Still need to work through early trauma

[Gaining Strength]

So well said Hops.

[Gaining Strength]

My work is to create space between my being and the shame and hatred that I internalized so long ago.  I have confused that dark stuff with my being for a long time.  This work is slow but I must keep returning my mind to the image of whole ness and success.  For many, many years I felt obligated to receive and stew in the condemnation so it is quite a challenge to turn that all around.

My mind automatically goes to connect dots between bad things and my deserving them so now I have to become aware of that mind and manually rewrite it.  At some point what takes considerable effort will become automatic.  It seems to me to be akin to a stroke or injury victim learning to walk again, what had once been natural without thought now requires very concerted effort.

I vow not to relent, to stick to the battle plan, to know the steps seem difficult and the progress slow but it will come.

It took me years and years, decades to understand how I got where I am.  That is a victory even though it did not solve things but now things are being healed.  I am encouraging myself to have faith in this process and to not give up.  Stay strong.

[Gaining Strength]

Here is a link to one section of Pete Walker's page on healing cPTSD.

THIS IS HELPFUL AND PAINFUL BUT MOST IMPORTANTLY HOPEFUL.  AND IT IS GEYOND COMFORTING TO NOW KNOW WHAT HAS BEEN PLAGUING ME MY WHOLE LIFE AND IT IS NOT BECAUSE I AN WORTHLESS.

(Sorry about the caps. I was typing without realizing.)

Now it is beginning to get easier for me to allow the stomach turning, physical response of shame to release and then use a thought process to find a place of comfort.  This us hard, I would prefer to go into shut down but the work will produce healing and shut down won't.

I must continue to talk to myself about hang and having faith in this process.  Feeling these feelings is extremely painful.

[Gaining Strength]

I don't really think of him in any specific ways oddly enough. But I think of the effects of his behaviour on me and , perhaps the even more destructive phenomena that no one ever stood up and pointed out to me that his behaviour was outrageous and cruel.  Because no one did and because it started from my birth, I always processed it as a flaw in my being.  And that has been the great destructive force in my life.

So today, I am reorganizing how I see myself.  I wish it were as easy as it writes.

I want to interject about how your daughters combination of afflictions explains so much about her inability to receive what you have for her.  It is so much easier, though not easy in any way, to cut the ties with a rejecting, shaming parent than with a child who closes a door, no doubt.

*****
Yesterday I began the "safe place" phase of EMDR.  I am back in "shame", dealing with "shame."  I am thankful that I made the progress I did in early summer.  It cleared away a seal that now exposes the shame that has controlled my life while taking the horrific edge off the pain of it.  So now, at long last, I am opening up the shame yet again but in a new level.

So yesterday we talked about a handful of memories in which shame and rejection paralyzed me.  These memories and me reaction to them touch where I am today.  Shut down.  BUT - now there is hope and there is understanding that this shame and rejection came on me not from my own doing and that they can be lifted and life can be renewed.

Years ago I recognized that I lived with GAD, that my anxiety had attached to everything.  And that is true about shame as well.  I hear something that has some level of shame, unrelated to me and I feel shame.  Decades ago I recognized that I tuned into negative feelings around me.  I was certainly trained to do this but I think I also was born probed to do that.  But now, I am learning how to generate distance between myself and the excoriating, disabling pain that shuts me down.  That is where the "desensitization" becomes powerful, allowing me to function in spite of the memories and associations.

[Gaining Strength]

This is so painful to read because it is so spot on. I have never felt so fully understood and I have never even met this man.  It gives me hope.  Now I must tap into the fortitude necessary to withstand the pain.


http://www.pete-walker.com/managingAbandonDepression.htm

[Hopalong]

Dear GS,
I know it hurts to live in the old pain.

I hope you will just push STOP sometimes, and do something
just plain loving for/to yourself...

If you simply rub your own arms with the deeply loving, comforting, compassionate
accepting touch (that you might wish you had had from them) -- just stop for
5 minutes to actually offer yourself that loving touch, while saying/thinking
greatly loving things for your inner self who is doing SUCH a good job of
this hard work...

How does it feel?

Five minutes is a long time to feel Real Love.

Love to you,
Hops

[Gaining Strength]

I love that Hops.  Actually I was given two exercises to help and one is exactly a self hugs. Somehow it connects the two hemispheres of our brains.

I hate being in the pain but actually it is the way out - being present and creating space between my being and the feelings taken on in childhood which are never not present, at best repressed. So feeling the pain and being mindful of it is actually a way to move beyond.  Sound illogical but I am so thankful to be in this place.  The finally understand it all and have compassion for myself is an achievement in its own but not enough.

I'm expecting to see significant progress by the end of November.  We'll see.

[Gaining Strength]

No one had empathy for them, showed them warmth, or invited closeness. No one cared about what they thought, felt, did, wanted, or dreamed of. Such trauma victims learned early in life that no matter how hurt, alienated, or terrified they were, turning to a parent would actually exacerbate their experience of rejection.

I love to read others words that reflect what I experienced. It has seemed impossible to convey for so long but here is another human writing about my very own horror.  It is both painful and cathartic.

[Gaining Strength]

This book may be the most important thing I have come across - giving me hope and help.  I have so many question but of course the author practises in CA. If only.  But still I am learning, practising staying out of  the trigger place.  He calls them flashbacks, I still like trigger because it feels like a trigger more than flashback even though he articulates that specific memories are often elusive. 

There is a balance for me in avoiding triggers and working through the triggers.  But if I can both expose the origins and work through softer triggers first then my muscle will grow.

[Gaining Strength]

Today I am talking back to my father, telling him that I will no longer take his abuse, that it is destructive to me and destructive to himself and that I font deserve it.  I would do anything in this world to help him but receiving the abuse is not helpful but destructive.

I have already facd several activities this morning and this internal conversation is helping tremendously, keeping me out of that trigger state.  This ism real progress.  Now the trick is to help it last or find replacements when it no longer is effective.  I choose to believe that this will happen.

[Gaining Strength]

Now I recognize that part of the shutdown, retreat is to avoid the triggers.  If this strategy works then I can face the triggers and cut right through them.  This will happen. The more I cut through the more my brain will be retrained. He ruled my early life but he will not rule another full day.

[Hopalong]

GOOD for you, GS...the activities. Brava brava.

My T had an epiphany this morning that helped me a lot.
We've spent two years trying to get me to work with the usual ADD kinds of advice:
List things that need doing, break them down into small steps, calendar the steps,
build in breaks and rewards, etc. The ONE THING TODAY, all that...

And, sometimes, that does help. But the very biggest thing was something else:
Today he asked me repeatedly what I say to myself when I turn aside from a
plan I'd been excited about the day before. Even the simplest thing, like...not
taking my laptop to bed. Or, a 10-minute walk when I come home even if I
don't feel like it.

It was, embarrassingly, that what I say to myself is: "I don't want to." And
secondly, "I'm alone, so there's no one I'm accountable to." (Clearly, I don't
even feel accountable to myself when the escape-task-exercise-sleep urge
is on.)

So. He said, "It's really just ONE THING." It's that you are run by your feelings.
(He wasn't judging that.) Your rational mind understands completely how the
step-by-step, small-goal-setting systems work. But your feelings RULE. So
your entire task, about everything, is to push back against letting your
emotions decide everything. THAT'S the internal dialogue you need to have.

Just every day. When the escape urge comes up, you need to talk to yourself
about your rational, adult mind.

We looked at each other sort of bug-eyed because in my case, it's really
that simple. I have oceans of emotional reasons (grief, depression, etc.)
for avoiding taking care of my life. The endless chores/decisions/tasks
of taking care of an adult life. So, given that my emotion-ocean will
never completely dry up...what else can get me to DO something I
really need to do?

My rational mind. I need to listen to it. Allow it to take charge for many
of those daily decisions.

Not everything. Of course. Not stopping my emotional processing and
reflecting and relaxing and recreating, not at all. But just...when I have
so CLEARLY identified for myself SIMPLE steps and choices that would
vastly improve my life, to engage my rational mind as my ally.

Sounds odd in writing this, but it really was an epiphany. It had one
of those solid-moments-in-therapy feelings. Like, we looked at each
other and went: Yes. That is essentially IT. For me.

Hope it's not a you-hadda-be-there but it's good to share it anyway.

Tonight? Rational mind needs to go home and in spite of:
--feeling achy and drained
--sour mood at beginning of tedious workweek
--physical fatigue
--depression at coming home alone

Rational mind needs to say: Right. Now we're going to walk around
the block. LATER we're going to watch the escape stuff.

That's it. So embarrassing so say -- that's my goal of the day.
But you get it.

love
Hops

[Ales2]

• • • This is not a minor epiphany Hops, its a really good one.  I have the same problem with escapism and avoidant, procrastinating  behavior.  Mine usually is that I get up at 5ish and feed cats (at 5 am they are NOT cats they are extortionists in a fur coat   ) then want to ust la there til 545 to make a coffee change into gym clothers and get to gym by 6ish. Lately, I get stuck, fall back to sleep or get on the internet, it gets to 620 and then I feel its too late to do the workout I want to do, so I make all sorts of little mental NOs in my head and never make it to the gym.  I am working my way around that which is 545 cats fed coffee and banana made, bed made, in clothes, out door. That helps, SOMETIMES, if I get a good nights sleep.
      
      Best techniques I learned for procrastination are the following:
      
      
      Mel Robbins - Successful people do the right things consistently, even when they don't feel like it.
      
      The Tools/ Phil Stutz ad Barry Michels - Bring it on, just sit, eliminate your distractions and do it NOW.
      
      Eliminate the monkey with a small goal today (one load laundry, 10 mins sorting junk mail, save $5 today) so it doesnt turn into a monster tomorrow (3 loads of laundry, a box full of junk mail or $200 credit card bill). Get the monkey off your back before it turns into a monster. 
      
      Recovery - Folks in addiction recovery learn to "do the next right thing" when they get emotionally triggered and want to relapse.
      
      Eckhart Tolle - Power of NOW.
      
      My own - when I want to escape by reading an article, watching netflix or some other thing I put it on a sticky and get back to work. What I discovered is that when I perceive my time to be my own, like I can go to the beach on Sunday afternoon or do whats on the sticky, I suddenly have lost interest in that item and I can see it for what it is - a distraction and procrastination avoidant behavior.
      
      I use these tools and get good results. You are on to something with the emotional awareness.
      
      
      

[Hopalong]

Wow, Ales.
That is a REALLY powerful and for me so so helpful, post.

Thank you for sharing all that.
It's extremely heartening. And gives me some new resources.

But...5am? For real?

Oy. I have a loooong way to go.

hugs
Hops

[Hopalong]

GS, thought I'd share this followup because I imagine you may relate.

I emailed my T to thank him for his solid epiphany yesterday--because I
stayed focused on it. Result was (will sound totally minor to those who don't
struggle with the take-care-of-your-life-like-regular-people-do issue):

When I went home I override my immediate-escape valve and:
--walked the dog (ran into friendly people, too)
--made healthy soup

NBD? It did feel like a big deal. Anyway, he wrote back "You're welcome"
and added this advice, which I liked a lot. Concise and solid, just like the insight was:

"Keep in mind its not about the soup or the dog but going against your grain, overriding
the emotional brain. One or two overrides / challenges a day is a good starting point.
You can increase the size of the challenge as you gain confidence. Choose consistency over size."

FWIW, hugs--
Hops