Camille's Journal (TW)

[camille13512]

Trigger warning in general. I don't think anything graphic will be involved as I have close to zero memory from the childhood, but the language I use to describe the current feelings and some ideation may be triggering.

I started this post because I don't want to spam the board. I'll try to not delete the posts the second I made it. I hope it to be a recovery even though I'm not sure where I am now. There are a thousand questions rolling around my mind since the day I found the term cptsd, and it is like a ranch I pulled to direct my path to an unexpected direction.

I guess I will start with the 4F responses. After reading Pete Walker's book and talking to my T, I realize I cannot actually find my position. On the surface, I clicked with the description of flight (workaholic and shamefully proud of it) and fawn (please people out of fear) first, but I think fight is deep down in me and I am so very scared of that part of me that I use all the other responses to push it back and silence it. My T also suggested dissociation when I described some of my EF's. I felt I was doing some kind of role play all the time and switching between different characters uncontrollably but knowingly. It's almost as if I managed to separate my 4F response into four different personalities; I used to call them: angry man, aloof bystander, crying baby, spineless clown and vicious voice.

-- TW (language) --

Vicious voice is my IC. I often project it to have other people's face, voice and behavior, ranging from past abuser to a stranger on the street to even my current friend, the only thing that doesn't change is that the poisoned and electrocuted feeling it injects in me, and I will beg it until it leaves me alone after it thinks I have suffered enough. "For now", it will say. The best (sarcastic) part is that IC has convinced me that it is the only true friend I have. "You won't be where you are if not for me. You are lazy, stupid and ugly, the only reason that you have a spot to stand is because I have been pushing you to show you are of some kind of use. You will lose your place the second you stop listening to me and slack off." And every time I fear being abandoned by real people in life, IC will wander back and pretend it is hugging me from behind. "Now you see that I'm the only one you have. People leave you behind even when they promise they won't; they almost never remember their words even though they meant it the moment they said it. But I'm unlike them; I'm not going anywhere, and I only wish the best for you." So I hugged the voice back. I said, ok, lead me where I should be, do whatever you want with me. And the same pain came back, but at least it felt familiar and unchanged.

-- TW ends --

I've been rejecting IC since I know this is its name. I refuse to listen to it, and it got rampant fast. Instead of saying things next to my ears, it just keeps pumping fear. I'm constantly on an adrenaline rush, sweating and having sight blurred out. I fall back to the flight routine by working and working and only having time to sleep and eat, and still can't have the simplest task done. I thought I was going blind when I got so exhausted that I felt detached from my body. And I started crying, fearing that I won't finish up my work and will lose my position soon.

But even this, the exhaustion and fearful anticipation, are still better than the night, when I can't sleep and keep thinking how many choices I made were driven by the illogical fear and unnecessary defense; how I pushed people away even though I wished they could stay; how I truly have nothing in me and so afraid that eventually everyone will find out there is just a hollow core under my skin; that the only thing that can distinguish me from the others is this nothingness. Everyone else is colorful, melodic and lively; I'm colorless, mute, and merely undead.

I wonder what the end goal should be and looks like. I don't think I can recover the me before I was molded into this discordant shape. I was locked outside the sea of people the day I was born. I said, I love you, and please love me back, and the voice was so weak, and I don't even believe it came out of me, because I was never that brave to say it loud. I daydream that I am an alien, and one day other aliens will find me and ask me to go with them. When that day comes, I will pretend to be hesitant first but I will jump onboard quickly.

Should I try to be human again? Can I be human again? Like the ones that laugh and cry and dance and sing, the ones that don't need to pass any test or go through any redemption to breathe, to live, to love and be loved. Or will it be easier to just accept that it will never happen, that I will never be connected with anyone, to understand and be understood in a mutual way? Will it be easier to accept the condition as a terminal disease, and just move through life as it is? After all, isn't pain the only thing that proves I exist?

[sanmagic7]

camille,

yes, that little baby voice was weak, but it was there.  your spirit and will to live were there.  your humanness was there as well.  unfortunately, as with so many of us, your voice, the voice of your 'self', was drowned out and buried by voices that were bigger and stronger than our own.

however, i don't believe it was completely stilled - it still lives, even tho it may be impossible right now to hear it or believe in it.  i do believe that's what recovery is all about - recovering our true selves from under the rubble that was piled on top of us by too many to recount.

thank you for sharing this with us.  even if you don't know it, you are a beautiful being who deserves to be loved into your own personhood without threats, put-downs, or untruths.  the voice of that ICr will leave you when your truth becomes stronger.  as you continue with recovery, i have no doubt you'll feel the difference.

this is not an easy path you've chosen, but it is do-able.  you're not alone with this, either.  standing with you, camille.  sending you a hug (if you want it) filled with kindness, caring, and nurturing.

[woodsgnome]

Camille 13512, you said "I truly have nothing in me and so afraid that eventually everyone will find out there is just a hollow core under my skin..."

I hope I'm included in "everyone". And if I am, I see in your posts that you are a strong person who not only deserves, but will likely find a way through the current despair. I've been in the dark place you describe many, many times. Despite trying to guard against falling again, it happens all the time and I want to give up. The ever-vigilant ICr will try and rush in, over and over.n. Sometimes I can't get any traction. I know it's frustrating to keep hearing about patience and fortitude, but it's only by latching onto those traits that I've progressed at all. And, perhaps a willingness to be surprised, as it couldn't really get much worse.

You wondered about acceptance; it doesn't mean giving in to life continuing like it's been so far, but is more like a middle point, where the old path ends and from there a path leads to the always new horizon. It may not seem like it but from here it looks like you've turned a corner just by expressing yourself here. Because here you can at least experience a place to freely speak from the heart without fear of judgement.

Your last paragraph was a precise description of what this journey feels like. It might be hard to sense any recovery, but it seems to happen regardless for those who can draw on inner strength to keep moving forward. The other day I was listening to a talk by someone who used a famous quote about failing; I'm paraphrasing, but the message ran something like you will fail--try again; fail--try again; and again and again. Not blindly--but because it's obvious you deserve the right to turn the corner, and finally your own core is bursting free.

You started that last paragraph by asking "Should I try to be human again?" You are a wonderful human already, now--in this very moment. Those others that seem to have it all together aren't necessarily the best role models for how to live. It may be they're lacking the depth and courage to really look at life, as you are now doing by reaching out.

   

[camille13512]

sanmagic7, I'm trying really hard to not cry over your assurance. I am very aware of the little voice inside me; it sometimes burns to remind me that it is still there, alive and waiting to be acknowledged. I am aware, and I am the one that has been trying to kill it over the past years. My IC is strong and dominant because I've been enabling it; I believe what it says. What if my true self deserves to be eliminated? What if it is truly hideous and evil? I would prefer a hollow straw to that kind of "self", no matter how true it might be.

woodsgnome, "it couldn't really get much worse" is what makes me hold on most of the time. I'm hoping that this is the bottom already, that I won't keep falling.

But I will be lying if I say that I don't believe even a little bit of what both of you are trying to convey. I want to believe that there is something nice inside me, that shows my IC could be wrong. I hug you back with all the warmth I can gather.

[camille13512]

I think I am pretty good at pretending to be a human being. Because other humans talk to me, smile at me, greet me, offer to help me, when they know close to nothing about me. They would actually approach me without showing much contempt when it is just an image of me in front of them. There is clearly something wrong with me, because people withdrew from my life whenever they knew more about me. So I think whatever truth I revealed about myself, no matter how trivial it might be, must be scarily ugly and revolting that pushes the others away instantaneously. And so many times I wish that this something, the sick part of me could be more visible, so that I know clearly what it is, and nobody would even bother to approach me at the first place.

This is why I am co-dependent on my IC. I believe everything it says about me. If I have any identity at this stage, if I have to recognize myself with anything, it will be my IC. It could be wrong (and I refuse to believe so), but it keeps its promise: it never leaves me alone. And though it is as pathetic as it gets, I give it all I have to just have it not abandon me too. I stump on my self-esteem for it, I curse myself with it, I silently wait (even wish) for the external world to crush me as it enjoys the show and laughs, as long as it stays. It enjoys my pain; I rely on its accompany to breathe.

After almost a week of rejection of IC, today I fully embraced it back. I am ashamed of myself, but it is one of those days I simply cannot hold myself up. "It's not like it's anything new; being disappointing is pretty much the only thing you are good at."

[hopeful10]

There is clearly something wrong with me, because people withdrew from my life whenever they knew more about me. So I think whatever truth I revealed about myself, no matter how trivial it might be, must be scarily ugly and revolting that pushes the others away instantaneously.

Camille, I have also had this experience of people who got close to me being scared off. In hindsight, this was mostly due to my social skills not being great, and bc at that time I was looking for unhealthy relationships. What really helped me was reading a book about managing my emotions so that I didn't take them out on others (Constructive Wallowing by Tina Gilbertson), and also reading a book about relationships and healthy attachment (Hold me Tight as an audiobook by Sue Johnson - it really helped to hear the compassion in her voice that at first made me uncomfortable bc I thought it wasn't ok for me, but of course it was).

Whatever it is that is causing you problmes, I hope that you know that it is fixable, and you will find people who are capable of accepting you and your past and present as is. There's no need to be so hard on yourself because its completely understandable to struggle with this.

I stump on my self-esteem for it, I curse myself with it, I silently wait (even wish) for the external world to crush me as it enjoys the show and laughs, as long as it stays. It enjoys my pain; I rely on its accompany to breathe.

This sentence makes me so sad! You deserve so much compassion. Not having/losing a sense of self is something that (from my reading) I've gathered can happen with cptsd. It has happened to me, and it was terrifying and incredibly difficult to bear, but I believe that you will get through this. You have been so tough to make it this far. Don't give up! 

[sanmagic7]

camille, i give you so much credit, sweetie, for holding that IC at bay for an entire week!  that is quite an accomplishment.  what a courageous thing to do.  it's no shame, no failure, to bring it back.  it's what has drowned out that voice that you were born with, the voice of the innocent, precious baby.  that baby only deserves love, caring, nurturance and kindness.  it's not the baby's fault that it's voice got stomped on.

neither is it your fault that you've embraced that IC again.  it's what you've known most of your life.  your true you, your 'self', is, in actuality that baby's voice that would not be stilled, that hasn't left you, either.  you just weren't given much of a chance to know you, the real you, before those other, larger and stronger voices tried to silence you.

but, they weren't quite successful, were they.  that little voice is still there, still with you.  it hasn't left you, either, and you've shown that you are fighting for it to get stronger.  an entire week.  that was a tremendous start.  well done.

it's not you who stomps on that little voice, it's all the others who trained you to do that.  this is not your fault, it's theirs.  they trained and programmed you so well.  we can all relate.  but the shame and blame is on them, not you.

sending you a big hug filled with encouragement, compassion, and love.  that's the kind of stuff that will feed that little voice and help it grow, help it become stronger.  it has never left you, either, and won't.  they didn't silence it. 

[camille13512]

Hopeful, Thank you for the recommendation of books. I am checking them out. I do wish I am fixable, every part of me. As a "beginner" in learning to deal with myself the first time in my life, I believe I am slowly walking through the paths that are paved by many of you, and I feel the gratitude jar is being filled a bit more everyday. Hopefully, one day, I can add a part of myself in that jar too.

San, why is it that your words always make my tears flow (in a both unfamiliar but somehow nostalgic way)? I never thought about it this way. I never thought that the baby is with me too. I'm so busy with the IC that I feel blinded much of my life; I thought I always only had one voice to listen to, one road to follow. But maybe you are right, maybe I am not alone like the IC wants me to believe. How I wish I could go back to when I was three, and tell that little girl to never listen to that voice. I'm hugging you back, and I think the child in my is hugging you back too.

[camille13512]

I'm afraid there is not much improvement I can note after last time's downing rant. I have not made much progress the past few days. IC enters the horrifying mode, and I cannot get out of fawning. I constantly told myself to not think about it, not think about it in the old way. But old habits are so hard to pass by. If I do not whip myself internally, I feel even more shamed than I already am.

--TW for language--
(The following paragraphs have been edited to remove details and will show inconsistency. I'm deeply sorry that I put it up and then took it down like this. )
During all the past time when I felt helpless, I forced myself to accept the reason to be "because there is no one there", "because people don't help each other, especially little kids", "because you are a bad kid who needs to be disciplined", "because you are such a coward who doesn't even dare to speak up so of course no one will know and help", and "because it is your fault; it always is".
-- TW ends --

But now I know a part of those answers are not true. There are people there; there are people who help each other because they genuinely care. So what is the truth? Is the other part true? Is it because I didn't ask for help so I didn't get any? Maybe that is indeed what happened? But at that moment, I felt so much bitterness soaring up my throat that I had to go back to the toilet stall again. It makes me want to cleanse my inside out if only I could. And at the mean time, I cannot get rid of the feeling about how much isolation I feel even when I am among a group of people who are working towards the same goal. I am this floating balloon that does not have a string tying to anything. And I panic that I will soon disappear into vacuum, into a space no one knows about. This immediately triggers fawning, and fawning always attracts the IC the most.
--Edit ends--

I keep shouting "stop" at IC and it doesn't really work much. And I suppose this disgust and littleness I feel is just another EF I failed to fight against. I desperately search for a distraction. I think I will cry until I can't and hopefully fall asleep afterwards. Nowadays the thing I look forward to the most when I open my eyes are the night time when I can cry under my blanket. At least at that moment, I feel crying is allowed, and a little bit free from the fake smile I carried in the days.

Initially I was hoping to sort through my feelings in the journal, and I guess it doesn't really work that way. I wish I could put thoughts into terms and go through the things that messed up my mind step by step, but sorting a mind is different from sorting a room. I wish next time, I can say something nice and uplifting. To the little baby in me, sorry I still cannot hear you, but I wish you a good night.

[Three Roses]

This is poignant and beautifully expressed.

That IC is something we all seem to struggle against. At the risk of repeating myself, may I suggest Pete Walker's input in fighting to reduce the Inner Critic - http://pete-walker.com/shrinkingInnerCritic.htm

Good luck to you in your struggle. 

[ah]

Hi Camille,

I think you're brave and very sharp in your observations. Keep going, keep writing here even if things seem like they aren't coherent yet to you, in my personal experience just verbalizing stuff helps my mind make sense of them and look at them in new ways. Connect them to things that never would have occurred to me before. The mind wants to sort things out but its techniques are different from what we might expect, because it's a problem solving machine and it has so many different points of view on each thing it experiences... so it's two steps forward and 4985739 steps back.
But as long as you can look back and see you're slowly going those two steps forward then you're doing an excellent job.
If I can help you at it then it'd be my pleasure.

Boy do I relate to what you wrote about being pretty good at pretending to be a human being. I absolutely feel that way too.

Those terrible ideas, that voice in your head that says "It's all because you're worthless and you know it." I've recently been shocked by something I heard about my FOO. I've habitually been criticizing people about a habit of theirs all my life, kept saying to myself "but it isn't typical of me, why do I do that? Beh..." and it turned out what I had been saying was, word for word, a cruel thing my FOO used to say on a regular basis. I was really stunned. Got me wondering whether most or all of my IC are also things that I had heard, not just exposed to but are alien to me, things I took on but hurt not just because they cause me pain and torture me, but also hurt because they just don't fit our values. Our own values say to be kind.

One moment at a time, I'm with you. You're not alone.

[sanmagic7]

dear camille, wish i could say more, but am in a bad place right now.  sending a hug of caring, warmth, and love. 

[camille13512]

Three Roses, thank you for your encouragement. I am reading Pete Walker's book and found a lot of things he said make sense, but also hard to follow. One big problem is my (potentially fake or exaggerated) memory, the rest is a stubborn unwillingness in me to channel the anger out. I will keep trying. Nowadays when I feel utterly hopeless, I know it is not really me but an EF or IC, so I'll wait until it passed and then come back again. So I guess this is already an improvement.

Ah, I definitely agree with you that writing helps. In fact often when I feel trapped, writing is the only thing that gets me through those moments. When I say "only", it is not the "all or nothing" talk, but an honest opinion. I'm actually quite surprised by myself as I keep coming back and post in a public place without holding back, when in real life I'm a very private person and paranoid about internet privacy all the time. The journal here serves as "snapshots" of my emotions and resurfacing memories that I thought I had long lost, so I'm afraid it's going to be messy and probably getting messier soon. Thank you for staying by my side when it is difficult.

San, you don't need to say anything when you don't feel it. I know you are there. I'm sending you all the love I have. You have given me strength, so I wish to give you back some too. This darkness is scary, but we are not alone in this.

[camille13512]

Edit: because I cannot stand myself. I'll leave the gist of it but delete the details and examples I gave.

A big wave has passed and here I am again. I still find it hard to admit that I was abused as a child (yes, I am stubborn), but I will put a trigger warning here before I post about my childhood just in case.

Pete Walker talks about letting anger out to shrink the IC. And unfortunately I am very reluctant to practice it, because I found it extremely hard to say, "hey, you, my abuser, you did this to me." I cannot do it because I know with a ninety percent certainty that the people who abused me were also the ones that were abused. It is a generation to generation cycled curse that has not been broken and been passed on (I saw it with my cousin and his baby). They have suffered enough, and I cannot bring myself to hate them. I know how it is going to sound (a victim with Stockholm Syndrome), but I am going to say it; I believe F and M's feelings for me are genuine and meant well; it did not work as well because they never learned how to love.

F is a narcissist. He may even fall into the "charming" category as Walker described: very friendly towards strangers or friends, but abusive toward family members (me and M). I do not have much memory about him since I was little. He was always busy, came home late and often drunk due to the toxic working environment. When he was at home, he would be very nice when he was in good mood, but would throw a tantrum when the mood switch was flipped. Occasionally when he remembered to check on me, such as my grades in school, he would throw "the look" described by Walker at me if he did not think I did well enough. He said that I "made him lose face in front of the others" because how low I scored.

Because F did not spend much time home and M is quite assertive, many decisions involving me were actually made by M. My relationship with M was also not quite conventional. Most of the time she treats me as an equal, and I am tremendously grateful for that attitude after I saw what happened to my classmates. The problem is, I think I would prefer to grow up as a child instead of an adult. I am always an easily startled child (talking about hyper-vigilance since age three). And I would tell M that I was scared (to do certain things). M's response was always that there was nothing to be afraid of, and it was irrational for me to cling to the fear without trying. And then the worst comment I received my life would follow:" you are truly your F's daughter to fear without even trying." "You are your F's daughter" is the trademark of my nightmare. Partially because I had first-hand experience with him, and partially because the obvious disgust M had when talking about his narcissistic manner. I suspected that a large portion of M's education on me is to prevent me becoming F. She explicitly said that I was born like F and it was really hard to "turn me around" because of bad genes. It was half joking and half serious, and I adopted the same thinking very thoroughly: the biggest goal of my life is to eliminate the traits I got from F as cleanly as possible.

This is why IC hates the fighter in me the most, the assertive, angry part of me. There are other factors too, such as the social expectation for a girl to be obedient and "nice". I know there is always a rebellious part in me, and I keep it on guard all the time because I am afraid I would "turn into F".

So during the feedback cycles of interacting with F and getting intimidated and insulted by him, together with M's determined goal to make me "less like F", I fully accept the presumption that I am a danger to others just as F is a danger to M and me: after all, I am F's daughter. It is a hopeless thinking, because I was born this way. I even used to joke with M that she should have picked a better genetic source for me. She said: then you won't be you any more. I said, no, I would be a better me. It was told as a joke at that time, but now it hurts.

It hurts because I know M would willingly sacrifice everything for me (which I found out in a(nother) traumatic experience we went through together). Initially it hurts even to just think maybe she also took responsibility for my suffering. Now I see it as an inevitable tragedy, not for me but for FOO: M married F even though she did not love him; they did not love each other. She married him because she was under a lot of social pressure, and later on pressured again to get pregnant and give birth. It was a disappointment that she gave birth to a girl instead of a boy, clearly expressed by F and F's FOO. Growing up in a family where F and M simply couldn't stand each other made me question every part of me too. Every time one said something nasty to the other, I wonder if there was also part of me that was hated. I am their product, after all. So soon there is nothing left in me that I feel deserve to be loved. And no assuring words from either F or M can help with it. There is simply nothing there that could have been fixed. If I could travel back in time, there would also be no switch for me to pull to make everything fall into the right track.

I edited the response because I realized it is all just one theory I came up with (and I cannot stand myself disclosing it in this way without any clear evidence to back up my theory). There is no way for me to test whether it is true or not, and I have experienced many times before that my brain offers the most incoherent logic and I will still accept it. I am waiting to see my T to see if there is another explanation, another route, another theory that can shed some reasoning onto the mist filled road.

[DecimalRocket]

From the sounds of it, you understand it intellectually, but you're not feeling it right? That's alright. It takes time.

I understand how hard it is to kick the habit of never thinking you could be angry at someone. It's been years for me — if not much of my entire life.

From reading "The Body Keeps The Score", the emotional and logical part of the brain is separated. It's easier to understand something for trauma, but to feel it is something else. You've had a lifetime of feeling that you don't have the right to be angry, a lifetime of people not believing in you and it is going to be hard.

But I believe you have the right to be angry. You do. And I bet other people will agree with me here.