Living in dignity and love beyond complex trauma (formerly IntoThisBreakingLight)
Tag: CPTSD
“Happiness can be found in the darkest of times, if only one remembers to turn on the light.” – Albus Dumbledore, “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban”
J K Rowling / screenplay by Steven Kloves
I think I’m still stumbling around in the dark banging into things whilst I’m looking for the switch, but I’m trying…. 🙂
xx
I’m going between boiling anger that I can’t stand (a force rising inside me which I can’t swallow down, just force and power uncontrolled and bursting free) crushing anxiety with spiraling thoughts, lists, growing out of control faster than I can count, no air to breathe, dread that I can’t surmount, and numb.
Numb. Nothing. Stopped. Watching. Un-engaged. Dumb. Deaf. Hearing what everyone else says but it makes no sense and causes unbearable sensations if I try to respond – I need numb.
I’m drinking tonight to make sure I stay numb and make warmth and cotton wool replace the ache, distancing the hurt from my dissociated state so it can grow without sensing the raw pain or maddening and crushing demands of the ‘other’ (real) world.
The pain from my gynae problems has been scary too, as well as the arthritis. It’s almost funny – completely messed up inside and the physical stuff out of control too, things ‘breaking’ one after the other. Nothing medically serious but it does seem to make me as useless as possible in the real world.
I don’t often drink and it’s a dangerous and stupid choice, especially now. I’m in a really dangerous state right now. I tried and couldn’t get help. I can’t choose rationally what to do. I’m saying it’ll just be tonight and tomorrow I’ll try to face it all again.
I really don’t know if carrying on with therapy is a good thing or not at the moment. I am more broken now than before I started this route and know more certainly that I’m on my own in it. I can’t keep trying to fight through day to day, to go to work and to keep going to therapy. I’m starting to wonder if it wouldn’t be better to just push everything back down again and live in my imaginary world. I functioned better day to day when I was anorexic and numb to everything. There isn’t enough support outside therapy to keep it going.
I keep on hanging on to things desperately, for them to be snatched away. The only times I’m not alone are when I’m faking it, even if I’m doing a bad job of that. When I can’t do it, when I am on the point of taking my life, when I am cutting, when I am terrified by the flashbacks, I’m on my own every time. Apparently I’m not allowed anyone there. Apparently I “wouldn’t qualify” for any social care support, and no family or friend wants to be a carer for me. I know they have no responsibility for me but that still really hurts.
I am thankful for my friends. I am not trying to be ungrateful. They do much more than I could ever ask. I know they can’t be there. I know often they are there when I can’t possibly believe they would still want to know me, after I’ve lost it and screamed and snapped.
Trying to keep going used to help. But now I get closer and closer to complete breaking point every day.
I’m going for another appointment at the hospital tomorrow for my 1:1 and I think I’ll tell her I’m thinking about not carrying on therapy. Things feel very very dangerous and close to the edge right now.
It’s very easily impossible to believe “this too shall pass”.
In BPD, that can feel like the most hurtful thing to be told, in the midst of utter pain. Even if the pain was triggered by a very small thing, at the time, it is not minor – it is the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back or the rope you were holding onto so so tight because everything else had been snatched from you, then this too disintegrates.
But the fact that is at once cruel and possibly hopeful, is that every time you go through that utter pain, and still continue, it is proved that “this too shall pass”.
On Friday afternoon this week I was about to end it because for the n’th time it was more than I could stand, more betrayals than I could bear, pain only for pain, the original source now lost amid the impossibility of existing beyond that moment. I was evil rubbish and the world was laughing at my hurt. It was time to overdose and walk in front of a train and end it. And perhaps I was going to hurt someone. My memory blacked out.
Somehow, on Saturday morning I was at my friend’s and she was cooking breakfast. She made “eggs in clouds” for a treat (look at the picture – literally a little egg yolk in a little savoury souflee cloud). There’s chopped bacon in the soufflee cloud so we thought perhaps it should be “pigs in clouds” instead. We talked about everything, minutiae and serious: baby showers, Harry Potter, Alan Rickman, jogging, marriage, how to stay in love and what to do when something nobody else cares very much about is unbearable to you, a mutual friend who may be in a bad home situation, sunshine, work…
So you see, it turns out pigs do fly, and this too did pass. It seems ridiculous that both these scenarios were real and followed each other by less than one day. But both were real. The change, although I do not know what brought it about, was real.
Perhaps it’s worth keeping a short note of the times that pigs did fly, that the darkness did end, what you did to change things, if you can remember – but if you can’t, even just record the fact that you did change things. That although that night you thought you could not go on one more moment, the next day you took a few steps out of your house, maybe walked down to the bottom of the road and back. That through the terrible flashbacks, you held on, and now you are back in today’s reality.
Both are real. Neither are permanent, both shall pass, but both are real. Note it down, however small it seems. Then the next time when the darkness starts to come, you can look back and be encouraged.
I’m going to be disloyal, or hypocritical, I don’t know which the word is, to my last post. But I’m crashing tonight. I can’t do it. I’m done and I haven’t got anything to be able to go on. I know it’s stupid and they say it’s not worth getting worked up over, it can be fixed; but it’s done and I ran out a long time ago. Why can’t anyone hear me? Why do they tell me it’s okay? It’s not anxiety it’s desperation and just needing one tiny thing to hold onto – no I’m not strong enough without anything to cling to and I know it’s stupid it’s so small but it really, really matters when everything else is too much and spiraling apart.
So it’s taken away as well and I’m done. Nobody will come and nobody can hear me screaming (stupid nasty spoiled child inside me and stupid ugly needing. ..) Even now I’ve told them the very worst and how much I can’t do it and nobody will come. And I won’t go to the hospital and I don’t deserve it and I don’t want them to stop me because I don’t want to go on and it’s nobody’s fault or responsibility but mine. I should have been able to do it.
I don’t think I can do any good…
I cut and cut but it wasn’t enough. I don’t think I can feel anything but this spent, hurting, screaming silently, needing it over.
I don’t think I can go to work tomorrow or anymore. Not even go out. I don’t know how to get to tomorrow. I’ll lose my job again. Well it’s clear enough I’m rubbish anyway. They’ll want me out of my house. I’ve wasted so much again. I should have done good. But I’m so so … just had it…
And everything I say I’m scared and whoever I tell I might manipulate or they think it’s to threaten or think it’s just stupid and not worth it and just get over it. ..and I’m scared of my anger. I’m sliding in and out of dissociative states right now.
To me it can be all I am holding to and I’m on the edge of ending it all, but to someone else it’s nothing, not worth it, and just fine that more and more is taken that I was clinging to and more and more heaped on that I cannot cope with. I can’t cope with this detachment itself either and knowing every worst feeling is invalid.
I really needed crisis support on Friday but didn’t get it. After therapy group I was spiraling down and out of control, then a number of bad events came snowballing, knocking me further down. I had a brief conversation with the duty line at the hospital and was supposed to get to speak to them again later in the afternoon but they didn’t have time. I was in pieces, cut and was on the edge of the very dangerous place I cannot take a single step more and decide to end it. Thanks be to God I didn’t but I took a higher dose of my tablets than I should to knock me out and stop the hurt (not really an overdose as it wasn’t over the maximum dose of anything, but I took more than I’m prescribed and everything together).
I’ve been fighting through this weekend as I’m working. What I want is numb, stay at home, stay under a blanket, no more feeling, no more thinking, no more hallucinations, no more noise in my head, never have to speak again, never do more harm, someone to hold me, to go to the dissociated place, forget everything I have to fight through and just stop and be allowed to need it to be no more, stop, sleep.
What do you do when you feel this and you can’t get help? It’s the weekend and/or evening. I couldn’t get help from the hospital on Friday. There will be nobody available until Monday and who knows if they will have time then to see or call me.
I could go to A&E but I wasn’t sure what they’d do, and it’s not really an emergency and there isn’t an instant solution. I need more help day to day. I could call 111 the NHS out of hours line, but they tend to tell you to go to A&E if you admit to self harming or being suicidal. They’d probably take my tablets away too. When I’ve been put in touch with a community crisis team before I’ve actually found it really unhelpful. They did not (in my uneducated opinion) understand BPD. What they said piled on the guilt and made me closer to ending my life and they were determined to show me I didn’t need (or deserve, I feel) any help and Iwasn’t genuine. If i got that right now I would go through with ending it.
Part of the problem needing help out of hours is having to try to explain your whole story – trauma, abuse, flashbacks, hallucinations, voices, BPD, hurt, fear, desperation and needing to end it – to someone who doesn’t know you or the therapy you’re having. It’s too frightening to do and the cost of being misunderstood too great.
I promised a friend that if it got to the worst I’d go to A&E before I did anything. I would, I’d keep that promise. I made it only because she would be more worried about me and stressed if she thought I wouldn’t. I would go at that point, out of honesty to her. Even though having reached that point I’d not want to be stopped.
What do you do when you need support out of hours and can’t see your GP or your usual clinic / hospital team? I’d be interested to know what others do.
I know a lot of it may involve other coping strategies not going to someone else for help. But what about when it’s bad enough they don’t work?
Ginny xx
It hasn’t been a great week.
Hurting with physical pain from gynae problems and joint problems.
Going between guilt for worrying and burdening my family and not being able to do what I should, and feeling cut up that I’m “in the way” to them and need to be compartmentalised so I don’t intrude on their life – the part of it they actually want not just feel obligated to do.
Seeing far too many things. ..scary things. ..that aren’t there… that are hallucinations from memories that grip me and shake me.
Wishing someone would hold me and tell me it would be alright even when the flashbacks come.
Working through water or a fog each day and knowing I’m getting it wrong and doing wrong and so so tired.
I slept about 4 hours tonight if that. Tomorrow is group therapy again. I am so scared to go. I will go because I mace this commitment to everyone in the group, the therapists, and to trying to get better, to God, and I won’t throw away what I’ve been given. But I’m scared. I don’t know where we are, I don’t know how to be, I don’t know who to trust, and I can’t trust what I did trust or where I thought we were before. Everything unraveled last week. I wish I need not speak. I wish I could just sleep and stop it all.
I will try to go forward thankful. I will ask thankfulness for another day, to learn to thank our God for revealing His loving kindness in the tiny little helps of each day and pray to notice and see them not just the mess in my head. I will try to work to make something beautiful – even just draw, colour, sew, write to my family and my closest friends who mean so much to me simply by still somehow being here.
Somehow this moment will pass but good will remain. I’m trying to believe.
I’m still struggling to process what I’m feeling after therapy group on Friday. Tomorrow I have my 1:1 appointment and I know we will be talking about it. It is going to be so hard to go and even harder to go back to group when it comes around this Friday.
Just when I’d dared to start to think it’s okay, it isn’t. Just when I’d started to think group might be a safe place, somewhere that you can dare to speak about things that are otherwise forbidden, it isn’t.
Just when I’d started to let my guard down a little and trust, it turns out I’ve hurt everyone and didn’t even know. How did I not know? Usually I can feel it right away and know it’s my fault and this time I didn’t. I so so needed to trust them there and now I can’t. I couldn’t understand what I was feeling then last night the thought hit me – what if actually I’m angry and hurting because I feel I can’t trust them? I did the wrong and I caused the hurt but what if I’m angry because I feel people didn’t say what was really happening?
What if I’m angry because I feel I can trust or speak anymore?
What if I’m angry because I really needed to trust and yet again it all breaks down, just as usual, every other time? I know and felt so so strongly they hate me, they are angry, they don’t want me there, they hate me, they’re angry, and they’re angry for each other too because I’ve done wrong and got it wrong and they think I’m nasty, a fake, no right to be there, they just want me to go away and just put up with me because they had to. What if that made me angry as well as guilty because I can never know where I am and know I must never ever let anyone close but so desperately need people?
Does anyone else ever just wish they could never have to speak again?
The hallucinations are multiplying as my thoughts spiral through all these things.
Ginny xxx
Stars can’t shine without darkness.
To everyone who is alone, hurting, fighting, crying, tonight –
Don’t give up. If you can’t say, one day more, say, just one hour more.
When all you can see is that everywhere is darkness and you are breaking and cannot believe that it will pass, if all you can do is breathe, then that is how you can go on.
In this darkness, you will be the stars, and this struggle you give your strength and your heart to will make you shine the brighter.
Ginny xxx
Don’t look back.
You’re not going that way.
I don’t think we should never look back. Sometimes it can be helpful to look back, analytically, or in gratitude, or recognising how things have changed or how far we have come.
Yet, I like this quotation because it reminds me that, no matter how terrible things have been and are, we try to have courage to face each day hope-fully, and to trust that even if we don’t know where we are going, each day we struggle is a day we are going on, and that God promises us “plans for prosperity and not disaster; plans to give you a future and a hope.”
Ginny xx
Dignity Beyond Trauma 