Hey Phoenix
What you mention about talking about feelings and giving them the wrong labels rang a bell with me because you mentioned something like it a while ago - not having the words to talk about them in the same way that other people would. I have a hard time talking about how I feel because I just don't know what to call it - my T will often start going through a list of possibles and I'll go, "yeah, that's it!". It's like I can't link emotions and language together, we just didn't talk about anything, ever.
I'll have a go at describing it but it's a bit wobbly in my head so it might not make much sense
I have memories, obviously, although there are big gaps. What I often have is a memory but nothing associated with it. No feelings, no reaction in my body, no sensation at all. My T was asking me one time what sort of clothes I liked to wear when I was a teenager, how I chose them, where I went shopping, what my favourite outfits were. I can remember a few bits and pieces I used to wear a lot, usually because something unpleasant had happened when I was wearing them. But it's very scant and there's no feeling or emotion associated with it. Then she asked me about my mum's clothes - I can see her wardrobe and everything in it. I can feel her coats, smell her perfume, I can see her skin cream on the dressing table, feel the weight of the bottle in my hand, the smoothness of it in my palm, I know which items of clothing she kept in which drawers, how she folded stuff. It's literally like I'm back in the room and I can close my eyes and describe every aspect of her stuff in detail. But when it comes to me there's just a haze, no sensation, no feeling.
Then I get what I would describe as physical flashbacks. Put bluntly, I feel as if I am being raped. I can feel weight on my chest, hands on my throat, stabbing pains in my genitals. I feel fear and terror but there's no memory there at all, my head's completely blank and nothing comes, not even a tiny image. Other times though, I get images but nothing physical and no emotion, no feeling. Sometimes I can hear his footsteps on the landing - clear as a bell, although obviously they aren't really there. And it's as if something disconnects, I start feeling scared but then it goes and I'm just numb and the sound gets muffled.
I get really intense feelings sometimes of rage, sadness, frustration, envy - but they aren't attached to anything. I don't know why they're there, or what caused them, or what I'm remembering that's making me feel that way. They can seem to come without a trigger, or be triggered by something tiny that seems really insignificant to me, logically, but obviously matters for some reason.
So it's like all the bits are there, but they're not together, they sort of float around each other - a bit like being given sections of a book in some sort of random order, I suppose, and you don't know what the whole story is so you can't put them together properly. My T has been getting me to write down what's in my head, how I am feeling and where in my body I am feeling it. I have found it very hard, but it's starting to happen. I have constant pain in my neck and shoulders, which I'd never noticed before. I am almost constantly tense, which I hadn't realised, and find it very difficult to relax and switch off. Even if my head is clear, my shoulders and neck are still tense and I often feel sick and get headaches, but for some reason I'd not noticed it and hadn't connected it to all the 'stuff'.
So I don't know if that makes any sense? Or if it's anything like your experiences? Hope you are okay xx
