[Teacake]

Decades ago I saw a 27 year old man reexperiencing physical treatment in captivity in night terrors. For years I had nightmares about his night terrors. Last year I went nuts when my neighbor made his little dog scream.

I used to try to talk about it. No one cared. You've probably seen it too, the blank stunned cow face. The stupid face. I need to stop hating myself for getting the stupid face from people.

I am NOT watching or listening to the news or reading it online. But I feel it anyway. I'm like that. I'm intuitive and empathic. I feel. And what I feel, this Ramadan, when the prayers of the faithful billion pull heaven closer to earth is sheer pain and horror. I feel grief.

What ARE we?

I do pick up on prayer. I don't care if it sounds crazy. Sometimes I catch the language of the prayer. Prayer, or strong feeling. I feel the people near me. So, I am NOT feeling Gaza. I am feeling the nauseating pain about Gaza from the people near me. It's called limbic resonance.

My dad was the same way.

I refuse to be ashamed of being intuitive or empathic or sensitive or "psychic". It's natural and human.

I dont pray. There is no God. Just us. But...if only there were a cosmic adult to see me cry and make the scuffling boys knock it off...

Why are we so horrible? Why do we hurt one another?

What are we?

Why does it hurt so much?

How can I be fifty years old and still cry like a child with my jaw shuddering, because people are cruel to one another? I thought is grow out of it but I don't. It just gets worse and worse!

When I was 22 I thought 27 was a grown man. Now my little boy is 27 and this is why I think of my friend. That and the fact that I'm insane and going to end up in the state hospital drooling for recreation if I don't either pull together or just flip and hope to roll through

I'm ready to turn myself in again, but to whom? Do I go to ER and say I feel the world pain? Go find a priest and tell him I may have some atypical serotonin syndrome? Do myself in and hope like hell to find my ancestors in some happy hunting ground instead of being immediately reborn
in this awful place?

This is awfully histrionic for a WASP.

It's awfully shameful for a WASP to be in such a state. So emotional. Get a grip. Buck up. Come now, smile, that's a girl. You can't let it get to you.

They have told me I got hurt because I ventured out of the white suburbs. They've said it plainly and they have implied it. But I was lonely. Its not my fault the smarter boys werent the golf pants boys.

I can bear my psychotic flashbacks and body memories because they are temporary. I will get through. A lobotomy and a thirty year mortgage on a house on a golf course...you don't recover from.

But I have my doubts.

[Teacake]

And then there is Psychic ptsd. Yes there is. Fml, but there is.

When I taught refugee children I flashes on images of their stories and they knew it and the social workers sometimes confirmed it.

When I was with my asylum requesting friend, we had conversations without a common language. We had hysterical misunderstandings as well, but we dreamed each others experiences. This is how i experienced love in my twenties. It would have been intense without unscathed men.

I lied to my son. He asked If I could read his mind and I said no. I said I read his "tells". But I knew what he was thinking. Like I might know what he was saying.

Its not weird or wrong. Its natural and normal and nice!

Now what gave me the shivery horrors is how id always attributed childhood intuitions to, well, intuition. To perceiving signs and forming images that were symbolic as dream language...but If I accept that I dreamed my lovers first safe place in Cyprus, I can accept that as a child a had the same perceptions of plain old reality. I knew things no one knew how i knew them. It spooked mom. It w as normal to Dad.

So of Its a shining its always stronger with other traumatised people. I walked into a classroom, looked at the students and "oh look, there's one just like me". No idea what I meant, but she was a beginning English student and we spent a few weeks on the same vocabulary, before we figures out she was reading my mind.

For a long time ive thought those experiences might mean i was schizophrenic! I even exercised overcaution in using stimulants because of it!

How could i not be dissociative when ive spent my life hiding how i am. Too smart. Too sensitive. Too empathic. How do you know that? You cant know that! Well, dont tell them that!. Who told you that? Who write that? You didn't write that!.

Its a relief to be fifty.
I survived.
I reproduced.
Lets see you do that as well as i did.
**** you.

Lol!

Menopause better hit pause real fast. This pericrap is killing me.

[Open Eyes]

Have you read the side effects of Prozac Teacake? It may not be agreeing with you at all, it happens. It is important you pay attention and if you don't feel well, go to the ER and talk about your symptoms and concerns it may not be agreeing with you.

[doglover1979]

Not trying to be rude or anything, but have you discussed these psychic experiences with a mental health professional?

I believe that mystical stuff can happen, but it may be something to discuss with your therapist or doctor. There is a total possibility that it could be psychosis.

[Teacake]

Originally Posted by Open Eyes

Have you read the side effects of Prozac Teacake? It may not be agreeing with you at all, it happens. It is important you pay attention and if you don't feel well, go to the ER and talk about your symptoms and concerns it may not be agreeing with you.

Have you read the symptoms of PTSD, OpenEyes?

My son is now the age of my boyfriend when I was 22. I heard something in his voice and the floodgates opened on trauma. And Its Ramadan. I always feel when people pray. I dont know why. Just sensitive. I hate football season. But love the High Holy Days.

I was only 22, teaching english to children who had been placed into very adult roles by circumstances surrounding war. My students had ptsd and I knew I was like them.. am i Cambodian? I wondered. My boyfriend was seeking political asylum. He had serious night terrors. I had been scared silly the year before. I had dropped out of college. I was barely post adolescent. And I had a man with very serious symptoms. And we didn't have a translator. And we were so young. He too was so young.

ER is down the road and the police are three digits away If I need help getting there.

[Teacake]

Originally Posted by doglover1979

Not trying to be rude or anything, but have you discussed these psychic experiences with a mental health professional?

I believe that mystical stuff can happen, but it may be something to discuss with your therapist or doctor. There is a total possibility that it could be psychosis.

It could be psychosis If I suddenly became psychic. Or suddenly realised for the first time that I have always been psychic. But I have always wondered about these experiences and not been trouble by them

My therapist helped me a lot when I was having extreme anxiety in the days before mass shootings near me or loved ones. I would feel like the ptsd storm, only instead of memory there would be a shooting. Once I had terrible nightmares. A woman thirty miles away in a house like mine was shooting her children as i dreamt it. I had a good talk with myself about how i did NOT need to know it If I couldnt prevent it. It didn't happen again.

My therapist is the one who helped me normalise being sensitive like that.

[Teacake]

Its so strange to realise...I remember him as an "older" man, because he seemed so adult. And I remember him as a boy, the age of my son, and it seems incredible that our generation is now old.

And the regime never changed.

[Open Eyes]

Yes, I know about the symptoms of PTSD. I do see that things are coming forward for you, things you put away, not really knowing you did and you are recalling details in the now yet with the "then" awareness and emotions. I have experienced that myself and it is very confusing and disorienting.

I think it is good that you are talking about it too, even writing about it as you are now. It may not make total sense to others because of how these various memories and flashbacks come forward in pieces. It can be an effort to even put it all into language too because (as my T explained) our brain stores information in different areas of our brain, some of these areas don't have language.

Yes, I believe you that with your son being the same age as this boyfriend can be one of the triggers to this coming forward this way too.

I went through this stage myself and it was confusing as hell. I was 52/53 at the time and I had the same question of "why am I feeling like a child at times" at this age? I am so glad I had found a therapist when I was going through all this because I think I would have gone crazy tbh. Now, when I look back I can see that what I was experiencing in the present was what brought all this forward. I was stuck with a lawyer that was failing mentally and I didn't have enough knowledge of how to defend myself or get help with it and that is what I experienced with my older brother. One conversation I had with him where he threatened me by saying, "You do that and I will break your neck" went deep into my brain and dislodged how threatened I felt with my older brother.

I was fortunate that I had a therapist to explain to me how these flashbacks would come in waves and I would not be able to stop them, but they do come in crest and recede like a wave and to just learn to let it happen and then make it a point to touch things in the present and keep reminding myself "not now".

I think you have been looking for the right witness/therapist that can help you work through this Tea. It definitely has to be someone who can just listen and allow you to talk about it all whatever way you have a need to talk about it all. It always comes out in ways that is hard to put into words, often there is a need to repeat it while you work on putting it all together too. I found that if I came up with one new piece, I had to repeat everything adding that piece in too.

If you can find a therapist that can do this with you it would be very helpful. Until then, just come here and let it out and it would also help you to have your own journal. It is just always better to have someone willing to listen with an understanding of what you are trying to do and who doesn't pick on you or stop you or punish you and is just willing to listen while you work through it. For myself, I was lucky that I did find a therapist who understood this.

You need to make sure you eat Tea, and also pay attention to whatever other symptoms you are experiencing at the same time.