This is awful tonight. I can't stand to be in my own skin and head. Boom.....It just suddenly wants and is going to have it's way with me, and nothing else matters to it. I thought life was going fairly well for a little while there and suddenly Boom.....Absolutely must sleep, but can't. Have been feeling deep feelings of helplessness and powerlessness. And, these feelings have been broadening and increasing and now I'm feeling guilty, depressed, terribly frightened and with feelings of hopelessness.

It all sucks so bad tonight and I damn well hope it doesn't take me for a ride for days or weeks to come without any relief from it.

I don't know what to say, do, think, not think whatever. I'm lost! Tonight as I attempted sleep out of nowhere I was flooded with memories of and started remembering and thinking of each sexual encounter in my twenties. Now I simply don't think of these yrs. It wasn't until tonight, that mostly part of an amnesiac state of mind or something lifted. Most memories were lost to the present for that matter, up until it all slowly crept back in, hitting me terribly hard and claiming me on any given day.

I hate this crap. I'm driving myself crazy with the past and I have no control over it again.

I don't want to even say anything more, I just really want to sleep but it's not happening, and I quite literally feel tortured with feelings, my memories and my thinking tonight. I didn't even want to get out of bed, but there is only so long I can stand laying there feeling and thinking the way I do and being unable to sleep and not having the faintest clue as to how to make it all just go the fck away.

I have a therap. retreat planned for tommorrow, and I haven't a clue if I'm going to really be able to show up now, what I'm going to address and tackle, or whether I even should.

I know this sounds like one big f'n complaint. I should grin and bear it, and suck it up, but for crying out loud people can only take so many hits and surprises before they crack or give-up. I can't ever be hospitalized again. Hospitalization is just not an option for me, and quite practically so.

Please pardon me, for being so suddenly out of it tonight.

I do hope I make that retreat tommorrow all right, and if so I'll be gone for a few days.

Does anyone ever feel like they've lived, know(n) and understand way to much for their brainhousing to cope any longer with?

or,

Does anyone seemingly self-sabotage their own peace of mind still?

.........And, please no one tell me that I shouldn't be feeling and thinking this way as there is not a damn thing I can do to influence change in how I'm feeling and thinking right now, as this condition takes over and has a complete desire and path of it's own with me at times and simply doesn't regard how I think or feel about it. Hell, this sucks!

Hope

Oh, honey, I'm sure not going to tell you you shouldn't feel this way right now. I just wish you didn't have to. Yet, the reality is that you do have to go through those feelings, like we all do. It's so incredibly hard when it hits you like that all of a sudden, though, I know. Please keep us posted, and if you feel you can add any more to your story here or in the private forum, just keep in mind that that may help the rest of us comment more constructively. And, yeah, I think I've been able to sabotage my own sense of well-being, too. Something I try to work on a lot.

The retreat sounds like a good thing to go to. Or not. It might help you deal with this recent development. Or not. Of course, you are the best judge of whether to do that or not. You may also decide it would be better to stay home and communicate with people on the forum. It's totally up to you, since you are the best judge of what you need right now. Just try to decide what that is. Hang in there, and please let us know how you're doing, okay?

I can say yes to the first item you listed. There were times in the past, in the first years after everything happened, where I sat outside and had that same kind of feeling. I would think about everything that had happened, and that would be absolutely isolated. I would later think about the effect it had had on me, and that would be completely isolated too. Most of the time anyway. There were rare instances when those two series of thoughts would combine, and in that form it was too much to bear. I felt that all that existed was pain, all was suffering, and that there would never be any relief from it. That completely overwhelmed me, but somehow after fairly long amounts of time I would go back to that first point I connected those thoughts and sever it again. At least, until the next time I sat down to rest. I thought that this entire thing was too much for anyone to know, too much to let anyone have any idea I knew either. That I understood the reality of what had happened, and was convinced that it was futile to try anything to communicate about it. It just was but had to be kept in the dark and away from others like some terrible and forbidden thing.

I can claim the second partially, a little in the past anyway. Sometimes when I would start to really lose attachment to external reality I went along with it even when I recognized it. I convinced myself it was only the proper thing to do to catalog all of the mistakes, and little errors I had made in the past and to rebuke myself for them without any mercy. Of course that only caused me to feel worse and knowing that I pressed into it more and more.

Now, it is like something has switched and these things very rarely go as far either way. The passage of time and continuous analysis and perhaps a bit of excessive harshness has brought me to this new point. I do not suggest being harsh as that was the worst way to go but thinking about it what that did to me was let me refuse to ever stop the self analysis and the key in that was that I stopped letting things build up and instead tried to defuse them. This way everything is bearable, or somehow after time it is more bearable. Now I can rest and actually have some real peace.

goingonhope....i have been feeling fairly similar to this recently, but i honestly dont know what to do either!
I hope you make it to the retreat, its worth a shot, im also thinking about going to one myself...
And i also sabotage my brief moments of peace of mind, i think its partly to do with the fact that i dont believe it could be real, or why bother when its just gonna go away again.

Hi
I'm guilty of self sabotage, it's sub-conscious. I've suffered panic attacks since I was in single digits and would beg my parents to tell me funny stories.
Now, out of nowhere, in the back of my brain will say saomething like"You know you're going to panic, and every move you make from here will increase the severity of the attack", because the "voice" in my head knew I'd be moving to prevent it. I start to lose touch with reality and everything in my vision begins to look too real, my skin burns, I get pins and needles under my skin, all If I'm not able to "flip the script" when it all starts. Sometimes I'll be walking from the bedroom to the couch and just feel like collapsing in the middle of the room (this is what I do with life, couch bed, bed couch), feeling deflated and just finished with it all.
I know you don't want to go there into the details, and believe me, I get it. What you did share I appreciate, and can say that all of the sexual contact I've had in my teens, and during a separation with my husband, that I'm having huge problems now trying to figure out what the point of sex is beside procreation. I get out of control angry about it. I can't figure it out.
I think the retreat would be terrific for you! It will remove you from your surroundings for a bit, and help get you out of this frame of mind, perhaps. Being around people has helped me in the past (as long as they are positive people in a positive surrounding), as well as getting me out of my rut.

I hope you feel better soon! Also, for sleep, try playing your favorite comedy to go to sleep to. I have a DVD in the bedroom ad choose different movies to go to sleep to, and have them played on a loop all night. I may not get the best sleep, but it keeps my mind from flirting with the dark stuff.

I hope I could be of some help. Take care!

Hope,

I so much feel your struggles and understand. I've been a bit on the edge myself this past week being in the hospital, but know this, you are a very sweet and special person and what you are going through is not your fault. Just speaking from experience I know that is hard to believe, but it is completely the truth! I have no awesome advise but I do have lots of love! Know you are in my thoughts and prayers.
Love,
Marilyn

Oops I almost forgot! If ok (((((((((Hope))))))))))
Lots and lots of HUGS!

Well, I'm back home after the retreat. hodge the retreat was a good thing for me and helped significantly. What had me so scared the other night, is that faced with all the regret and remorse I felt, I'd continue to stay awake all night with some flashbacks and much painful reliving of memory, suffer hard, and then pay the following day by being out of it from exhaustion at the retreat and/or miss it.

It's a crazy thing I now feel little to no regret for any sexual encounter that I invited, welcomed, or thought I wanted involvement in, but I do feel terrible about those that I was subservient to. Not that I was interested or eager at all, but rather my wishes, lack of desire, decision and importance in any of the decision making process was made painfully clear to me through a combination of my own thoughts and that of the other, that what I
thought or felt made no difference whatsoever and had no bearing whatsoever on the outcome. The ongoing tearing down, objectifying, emot./phys. assaults and attempts, the sexual harassment, pressures and threats of complete rejection were persistent, in full force and I felt like and believed that it was either be subservient or die, or kill myself. Ouch!

There use to be a time too that I'd feel so powerless of my ability to ever fall asleep evenings that I figured that if I was to win a million dollars and all I had to do was show up the following morning to collect it, that I was rightfully certain that I'd miss showing up and sleep instead. Those were in the days when it was only the morning's arrival, it's light, the birds chirping and other morning sounds that would calm me after an all nighter' and allow for me to crash, typically all day long. Those were also the nights that the only way I could find some temporary relief was to contemplate and fantasize about suicide and in it's various forms.

hodge I made it through my most recent feelings. I didn't have to go through these ones alone though. I did fall asleep after taking a PRN prescribed dose of medicine and posting.

At the retreat what I chose to begin to focus upon was the concept of chronically being made to feel I was suppose to be nothing more than an object and my trauma that surrounds that previous state of mind of 'depersonalization'. This focus all resulted in me rapidly confronting the SA abuse of my father when I was 3,4 or 5 yrs. old. And, wow was that revisiting that abuse most sickeningly painful and alarming. Though it was insightful, it was only SEVERELY INTENSELY SICKENING. yuck, enough said here.

ya hodge I hear you on this, bc already too many people I know, know that I'm actively a member of a PTSD forum and quite actually it wouldn't be to difficult at all for them if the went looking to place me with my username and other info. here. It would be simple to connect these dots for them. And, yet I tend to fluctuate between the thoughts that it's hard to believe others, whom I know, would actually bother doing this, ......and with, so what if they did. Though I'd care, I'm almost at a point that anyone I know can go to hell if they think they could read a miniclip from my life and pass accurate judgement. It's just not possible or realistic. And, if someone I know is trying to do the impossible, or play God, or engage in make believe or fantasy about me than I don't really want to know them anyhow, bc I soon find out nothing, absolutely nothing I can do constructively will influence their way of thinking, they're going to believe what they want to believe. I've known some real rigid, thick, numb-skulled people in my life and I've noticed these characteristics seem to cross over all barriers of life. yuck.

Just like the guy who had sex with me while I cryed, said No, vomited, shook and seized. My No apparently wasn't assertive enough, perhaps wasn't loud enough, didn't mean enough........I'm talking to much.

This is now turning into a bit of a vent. Ouch!

Hodge, thank you for your words and thoughts on this. I especially like when you say that I'm the best judge of what I need right now. That wasn't always so, but right now, and since I've found this forum, read and joined I believe it is so.

I'm simply learning so so much, shifting, changing and growing... And, in the big picture I have a lot of hope. I'm not yet always able to grab hold of much hope simultaneoulsy with suffering and being surrounded at times with self-loathing and so for periods of time. And, all my symptoms ouch, but what I'm finding is that I'm not alone in this, that I am on a real road of true recovery and that with owning and healing my trauma (the work), coping with my PTSD (acceptance, practice and skill), continuing to abstain from alcohol and treat my alcoholism (with willingness and work), much time and love both given and received (love). Hey' I'm really digging showing up and being real again and courageous, some great new people whom I've met and I can be hopeful of the present.

My husbands and my marriage and relationships is growing and strengthing now and I'm psyched and it would certainly would appear true for him too from his expressions of love, fresh thinking and his increasing loving actions. Our love for one another and our continuing freeing selves and passions are blooming. It's awesome, and, this is no bullshit' and I must say it's only here and true again after having felt much pain and humility and followed through with personal confrontations, honesty and effort. Our growing experiences of love and grace is the fruits of all this.

Hodge, I just simply feel like I'm generally doing good. I'm feeling mostly good about myself, more often than not. And, again, thank you hodge.


This is exactly it Andre. This is some of the self-sabotage I'm now speaking of. What you said when you said,
....I do this and then judge and blame myself for doing it. It's as though, I feel almost a compulsion to revisit it and learn something new from it and not forget it, bc while it was all happening I didn't know what the heck' what happening, and felt so helpless and powerless to make it stop, OMG, I didn't even recognize myself and the permissive, childlike person I'd become that believed that these men had all the rights in the world, almost like God(s), and that I had absolutely none anymore and that when I thought I did have rights, that I was only shamefully, fooling myself and hurting others in the process. Wow! -that's a world of hurt I'm not about to revisit right now.

Anyhow Andre, thanks for your comments.


I do so relate to sudden, out of the blue, startling evenings of thinking and feeling like this and they're becoming more frightening the more I inventory and look inward:

This had been true for me too for yrs. but not as of late. I still can't wrap my mind around how something that had switched so positively for me resulting in some real peace for me as well, can one day again switch back so negatively and result in some real anguish, all over again. What the hell is this? I mean for years I had wiped out, forgotten and had washed away for me the enorm. pain, guilt and memory of any of my twenties and then surprise and hello again. Chances are there is like an upheaval of this all crap, resulting from my periodic flashbacks, ability and willingness again to own a reclaim the horror of my SA from when I was a young child. It's just something I haven't wanted to believe for so long and I'd almost prefer to believe that I was wickedly evil, wretched and corrupt for ever dreaming up that my father abused me sexually by wanting and/or forcing me to perform oral sex upon him or them. I mean right now, I don't even know the full story, and I'm missing some important details. And, though I have had reliving experiences a multitude of various flashbacks, returned bits of memory and all resulting in frightening nightmares and as I've said, I do still sometimes relive being a child and having what I believe is my father, standing before me, I'm again not yet ready to trust myself. I get confused. I'd rather believe my father when I once confronted him and he said it wasn't true. The therap. work that I did on my retreat partially explains to me as to how and why. On retreat, during therapy all I could see was everything below the belly button and above the upper thighs. Other times I've known it was my father, but now'a'day's, I don't want to trust it, as I can't see his face anymore given his height in comparison to mine. ....nothing more needs to be said here now, as it's debilitating and makes me utterly sick, and yet I said as much as I have bc it's seriously eating at me and this hurts. yuck.

Nevermind that horror, my retreat was phenomenal
Thanks again Andre.

Hi BassistKara, and Welcome to the forum. ditto on the above, as that's my predictament too with peace of mind these days and my fear. I hope you do find and show the willingness to attend a retreat for yourself, for me it's like emergency care without the hospitilization which never seemed to ever help me, though I do believe that certain medical and mental health care is available and accomplished with proficiency. Just not around here. Many people, I imagine are and have been well cared for during a hospitalization, but that's just not my experience.

AnyWho, BassistKara you take care too please and though you and I may not always know how best to care for ourselves, we're discovering and learning, Right! My best to you, and thank you for your response.

Tiana, you were very much of help. As for playing the comedies or different movies to go to help me go to sleep what a great suggestion. I had given up mostly on watching much tv at all, but then just recently have been watching dark shows. Just plain sick drama's and crime shows with all the dark crap. This I can right now see, can only hurt me and fuel all my negative emotions. Another way of mine of self-sabotage. You helped me see this one Tiana. It's just that I sometimes have such a hard time welcoming and accepting viewing soft, funny and fluffy, but now that I can see some of my own undoing, I'm more likely to do something positive about it again.

Tiana, I can relate to your panic attacks and also how they increase in severity.

The dropping and collapsing in the middle of the room, or a flight of stairs or walkway, or out in public, boy do I ever relate. This is one of other predominant signs for me of my exit from my present and lapse into my past. It happened on retreat too during my therap. process, it happens all the time when maxed with PTSD symptoms. It use to horrify me before I understood it, not that I understand it all too well now, just that I know it's a symptom of my PTSD and can connect it with my emotions.

Do so identify with the pins and needles as well, as quite honestly this is my first memory of one way this symptom of collapsing initiated for me in my teens, but then with continuing untreated PTSD, it took on a life of it's own and seldom do I ever get
the pins and needles anymore, my legs just come out from underneath me and I fall. I use to think I even somewhat could control my fall, but not for sometime now, bc now when I collapse I can sometimes seriously hurt myself.

I did go on the retreat for the full duration and it was wonderful. Just like you said it was terrific and hope to go on another one sometime in this year. Thank you for your warmth, understanding and suggestions. You take care too Tiana. My best to you.

To All of You, Thanks so much, ............sincerely Hope

You too Marilyn ! I want you also to know that you're indeed in my thoughts and prayers, too.

(((Hugs Marilyn)))

Also,

I want to thank all of you all over again for your wonderful support as it has helped me so so much. THANK YOU ! Knowing, feeling and doing much better and have completely finished with this thread.

......sincerely goingonhope

Hi, Hope,

I'm so glad to hear that you have found a way out from your dark place. I'm kind of still in mine at the moment, so I haven't been able to really digest all you've written here yet. Just wanted to say I'm really glad you're feeling better. Keep up the good work!

Hodge