Reprocessing trauma and feelings

[Depression = 72% of members]

Have you listened to the “Jocko Podcast”?

[JNChell]

Have you listened to the “Jocko Podcast”?

[Mata]

Have you listened to the “Jocko Podcast”?

A few times. I don't really listen to podcasts very often.

[JNChell]

Give it shot. Jocko is good. Retired SEAL with very good insight.

[Mata]

I took some time off work this week, and went up in the mountains to clear my head and try and de-stress a bit.  While up there, I was thinking about the whole re-processing trauma issue, and the thought occurred to me that one of my obstacles is that I am still falling into a caretaker role with my mom.  I find it difficult to revisit my childhood experiences and emotions, while at the same time feeling a responsibility to take care of my mom.  I think that the more I work on relinquishing the caretaker role, the more emotional space will open for me to work on my own inner issues.  At least, that's what I'm hoping. 

 

[JNChell]

Getting out in nature is a great way to combat the stress. I’m going out tomorrow to help my friend set up his tree stand for deer season. It’s a beautiful area and I’m looking forward to it. It’s kind of like this for me personally. Maybe you can relate. Being out in those big and wide open spaces can provide perspective. Kind of like it can make things that seem very big and negative in our lives, look a bit smaller even if only for a little while. At least we have that time to breathe and feel better.

I understand that you’re feeling a little torn between caring for your mom and having trouble with your past. Maybe you’ve just described what the real battle is? You might feel obligated to your mother which is understandable. On the other hand you may want to resolve and heal from your past which is also understandable. It’s almost like those two obligations trump each other. Like if you pick one path you’d be leaving the other path. Does that make sense? Maybe the internal conflict is causing you harm.

[Mata]

Getting out in nature is a great way to combat the stress. I’m going out tomorrow to help my friend set up his tree stand for deer season. It’s a beautiful area and I’m looking forward to it. It’s kind of like this for me personally. Maybe you can relate. Being out in those big and wide open spaces can provide perspective. Kind of like it can make things that seem very big and negative in our lives, look a bit smaller even if only for a little while. At least we have that time to breathe and feel better.

Yep, the mountains always reset my perspective.  Enjoy your day tomorrow! 

I understand that you’re feeling a little torn between caring for your mom and having trouble with your past. Maybe you’ve just described what the real battle is? You might feel obligated to your mother which is understandable. On the other hand you may want to resolve and heal from your past which is also understandable. It’s almost like those two obligations trump each other. Like if you pick one path you’d be leaving the other path. Does that make sense? Maybe the internal conflict is causing you harm.

Yes, makes total sense.  You've summed it up nicely.  I think the internal conflict is keeping me stuck, which is harmful.  I think it was a break through of sorts for me to realize this. 

[JNChell]

Right on. Will you keep us posted on how things are going for you?

[Mata]

Right on. Will you keep us posted on how things are going for you?

Will do.

[Methuen]

I was thinking about the whole re-processing trauma issue, and the thought occurred to me that one of my obstacles is that I am still falling into a caretaker role with my mom.  I find it difficult to revisit my childhood experiences and emotions, while at the same time feeling a responsibility to take care of my mom.  I think that the more I work on relinquishing the caretaker role, the more emotional space will open for me to work on my own inner issues.

I can relate to this Mata.  I'm an only child living in the same town as my 84 yr old frail mom, and her only family within 800 miles, therefore the responsibility of dealing with her life needs and events falls on me.

What has worked for me is a slow withdrawal of contact, and only supporting her with actual needs that she cannot do herself.  She is physically unable to mow her lawn, so H does that.  During Covid, I did her grocery shop.  I drive her to get her eye shots for macular degeneration because she is not allowed to drive herself home afterwards.  She also wants me to do the things she doesn't want to do, such as phone with a service provider problem such as her cell phone, or changing a bill payment etc.  But when she implies she needs someone to do that (i.e. me), I remind her that she can still do that.  My litmus test for how much support I give her is "is she able to this herself" rather than "does she want to do this herself.  There  was a lot of FOG in the beginning.  A year later, she has adjusted, and last week she was so proud of herself for accomplishing a problem solving task (with a phone service provider), that she actually reminded me of the pride a small child feels after accomplishing something for the first time in their young life.

Meanwhile, because I feel more differentiated from my mom than I ever have, and have more autonomy in my life, I am less stressed, and I also have had more time to look after myself and do a lot of the "processing" you mentioned you are wanting to do.

I love nature too.  Trees mountains lakes birds and fresh air.  Amazing.

I finally figured out that if we just do everything for them because they manipulate (FOG) us into meeting all their needs, we're effectively training them to be dependent on us.  It's kind of a two-way trap, that most of us have fallen into, and are desperately trying to figure out how to get out of.

Dunno if this resonates or not for your situation.

[Mata]

What has worked for me is a slow withdrawal of contact, and only supporting her with actual needs that she cannot do herself.  She is physically unable to mow her lawn, so H does that.  During Covid, I did her grocery shop.  I drive her to get her eye shots for macular degeneration because she is not allowed to drive herself home afterwards.  She also wants me to do the things she doesn't want to do, such as phone with a service provider problem such as her cell phone, or changing a bill payment etc.  But when she implies she needs someone to do that (i.e. me), I remind her that she can still do that.  My litmus test for how much support I give her is "is she able to this herself" rather than "does she want to do this herself.  There  was a lot of FOG in the beginning.  A year later, she has adjusted, and last week she was so proud of herself for accomplishing a problem solving task (with a phone service provider), that she actually reminded me of the pride a small child feels after accomplishing something for the first time in their young life.

I've been doing the slow withdrawal of contact.  Covid has helped with that, actually, since I can't visit her apartment.  I like your litmus test.  I get myself into trouble doing too much because there are some things she can't do, things she can do, and a whole lot I think I can do better than she can.  I kinda get lost in that middle area.  I keep telling myself the middle area is where I need to let go, and let her live with the consequences of her decisions.  I was able to do this much better when I lived 800 miles away.  If moving far away again was an option for me, I probably would.  But I'm pretty settled in my town, and unfortunately she moved here.  I feel like selling my house and finding a new job (when I love my current one) just to escape my mom is unreasonable. 

Meanwhile, because I feel more differentiated from my mom than I ever have, and have more autonomy in my life, I am less stressed, and I also have had more time to look after myself and do a lot of the "processing" you mentioned you are wanting to do.

This is great, and makes me feel hopeful.

[Methuen]

I get myself into trouble doing too much because there are some things she can't do, things she can do, and a whole lot I think I can do better than she can.  I kinda get lost in that middle area.  I keep telling myself the middle area is where I need to let go

yes yes yes!  It takes a while for us to get the hang of all this, but you are figuring this out Mata!
 

[JNChell]

Mata, you’ve just described black and white thinking and how it’s important to live between the two. In the gray area. That’s where meaningful things happen. Sanity and reason reside in the gray. Remember that.

[Mata]

. Sanity and reason reside in the gray.

This should be on a tee shirt. 

[JNChell]

If you get rich off of it, you owe me half.

[livednlearned]

I tend to get less emotional and more analytical.  But I'm an over-thinker by nature

Me too.

I don't know if this would be helpful to you but there is an excellent book called The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk. He has done a lot of research on healing from trauma and discusses EMDR and other therapies that seem particularly helpful if you have learned to stuff emotions and not experience them physically. I came across van der Kolk when I noticed that years of talk therapy had kind of plateaued for me. I was so willing to process trauma and emotions yet couldn't seem to find a way in. I started to suspect that at least some of my anxiety and dread was not accessible through talking, perhaps because I was so analytical? I don't know. My regular therapist was always saying how well I was doing, but I was waking up feeling intense dread in the middle of the night and was reacting physically and emotionally (all stuffed inside) to situations way out of proportion to what seemed reasonable.

I looked into EMDR and it seemed to be best for specific, episodic types of trauma. Chronic developmental trauma, like what many of us experience as a kid, is apparently a slightly different kind of trauma, at least in terms of different treatment approaches. I didn't conclude that EMDR wouldn't work for me, I just felt that other approaches might be more effective.

That led to somatic experiencing therapy ( https://traumahealing.org/about-us/ ) which grew out of the work of Dr. Peter Levine. I spoke to an SE therapist who did EMDR and based on what I described she suggested that somatic experiencing would be safer. Her concern was that EMDR was harder to titrate (?) I think is the word she used. Meaning, it would be harder to put the brakes on painful emotions and that could be re-traumatizing.

The way SE worked was that we would talk and sometimes I would make a gesture with my hands or move my head a certain way and she would stop the conversation and have me sort of ... exaggerate the movement. Sometimes she would have me do something in reaction to a specific movement. For example, I might make a very small movement with my hands when talking about my uBPD brother, and she would have me move my whole arm forcefully as though I was moving something away. I don't know how or why, but the combination of moving my body in connection to what I was saying seemed to unlock things that I otherwise couldn't access. She also seemed to have a sixth sense about how to ground me back in the room and return to baseline. Once we started working together, I realized how important this was for me. Maybe because I never really knew what it was like to feel safety as a kid it didn't occur to me to even check that she would help me recover from these feelings 

During our initial sessions, emotions would surface that took me by surprise. For example, she had asked me to come to my second session with three memories of something that had had a big impact on my life. I came back with three well-visited memories that were kind of ... tidy? They had a beginning, middle, end, like a story. I knew they were important but I didn't have a lot of feeling associated with them other than cooled off anger and hurt.

For the first memory, I was in the middle of describing the scene, and was using my hands to gesture, like we do when we talk. The T asked me to keep moving my right hand, which I did. Then she asked me who was to my right in the memory, and what did I want to do to that person. Somehow, those simple questions and movement unlocked the feelings that went with that memory, as simple and pure as how I felt with no censoring, almost like I was able to be that age again and feel the raw emotions without my adult self trying to stop them from happening.

The first three or four sessions were pretty intense emotionally, but I always felt like it was just the right amount and that there was someone there making sure I didn't go too deep or too far into something that messed me up for a week until the next session.

It's been helpful to me in life to be analytical, and it's also been a bit too effective when it comes to having appropriate feelings.

I still have work to do but I was estranged from my father for 7 years and was able to reconnect without shorting all my circuits. I'm not sure how I'll do when it's time to see my brother and I'm in no rush, but I do have faith that this type of healing works even if I don't fully understand how. What I wanted was to process those feelings so that they didn't show up every time I interacted with family members and that seems to have happened. Sometimes I think the animal part of my *self* needed to know that I was taking measures to keep my whole being safe, and I nailed it  Not only did I not re-traumatize myself, I found a way to do it carefully and thoughtfully and somehow earned back some trust from the part of me that's been super tense and vigilant. And I've been working on boundaries and finding trustworthy people in my life, something I didn't even know was a thing.

All this seems to have unwound my nervous system a little and let me be a bit more in the moment, with appropriate feelings in line with what's happening. Not perfectly, and not all the time, but definitely better than what it used to be when I felt so jacked up.

I hope you find peace and relief, Mata. There is so much happening these days around resolving trauma, and I wholeheartedly believe we are entering some kind of golden age in learning how to recover from trauma in genuine and long-lasting ways.

 

LnL

[missing NC]

Mata,

I am so sorry for all you have been through. You are quite a survivor.  Regarding the punching bag in the basement, a friend also suggested a tennis racket on the bed, which I found a bit easier than the standing punching bag she bought me to release frustration/stress related to Cluster B trauma.  (Overall, I'm looking at other options for processing the past and dealing with current issues at this point.)

Merv/Mata,

Like Merv, I tried one ketamine infusion, but the provider was not the best choice. I plan to try it again with a highly recommended (and of course even more expensive) provider.  I will let you know if you are still interested in a month or so (due to the waitlist) how it goes. 

Methuen and all,

I find your suggestions for coping really helpful. 

[Mata]

I don't know if this would be helpful to you but there is an excellent book called The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk. He has done a lot of research on healing from trauma and discusses EMDR and other therapies that seem particularly helpful if you have learned to stuff emotions and not experience them physically. I came across van der Kolk when I noticed that years of talk therapy had kind of plateaued for me. I was so willing to process trauma and emotions yet couldn't seem to find a way in. I started to suspect that at least some of my anxiety and dread was not accessible through talking, perhaps because I was so analytical? I don't know. My regular therapist was always saying how well I was doing, but I was waking up feeling intense dread in the middle of the night and was reacting physically and emotionally (all stuffed inside) to situations way out of proportion to what seemed reasonable.

I'm about half way through that book at the moment, I agree its excellent so far.  My T also says I'm doing well, but sometimes I don't know. 

I hope you find peace and relief, Mata. There is so much happening these days around resolving trauma, and I wholeheartedly believe we are entering some kind of golden age in learning how to recover from trauma in genuine and long-lasting ways.

Thanks.  I really appreciate you sharing your experience with SE, it sounds really interesting.  I did some searching and it doesn't look like there is anyone in my town that offers it.  I might have to dig a little more. 

[Mata]

Like Merv, I tried one ketamine infusion, but the provider was not the best choice. I plan to try it again with a highly recommended (and of course even more expensive) provider.  I will let you know if you are still interested in a month or so (due to the waitlist) how it goes. 
 

If you feel like sharing, I'd be interested.  Tennis racket on the bed sounds promising too.