I am back

[Mum Chris]

Hi,

I am starting back on treatment for ComlexPTSD. I thought last year was bad but this year just got worse. I was dealing with a child that was agressive and intimidated and scared me so much. My husband wanted him out of the house but I refused to do it. A mum doesn't turn her back on her children. Well I couldn't fix it and the Police got involved and it was so bad so so bad. I feel like I failed everyone and now i am dealing with the loss and grief involved with untreated mental illness and my child refused to go to a facility so was locked up in jail and may go to prison for a long time.The sadness got so bad I ended up in hospital and I speak to a counsellor and will see a trauma specialist soon. I wanted to go to emergnecy and just get into hospital for mental health treatment but I work and my husband doesn't want to be left alone. I still might but i am trying to get outpatient care set up so I can get free from this sadness. I have all the classic PTSD triggers, loud noises, intrusive thoughts bad sleep nightmares and physically i am not doing great. I am down a dark invisible hole and people around me can't see it and when i try to explain it i cry and can't talk. That's one of the things that happened to me when the initmidation got very scary i lost my voice i would lan to spewak up and say NO but I just stuttered and fumbled and froze. I can't believe i was ready to leave my husband so I didn't have to face standing up to my son. This is how I feel - I had 1 job and that was to raise a healthy happy child and I failed.
I have enrolled in a physical rehab to get some fitness back and I watch funny shows to get my laughter back. My counsellor said yesterday to pick my grief up off my pillow and stick it in a cupboard and shut the door and say not today Grief you can just stay there today I am going to be free of you. She also says he had choices to make and he chose to act that way and to do those things
I am really not that great and I am pretending to be OK. I smile at people and sort am able to work but i can't wash a dish or cook a meal its a huge task now.

Anyone sorry for the downer I am just trying to be honest.

[Mum Chris]

Hi mmMekitty

The anger into words would be cathartic. The anger is a jumble of disappointment and a whole heap of other feelings like loss and sadness but it’s also frustration that a person I love could be so deceptive and destructive to himself and everyone around him and still think he’s right and blaming others. I may write it all down and see if there’s any sense there or just a mix of emotions that are intertwined.
Last night I ended up laying in bed and just let the thoughts ricochet inside my brain and I could feel them too. No matter how hard I tried I couldn’t calm them and I eventually went to sleep woke up exhausted and puffy feeling dehydrated. I closed my eyes and went back to sleep I wasn’t ready to face the world.
im so unmotivated to eat well and exercise but I’m at a point where my future depends on it. I’m only doing baby steps and I’m trying to do what I think about doing. I think about exercise 20 times a day and don’t do it same with drinking water and everything else I’m supposed to be doing.
If I think I need to exercise then I must do it. If I think about dishes I must do them and annoyingly I just thought about them and after I finish this I’m going to do the dishes. Just think how much spare time I will have if I’m not busy procrastinating. I’m walking better and I have sore muscles from my 20 minute work out. So a good day.
Resilience is not a word I’d have identified with so thank you it put a smile on my face.
MC

[Mum Chris]

Hi therisising

im fairly sure I’d not answer the door to a personal trainer but home cook is a yes please. Make it healthy I will eat it and it would be greatly appreciated. A masseuse and a life coach that could help me open the door to the personal trainer maybe.
The volume was indeed turned up last night and it was techno house clanging in my brain. All it took was a question from someone I don’t really trust but need to trust and want to trust about a terrible situation disaster catastrophe and luckily it was a question I couldn’t answer so I said I don’t know. Then comes 2am why don’t I know I should have been kept informed and the impact on me taken into consideration except all that happened is the perpetrator gets support. Umbrella feeling is very accurate and I needed to close that umbrella over my head and squish all the thoughts out. I’m deeply disappointed and feel immense grief and sadness. I see my grandchildren suffering and heard how they struggled without me and that they were not listened too and their feelings were not taken into consideration. I’m deeply disappointed that I raised a person like that. Hence the anger and swirling brain pinging and keeping me awake.
Today I exercised and ate healthy drank water and worked

Gentle music does help and I often sleep with one EarPod in with positive affirmations playing. Last night I went to bed happy woke up not so.

MC

[therising]

Hi Mum Chris

While it sounds like hell on earth at times for you, I'm glad you've managed to find what works on occasion. I imagine you can relate to what may work on one occasion may not work on another, under different circumstances. When you mention the positive difference listening to the affirmations makes while you're going to sleep, such a strategy may only work while going to sleep at night. It may not be effective enough to work during the day. That might involve a whole other strategy. Finding the best tools for the toolbox can be such a torturous and slow process, that's for sure.

Mum Chris, while it may sound a little silly to some, it took me so many years to reach the conclusion I'm actually on a quest to know myself better. The thing about such a life altering mind altering quest is...it holds and enormous amount of questions. All significant quests hold questions. While some of the questions can lead to liberating revelations, other questions can lead to no obvious answers or potentially depressing answers to work through, grow through and make better sense of.

On a quest, you can employ a variety of people to help find answers. Medical answers - a GP or specialist. Psychological based answers - a psychologist. Basic answers - a friend or family member. Then there are the kinds of answers only one person can give. If that one person won't provide us with answers, all we're left with are questions to find the answers to our self. Regarding the answers you're looking for from your child, perhaps they're ones only your child can give you. Perhaps the truth is 'Mum, while you raised me well up to a certain point, it was at that point where I went off track, for this reason or that reason. I got lost'. So, on your quest to know yourself better, you find the answer 'I am a good mother whose child became lost through the misguidance of others'.

I found, on a significant quest I question myself, I question others (often in my own mind), I question the powers that be. I'll question just about anything. The internal dialogue that comes with questioning can drive me to what feels like the brink of insanity at times 🙂

I think, to know we're on some quest as explorers can sometimes take the edge off the exploration process. To know we're meant to be asking so many questions, covering so much territory, is one of the things that encourages us to give our self permission to take a break on occasion. It's such thoroughly exhausting work at times.

[Mum Chris]

Hi therising

I started a message reply and lost it and gave up.
Take 2.
Yes a quest it is and I’m discovering how scattered I am on my quest. I have a job with a lot of responsibilities and deadlines and I seem to save my energy for work and family. Solving problems and preventing disaster’s and I now find myself scattered and weak. Unable to cope with daily life and if the slightest thing happens I fall apart.

I had PCR test after very close contact with positive case and it came back negative for all of us except one who is quite sick. I’m of course shattered and worried but they are not in hospital and I’m hoping will get better soon. It’s been 6 days and no improvement and I hate the uncertainty. I realised that I couldn’t care less if my test was positive I just want them better. I cared for them for a couple of days now someone else is caring for them. Their not vaccinated and that frustrates me they had planned to but it never happened. I’m upset no one took them and helped them to get tested. I offered but was told no it’s organised. 😡

Another thing I have to let go I seem to be taking on others troubles and rolling them around in my brain especially at night. At least I’m not running around fixing everything which is my destructive behaviour. I’m just quietly annoyed without voicing it.

[Mum Chris]

Hi Croix

my fear is back and I’m wondering how you learnt to let go of violence and vigilance. Psychologist has me doing happy place meditation but I’m not even getting there. I’m in the here and now and I need doors locked and cameras checked.

im crying again and feeling frustrated and I’m very unhappy with how things are handled. Victim support is none existent but perps support is everything.

Reality is things are not good and I’m injured but it’s been xyz amount of time and I should be better as far as those around me are concerned. I have to hide my tears pain and fear because it’s 2022 so I should be better now.

Im doing exercises and eating healthy 90% of the time nearly no sedatives just maybe 1 a week. Nearly no painkillers and I’m icing foot and elevating. I’m working and I’m keeping in touch with friends and family.

Just my brain has a life of its own.

MC

[mmMekitty]

Hi MC,

Those people who say, "you should be over it by now", really get me annoyed, 'as if they know our experience - they didn't live through it like we did, & don't seem to have a clue, even when we have tried to give them a clue, & somehow think they know when we "should be over it".

I've realised there is no predicting how long it takes to 'get over' anything, or if that is even the way I would put it. I prefer to think I am working through, processing, growing & learning even decades after. I don't expect I will ever look at a memory of particular events & shrug as if to say, ha, that's nothing to me anymore. I recognise all the individual incidents had an impact on me, & the cummulative, overall effect has been profound, deeply enough to say they have changed who I am permantly. Like, there's no getting over being run over by a truck a dozen times.

& now, learning, I don't have to continue to look at the world or everyone in it from that perspective. There are some good people in the world; I might even be one of them! It's going to take me longer to trust, & I have to be very consciously setting boundaries, so I feel safe & that I have some say in what the relationship I am in is going to be like. I don't have to put up & shut up, with whatever comes my way. I might even have a little power!

Thing is, no one can decide for you how long it will be before you are 'past it'.

It's very early with these new exercises, with the new Psychologist, opening yourself up to a form of treatment you've not explored before. What you said, indicates he is wanting to prepare you for some more intense treatment, by teaching you some new skills, which are going to be yours to call upon when you need. & like any good craft, the preperation is very important.

Sometimes I wish we could remember how many times we fell over while learning to walk. I've been amazed watching how the babies keep getting back up & trying again, & again.

More later,🙀💤

mmMekitty

[Mum Chris]

Hi mmMekitty

Yes impatient me has struck again and I’m getting tired. The physical therapy and the mental therapy is wearing me out. I felt really disappointed by the get over it attitude and it comes from a selfish place not a caring place. I thought of returned soldiers whose family give up on them because a year later they are still non functioning or changed

I wonder who I would have been without the terror and it’s impact I see my school friends and there nearly 35 years of marriage and the close knit family around them and I feel the loss I could never have sustained the lifestyle and had the honest close connections needed to be that family I was always running to keep ahead of the next explosion

Physiotherapist was painful today very painful and I have some tight and twisted tendons that need to be stretched and rolled out on torture like rollers. It was so painful I had sweat dripping off my face while lying face down on the table/bed thing. I had to buy a hard roller thing for me to use at home and a hard ball to roll under me feet. The issues are not only from this injury but from neglected. Did I say I don’t like the physiotherapist I think they must have masochist tendencies.
I’m just frustrated that I can’t control my brain enough to relax and do the happy place meditation after I pay a lot of money for the help and I should do what’s given to me. I will try again tomorrow with some music playing see if it helps.

MC

[mmMekitty]

My calves were so tight, when the physio was kneading them I thought she was putting her thumbs right through from the back of my leg to the front, (nevermind the bone in the middle). I had a few swear words & tears. This was at a public hospital so there were other people seperated by curtains, so we heard each other easily.

She asked me after if I felt better now, & I said, "yes, but only because you've stopped doing that".

*

I don't know if I actually let go of being vigilant, just that with time, long stretches of time when nothing happens to justify my vigilance, I settle, I don't keep looking out the window or starting at every sound,(it's only sometimes, even with my neighbour upstairs having outbursts & such, that I am at all, now, maybe...I don't know. I still startle when someone knocks on my door, even when I am expecting them in a minute or two.

It was a long time before I fully acknowledged I had actually experienced some certain form of violence. It shook me up, having it explained by my current PDr. He seemed shaken a little himself when I was talking about it.

My default had been, for a very long time, to not recognise what I felt, how deeply I felt, minimizing, denying, avoiding, like constantly dodging the truth, so it was hard to see it.

Overall I do feel safer if no one is around. If I have a thought in my head that someone is around, I feel on alert again. I don't know if that will go away, only that I understand what the feelings & thoughts are about. I know, breathing, distraction, even turning a light on, (if I can get out of bed), all help until I feel calm again. & calmness will return. I know that now, too. That in itself is reassuring to me, just knowing if I get onto it quick, & the thoughts & feelings don't overwhelm me, or even if they do, I will not be in this anxious panicky state for very long.

I used to keep notes, so when I complained about the neighbours, I could tell them more details, but doing that make me feel I was focusing too much attention & feeling worse for doing it. So I don't do that now.

Having an aging memory is actually going to help, because I will forget so much detail, not that people behave badly sometimes, but I won't be thinking of all the incidents, & not in detail.

& absolutely I wonder too, who I might have been, what sort of life I might have led, too. & how far back to I have to go to make substantial changes for the better, if I could.

mmMekitty

[Croix]

Dear MK and CM~

I’ve been sitting here for a long time wondering what to say to you both.

I guess the first thing is I’m glad you have found each other, you relate so well and interact with frankness and understanding. A remote friendship I guess, even if it is based upon a mutual dislike of physiotherapists:)

I used to play the game of which butterfly would I have to stop flying in order for the world to change and I never ended up with the incidents that lead to my illness. Now, not so much.

True, I have it easier than the pair of you in that my symptoms are more manageable, probably because the cause was different and I am, I suspect, a fair bit older. All but a bit off my life behind me (no that is not a complaint, I’m content it should be so, just an indication of change of attitude)

So now I don’t wonder so much, I am me, and that is a product of all my past, and I can live with me (including my experience's after-effects).

Why am I rabbiting on like this? It is not becuse I cannot picture what you live with, it is so you might get an idea that there is hope you will reach a stage of recovery where you feel the same. (Recovery, as you no doubt know, does not mean ‘as before’)

Other things you may have thought of already:-

MK you can get a plug-in wall socket (no instillation required) into which you can plug a light. It is cheap and works off a small remote you can keep under your pillow. The more expensive version is a power strip wiht 4 independently controlled sockets.

CM, I could not draw a happy place, no matter what the inducement. You have probably seen me bore people silly with my happy place on the edge of a cliff surrounded by grey seas. All in the mind, nothing else. It is a workable retreat for at least a few minutes, leaving me with my mood altered.

Although I acknowledge it is at great personal expense for each of you I’m glad you are here

Croix (who is pretty pleased there is no walrus icon (:{=)

[mmMekitty]

Thank you, Croix. 😺 You've had some very insightful things to say. I appreciate your input wherever I see your posts.

& I am not very much younger! 62, okay? With some grey, my helper said is 'silvery'!

I was thinking, my happy place could be a piece of music. I might make some visual imagery to go with it, but that is not essential.If I am able to hold a tune in my head, hearing the notes, I can follow each note, along a wire, usually copper, & each note is a different colour, & I swing along as on monkey bars, hand to hand, left right, left, right....Or I can picture myself, with Mekitty, lying next to each other, & she is purring, & I am petting her, & talking to her, drowsy, & happy. I don't feel any need to fill in any more detail than that...Or I could try to recall a dream or two which had been very happy & contented dreams (well, most of the time - but I can leave bits off.).

Maybe I can even use the memory I have of when I felt I could feel my sis's presence in the bedroom, her in her bed, & me in mine (when we didn't share). That was a good feeling, feeling someone in the room, but it was her - knowing she was there, & that was a good feeling.

mmMekitty