day one will hot me in public but the mechanism for this happening to me alone is so deeply embedded that I somehow doubt it. If I'm really tired I might whisper an insult to myself in a shop but that's about it. God knows what my neighbour must think though. It sounds like I have a hated hostage in the flat sometimes. It sounds like I still do. But as I said...I see my traumatised brain and my sane mind as two different entities. It has helped me a lot although I can't be sure that this has led me up a cul-de-sac as far as a more whole healing goes.

Best of luck to us all

[flookadelic]

Thank you Rain. My stiff upper lift is wobbling a little after reading your immensely kind and understanding reply. I do have a better relationship to my inner critic than I had. For myself I found that fighting it out of revulsion and fear put me in a horrible place. Seeing *my* inner critic as a wound and not an enemy has enabled me to react from a compassionate and loving place instead. It feels like I have stepped from a battlefield into a garden of healing...even if that voice inside repeats itself. It can do so but I find that a quick on the fly bit of love towards it quietens it down. So I still get the blurts, and sometimes the new experience of conscious anger at the perpetrators suddenly rushes through me...but I feel as if I now know what to do. To have a different perspective on them that leads to release in love rather than perpetuation in an inner war.

Of course I get so, so tired of it all some days. But again...that tiredness needs love and not condemnation...just repeating the dose of compassion and love. And the odd glass of sauvignon blanc :-)

Do ypu think its ever possible to rewire / rewrite such deeply embedded neural pathways totally?

Thank you again for your kind helpfulness.

[schrödinger's cat]

Not sure if we can ever really get rid of the old habits of thought. But I read a book on depression once, and the author said: even if you don't get rid of it, you get better at dealing with it. He compared it to bullfighting. Now, you might hate bullfighting on principle, but let's pretend we live in a Disney movie and no actual bulls get harmed in the making of this metaphor. The bull will keep on having a go at you. But one day, you'll be so good at this that you'll hear it coming from miles away. You'll plant your feet just so, you'll wait... there it is, a massive black shape, horns lowered. You raise your cape. You smile. The bull charges. You take an eensy step to the side. The bull plummets down a cliff.

No idea if that's true for CPTSD. But, I mean, all the work we do has to pay of somehow. So maybe that kind of thing is achievable. I'd like that.

(Writing this has made me want to dig out my Tom Lehrer tapes again. "For there is surely nothing more beautiful in this world than the sight of a lone man facing singlehandedly a half a ton of angry pot roast.")

[flookadelic]

That pretty much sums up what I do with my outbursts and EF's...in some ways I am "lucky" as my fibromyalgia isolates me from society a lot. I can just pootle on quietly. Or choose to interact via social media which feels much more on my terms, so to speak. If there is no final cure for my brain, if it will always blurt out the damage then knowing I can do something with it that places me in a good, strong place...as opposed to the *...well, I honestly think that I have still done pretty well. Via a total life implosion mind...when I could no longer control my trauma.

I still can't control my trauma inso far when it hits and how hard it hits but I can at least control my response to it and get things under control. A more persistent feeling is one of sorrow these days. But as I keep harping on...it's a wound not an enemy...etc etc which helps. I first got angry with my perpetrators after my initial diagnosis just over a year ago. That was and sometimes still is a huge thing to experience and live with. Anyways...

Thanks for your thoughts Shroedingers Cat!

[Rain]

I still can't control my trauma inso far when it hits and how hard it hits but I can at least control my response to it and get things under control. A more persistent feeling is one of sorrow these days.

I can understand the sorrow, flook ...you have lots of grieving to do as you are connecting pieces of the puzzle together as to how you got here.   Others caused you this harm, and that is hard coming to terms with.

As to what you write on the trauma, when and how hard.   I'm curious.  Are there triggers that you can identify?   By chance have you written them down and kind of been like a scientist?   Might be a smell, the time of day, were people with you, that kind of thing.

One step at a time, and besides flook, you have good company on this Journey.  You can share what you find here and it helps others too!

Not alone, friend.

[flookadelic]

Hello Rain, Thank you for your interest. First off...triggers can be random memories esp when I am tired. I don't always sleep so well so this can be a problem. I don't consciously go into the past...sometimes I think that if I look at my past I'll only find more past! But sometimes it comes out of the blue and I find myself in a sort of mental and emotional spasm.

Churches are a difficult thing for me. Walking past them...I feel a mixture of things. Anger...revulsion...regret...pain.

One seemingly weird trigger are adverts for martial art classes. I had a pretty heavy episode a couple of weeks back over that one.

Being pretty well traumatised by age 12 *trigger warnings re religion* with child exorcisms, growing up around my much, much older brothers untreated schizophrenia...well untreated apart from exorcisms...and his resultant descent into a psychotic madness that had him taking a knife to his toes...and satchel, clothing and room searches for  "unchristian material" which felt like being mentally raped...book burnings for the Blake and Tolkien that were discovered (I was made to actually throw the books on the fire...a tad disempowering...) and being made to eat my dinner in front of pictures of starving children to make me grateful for what I had...

Well, as you can imagine I was a complete mess with no confidence whatsoever. I knew that learning a martial art would give me confidence and a chance to meet other kids out of school. But my parents declared that Judo was Satanic and that was that.

Hence that weird trigger...

So being tired and having spontaneous recall...churches...martial art classes...

And I honestly had nowhere else to go. Mixed race marriage meant both my parents were ostracised by their families. Just me, my brothers and my parents. I was the only one not to be a Christian. Kind of isolating and very vulnerable place to be. My views, opinions and perspectives were either condemned and attacked in no uncertain terms or laughed at. My femininity got me into huge trouble..."effeminate demons" was the verdict and being exorcised was the answer.

The sorrow...well now the anger is being healthily processed through art...just sorrow at so much subsequent loss over the three decades of not being diagnosed. Esp relationship wise.

But you know...sorrow comes and goes like clouds in the sky and it's not the clouds that matter...it's the sky itself. I kind of detach and look at my sorrow and it is a strangely peaceful perspective. It may be dissociation but I don't think so. I'm not running from it. Just watching it.

Anyways...onwards and upwards! Love is the key

[flookadelic]

Sorry to have gone a little off topic from the title of the thread.... :-/

[schrödinger's cat]

No worries.    Thanks for telling your story. This must have hit you on so many levels. It reminds me of what I heard of childhoods in the former GDR (East Germany) and other totalitarian regimes - simply just in the way your parents made their own ideology reach deep into your own everyday concerns. Chilling. So, even without the greater events (the book burnings, your brother's behaviour, the exorcisms), that must have been such a narrow, cold world to live in. It's an inspiration that you've reached so much serenity about it.