Hi Scattered,

I get what you are saying, and am finding myself in a similar place right now. Just the thought of accomplishing anything that needs to be done is enough to send me running for the covers of my bed. My mind is consumed with thoughts of the inner work I've been doing, and there is little room left for anything else.

In addition to depression, I also am blessed with ADHD, making focus challenging on even my best day, but as of late, concentrating on anything has been impossible. I've reached the place where I really don't care what happens, which for me, is pretty close to hitting bottom. I wish I could have therapy daily right now so that we can weed through these memories and emotions quicker!

I'm going to try to set a goal for myself of accomplishing a small task within a given time, and see if that helps me get anything done, as there are several things that MUST get done today, but I have no desire to do them. If not, I hold on to the logical comfort of knowing that this too shall pass, and everything always seems to work out in the end... (though logic never seems to make a dent in the emotional world!)

Hugs and peace to you!

Thank you catalyst and R2G with your responses. I have been struggling yesterday and today to make sense of all this.

Thank you for your thoughts about this and am sorry that you too had bad memories, flashes etc

Scattered,
I could have written your post. I started having memories/flashbacks a couple if months ago, but they aren't 100% clear and I question everything. Additionally, now I'm so overwhelmed, I can't hardly focus on completing any tasks. My T says I don't need to worry about having the whole memory or even if it's accurate, because it's about the feelings that come up, but my mind wants it all and wants to know what the truth is.

((Raven))

I'm stuck at this one BIG TIME... I feel totally useless at the moment. Depression has hit bad. I'm going to therapy on Thursday and I'm actually dreading it, because I am frustrated with myself. It's hard to give words to all the emotions.

Sorry you feel like this too.

you said sometimes it is "hard to give words to all the emotions" well sometimes it is hard to know what to say.

quote:

I'm going to therapy on Thursday and I'm actually dreading it, because I am frustrated with myself.

Yes - feel like I'm at this point, too.

(((hugs))) I hope you can work through it and start feeling better

((Scattered)) ((all))

I've been convinced for a very long time now that my T is so sick of me because I keep saying over and over and over and over again, "What if I'm making all of this up?" And as someone else pointed out above, she keeps referring to the feelings and trying to trust those rather than what I may or may not remember (which also is not much). Just last week she asked me, "Why would it be this hard to deal with if it weren't true?" I just told her that maybe I'm making it hard on myself on purpose to make it real - but she didn't buy it.

When I first was discovering some stuff, I felt completely incapacitated and not myself at all. It was hard to go out and be with people, it felt hard to talk, and it felt hard to joke and laugh (which I normally always do). I went through that period for a while and just recently noticed that I'm more back to normal than I was at first. You'll get through it - but be patient with yourself and allow yourself to not be the "normal" you. My T said to me several times that it is okay to not be okay.

Just take it slowly and try as hard as you can to be easy on yourself, though I know how hard that can be. The wonderful people on this forum were here for me when I was first learning some disturbing stuff, so don't be afraid to lean on them in time of need.

I can definitely relate.

quote:

I've been convinced for a very long time now that my T is so sick of me because I keep saying over and over and over and over again, "What if I'm making all of this up?" And as someone else pointed out above, she keeps referring to the feelings and trying to trust those rather than what I may or may not remember (which also is not much).

I deal with this as well. But, even if I strip away all the images, fragments of conversation or memory that I can't fully make sense of, there is no way I can make up that I am feeling bad or scared or sick or alone. I find that the less I focus on needing to validate or invalidate the minute details and the more I follow the feelings and just let the wounded parts of me share, the better I am able to accept the work I'm doing in therapy and the more functional I am outside of it. It took A LOT of time to even start doing this and it's a battle for me, daily, to not tear myself apart with invalidation. I think it took a lot of pressure off me recently to say to myself that my feelings are true and this other stuff is probably at least partly accurate. But, just because it is doesn't mean I have to take any sort of action on it. It doesn't mean I have to erase the good stuff I remember about some of the people it applies to. It just means being more realistic about the fact that my life was not full of villains and heroes, but a lot of broken people who tried and failed. The less I need those contrasts and the more I can accept a little grey area, the more I have been able to accept the confusing things going on in my own mind during therapy. It's not easy, but we're all here with (((hugs))).

Thank you all for your support

((b2w)) ((raven)) ((kashley)) ((yakusoku))

You have all been so kind and so nice and finding myself in this dark place at the moment - this really does give me hope that there is healing out there and there are people that understand what it's about.

I was trying to even find happy memories from that time in my life - there aren't any, not even one. I don't feel anger but great sadness, because at the end of the day, this is not how I want to remember him.. I see sadness in his eyes too.. I've tried over and over to think of some explanation as to why there are so many signs, evidence, emotions and even body reactions, that it did happen. Maybe I should, like a friend told me to go with it as if it did happen without a doubt and then see if most of the issue is not maybe lying within the struggle of not wanting it to be true. Same as you are saying yakusoku.

This is just really so hard and painful..

I am so grateful to have found this forum. Although I feel ashamed to share and also useless to help, but I'm hoping that I can do this more often. You are my TTTTTTTT's away from my T...

hugs to all of you too

quote:

"What if I'm making all of this up?"

quote:

"Why would it be this hard to deal with if it weren't true?" I just told her that maybe I'm making it hard on myself on purpose to make it real

I feel just like that. How could I know every detail either side of the blanks, but not know the blanks if the blanks are all part of the same story/event? All these years I have thought one thing, and battled enough with that particular thing, and now these blanks that are filling up are making it even worse than what I ever remembered - and I question my mind again and again because hey, my mind has not exactly been the most sane mind out there lately, and so what happens if it made a mistake?

It has really become a battle between my head and my heart but in truth, as much as I hate to admit it my heart knows it happened that way.

Sometimes you try so hard to find the answers (fill the blanks) and then when they do fill, you wish you could just make them all blank again, because it didn't feel half as bad.

After my lovely schpeel above, I just spent 1.5 out of a 2 hour session arguing with T how I must be making all this stuff up and even the diagnosis has to be wrong and even though it fits my subjective experience, I must even be tricking myself, lying and exaggerating about that, because there is just no way for me to let this stuff be true. I talk a good game, but apparently I still suck at this.

Monte - I really liked the thing about the leg. I am trying to do that, but coming up against stuff relating to a very specific individual who I basically modeled this outside part of myself after and so if I allow that person to be bad, it destroys what little self-image/identity I have clung to. It literally feels like it will destroy me.

((b2w))

quote:

Sometimes you try so hard to find the answers (fill the blanks) and then when they do fill, you wish you could just make them all blank again, because it didn't feel half as bad.

((monte))
Thank you for your encouragement, and what you say makes so much sense.

((yakusoku))
I'm sure you wil get there before I do.. I suck in a BIG way with this whole T thing.

My session was terrible today and I am still licking my wounds. She didn't even say anything about the emails, I still feel hurt.

I said nothing at all, just nodded while she babbled some stuff, I didn't even hear what she said.. We were working on the whole memory thing - she was going through a sketch I had drawn. Everything inside of me was shouting to talk to her, but I just couldn't. Now I have to sit for a whole week with these awful feelings and thoughts and I don't know what to do about them.. I know I don't have to relive any of it, and this is where the whole leg story comes in, doesn't it monte? Agh, I feel so sad today and very tired. Feels like I missed my whole session today. And all I want is for her to hold me and tell me I'll be ok.

Phew, are things always going to be this tough?

quote:

Everything inside of me was shouting to talk to her, but I just couldn't. Now I have to sit for a whole week with these awful feelings and thoughts and I don't know what to do about them..

I do understand this, Scattered. I often leave T having left unsaid the very things I had intended to say, meaning I then have to suffer another week with those emotions and unspoken issues causing even more chaos within me. Once, I jotted down a few things and made myself give it to my T so even if I chickened out, it was there - in writing, to be dealt with somehow.

Can I ask you and the others something? I don't have any "bad" memories of my father.... well, not the kind we're addressing here, but I do have a few of him in general that give me a creepy feeling. Could these be percursors to events I'm not recalling? I keep insisting my father was a good man; warm and compassionate to a certain age, then cold and rejecting at times. Sometimes, though... it just seems like the pieces don't add up, unless there's something worse that ties them all together, and I just don't know about it yet. Does that make sense?
So I guess I'm wondering if you all have had similar experiences, or like Scattered said in the initial post, could this be the beginning of fabricating? I'm with you all - I don't want that.

Scattered, I hope you feel support here. I don't have any besides the people here - H doesn't know most of what I am dealing with in therapy, and I have no one I can confide in, so this forum is IT for me. I'm so thankful for everyone here - they have all been so supportive and helpful, every step of the way. I pray you can feel the same strength and support.


Hugs to you,
Starry

quote:

Some questions can maybe never been answered. So I have learnt to accept the feelings as real, which by default verifies that 'things', actual events, occurred which should not have.

I don't know what is worse, to be plagued by unnameable terrors and anguish and nightmares that disappear upon waking or to have to have actual memories that play over and over

I'm trying to figure out how to let that be enough, to know that stuff that shouldn't have happened, painful stuff, exists in my past, but without answering all the questions. I have this compulsion to defend my caregivers against what inside parts feel and think and say and show.

I think, having both unnameable terrors and actual (certain) memories each have their own pain. I'm not sure either can be called worse. On the one hand, knowing exactly what happened (as much as any memory is accurate) can make it easier to sort out how it is translated into present day problems. On the other hand, it doesn't change that all those same emotions of shame, self-blame, confusion, grief, etc. are still there. However, that also makes it more difficult to rationalize away when you need a break from it, if it stays "true" all the time. But, the nameless stuff, because it can be so difficult to process and link, can really make you feel like you're losing your mind...or that's my experience. Not saying it is like this for everyone or trying to undermine anyone else's experience or opinion on what is harder. This is just how I experience these things.

In my case, I seem equally able of doubting the reality of stuff I'm objectively sure of as the stuff that comes up all fuzzy and fragmented. I just use other tools like minimizing, excusing, justifying, questioning my own perception/interpretation, etc. with memories I'm sure or pretty sure are real. There are things that I know happened in my teens that I know 99 out of 100 people would say were awful, at least extremely inappropriate parenting, if not outright abusive, yet when I hear my T talk about those things as harmful (stuff I was exposed to, ways I was treated, etc.), I immediately lash out at myself for having exaggerated, mislabeled, misled...or try to excuse those people's behaviors. I make the feelings invalid if I cannot make the memories unreal.

My T offers a ton of comfort and reassurance and while it makes it feel safer for the hurting parts to share, it doesn't make the pain better. Only my slow acknowledgement of the pain, acceptance, validation of the feelings that are there, whether or not I can understand their origins, seems to make a difference. When we share what we do know, feel, think, experience, remember, fear, etc., and it is accepted both by someone outside and by myself, it always feels like stepping forward. The hard part is not immediately jumping a step or two back in response.

Hey Starry,

Thank you.

quote:

Can I ask you and the others something? I don't have any "bad" memories of my father.... well, not the kind we're addressing here, but I do have a few of him in general that give me a creepy feeling. Could these be percursors to events I'm not recalling? I keep insisting my father was a good man; warm and compassionate to a certain age, then cold and rejecting at times. Sometimes, though... it just seems like the pieces don't add up, unless there's something worse that ties them all together, and I just don't know about it yet. Does that make sense?
So I guess I'm wondering if you all have had similar experiences, or like Scattered said in the initial post, could this be the beginning of fabricating? I'm with you all - I don't want that.

Can I be really honest? That is how it sort of started for me. I never thought of my father as a good, warm or compassionate person, because he isn't really, his absence in most part of my life has left me empty, but I started feeling that things just didn't add up and all the emotions and feelings that I was having, could only have been from childhood trauma, and once I was asked THAT question, the flashes started and then remembering repeated nightmares from when I was very young, and still have them and others, that I'm trying to figure out right now. My body has also started acting up with a lot of pain. So the more I work through all this, the more flashes and memories appear. We are, as young children 'forced' to think of our parents as compassionate and warm and caring, but when you actually start questioning past that....the picture looks very different. No they weren't the perfect parents, and there isn't such a thing, but when the bad memories overtake happy ones or happy ones don't even exist.. then I suppose there were serious malfunctions somewhere and now I'm starting to remember, bit by bit and it's not pretty at all. All I can say is that if you are going to go beyond that border and look further - take it very slow, only little bits at a time and let your T do it with you...

(((monte)))

I'm starting to learn about time and patience.. the hard way.

(((yakusoku)))
I could have written your post, word for word. That is how I am feeling too. As soon as I do talk about it, I want to take it back or make it to be actually nothing. I've told my T on several occations after a hectic session that it was all a lie, and then she just calmy looks at me and tells me "I can see the evidence, and I know what I know.." well that just about makes me cry for the remainder of the session. She actually believes me... she really does, and that scares me. I've always had this fear that nobody would believe anything I tell them, yet here she does and that scares me too. What a rollercoaster of emotions and feelings. What my T offers me is more than I could ever have asked from anybody and I am not used to any of it and some sessions we just sit an argue at how I am actually worthy of her time (not to mention that I do pay her and a lot too) and why she even bothers to actually believe me, when she shouldn't when she should be angry at me for some reason and I wait in suspense for her to push me away and I test her, I really do test the waters, but yet, she is still there - pretty amazing really. But the shame, guilt, uselessness and everything else still remains and even worse than ever.

I feel ashamed of who I am... and I think even if I didn't remember my past at all, that, will still be there.. I can't even look at myself in the mirror never mind looking anybody in the eyes. If my T had a box I could sit in, maybe I would be able to tell her more, talk more. I feel so awful about thursday's session and normally she would have checked in by now with an email, but I haven't heard from her and I feel hurt, but know I shouldn't.. struggle, struggle, struggle...

Scattered,

Thank you so much for both your candor and your kindness. I felt your sincerity, and I know you speak from the heart.

quote:

All I can say is that if you are going to go beyond that border and look further - take it very slow, only little bits at a time and let your T do it with you...

Thank you. I know you're right. I'm scared and don't think I want to delve into any of this right now. But if/when I do, it'll be as you said - with my T, and... this support network, I'm sure.

My heart goes out to you for facing and enduring the challenges you're forced to deal with, and I admire your courage.

Starry