Nothing but a shell?

Another day, another week, another month, another year gone by without any improvement. How do you deal with the frustration of feeling like nothing but a shell? It's as though if I were to be hit hard enough I would crack open and see that there truly is nothing inside. That it's all been one cruel joke and I've been chasing after something that has never existed.

When I look in the mirror I see the reflection of what I know is my body, but it evokes no feeling of recognition in my heart. It's like I'm staring at some stranger that I've seen in passing but have never spoken with. How can I look like that? It doesn't at all match what I would have imagined I'd look like, had I never seen my reflection before. What happened to the real me?

I don't want to answer the phone, or respond to e-mails, or even really talk to anyone at all. The only thing I want from anyone I know is to finally be understood, but it won't happen because everyone has this image in their mind of who I am, and I've always played that role for them. I don't think there even is a real me. At least not enough that could be pieced together to make real person. I feel more like the lingering shadow that a person once cast long ago, but as time goes by the sun gets higher and that shadow shrinks smaller and smaller.

My GP gave me a referral to a psychiatrist a year ago, but there's so much backlog I'm still on the waiting list to get in. How screwed up is everyone that there's a year long line just to see someone who is probably screwed up themselves in their own way, and who will just hand out pills that they probably get kickbacks on? I can't ever imagine being helped by someone I have to pay to act like they care. Yeah, I know that's completely cynical of me to say, and that there are people who have been helped through that route, but what about the people who have never been normal? They can't get fixed. They can only get turned into what everyone else says they should be, which is just another role for me to have to play.

My very earliest memories in life are of telling an abuser no, and to stop. His response was to laugh and do it anyway. Years later when he finally gets hauled into court under charges, the prosecutor, not even the defense, but the one who was supposed to be on my side, tells the judge that it happened a long time ago and the abuser was underage so he didn't think it warranted any jail time? Excuse me? The judge disagreed, but all the abuser ended up with was a little over 2 months, and I was given $4,000 in victim compensation.

Is that what my life is worth? The person I was, the person I was going to be, lost to me. Gone forever. There are no memories to recover, and so no ability to try to get back to a place I don't remember. And all that's worth is 2 months and $4,000? That's the equivalent of someone's summer holidays and a trip to Europe. That's how little I was worth? And to top it all off, because he was underage it wasn't even put on his adult record. It literally doesn't affect him at all for anything he wants to do in life. Whereas I'm expected to scrape together some semblance of a personality - without any help given, mind you - so that I can go out, work, and contribute taxes to pay the salaries of people like that judge or prosecutor who don't even do their jobs. If I do want any help from therapy or counselors, I have to pay for it out of my own pocket. How much help did he get in prison? How often did he get to see therapists? It's like they give more assistance to the person responsible for the crime than the person affected by it. The injustice of it makes me want to scream.

I look at other people and try to figure out how I'm supposed to act. What's supposed to be important to me. Everyone says it's love, family, friends. Okay... so where does that leave someone who doesn't connect with others? Who has never loved anyone? Who can't even handle being in the same room with people without his insides twisting up, heart rate spiking, and feeling like he has to play a role because he doesn't have any kind of real identity inside?

I just want to feel whatever it is that other people feel about themselves, about each other. I want to know who I am, and for my actions to not be reactions to trauma. I want to see my reflection in the mirror and know the person I'm looking at.

This was more of a rant than anything, but PTSD has been kicking my *** for a while now (worse in the past 2 months) and I'm getting so tired of it. I needed to give form to those feelings I've had since waking today.

Oh (((Trebyn))) I am so sorry you are not getting help. When I was reading your post I could identify with those feelings. I am sorry you didn't really get the justice you deserved, or the help you needed because what this abuser did caused you to develop PTSD. It isn't so much that you need to see a psychiatrist as you need to find a therapist.
I understand how you are feeling angry that you need to pay to have someone care, me too in a way, but a good therapist is more then just a person who is pretending to care. A good therapist is a person who understands the challenge of PTSD and actually cares about helping a person like you to finally heal. I finally found a therapist that works with me on a sliding scale, I pay out of pocket and I could not afford a more expensive T.

Yes, PTSD can make a person feel like a shell, and the other symptoms you are describing, but there is a person inside you, just a confused person who struggles with a disorder that can be very challenging. North America is a big area, I don't know where you live and what your circumstances are, but there has to be a way you can find a therapist and help. Don't give up on yourself, you "can" make gains on this condition.

(((Hugs))))
OE

Hi, Trebyn. I know exactly how you feel. My first abuser was my mother. She was so cold that she never hugged me. I too feel like a shell of a person and do not understand and have never experienced love. It was never taught to me. I am sorry for what you have gone through. The effects of trauma on my life, like yours, have been enduring and run deep. T's (like judges) don't seem to understand and the treatments have not done much.

You have been waiting too long for a T. Are there any other resources you can use? Other therapists? Self help books / CDs you can order? Have you tried meditation classes. (They have helped some sufferers.)

To get to know yourself better you have to go out and to things, first with yourself and then with others. Go walking or bike riding, read novels, take courses, develop interests, hobbies and values. Once you develop values and hobbies, you are ready to make friends and lovers. (That's the commonality with friends and lovers - values and interests.) It's a slow process. My best friend died 5 years ago and I am just starting to get on my feet and recover from the loss. Tomorrow I will be meeting a prospective friend from an internet ad. I don't have high expectations but it's an attempt.

I wish you all the best.

Oh, I've been to therapists in the past. Not for quite a few years, but I went to a number of them in my later teens after the trial. A couple of them were supposed to be specialized in treating problems arising from sexual abuse (I was directed to them through victim services), but none of the therapists I've gone to were really able to do anything for me. One of them actually made things considerably worse, and I wound up losing an art scholarship from the results of their ill-advised art therapy. The medications route wasn't beneficial either. The last antidepressant/anti-anxiety medication I tried actually turned me violent psychotic and I had to lock myself in a room with instructions to call the police if I came out. After that I said no thanks to future prescription offers.

I have had books recommended to me in the past, and I did take a look at some of them. The problem is that I don't know any different, so I don't know what to change, or how to go about fixing it without feeling like I'm faking it all the time. Or if it even can be fixed. I've never known what it's like not to live with that kind of stuff, because it started so early and continued off and on until I was 12. Already by grade 8 I couldn't be around people and started getting homeschooled by a private teacher.

I was shown love as a child, but I never seemed to feel it back. To give an example, my grandmother was excellent to my sister and I. She was very kind, very attentive, and she never did anything to hurt us. There were even a couple of years when she lived with us, so we knew her pretty well. Yet even with how she was, I still couldn't handle her hugging me without it triggering the anxieties and muscles tensing. At the end of her life her health deteriorated, and everyone knew it was just a matter of time before she passed. All of my relatives were really distraught over this, and yet the only thing I felt inside was impatience and annoyance. I could make myself sound somewhat decent by claiming that why I felt that was because I didn't like seeing her suffer, but in reality those feelings were there because it was disrupting life for everyone else. Relatives were constantly calling me, e-mailing me, wanting to talk etc and I wanted that to stop.

Not once did I feel the need to go see her, I only spoke with her on the phone once or twice in her final year, and didn't go to the funeral. It was incredibly selfish and heartless, but that's who I have always been, right back to my very first friendship. I should feel ashamed about it, yet I don't. It feels like it's just the way it is, like how you can't change the weather.

I don't connect with people, but I don't know why. Is it due to the abuse? Is it due to brain injury during early surgeries? Or have I always been this way? I can't remember any time from before the abuse so I have no reference to compare to. All I can compare it to is other people... but what they describe feeling, I don't. That in of itself doesn't bother me, it's that I don't know why I don't feel it. What if it's not due to PTSD and it is who I actually have always been? If everyone thinks love, family, and friends are what life is about, where would that leave someone like me? Watching life from the sidelines?

I hear you. As a child, my emotions were not developed and I could be cold. However, as I grew up, I changed. Having spent a lot of time with people and having gotten to know them - and them having gotten to know me - relationships became deeper. Parent - child relationships where I initially followed instructions changed to ones where there were deeper conversations. (With me, this was truer with aunts, uncles and cousins than with parents.) I never did well with friends but I did grow with family. Often, it took effort. I made effort to develop relations with nieces and nephews. It paid off. I picked up the phone and called cousins and nieces and nephews. I emailed. Sometimes I feel less close than others. My feelings can be inconsistent. But we are there for each other when it matters. Even if you're going in blind, you have to make an effort in order to find out if there are rewards however small or inconsistent.

One of the benefits of PC is the home page which features many helpful articles written by professionals. This article is featured on today's home page and I thought it might be beneficial since it deals with self-discovery.

Questions to Spark Self-Discovery | World of Psychology

It sounds like you were just taught to be a victim during important years where you were supposed to learn and develop bonding, caring, and trust and feel safe and loved. It is very difficult for a child to develop emotionally if the child isn't exposed to early bonding where a nurturer gives them a sense of identity, warmth, caring and encouragement. If physical contact is being abused, it would make sense that a child would only develop a deep message that physical contact doesn't have any rewards to it so "avoiding" would be the best way to feel safe, and if it is forced, then a child would slowly learn to shut down emotionally until he/she is released from it.

Back in the 60's an experiment was done by taking an infant monkey and only giving it a mother that was nothing more than a cold metal simulation, no fur, no physical nurturing messages, no interactions but just nourishment, but nothing in that nourishment that involved nurturing or warmth of any kind. After the monkey matured they took it and put it in with other monkeys and it could not interact or socialize but instead got all upset and did it's best to distance from the other monkeys, any attempts the other monkeys made to socialize only made it very uncomfortable. They had to separate the monkey and he had to live alone the way he grew up. I was young when I saw that and it left a big impact on me, I felt it was so cruel to do that experiment. It was so long ago but I can still picture the cold metal replacement for the mother and how terrified the monkey was when they put it in with other monkeys.

It doesn't surprise me from what you have described that you didn't get emotional when your grandmother died or that when other relatives called you to share their grief it annoyed you. While your grandmother was nice to you, she was not there earlier when you needed to learn emotional and physical bonding.

I am not surprised either that the therapy you did get in your later teens was not helpful and that one therapist did more harm than good. It sounds like these people assumed you had "something" there that could respond to their therapy, but they were definitely missing some very significant impairments. Yes, you are right, the punishment of your abuser and what was given to you monetarily was no where near what you should have received, I totally agree with you there.

This is something that really needs to have light shed on it too. It is so important that the gravity of how you were challenged is recognized. It's strange to me that we have learned about it scientifically because of what was observed in that experiment so very long ago, yet as a society and how we treat those who struggle psychologically is falling short.

There are so many variations where different people genuinely struggle psychologically because of how poorly they were nurtured and society is having to constantly deal with it in so many ways that it has been a huge burden both financially as well as the overall stability and safety of society itself. You are really not alone with your very real challenges, actually if you pay attention, there are so many varying degrees of it in so many posts here at PC and there are constantly not only members but visitors who are reading the different threads, and the busiest threads are relationships, depression, and psychotherapy.

So Trebyn, you are not really "alone" when you struggle. You are also not alone in not getting your needs met either. You are not the only one that struggles with confused emotions and ability to trust and connect with others, or even needing to distance and "avoid" others because it just gets so uncomfortable somehow. I believe you when you say that you have to "pretend" to have feelings about different things when you "do" interact and that you wish you actually did understand what it is like to have that part of you active and balanced because you feel so lost, but, again there are all kinds of variations of that challenge where some people have some things in place but really struggle to find a balance in some way.

Trebyn, if you spend some time observing PC and all the different members, after a while it isn't hard to see how many members talk about their challenging childhoods and are at a point where they are confused and are trying to figure out how to sort it all out somehow. And often so many people get into the field of psychology because of some kind of desire to learn how to figure it out, and even join the field to help others, so they think, sort it all out too. It is actually not unusual for a therapist/psychologist to have their own issues and some of them heal while helping others while others end up needing therapy themselves at some point. I have personally met a couple of them who were supposed to be authorities on psychology and I actually noticed how these individuals were missing what I consider "simple basics". I am not saying that to promote myself as superior either, because I am sure these people do know much more than I know, however, IMHO, what good is that if one really doesn't know the basics. You are a good example of exactly what I am saying because of what was missed when you reached out for help yourself.

A house can have all kinds of amazing features to it, however, if the foundation isn't solid, the house simply isn't going to last. Well, it is the same thing with human beings too.

You know what Trebyn, I had something happen to me where I saw my neighbors dog destroy things that took me so much time to put together, and I loved them. I saw it happen, and I see it every day and I often wake up in a bad dream seeing it many nights too. It broke me down and I tried to reach out for help and I did not get the help I needed, instead I got misdiagnosed and misunderstood. It is up to me to "prove" it and because of that "I" have been the one who is on trial in ways I never imagined. Because of how badly I was misdiagnosed and that I have some challenges in my past, it has been advised that I don't have my PTSD brought into it. If I do that everything about me will be deeply examined and the opposing side will try to use whatever they can "against me" too. Not only that but all of this will also become "public" too. What I need is a video, and I have video in my brain that plays over and over, and the only blessing is that my husband also saw it too.

I have been in therapy for just about three years to help me with the fact that not only was what happened to me "traumatic" but when I reached out for help I was not helped the way I deserved and so I have had to have therapy for bad therapy too. I have also had to have therapy for how even my own family treated me badly because they did not understand the significance of what "trauma" means in my brain. I also had a lawyer who traumatized me because he was declining mentally and failed to do his job for me and while I tried to reach out for help, I didn't get help until it got so bad it was really obvious that he was failing me and "badly". So, when you talked about how you were failed by the prosecutor, I CAN UNDERSTAND THAT COMPLETELY.

Over this past weekend I thought about what plays over and over in my head, the past three years of having my therapist help me sort it all out too. I am actually thinking about putting the PTSD into my case tbh. I know that will be very hard on me too. But if the evidence that is needed is constantly playing in my head, and I have a therapist that has been trying to help me with it, then maybe that is what I need to do because what has been happening to me for going on 7 years now IS WRONG.

I have that shell feeling that you talk about too Trebyn. I am just a bit different because the one thing that was my passion and love and personal, very personal source for thriving was destroyed and I don't know how to go back to feeling about it like I did. I am trying but my brain wants me to AVOID IT and every day I try, but I end up in pain. I am different than you because "I feel too much, it hurts too much" and I feel like not only do others not understand that, but I can't seem to stop it.

I am deeply sorry that you struggle the way you do, I really do understand it too. I understand that deep desire to "avoid" and "distance". I am different in that instead of wanting to feel as you do, I want to "not feel" so I tend to avoid because of how other people don't understand that and it tends to trigger me and embarrass me.

I know you feel "alone" but Trebyn, you are not.

Yep, that's PTSD alright. My advice:

1) Go to a psychiatrist who doesn't have a long wait list. This person will give you medication for your social anxiety, along with practical life advice. They don't "pretend to care", they just do their job like any other person. If you go to the ice cream parlor, the kid gives you an ice cream and kind of cares, in the sense that he would feel bad if the ice cream killed you, and he would like for his customers to be happy. Similarly, the psychiatrist is just helping you out and performing a service.

2) After you get your medication and some advice, start to purposefully approach certain people with the mind of making some friends. In this way, you will see who you are in relation to those around you, and you will form a sense of self.

As an aside, I have been feeling like a stowaway on planet Earth for about 35 years now. I currently have absolutely no local friends outside of my neighbor, my "at-work" friends (i.e., potential backstabbers), and my boyfriend. It's too much freaking effort for me to make and keep friends, especially when I always feel like they're judging me. However, I have found that my feelings of alienation decrease by a lot when I have a few friends. I am being lazy about it, but that's no excuse for you to be like me.

I know it seems like there is no hope, but there is a glimmer of hope inside yourself. You just have to see it. And if you have to walk the Earth three times over to find one person who can see it too, then you'll be in great shape so it's fine.

PTSD physiology is one of split mind and body. We feel numb and alienated from our life force. Yoga Jane Bercelis TRE arent just about relaxing and stretching hamstrings. Getting back in your body is a trick. Its worth the effort to learn. Life is embodie!

I strongly urge you to read Peter Levines work. Listen to his audio CDs. Go slow. This can free you, but go slow.

The callousness is attachment issues feom early chiildhood trauma. Psychodynamic therapy can help. You arent too broke to Fix. You had a good grandmother. One kind and loving person can wave us in chiildhood, even If we are somewhat frozen. I can be emotionally articulate in real life now. It surprises me., I was very shut down. I can still be detached and cold, but I dont have to be a sensitive warm peraon trapped inside *****zilla crying for someone to please see and rescue her. It was sad to be like that.

I know the withdrawn, agoraphobic, super shy, unable or unwilling to deal with people "puny-ness". Diet and vitamins help me. Complex carbs and b vitamins, especially b6. Like whole wheat biscuits it vives "shy persons the energy to do what must be done".

Recovery from ptsd is whole body work. There is a LOT you can do while you wait on a psychiatrist. Its ík to have psychiatry for dessert. Its not really a main course. More like a síde dish.

Ot gets a whole lot better, and the simple, hokie "vitamin and meditation" methods have the greatest effects.

Thanks for your replies, everyone. I'll try to put it out of my mind until I finally get a call back about my referral. Medications will unfortunately not be an option, as bad reactions in the past have made me remove them from the table, but perhaps the psychiatrist will know of someone in my area that I can go see.

As strange as it may sound, ideally what I would prefer is to get a brain scan If I could know whether the structure is normal or not, and how much the emotional centers are being activated, than it would really help me out. I'd know then if it was all psychological, or if it's physical. Who knows... maybe if I ask for it they'll do it?

Well, it never hurts to ask. I am not sure how much they will know from a brain scan however. I have seen some research on documentaries and they do have technology
that shows the brain's activity in certain areas and if these areas get active when a patient is asked certain questions or shown certain images. I think they can see "some" things on scans that show challenges like dyslexia or even what the brain of a psychopath
looks like.

I don't know how much is costs to do that or if you have insurance etc. A psychiatrist might not be the one to see though, instead a neurologist would be one that would
be able to order that kind of scan and be able to know more about the brain itself. So maybe you should look in to seeing a neurologist, especially considering medications are just off the table for you which is what psychiatrists are more about. I would hate to see you wait such a long time to see a psychiatrist only to be referred to a neurologist and have to wait longer for what you want.

OE

I have been thinking for a long time that I should sign up for a physiological study on people with CPTSD. It would be cool because I could see juuuuusssst how screwed up I really am. For instance, what if my brain turned out to be triangular? That would be sweet. I just haven't done it because I don't like being around people who make judgements on my condition. I will encourage everyone else to do it, though. Maybe I actually will some day.