Tag: trauma

Trying not to choose destructive “safety”

I’m buzzing with anxiety and I don’t know what about. There are loads of things I have been really worried and upset about. But I can’t work out what’s bothering me right now. My stomach is knotted around a cold ache. An actual physical pain. My head feels the same as when my thoughts spiral but there aren’t any thoughts I can catch, just dizzy blankness. My legs are shaky and I’ve lost balance several times. It’s different from the dizziness and fainting that comes with the POTS. I wish I could make it stop. My tablets I regularly take in the evening usually sedate me a bit but it isn’t working. If I could walk for ages, or go running, maybe it would channel the feeling out of me (but I can’t since I can only walk a few yards with crutches).

If I knew why it would help. It’s scarier when the feeling is separated from thoughts. The emotional state seems to have a tighter and limitless hold on me even if rationally I ought to know it will pass. An emotion that shouldn’t be unbearable becomes so because of confusion, fear, and I realise now, the dread that is wrapped up in the associations of previous experiences of this emotion (abuse, being trapped, feeling guilty, feeling unable to stop terrible things happening because of me).

I desperately want to numb it and stop it. Drink, or cut, or binge, or take enough tablets to knock me into sleep. That seems to be the default response my mind and body make. I’m asking God to help me stay right here and feel and know I am with Jesus. This week leading up to Easter we are particularly close to Him in the suffering He went through so we could be with Him. In this small struggle that feels big right now, He hasn’t left me. I will keep on reaching out for His hand, praying and reminding myself of His goodness. Every moment is His way of coming to us now and sometimes we are with Him on a steep path, a storm or a lonely place. What matters is we are with Him.

It seems I’m saying what I really want to believe, rather than give in to the false security of numbness through destructive actions.

Jesus, please hold me, Mother Mary, please help me.

To be continued…

Ginny xxx

Moth to a flame

I’ve been drawn back to a website that has been harmful for me before. Another page I follow posted a link to it. I should never have looked at it again in the first place. Definitely not the second, third, fourth time… until I was being drawn back compulsively, hurting more and more each time but still going back like the proverbial moth to a flame. Or to a fluorescent artificial bulb, which seems more appropriate in this case. Why? Is it some kind of self-harm? Some unwilling fascination like not being able to look away from something awful, a crash or accident scene – except the awful thing in this case is what I fear that I am inside.

I don’t want to say what the site is or what was written as that would do no good to readers. In summary it promoted fear of people like me with personality disorders and the harm we do and made various claims about how we think and what our motivations are. It was not new to me, the claims are nothing new and I’ve been well aware of these ideas about people with personality disorders for some time. What was written drew me right in. It activated particular fears and past memories for me. It’s worse because on the face of it at least, the site is highly regarded (though I have suspicions) and because in the past before coming across the harmful articles, I had found some pages on the site about surviving abuse to be helpful and relatable. It’s not as though I stumbled across just any webpage on a spur of the moment search.

It is very hard to hold any sense of my identity apart from what this site “says” I am and what I now fear I am. I was afraid before and continuously doubt myself and my motivation, thought processes, whether I actually love, actually want good and care about people in my life or if actually I’m selfish, if someone thinks I’m good am I actually deceiving them, and it’s never ending. What I’ve read has multiplied and sped up all these thoughts.

The last 3 nights I barely slept, not really knowing why, though this unending thought process is probably a large part of it.

Xxx

Looking for an app to track mood and pain

I am seeing a psychologist at the pain clinic for a short number of sessions. When I was first sent an appointment to do therapy I was really worried and almost angry about it, feeling I’d had enough of therapy in other services where I couldn’t trust the therapists or the community team and I couldn’t risk making myself vulnerable again. On top of that I was sure the therapy would be from the point of view that nothing is wrong with me, the pain I have is unnecessary and my fault because I’ve rested too much and not pushed myself enough, which is an attitude I’ve encountered too many times on so-called pain management courses. Amazingly it has turned out to be a very different experience.

I don’t tend to find pain is terribly related to my mood, beyond the fact that I’m more anxious and low when the pain is worse. It’s also connected to flashbacks but I don’t quite know how. We identified in therapy today that I find awareness of my body very difficult. Maybe that is common in personality disorder and certainly in dissociative identity disorder.

I want to try tracking my pain and my mood together to see if this may show up any links I’m not aware of. I’ve done the two separately before as part of learning to pace activity (I did not find the recording gave me any new insights) but I’ve not really done the two together, not over an extended period anyway.

Phone apps exist to track your mood but I’m looking for an app that tracks mood and pain. Ideally I’d like an app where I could record a numerical score for my pain and my mood every couple of hours through the day, with space to make a brief note if something very significant happened (for example if I have flashbacks or an event triggers traumatic memories or dissociation).

Have you used an app like this and did you learn from it? Any recommendations would be very helpful.

Ginny xx

The worst thing they can make you fear

TRIGGER WARNING for discussion of abuse and control

The worst thing my abuser made me fear was not what she would do to me. Actually I accepted that without question.

The worst thing to be afraid of is myself. That’s what my abuser made me most afraid of. Me. What I really am. What I can’t stop. What I would do to her. What I would do to everyone I loved. What everyone would find out in the end about me. What the people watching thought and how they’d take my loved ones away because of me (the watchers didn’t exist, I’m told, but it was too deeply engrained for that to make any difference now).

I was supposed to love my abuser, and that made it worse, because the revulsion I felt showed I should be repulsed at myself.

When rarely, I told what had happened, nobody heard or nobody believed, but she’d already told me they wouldn’t.

I escaped from my abuser, in physical terms. And I know I’m very fortunate because so many don’t.

The one thing we can certainly never ever escape from is ourselves. The one way my abuser ensured her power over my present and future as well as my past is this terror of myself. Add to that my “alters” (the child that screams unendingly because no-one heard her when it mattered; the violent lunatic full of anger as I’m tricked again and again by those who supposedly love me) – and my abuser is not only in my mind now but sickeningly in every current relationship and interaction.

I can feel her laughter and ridicule now. I feel surrounded.

X

Frozen, slipping, returning

I’ve a list of things I need to do. Call my energy supplier as my current gas and electricity plan is coming to an end. Write Christmas thank you notes (I always have them done by New Year so this is late for me). Type up notes for some admin I do to help my fiancé’s work. Read the material to prepare for a meeting on Friday. Clear up the house. Sort the TV licence payment.

Why do I feel like I’m drowning… no, stuck in a block of ice too frozen cold to move again? I can’t do any of it. Waves of exhaustion, vacancy, cold, fear, dread, crash over me even though I can’t find any immediate cause. I slip in and out of presence and dissociation. The guilt intensifies on every return.

My to-do list is an insignificant lot of things to most people, I know. I know if I told someone I am struggling with this they’d say it’s nothing and just day to day responsibilities. This brings back so many memories of times I’ve struggled before and family members have told me I have no responsibilities and I’m a spoiled brat. Here comes more guilt and fear wrenching inside.

What I have to do overwhelms me but it’s not really what overwhelms me – the waves, the cold, the dissociating and returning do. It hurts and takes all of me and if it weren’t for my fiancé I don’t think I’d be able to come back at all. I’d have no strength left.

Why now? When so much has been so good? (Ungrateful little brat, look what everyone’s done for you, why isn’t it enough – the voices scream, preventing me telling anyone about what’s happening because that’s what they’d say again.)

Is that just what trauma and depression and borderline do?

How can I try to escape from this ice and reach out and reach forward again? I know sometimes doing even the tiniest thing can make a difference at first. I forced myself to get up this morning, get dressed and put on makeup. Afterwards I was shaking and exhausted. Being more ill physically than usual doesn’t help. After some rest I made a little start on the paperwork I’ve just been sent that needs to be read for Friday. My mind was a blank for hours after that and I was gone for much of the time but at least I had achieved something not absolutely nothing. I’ll write this down in the journal I resolved to keep, to see if this helps me when I look back. I will be able to acknowledge what I did and somehow find a way to see good in this day and give thanks. Creativity sometimes breaks through the ice so I made a paper origami ball and did a few steps towards decorating the photo frame I’m giving my dad as one of his birthday presents. Then I really, really struggled with so much pain in my head and inside me, anxiety, hallucinations and unbearable voices and just… numbing cold.

I want to sleep now and I will soon and hope rest can shut off this state for a while. I don’t know if I believe even that right now. I forced myself to write this post bit by bit over a couple of hours because when I wake up tomorrow and read this, I’ll know I got through it thanks be to God, and something, however small, will be different in the morning.

Ginny xxx

Anger management courses – do they help?

I’m scared that I’ve become increasingly angry and less able to control it. Maybe I never could control anger. Under my abuser’s control I never felt it, except for a very few occasions where some feeling that probably was anger exploded, always severely punished. When I did start to feel it, when rebellious feelings grew, fear of myself almost always grew stronger, and so I channeled it towards myself with anorexia and self-harm. I lost control eventually, years later, but bulimia and binge eating, overdose and cutting still did well to numb my most frightening emotions. But then, and I don’t know why, I started to scream. Rage burned and exploded and my control was gone.

I did not learn, in the therapy I undertook for my personality disorder, how to control the anger.

It may not be the first emotion that takes hold of me but every difficult, unwanted, feared, painful emotion seems to work its way to uncontrollable anger that I can’t control. I still turn it against myself but it explodes outwards as well. Dissociation possibly gives me and others some protection but my “others” can get angry too and that’s so dangerous.

Recently, someone suggested to me that I could try an anger management course.

I’d never thought of this. On one level it’s an obvious thing to try. Why hadn’t I thought of it before?

I’d be very interested to hear about your experience if you’ve tried an anger management course, especially if you also suffer with PTSD or personality disorder/s. How did you do the course, for example a self help course or taught? How did it help or not help you? Is there a particular kind of course that will help those of us with PTSD or PD?

Thank you in advance.

Ginny xxx

The peculiar significance of treacle

Every year I forget how evocative certain Christmas smells are. Not just the more obvious things like candles and oranges and mincemeat and brandy, but certain specifics. It was black treacle and spices the other day, as I was making gingerbread dough. Suddenly as I counted out the syrupy spoonfuls I was taken back to being stood in front of another cooker, aged maybe 7, stirring the pan dissolving the sugars, with my mother watching. Chain smoking, of course. A knot of emotions expanded inside me as they did then. Excitement for Christmas. Some kind of enjoyment of doing a grown up thing. Delight at wanting to make pretty biscuits. Wanting to get it right and please my mother…. well, the desperate need to get it right, impeccably following the process she had shown me. That meant tenterhooks and anxiety and churning emotions, too often teetering on the edge of me ruining everything again (I thought). One mistake, one deviation from her instructions, her watching would explode into anger, ridicule, accusations and threats. Hours of shouting and violence would follow. And everything, I had made her do, and each time I’d have that sick terror inside that this time it was over and the threats were being fulfilled. Looking back and seeing how little was needed to tip us into that disaster, it’s bizarre. Laying a biscuit onto the baking tray in the “wrong” way (ie not the precise arrangement she required), not getting the bow on a package right fast enough, touching the wrong switch on the oven – even simply letting any of my anxiety show. It sounds almost as if it should be funny. But it isn’t funny when someone has you isolated, under their power and in fear; not in fear of them but in fear of yourself. Because one sure thing to me at the time was that it was my fault.

So, standing there measuring the treacle it all came back. As I’ve been making the biscuits over the last day or so, I keep being catapulted into so many emotions and suddenly reliving snatches of good and bad … And to tell the truth I’ve been pulled into the bad too much. Exhausted.

I’m fighting it, because there’s no way my abuser’s having this Christmas. This Christmas is for God and the present and my fiancé and it’s about all the good we can do and are thankful for today. I speak briefly, quietly to God as I roll the dough, cut, bake , ice, package these cookies. I’m pushing through the dissociation to do all I can to hope for this Christmas and for every flashback find twice as much I’m thankful for today.

Ginny xxx

Hospital

My friend has been admitted now (see my last post).

He was in much more danger than I realised. I’m not putting specifics to keep confidentiality and to avoid any unhelpful triggers for readers.  He only told me after we had parted earlier. He didn’t want me to know and be scared. Then he went to A&E but didn’t go in. He was scared. He felt huge guilt too I think. He was confused and distressed and we lost contact and he was walking or lost in the hospital grounds I think. I got there as quickly as I could in a taxi phoning security to search for him. Thanks be to God for Security whose officers tracked his car. Thanks be to God that he did make it into A&E. I still don’t know exactly how.

Again I didn’t want to leave but he really preferred I did as his anxiety about hurting me (which he has never done) was so high. I spoke with the nurses and we all agreed is best for me to come back in the morning. He’s being cared for…he’ll be on a drip…he’s not alone…

I’m scared. He was so weak and drowsy and in and out of consciousness / awareness.

I’m hurting. Shaky. Scared. Exhausted. I don’t know what to do with all I’m feeling for him and the overload in my mind and chest. Hurts to breathe.

I know I have to accept right now I can’t do anything. The doctors caring for him can do something. God can do… more than something. Still I feel so horrible for everything I can’t do and all the good I see in him where he only sees what he calls poison.

I place him in your hands dear Lord Jesus. Hold him please tonight. Whatever happens now.

Ginny xxx

How long their words stay with us

I’m trying to persuade a friend who is very ill to go to A&E tonight, or at least call 111. I wish I was where he is and could take him.

He is not at all well in so many ways. He’s waiting for several operations.  The worst danger tonight is that he has unbearable pain and symptoms to do with blood clots he has; we know with these symptoms that there is a danger of a blood clot in his stomach. We know he should seek help urgently in these circumstances with these symptoms; medics have told him this.

The main reason he is very reluctant to get help is what was said to him by a doctor the last time he was admitted, a few days ago. The doctor made a range of sarcastic comments about him to nurses and another doctor and said outrageous things to him including that hospitals are for people who are really ill not timewasters like him! This was when he’d been admitted when he’d attended as he was instructed to for an ECG and scans. He was found to have three bloodclots in his leg, as well as the numerous other serious problems for which he is due to have operations.

I cannot conceive what would lead a doctor to say what this person did. I know anyone can have a bad day. Anyone can dislike someone. Doctors, nurses, HCAs and other staff in hospitals are under a critical amount of pressure, now more than ever. But what would lead someone to say such bitter, accusing, unsubstantiated, false things to a person they are specifically there to care for? Did the doctor actually believe it? Or was he somehow venting anger, hate, judgement, for some reason onto my friend?

Not only this but without asking any questions to determine his mental state and without advice from the psychiatry team at the hospital or the community mental health service my friend is seen in, the doctor said to my friend that he should be Sectioned, and started trying to arrange this. Was he assuming or insinuating that my friend’s physical health conditions didn’t exist and were delusions? In spite of countless scans and test results and reports? Had he branded my friend as attention seeking because that’s the stereotype he holds of people with the mental health problems my friend has? Did that stereotype have such a hold it negated the physical evidence in front of him? Or does he regard people with mental health problems as unworthy of help or care however much they need it and think instead we should be shut up in institutions out of the way of those who he thinks do deserve help?

I’ve been on the receiving end of this numerous times. I’m really hurting for my friend and knowing he’s been left in so much danger now. Whatever the reasons behind what that doctor said, his words have told my friend he’s unworthy of help and must not ask when he needs it. My friend struggled enough with that already. He has had enough abusive people telling him he deserves pain, deserves bad, is asking for it. I don’t know exactly how it is in my friend’s head of course, but I know from my own experience how much louder memories that tell us we are unworthy, that confirm what our abusers told us, scream at us than any fledgling sense of ourselves and our value can. Words like this doctor’s join with the voices accusing and taunting us and they do not fade; they take a grip of us and punish us if we do not obey them.

My friend is in unbearable pain now and potentially great danger, and I’m trying to persuade him to go to A&E or if he cannot bring himself to do that, to call 111 for advice. I’m praying that if he does speak to 111 – when he does, please God – the advisers that speak to him are compassionate and show him there are people that do want to help and do have compassion and will help and believe him.

What this doctor said to my friend was awful by any standard, I think. Still, I wonder do people, especially people in authority roles (such as those who determine the medical care we get), know how much difference their words make, for good and for bad? I think words do have greater power for those of us with BPD, with histories of trauma and abuse and rejection, and no doubt with many other health conditions too. This is our responsibility to be aware of and to try to learn ways to cope with and I’m starting to see that very gradually,  with a lot of time, we can. It would not be at all fair to demand that other people treat us more carefully than they treat others. Actually, this is one of the things I fear demanding of others. But when we are already in crisis, desperately needing help, it would help so much if those caring for us knew the lasting difference their words and actions can make.

Ginny xxx

 

 

The wrong voices calling

The voices are very bad at the moment. My emotions are soaring and plummeting at the moment since my last group therapy and discharge on Friday. So it is not surprising the voices are worse. They often are when I’m emotional and stressed.

It’s as if now this stage of therapy is completed and I’m trying to hang on to the good and the real, the voices are getting louder (stronger?) trying to pull me back to the blackest darkness and terror where “reality” was my abuser’s words and threats. All morning I’ve heard her calling out to me. Sometimes just my name. Sometimes the things she’d say – mocking, detesting, making me an animal, less than human, threatening, confirming my evil and the terrible things that would happen (unless I gave in and gave her total control). I hear her. And it is terrifyingly real. It is totally outside, not an echo in my head. I turn towards the voice and dread grips me. It stays totally real to me even as I try to repeat my safety statement.

I am Ginny. I am 32 years old. Today is January 30th 2017. She is far away. I am safe now. I trust in God. …He created me for good not evil.

These aren’t the only voices I have but they are some of the most frightening and separate me most from reality. I don’t know how or if there is any way to stop or change the voices. If there is I haven’t found it in the therapy I’ve had so far. If I can’t change them can I lessen their power?

I try to remember,although the world created by my abuser was my reality – the only reality for 11 years and the most of it for another 14 or so – it is not the truth. The voice is not trying to do anything, or pulling me anywhere. It is a hallucination. It is a memory. It is not a person (now). A hallucination does not have a will or an aim. A hallucination is not physical so cannot pull or drag me. So why does it have power to cause me terror, to return me into the frightened child, to make it impossible to believe in my freedom or any goodness in me?

Several other people I’ve met who have personality disorders have shared having experiences of voices. In my 18 month MBT therapy, we talked about hearing voices in the group sessions. Sometimes for example, I’d share that I was struggling to stay present in the room because the voices were loud and scary and I was constantly being pulled away from reality. But in therapy we didn’t get to explore the experience of voices or how to cope with them, how they may interact with what you’re feeling and what is happening in reality, how they affect interactions… in therapy the focus was on using grounding techniques to move away from them and be present in the group and able to focus on others. Sometimes we talked a little about how the voices may affect our thoughts about ourselves and about others, for instance when we’re interacting with someone, leading to assumptions (they think I’m evil, the know I’m bad, that’s what the voices are saying) rather than curiosity about the other person’s thoughts.

However we didn’t talk about how to cope with them. We didn’t talk about their emotional effect on us, the way they pull us with them, the control they have even though it makes no sense, how they bring traumas right back, how what they tell us and make us feel is more gripping than our current experiences, if there is any way we can respond to lessen their power…

There is a place for using grounding techniques to cope and this is valuable. There is great worth in learning to be able to stay present for others here and now. Probably a value to staying present in the moment for ourselves. Yet I wish there were more than grounding techniques because there’s always next time the voices come. Their apparent power stays the same.

Perhaps I’ll look to see if there are any books that explore voices and how to cope. I’ve pretty much been told that the voices won’t go away but if I keep taking my medication, I won’t lose my grip on understanding they aren’t real. I feel I need to find more than that.

I would be very interested to hear about experiences of voices that anyone would like to share.

Ginny xxx