New member - Feeling like I'm stuck in this cycle for life

[david89]

Hi everyone,

This seems like a really helpful community, and at this point I'm willing to try anything that could help even a bit. So hello, and thanks for any support you can give.

Like most people here, I'm sure, I could fill several novels with the details of my experience, all of which feel relevant. I'll try to boil it down to its most basic elements. I've always had different 'wiring', spending huge amounts of time on my own, being radically sensitive to criticism and conflict, and I have several minor neurological conditions such as Tourette's Syndrome and obsessive tendencies. I struggled with severe depression as a teen, and now anxiety and complex PTSD makes up a big part of my day to day life (I am now 28).

Nearly 4 years ago a relationship which was, in retrospect, deeply unhealthy, ended abruptly. I was entirely dependent on that person for my sense of self-worth, and when I confessed to having mental health difficulties they ended it literally overnight. My current, recurring trauma is that I see this person regularly while in town. I have developed severe hypervigilance and I have minor panic attacks whenever I encounter them or anything closely linked to them (ie a bicycle that's the same type as theirs, any evidence they might spend time near where I live, a television character with the same name as them, etc.). I can't be in a crowd without scanning for them, and when an encounter does happen I'm torn between fiercely wanting to get away but also still longing after this person and what they represented to me at the time. I realise this may sound lightweight - I didn't witness a murder or rape, I have never been to war, etc. - but the symptoms are all there and have been crippling me for years. I have literally spent weeks in bed in severe emotional pain, and I am chronically smoking pot to numb the pain. I regularly spend entire days playing the same video game I've played for a decade as a means of escape. In some areas of life I'm very successful, but in others I'm struggling just to get by.

It's now at the point where I feel I can't live in the city I'm in, which would be terrible because it's my dream place to live and my profession is very much based around this particular city. I have a 'run-in' of some degree every few months, and worst of all I saw her entering a building recently which is where she clearly lives. To be clear, I am not engaging in any stalking or anything like that - my city is just so small that you regularly see people you know. Now, any time I see anything that remotely resembles this person I re-experience the emotions from the breakup, as though it's still fresh (was in September 2013). I feel horrible about this, because I have a very loving and supportive partner, yet this other person is almost a bigger factor in my life. I've tried numerous talking therapies which haven't helped much (intellectualising the problem is important, but it hasn't helped me actually feel better).

I'm now at the point where, even as I type this, I'm experiencing C-PTSD symptoms on a daily basis and it seems inescapable. I'm trapped in a cycle of isolation, rumination, addiction, trauma and avoidance, and I can feel my life passing me by as I remain a hostage to this. If anyone has gone through something similar, I would deeply appreciate knowing how you coped or what you tried that actually made you feel better. I'm shaking as I write this, knowing I'll have to go into the area of town where she lives this later today for work and I'm already playing 'the movie' in my mind of what will happen. I can't fathom how to even begin to break this cycle, it seems such a constant part of me.

Thank you so much for 'listening'.
-David

[AphoticAtramentous]

Hey there, David. Welcome to the forum, it's a pleasure to meet you.
I'm sorry to hear about what's happened, it must feel like * living in such a small town with such fears and anxiety on your mind all the time.
Your 'cause' is not lightweight though. You still feel the same symptoms, you still suffer as others with this condition do.
I hope you may find some guidance and direction soon, either here or elsewhere. ^-^

[Three Roses]

Hello, David, and welcome to the forum! I'm so glad you're here.

No pain is lightweight; no cause of pain is too small to mention. Each of us has different damage, but it's damage nonetheless, and comparison to others does us no good. It only helps to keep us mired in shame and self-recrimination, re-injuring us further.

I'm wondering if a therapist could help? I know in my own situation i tried to handle it on my own for years, decades really (i'm in my 60s), only making half-hearted stabs at what i referred to as "counseling". Got some doozies along the way, too! Now I'm with a therapist who is actually helping. Although i do wish he was trained in trauma, what he is trained in (gestalt) is still helping.

There are many avenues open to you. If you like reading, there's a couple of books i'd recommend - The Body Keeps The Score by Bessel van der Kolk, and the other is CPTSD: From Surviving to Thriving by Pete Walker who also has a very helpful website (http://pete-walker.com/). On that website he has a series of steps to take to remedy an emotional flashback, which to me sounds like what you're experiencing.

There's also another website that is very helpful, it is a little new-agey but the one time i did this test and the exercises, it really helped and idk why i havent done this again - https://www.eclecticenergies.com/chakras/chakratest.php

Anyway, i'm glad you're here and i hope you find some meaningful connections that will help sustain you! 

[snailspace]

Hello David and welcome.  Sorry to read what you are going through.  I have found neuro linguistic programming (NLP) techniques have helped me.  Here's one which I have used. You might want to adapt the technique to your situation.  Good luck.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_RQxt0Wcgk

[JamesG]

Hi David, welcome to the team.
My advice in the short term is to make understanding the mechanisms of your condition a priority, knowledge is power in this game. With me, it's been very helpful to get to grips with the fact that the experiences are not unique, people do beat them and there has been much work done on understanding how they work. A good place to start is the Spartan life coach on you tube, his explanations are very much everyman and are quite an eye opener. Then counselling if you can find the right person for you. It certainly sounds like you are tumbling a fair bit, typical for these things. Give yourself permission to roll with it a little, it's really not suprising that you've been feeling overwhelmed by your experiences. Permission to have a break from the fighting is hereby given. Re the computer game, that rings bells for me, I think I played the same one a lot, because it gave me a sense of control over things knowing how that worked when life around me was a game I had no control of with no undo button. Re drugs, well there is nothing good to be gained from smothering symptoms with any substance, invariably you are just adding more fuel to the fire. Why not see if you can find something healthier as a defence, hard I know, I am the same with alcohol. Wait til the moment is right and try swimming or walking, anything that turns things physical. You are still a very young man, chappie, plenty of time to get this sorted.

[Moon22]

Hi David- I understand this statement you shared  for sure:

I feel horrible about this, because I have a very loving and supportive partner, yet this other person is almost a bigger factor in my life.

This is too what my triggers are, except I can't physically see mine anymore. Mine are all flashbacks, good, bad, loving, and so painful.  My 1st husband committed suicide 7 years ago and I am re-married.  I've struggled with PTSD since about a year after his suicide, but now believe it may be  CPTSD with all that I have read and discussed with a family therapist.  I was having a very tough night a couple weeks ago (my husband and I went out and I had a trigger) and by the end of my meltdown, he calmly said he was tired of me making my 1st husband part of our marriage.  That calm statement has really stuck with me. I would give anything to talk to my 1st husband to make peace with our relationship and peace with the way it had ended ( we were in the middle of a divorce). I know this might be way out there or easy for me to say since I don't have this opportunity, but what if you either met with her or wrote her a letter to make some attempt to put closer to that relationship.  You may find it healing and might make you ready to move forward with your new relationship.  Just a thought. Tough I'm sure but it's an option.  I'm doing the same, journaling. It heals my heart and hoping to help me live more in today with my relationship with my husband now and find a place for the painful "stuff" and place in a box that I'm sure to revisit from time to time. I'm looking forward to not revisiting it and taking me down this meltdown road any longer.  Take care and hope you find healthy ways to move forward.

[Eyessoblue]

Hi David, welcome, you'll get loads of support here, it's been my life line! I keep going on about EMDR to everyone and it is a really powerful way of getting through this, I'm lucky as am in the uk and have everything see through by the NHS but EMDR is a really good way of clearing your traumas and helping with every day anxiety, don't get me wrong it is a hard exhausting process but the results for me have been really good, might be something for you to look in to.

[david89]

Hi everyone, first let me say thank you so much for being so welcoming and for all of your advice and support already. This experience, as you well know, can feel tremendously isolating, so in a strange way I'm glad there's a community for this - even if it would be ideal if it didn't have to exist at all!

I'm acutely aware that what is going on is largely subconscious and involuntary, which is why things like NLP and EMDR really appeal to me. I've tried quite a few talking therapies and while they've helped to contextualise and intellectualise the issues I'm facing, they haven't yet started to dig at the subconscious roots of the problem. As Moon22 suggested I have in fact tried in the past to speak with them, but it did not end well - she is an incredibly unempathetic person, and is, in attachment theory terms, quite far into the Avoidant side of the spectrum. The last words we had was that we would never speak to or acknowledge each other ever again, so any attempt to make contact would be met with extreme hostility. I appreciate the suggestion, though, as in many cases it may well have helped.

I am indeed 'tumbling' as JamesG put it, and one of the biggest struggles is how everything is becoming imbued with characteristics that trigger my flashbacks and attacks. At the start it was direct reminders that got me, but now almost everything with even a tiny tangential connection does it - a person wearing a similar style of jacket as hers, hearing someone with her accent (Irish), going by a yoga studio because she was into yoga - to the point where my entire city (Edinburgh) feels like a danger zone. I do wonder - what do you guys think about moving away? I know that would be a form of avoidance in itself, but I just feel like I don't have the space or security to heal while I'm here. It would be heartbreaking to go and I'm not sure what I'd do to make a living, but at this point it feels like everything else is being damaged by it anyways so why not just jump off the deep end and get out and get space to heal? It's been 4 years and I still get almost nightly dreams that leave me shaken, and I feel like so long as I'm here it will just keep getting worse. Thoughts?

As for the actual feeling I get when something happens, it's like a warm, fuzzy feeling but not a pleasant one, like every cell in my body is going on fight/flight mode. I almost feel like I'm having an out-of-body experience sometimes, and oddly I'm actually drawn towards the source of the trauma - if I see her I feel like a horrible magnet is pulling me towards her, or if I see her bike in town (it's very distinctive) I might pause by it for a moment and almost amplify my own pain, imagining scenarios (ie she's probably having amazing sex with her new partner just 50 feet away from me). In fact, one of the things that plagues me is what I call the 'blinking red dot' - I imagine a map of my town with me as a blinking red dot and her as a second one, and all the ways they could intersect at any moment. Even just knowing that we like within 1 mile of each other makes me sick - I want more than anything for her to just be far, far, far away from me. There's a definite masochistic element to it, even though it's intensely unpleasant and messes me up emotionally for days afterwards. Can anyone relate to that?

Again, I hope this doesn't seem more like a relationship thread than a trauma thread - it's both, really, but of course there is no longer any relationship while my trauma just deepens and becomes more and more a part of me as time goes on. I'm not feeling quite as viscerally traumatised now as I was, say, 2 years ago, but it's almost more pervasive than ever before, seeping into parts of life it never previously touched.

All of your suggestions and support are so appreciated, and again thanks for being so welcoming. I hope I can help some of you in any way I can, too, and I definitely consider this to be an important tool in my fight. All the best.

[david89]

PS I'll try to be more succinct in future - that was quite the essay, but it all just kind of gushed out. Thanks for bearing with me

[JamesG]

Hi David

I wouldn't move away, it's not really about location in the end, it's about feelings and in my experience, these things follow you or even amplify when you bail out of a location. When faced with these intense trigger farms you sometimes have to just take a deep breath and burn away the stubble.

I am curious to know about how you were before this relationship, what was life like then? It feels to me like there is a bigger issue lurking that has amplified your experiences.

Re the masochistic urge to approach the source of trauma, well I can totally relate to that, it's unfinished business on an epic scale, but people are not solutions in themselves and hoping they will provide absolution, especially if they are narcissistic is like writing kick me on your forehead. The solutions all come from us, not from them, you have to see them as the people on a platform left behind by your train. No going back. My ex-partner, my brother and my mother could have said the smallest tiny things to make me feel spectacularly better, * would also have frozen over. This girl is now part of your past and has no answers for you in your future. She is free to move on, them is the rules, but they are also the rules for you. Take what you can from it that was good, forget the bad and turn your head to the future. Someone said to me recently, "you have to give up on trying to have a better past" It's that really. For you to heal you have to stop pulling off the bandages. You are free to live and learn, heal and then just plain live. The tumbling will stop when you give yourself permission to rest. You are clearly a very passionate guy, that needs taming tho, it's a great thing and a dangerous thing.

[Juliette]

Hi David,

I understand this is an older post, but I figured since I had a slightly similar situation that maybe I could throw in my quip. The moment I left the area that my family was in, the moment I was surrounded by new things, I felt new. I have read many success stories of simply changing environment, some people leaving their respective state/hemisphere. If these reminders are so intense, perhaps continue to work in the city you love, but change where you live to somewhere slightly outside of the town. Close enough to drive to, just enough for some fresh air. If you do not like it, move back, and maybe that time away will help give you the space you needed to forget...even for a moment.

[Blueberry]

Moving far, far away helped me to begin with. But it's not the end of the journey. My problems caught up with me again. Had I stayed in my country of birth, I'm not sure I'd still be around, that I wouldn't have eventually succumbed to the effects of being reminded of my childhood daily. 

[JamesG]

can I just point something out David...

You write very well, good lean English, clear concise and indicative of talent. Just saying.

[Rainagain]

Hi
I can relate to Xbox games, and I am old.....
I use them to block out intrusive thoughts and allows me to ignore a chronic pain condition, at least while I'm playing. I prefer to read but sometimes I can't read, I hear the author's voice and can't concentrate on the actual book, it becomes distasteful in some odd way.
A big game like skyrim is distracting to my demons when books can't help.
Its better than alcohol and weed, they seem to help but in reality just make me worse.
I have no good advice for you, but I have similar experiences if that helps?

Regarding moving, I did that and it is pretty drastic, you leave so much behind that its just another trauma, more loss and sadness. But if you have been struggling for years maybe its time to give it a go. Cptsd ruins decisiveness and decision making....