Therapy, Scary Bus Rides and… Tea.

Had therapy today. It was hard.

Last night I e-mailed J about some things, that I’m having a really really hard time with. It’s a tricky triggering subject of attachment issues and all this stuff tangled up with my mom’s bpd and the way she thinks and the things she raised me to believe. And… I’m getting ahead of myself. I’m not going into detail, but it’s a BIG ISSUE and it terrifies me.

J encouraged me to talk to M about it, because it’s something that needs to be addressed with EMDR.

It was really really hard to pluck up the courage to talk to M about it. I struggled with the words. J had advised me to just share the e-mail with M, because then I don’t have to talk. But I had no way of printing out the e-mail, so… thankfully I remembered what I wrote and the insight I had, but it was still hard to get those words out. So, so, so hard.

The tricky thing is, that this is something that will probably only be fully resolved by talking it out. But it’s a conversation that absolutely terrifies me and I don’t think I can ever really have. I don’t WANT to have it.

But yeah, I explained things and then M said next Sunday we can do EMDR work to process this and work through it. I’m relief and nervous at the same time.

 

After therapy, I took the bus home. I was not prepared for it to be so scary and uncomfortable.  There was this boy on the bus, who was clearly mentally handicapped in some way. I could tell by the way he talked and acted. He also had the special bus pass and ID that you can get if you have a physical or psychological disability that allows you to pay a discounted fare to ride. (I have the same pass for my PTSD.) You have to have a doctors note and stuff to get the ID.

He immediately started talking to me. I couldn’t really understand him, partly because his words kind of slurred together, but mostly because the bus is loud and I have a difficult time hearing people. My brain is overwhelmed by all the talking, the loud noises the bus makes, the sound of the road. So I do what I always do when I can’t really make out/understand what someone is saying- I smile and nod. This boy gave me his phone number. I was nervous because I don’t like talking to people. I just wanted to be left alone. Then at some point he moved to sit right next to me, and I started to panic. I was blocked in, trapped against the window. He made me text him so that he would have my number. I was frozen with panic and fear, and he was right up next to me and in my space, and wouldn’t leave me alone, so I did it. He kept leaning into me, and touching me. I have no idea what he was saying, because I was trying to breathe and was dissociating, floating outside of myself and panicking. I vaguely remember he was saying something about how I need to come over to his house and we can hang out.

I was scared.

I don’t know what he meant or what he was implying or… I mean, maybe it was innocent and child-like thinking on his part, but I obviously took it in a way that he wanted to hook up or something. I don’t know. I don’t know. I just know I was scared and he kept touching my arm and my hair and I wanted him to stop. I don’t like to be touched, unless I really trust you. I don’t like people sitting right next to me. I don’t like people being within my ‘space’, which is within arms length of me. It’s my space. My little bubble of personal space. I don’t like it when people invade my bubble, and this was… beyond invading it.

Eventually I yanked on the cord to stop the bus and got off. I wanted to run away, get the hell away from there as fast as I could. So I finally did. I escaped into a big store nearby and walked around in a frazzled daze, it was busy and crowded in the grocery section which didn’t help at all. But I wandered around and ended up in the homegoods/furniture section which was a lot quieter. Eventually I just sat down and started tapping on my knees and trying to ground myself. I think I was in there for nearly an hour.

Eventually I felt grounded enough to manage walking around a bit.

And I decided to pick up some tea.

My therapist loves tea. Last week, when I was still getting over that nasty cold, she offered me some peppermint tea. I love peppermint. For me it’s very calming and grounding. So I said yes and I took some. I liked it well enough. I’m not sure of the taste, because… they all just taste like tea, to me. But it was warm and smelled like peppermint and I love that smell. Today I tried chamomile.  It was okay, too.

So, I wondered throught the tea isle, and decided… what the hell. There was a box that had different flavors, like mint, and chamomile, and lemon, and other blends. So I grabbed it and bought it, and when I got home I made myself some with the peppermint/spearmint blend. It helped ground me some more. Plus, I find the warmth helps soothe my throat which is still achy and scratchy.

I’m still not a tea person. I know nothing about tea. But this stuff was nice.

Ugh, it’s been a long day.

Is my PTSD not as bad as I think it is?

This has been something that’s kind of bugged me since I met with my new therapist, M.

At one point she asked me if there’s different degrees/levels to my dissociation and I said yes, and she asked me to explain them. I started off by explaining the more “mild” episodes, where I zone out, my mind goes blank. I’m sort of aware of where I am, but, my mind is just blank. It’s like I’m on autopilot. Then there’s episodes where I feel extremely detached, sometimes to the point of feeling outside myself. Then there’s the times where I shut down emotionally.

M said that the ‘mild’ stuff is fairly normal. That it’s more like what a lot of regular people experience, and not necessarily trauma related.

M said something along the lines of, “I don’t think you’re as sick as you think you are.”

She said it in a very gentle way I should note. It wasn’t condescending or anything, it had more of this feeling like she thought it would make me feel better or relieved even.

I’m not sure how I really feel about it though. I think at first maybe I was relieved, but now I’m… I don’t have a word for it.

I think it’s something I want to talk to her about again. Maybe I didn’t explain it right. It doesn’t FEEL normal. It only happens when I’m upset or uncomfortable. That can’t be normal right? I don’t know. I’m confused.

Edited to add: As I’ve been thinking about the “mild” zoning out, generally tends to lead to a “mild” detached feeling… that can grow stronger and stronger the longer I’m in that state. I think this is more the way my mind copes with day-to-day stressors. With the “smaller” things. Where as the out-of-body, and the emotional shut down… they tend to happen a lot more suddenly and with BIG triggers. In fact, the emotional shut down I’ve kind of only experience when I’m dealing with someone talking about wanting to self-harm or commit suicide.

Does this happen to anyone else?

When I experience a pretty significant trigger, and start to have that detached dissociative feeling… I feel like there’s this sudden pressure from inside my head. It’s all over, but mostly I feel it pressing against my forehead and that spot between my eyebrows. It’s this very very strong pressure that feels like it’s coming from inside. It doesn’t hurt. It just feels like someone is pushing against the inside of my head. It makes me feel like I want to shut my eyes and disappear.

It gets really hard to keep my vision focused.

Does anyone else experience anything like this?

Dissociative Continuum

I found this a while ago while researching dissociation. I think it explains it pretty well.

There are different stages of dissociation which lie on a continuum:

Daydreaming. Almost everyone does this. If you have ever let your mind wander in class because the teacher was boring, or driven to work and then not been able to really remember the trip, you have been daydreaming.

Imaginary Friends. Many children have imaginary friends. This is neither unusual or abnormal.

Dissociative Episodes. During traumatic events, extreme stress, or overwhelming emotions, you may “blank out,” “get lost in the carpet,” or even fall asleep. When you return you will not be able to recall where you mind went, or what you were thinking about. These dissociative episodes occur to help you avoid dealing with what is happening around or inside you.

Out of Body Experience. During a traumatic event, you may have the sense of being oustide your body, and feel that you are viewing yourself from a completely different vantage point. For example, you may see the event as though you were floating near the ceiling and looking down at yourself and/or your abuser.

Voices with Identities and Functions. You may hear voices inside your head telling you what to do or say. For example, one voice may tell you, “Date that person, he’s really bad for you.” You have compartmentalized yourself out of necessity, because although your abusers do not allow you to think, feel, or act for yourself, you still have to be able to function when you are away from them. Imagine you have put your behaviors, thoughts, and feelings into different drawers in a chest; there are dividers between them, but they are all touching, and you are aware of what is happening.

Fragments with Identities and Functions. If you need greater protection from your abusers, you may develop fragments with names, specific functions, and feelings. Your parents may demand that you be quiet, compliant, and pretend to be stupid. However, you also need to be a good student in school. You may have Quiet Clara who handles situations at home and Suzie Student who takes your tests at school. When a fragment is functioning for you, you may feel as though someone has “taken over” your body and you have no control over yourself; however, you are still aware of what is going on around you. What has happened is the that the “drawers” into which your behaviors, thoughts, and feelings are stored have become separated from each other and are no longer touching.

Note: At all levels of dissociation from Daydreaming through Fragments you are conscious of what is happening. Dissociative Episodes through Fragments are classified as Dissociative Disorders. 1-6 are all conscious and 7 is unconscious.

Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). This occurs when your need for protection from your abusers is so great you have developed alters, each with their own feelings, functions, memories, and names. […] There is some or no communication between alters, but you are not conscious of what happens when an alter is “out” (functioning for you), nor do you have any memory of what the alter has done or said. You have crossed the “amnestic barrier, ” consequently when you switch from being yourself to being an alter, you lose time. […] Nevertheless, all your alters are still you; they are parts of yourself which have become compartmentalized. What happened is that the “drawers” in you chest have become completely separated from each other. You have developed alters in order to protect yourself. Each alter holds memories, qualities, thoughts, and feelings that are perceived as being too dangerous for you to have. […]

(Source, emphasis mine)

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My experiences with dissociation, I’ve had up to the out of body experience, that’s what I’m sure of anyway. The out of body experiences are few and far between and come from extreme triggers- like when I was triggered at work a few weeks ago, and when I had an extremely intense therapy session, and a few moments I don’t remember very well from my child hood.

The dissociative episodes, I think, are how I coped on a daily basis through elementary, middle, and high school while I was stuck living with my mom. Back then, I didn’t know I was dissociating. I just zoned out a lot, and often had “dizzy spells”.

Towards the end of highschool and through college, I dissociated less and began having anxiety/panic attacks much much more often.

Then about 6 months ago, I realize I had begun dissociating again. I kinda felt like my body just couldn’t handle being anxious all the time anymore, so it switched to dissociating.

When I moved, I dissociated A LOT. I was nearly constantly dissociating. I’ve talked about it on here, how my therapist and I felt like there was just way way way too much to take in. Leaving behind my mom and old life, moving to a city I’ve only been to once, to a part of the country that is drastically different from where I was raised for 23 years. It was too much. So I dissociated.

Something this article doesn’t get into, but is sometimes a symptom when I dissociate is going emotionally numb. With certain triggers, I feel like my brain flips a switch and my emotions literally shut off. I feel absolutely nothing. My mind is still spinning, over analyzing- hypervigiliance is still working overtime, but I’m cut off from my emotions.

I also dissociate at work. It’s more on the level of daydreaming, I think. It’s sort of impossible not to, because the actual work is very very repetitive and mundane. Some jobs more so than others, there’s just nothing to hold your attention at all. I don’t know if this is a good or bad thing. If it’s going to make me more prone to dissociating- I kind of want to talk to my therapist about this.

The voices with identities and functions is something I wonder about. I think I may experience this but I’m not sure. Maybe I’m just mixing this up with negative beliefs and thought patterns. I don’t know. Hm.

Missed Milestones?

Here’s something that is always odd to me, and makes it hard for me to relate to people. It feels like all the time now when I meet peers in my general age group, mid- to late-20’s, I come to find out they’re married and have kids. I’m left feeling like a loser and unable to relate to them while they talk about their spouse or kids. I just sit there quietly like, “Oh. I’m a 24 year old virgin with no social life whose never really dated.”

When I’m listening to my coworkers talk about this stuff I’m left feeling like a naive child inside.

I don’t fit in.

I don’t even really have much interest in dating, or having kids. I don’t want that. I mean, even if someday I did want kids, I don’t think I could. I don’t know how to be a parent. I don’t want to make the same mistakes, I don’t want to fuck up my kids royally and I feel like I’d end up doing that because it’s the only example I have.

Then I start to wonder… if I wasn’t raised by a BPD, would my life be different? Would I be married and have a little one by now? Would I actually have a social life and friends?

Would I have gone to college and actually gotten a 4-year degree, instead of just my AA?

How many milestones have I missed?

How many will I continue to miss?

Will I be emotionally stunted  for the rest of my life?

Is this all there is ever going to be, an endless cycle of anxiety and panic, dissociation, and depression? Does anyone ever truly recover from emotional/psychological abuse and PTSD?

What’s the point anymore?

Taking it easy

So, I came home from work and laid down to nap for  a while. Then I watched Howl’s Moving Castle and Spirited Away. It helped me calm down for a while. However, I started dissociating during the movies. I quietly did the 3 Things exercise (look around the room and find 3 things you haven’t noticed before) and it helped bring me back to reality for a while. The rest of the time I just let myself detach. I was too tired to care.

Might put in another movie. Not sure. Maybe I’ll go to bed. S’been a long day.

BPDm sent me another e-mail with a link about the shit concerning my old teacher. Ugh.

Unexpected triggers

I hate unexpected triggers. Something as stupid as a song coming on, and I think about the last time I heard it, when I was really little, before the divorce.

It’s not even a particularly bad memory.

Then again, it’s not even a real memory. It’s a memory from when I was older, of watching a home movie on VHS from when I was real little.

That home movie always made me really sad. It was of my dad and me.

Anyway. That stuff was playing in front of my minds eye while I dissociated for a minute. It didn’t last long. But I’m struggling to feel grounded.

2 Weeks in New Home

Been a while since I updated. It’s been 2 weeks since I moved. I now live several thousand miles away from enDad and BPDm. I’m still kind of in a very surreal state of mind- it doesn’t quite feel real yet.

The first day was extremely hard. I was an emotional wreck, and cried for hours. I felt so scared that maybe I’d made a huge mistake and I wanted to go home.

Eventually I pulled myself together, and the next few days weren’t so bad. However, I’ve been dissociating a LOT. For some reason it’s especially bad in the grocery store, I don’t know why. Sometimes I don’t quite realize I’m dissociating until a while afterwords. It’s like, I’m present enough to know I’m out in public and usually where I am, but I can’t remember what my best friend was saying to me or what I paid if I bought anything.

I had a session over the phone with my therapist; she suspects I may be overwhelmed by my new environment. On top of moving out and away from my parents and all the guilt and old stuff that goes along with that, I moved to a completely different part of the country. Nothing here is familiar at all. It’s cold. It rains. There’s hills and mountains- you’ll be driving along and all of sudden you’re on the side of a cliff (or hill or whatever it’s called) and you’re up really high and it’s a over the edge is a straight drop down, and it’s kind of scary, and all the going up and down makes me very dizzy . Everything is green, there’s gardens everywhere, there’s trees I’ve never seen. The grocery stores are different.

It’s DIFFERENT. Unfamiliar.

It’s not bad and I’m not complaining that I don’t like it, it’s BEAUTIFUL here. But it’s different and I’m not used to it. It’s alien. And at times I think it’s too much, so my mind dissociates.

My therapist told me to try setting aside time twice a day to do a few yoga breaths and meditation, in order to help me stay grounded, since I used yoga to cope in the past. It’s familiar to me and she thought it might help. I’m doing my best to keep up with that. I usually manage at least once a day.

I’m also supposed to try just sitting outside for like 15-20 minutes a day, in order to just take in my surroundings and grow used to it. I haven’t been doing that. I suck.

Transportation was another issue that was starting to overwhelm me really bad. I was getting frustrated and scared and felt trapped, because I don’t have a car and I was used to being able to go wherever I want, whenever I want. I was having major anxiety over taking the bus- public trans is really big here-I’ve never ever taken a bus before and I was terrified of it. My best friend went with me on it one day and I feel a little better. I think I can manage better now. I’m planning to go downtown to the bus ticket center place thing, and get more route maps and stuff like that. I’m trying to gather as much information as I can, I’ll feel safer that way. I went to Barnes and Noble last week and got a map of the city.

I’ve had ups and downs.

At the end of last week, one night I had a bit of a major meltdown. I brokedown, relapsed a bit, was overwhelmed by old thought patterns, and triggers.

I’m doing better since then. I know it’s going to be like this for a while. I’m going to have ups and downs. My PTSD symptoms are going to get worse before they get better.

Things are okay, I guess.

Rough EMDR Session

Trigger Warning: animal neglect, effects of abuse, bpd mother’s suicide ideation and threats

Last Wednesday, in therapy, we did more EMDR work. It was intense and really really hard. I got stuck for a while.

Started out because my dad said stuff to me, asking what I’m going to do about my cats. I explained I’m taking them to a shelter, because I can’t take them with me, and if I let my mom have them she’d eventually dump them in the woods. He made some comment about how he’d do it too, and that’s what happened with the cats we had when I was young before my parents divorced.

He’s ALWAYS saying these awful, cruel things about my cats, because he hates cats. I HATE it.

He then went on about how I didn’t take care of them so we got rid of them. I was like, “I was FIVE YEARS OLD.” And he just rolled his eyes and was like, “So? They were your responsibility.’

It still makes me angry. It’s complete bullshit to expect a 5 year old to be completely and solely responsible for an animal.

While working with EMDR, I quickly saw the connection between being expected to take care of an animal all by myself at 5, and having to take care of my mother. It was like, “I didn’t take care of my cats, and then something bad happened. So if I don’t take care of my mom, something bad WILL happen.”

Fuck it’s so depressing to look back on it now. That I had to fucking have that weight on my shoulders.

I got really really stuck during EMDR, and I was somewhat dissociative. My therapist had to keep reminding me to stay in the present, stay grounded. It felt like a long time where I just couldn’t get past the, “My mom IS going to kill herself. She’s going to do it, something’s going to push her over the edge.”

It was a struggle to call it what it really is. My mom is NOT suicidal, she uses threats of suicide to manipulate and control people around her. She’s never made an actual attempt, she just talks about it until I panic and try to “fix it”.

Something that particularly got through to me, was my therapist was giving me things to focus on in case I got stuck again outside of therapy, and she pointed out that my mom survived before I was born. That kind of hit me like a ton of bricks.

It’s true. It’s completely, and totally true. She survived, she got on with her life, before I was born. She’s not going to shatter if I’m not around to hold the pieces together. I keep reminding myself of that.

God it was so so hard to face that, to pull myself out of the well worn path of thinking. It’s particularly hard because it involves facing and letting go of a role I’ve played so fucking long it’s become my identity. I’ve found myself thinking at times since that session, “Who am I if I’m not my mom’s caretaker and emotional support?”

I’m not sure. I need to figure that out.

Another e-mail…

Trigger Warning: effects of abuse, emotional abuse, abusive BPD mother

My flight is not soon enough. It really isn’t.

Why do I do this to myself?

I know I need to stop reading the e-mails. They’re abusive and nasty and triggering.

I set a filter to they wouldn’t go to my inbox, but I kept glancing at the folder they were being sent to instead. I noticed a new message and I read it.

I knew she was splitting me black, but there it was in writing. Splitting, gaslighting, playing victim.

And is seriously disturbs me that she’s using BPD related terminology, supposedly because she’s been reading. It makes me paranoid that she’d reading stuff on the support forums I post on, because some of the terms I’ve only seen on there.

Why did I read it?

I’m stressed out as it is. I’m freaking out over packing, and shipping, and moving, and money. 2 checked bags isn’t nearly as much room as I thought it would be. My carry-on suitcase feels too small. There’s so much stuff and I need to decide what to keep, and what to get rid of, and what to ship out. There’s so much I need to do and I feel like I don’t have enough time to do it.

And I’m scared. I’m scared of moving. I’m scared of making my best friend hate me. I’m scared of failing. I’m scared of things going wrong. I’m scared of how hard things will be. I’m scared of not being good enough.

I wish I could stay somewhere else until I leave.

Awesome. I’m feeling dissociative. I’m just going to end this here because I can’t focus on writing anymore.