I'm in trouble

I haven't slept in 3 days. Overwhelming, incapacitating flashbacks. I don't think I can go to therapy on Monday and I can't figure out if that's a good thing or not. I keep telling myself, everything seems so bad because I haven't slept, but I CAN'T sleep and everything just seems like it's spiraling out of control. I facillate between 1) wanting to call my t and cancel for Monday and 2) wanting to call her and say HELP and 3) just ignoring it and then I start the cycle over again.

I'm falling apart, and I'm not sure why or how or what to do.

(((((Zoo)))))

Call your T and ask for help! Three days without sleep is a really long time. You need to be able to sleep. Please don't cancel Monday. You can go and not talk about the trauma, but check in on how you are doing and making more plans. Please call your T. You need your sleep. Please stay safe.

(((zoo))) I would pick option 2) call your T and say HELP. Having no sleep isn't helping and you need help.

Keep posting.

it's all complicated by the fact that I'm not at home this weekend, I'm visiting my best friend at her house. Which is great, usually, but I'm having some kind of breakdown and keep wanting to just throw my dog in my car and drive the 3 hours home so I can hide in my own little nest. But I also don't want to leave here.

This is just another example of how my brain is going around and around and around and not getting anywhere and not letting me rest and just driving me into the ground.

I feel like there's nothing my T can say to help, and also I don't want to bother her in the middle of her weekend, while at the same time I know you guys are right and I should call her. Again, stuck in the spiral.

(((((Zoo))))

I don't think you will be bothering her. She will want to be able to help you when you are having such a hard time. Please reach out. She will be able to help.

I got some food, I'm going to try to eat and then try to sleep. Just didn't want to disappear after posting in crisis.

(((((((((((Zoo))))))))))))) Can you just call T without trying to guess the outcome? Just make the call and give T the chance to help you?

It's awful to be stuck in those spirals, and not sleeping makes it 57290582048 times worse. And I'm sooooooooooooo sorry about the flashbacks.

whatever you do, please don't cancel Monday. Go and let T support you. You can go and take a break from the trauma work...or you can tell about the flashbacks and release them. When I was telling my story, sometimes I would have flashbacks that I thought I couldn't bear....but if I would just tell them to T, things would quiet down a little inside. For me, it felt like my story pushing to be told. It was still just as hard to say the words...but T always told me that bringing things into the light would take away some of their power, and he really was right in the end.

Call T. Go to session Monday.

Be gentle with you, sweet zoo. Don't cut yourself off from help.

Everyone is right in what they said.

(((((((((( Zoo ))))))))))))))))))) I am SO sorry you are in this kind of pain!
Sorry I didn't post sooner - haven't had much time on PC due to working this weekend - :-( But sending you TONS and TONS of hugs!!!!

When I was doing my truama work, my heart hurt and my T said I was "flooding"
He said it is a part of trauma healing.
I had to write T e-mail - sometimes two or three an hour!!!!
I would NOT have been able to do the trauma healing work without him being right there for me - even though I knew he could not reply to most and would not even be able to read most of them.... it was not about his part of the work - I H A D to get the poison out of my system as I was in agony.

Truama work is not the same as any other depression or spiral.
It is agony and a fever of the soul that only a survivor who has done it can understand. It is that painful and that bad.
It is a pain that made me realize just how much I was wronged by those abusers.
It is a pain that my heart literally breaks open when I know others who are enduring their own trauma healing.

But my T was right (he surrvived CSA as well and did his own trauma healing - still doing some of it even after 20 yrs!) - He told me that was the hardest part and it would not last forever.

You ARE doing it.

My heartfelt advice is to give yourself room and space and time to go deeply into the pain and feel what is there. That is the only way to process THROUGH this stage.
You need to be in a safe place. I put myself in my bedroom and locked the door.
I would wail and cry and scream for hours at a time - sometimes while in a flashback... sometimes with a memory... and sometimes just because I was in agony.

But while it felt like it would never end - like I was at the end of the world and my soul was on fire - I was indeed able to find that the sky could not rain forever. Eventually the tears slowed down and the pain faded. I saw hits of the sun in my heart.

I am still going through some rainy days, but thankfully the sky is just threatening most of the time rather than a thunderstorm on my soul. And I even am finally starting to have a few hours of blue sky!!

You CAN do this.
You are so much stronger than you know or can feel right now.
And the people who did this too you deserver to suffer in agony .... in ways I can't even describe. I hate them for what they did to you.

I am not sure if my words will help you at all because I know when it is that dark inside, it is hard for anything to make sense. But I send them to you from my heart and soul.

Did you get some food and some sleep? I hope you are feeling better.

how are you doing today zoo.i hope you decided to go to your sesson tomorrow

Let us know how it goes!!! I hope you go to your session too.

thanks for the replies, you guys. Wepow, you are so articulate and powerful in what you write. Thank you for sharing that with us.

I slept. It's amazing how much a little (or a lot) sleep helps. I knew that when I posted on Sat but I still felt like I was just on the edge of going out of control, and was so afraid sleep wouldn't come. But, it did, and I'm ok. I'm going to see my T later this morning.

thank you again for your support, I really needed that.

(((((zoo)))))

Great!! You did it!! Let us know how it goes!!!

(((( HUGS ))))

I'm sorry I wasn't here for you....my internet at home is down at the moment....I hope your session with T is helpful. Please update when you can.

(((( BIG HUGS, ZOO ))))

I had my session. We talked about the really bad stuff I've been avoiding the past few weeks. It pretty much sucked. Just trying to put myself back together now.

Hope it's better to have gotten some of it out in the open now.

(((((((((zoo))))))))))))

I know it doesn't feel like it yet, but eventually you will feel the heaviness lift. Be as gentle with you as you can. Call T if you need to. Post here.

It won't feel this bad forever.

You are being so brave

no, actually, it's not. It feels horrible. It feels like a violation. It feels worse than I could ever have imagined it would feel, and I spent a lot of time imagining some pretty rotten feelings.

I feel physically ill at the thought of seeing or speaking to my T ever again. It makes me want to vomit. I can't quit thinking about her eyes, looking at me while I spoke. Just her, just sitting there, just looking. It's like the worst kind of voyeurism imaginable.

Can you tell your T this Zoo?

Zoo, I know last night was hard for you. Let yourself feel the YUCK that comes because you talked about the YUCK. I always HATED the "day after" trauma session work. I hated the way my T looked at me silently while I spoke. He would even make sounds like "hmmmmm" or a drawn out "yahhhh" - Logically I KNEW he was just supporting me and he did care. But the sounds set me off inside and made me feel like he was getting a kick out of my details. That is NOT him at all. But my past trauma taught me to see things in that way. UGGGG!!!!!! So playing the session over and over in my mind was like getting abused over and over and over again.

The only way I made it through that part was to force myself to understand where the pain was rooted - in the abuse. And T had to remind me that I was going through the pain and had to experience the grief of the things.

Stay safe and be VERY gentle with yourself.

oh (((((((((Zoo))))))))))))

I had exactly this feeling at one point. I remember crying angry tears and telling T how much I hated him sitting there staring at me while I went through so much pain and fear and shame. Yuck.

I know I sound like a broken record and that it's probably hard to believe me, but it really WON'T feel like this forever. ALL of these feelings are what we have to go through to heal. The fear, shame, yuck, anger...all of it. It feels terrible - that's why we pushed it away for so many years. Bringing it into the open seems unbearable. But it's not unbearable. You are getting through it right now. As awful as it is, you are doing it.

My T used to tell me sometimes when I was at my lowest points "you'll never have to go through this again"...and he was right.

(((((((((zoo))))))))))

Interesting how many different things we can imagine other people are thinking when we show them something...