A rough day

Today was the worst day I've had in a couple months. The usual stress of my life plus a horrible day at work. My boss is an *****. Anyway, came home very triggered by ????? Just very stressed out. All afternoon I was getting severe stomach pains. After having a yogurt, I laid down for 3 or 4 hours and listened to my Zen relaxation music and after awhile actually started to relax. I don't think I fell asleep, but may have "lost time". Not sure. I usually don't lose time when I dissociate. Anyway stomach pain has gone away. I don't want to go to work tomorrow, but I have to.

Happens to me each Monday. I give college students lectures and being in front of scrutinizing eyes is a very difficult situation for me that activates the shame spiral. I remember one day I was so hurt and vulnerable I couldn't even raise my voice and I kept attached to the whiteboard and never turning toward the students. I don't know the eye contact for me is a major problem that devolves into social anxiety. The rest of the day I spend in a very depressive posture.

Sorry your day was so bad. Remember what I said about that cosmic cloud of negative energy? It seems everyone is stressed to the max. Try to get some rest, eat protein and drink lots of fluid. If you get a chance at lunch go outside for some fresh air and maybe a walk. Glad the stomach is feeling better.

Do you have to do this everyday or just Mondays?
Give them all A's and go to the zoo for class instead

This has been building with my boss for awhile. I didn't go too much into what happened at work because I don't want this to be moved to a different forum. Bottom line, his boss (my former boss until a couple months ago) came down on him because he basically does nothing and his response is to tell me I need to work less on projects for other people, and need to spend 50% of my time working on his projects. I work on projects for at least a dozen other people. Basically, he needs to show results and since he's not going to do it, I have to.

I generally do get outside at lunch time, and with spring weather coming will probably be doing it more soon. That is actually something to look forward too!

I'm sorry to hear this. I have a very difficult time presenting in front of people. I have done it successfully a few times, but it took so much preparation, and caused me such anxiety that at this point in time I avoid public speaking completely. I was asked to develop and deliver a training class at work late last year, and I told them there was no way I could do it. You are much stronger than me, because you are actually doing it. Have you tried any Mindfulness/Grounding techniques before you have to present?

Was today any better?

Problems like this can be so triggering to the CPTSD. So what are you going to do? This sounds like it could end up in an ugly place.

Yeah Monday's only. rest of the week is research (thankfully)

lol, I'm ending up giving them all A's.

Thanks Reb, please don't worry about me . I was trying to say we all have rough days and its kind of hard for us to evoke a self-empathetic gesture toward ourselves, or at least that what I'm thinking.

yeah, mindfulness/grounding definitely helps. what I'm currently experiencing is once I'm at this state of inner turmoil/conflict, the critic goes haywire and your sense of safety, self-esteem just evaporates. You feel very little and hurt. Its not actually the scrutinizing eyes that cause us this unnecessary pain and shame but it's ourselves. That why when I'm in this state of insecurity I'm looking for any disapproving eyes to confirm I am really defected and worthless. Its so hard to dis-identify from this belief because its merged with our personalities and we need to work very hard to shake out this belief.

Hope today for you is well and safe.

This was good that you wrote this out like this. This is in the "now", but it triggered you because something in your past "hurt" you and it probably is a similar scenario where someone else is under pressure and took it out on "you".

I can experience these triggers myself, and I don't always know what is being triggered from my past that makes a "now" situation like this have such a crippling affect on me. This is the "intrusiveness" that PTSD can present and what is also described as "ghosts".

What you have described in this experience is how this man/boss took his stress out on you, actually, that is also one of his ghosts too. Truth is EVERYONE has these ghosts, it's just when one suffers from PTSD, these challenges are "magnified" and can be completely disabling.

I think dissociation is coming from how a situation like this was handled in one's past. When we are young children and something like this happens, we simply do not have any life experience in how to respond, so a child learns to dissociate. I think about how in Charlie Brown cartoons the parents voices are just sounds without real words. I think it's comparable to being around people that speak a foreign language and you only know a few words that you can identify here and there, but you can't understand the complete message.

I think that often some of our "ghosts" are when we felt threatened or afraid but we did not have anyway of storing that with all the words that we finally learn to have and develop into our adulthood.

One of the things I noticed is that when I have a flashback from when I was a young child, I see a lot of pictures and I "feel" things and sometimes my adult me can get "loud" when my adult mind is finally VERBALIZING whatever I was incapable of saying at that age.

The behavior this individual chose to present, "taking his frustration out on you", is his "learned behavior" that he is probably not consciously aware of.

My very worst flashback is when I was just a baby. I was in my crib, that much I could tell, and I was crying and crying and when I have this flashback my stomach hurts so bad I feel like I am going to die and I also get the chills really bad. I hated that flashback the most, I felt so helpless and it was the one flashback I could not say, "I remember that, it's in the past, not now, I am safe now".

Thank god for my therapist because he told me that when babies wake up they are "wet, cold, and hungry" and their stomach really hurts, that is so the baby will cry to sound an alarm so the baby will be fed and changed. When I thought about it I remember that my mother had two other small children, she was often overwhelmed and I think what probably happened is that I would wake up crying and extremely hungry and she did not get to me and I probably had to wait in that state of extreme hunger, wet and shivering. I did always struggle with stomach issues when I was stressed growing up. Every part of our history is there in our mind/subconscious. It could very well be that happened a lot to me because of how my mother had two other children where she could not always get to me right away. I was the youngest of three.

Once my therapist helped me with that, the severity of that flashback significantly reduced.

This situation is triggering something in you from your past where someone else's issues "hurt" you in some way. By writing down whatever is happening in the now that is triggering you, sometimes it helps you figure out the trigger, but to also see that this man's behavior is "his" problem and you can learn how to help yourself slowly give his problem back to him instead of how "you" are absorbing it that somewhere in your past did stress/hurt you.

I am not in anyway saying this is "easy" either, but, identifying is the first part of the puzzle where you can begin working on developing your ability to overcome that trigger.

It was better. I didn't even see him face to face yesterday. But I have a meeting with him tomorrow. I talked to my co-workers that I get a lot of work requests from and let them know what's going on. Two of them I trust to back me up. The third one, not so much.

It probably will before it's over. One thing I have going for me is the fact that everyone knows I do my job well and I have a lot of people who will back me. I know I have the support of one guy who came to talk to me yesterday about the situation. He gave me some advice. He dealt with him before moving over to my division and he warned me a couple months ago to watch my back. I know I have the support of at least two of the co-workers that I do a lot of work for.

Thank you for this. Very informative and gives me a lot to think about. I do know that most of my CPTSD triggers come from my father, who lashed out when he was stressed or mad. But there are other things too beyond that where I am triggered. It's quite complicated. My biggest issue is realizing I'm getting triggered. I see it afterwards, but not during. If I could see it during, maybe I could stop the reaction.

I feel the same way about dissociating , don't know I'm doing it until I'm coming out of it. How do you stop something you are not even aware of happening until it's too late?

That's a good question. I wish I had an answer for it. I think, for myself anyway, that the key is finding a way to avoid getting to that point. I really want to start using Mindfulness/Grounding on a regular basis. The problem I have is when my anxiety gets to a certain level my memory and focus fail and I forget to do them.

Totally understand, it's like the anxiety consumes the head and nothing else can get in.

Exactly.

I have this challenge too. I have vented the same desire of "if I could see it during, maybe I could stop the reaction." I have made some improvements and gains, but I still have challenges were I can "react" before I can stop the reaction from happening. It's a lot of work, and one has to develop so much "patience' with self when it comes to working through the things that trigger you and gradually gain on controlling it. These things did not happen overnight either, they come from years of being exposed to "toxic" individuals and when it comes to complex PTSD, often these deep seeded challenges began long before we had any way of knowing how to defend ourselves or that what we faced was toxic.