Have you ever

Hello.

It's been a time I have posted in this forum.
Anyway, for years my mind has been a mental fog, with no clear thoughs or memories. I strugle with very high levels of anxiety and I suspect I have Cptsd. Anyway I am on the obsessive side. I think everything over and over and over. I interact with other people and I have to have a meaning for their responses and what they tell me about myself, and it's mostly negative. And I have a urge to control my thoughs, my feelings and my behaviours. I am very stiff and have a great difficulty to let go at everything. I live like there is a huge strong vest in my mind controlling my words and behaviour s, a very big computer intrepreting others, and a wild beast running around around checking the other two are working their best (anxiety). It never goes down. It eases and the beast calms down when I am alone, but it is always there. Can someone relate to this?

Yes I can relate to it. I was so guarded for so long, I struggled (and still do) to know who I really am. As in, who I was born to be. Who would I be if the trauma hadn’t completely altered my brain.

I feel like in therapy they might say the parts of you that you mentioned, are parts that have evolved to keep you safe when scary things happened to you. Like the bit that tries to obsessively work out what other people mean or that they are thinking negative things. I know that was really important to me for a long time, because knowing how other people were or what they might do next gave me some idea of what is going to happen to me…so I could prepare for it some how. It is hard to unlearn all these things that were once so helpful. And it is exhausting being anxious all the time, I still struggle with that.

Thank you for your answear I understand what you say.
Can I ask, can or could you open up in therapy?

I couldn’t open up in therapy until I found a therapist I felt comfortable with, and it took a long time. It wasn’t immediate either, he really tried to build trust with me. It’s so hard to be open when people have hurt you so bad before 😟

Obsessive thinking, cpstd and living as if I viewed the world from behind a huge glass window that Kept me apart. For me being a child of emotional abuse I internalised all my mother's negativity toward me and fed it. Took many years of taking things apart little by little for me to have internal space for me... It's a long journey in therapy to be free of those negative programmes.. But as I have to live this life I decided to add long term therapy alongside it..thst way at times I became frustrated at the time healing took I remembered how many year as a child I had to live with the awful toxic lessons I had to live with.