Feeling very stuck

[CafeMan]

My brain is so rationale when it comes to my abuse. "It wasn't my fault, my body reacted a certain way, some people are just evil and do bad things to good people." I get it!

Why doesn't my heart accept that? Why is it that when I have a PRESENT day challenge such as a work issue, the remnants from the past try to latch on to me?

I had an issue from work last week. It had NOTHING to do with being an 11 year old boy. Yet, I was very despondent for the next few days. I was dreadfully depressed and feeling vulnerable, scared, sad and pessimistic. I hated that feeling. I knew it would last a few days, then I would come out of my funk. However, why do I persist to be afraid of life? Why does my mind go back to those events from the past?

If we are conditioned from our abuse, can't we be unconditioned? Can we go through another conditioning process to cancel out the bad post-csa conditioning? I am so TIRED of fighting. I will continue to fight for peace but at what cost? I pray, I say self daily affirmations praising my positive attributes, I smile when I don't want to smile, I help people. I still feel it's not enough. I sometimes wish I should have buried my emotions like I did all these years and just run on empty. When I started to "feel"...it sucked! I was more productive and more positive when I lived a non csa thinking lifestyle.

Eh, I'm venting. Even exercising, which is supposed to release all these endorphins, exhausts me. Sheesh! LOL! I guess I'll just keep trying.

 

[DanielQ432]

Hi there, I could have written that myself, I feel exactly the same way. I understand intellectually, but emotionally, especially when triggered and/or just generally having a bad day, can so immediately fall down the pit and wallow in the muck at the bottom.

I get those tired of fighting days, too. I am very afraid at times, I have memories of being hit, I think more than I originally believed, maybe repressed, maybe just denial sunk in big-time.

Exercise does help me overall, at least it's a lifeline. One good thing I can say about serious hypervigilance, which left me a couple of years ago - it keeps you moving through the exhaustion. Then eventually, you crash entirely.

Yup, we need to just keep trying to fix this fucking mess. No real alternative. I don't want to die, even though I think about suicide in very specific and graphic terms. What I want is the opposite, a real, rich, full and happy life.

 

[Ceremony]

Hi CafeMan, I'm not sure if there is an answer to becoming "unconditioned"; yet! I've been exploring the idea in terms of how the conditioning of all my childhood, from 3 to 17+ was wrought with various neglect, bullying and trauma. I have to dig for good memories. Some (maybe a sibling?) might say I don't try hard enough, but, talking to my brother, he validates the difficulty of what he remembers. So, that was helpful to a degree. Being validated does help, it encourages me to consider the deep consequences of all the conditioning my brain went through to become the dysfunctional man I am today.

I have to add the physical limitations of getting older now too. I won't be a good fit for gym membership, nor anything athletic. I'm unable to ride my bike yet too (knee surgery). I've barely been able to start on my elliptical! My joints in that leg swell. I think some of it is sodium related with water retention? I do what I can with this body, and that's not nearly what I could do 5 years ago. The term pace myself has a lot of new meaning.

Then too, there's a lot of stress. My health, my wife ragging on me about an endless litany, an obsession of hers to berate me into doing what she wants me to do? Sometimes those things are Ok, but many times they're bullying and triggering. I respond better to being asked too, not told!

Now, the research I've done that might bring me somewhere requires that the stresses of my life have some manageability. Like Kevin, he's taking time away, disconnecting. I have no means for that, so I'll have to manage with the ongoing stressors. That's what I am still going to discover. I'm doing EMDR and Sensorimotor Psychotherapy. Thus far, I'm dealing with how to connect with my inner boy/s. It seems to be Ok, I have done some of that now, and those inner boy/s are for the first time, with me. I chose them too. I chose the stages I could recognize had thought process changes in me, thoughts I could recognize from those times. All except age 3-4.

That earliest age was a tough one to bring into me. I discovered how shut down I was. It was from neglect, and my little self was not connected to any person that I can/could recognize as significant to my being. I closed myself at that early age, and it seems I let go of parental bonding. I noticed that at age 6, I knew from my parents splitting, that I didn't belong, and I was adrift. I tried the tactic of being extra good.

That's when I suppose I groomed myself to be a people pleaser, a scapegoat to others needs. To give away my needs to please others.

I noticed at age 8, that I had the same pattern, was trying to make connections to other children. I know I had some success. This is the age of my knowing something happened to me, but it's too lost in memory, and recalling it isn't too important. I'm unsure if it was myself being sexualized or if I witnessed it, but I have the same images of memory, so whatever it was, it's just down inside somewhere.

I noticed then at age 10 (yes, it seems every 2 years), that I was now knowing I was left out by the other kids. My mother kept moving and I kept being a new kid, and outsider, and nobody would invest in kids like me. I was not athletic like my brother, though I played little league for a couple years at this age. I didn't make friends and was home or alone too much. We stayed at this location for a few years and this is where I learned what being bullied is all about.

Age 12 is where I've stopped working to connect to my inner children. I've gotten him first. He was the most powerful emotionally. I had a huge physical reaction to connecting to his bullying trauma.

What I hope to do, is once I get back to myself, is to see if EMDR can process the traumas and pain, and open up my mind to fuller processing. That's the intent of EMDR. It's not easy for complex CSA trauma survivors who are not prepared. It can be utilized for some, but the preparation work is as intense as the actual therapy. The therapy is very intense for the most hurtful events. I have taken them one incident at a time, choosing what is representative to that era. I could do some other events of that age too, but to get into one of the deepest and troubling is to allow the others room to travel along with the one I'm working on.

Well, I don't know if anyone has studied any of this, and welcome discussion. I tried to discuss this in a thread about EMDR, and it's not grown, so I'm doing it piecemeal now, out in the FORUM.

Thanks.

 

[wreckage]

For me, some days are better than others. I identify with being right back in the mode of the past. I get into swings in mood and inevitably it is because of some unresolved conflict that went unresolved because of the baggage and its effects.

I think there will always be a residual effect on survivors- especially CSA or complex PTSD.

In addition, I struggle with the fault thing too as I was 16-18 when I went for more after the initial shit went down. I think it is a self-acceptance thing that affects everything we experience.

Being informed a certain way and then trying to re-inform is tough.

Feeling is definitely better than being numb- it's real and is on the same plane as the rest of the world.
I would rather live in the land of truth and be lost, than live in the land of untruth/inside one's head and be found.

I always try to remember that my worst day is better than my best day back then.

Hang in there. This will pass.

 

[CafeMan]

Thank you for the comments. It means a lot to me. Basically, I haven't forgiven myself for some of the past items. Also, I haven not forgiven myself of the sins that I commit presently that, I believe, are derived from the CSA. I'm too hard on myself. I trust God, but I don't trust myself. God has forgiven me, yet I have not forgiven myself. I put on this higher standard that is even beyond His standards. That is so wrong. I struggle with this daily. I am trying very hard to let go, wash away my sins, live the life that God wants. It's a both a process and an epiphany all at once.

 

[Chris4TheMill]

Good observations, CafeMan. We often have higher standards than God and can be harder on ourselves than He is.

You'll get there. Don't give up. It takes awhile sometimes to get there.

 

[CafeMan]

Thank you, Chris.

 

[don64]

Hi CafeMan,

I empathize with your quest regarding being hard on yourself. I have to remind myself I don't know what I don't know. I have to remember that continually acquiring skills has been necessary for me to deal with the deeper and more damaging material. At age 68, I am still amazed when I integrate very challenging material. Suddenly, a space that was chaotic, negative and endless yesterday is peaceful today.

Sending you love and good will,

Don

 

[dark empathy]

Hi Café man.

Wow this sounds familiar. I know what being stuck feels like having been there for years and run around all those endless circles and even worse, known! rationally what those circles are.

There is one rationalist definition of insanity which states that insanity is performing the same actions and expecting a different result from those actions. Yet this definition doesn't necessarily go far enough since it assumes the rationality to determine the actions that one undertakes to achieve the result.

One of the things I've realized myself is that saying "Here is rational" and "here is irrational" is simply not a correct way dividing up what is inside my mind, or I believe anyone else's.

We can know Why! we are stuck but not be in any position to avoid being stuck? Just like hacuna matata from the Lion king.
So it occurs to me if we can do nothing about it, why worry?

This isn't to say to stop trying, to simply get rid of all those "should"

Just because we understand something does not imply that we can control it.
Think of the tide. We know exactly why! tide comes in and goes out. We know about the moon's gravitational effect, but saying the tide "should!" come in at such and such a time or "should" go out at such and such a time would be pointless.


Hope some of this helps.

Luke.