Fear of IC Work

[arpy1]

thank u x

[arpy1]

oops, that slipped in, i meant  , sorry

[Trees]

arpy1:
"it feels so good to know i'm not on my own anymore with this whole thing. i hope you won't mind if i come back to this with you as i go through the ict... i have an uncomfortable feeling i might need all the support i can get...."

I think, though I hesitate to say it out loud, that that is why we are all here---to give and receive support as we go through this stuff again and again and again.   And again.

My therapist says I will eventually understand, at a deep down level, that I can be in pain and still be lovable.  I wish that for you, too.   

[arpy1]

update on my slightly abortive beginning of Inner Child therapy....

today i decided that instead of trying to fill in this childhood memory list, i wld just sit and write down everything i could remember from my childhood, just as it comes out of my memory onto the page, without trying to score it, judge it, analyse it or anything. i think i've been getting my head in a mess trying to make judgments about what was a good memory, what was bad, what was neutral. 

so i did, it took hours, i was surprised at the number of incidents that stick in my mind. but i am still at a loss to know what to do with them. it's too long to fit on the form. and to be honest, my judgment of almost all of them is that they were neutral. i don't feel strongly about any of them one way or another. they just were. i read them and think 'meh'

the odd thing is, though, after trying to read it all back with a little objectivity, as if i were reading it as someone else's story, i think i would say 'poor little kid, she was scared all the time' but not becos of big stuff. i was just always scared. right from my earliest memory. how weird is that? ho hum

[arpy1]

i hope no one minds me trying to walk myself thru some more stuff relating to the ICT. I think I now realise one or two things, or at least am more willing? to look at one or two things. any input gratefully received, especially if i am off track with this?

In sending the memory writing to my T, and asserting definitely that I had no real emotional response to any of the memories and that my childhood was basically pretty normal...

and in subsequently to trying (for the n'th time) unsuccessfully to read more than half way through Pete Walker's article on Abandonment Depression;   

and then reading woodsgnome's post back in another thread about 'killing off' his formative years and reinventing a new person in the form of successful actor, until he got cut down by depressive illness

well, I think I have to face a few facts:

it is still true that my feelings about my early memories are kind of 'meh', nothingy.

I definitely did the same as WsG. I killed off my formative years and took on the role: 'good xian sister (in the cult)'. When I got too screwed to carry on with that and got poleaxed with depression, I partially killed off that person and ran away into marriage, and created a new role of 'uber-caring codependent giver', and when that screwed me too much, I ran away back to the cult, and tried to reprise my old 'good sister' role. But that backfired badly becos I made too many waves. So I got written out of the series (killed off) by them.

And now I have killed off all of those characters and...
I have walked off the set.

So following that analogy, I have actually created and killed off several different characters to try and fill the space where a selfhood should have been.

And I begin to see that the reason there wasn't a selfhood in there to start with must have been becos of those early years, the memories of which excite no emotion. 

Ok, lightbulb finally turned itself on. How come I didn't see this before? (this must be what my T has been trying to get me to see, all these months.)...

Well, looking at the Pete Walker article thing:  I have tried to reading this one through to the end at least four, maybe five times now and each time I get to the bit where he starts to talk about self abandonment and learning to be able to 'stay present' when triggered into it, each time (and even now, when I am just obliquely referring to it and avoiding too many details) I go into a panic and my heart starts to race and I get shaky and sicky, and I can even feel it now as I write. So I have to get off that topic. Now.

I understand that this is an emotional flashback. The article itself triggers the very thing it is trying to deal with. That has to be significant.

So I am convinced.

I don't know how the * I am going to do this, but I have to start addressing the whole abandonment thing that goes right back to when i was born. And actually admitting it is a start, isn't it? And that is as far as I can go with that right at this moment. phew. thanks for listening. now i just have to get the courage to say all that to my T.

[Kizzie]

Back when this site first started another member and I used to talk a lot about wanting to rip off the band-aid and just be done with this whole CPTSD thing.  We railed against the agonizingly slow pace until it began to come clear just how traumatic our childhoods really had been.

Your post reminds of that dawning realization about just how necessary it was to let the process unfold in amounts that we could tolerate and for the reason that we feel the trauma through our inner children not our adult selves.  That EF that you begin to have when you read that passage sounds like you are close to a truth that is very hard to bear, so stepping closer to it (staying present a little longer each time) just a bit at a time represents real and necessary self-care and compassion imo.

[arpy1]

yeh, i guess. funny, as soon as i posted the above, it was like a tide of such sadness rose up inside, i just cried. and then i couldn't cope anymore and i had to go to bed and switch off my brain. i felt so rough when i woke up a few hours later, like i had the flu or something, but i don't.
i have spent the evening watching wildlife programmes back to back becos they make me feel happy and becos then i don't have to think.  i have spent so long insisting that my problems stem from all the abuse that happened to me as an adult, this has come as a shock. and you're right, the pain is very very hard to bear.

thanks for responding, Kizzie, i was getting so insecure, having splurged all of it out, thinking that even here on this site everyone thinks i am a total crack pot and don't want to know.

i really hate this. - but i have to carry on, don't i.

[Dutch Uncle]

Ok, lightbulb finally turned itself on. How come I didn't see this before? (this must be what my T has been trying to get me to see, all these months.)...
[...]
I understand that this is an emotional flashback. The article itself triggers the very thing it is trying to deal with. That has to be significant.
[...]
And actually admitting it is a start, isn't it? And that is as far as I can go with that right at this moment.

I just highlighted a few sentences for brevity sake, but I find your whole post awe inspiring. 

i hope no one minds me trying to walk myself thru some more stuff relating to the ICT.

You have no idea how helpful and enlightening such a post is for me, personally.
You spell out the process so clear, and parts of it resonate strongly, with my own process.

I think, but it's just a thought/opnion, that 'getting' the whole cPTSD has been a process as well. It's not been a "Oh, there and then it went 'wrong'." It's been a series of events and experiences.
And I think recovering will be a same thing: a process, not a one-time-event that we, at some point ahead in time, will be able to pinpoint as: "Ah, there and then was the moment it got 'fixed'.

So, thanks for sharing.

[arpy1]

Dutch Uncle thank you so much for that support. it means a lot.

today i woke up feeling like i had a dose of the flu, but i knew it is not a physical problem, just my body responding to being nuked with this overwhelming but undefined sadness. so exhausted i just went back to bed for three hours.

when i woke, i still felt ghastly and overwhelmingly sad. i started watching a documentary on graffiti, and my creative juices got moving, which was really good, becos i wrote a new poem (posted in the Poetry bit). it's weird how i can only write when i am 'in extremis'. i can't seem to do it when i am ok. it's like a pressure valve or something, it really helps me.

the point i am getting to in all this is that somehow, putting a bit of the pain into a poem stemmed the floodtide of sadness that had been overwhelming me, and it receded.  so that now, i feel like i might be ready for the next bit of the process; i can maybe face the ICT if i take it gently. and lo and behold, my body feels ok again. weird stuff.

 

[Dutch Uncle]

I did read your poem. And I found it quite upbeat.

It's wonderful it makes your body feel OK again. 

[arpy1]

 

[arpy1]

ok. so i am seeing my T tomoro and i feel quite nervous.

the last few days have been a rollercoaster of emotion, and yesterday i started to kind of numb out. and i have stayed that way, pretty much. it's not on purpose, but it isn't a nice feeling. it's weird and unpleasant.

this morning i talked to my son, he needed to have a good vent becos the stress at his job is getting to epic proportions. i am happy to be his talking-post, but today i didn't cope with it terribly well. i ended feeling uber-anxious and distressed all the way home in the car (not good when you're behind the wheel). i know he is a grown up and i know that i can only support him, not fix it for him.   even so, i worry. 

but the weird thing is that after a while of feeling in this hyped up state over it, i just went numb again. it's like a blanket wraps itself around my head and everything is kind of muffled.  like my brain can't handle feeling wired up any more so it switches itself off. this happens to me quite a bit.

it is a bit worrying. i guess i feel like i am not going to  be much good in session tomoro if i am like this. and i don't like to waste sessions - they cost money! and having finally got to the point where i am willing to try with the ict, i don't want to lose impetus. ho hum.

[Dutch Uncle]

Is it possible for you to take a break (from the ICT) today? You've worked hard the last couple of days on this ICT-form and everything that it brought up. I've witnessed it.
Take a day off. Try to see it as a weekend/lazy sunday.

And perhaps than tomorrow you'll have fresh energy to attend the T.

You're doing great.

[arpy1]

you know what, that is a really good idea. i get so intense sometimes. Thank you. I am gonna do it.   

[Kizzie]

When I dig into the trauma it takes three days or so of feeling hungover or flu-like to recover - lots of rest and fluids and compassion (no letting the ICr rant about how weak I am), work for me.

I had a bit of a light go on when I was doing some IC work and realized why this seems to be the case.  I feel trauma, fear with a child's intensity (which is why it scares me frankly - who want to go through that again?).  For example, the abandonment I felt as a child would have been simply terrifying. So as I work through it at least initially there is no rational aspect to it, there is only a deep and primitive fear with all kinds of lovely chemicals linked to those feelings that bath my system.  I am literally hungover and need to give my body time to recoup.

So good for you for taking a break arpy