BPDRecovery.com: Forums

Hi guys.

I am having a hard time right now. My t says that my interpersonal effectiveness is really off. I need to work on that and he told me to use my coping skills to get through the night. I have done so many of them. I am bored that's one thing. the other thing is that I was watching Dr. Phil and a commercial came on for an upcoming new show and the poor woman on there was flipping out because of trauma stuff. Anyway, seeing her reaction and hearing what is the accusations, I wanted to throw up. I felt like i was going to pass out and it brought up images of when I was sexually abused at 11 by my great uncle. it was in the spring time too and now that it is spring time, things start coming up for me. I hate it.

I just wish I could imagine it away. Instead i see the innocent girl I was, crying and laying like I was frozen and then hiding in my bedroom closet in shame.

it makes me ill and furious! I see my T tomorrow and i just need to get through the night but I am so afraid right now. I know that nothing is happening to me in the moment but it feels so real still!

does anyone else go through this where it feels like it is literally happening all over again and you are right back in that place? everything is racing in my head. and some of you know how I have described my dissociation and I don't want to dissociate. when parts of me get tweaked, that happens and I am not in control. we wont' get into that because that's not what I am posting about. I need some help and/or encouraging words tonight to just get through another 15 hours before i see my T.

Thank you,
Roo

((((((Roo))))))

I don't have your expereinces, but I wanted you to know that there are people out here thinking of you. I'm on a library computer, so I may not be able to get back to this, but remember, 1 minute at a time, you CAN make it through the night.

(((Roo))),

I can't relate to your replaying the experiences, but I know others on the board who have discussed that happening to them. I can relate to the difficulty of getting through the hours when something important is happening the next day, though. I have trouble calming down, and sleep does not come easy. I also understand wanting to be with your T and how slow the hours go when you are waiting for that moment.

Can you distract yourself? Read a novel? Bake a cake? Do some project that can get your mind off of what it's thinking about? Talk to someone on the phone, write a letter, draw a picture, watch TV, watch a movie? Do you take any meds for sleep? Maybe you are already sleeping, and tomorrow will be here before you know it.

You will get through the night. Keep posting if you need to, if you are online now.

Thank you for posting to me.

I did do a lot of things to distract on Thursday. I got my basketball pumped up and me and my husband spent about an hour outside playing pass with it. then I bought some huge bubbles and wand and sat outside playing with bubbles and sidewalk chalk. My neighbors just stared but its ok :O)

Watched tv..........did all that stuff but I was in a place where it wasn't keeping my attention and I kept going back to other stuff. but once I fell asleep, I was out for the night. that was good. my dreams were sad but not about trauma stuff so that was good.

then I got up at 5:30 this morning and had my usual breakfast of cheerios and am feeling better. left messages and emails for my T and I asked him if he would call me this morning before session to talk about what he felt we should do to approach the trauma. usually on fridays, we don't do trauma work just because its so hard on me going itno the weekend, but I said i want to leave it up to him as to what approach we use. I need to trust him to help me today.

and for comfort, I am going everywhere in my PJs today. I am not doing make up and getting all pretty. I need to feel safe and I feel safest in my pJs. when some trauma happened, I was in a dress and looked pretty. so I feel too vulnerable and scared right now. although i have been wearing make up and dressing up a lot lately and feel so good when I do for the most part. just not today. I need my sweats and pjs. I hope that doesn't sound too stupid to people. but for me, certain clothes have an association of 'protection' for me.

thank you for your suggestions. I will probably post after my appointment. Its hard for me because of the internal family systems work we do. Not a lot of people understand the language of it and I don't want to confuse anyone. I will just do my best I guess.

Thanks,
Roo-D-Bear

(((Roo)))

I hope your session goes well today!

we might do some EMDR around the trauma. will post later.

Roo

Roo-D-Bear,

My t and I do some Internal Family Systems work and EMDR. So if you want to discuss anything about it, feel free to bring it up here or in a PM to me.

I totally understand about getting triggered about traumatic events and dissociating. It's scary and really interferes with daily life without skills to bring yourself back to the present moment and calm down.

My suggestion to you is to go SLOWLY with the trauma work. . .trying to work on too much trauma at a time overloads me emotionally and I get overwhelmed. Then it does no good. So if you find that you are getting too triggered in your trauma work, to the point that you dissociate, please tell your t you need to slow it down. It has taken me a long time of building up safety and coping skills to be able to start doing trauma work without either getting flooded emotionally or numbing out.

Hope your session goes well!

i do relate because that is what i do with my CPTSD/

and while you must go slowly, distracting will sometimes make it worse. my T told me, as much as i can, to sit thru them. touch something to keep yourself grounded in the here and now. ice...chair,,,something uncomfortable. and tell yourself your safe, it is past, over and over. distracting is well and good, but these traumas are screaming to be felt and heard. and will come up , in my case, for years.

i had a pal who saw his dad shoot himself. literally. it fucked him up beyond. he cant sleep, eat, do much at all. he sees that tape replay continually. in my case, most of mine wont come up unless a situation comes up which keys me back to it.

it can be very dangerous to handle this alone. i end up sleep walking again and not knowing where i am. so be really careful. i wish you well in this. i agree with emerging... we have to work thru as much as we can...once the blank spots come back to us as actual memories. but never alone...or too fast or deep. you must gather those skills emerging talks about so you can handle it. always keep yourself grounded in the present, and say out loud if needed, "im safe, im ok now"

Thank you for the suggestions! I decided to act opposite and got out of my PJs for one. That made me feel uncomfortable enough I think to keep me present. Not sure if that made sense or not but my PJs are the most comforting clothes I own!

I talked to my T before my session and at first we said that we would skip the EMDR but I had some words mixed up so we clarified them at the session and we ended up doing EMDR. I mixed up some terms with Internal Family Systems and EMDR. It was a sincere mistake. So My T says that i need to learn to trust him again. So I thought that trying some EMDR was a sure way to show him and myself that I was trusting him again.

It started out going one way and then ended up going in another direction. It was very helpful actually. Its hard to explain. But I guess the bottom line is that I feel guilty a lot when i enjoy or want certain things with my husband but that those same exact things are the traumas to me as a child. It got super confusing. So the EMDR helped to release that out of me and my T said I did some major amazing work yesterday. By the end of it, I was so exhausted. He reminded me that any time I ever did EMDR, it exhausted me and that was normal. It was hard emotional work.

I was able to stay present the entire session and I was afraid of not being able to. So that helped me to see that I could trust my T to help me as much as he could. He said that a flashback was different than dissociating and that is what I was scared of. I thought they were the same. but of course when I could 'hear' the footsteps as we were processing, someone else in the office happened to walk by the office and all I could hear was footsteps. but I stayed present. My heart just was beating real fast. but I knew I was safe. My T wouldn't let anything happen to me.

I ended up taking a good sound nap yesterday and then fell asleep early friday night and slept til noon today! whoa!

thank you for letting me post here and for the encouraging words too. I have stalled in therapy for too long and getting back into it is hard. Its a trust thing.

Roo

Roo, what is Internal Family Systems? Thanks.

Roo, while the "acts" may be the same, the intent is very diff.

one is love.

one is power and wrong.

can you see that?

i do relate to the problems you have with this. i too, was molested as a child. i just dont recall much of it yet but feelings.

emotion shit just is exhausting, isnt it>?

hang in there. you can do this. you have a great T, it seems.

yes I am realizing that it is very different. I didn't even become one to engage in S stuff until I met my husband and then a lot of stuff came up for me. Thankfully I can talk to my T about ANYTHING and I mean anything. it does not embarrass him and so I can even ask questions. he says that I am kind of like a teenager learning all this stuff for the first time. anything to do with S in my family was thought to be 'bad'.

it is very freeing though i have to say, to be able to see that the acts and intents are very different. somehow I thought that if I liked it, it would mean that I was 'bad' like the perpetrators. my T and a trauma support group I used to attend, showed me that I am not bad and that it doesn't mean that I have addictive sick thoughts and actions either. isnt' complex PTSD confusing?

thanks for your post.

Roo

C/PTSD is confusing. i went the other way and was very promiscuous. people go either way from molesting.

interesting enough, molesters are always someone who WAS molested themselves. they act it out. i found that interesting. victims perpetrating victims.

well, you can always ask me anything. my pal does and didnt know about orgasms until she was 40. and she had 4 kids then. very little bothers me..lol. asking is how we learn.

im so glad you are blessed with this T. a true blessing, arent they?

"anything to do with sex in your family was bad" no doubt because some dysfunction of a relative who passed down the issue. my mom was that way, too. i only knew about periods from a film in school.

you are not bad. you were powerless. and sometimes our bodies betray us and even as kids, will "like it". its a purely physical thing, and normal, even while we may be screaming inside to leave us alone.

((Roo))