Being Eliza

Every choice that I make
Changes the course I take;
Won't be afraid when I make mistakes.

Open my arms and give in
Do it all over again
Do it all over again and again
To get to the end of who I am now
I'm gonna find the answers,
and yes I know how
I know I can win some of my dreams
and ever thing I ever wanted, everything I ever wanted to be.

Erica passed her test; she's training to be a therapist now.

Cross your fingers for me.

Emotional Flashback Management

For my own reference, a good article on emotional flashbacks and complex PTSD.

1. Say to yourself: "I am having a flashback." Flashbacks take us into a timeless part of the psyche that feels as helpless, hopeless and surrounded by danger as we were in childhood. The feelings and sensations you are experiencing are past memories that cannot hurt you now.

2. Remind yourself: "I feel afraid but I am not in danger! I am safe now, here in the present." Remember you are now in the safety of the present, far from the danger of the past.

3. Own your right/need to have boundaries. Remind yourself that you do not have to allow anyone to mistreat you; you are free to leave dangerous situations and protest unfair behavior.

4. Speak reassuringly to your Inner Child. The child needs to know that you love her unconditionally—that she can come to you for comfort and protection when she feels lost and scared.

5. Deconstruct eternity thinking. In childhood, fear and abandonment felt endless—a safer future was unimaginable. Remember the flashback will pass as it has many times before.

6. Remind yourself that you are in an adult body with allies, skills and resources to protect you that you never had as a child. (Feeling small and little is a sure sign of a flashback.)

7. Ease back into your body. Fear launches us into "heady" worrying, or numbing and spacing out.

Gently ask your body to relax. Feel each of your major muscle groups and softly encourage them to relax. (Tightened musculature sends unnecessary danger signals to the brain.)

Breathe deeply and slowly. (Holding the breath also signals danger.)

Slow down. Rushing presses the psyche's panic button.

Find a safe place to unwind and soothe yourself: wrap yourself in a blanket, hold a stuffed animal, lie down in a closet or a bath, take a nap.

Feel the fear in your body without reacting to it. Fear is just an energy in your body that cannot hurt you if you do not run from it or react self-destructively to it.

8. Resist the Inner Critic's catastrophizing.

(a) Use thought-stopping to halt its exaggeration of danger and need to control the uncontrollable. Refuse to shame, hate or abandon yourself. Channel the anger of self-attack into saying no to unfair self-criticism.

(b) Use thought-substitution to replace negative thinking with a memorized list of your qualities and accomplishments.

9. Allow yourself to grieve. Flashbacks are opportunities to release old, unexpressed feelings of fear, hurt, and abandonment, and to validate—and then soothe—the child's past experience of helplessness and hopelessness. Healthy grieving can turn our tears into self-compassion and our anger into self-protection.

10. Cultivate safe relationships and seek support. Take time alone when you need it, but don't let shame isolate you. Feeling shame doesn't mean you are shameful. Educate those close to you about flashbacks and ask them to help you talk and feel your way through them.

11. Learn to identify the types of triggers that lead to flashbacks. Avoid unsafe people, places, activities and triggering mental processes. Practice preventive maintenance with these steps when triggering situations are unavoidable.

12. Figure out what you are flashing back to. Flashbacks are opportunities to discover, validate and heal our wounds from past abuse and abandonment. They also point to our still-unmet developmental needs and can provide motivation to get them met.

13. Be patient with a slow recovery process. It takes time in the present to become un-adrenalized, and considerable time in the future to gradually decrease the intensity, duration and frequency of flashbacks. Real recovery is a gradual process—often two steps forward, one step back. Don't beat yourself up for having a flashback.

Candy:

Louise had often said that she felt I was the first face she had imprinted on, and that she sometimes watched me to see what it was that humans did or were supposed to do, just the way a baby bird will imprint on its mother, surrogate or real.

I found this article and want you to read it. It may be triggering. It's about a therapist leaving her client of 6 years (who has, I suppose, a dissociative disorder somewhere between yours and mine).

Other people may find it useful too.

It's okay.

Today my Inner Control Freak was triggered and I have spent this entire evening trying to manage the resulting anxiety and obsessive/compulsive feelings and thoughts.

I do resent having to do this. It would be far nicer if the feelings just disappeared. In reality, I'm observant enough now to know that had I been capable of expressing my emotions honestly in the moment, I would not be in this situation. But because I let my frustration grow to the point of feeling out of control and I was 'trapped' in the meeting, my brain reverted to the same old crisis toolkit: EMOTIVE SHUTDOWN MODE.

The curtain falls.

I become unresponsive.

God help even the most well-adjusted of adults. I'm a monster. It's scientifically proven. An unresponsive mother is the most feared of all creatures. Developmentally normal humans crave response. Therapy leans on this principle. I've pissed off a lot of people in my life because of my inability to connect, respond. Feel.

Only this time it's even more psychotic, because I'm not just unresponsive. I'm fighting that damn wall. Searching for how I feel (FRUSTRATED, ANGRY, WANT CONTROL) and trying to find a way to appease it. But I'm still a baby at this. All I can do is try to contain myself and wait. Sacrifice society. Wait it out.

And meanwhile? Try not to hate yourself for failing. For your increased heart rate, your shaking limbs, and the disappointment on their faces. As though you weren't juggling enough, facilitating that meeting.

But I'm practicing radical acceptance. So instead of fighting the anxiety, I tell myself it's okay. It's okay to feel upset at myself. It's okay to be afraid about what the others think of me. It's okay to be frustrated because the meeting didn't go as planned. It's okay to be upset at Boss-man because he disregarded the agenda and wasted a lot of time asking inappropriate questions. It's okay to want it to be perfect. Because I am a Person in Progress.

I didn't hurt anyone. I wasn't mean. I got through the agenda. I was flexible. I let people talk, including my Boss-man. I pushed where I needed to push. I let go what I could let go. I ended the meeting with a reassuring compliment. I got a reassuring compliment in return.

I feel ashamed to feel out of control and to want the control so badly. But those are my unrelenting standards, not theirs. I am disappointed in me. Not them. I am the one that needs reassurance.

So I'll provide it. And if it's not enough, I'll ask for it tomorrow.

And it's okay to have those needs. It's okay to be me. It's okay to feel this way.

I heard her.

She wants her mommy.

But I told her again: she'll only be disappointed.

Family of Origin

Someone asked about me. So, she called because she didn't have an answer. But she had a reminder: your daughter, just one politely questioning stranger and one phone call away.

I hate it when they call. The phone says 'International' and I wince. Sometimes I don't answer. Most times, my husband picks the phone up and hands it to me silently. I sigh and pull deeper inside. My voice drops. The curtain falls on my emotions.

"Hello."

The phone call is as shallow as our lives have been. What is new? Anything else? My mother says XYZ have asked about me. She lists their names. I don't know most of them. The others, I pretend I don't. It's easier that way. I feel in control.

We talk about Dad, who is taking calculus. My mum mentions that she was good at Math in high school. Very good. I pause, because this sudden burst of confidence is out of character. Suddenly I engage: "Were you gifted, too?"

My mum shyly but proudly affirms.

My thoughts race for a second, and then I elicit some stories from her while I focused on my reaction.

First, noting that there is a genetic link for my giftedness after all. It helps to be validated by biology.
Second, reinforced disappointment that she only shared this with me after THIRTY years and only when I asked. To be honest, I always thought my mum was a bit of an idiot. Hard-working, yes. Sensitive, yes. But not altogether there upstairs.
Third, that finally, finally, finally, finally, finally we have something to talk about. Something in common. A united experience. Knowledge to pass on.

So of course she changes the subject.

For the first time, I feel like there is a chance for us, which is on its own a very good thing. But surrounding that hope is a sea of increased anger, because I just can't accept how someone so gifted could have been so stupid and scared when it came to raising me.

Building Self-Confidence 108

I have a dissociative power they don't describe in scientific literature.

To cope with the pain, I would disappear into my head, my thoughts, my imagination, dreaming stories, and finally sleep. Eventually, I trained myself to sleep on a dime. Within a minute even. In the middle of sentences sometimes.

So, it's no big surprise to me that I suffer from derealisation/depersonalisation (DR/DP) disorder which is said to be caused by a breakdown in the barrier between sleep and consciousness. When I have migraines, the first stage is DR/DP and then yawning and then pain because I am so, so sleepy. I can't cope with the sensory information and stress. I become numb. I just want to sleep.

And then I sleep. And most of the time, I wake up a new person. I've trained myself to let the emotions of yesterday wash away in the night. I struggle to remember how I felt.

When overwhelmed by stress, especially emotional stress, I get migraines. Is it my body's way of saying 'WHY WON'T YOU LET ME SLEEP ALREADY, THIS HURTS' ? I'm just not sure what to trust, because even though the pain is gone right now, it will be back again another day.

Another day I'll wobble. I'll feel the hate inside.

But for today, I'll marvel because I can't find a single bit of hate. I search inside and all I feel is pride, love, acceptance, calm. It unnerves me that somewhere in my brain are neural connections full of hate and revulsion and distrust, ready to activate on my triggers, and I have no real ability to access them at the present.

Dissociation.

It's hard to build self-confidence when I know that a part of me will betray this current happiness. That, out of nowhere, the Inner Bully will emerge, waving her sword and threatening me. Moreover, I will become her / she will become me. And this current happy, secure person will be the inaccessible one.

Strangely, the solution isn't to shut the Inner Bully away. It's to teach the Inner Bully how to love herself. Radical acceptance means accepting that the Inner Bully is scared and angry and protective and insecure. It's loving the Inner Bully despite those feelings. Sitting with the Inner Bully while experiencing those feelings. Learning that it's okay to feel scared and angry and protective and insecure and suicidal, because those feelings don't mean we're going to hurt ourselves or others. We're smarter, more kind, more capable than that. We may be afraid, but we shouldn't be afraid of that.

I'm using mindfulness (meditation techniques) to hold on to good feelings, so that when the Inner Bully comes I can show them to her. So she can learn how to sit with the positive feelings and realise no one is going to take them away.


Read on the NHS Choices blog.