I want to feel like my thoughts and feelings matter. Everyone around me affects me so much. I'm a puppet constantly being pulled in every direction except for the one I want to go in. People's actions, or inaction, towards me controls my life. I need some guidance. I need for someone to tell me it's okay, I need for someone to reach out to me and keep me on track and be there even if I pull away from them. I have goals....I have a vision that seems so unattainable due to all of this. All I want to do is succeed......

[Open Eyes]

I understand Maranara, I have felt that way myself too. I think that what you have to learn to do is recognize that often other people dont have "good or healthy motives". If your "motives" are good then you have to learn to keep giving yourself permission to push forward with a firm mindset "inspite" of others. The one person you have to build a "trust" in is yourself.

When someone developes PTSD, they tend to react more or be more sensitive. But that doesn't mean you have to tell yourself to "continue to be that way". That is what many people who struggle with PTSD do not realize they can change and actually heal from. The constant thought is that because they get triggered or even have anger, that means they have to practice those emotions.

For example, if someone happens to "hurt" us, and we see that it is "not fair or wrong" and it causes us to lose something somehow, that doesn't mean we have to keep being "angry and want revenge". It also doesn't mean we have to keep constantly deciding to "feel hurt or some kind of unworthiness" either.

I have been working on "observing myself in a new way" and recognizing that when I recall things that others have done wrong to me in my past, that I can choose to know it was wrong, but instead of constantly telling myself I "have to" be angry, I tell myself to recognize that I am angry and that when I allow myself to "feel that" I allow myself to also get upset inside.

I have every reason to harbor anger against my careless neighbor because they were so careless that it cost me more than I ever dreamed. One day I was out doing barn chores and I could hear them laughing and having fun, and I began to get angry. Then, I paid attention to how the anger I was allowing myself to feel, was affecting "me" and interupting my day. Then I began to realize that "my anger" was hurting "me" and not them. Then I realized, "wait a minute, why am I hurting myself this way, I don't deserve to hurt myself". So right then and there I began to decide to let it go and choose not to "hurt myself" and to my surprise, I managed it better.

What we tend to do that we do not realize is we begin to think that "we have to have an emotion and cause ourselves to suffer". The truth is, we actually do have a choice. We actually "can" observe our own reactions to things and slowly make a conscious effort to pay attention to how we unknowingly think we have to push ourselves into feeling bad about ourselves.

The whole purpose of "healing" is all about slowly learning to pay attention to the messages we send ourselves that cause us to feel bad or hurt or unworthy. Instead, we have to think about who we are, that if we have good life motives, and want to "try", we actually do not have to "punish ourselves or allow others to send us messages where we have to believe them to a point where we have to "self punish".

Look at PC, and listen with your mind. There are so many that talk about their pain and personal challenges. What does that mean? Well, what that means is that you are not as alone as you think you are, instead of being "distant or alone" you are actually part of, part of being human just like everyone else.

What you have to do is you have to learn to look at others in a different way, and recognize much of what they deal with deep inside them, is very much like you struggle too. If you wonder if you are worthy, well, so do others. If you say to yourself, "no one seems to like me or understand me", then you must realize, many others also feel that way.

Someone can say to themselves that they are ugly or not as good as so their life is hard. But honestly, someone can be very attractive and have challenges that people tend to truely not see. A person can be "attractive" and be just as hated as an ugly person. A person can be an attactive female that men just want to take advantage of, if she is nice, all the better because she wont see it coming. So, it can be every bit as hard for someone who "seems to look the part and not be what someone considers unattractive".

So what everyone needs to recognize is the relativity of their perceptions. That what is most important is to develope the ability to understand the importanced of "self respect" and finally commiting to true "self care". In other words, a person who believes they are less than can condemn themselves for it, but a person who is beautiful can also wish they were not because they can attract alot of bad from that too and have just as much pain.

If you have good motives, then find your way to "honoring yourself" and committing to learning to go forward with "self respect" inspite of the issues other people have that are "unhealthy". The truth is, none of us can be "in charge" of others, however we "can" learn to be "in charge" of ourselves, we truely can.

Open Eyes

[archipelago]

Open Eyes was very clear about the internal process that happens. I just want to add that I believe that you don't have to "go it alone." In other words, a good therapy relationship encourages the strength that you want. You don't necessarily have to go into the depths of your past to benefit from supportive therapy. There are "strength-based" therapy approaches that start with where you are and encourage you to go after your goals. The intimacy that therapy provides is taken inside yourself at some point along the way so you feel stronger to do things on your own. And this can happen relatively fast so doesn't require a huge expense either.

[Alishia88]

I can very much relate to what you say. I´m also tired to be so extremely affected by every little thing that happens around me and people say.
It is like my mental immune system is totally low. It´s when you have lost yourself, your sense of self and the security and sureness of your own opinions, I guess.

Therapy is not an option right now. I make way too much to qualify for any assistance but at the same time can barely make ends meet and have no insurance. I just wish to find someone who would keep me "on my toes" and goal oriented so the other stuff wouldn't get to me so darn much. Feeling as though I've done something right and stuck with something would go a long way right now.

[Open Eyes]

((Alisha88)),

Yes, you are probably at a point in your healing in PTSD where you are feeling very "exposed" right now. When someone developes PTSD, they will be very sensitive for a while. Everyone that developes PTSD says, "I wish I was my old self where I didn't react as much as I am now". And that is why developing a "safe" place and a sense of feeling "safe" with a therapist is the first thing that must be established. When you first work with a therapist, what most therapist's focus on first is teaching you how to recognize your anxiety and then learn how to "self sooth" and focus on something very calming so you can actually slow down the sense of "urgency" taking place that signals cortizone to build up to prepare for "fight or flight". So what you begin to learn is that you actually "can" have "more control" than you realize. These methods are called "coping methods, but also self soothing techniques" so that you don't have to think that just because cortizol is building up, you have to suffer and even unknowingly "feed into it" just because it is taking place.

What patients can get confused about when they learn these techniques (which I struggled with myself), is that learning how to self sooth or develope "grounding methods" is not saying that you do not have "genuine challenges and worthy concerns" and it isn't in anyway meant to make a patient feel dumb or inadequate because they struggle with anxiety or or acute stress. It is more about "observing self" and recognizing that a trigger or challenge is taking place and the brain is getting overwhelmed and thinking something has to happen right now. And instead of getting all upset, you can actually learn to reverse the signals and as you do that, the cortizone buildup will stop and back off and instead will discipate again.

This is why coloring books work or what my T did with me where he saw I was struggling and told me to close my eyes. He told me to picture a big chalk board in front of me and that I had a piece of chalk in my hand and to draw the number 10, then he told me to take an eraser and erase it. He told me to write the number 9 and then erase that and he proceeded to go down to the number one. He told me that if I wanted to, I could also just draw a picture on the chalk board too. When he finished, he had me open my eyes and I did notice that I had calmed down. And the reason that happened is because I had my brain doing something calm that had nothing going on that meant I should need to "act on anything" and have to build up cortizol.

Everyone developes "subconscious" messages that tell them something bad is taking place, it may have hurt them or told them to feel bad in some way. But when someone has PTSD, these messages can be alot stronger, and often the person struggling can get confused by that. What they need to do is be able to talk about whatever they experienced that was "bad or upsetting" with a therapist and be validated that "yes, that was bad and wrong" but it is not happening now. And that because something bad did happen, we unknowingly held onto it and didn't really have a way of "processing it" where we felt we learned from it, got over it, and that it was also validated by someone else and a sense of "being validated and comforted" took place.

One of the biggest things that I have had to overcome myself is "my own victim mentality". A victim is someone who has been in a situation where they were neglected or victimized and they had to figure out how to find a way to feel a sense of safety in that "toxic" environment. When someone becomes a victim, they try to hide whatever it is that they can find to somehow self protect. Their greatest fear is that if the abuser discovers this, then they will lose that way that they have found to "self protect". Within abuse a victim learns ways to "control abuse" and sometimes that means they have to almost become "loyal" to the abuser. As this takes place, they will often believe that no one else will understand how they had to be a certain way in order to "self protect". What also happens is that there will be an ongoing fear that by exposing this intricate way they had to "handle" the situation that they will somehow "lose" some kind of protection or even risk being hurt or misundertood, if they "talk" about the experience they had with an abuser.

Often what can happen is that a person that was hurt or neglected can make some kind of deep pact that it is "their private way of dealing" and they somehow got through it and it is better to not let anyone else know it ever happened. However, what they did take away from "neglect and abuse" is certain warnings where they have to be able to see in other people as "possible abusers" too. A victim can also begin to believe that even though they want to be loved and should trust, that even if they try, the end result will be "someone will eventually let them down or hurt them".

When PTSD happens, whatever "troubled history" is there will be "magnified" and it is normal for the person struggling to believe that no one could possibly understand the depths of how bad or hurt or confused/troubled they really are. Something "bad" happened and resulted in a tremedous sense of loss and the PTSD patient doesn't know how to show how bad they are hurt, or a PTSD victim will often want to find a way to ring some huge alarm to say, "Warning this is bad, this is wrong, and it should not happen".

Therapy only works when a patient can establish the right sense of safety that the therapist will "believe them" and actually "validate the significance of the injury" that the patient feels has happened to them. This is what is discussed in what a therapist must know to treat "trama patients" that is discussed in Judith Herman's book.

No matter what a patient's history is, the bottom line is that a patient has to be able to feel safe and also feel that "they will be fairly judged, validated, and believed". Unless they can feel that, they will not be able to move through the healing process.

This is where you are feeling challenged right now ((iota)) in being judged and "believed" in the situation you are discribing. I can't blame you for struggling either.
And I am very glad to hear you have found an Alli in a professional to help you with this, very important to have that. I would have to say though, the important part of this process is that you "know in your heart that you have a real reason for what happened and you stick to that in your defense".

So "healing" and "gaining" to what I am discribing in my first post "does take time" to achieve being able to begin to start seeing. I cannot say enough how important "self observing" is when it comes to the healing process. I have been challenged so much in the past two years myself. But, the best thing I did was to allow myself to be "patient" and "caring" no matter what I was learning or "reacting like when I was triggered". I have cried many times because of some of the "realities" I recognized about myself that was a result of abuse/neglect in my past. But, I have also been learning that part of the healing is "mourning" too. And also staying "mindful" of myself and that all I can do is to slowly learn how to grow and learn "inspite" of whatever I see about myself that might be "unhealthy" about how I had adapted.
After all is said and done, "I am only human".

Open Eyes

If therapy is the only way out, I am stuck for the foreseeable future. I am also BPD; my desperate, self-loathing, fatalistic, self condemning frame of mind can change on a dime and I'm starting to disassociate, turn numb, not care. Not the ideal way out, but it will save me from myself for a little while since no one else can.....

[Open Eyes]

Maranara,
Try getting the book, "Trama and Recovery" by Judith Herman and read through it.
If you can't have a T for a while then you have to look for other ways to "self help".
So reading would be a good way to have "new suggestions" come into your mind.

You have identified some of your challenges here, so that is a start. You can work on knowing these challenges present themselves to you, so you have to make decisions about developing better ways to manage yourself and "not allow yourself to think you have to follow along with these troubling thoughts just because they come up".

I see a therapist Maranara, but he keeps me to task as "I" learn to do the work to help myself "heal".
A therapist doesn't fix someone, they "help" and support and guide patients to learn how to do what they need to do to heal and take over controling their challenges.

(((HUGS)))

[archipelago]

I'm sorry that therapy isn't an option right now. There are support groups out there, but it depends on where you live and your schedule and it isn't really the same as a therapy relationship.

I do have an idea that might sound a little strange at first, but it might be worth trying to see. My therapist is an analyst and a psychiatrist, but he uses many different techniques and with people with trauma, especially who feel in need of safety and a tendency to dissociate, he has used a version of hypnosis, that you can use yourself.

First you imagine a beautiful, special place that is completely safe and private and you have complete control over who or what can come there. I imagined a tropical island and described it in detail. Then he asked me to close my eyes and imagine a staircase that would bring me to that place.

He counted slowly backwards, after doing a complete body relaxation, from 10 to 1, with each step getting more and more relaxed until I reached the special place. He asked if I wanted to be by myself and I asked him to come with me. He asked me to describe what I saw and what was going on. He said there was magic in this place, things that would shrink those I was fearful of, and stuff like that. After a while of playing there, we returned by the staircase, counting from 1 back to 10. I recorded it on my phone so I can play as a self-soothing, relaxation tape, or I can just go there on my own.

Sometimes if I feel like it I draw this place so it feels even stronger and I know it's always there for me no matter what else is happening.

[(JD)]

Maranara. I would find one small thing to control first. Then once you have that set, find another. It can be anything really.. From choosing not to do or eat something To when you will do something... And then dont let anyone or thing take it away.

You are important. Find what is in your own best interest and do not let another's ignorance put you down.