Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Even when it is available for the choosing, anger can only get one so far. Yesterday morning was a disaster when it was finally time to sleep. Now is not that much better. I passed the night this time by bashing BP on their message boards. Now I will attempt to sleep. I'm not sure what it is about distraction that makes my problems try to reassert themselves with such astonishing force, but it seems to be the pattern. And I don't remember how to make it through the night without distraction and other forms of bullshit. This is a problem. Because I eventually have to go to bed and then the shit hits the fan.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
This sounds like you are / were distracting yourself with the anger, and / or with other things, but that distraction is not an option at bedtime?
ReplyDeleteCan that be reversed, so that there is time for facing things squarely during the day, when you're better fed, when there's light, when you're less tired, and then use distraction (if it helps) at bedtime?
I don't think distraction is bs if it's used in moderation -- you need to sleep as much as you need to face reality.
Bedtime is when my anxiety and depression are usually at their worst, and when the inner critic's voice gets loudest. Most of the time, it seems it's mostly due to being tired, and perhaps partly due to associations with the dark and with sleeping. And so it makes sense, to me, for me, to not take those voices so seriously at bedtime. If / when they're just as loud in the day, I know I need to look into it.
Then again, yet again my situation is not yours, and so my experience might be completely irrelevant.
I'll just hope on your behalf for some solid peaceful sleep very soon.
Hi, Marcy.
ReplyDeleteOh, I get enough sleep. The main problem for me is WHEN I sleep. I’m a daytime sleeper and it makes for a bit of an abnormal life and I must make many accommodations because I have not been able to change this and it doesn‘t seem like it‘s just going to go away. The other problem is bad dreams, sometimes even nightmares, night terrors and dissociated somatic memory, but those things are a whole other matter.
I’m not sure if I was totally distracting myself with the anger that came my way, but it does seem so in retrospect. And this is my problem with ’choosing’ the emotional response. While not a total lie, because this whole situation truly IS angering, the emotion of anger was not the one begging to be addressed. I chose it over fear for the purpose of function. And this is the way distraction works for me. It only serves to stow things away and then they pop up later and the timing is not of my choosing. I cannot choose to address the issues of a dissociated self-state when it is not present. I do not have access to any of its stuff when it is not present and I can’t just summon it like a medium would summon a spirit or something. It just doesn’t work like that.
I understand people can have associations and racing thoughts at night and all that, but that is not entirely what this is. The act of showering, the act of going to bed for the night (even though it’s technically morning by then) -- these acts trigger a dissociated self-state who has a problem with these things. I don’t know the whole story because my memories are very fragmented, but I do think those two triggering acts are triggering because they are part of a dissociated trauma(s).
You want to hear something weird? I have even tried a few times to bring the shit on purpose so I could take it to therapy with me. I took a shower right before I left the house. Nothing. Because I had to be somewhere, I dissociated to be able to shower and I could not prevent it from happening. I had some bit of success once with it causing less severe dissociation, but… my therapist is almost an hour drive because there is no specialist around here who can handle this kind of thing, so I had plenty of time to completely dissociate in the car. You know what caused the dissociation? Grounding. Yeah. I think I‘m fucked. Things didn’t used to be this way. I used to be able to actually work on things with Old Guy until he played the get-mindful-and-chomp-some-drugs card. Maybe this explains why my hatred of him gets so extreme and vile-sounding at times. He can explain away his actions as much as he likes, but I can't seem to get the genie back in the bottle. He broke my brain much worse than it already was and this is why so many parts of me label him as a dickwad.
So the dissociation is largely out of your control. Yikes.
ReplyDeleteWell -- I am glad that you do get enough sleep.
So now I will hope on your behalf for more and more non-dissociative moments at times that are good for dealing with stuff.
Yes, that would be a good thing to hope. I have a suspicion, though. I suspect that that will only happen when I have a very, very safe, strong and competent place/ person/ situation that can respect my values while helping me get through what will happen at that point. There are some things that even the strongest individuals cannot do all on their own. Ultimately, this is what I hope for. It's what I need. If individual personal strength were the only consideration, I would be fine already, but it's not. Some kinds of healing cannot happen in a vacuum and there are some things that people just can't think their way out of. It takes more. I know you are a Christian, so I will leave you with this mutual idea that I think you may relate to. "Wherever two or more are gathered in my name, there I am." I need a like mind and heart, Prochaskas. I need it to gather with me in the closest sense in the name of healing in a way that respects my values. I might possibly already have it and either cannot perceive it as such or cannot determine a way to use it. I don't know, but I know what I need. I don't think relational trauma can be healed outside of the arena of human relations. Not for me, anyway. I cannot heal in the same kind of vacuum I was injured in and I'm not sure where that leaves me right now.
ReplyDeleteLast night I took an important step that might at least help me find a real live community. My husband and I attended a meeting of local atheists and it went very well. Atheists are not what many might imagine. We are not Christian haters who go around clubbing baby seals and worshipping demons, we simply do not believe in a diety. I was, for the first time ever, able to reveal my sleep disorder to real live people when the question of the timing of outings and such arose. No one seemed surprised or treated me like an oddball on account of it. They simply just accepted that that is how I live right now and they still welcomed me. They even laughed at the story of what happened to my mother and her pastor's wife when they kept bugging me about my anxiety disorder, insisting that is was demonic possesion. I imagine you have been reading here long enough to know that they were probably more convinced than ever of demon possesion once they pissed me off past the point of politeness. And the same people who laughed at that and respected my ability to protect myself from foolishness also understood how it was unjust for me to have been hounded that way while I was suffering. You know what else I found there? Lovers and defenders of the U.S. Constitution. I think I see the company of my fellow atheists in my future. They understand freedom. I felt really comfortable with them and I think it might help me to have a realtionship with a community in real life instead of being such a hermit.
I totally understand about the vacuum. I've also been hoping on your behalf for the right person / place / situation to come into your life, like I found with Joe.
ReplyDeleteYour atheist group sounds very pleasant. I don't have any illusions that all atheists are like Richard Dawkins and the like, any more than you have illusions that all Christians are like the ones who hounded you about demons. One of my red flag issues when I am looking for a church (like after a move) is the way people talk about therapy and mental health -- if someone thinks the Bible is sufficient for a counseling manual, the red flag is raised. Not that I think the Bible is irrelevant to therapy and mental health -- but I don't think most people can glean all there is to know about those things from its pages.