Playing the "Where Is That Feeling Coming From" Game

[j.banquo]

    The past few months, I've been isolating myself on purpose sometimes. Only when it makes sense. It isn't a bad thing.

    Often in the past week, I've even been swept up in some kind of really intense emotional flashback, which is a new experience. Or I've just found out I've been set up, or just been told to never expect any support from anyone because I'm bound to fail (in sideways language). Or I've been thinking, and remembering things on purpose.

    Or I've seen a long-past event in a new light, and it's obvious that it should always have been horrifying to anyone hearing the story, horrifying to any adult in my life at the time, I literally almost died from medical neglect, it was totally obvious, and no one said or did anything.

    Right so, trying to interact with anyone, especially responding to a text (how else do we all interact now anyway), while feeling any of that that intensely, is not a good idea. Either my feelings are going to spill over, or I'm going to be reacting as if I were engaging with the hurtful stuff, even though I'm interacting with someone totally unrelated to it.

    I read something normal like "I can't right now," and my instinct is that someone is withdrawing from me; I know I have no way to judge that, so I wait. I often want to reach out, but have no idea if it will come off as calm, or as needy and desperate, so I wait. In those cases, I trust my reason, and my existing knowledge of how these people feel about me, instead.

    I can get totally outside of reality, though I'm aware of it. I "know" that my best friends can't stand me (after 17-26  years of friendship), that I'm needy and self-centered, and that they're on the verge of abandoning me forever. It's totally obvious to me even outside of reality how my emotional state can make the meaning of something completely different from what it is, and I just stay as far away as I can from interacting from such an unstable and meaningless (to those relationships) place.

    It's excruciating, since I am so vulnerable, and I could use support. I also know that kind of support won't help me with this stuff, and it can't be sought anyway when I'm that confused emotionally. Not from them, not via text.



    I trust my instincts almost all of the time; I have really accurate instincts about people by now.

    What I don't trust (I know better) are my instincts moment-to-moment about people who are already important to me. What are they communicating, thinking, and what are they feeling? Am I pushing them away, are they withdrawing, are they getting too close, am I maybe triggering them talking about some of this (even though they know they can back away, I've said so kindly, will they feel an obligation not to, then resent me later). On and on. Will they punish and hurt me just for liking them... All generally legit concerns based on past experiences, but with most of these individuals, those questions were answered years ago.

   The closer they are to me, the worse it is, and the worst of all are potential romantic relationships. The more intimate it is, the harder it is for me to know, even if I know for sure that I can trust them; it's horrible.

    Actually, the only people I trust completely right now are close friends who I've known for more than 15 years, who I also lived with for more than two months as roommates. I'm actually really lucky because that is three people I can trust completely. Other than that, there are two people I half-trust; I also trust strangers right now. They know nothing about me, so they can't hurt me. 

   Eventually, the chaos settles down to the point where I can trace a feeling or a reaction back to something, usually after allowing the horrible feeling(s) to sit for maybe an entire day, with a splitting headache, insomnia, no appetite or massive appetite, pain, fear, hyperventilating, oh my God, but I come out the other side for a while, and can interact again, knowing then what it is I'm reacting to emotionally.



   Still, I caught myself a few weeks ago having an emotional reaction to something that turned out to be about other people entirely, which means I don't really know how to do this. No one anywhere does, since emotions are always tangled with experiences from the past, but I know I can figure this out.

   I was feeling pain about a romantic relationship not being quite what I'd thought (it made total sense; I actually still both know and don't know what is going there a few times over, which I can't focus on right now, unfortunately).

   It was one of my only positive experiences feeling pain from some kind of interpersonal disappointment. Pain without regret or guilt. Most importantly, pain that didn't come from hurt. My response was mostly surprise, and then happiness. I cared, but there was no conflict to resolve, no one was attacking me, and again it came from the real world, not from chaos. I felt the pain, it passed, and I was left with the happiness. Then more pain, didn't even feel exactly bad to feel it, and so on.

   Within a few hours or a day, I realized there was all this pain that came from hurt, right underneath it, amplifying and hiding behind the nice pain. It felt almost exactly the same. It came from the oldest and closest relationships in my life, of course. That's not a bad path to knowledge, but overall it is not good to have that happening; the relationships are completely different in terms of how healthy they are.

    Emotions from those people have been bleeding together with emotions about the new person the whole time, I knew that always. I know they had a negative effect on the relationship where the good pain came from, long before there was pain. Nothing could've prevented it; I know that when you've been through abuse, every new close relationship feels wrong and brings forth a flood of horrible past associations, each one has to be talked about, and it sucks.

   I already know that tons of emotions bled together for both of us, from past truly horrible abusive relationships, into what almost certainly won't be one, and never has been, whether it ends up as a friendship or romantic or a work relationship, or even if he withdraws completely... Some of it I noticed, but a lot of it I didn't, even though I knew what to look out for.

    Thoughts?

[Starboard Song]

Trauma leaves many of us with a lack of trust. My wife says she feels ill-at-ease in almost any social situation. That social situations make her feel unsafe even when she knows that is unreasonable.

Your doubting of others is a pretty reasonable reaction to your experiences. Now you have to find a way, in time, to increase the degree of safe trust you can have in others. My wife highly recommends the books in the first line of my signature.

[Breadroll]

It's awful that you were neglected- and that adults around you did nothing. Frightening and leaving you feeling unsafe. It's great that you can now recognize that, and adult you is rightly appalled. Trauma damage has all sorts of destabilizing effects. Rumination and overthinking nearly everything was - and sometimes still is- a feature for me.  Trusting self a big one.  I found «  inner child » work helpful, and also some Emdr ( just on the internet) was oddly effective.   Seemed to «  calm » the brain. IGood luck

[1footouttadefog]

There is good news in all of this.  It means you are recognizing and dealing with the traumas of your past and how they are impacting your current life and relationships.

This means healing is taking place and will continue to do so.  It means your future will be brighter because you are in this process now, even if it's terribly painful and seems overwhelming emotionnally.

I would encourage you to read up on Complex PTSD.  C-PTSD, I cannot if course diagnose and am not trying to do so, but those resources help teams victims regardless.  Some things are on a spectrum and we can have been impacted to varying degrees.  There is a sister website to Out of the FOG called Out of the Storm that deals with CPTSD.

I relate to your story in parts but not the whole.  I will to that extend reply. 

When coming out if the fog, my eyes were overwhelmed with bright light.  I was oversensitive to narcissism and narcissistic abuse.  My feelings and senses were raw.  It was hard to navigate as my vision was overwhelmed with the bright light.  Taking it in smaller sizes and at optimum times was best for me.

I was also processing alot of grief, grieving relationships and goals and dreams.  Grieving the functional and healthy people in my life I tried to find in the pds and actually deserved. 

I grieved the part of my life I felt had been wasted, and the fact I had played into some of the dysfunction myself in my efforts to fix things. 

I had to reevaluate my relationships and process all the emotions almost at once.  I also isolated for a while.  I did this again  recently and am just emerging again.  Took time out to process some stuff without impacting relationships.

I think that in relationships what helped me is that I was fortunate to always have a specific person or two who I talked about this stuff with.  I did not bring it up in all relationships.  I had a Thursday nights out friend who had similar challenges and we helped support each other.  This helped keep other relationships inside appropriate boundaries, sometimes the other people's boundaries are offended when we talk about trauma etc.

I think that keeping some relationships inside certain boxes is safe and healthy.  Hobby friends are for hobbies and socializing casually, Bible study friends are kept in another box, people I volunteer are another set also. 

Not being super enmeshed with all my stuff helps keep these relationships safe and easier to navigate.  Most people don't want the level of intimacy required to divulge past trauma in detail and to be empathetic toward it. 

I am less apt to misread the communications or mis hear the communications of these lighter relationships because I know that is not the space where they take place.

It took me a while to get to this because I had been trained to be enmeshed.  Not being known with real intimacy cause me to desire it and seek it from anyone who I formed a friendship with making me too intense for many..  I had to resist this urge and recognize it as my own issue and not to let it impact all my interactions. 

Kinda like if I had car trouble I would not seek help from my plumber or  a chef or librarian or friend.  At the same time I could check out a book even though I had a car issue.

[j.banquo]

Wanted to say thanks to everyone.

I'm getting better at "Where Is That Feeling Coming From." It does take a lot of time... it also seems like it's necessary "to play," or it just sticks around.

Did I mention the snacks? I saw a container of food with a post-it on it, I knew who it was from. It was so obviously a gift of snacks, and I knew it. The problem was, my physical sensations were not in line with that knowledge, so I also knew in my bones that it was either a note with a really burdensome request for something that didn't matter, or a note asking me to leave the premises that day. Two hours of that before I went out to look at the note, which was "I made extra snacks, have some." Four hours recovering from the feelings of having been through all that over a gift of snacks.

[1footouttadefog]

It sounds like you have alot of super painful stuff being triggered by ordinary stimuli in your environment.  Ie the Note in the snack box. 

Maybe you could consider some therapy.  If that is not an option, I would think that continuing to delve in and find the where the feelings come from is wise. 

Please take good care of yourself while you are in this state.  Maintaining your physical health and getting good sleep is very important because emotions are so much magnified when we are sleep deprived or unhealthy or in pain.