Iwanttoheal

Sat here in bed after 8 hours undisturbed sleep completely exhausted - I just want to go back to sleep and stay asleep and not wake up.

No energy to cry
Nothing to get up for - okay, scrap that, plenty to get up for but no energy to do it. No energy left to even perform my usual list of "should dos" that form the basis of my days as a super-responsible adult.
No energy to even feel angry at myself for still being in bed 3 hours after I have woken-up.

Just feel lost, completely adrift without purpose, meaning and point.
I must be so depressed that even the anti-ds that I have taken for years are having no effect. There is no alcohol or prescription drugs in my system (apart from my 20mg Seroxat) that could be causing this. I am not ill. I am not sad. I just want to sleep. I keep falling asleep as I type this.

I have been fighting this for the last 8 months and today I've lost and I don't care, I just want to sleep.

Has anyone gone through this. What helped to get you back your fight and get "living" again.

jane_668

Iwanttoheal, I hear you. Im sorry that you are struggling. I dont know what to say except to tell you Im here if you wnat to talk.
Hugs and Love
Jane

Iwanttoheal

Thank you for your reply Jane. Thankyou for hearing me and sending hugs - fancy that, people I don't know from around the world can hear my pain but my own mother can't.

Yet again, I phoned my mother - she didn't hear me, she didn't validate my emotions, she explained everything away that it wasn't as important as how I felt and then turned the conversation around to her needs. God how I know this hateful dance but I guess I'm a tiny, tiny step further forward in that I could actually see the dance in process - it was like watching myself on a stage - I'm hoping this is progress. I am also beginning to understand how an addict hates themself because they can't stay away from their fix.

I'm up, feeling a bit better - done a few household chores on automatic pilot.

This is nuts - completely insane. My inactivity is a completely maladaptive response to normal stresses that every adult in the Western World experiences throughout their life... but I am not coping - first I go into extreme terror, now it feels as if my mind is trying to make me completely dissociate into a fugue state. From one extreme to the other, I cannot find a reasonable middle ground. All because I cannot control my perceived threat. No wonder I am emotionally exhausted.

It's got me thinking as to how I've coped with "threats" this far in life - as a child I dissociated; as an adult I've avoided; dissociated or controlled. I've never used alcohol or drugs to numb things (anti-ds have sort of helped) but I don't feel any the healthier for it.

With my current financial threats (dh job is under threat; social is deciding whether to pay disability to my son), I cannot control them, I cannot avoid them and I don't want to dissociate from them or numb them. I want to cope with them like a normal "sane" adult but here I am bouncing between two extremes of supreme terror and trying to sleep in order to avoid.

I have a horrendous fear of having no money. When I was 10, my mother would make statements like:
Your father is drinking all the money
Look at all these unpaid bills
Your father has re-mortgaged the house, what are we going to do with no roof over our heads
What was I supposed to do, I was a child...
To make matters worse, she is now financially secure and has spent the money my Dad left for his children on herself. This bitterness disappeared over the years when I was working but it has reappeared because I am at home caring for my son and financially vulnerable yet again.

I just want to let all their poison go, let it all drain out me but it's part of me - ingrained in my physiological responses, in my learnt behaviours - eugghhhh

guiab

Iwanttoheal
You are describing days that felt very much like days I have experienced, and how I felt on those days.
In the past few months I have had days when all I could do was repeat the serenity prayer over and over for over an hour. Yeah, I used to think people who did that were silly. It is sometimes the most rational thing to do to preserve sanity. I are not good at making decisions that are good for my sanity, and that is a common ailment around this forum.
And I know what it is like to be around a narcissistic parent that can't see beyond their own woes. And none of which is their fault, ever, is it?
You are better than your mother - to yourself, your kids, and others. Don't forget that.

Iwanttoheal

Thanks grewupinabarn

Hmmnnn - repeating the serenity prayer over and over - given some of my actions lately, that sounds quite a sane thing to do.

No, sadly it never is their fault - ever - and never will be.

I have made a couple of steps for me, I have been trying out "I give myself permission... " statements, so here goes:

I give myself permission not to be perfect
I give myself permission to fail
I give myself permission to be exhausted, completely and utterly done
I give myself permission to accept that I am not my mother
I give myself permission to believe that my current behaviour is not an indication that I am turning into my mother
I give myself permission to accept that I am a good mother; a very, very good mother

cymbal

I think for me the slogans were the first things I grasped onto:

One Day at a Time
Easy Does It
First Things First
This Too Shall Pass

I love the expression here about just doing the next right thing.
It may be just staying in bed and having pajama day!
You're not alone.
Oh for me its sometimes that time of the month that is the worst, especially since I'm close to the "change". Sigh! Truth is hard sometimes, but there you have it.

DesertEyes

That works for me too. What I have learned is that my head can only hold one thought at a time. It can ping-pong very quickly from crazy thought to crazy thought, but only one at a time. If I keep my mind focused on _healthy_ thoughs, then there is no space left for the crazy ones. It's the thoughts in my head that guide my actions.

What has happened over time is that the the thoughts I have in my head slowly drift down into my heart, and guide my feelings. With patience the feelings I have in my heart drift down into my sould, and guide the person I become.

The "toxic" thoughts of my parents turned me into a nervous wreck, frightened of people, unable to function in life. I am no longer that person. I have filled my head with healthy thoughts I learned in recovery and I am now a sociable, happy person who loves life and all the people in it.

Somedays, just like you, I had to focus on getting thru just _one_ minute at a time. Takes me 12 serenity prayers to get thru one minute, but it gets me thru the minute

Mike (((( hugs )))))

Iwanttoheal

Thanks to everyone for your posts

Negative and crazy thoughts ping-ponging uncontrolled around your head - oh yes I can relate to that big style eg I can go from dh losing his job via 100 horrible thoughts to us being homeless and destitute in under 3 seconds.

I have never consciously or actively tried thinking happy, healthy or postitve thoughts before - I have always just tried to stop or control the negative thoughts and therefore negative feelings. Sometimes I win, sometimes I lose.

So healthy thoughts - I've started with my giving myself permission statements. I also like the recovery slogans - thanks cymbal. So for me at the moment, these feel most appropriate:

This too shall pass
Do the next right thing
First things first

.................................................. ........................
Bear with me while I try to work through this...

"A nervous wreck, frightened of people, unable to function" - well that certainly describes what I've been through ovet the past ten days.

Now you see, I've been like this before 27 years ago when I first left home and wasn't allowed back and also again 12 years ago when my hubbie and I split up. I never knew what was up with me, why I reacted so extremely - I just thought I was a right loser. Now from all my reading over the past year, I realise that I had really severe abandonment issues going on. My feelings and fears were completely out of proportion to the stress that I was under and left me totally incapable of functioning.

I was never aware that my extreme feelings had their routes in the alcoholic chaos I grew up in - that it was in fact a form of PTSD.

Slowly I built myself up and my life up to what I wanted it to be (even the fact that I remained the family caretaker was sort of okay - I wasn't too happy with having to care for abusive mother and alcoholic brother but it did not interfere too much with my own life - they were like an unpleasant rash that flared up every now and again, put some cream on and it fades).

Then last year, my ds is diagnosed with Autism - it was like a bomb went off in the family (it wasn't an intentional bombing like a loved one feigning a life-threatening illness in order to control other family members; it was just one of life's curved balls). I unwound all the way back down to being an abandonned and abused child living in the middle of alcoholic chaos.

I coped:
with all the professionals surrounding my son - like an adult
with my alcoholic brother - like an adult
with my abusive mother - I didn't cope and am still not really coping

...until last week, completely exhausted , I ran out of adult coping skills and regressed to an abandonned child trying to cope with adult problems ..... cue paralysing fear and ferocious attempts to dissociate.

So next question - what do I do to stop myself regressing into abandonned child mode and help myself remain in competent adult mode?

I would love to hear your E, S & H.

This is really important to me as tbh I don't fancy another week like the one I've just gone through.

Many thanks, IWTHxxx

cymbal

I think this is where Mr. Burney and his pages on inner child healing that I mentioned on another of your threads helps me. He speaks about being an observer. You are halfway there now that you are aware. The Al-Anon book, "In All Our Affairs" is about awareness, acceptance, action and moving on. The author Eckhart Tolle in his book "The New Earth" (?) speaks about awareness too.

It takes time to connect the mind, body, and spirit like Desert Mike said. The pieces just all click suddenly, and you can observe your own behavior like an outsider which is the adult you. The inner children react out of their hurt and pain. As an adult you can speak to the child coax her to quieten with love. Mr. Burney says to ask yourself how old you feel?

Love your inner children. You spoke of wanting to dissociate. This is actually quite like it actually, but as you consistently love on the inner children, validate their feelings, and listen, you'll find peace eventually as they begin to trust the adult you, and their strong reactions lessen as you identify buttons.

I think seeing this in yourself is the beginning.

I actually used substances to escape, so I do understand alcoholic and addict behavior.

I can try to give you an example. I needed to find a new sponsor as things in my life are heating up at the moment. She was feeling sick, and I couldn't see her for quite awhile. My buttons of rejection and abandonment were pushed from my childhood. My adult took over and told her that I hope that she feels better soon and that I was proud of her for taking care of herself. Meanwhile the kids were having hissy fits! Lol! When I finally did get to see her I thanked her for helping me to work on those old buttons.

I know that I'm a work in progress too. I have good and bad days still.

(((((hugs)))))

DesertEyes

That's what happened to me when my ex and I split up. Old feeling arising from old injuries in new situations.

What I do is heal the same way I was injured. Little by little. I wasn't traumatized as a child all in one day by one huge assault, it was the result of thousands of very small injuries repeated day after day for years. If I try to heal it all at once it is overwhelming. But I can heal just _one_ small injury without any trouble.

I do _one_ very small thing for myself. Just once. For one day. Such as I give myself permission to buy _one_ nice thing for me, small, just once. Like a very small potted plant to put on the window sill in the kitchen. Just one.

That works for crazy thoughts too. I give myself permision to _have_ crazy thoughts, but ony for one minute. I look at the clock and allow myself to be afraid for one minute. And then I think positive thoughts for one minute. Repeat.

I know it sounds too simple to work. But it does. That one little potted plant became a whole yard with a couple fruit trees. I bought one little picture to hang on my wall and over the years I learned how to be a photographer and now all my walls are full of my own pictures.

that's the whole secret to recovery. To _not_ try and fix our entire PTSD / toxic past in one day, but to heal the same way we were injured, one little bit at a time.

Mike

Iwanttoheal

Thank you for you share Cymbal and I appreciate your honesty.

I have been lucky enough to escape personal chemical addiction - how I don't know, blind luck I guess. I have had issues with using food, exercise and work in the past to numb the pain - so I guess I exhibit addictive behaviours without the substance.

I am so glad I found SR - I came here searching for an answer, a solution, a magic bullet and here I am learning so much about myself, where I come from and why I am the way I am, IWTHxxx

Iwanttoheal

Ooooh, this set off an enormous trigger with me. Buy something for me, me alone and no-one else, just because I like it and I'm a grown-up and allowed to spend money on myself. Just can't do it Mike, believe me I have tried but the conditioning is far too strong. This'll have to be broken down into miniscule parts to achieve this one. If / when I get my counselling referral, I can see me spending weeks on this one.

I need to have a reason to spend money on myself eg my hair needs done so I can look decent at work; I can go on holiday because my family deserves a holiday. Even if I do buy something for myself eg a new handbag, it will stay in my drawers unused and end up recycled as a gift for someone else. I am doing this at the moment - I make do with the tatty old handbag that isn't broken and give away my lovely new handbag to a friend for her birthday. I guess I feel more comfortable as the impoverished servant girl rather than the princess. This behaviour is really noticeable with regard to my kids - I do without all the time so that they can have, even when they don't need. I do not resent this in any way - I just love the feeling of my kids being able to enjoy what I never could. Maybe I am giving to myself through my kids.


Why do I do this? old conditioning I guess

I am extremely uncomfortable when anything is bought for me - I guess I feel I don't deserve it. I always did without - the money was always spent on alcohol or my mothers hobbies. Whenever I asked for anything I was always shouted at so I learnt not to ask, not to expect. I learnt very young that I was not important enough to have money spent on me - their needs came first. Money that was rightfully mine eg child benefit, provided by the state for me, was never spent on me. Later on, my Mum spent my Dad's money that was meant for me on herself and up until last year I was okay with this - I mean I really believed that I was not as important as them and therefore didn't deserve any better.

So now I am angry and feel that I deserve better, that I actually deserve money spent on me - I can't actually do so - what a mess..

Can anyone else relate to this at all???

DesertEyes

yes! exactly right. That is _exactly_ the way to do it.

You have already done the _first_ minuscule part. You are here on SR and sharing and reading and participitating. Ok, that's _three_ parts But you have _done_ that. And you have done more; you have decided that if/when you get your counseling referal you will be working on that issue. That is another minuscule part.

And there's even more, you said

You have _accepted_ that you deserve better, that is yet another minuscule part. I have lost count now, five? six? minuscule parts. Not so minuscule anymore.

So see? You _are_ making progress

Mike

Iwanttoheal

This made me smile when I woke up this morning - I think I'm getting it - teeny, tiny steps - right. If the teeny step is too much, break it down even further until it is something you can manage. Progress not perfection - I'm sooooo happy.

I think I have been waiting for perfection, the instant solution, the miracle cure - it isn't going to happen but tiny steps, yes that has already happened.

Also, these tiny steps are going to be very important to me if I am going to effect lasting change - I have already learnt to my cost that too big steps or drastic alterations to my behaviour or thinking "ping" me right back at top speed to where I started and then I feel I've failed or can't effect change.

What a good start to the day

cymbal

You're very welcome. I really enjoy pondering all your wonderful questions. I hear you about wanting an answer, a solution, and a magic bullet, but it turns out its just really hard work and introspection that doesn't ever end. I want it to be instant and easy and to "graduate". Sigh!

dothi

Maybe. Maybe because the part of you that's healing is still emotionally stuck in your kids' ages somewhere.

Have you ever had anyone show you how to give to yourself as an adult? Like actually gone and shown you how?

I say this as someone who was literally terrified to go to a hair salon until a few years ago. I asked my sister to come with me (who was all over hair). She explained what was going to happen, what each step of the procedure was, etc.
I'd like to throw in that I was self-aware enough to know that I would be extremely uncomfortable trying to remain calm and relaxed around a woman touching my head when I grew up with a mother who used to impulsively rap me across the upper body with a hairbrush, on physically breaking it on >1 occasion. This has been a stress trigger for me, as an adult, that I've finally cornered.

One more than one occasion, I've had friends step into my life to show me how to buy clothes... I'd probably still look like a value village lifer if it wasn't for help like that. I didn't have to adapt everyone's advice; just develop in the directions that best suited my personality. Without that help, I just had too much anxiety to handle all that kind of new and different alone

Just some food for thought. You and I both have good reasons for avoiding what seems to be "normal". Part of the trigger is the intense fear that the same negative outcome is going to happen AGAIN (especially in such a similar situation). Part of defusing it was understanding that although my inner child perceived the situation to be the same, it was not. There could very well be some pinpointable triggers for you that could definitely be explored with a little luck and a good therapist.

tromboneliness

Heh... I was like that, too. I used to think that clothes should be as vanilla as possible, for some Calvinistic reason or something. At one point, I tried an exercise -- I wore gray slacks (not the same pair ) to work every day for months, vowing to keep wearing them until someone noticed. Turned out no one ever did, so after a few months, I gave it up. Not that I'm any clotheshorse now, but at least I don't mind trying something more interesting -- or at least moderately stylish -- once in awhile, as long as it's still sufficiently tame!

T