TraumaRecovery

I was involuntarily hospitalized last week... It was horrific. I'm currently unable to go into more detail because I'll dissociate and I habe trouble managing the anxiety attacks too.
I already suffer from CPTSD due to childhoof trauma. The symptoms since this incidents have peeked at a new level. My normal skills don't work as well as they did. I don't really know how to deal with a fresh trauma. I was able to see my therapist this week. But I was really scared to go see her but she wasn't even involved in all of this. I'm afraid of the police, hospitals and all mental health institutions in my area. So it's hard for me to get the help I need.

I am fighting but I am in a very bad place right now. And advice/tipps how to handle a fresh traumatic experience? And I wonder if there are other people out there who got retraumatized by the mental health system or if it's just me being vulnerable and overly sensitiv...?

Thank you all... #Trauma #Anxiety #AnxietyAttacks #TraumaRecovery #PTSD #CPTSD #PTSD #Depression #ChronicDepression #AnorexiaNervosa #EatingDisorders #struggling #SuicidalIdeation #SuicidalThoughts

This is a deeply personal poem. I don't think I'll ever finish it because the interpersonal work it reflects will take a whole lifetime to work through. Those of us on a healing journey through CPTSD may figure out along the way that it takes time to learn how to unlearn the byproducts of abandonment, neglect, and abuse. This undertaking is deeply personal and unique to the situations we've survived. So far, the most impactful aspect of healing for me has been learning not to abandon myself. Realizing that I've been acting out my inner life where the central message of abandonment lives. That message being unworthiness and has morphed itself into self abuse, self contempt, self blame, self criticism and self doubt. These have been the dark lenses through which I have viewed and lived my life. As I continue the work that healing requires I am encouraged by the moments I have chosen to stay yoked to my true nature; loving, accepting and encouraging myself. These sprouting moments will grow deep roots and will eventually become a more natural way to live.

*****

Let her Speak

By: Stacey Gensler

There’s a girl on the porch on Cottonwood street

Invisible to those nearby

She’s come outside where rabbits graze and things that live are growing

Inside her room with bed and dresser are dead and splintered parts

With outstretched arms she wants to speak with songs like the wild birds sing

Unburdened, unfrozen, unraveled from the belly and free

Inhaling, her chin toward the sun, she calls forth the caw of the black crow

And spills out the secret that was never hers to carry

This child speaks of the dark burden

Born from loss

Tethered to the secret sins of ancestors

Whose flesh she’s never touched

Their cells, Their DNA,

Ancient binding shadows that carried her life into birth.

Of play

she cannot speak, only the absence of innocence

Lost among the tall green grasses with butterfly and pony

Carried away with the freshness of Lilac and Lilly

II

In the woods

following the slow-sloped winding trail

along train tracks with slow moving rusty boxes

marked with city art

she walked

and tried not to think

she looked for herself past thundering, threatening, bare-black oaks

with needle sharp limbs and knots felt deep in the gut

downward, fixed gaze her strides

led to the edge of the cat tail swamp, inhaling the stench of decay and sunless earth

her feet sink into fear and fate

the cattails frozen by mud and stagnate wind

their movement abandoned

under the weight of grief

She walked around corners

where ticks steal

while wild deer graze in tall dry grasses

their innocent bodies no longer their own

then, past the empty soybean field once bursting with tenderness

holding its residue

a by gone crop

its season yielded

barren by the heat of neglect

Above the deep worm burrows

rests soil ripe with longing to be fertile

Listening deeply, she hears the call of surrender

To be turned over and over again

To endure the blades excavation

Preparation for the new seasons harvest

III

Follow the scent of innocence deep into the landscape of budding trees

where violet blooms hang heavy

left in solitary stillness to reach their full potential

Announce your presence tenderly the way the wind approaches the sleeping sea.

Or be silent

And watch at the shoreline as I wade into unknown waters

and stare at the disfigured reflection

left by your absence.

Feel the burn of your squinting eyes

straining to focus through the mist of sea spray

tethered to the tears of 1,000 different disappointments

Watch with shame as I dive through the dark abyss

to rescue what you’ve left behind

lifeless

damaged

unrecognizable

forgotten

and irrelevant

Turn

Turn away

Leave me to gather myself from the depths of this ocean

#CPTSD #Poetry #TraumaRecovery #PTSD

*photo credit, Gaëtan Werp

Just like Monarch Butterflies, your part in this world makes a marked difference. You can touch lives just by living authentically and can change the course of someone’s entire day with a smile or a kind word. If you weren’t here tomorrow, we’d miss you. Tomorrow holds opportunities that would have been premature for today; if we can’t rush a pregnancy, we can’t rush healing or progress. Don’t give up: tomorrow’s you may have the chance that today’s you isn’t ready for. (I’ve been there many times these last five years; this is personal experience and I’ll start sharing it soon.)

Now. Grab your coziest blanket, and burrito up again; you get to stay tucked in the chrysalis a little longer. When you’re ready to take the next steps and start your transformation, you’ll know. We’re here to support you when you need it and to celebrate with you as you make your goals. #CPTSD #TraumaRecovery #Suicide #SuicidalIdeation #Depression #MajorDepressiveDisorder #keephope #itsokaynottobeokay

This past month I tried something new! I loved it! I am learning to come home to myself and thanking my body in spite of our challenges. 💚

My wife just blew up at me. We need to communicate better, she said. She has a habit of telling me what negative thoughts I am thinking and feeling, and then adding, "well am I wrong?" to it. This is years in the making. Essentially, it happens when she asks me a question or tells me about something, and my tone of voice sounds negative to her, or my face or body language looks negative.

I have chronic pain as well as deep depression, so it is difficult for me to convincingly put on a happy face, or speak with joy in my voice. But I do try my best to speak in neutral tones at the very least, and I have thought that I have a resting face of a neutral mood or higher as much as possible.

It has been building for a long time. I am struck out of the blue most times when she tells me what I am thinking, and how unfair that is, and paints me as the bad guy and her as the innocent one. In the early days, it would just shock me, and sometimes confuse me. In the last couple of years, it just makes me angry and defensive. We've had plenty of arguments about it, but no agreement. She doesn't see it as mind reading because she says "I 'feel like' you were disgusted by what I just said, and you shouldn't be", or "I 'feel' that you think I'm stupid just because I did X, or Y". She says since she uses the word "feel", she isn't mind reading, and so it's up to me to tell her if she's right or wrong. Well, I have been telling her she's wrong for over 40 years now, and that only makes her angry and defensive. I told her time and again that I get mad when people try to read my mind and put words into my mouth. I tell her to skip saying the part about what she is so sure that I am thinking, and just ASK ME what I am thinking, instead. Ninety percent of the time, I am not only NOT thinking what she thinks I am, but I am thinking about some other subject altogether. Then when she accuses me of thinking some negative thing, it hits me out of the blue, and I register it as an insult. I asked her why she can't just ASK me what I am thinking, or ask me how I am feeling. I would welcome both of those if they were honest questions. I would feel like I was cared about. That makes perfect sense to me, but she doesn't see it that way. She says that she's just being honest, and that she IS asking me how I feel, or what I am thinking, when she tells me what she feels like I am thinking. We can't get past that. So she got louder and more accusatory, and then angrily walked out.

I don't know what to do. I am battling Major Depressive Disorder, CPTSD, Anxiety, ADHD and severe Chronic Pain. I am doing the very best that I can. I am on disability, and I fill my days and evenings reading books on my various diagnoses, learning as much as I can, so that I can better control, or adapt, or adjust to the reality of my life, and I do feel good about that. I have tried to share some of this with her, both verbally, and by sharing articles with her via email. She seems stand-offish about it, at best. When I ask her outright if she wants to learn more, she swears she does, but she has a life, therefore she just doesn't have the time or energy to read much about it. I told her a few minutes ago that I will stop burdening her with it, and will stop sending her articles and such. She rebuffed that idea, but added again that she just doesn't have the time. She said she is doing the best that she can in trying to deal with all my problems, and she doesn't have the energy or the will to do it any more. She's "had it."

She came back and brought up another time recently that I was unreasonable, saying that she had told me something about her job, and I had reacted with sarcasm and disgust. I remember it well. It was just the opposite. She told me that her employer was giving $50 bonuses to anyone who got a Covid booster shot, and I responded "wow, that must be nice. Go ahead and do that." She and I both agree that that's all that I said. But she says I was being sarcastic, and spit the words out like venom, and I thought it was disgusting. I remember calmly saying those words, genuinely happy for her to get $50 just for getting a shot that we both were going to get anyway. The difference, more than likely, was the fact that during the time that she was unwinding after work and telling me bonus, as well as about the rest of her day, I was in a pit of depression, and I was in a ton of physical pain from my legs and my back. I know that had to have affected the tone of my voice, the look on my face, and my body language. But I don't talk about the pain, because it would sound whiney and redundant. I was just sitting there listening to her, and I thought I answered appropriately and honestly. Anyway, that night, after I had answered her, she responded by telling me what (she believed) I was thinking and feeling, and she wanted to know what my response was. My response was "that's not an argument I am willing to have right now." To me, I was angry that "it" was happening again, and I could argue about it like so many times before, or I could choose not to. I chose not to argue. To her, I had just insulted her, and said she isn't worth arguing with, and since I had not argued, then what she had thought about me must indeed be true.

If (and when) she "reads my mind" again, and assigns various negative thoughts and feelings to me, we could bypass all of this trouble if she could just hold those 'mind-read thoughts' inside, and just ask me two simple questions, instead. First, "how are you feeling?" And second, "what are you tinking." I will gladly and honestly answer her. But I just can't take any more veritable accusations for thinking and feeling certain ways, and then be expected to explain or defend myself, meanwhile letting it roll off me like water off of a duck's back. It's not an argument I'm having anymore.

Thanks for listening.
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