Playing Jenga with my life?

[Guest_2350]

My life is based on some personal values and beliefs. During the treatment in the last few months I often got confused. Confused about my feelings, confused about my relationships to other people, people that are close to me, confused about the memories that keep popping up out of nowhere.

As I am going deeper in the past - I ask myself: If these situations steered the course of my life, impacted on my life so signifcantly to cause me mental and physical issues now - then who am I? I feel like I am playing Jenga with my life. What if I take out a core relationship and everything just falls over? Can I accept that I hate a person I was meant to love? Can I forgive and move on? Can I accept that I love and hate that person? Then there are other people that have caused so much grief in my life and changed my life forever, but it was not their fault. I have moved away physically, but also removed my heart because I cannot bear the pain. I have learnt how to look excited when opening a present, when to laugh if people are laughing, how to mingle in public, but I don't feel it. I can also detach when being sad, change face in an instant. Have I just built a pretty facade? Put the Jenga pieces on top of each other without making sure the foundation is ok? I am going back so far in my past, that I am worried what I may find out about myself. I am worried to start questioning the core relationships I have now - and then what?

Are there others here that are working through childhood/young adulthood trauma? How have you coped? Am I over thinking this?

I am safe and I know I will be able to get up from this chair and do something to distract myself. But I needed to ask this question, as it has popped up so many times over the last few months, and I think I just figured out, why this confuses me so much.

[Guest_2350]

Dear Neil and Sherie,

I am so sick of feeling sorry for myself. I am disgusted that I feel the way I feel and I am so disappointed in myself for feeling this way. Why can I not just snap out of it? 

[Guest_2350]

Well, I snapped out of it. And I am actually really proud of myself, as late in the afternoon all my old coping techniques popped in my head and I thought, ok, let's try something different. So I went home, I meditated, I made a nice  cup of tea, did my mind exercises... and eventually the confusion and the anger subsided.

[Guest_5218]

Hey Yggy, thats great.  Well done.

I hope you are now able to enjoy a nice weekend.

Hug to you yggy.

Sherie xx

[Guest_2350]

Dear Sherie,

thank you, I hope you will have a nice weekend too.

 How are you? I hope you are doing ok. Do you have nice plans for the weekend? I am having another weekend of rest and I am starting to feel a difference with having more rest, taking medication and looking after myself a little better. 

I sometimes feel these little people in my head fighting and bashing each other - today I thought no wonder that some people see no way out, it is really surreal - sometimes I try to smile and think how silly it all is. Do you have that sometimes? I've started ACT recently and I seem to be talking to myself more. Hopefully that's the right direction for me, CBT made me worse in the long run, although I thought I was getting better for a little while. Have you tried ACT?

Take care and big hug, Yggy 

[Guest_5218]

Morning Yggy.  Thanks for your reply.

How am I?  Actually I'm doing alright thanks.  I have an apt coming up on Monday 21st with my psych.  I havent seen her since November, so its been a while.  I have since joined BB Forums which I believe has helped me a little in taking charge of my own future treatment, and in knowing what I want to get out of it all.  So for the first time, I am actually looking forward to my next appointment.

No I havent had any ACT treatment, in fact never heard of it until I read your mention of it.  So far I've only had the CBT, which was of limited benefit.  The psych mentioned last time that she would like to try EMDR treatment this year, but I have read mixed reports on its effectiveness.  So I will need to be convinced on that one.  Of course everyone responds differently to all the individual treatments, and what works for one, wont for another.

I was interested in reading your post from a couple of days ago about high IQ, expectations, etc.  I too have always tested in the very high IQ bracket.  And yet, I have never really done anything with it in my life.  I have always been painfully shy and had a very low self confidence.  So I guess I am one of those people who waste what they apparently have.  I would have been better off with a normal IQ, and then people would not have had certain expectations of me.  But it certainly sounds as though you have not wasted your gift.  You have achieved so much, especially in your working life, so I'm not sure why you feel the way you do about it.

I have a quiet weekend planned, and hopefully no surprises.  I'm glad you are starting to feel the benefits of the combination of rest, meds and taking better care of yourself.

Okay yggy, you take care also.  Please know that I care, and am thinking of you.

Perhaps you'd like to post to my new Pet thread in the Staying Well section.  I'd love to read more about your pet parrot.  All part of your rest and recreation weekend.  ( - :

Sherie xx

[Guest_2350]

Dear Sherie,

I am glad to read you are doing ok. Good luck with your appointment with your psych. If only we knew what would help us in the long run. What did not work with you and CBT? I struggled with thought challenging. I'm not sure if it was the CBT but I remembered a lot of the past and that was frightening. At the moment I refuse to talk about the past. It is not easy as I also exclude a lot of people from my past, but I will deal with that later.

Let me know if you try EMDR, apart from DBT that was suggested to me before, but I committed to ACT now and will see how that goes. ACT is about accepting unpleasant feelings and thoughts - that is as far as I have gotten with one session. The concept sounds pretty good to me, as it does not require me to fight negative thoughts with my brain, but to accept that I am feeling this way. Not sure how that helps in the long run, but I really want to try it. And it feels like there is no shortcut out of this mess anyhow. I try to focus more on the moment and meditate regularily and I want to see if this gives me the space I need - I always love it when people say they are the "bystander" watching their thoughts from a distance. So I must have done this before, otherwise I would not see little people fighting in my head... sounds pretty crazy to me, but I have nothing to lose.

Sherie, you are using your gift. You are such a wonderful person and so valuable in this community here, I am sure everyone appreciates you. I have learnt about gifted children. Unfortunately if gifted children are not nurtured in their development at home and at school, they can turn, as they get bored in school and disturb the class. My friends boy is like that. You either keep him busy and entertained at his intellect or he is the class clown. Thankfully nowadays teachers are more aware than when you and me were in school.

I've only had an IQ test a few years ago. I did it because I did not understand why people could not follow my thinking or took long to learn when I explained things. I needed to find ways to break things up in a way that I was not the only one who could follow my reasoning. And the more I thought about that the more self-aware I became, thinking about how I studied and how I learnt things in my life (and what limited interests I have).

I'll have a look at your pet thread, I have my little pet parrot with me right now.

Take care, Yggy

[Guest_5218]

Regarding CBT, I dont think it was anything in particular that didnt 'work'. Possibly being a fairly stubborn character, I had difficulties with challenging my thoughts. Perhaps similar to you?  

I did find it had some benefits however.  It did enable me to finally face what happened, and to accept that it had nothing to do with what I did, or did not, do.  And that nothing I could have done would have changed the outcome.  So I am grateful that CBT finally allowed me to stop denying what happened and to bring it out into the open and to try to dissect and analyse it.  My brain needs to have an answer to everything, there has to be a reason, a cause, and an effect, an outcome.  And I have never had that over my trauma situation.  There are still many unanswered questions I have, and most of them will remain unanswered.  I find that difficult to handle.   The CBT did bring out many memories that I had previously 'locked securely away' because they hurt too much and caused to much further trauma.  And I told somebody what had happened for the first time ever.  Although it took months of patient therapy by my psych I did finally tell her all that I could remember of what happened.  There are still some memory gaps there, during which I simply dont know what happened.  My psych says I probably dissociated.  Either that or concussion blacked me out for a time.  I dont know, and I find that difficult to deal with.  The not knowing.....

I recall reading in an earlier post of yours that you had a hard time dealing with your diagnosis of ptsd.  I was not like that at all.  When I was diagnosed, it was actually a huge relief.  After the initial shock anyway, because it just wasnt something I had even considered.  I found that it finally explained how I was feeling, why I felt that way, and the way I'd been for all those years.  Everything actually made some sense to me for the first time in 19 years.

Through school everyone used to have an IQ every few years as a matter of course.  I always scored very high apparently, but nobody would understand why wasnt I doing better. I always did ok, but not as good as I should I guess.  Then I had to have an IQ test before being accepted into a new job.  They placed great importance on your IQ and would only accept the top 5% IQ.  Totally ridiculous, as its not 'what you've got', its 'how you use it' really.  Anyway I got in.  

Btw, thanks for your kind words.  And thanks for your post to the Pet thread.  

Sherie xx

[Guest_2350]

Dear Sherie,

very interesting what you said about CBT. Perhaps I just scraped the surface before I could see results. I found it very confronting and it triggered memories I had long buried, similar to you. I was not ready and I think the setting was not right or I may just not want to talk about it. There are two trains of thought with childhood trauma, going through every detail - or not. At the moment I don't want to talk about the past, I need to get better in the present and then maybe I will be strong enough to tackle the past. I am not so sure whether the answer will be digging it all up and analysing it. It won't change what happened. I am reading a book about childhood trauma recovery and it advises there are both options. At the moment I focus on becoming stable and getting to know my psych. Once I feel safe, I will think about what else I can do.

I am not used to getting a diagnosis that is for life. Get a problem and solve it. It puzzles me that there might not be a solution and that I might have to live with this for the rest of my life - on the other hand I wonder, why that worries me as I have lived with it all my life? And the endless loop starts. I am not sure if depression and ptsd is it, again I don't understand why that should worry me. I am who I am, right? There are always solutions in life and sometimes a risk analysis is required, to weigh up what step to take, I find it impossible to do that with my condition, as I have no idea what I could trigger. That makes me very cautious and scared. I am out of my depth, I guess. I am scared. I need help, I guess. And I think I have finally started to admit that.

I am glad to know that treatment has somehow helped you. I hope the new therapy will be of more benefit to you and that you find more peace in your life. It is so important to cherish our lives.

I think schools and parents should ask themselves what they are doing wrong if you don't perform and not why you don't do better. Although my IQ is high all over, I have some peaks in maths and science related areas. I am glad my teachers identified that as they supported me with fun activities like lending me books to solve maths problems for final year when I started high school and just letting me be. In school, I often did not get good grades because I would not write solutions the way they taught us or skipped steps as I thought they were not important.  But they knew I could do it, differently. I was lucky in high school.

Take care, Yggy

[Guest_5218]

Morning Yggy,

I know your trauma situation is very different in its origins than my own.  I am lucky in that my trauma is the result of only one incident, and I was an adult at the time.  Childhood trauma which occurs repeatedly over a period of time is a very different kettle of fish.  So much more to uncover and analyse.  Its understandable that you would be very cautious and reluctant of unlocking all that stuff from the past.  Any of the therapies deemed helpful for ptsd, by necessity, is going to be scarey.  But our brain seems to need answers/solutions and, for it to have that, a lot of hidden stuff needs to get unlocked, released and analysed.

If I decide to go through with the EMDR treatment I will keep you abreast of how it goes.

Getting back to the IQ test issue.  I am not really in favour of the standard IQ testing of children, as I think it can too readily result in the pigeon-holing of kids.  The above average kids can have expectations placed on them that they are not ready for, and the below average child can be cruelly considered not worth wasting time on.  And later they can be forced into occupations 'relevant to their IQ' which is not always what they will be happiest or indeed best at doing.  I think targeted IQ tests are relevant for any child who is struggling perhaps, be it those highly talented ones who are just bored, or those who cant seem to keep up with their classmates.

I hope you are having a restful weekend Yggy?  Is the weather where you are finally starting to cool off a bit?

Thinking of you,

Sherie xx

[Guest_2350]

Dear All,

I hope you are all okay. 

I've been quiet this week and I miss you all.

I've had a whirlwind of feelings and I find the new therapy very confronting at times. I've been upset and I have laughed, I've felt like everything will be good and I felt I lost the game. I've had clear moments and I've been more confused than ever. 

Writing makes not much sense at times but I just wanted to let you know that I am thinking of you.

Take care, Yggy