C-PTSD and fear of people

[Eagle Ray]

Warning: possibly trauma activating content.

I have made significant improvements in complex trauma symptoms in the past year. One of my biggest fears is that people are going to harm me which is ever-present but had lessened a lot. Then on Monday I got triggered by something that is probably not harmful but activated terror in me. It’s too much to explain the context here.

Do others have this extreme fear of people and if so is there something that you’ve found helps you?

To me it is experienced as life threatening terror. I can feel my body literally recoil from any contact with humans. Animals are safe to me but not humans. I have experienced a lot of trauma throughout my life.

Over the past week I’ve had unrelenting anxiety which yesterday also became depression which I know is a result of the anxiety not resolving. I want to run away from all people and go somewhere remote in nature. I’m also dealing with bouts of cognitive confusion linked to an autoimmune condition I have which isn’t helping.

I know self-isolation is not a good or healthy long term strategy. However, I want total isolation from people right now. It is the only way I can feel safe. It can feel like this is the only way I can be safe in life, to avoid people as much as possible, even though there is part of me that loves people and wants connection. But right now connection feels profoundly dangerous. I am back in the centre of my childhood terror.

Right now the Bruce Springsteen song Brothers Under the Bridge is speaking to me in which a Vietnam veteran tries to explain his need for isolation to his daughter. I think my grandfather was like this in how he isolated from others following traumatic war experiences. I think I’m trying to work my way out of this inherited intergenerational trauma as well.

[divine_inner_goddess]

Hi Eagle Ray and TonyWK, 

I can relate to how you both describe your mothers. Mine was very similar. For example, the irrationality. For my mother it would come out in contradictory statements or rules like "we don't mix with the 'riff raff' [working class]" but she came from a working class background. Or, "you don't have children out of wedlock" yet she did, twice, to different fathers!! So hypercritical. And with the physical ailments, if I told her about something that was wrong with me or about a difficult time I was going through, she would go all vague and spaced out and not really say anything, like my feelings and my life didn't matter or even register with her. And at the dinner table, when I was trying to share about my day, she would constantly correct how I was speaking, instead of actually listening to what I was saying. So eventually I would give up and stop talking. But the expectation was that we talk at the dinner table, but she would shut me down and then get angry when I stopped talking. So confusing. She was constantly critical and constantly comparing me to other "golden children" who weren't even related to us. "Oh, Angie is such a lovely girl" etc.... Or when I would get 87% in a test she would ask about another kid in my class who she knew was smarter than me, "What did so and so get?" to make me feel bad about my marks. Or if I'd get 93% she'd say "What happened to other 7%, didn't you study hard enough?" I was in all the top classes and sometimes I had received academic prizes at school, but she said to me towards the end of high school, "I have come to accept the fact that you're not very intelligent". What The F?!! (I am actually laughing as I write these examples because they are just so ludicrous). It was ironic because she wanted me to be nice, lovely, smart, pretty, good at everything etc. And I was all those things! But then she would crush it and criticize and compare, and whatever I did was just not good enough. I wish I had said to her, "Well, I have come to realise that you must be crazy because you make no sense at all!" Haha. That felt good to type that!

At the time though, these sorts of comments were very upsetting and painful and just added more and more to my sense of worthlessness.

dig   

[divine_inner_goddess]

Hi Eagle Ray, 

I can also relate to your comment about being the subject of your mother's 'irrational explosive rage' triggered by something totally innocent. I never knew when my mother would fly into a rage. She was very physically violent and emotionally abusive. And so confusing for a child when they are in need of the caregiver, but the caregiver is the one who is maltreating them. My father was absent, so it was only my mother bringing me (and my sister) up.  I echo your question, how does one come to terms with a mother hurting you like that?  

Well, it's been a long road and lots of healing and still more healing to be done. And now on my journey it's less about what my mother did to me, and more about how can I heal the trauma in my body, on a biological/physiological level. Thanks for pointing towards Peter Levine in one of your other posts, by the way. I have found Healing Trauma very very very helpful. And I am curious, what was the course you did?      

Like you, TonyWK, I am estranged from my mother with no contact, for me it's been no contact for over 20 years (except when I saw my mother at my sister's wedding and had some interaction with her). It's best for my health and well-being, for sure. It can be tricky though with my (half) sister who still has a relationship with our mother. 

Take Care, 

dig

[white knight]

ER

The similarities are being whittled down. My breakup with my mother was due to 6 weeks of her telling me she had a heart attack (coincidentally her friend had had one also prior) and me ringing her daily to check up. Then one day she said "my heart is fine, but I'm going blind". I insisted I attend the next GP appointment with her (4 hours away) and she wouldnt comply. Then "anyway ... and ... are my favourites" (my cousin and her granddaughter). She hung up on me and immediately rang my sister and insisted she support her against me. The end!

Both mothers put stress upon their children and placed them in a position whereby us children could not assist them with their illnesses, be it fake or real.

The missing teddy bears rang an alarm bell. My ex wife (narc) had a mother that was cruel. Her mother stole money my wife (teenager) would save and hide under the carpet. If the mother was in a bad mood she'd elbow her when passing in the hallway and so on. This resulted in my wife growing a extreme wall of toughness as she entered adulthood. She once said "my mother can do anything to me but cannot get through my mind". Sadly that hardness was used against me also during the 11 years of marriage. Your mothers behaviour with those precious items defies humanity and these actions she thought she could exceed to convince you of an excuse. That's where she undermined your intellect.

Regardless of issues in my life with mother her actions 4 days prior to my wedding confused me. My new wife and I were to live in a caravan until we could get a house. Mother wanted to give us a large wooden TV for a wedding gift. It seemed silly as we couldnt use it for a few years so asked if we could get a 12 volt one smaller to use in the van. That request immediately blew up and I was shocked. We left and she followed us to the car and tried to pull my fiancé out of the car!!. My mother withheld tupperware from a party paid for by the inlaws etc. Had to get the police to retrieve it. Anything to make me bow to her authority. Dad just supported her. Anyway an auntie payed peacekeeper and they all attended the wedding but mother white anted me at the reception, pulled sad face in family photos and I spent the entire event one eye on her. Fast track 25 years later for 2nd wedding, dad had passed, again, 3 week prior to wedding she blew up again, told my daughter she was going to attend the wedding and "make sure I say my piece". I got an AVO banning her from the area. Right up to the wedding in a park I was watching out for her car. Once it proceeded I was fine. I once said to my new wife of now 12 years "after she passes I'll still expect her to pursue me, such is the brainwashing of fear".

Interesting how you've developed protective methods to survive the happiest you can be. It sounds flattering but your intellect contains lots of logic that guides you through the mess of human behaviour.

Hi DIG

Re: "I echo your question (ER), how does one come to terms with a mother hurting you like that?  Around 14 years ago I had a revelation. A friend suggested I read the book "Walking on eggshells" by Dr Lawson. Googling it will produce extracts. Extreme BPD can produce up to 4 characters -

• The queen- she owns you, she will manipulate
• The witch- will pursue you to the end of the earth for revenge
• Hermit- uses absence for attention
• Waif- uses crocodile tears to others so others attack you.

It is more complex than that but worth googling. That revelation was amazing but as mother was/is in denial I've had to run with that as the reason she is who she is and I'm happy to accept that and it has helped.

TonyWK

[Eagle Ray]

Dear dig,

I can so relate to the vague, spaced out blanking out from your mother when you tried to communicate something from your experience. It’s so disconcerting, isn’t it. My brother has this exact same response now, and that is why I cannot have an emotionally real conversation with him about anything nor share my feelings or experiences with him. As the golden child he was subsumed inside Mum’s energy field and so internalised her way of being. I’ve realised it’s a kind of dissociation they have. With my brother it is a really blank stare. It can also turn into dismissive rage because of his intolerance of emotions. So it is not worth trying to share and emotionally connect with him except at the most superficial level - a kind of distant friendliness. I realise that like my mother he actually has a trauma reaction to emotions themselves, so will blank out or attack things that might make him feel emotions.

I think coming out of these experiences it is learning to see ourselves as worthy people rather than the kind of nothing person our mothers made us feel like. I agree very much with you that it is now less about what was done to us and more about healing the trauma in the body. I’ve found that is where the trauma is trapped in me. It is the fear response that I referred to in originally posting this thread.

 I do Peter Levine’s somatic experiencing method with my psychologist and it has been very successful in dealing with specific traumas. There is a lot there so it is a progressive thing. But I can feel my ingrained fear responses gradually unravelling. It is an amazing feeling when you feel patterns of bracing against trauma actually release from the body. Things like what you describe with your mother hitting you, it’s the kind of thing our bodies brace against and that pattern can stay stuck there for years. I have had several releases with my breathing through somatic work. I’ve found there can be a release, then another pattern emerges linked to a stuck trauma memory, so my breathing/autonomic nervous system may again go into a hypervigilant bracing, then that gets released, and so on. I’m literally progressively releasing lifelong multiple traumas. I find the releasing from the body allows the emotional healing to naturally follow.

The course I did was with a medical doctor who has also trained with shamans in Peru and Amazonian plant medicine. He is also a researcher in the field of epigenetics in relation to psychedelics in trauma treatment. The course was actually for practitioners but as I had been researching these areas I asked if I could do it and he said yes. I was drawn to it and I found it really interesting and helpful. I’m not using psychedelics but it’s the working with different consciousness states that I find very helpful in recalibrating a traumatised mind and body. It was a group of us from around the world doing the course via zoom. He is looking at bridging the gap between science and spirituality. It’s too big a topic to be able to really explain here but I basically just keep following my heart and spirit about what speaks to me and things work out when I do that. I’ve done quite a bit of sound healing in the past too and had profound healing shifts with that as well.

 I have so much empathy for what you’ve been through with your mother. I felt I was one of three things to my mother at any given time - invisible, a punching bag or a parent/support/counsellor. There are just a few glimpses in my memory where she momentarily saw me for me instead of a projection of her needs or as non-existent. So it’s so important for us to find our sense of worthiness and to be around people who are kind a validating. I really hope for you the greatest healing going forward.

[Eagle Ray]

Dear Tony,

That is horrible what you’ve had to deal with with your mother. It’s like you try to be reasonable with them again and again, only to realise they will keep coming at you in some way. I am so sorry you had to spend the time at your wedding having that hypervigilance worrying about what she was going to do, and totally get you not wanting her to be at your second wedding. There are times where total separation from the person is the only option to preserve your own well being.

When you describe how your ex-wife grew hard from what her mother did to her, it seems to be kind of what happened to my mother in relation to her mother. I am so glad I didn’t end up a hard person. It’s like my mother went into almost permanent fight mode, always ready to launch an angry attack. I think I went into freeze/retreat/curl up in a ball mode. I’m glad I haven’t ended up being an abuser of others, but I have been hard on myself as difficult emotions were turned inwards. I’m learning to self-parent now and actually really care for myself. It’s like a whole new experience.

As a child my mother could start irrationally screaming at me. I would try to reason with her but that just escalated the intensity of her rage. Countless times I ended up in the foetal position on my bed, either crying or beyond crying. I was kind of in a permanent state of shock. My Dad going into sudden screaming and hitting didn’t help either.

But I’m now slowly emerging from that. Things like me going on a road trip are ways that I am mobilising myself out of the fear/freeze/immobilisation. I am learning to act to release the trapped fear. I find it really does play out through the body. It’s like how the body learns to know that it is now safe and the mind then naturally follows. I start to actually register safety.

 I expect to pendulate back and forth for a whilst between fear states and feelings of safety, but I know this is the process of recovery. I do feel that I am moving towards recovery now.

[divine_inner_goddess]

Hello Tony WK, 

I too am sorry to hear about the hypervigilance playing out at your second wedding. That must have been incredibly stressful. I am glad that once the wedding proceeded, you were okay. I was already estranged from my mother with no contact by the time I was married to my (now ex) husband. So my mother was not invited to our wedding. But, I was still looking over my shoulder expecting her to just turn up. She wouldn't have made a scene, she would have just arrived as if she was supposed to be there, to keep up a front to everyone else that we were a 'happy family' and nothing was wrong (major denial). I had my cousins surrounding me and on the look out for me, but I was still very hypervigilant, too.    

Thank you for suggesting Walking on Eggshells. I actually have that book. I read it a long time ago and it helped me to understand an ex-boyfriend. But, I hadn't made the link to those four types explicitly in relation to my mother at the time of reading it. But the other day, I did google the types after you mentioned it in one of your earlier posts. And, I had had an immediate recognition of my mother as the Witch and the Queen. That was confronting but very helpful. I might need to read that book again, to go into more detail! 

I can accept that she is the way that she is. It does help a lot. As I said in one of my posts, I just focus now on healing the trauma in my body.    

Take care, dig

[divine_inner_goddess]

Dear Eagle Ray, 

So much empathy and compassion for you too. Yes I agree, the vague spaced-outness must have been disassociation. I am learning more and more about that and recognising it in myself, but also in my mother. To my mother I was a hindrance "you're in the way", a trophy "look how good I am as a mother", or a punching bag. It's not great, is it.  

And yes I agree that the healing journey, from such significant impact from a damaging mother, is about building a sense of worth as a person. I have come along way with that after a year of counselling for a very specific problem, last year. (I also have ongoing therapy with a psychologist too, and have had therapy on and off for about 20 years). And parenting ourselves in really important too. I am getting better at that too. 

I am so glad to hear that you are working through the trauma(s) with somatic experiencing. Yes indeed, the body would have been stuck in a freeze/brace/immobilise response. I can relate to that absolutely. I can also understand that it would take time, to release the energy of multiple lifelong traumas. My psychologist is not specifically trained in somatic experiencing, but she does have a somatic approach, which is helpful. I also saw a somatic practitioner after the really bad trigger 18 months ago. She helped me to roar and hit a pillow to engage the 'fight' response, and then to shake to move through the stuck-ness, and then a gentle relaxation to integrate. That was amazing! I can see now that I need to do more of that. And like yourself, it will be a long road, with multiple traumas to work through. 

WOW! That course sounds amazing. I listened to the summit on psychedelic-assisted therapy earlier this year, which was very interesting. I am fascinated by the coming together of science and spirituality/shamanism. I think there is a move towards a blend of both in the treatment of mental illness, very gradually.... science is so slow, so it's taking a while to catch up to what spirituality and shamanism already knows. I feel that it's an amazing time to be alive, to witness the process....      dig

[Eagle Ray]

Dear dig,

Getting in touch with that ‘fight’ mode is exactly what I have been learning to do, to protect myself and my boundary. My mother was chronically stuck there and I can see looking back was in a perpetual state of terror. It was not the way the fight mode is meant to operate, but a permanent state of feeling she had to fight all the time because of perceived imminent danger. Not long before she died she told me her mother would come into her room when she was a little girl and start screaming at her and slapping her. It’s like for the rest of her life she was fighting this terror. I could see she was always just a terrified child.

 I think for us, we don’t seem to have gone into the attacking of others in response to what happened to us in childhood. It’s like we withdrew into self-protection instead. I’ve learned that when coming out of the freeze response you tend to go through fight-or-flight on the way back to equilibrium. So there can be some quite strong activation when coming out of freeze which it sounds like you experienced as well with the somatic work. I went through a phase of throwing cushions into the couch, screaming into the wind at the ocean etc. The more I understand what are natural trauma recovery processes the more my body rebalances and I start to feel more ok.

 I have listened to a couple of summits on  psychedelics this year and one could be the same as the one you saw. I’ve read and learned a lot about shamanism which is often misunderstood from a Western perspective. It’s the oldest form of medicine and healing on the planet and it’s like there is a rediscovery of it at the moment with regard to trauma healing.

It’s interesting you were doing the shaking response too. I know this is common in many shamanic practices. The San in the Kalahari will dance and shake into the night and regularly do these practices that help recalibrate the nervous system. In 2021 I did a few sessions of TRE (Trauma Releasing Exercises) which were quite helpful and involved activating the natural trembling response the body goes through in trauma recovery. It’s used a lot for war veterans with PTSD.

 I think importantly I’ve learned not to be frightened of bodily responses and know that everything the body does is my nervous system trying to protect me. Likewise, when others have certain behaviours they start to make a lot of sense from a nervous system perspective. Like my mother and brother shutting down to emotions because it’s too activating to be open about them. The shutting down though means they come out in other ways. While for my mother it was explosive rage, for my brother he has had intermittent breakdowns of uncontrollable, intense crying that can go on for days. Then he all closes up and becomes emotionally detached again. I worry about him. Myself and a friend of his have supported him through breakdowns in the past, but it’s his journey and he will need to eventually either face and sort through things or not. The current partner he is with is prone to explosive rage like our mother was, yet he doesn’t seem to see he is repeating a trauma pattern with her. I think he is semi-aware of certain things and describes himself as emotionally avoidant, but I feel I’ve done everything I can and have to focus on my own healing now.

Yes, it is a great time to be alive in terms of that blending of science and spirituality. It is like a reconnection with the innate healing potential we all have. Mind and body got hugely separated for so long and spirit kind of disappeared from science and medical practice. My mind/body/spirit reconnect in nature and I’m sitting in a forest right now as I type this, surrounded by stillness, birdsong and beautiful dappled light. It’s all connected in the process of healing.

[white knight]

ER

"for my brother he has had intermittent breakdowns of uncontrollable, intense crying that can go on for days. Then he all closes up and becomes emotionally detached again". 

Like my sister that I'm now estranged, managing my own life, challenges and mental struggles, it is for her to seek more help. She has bipolar but its her adapted methods of our mother that ended us. That need serious psychological guidance before I'd even consider communication and as I know it wont happen (or to her it would admitting fault) I dont care any more.

The older and wiser we get the clearer toxicity is recognised. For my sister to drag my nieces into an argument forever destroying those special relationships is to me unforgivable.  "Unforgivable actions is not like plasticine - its like rocks" and my well being deserves some selfishness to move forward.

This thread has proved to be a cleansing one. Invigorating. 

TonyWK

[divine_inner_goddess]

Hi TonyWK, 

I was a bit confused by the book you mentioned. I have the book "stop walking on eggshells" by Paul Mason and Randi Kreger. It talks about borderline personality disorder but not specifically mothers. 

Then I googled walking on eggshells and Dr Lawson and came across the book "Understanding the Borderline Mother: Helping Her Children Transcend the Intense, Un predictable, and Volatile Relationship" by Dr Christine Lawson. The blurb mentions the waif, witch, queen, hermit. I think that is the book you are referring to?? Anyway, it looks highly relevant to me. I will try and track it down second hand as it's quite expensive new.  

dig