[growlithing]

Trigger warning

I'm starting to feel like life isn't worth living anymore. I'm so lonely all the time. My memories are eating me up inside and I feel trapped and unable to talk about them even to LCM. I don't know why they got so much harder to talk about or why they are gnawing at me so badly. I feel like I'm walking around with this huge disgusting secret. They keep me up at night and I see his face in my dreams, following me almost every night and the fact that winter break isn't too far away is killing me. I can't keep going back and I do have plans to become financially independent, but I don't think I'm capable of ever actually pulling through. I've given up on a lot of my schoolwork because I don't think I'm ever going to graduate at this rate anyway. I just practice for that slim chance that maybe music can save me. The sad thing is that it's really the only chance I have.

I don't have any real plans. I do have some of my old plans readily available, but I don't want to die. I know I'm just being overdramatic and I know dying would break LCM's heart. I know this will pass but I just don't know how and I can't escape it. I feel like I'm wasting her time because she wants me to make a change and do something and she pushes me but I just don't feel ready yet. I see her every week because she gives me something to hold on to and I worry that my passive sui thoughts would be more active if she were to disappear.

But I can't tell her this. I would hurt her so badly to just know that I feel this way. It hurts to see her pain. She might overreact and put me in the hospital. But I just don't know what to do. Should I tell her how I feel about this?

Yes, I know I need a TT. Still looking.

[lozza89]

Just wanted you to know that I read what you wrote and I'm thinking of you

When the memories get stronger, it means we are getting stronger to feel them...

[Open Eyes]

It takes time to understand PTSD and anxiety/emotional challenges. A lot of it is the brain saying, wait, I don't know what to do, I am confused. What that means is not that the person struggling is unworthy or wrong or bad in anyway, it just means the brain is confused and needs some more imput so it can figure things out. For example, you do something musically, so if you are learning a song so you can sing it, or play an instrument, it takes you some time to hear the song, think about the notes, then "slowly" work on singing it, or playing an instrument that follows along with what the song sounds like. So, lets say you only get to hear and learn part of the song and play part of the song, is it fair to expect yourself to suddenly know "all" the song and how to play it?

You can't really expect yourself to "just" play a song you don't know how to play, and that is what you have been expecting of yourself. Well, your brain is asking you to slow down and take some time to talk about what you do know, and then take time to learn some more so you can get on track again with learning the song and how to play it or sing it.

When someone is 21, they tend to think they are supposed to know the song and be able to play it well. However, the truth is, they don't, they have not heard enough, they have not practiced playing or singing it either and they keep "thinking and feeling" they should know it and be able to "just" play it. So what their brain is doing is stressing all about what the song might be, and the person keeps thinking they "should" know it, and the brain begins to struggle because it just doesn't know what to do.

You really can't feel guilty about this, it's really "ok" to slow down and allow yourself to just hear more of the song. And with ptsd, it means something happened that a person was in no way prepared for and now your brain needs to talk it all out and hear over and over again bits and pieces of how to learn the song about healing and learning what that all means and feels like.

When a person experiences bad thoughts, the brain is very stressed and is really saying, please slow down, I need to talk things out, I need to hear things that can help me so I don't feel all confused. You are not disappointing anyone when your brain is confused like this either. It does mean that it is important that you really slow down and not only get rest but talk things out and get helpful messages coming back into you so you quiet down more and your brain has some things to work with so you can gain some resolve and get back on track with hearing more of the song so you can slowly understand what is sounds like and be able to play it.

So make sure you reach out for help with a new understanding of why that help is not bad, nothing to be ashamed about asking for, and that you not only need it, but deserve it so you can slowly learn how to move away from how your brain is only saying "I don't know".

((((Caring Gentle Hugs)))
OE

[growlithing]

Originally Posted by Open Eyes

It takes time to understand PTSD and anxiety/emotional challenges. A lot of it is the brain saying, wait, I don't know what to do, I am confused. What that means is not that the person struggling is unworthy or wrong or bad in anyway, it just means the brain is confused and needs some more imput so it can figure things out. For example, you do something musically, so if you are learning a song so you can sing it, or play an instrument, it takes you some time to hear the song, think about the notes, then "slowly" work on singing it, or playing an instrument that follows along with what the song sounds like. So, lets say you only get to hear and learn part of the song and play part of the song, is it fair to expect yourself to suddenly know "all" the song and how to play it?

You can't really expect yourself to "just" play a song you don't know how to play, and that is what you have been expecting of yourself. Well, your brain is asking you to slow down and take some time to talk about what you do know, and then take time to learn some more so you can get on track again with learning the song and how to play it or sing it.

When someone is 21, they tend to think they are supposed to know the song and be able to play it well. However, the truth is, they don't, they have not heard enough, they have not practiced playing or singing it either and they keep "thinking and feeling" they should know it and be able to "just" play it. So what their brain is doing is stressing all about what the song might be, and the person keeps thinking they "should" know it, and the brain begins to struggle because it just doesn't know what to do.

You really can't feel guilty about this, it's really "ok" to slow down and allow yourself to just hear more of the song. And with ptsd, it means something happened that a person was in no way prepared for and now your brain needs to talk it all out and hear over and over again bits and pieces of how to learn the song about healing and learning what that all means and feels like.

When a person experiences bad thoughts, the brain is very stressed and is really saying, please slow down, I need to talk things out, I need to hear things that can help me so I don't feel all confused. You are not disappointing anyone when your brain is confused like this either. It does mean that it is important that you really slow down and not only get rest but talk things out and get helpful messages coming back into you so you quiet down more and your brain has some things to work with so you can gain some resolve and get back on track with hearing more of the song so you can slowly understand what is sounds like and be able to play it.

So make sure you reach out for help with a new understanding of why that help is not bad, nothing to be ashamed about asking for, and that you not only need it, but deserve it so you can slowly learn how to move away from how your brain is only saying "I don't know".

((((Caring Gentle Hugs)))
OE

Ironically enough, the whole thing you said about needing to take time to learn music is the whole reason why I am starting to believe I'll never graduate. A grad requirement for me is 4 semesters of a class where the final literally is having to sit down and sing a bunch of pieces of music without hearing it first. I'm not a singer, but I still have to do it. The idea is that we need to make reading music as easy and natural as reading words.

The analogy still works though. I can sight sing something when I am able to understand why the music sounds the way it does. The better I can understand the theory behind it, the easier it is to sing and the better I can sing something, the more I understand the theory behind it. So if I can't sing it, I'm not processing the structure under the music. Or more likely in my case, I panic and shut my brain off.

But in the case of more complicated music that I'm going to start working on today, yes that is the case. I'll need to take stuff slowly, give myself time to process it, come up with a game plan for executing hard passages, listen to recordings to figure out the style, etc. It just is a lot harder with ptsd because when I mess something up today in practice, I'll know what I need to work on in order to fix it. Some of it, I might need to wait to work out with help from my teacher next week but most of the actual notes and technique, I won't. For this, I'd need help every step