I Am Sorry
Someone once told me that the brain is incapable of remembering pain. You can remember that you were in pain, but not what the pain exactly felt like. I think back to when I gave birth to my two children with no medication and I can agree, I can't remember that pain. I don't fear those moments. But I think about the pain I was in when I was little and I can feel it. I can almost touch it. It takes my breathe away, it makes my stomach turn, it makes me panic. I can feel all of it. I am afraid of that pain. My brain remembers. Doctors ask the stupid question of pain scale, 1-10. I have had many medical pains that are excruciating. I had my apendix rupture, that was a 9 because nothing will ever be able to reach a 10. I am not strong, I just don't have a 10 anymore. It has been used. My past is my 10, that little girl had to use up my 10.
I cry for her that little girl, but I hate her too. She didn't fight for herself. I learned from her to be little and to be quiet. We are both afraid, but it is her fault. It is my fault. I hate her. I hate me. She is in my dreams and I am her when I am awake. She is a little scared girl, but I am so afraid of her. She has so much control of how I am. I want to protect her, but I also need her to protect me. She is a survivor. I know that I will survive because of her. How did she do it? I hate her.
@Mystrife
It's quite obvious from what you write that you have had a terrible time in your childhood. And because when you were a little girl you didn't fight back, you hate yourself as you feel that you were complicit in what was done to you,as if you consented.
That isn't how we are built, that isn't how the body works.
When you were threatened, seriously threatened, fearful and scared, the part of your brain/body system that is concerned with survival has a big choice to make in a very short amount of time. Simply put, the choices you had were Fight, Flight and freeze. The body typically has to make this choice in a few seconds only, of how best to ensure its own survival.
Did you really have much of a choice? did the child feel that it would have survived if she had fought? Was she really in a position where she had a chance of running away? My guess would be that, at the time, she was so scared that all she was able to do was freeze, or as you believe it now, to do nothing. It's tragic, but it is how we are all made.
Unfortunately, your reaction to freezing is not unusual. Most traumatised victims who have frozen feel like you do, spend a lot of time in merciless self-criticism and self-loathing. And it's especially upsetting as self care, self healing, is what is badly needed. Those who freeze develop ptsd much more often than those who fight or run away. It isn't their fault, and it isn't your fault.
You have nothing to reproach yourself for.
@DavidEss
It was recommended that I read the book The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel Van Der Kolk, M.D. What you said matches a lot of what is in the book. I am trying to find my way out of this by learning why I am the way I am, but my logical thought doesnt ever win. How do I go from understanding to feeling? From reading that I should feel a certain way, to actually feeling that way?
Thank you for your reply. It means a lot to have someone respond.
@Mystrife Hi, I read that book. He also goes over some therapies that can be helpful. The book inspired me to try some of the recommended therapies.I hope that you will find it helpful also.
@Mystrife
I listened to him talk about Trauma. Babette Rothschild is another interesting author. Spookily, he looks a lot like me when my beard gets out of control.
How does one move from understanding to experiencing? - Slowly, and by watching your language. Speak only the truth. What you are currently saying about being to blame is a lie. Your language is a source of advertising to others AND yourself.
@Mystrife
That little girl, your inner child, couldn't fight at the time... She was only a child, so scared and lonely... She did the only thing she could do at the time to protect herself... Nothing that happened is her fault. Nothing that happened is your fault...
You recognise the pain you have felt... this pain cries for compassion... Can you hear it? Take my hand and step back a little. Imagine a close friend of yours coming to you with such a painful realisation... How brutal would it feel to blame her, to attack her, to hate her for reaching such a conclusion? What would you feel compelled to respond to her pain with?
@admaiorasemper
I want it to not be my fault. I think about how different everything would be if I could see things through others eyes, or even my own when I think about a situation that doesnt involve me. I do step back and I see myself there. I know in those moments she couldn't have done anything. She was stuck, she was small, she shouldnt have had to endure that. Then I feel it, I feel how she feels and I know that it is her fault. I know it is my fault. There were so many avenues that could have been taken, that could have helped. Things that should have been done to save herself, to save us, to save me. I have such strong conflicting feelings of wanting to protect her and every other child that has been hurt, to wanting to yell at her for being small and stupid. I am her, she is me. I wish I could be strong for her, but I am weak because of her.
Apparently a trigger warning...
I feel detached right now. I know that means SH is coming. I am outside myself right now and I want to stop it, but I know it will make me feel something, not better but something. It will be a release. I can hold off because the understanding that guilt and shame will follow is still prominent in my thought process. I know that this will change soon. I know that I will no longer be able to see or care about the aftermath because the need will be too strong. I can see this cycle happening, but I feel powerless to stop it. I dont know if I want to stop it. This is something that is mine and no one can take it from me. I guess I pretend that I control it but the truth is it controls me. My life is written around these actions. It controls how I dress, it controls my actions when I am alone, it controls my thoughts. I guess I have control over where and how it happens, but not that it will or will not happen. Is that even control?
@Mystrife
I'm sitting here with you. I lack words today, but I just wanted to say that you are not alone
I am disconnecting again. How can I feel so much and be so numb? How can everything hurt and also feel like I'm not living through it. Thoughts keep infiltrating. SH isn't doing what it used to. I am losing myself. I want to shut my eyes and sleep. How I long to sleep again. Like a small child. The peaceful unadulterated, restful, innocent, stainless, uncorrupted sleep of a pure, unharmed child.
I feel like the walls are closing in around me. I can't stop the panic. Constant anxiety with panic attacks that are becomming harder to come out of. I am trying to avoid my triggers. It's not working. Everyone has a breaking point. I wonder how much more until my point. Is it inevitable? Should I let it come now? How much will it cost me to keep pushing through just to fall at the end? How much will it cost those around me?
"Life's For the Living" -Passenger (playing the background during my thought vomit)
@Mystrife
I am still sitting here with you, you are not alone in your pain. There is something that resonates so much for me in what you write, but I cannot say exactly what it is.
Yes we all have a breaking point. And it is ok to break down. Sometimes it is actually necessary to create something more beautiful with all the pieces that result from it.
Last night was hard. I was pushed and pushed, unrelenting. I became little again. I was forced into a corner and couldn't stand. The rush of fleeting thoughts don't make any sense. Each thought was a like a misfired signal going through my brain. Each breath is painful daggers through my chest. Each tear added to the burning in my eyes. I know the end is near. No one can live like this. But I do. I somehow find myself. I hear my daughter in the other room, screeching laughter. I can't focus on everything, focus on that. Find that. I made myself breath through the pain. I found a thought and hold it. I am not little.
I am sad. How can bones be sad? My bones are sad. My head is foggy. Things don't make sense. I had an amazing day yesterday. It was therapeutic. One conversation makes yesterday feel like it was years past. I will never be ok. I am sorry.
@Mystrife
Bones can be sad. Blood can be sad. Veins can be sad. Muscles can be sad. Sorry, I probably shouldn't write this. But I get what you mean very well.
I am sure that there is a switch in my brain that, if I could just access it, would change how I feel. It has to exist because people keep telling me that I have so much going for me and I shouldn't feel the way I do. I keep hearing that I should just be happy. Since I shouldn't feel this way, there has to be an easy button somewhere. How does everyone else do it without the switch? People are idiots...
"Half the time he felt entirely out of control. Half the time he threw up walls out of fear. And half the time he opted out of life before anyone had the chance to discard him. No matter that the math didn't add up, it was just how he felt." ~Laura Kaye, Ride Dirty
@Mystrife
Ah sure, the famous switch.
NOONE is entitled to tell us how we are supposed to feel.
"I must get my soul back from you; I am killing my flesh without it." ~Sylvia Plath
I want my soul back, I want me back. What if I have it and it's just damaged? What if it's like a ratty old blanket. One that has more holes than fabric. I used to have a blanket like that. It was a baby blanket made for me by someone who loved me. I don't know who, but they must have cared to give a blanket to me, right?. I had it everywhere, I wore it thin until it was almost non existant. It just couldn't hold up to the demands laid upon it, the daily use and abuse. Maybe my soul is that blanket.
@Mystrife
I love Sylvia Plath.
I wonder if the soul can be damaged. Perhaps not. Perhaps this is what Sylvia was saying. The flesh gets killed. The flesh decays and gets rotten. But not the soul.
How are you?
@admaiorasemper
Hello. Thank you for asking how I am. I think I am ok. That is a lie. I know I am not, but my mask is holding strong. It's almost Halloween, my mask is acceptable. I have been through a lot of changes over the last couple of weeks. I want to sleep and then wake up with this storm being just a memory of "hard time I fought through and came out stonger". One day I will be able to cope well enough. One day....
How have you been, friend?
@Mystrife you made me kind of smile with the Halloween mask thing. A sad smile though... I hope you won't feel the need to wear a mask one day, at least in this space...
How have I been? Hmm. I have been too much and nothing at the same time, if this makes any sense.
* hugging you if that is ok *
I can't keep up. I am in a cross country event and I missed a direction flag and I am too far behind to follow the people ahead of me. I am running the wrond direction in a race that doesn't have a finish line. I will be running forever. So much has happened in the last couple of weeks and my head is still spinning.
I moved and don't have insurance anymore. I have to go through the VA for things. It's free so I can't complain, I guess. Problem is, I ran out of meds prescribed by my old PCM and I don't know how long it is going to take to get more. It's Zoloft among other things, not even sure how well it works. I don't think it does very much, but maybe it is the web strand that my life is hanging on and without it I will not survive? I ran out yesterday so I guess I will find out in a couple days how much it actually does. Whatever it is doing is definetly not enough though. A decision I have been puting off and I can't anymore... psychiatrist or pcm. Girlfriend says I need to get rid of the stigma I have attached to the psychiatrist and labels. I don't disagree, but I'm afraid.
Just a few short weeks ago I hated myself for crying too much, I stopped crying, am unable to cry and I don't know what to think. I know I am going to be seen as a hard a ss for it, one devoid of emotion. That is how I was treated for my lack of tears before. I'm not sure I care though. In order to care I would need to have feelings and I am told I don't have them. I kept asking myself, how much more until I am all cried out, when will my body just give up, how am I not shrivelled up with this loss of fluid? Now I know, it took this long until I was done. I know this doesn't make anything better, and I didn't stop crying because I am over whatever was making me cry before, but I am relieved. Crying is bad. When you cry you get punished more. "Stop crying or I am going to give you something to cry about". I know that phrase well.
@Mystrife
You are safe now. Nobody is going to say that sentence anymore. Crying is ok, and not crying is also ok. Those who say you have no emotions are not inside you, they are not you, they cannot know.
On a pratical side: you mentioned on your previous post running out of your meds. Are you taking it again? How are you feeling? I wonder if this difficulty in crying may be related (antidepressant had that effect on me)
@admaiorasemper
I am not taking my meds any longer. I have noticed somewhat of a change, but not enough to think that those meds were the right ones. I think they grind down the sharp edges of the chaos, but I think I need something more. My panic attacks are having a really huge effect on my every day living and they are getting harder to hide. I used to be able to play them off as something else, but I'm becoming less and less capable of it. Maybe I never was good at it, maybe that's why I get looks from people and treated certain ways. Either way, they are lasting longer and I know they can be seen for what they are now. I tried to call the hospital I will be using to get a new PCM and I spent 30 minutes on the phone unable to actually talk to a human. Perhaps there is no way to become a new patient at this place, they give you an endless loop of automated messages and eventually you accept that this is the actual healthcare and you are cured of whatever ailment you might have. Sorry this became so long, in short... no, I am no longer taking my meds.
@Mystrife
I am really sorry to hear you are dealing with panick attacks. They are very unpleasant and upsetting experiences... And I am also really sorry to hear you couldn't talk to anyone when you called the hospital. It sounds so frustrating and unfair. I wonder if perhaps going there and trying to talk to someone in person may make a difference? I hope you will soon get to have a new PCM that can sort out the right meds for you.