Just needed to be heard for a little while

elsien

A question WaS about your experience, if you don't mind me asking.



Leaving a big gap if its too close to home at the moment.



on a perceptual level, that room overlay thing is interesting. Sorry, interesting is probably not a good choice of word from your perspective, but hearing about it from outside of the situation it does make me wonder what is happening cognitively.
Does that happen often for you, or is more often right inside the different worlds.

Waves_and_Smiles

It happens quite a lot, elsien. It's very hard to describe but when I make it back into this world I can see aspects of other worlds in a transparent form over this one. So I might see the chair opposite me but to see it I am looking at it through a transparent piece of furniture from another world. The only way I can describe it is an overlay of one world on top of the other so that I can see through them to the real world. I have often wondered how much is cognitive, too, my whole perception shifts, not into an hallucination as such as I can still see the real world, more like photos of the other places superimposed over the top.

jobbingmusician

An absolutely fascinating description of the overlay.

But your description of your mother - I just want to give you an enormous hug as I realise that you have experienced all this. xxxx

Also, although you have all your biochemical imbalances, etc, it does sound as if this was overall a healing experience, where you were working hard to comfort Lucee and therefore heal yourself. How does the idea of reframing these distressing attacks as recovery feel? *hides behind sofa in case the idea is so stupid that WaS will never speak to me again*

System

Waves_and_Smiles wrote: »

Well done, MU! You have a nice weekend to look forward, too! I hope that it is easier now that you have gone back today, I often find the anxiety beforehand is worse than the event itself.

Very little grounds me at the time, MU because I can't stay in this world for long enough. The episodes of screaming and hurting myself tend to be me trying to get back to this world but it rarely works. I am always aware of what is happening but I lose track of which world is real so I am never quite sure which one I am supposed to be grounding myself in.

Ah i see. Wish i could come up with helpful suggestions but i don't really have any experience of what you've experienced (i have dissociated before, but it was more i completely zoned out and went into a kind of nothingness (is that a word?) and did things i had no memory of

Waves_and_Smiles

Not stupid at all, JM! I really liked the fact that I was able to comfort Lucee as she is a representation of the child me that went through this. I really like that I was able to say to her that I would keep her safe, kind of the adult me telling little me that we weren't going to be hurt anymore. I do see that as a positive in amongst the terror.

Thank you for the hug, too. Looking back I am amazed sometimes that I didn't end up dead through either my own or my mothers hands or in a long stay hospital which was recommended for me by social services. It is only the fact that my psychotherapist fought it and said that I would lose myself completely if I was put into a situation where I didn't have to function that stopped it from happening. Sometimes I do look back from outside myself and realise how much danger I was in, oddly it didn't feel like that at the time. I thought it was a bit strange but relatively normal.

I have done that, too MU! I dissociate a lot, part is a biochemical imbalance and part of it is through PTSD. They kind of all get mixed up together and influence each other.

Waves_and_Smiles

I also wonder if I may have triggered today's episode myself. Last night during the two hours staring at the ceiling before sleep I was really concentrating hard on trying to recall my dad's funeral. There is absolutely nothing there at all. I compared it to other funerals I went to and what I know happens and you would think that something would trigger a memory but it as if it never took place. I can't get beyond sitting in the car on the way there, my aunt telling my hair looked nice and then it is 9 months later and I am sitting on my bed and knowing I have to suicide. There aren't even vague flashes of images or feelings from that time, it is as if I ceased to exist entirely for 9 months.

My psychotherapist at the time that I began to see directly afterwards told me that I might never get the memories back but I had hoped that as I healed and got older that I would remember parts of it. I apparently cared for my mother and ran a house for 9 months so someone was there, it just wasn't me and I just don't have a clue what went on. I didn't attend school so there are no clues there, no trips to my GP, it seems I didn't see anyone outside of my mother and grandmother. It was a huge life event and I can remember everything prior to it clearly, the police telling my mother and I that my dad had died, planning the funeral and choosing the flowers, my mother becoming very ill, choosing what I would wear, getting ready the morning beforehand and then nothing. Frustrating isn't the word...

What followed was also very scary as I went to my GP directly after my suicide attempt as I couldn't stop the bleeding and then it felt like every health care professional in the city descended on me all at once. Suddenly I was seeing my GP for 30 minutes a week, I had a psychotherapist, a psychiatric social worker, psychiatrist, ordinary social worker, Educational Welfare worker, my teacher friend, my Head of Year at school and my form tutor plus two more random teachers and they all wanted to speak to me what seemed like all of the time. I was very confused and very afraid as my family had kept me isolated for years and I had no idea how to cope with all of these people suddenly wanting to know every aspect of my life.

Eventually my psychotherapist called a case conference and arranged it that I would speak to my teacher friend for an hour week with top ups if needed, my GP for 30 minutes a week, see the psychiatrist every month and see her twice a week and asked everyone else to work behind the scenes and not talk to me unless necessary. It was a huge relief because having so many people suddenly appear after I had been conditioned by my mother that all 'strangers' would hurt me was more terrifying than being at home with my family. Nevermind the fact that I wasn't aware that my life was so different to everyone else's, suddenly I had lots of people telling me that a lot of my life was wrong and dangerous and I really didn't know how to cope with it. It seemed the more I told them the more they panicked and I didn't understand why.

I had nothing to compare it to as my mother wouldn't watch any programmes involving hospital, doctors, caring professionals or health care, she would switch off any news that involved any of that and wouldn't allow me to watch modern tv. We watched a lot of films made in the 1940's to 50's but very little tv to do with present times. I also had no friends of my own age to compare anything against so I really did think my life was just like everyone else's and yet all of these adults were suddenly telling me that things were very wrong.

I was thinking about all of this last night, I very likely caused today's incident myself...

System

Waves_and_Smiles wrote: »

Not stupid at all, JM! I really liked the fact that I was able to comfort Lucee as she is a representation of the child me that went through this. I really like that I was able to say to her that I would keep her safe, kind of the adult me telling little me that we weren't going to be hurt anymore. I do see that as a positive in amongst the terror.

Thank you for the hug, too. Looking back I am amazed sometimes that I didn't end up dead through either my own or my mothers hands or in a long stay hospital which was recommended for me by social services. It is only the fact that my psychotherapist fought it and said that I would lose myself completely if I was put into a situation where I didn't have to function that stopped it from happening. Sometimes I do look back from outside myself and realise how much danger I was in, oddly it didn't feel like that at the time. I thought it was a bit strange but relatively normal.

I have done that, too MU! I dissociate a lot, part is a biochemical imbalance and part of it is through PTSD. They kind of all get mixed up together and influence each other.

I can pinpoint the first time i diassociated but won't go into it as its a bit of a penguin for me and might be for others. It hasn't happened a lot but the few times it has happened i can only assume its because i couldn't deal with what was happening and thus shut myself off to protect myself. It's weird how the brain works eh?

Waves_and_Smiles

Oh, it really is MU. I still often get small amounts of dissociation where I don't feel real or the world doesn't feel real but I don't think that I have entirely gone away for a while. I think. I can never be entirely sure as apparently judging by the missing 9 months I seem just the same as always so I doubt anyone would spot it.

whitewing

WaS, jobbingmusician beat me to it. I felt that it was a very early healing experience too as I was reading it. Perhaps you will recover some more memories to do with your father gradually, when you are more able to process the events up to that point.

That you can remember WaSp giving you pills is a good sign too, surely.

I am fascinated by the overlay too. When I last dissociated badly, I was in the ladies toilet of an office building. It was just a single room and the door to the lockable door to the toilet led straight out to the corridor. At the time, I did not realise I dissociated. I remember thinking the room was huge. I was concerned about the door because it was far from the loo and I was worried that I hadn't locked it properly.

I went to the building again a few months later and was surprised that it was a perfectly normal smallish room.

Now, I understand that my perception distorts badly when I am exceptionally stressed. Objects are normal-sized but much further away from each other. Somehow this puts me off moving, because it all seems such an effort.

Time also distorts. Voices seem further away, even if they are fairly loud, and I find it very easy to not respond to people, even if I am aware they are there and I like them.

whitewing

Today's pregnancy test is negative too so I am beginning to accept it.

DH said, good. He feels overwhelmed with life at the moment and can't see how now is the right time for a new baby. (He told me that yesterday, and I am pleased because it shows I am getting better. He has sometimes protected me from how he feels at the time because he hasn't wanted to trigger things).

MU, I am glad you are more settled now.

haybel, how are you now?