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Can I ask another question?

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BonesMS:
((((((((((((((((((((((((((((TwoAPenny))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))

Twoapenny:
Thanks, Bonesie :) xx

Half way through Addiction to Love and finding it very helpful, lots of bits in there I recognise in myself, a couple of bits that I have already noticed about my prospective new chap - not worryingly so (yet!) but good to have an eyes open approach I think, and I've skipped to the end and seen there's a section on what a healthy relationship should be like which I think will be very handy for me (and she mentions A Fine Romance in relation to this as well).  What has suprised me is that it describes to the letter my mum!!!  Had never thought of her in this way before but all the bat crazy behaviour is in there, in all her relationships.  Also see it in my old relationship with her and my sister's current relationship.  Funny how you notice it once it's pointed out to you.  There's a very interesting bit about people using hysteria as a way of keeping control which made me think of all the times she's made false allegations against me - it's generally happened after a row and I've wondered before about it being a way of reigning me in.

Anyway, enjoying the book, finding it helpful, I have Healing The Shame on the bedside table now as well which looks pretty substantial so might need something a bit more light-hearted in between! :) xx

sKePTiKal:
How about some plain old fiction? I just finished Isabel Allende's "Island beneath the Sea"... and it was completely engrossing. Read anything by her - she speaks the language of emotions and describes emotions well with words. It's like reading the musical score to a symphony, sometimes... all the emotions of the different characters, combined with thoughts, actions and plot. Even when I can't connect to her characters in any significant way... I'm always getting hooked into the narrative and plot. Her "special angle" I guess you'd call it... is of stories of people who've been repressed, suppressed, or even flat abused by society, slave masters, or social norms (like women's roles through history). She doesn't preach and weaves a very rich, complex story.

-------------------------------------------

You know the saying "rose-colored glasses"? And that it means that someone always looks at things in life positively? Versus the kind of person who always sees a threat, a bad outcome, negativity everywhere? Originally, I was a rose-colored glasses kid. For some reason, it infuriated my mother; she said it "hurt her"... and she humiliated it out of me, every chance she got... until finally I learned to maintain that negative outlook myself - even through self-sabotage, when all else failed. What I discovered... was that I learned to apply a negative description to my feelings - incorrectly; that when I went looking at the feeling itself... what I found were more positive descriptors and adjectives. As if I were being brainwashed to believe that being "excited" and feeling pleasant "anticipation" was instead "anxiety" and "trepidation". And as long as I lived under my mother's roof - it wasn't safe to question or challenge that interpretation. So when I grew up and left - I had a stowaway built into my head - of this kind of fearfulness. It was the wrong description for what I really felt... because to feel something different than my mother SAID I did... was to risk that kind of humiliation again - often in public.

It's like she insisted that I was shy; a loner. But really, I'm not. I crave connection with people - all kinds of people. I like them and like being with them. It's taken a long time to "prove" this to myself - but I'm making progress and no longer automatically reject invitations or overtures from people. And I'm not really as "naive" or "over-trusting" or easily influenced as she told me either.

When we're children, we're usually not permitted to question the parent's opinion of who and how we are. Protests are cut short and considered "talking back" - because they hold absolute power over us. We aren't even allowed to express these natural "selves" non-verbally, sometimes... depending on how controlling the parent is. What really sucks in dysfunctional parent-child relationships like this - where the parent has some sort of PD or mental illness - is that once they've stuck a label on you - it's there forever. In the parent's "world" or "reality"... the child never grows up, out of things, never changes... and they don't even accept the child as an adult. Their relationship (from their perspective) is still one of control... and it's this, I think - along with the self-attributed power to judge and condemn and humiliate and shame someone who is now an adult - that causes us - the children - so much emotional conflict when forced to deal with them...

maybe because if they relinquished the idea of being able to control the people they still think of as children - even with the cruelest means - it would somehow make them "less than" to themselves, somehow... and they fear that more than death, I think...

... just musing, this morning. I get carried away.

When you feel able, would you explain more about how you are experiencing this disconnect between your memories, feelings and body sensation? I'm curious about whether your understanding of this has anything in common with mine... or if our experiences are completely different. Just whenever you think you finally "get it".

Have fun with your new friend, Penny! I think you've both worked out a good plan for being together and having fun and keeping it "safe" for both of you!

Twoapenny:
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

sKePTiKal:
Yes, sweetie - I'm OK. Life is difficult, very busy, and exhausting right now, but so be it. I've done this before - and know when I've reached the "totally fried" point... and then rest as long as I need to. I'll have time to be a "lady of leisure" again - there's light at the end of the tunnel...

Thank you for trying to describe this "disconnect", right now!! You did a pretty good job, too. I think I understand, anyway!  :D

It's very different from my experience, in that I remembered feelings and thoughts instantaneously, when I remembered events. It's like it "all came back" from the pressurized stream of water from a fireman's hose - and yes, it knocked me back on my butt for a good long while. Even so, I still have memory gaps - or "experiences" that seem more like fantasy, like the angel who "rescued" me and sent me back to life, in what I remember. It's almost as if I'd been drugged - in that chronologically, there are huge chunks of time that I really can't account for. Yet other memories are vivid, have input from my senses, and in incredible detail.

Especially when we are children, we have some built-in brain "defenses" that kick in automatically (not by volition or choice) when we are terribly frightened, fear for our lives, or are experiencing something so horribly wrong, that it qualifies as "traumatic". It's quite normal, I was happy to learn!! (I was even afraid it was proof that I was "crazy", like my mom said). Sometimes those end up as the gaps in our memories, or in my case - an "alternative" to the reality I was going through at the time. Maybe the reason for your current "disconnect" is still a self-protective one - it's easier to deal with emotions by themselves... memories by themselves... you know?

Dealing with my own gaps... I found myself doing what I eventually called "emotional forensics"... trying to shift around various "clues" to piece together the most likely narrative - and also trying to find actual confirmation of dates - that chronology of what happened to me when - so that I could at least tentatively reconstruct that whole period of my life. I was completely gobsmacked when I was contacted by a close friend from that era - and since have "friended" many from that year in grade school when it all happened - on Facebook. One has been very helpful with confirming or ruling out some of my random memories from then - things that didn't fit anywhere in the "story", but could at least confirm that I wasn't completely "out of it" during that time. The emotions? Well yeah, for me they were vividly connected to much that had happened. In that respect, I was undeniably "present" through most of it.

Thanks again, Penny. You're embarking on a rewarding journey to reclaiming a bit chunk of your "self", I think.

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