How to articulate thoughts in mind and stop being triggered by enviroment

[dealzz15]

Hi I'm on the journey to recovery from growing up in a self righteous narcissistic house where they controlled everything and pushed their own interests needs and goals onto me and for the most part things are improving and getting easier to deal with. I'm finally learning ways to regulate my emotions, let go some unprocessed feeling and memories, and starting to really enjoy being with myself and showing compassion to myself and finally feel like I found a safe space within myself.

However I still having problems fully articulating myself to other people because my mind just goes so fast that I know the initial thought but don't know how to elaborate or explain without feeling flusterd and that I'm about to be attacked. The way my brain works is that I can't hear my thoughts but I instantly know what I'm saying. Like my brain is able to watch tv without sounds or subtitles, I just know what I'm thinking. My working memory has always been terrible and I started heavily using weed after I graduated from hs (I've been able to slowly limit my reliance because at the start my body was tweaking out and was really burned out from the childhood I lived but its the only way for me to give my brain a break from constantly thinking and trying to fix things in my life and only thing that has brought relief) I'm also used to people not respecting my thoughts and feelings so I just assume no one wants to hear from me and that I'm an imposition and in the way. Will this problem go away as I'm building up myself more and more every day or is there something else I can do?

It also takes time for me to figure out what I mean and I can't do it quick enough to participate in a conversation so a lot of times I give short answers and can't elaborate. I don't know how to articulate how I'm feeling either right away. it usually takes like a few days for me to fully process and its not until I fully processed how I feel that I know what I was feeling if that makes sense. And because the way my mind works its very disorganized and I don't know how to add structure because sometimes when I focus on saying one thing I have many other thoughts circulating around my mind. I also can't visualize and idk if that makes a difference or has an impact.

The combination of both problems is just stressing me out with my friends and new people I meet because I think I fully believe that I'm going to do something to mess it out or my social skills will ruin it or that me not talking will ruin the friendship. I don't know what to do because I know its all in my head but I still can't find a way from stopping myself from believe it despite all the reinsurance I give in my head about the situation. Even if my mind can see that its a false alarm, my body still acts nervous and I unintentional send the non verbal cue of don't talk to me because I'm so scared

I'm in college now and I'm finding that similar situations that mirror how my parents treated me puts me on edge and that its almost like I'm on guard about being attack. I'm living on a oncampus apt and I feel like I'm not safe unless I'm alone and when a person is with me I feel the fear of being judged and ridicule and I can't continue with the task. I've been self isolating trying to work it out myself but I haven't figured it out yet. I'm also trying not to ruminate as that has very much consumed me in the past and I've realized multiple times that I need to focus more on myself and work on the ways that I still am affected by the trauma but its hard since I do have a lot of unprocessed memories especially from hs that I'm pushing down (I went to a really difficult boarding school that had Saturday classes and wouldn't get much sleep like pulled an allnighter every 2 weeks while my parents were yelling at me for any small mistake)


I also one day want to stop my reliance on weed. I dont think it's possible now because I still have moments when I freak out and it feels like weed is the only thing that's holding me apart. Sometimes its the only thing that keeps me going and someway has given me the ability and willingness to change (before I smoked I was very stubborn and couldn't break the false beliefs that were pushed on me)  But I want to get to a point where I don't feel like I need it anymore and can just live my life without thinking about the instant relief it gives me. Its gotten better after I realized I subconsciously used weed to create cognitive dissonance about the parts of the life I hated because of my parents control and I was able to dissociate without my dad's yelling affecting me but after that realization I stopped having the constant urge to be high and been trying to keep it more as a tool. Its been able 6 months since that and my usage has significantly a lot better even though I still smoke every day.


If anyone has advice, books/videos, or tools that can help with me articulating what I mean without feeling I'm about to be attacked and finding peace with my past and how to lessen the effects of past traumas I would greatly appreciate it. I'm really determined to do all the work I can for me to live a life where I'm overall happy, have balance in my life and live in peace. I've listened to the audiobook Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents, watched a bunch of different videos about narcissism and its effects, journaled and also seeing a therapist since last march. I haven't mentioned to my therapist about my suspicions that my dad is a narcissist though because I'm scared about her reaction and her not believing me and invalidiating it. I don't even know why I have this fear. Even though me and my family show all the signs and effects of living in a narcissistic household, I still doubt myself and part of me thinks I'm making it up even though there is so many signs that show it. I think I search so much for validation that I'm actually dealing with narcissism and its not something else but even when I find proof its not enough because nothing is enough for me to fully believe it without a doubt.

I think just from growing up I have so many doubts about if I'm right or not that I end up not trusting myself and automatically belive I'm wrong and I don't know how to stop this.

[square]

I'm sure others will have far more helpful input than me. But here is my one thought. You've clearly given some thought to not only your communication but your thinking process ("metacognition," a terrific skill to have). You mention not thinking in words ("heard" in your head) or pictures.

Do you process your thoughts through writing?

And/or by speaking them aloud? If yes to this, does another person have to be there or can you talk aloud to yourself?

Also, an unrelated thought. When we feel threatened, the amygdala in our brains takes over - not 100%, but it increases in priority, how much depends on threat level.

The amygdala has very little verbal ability; it can cause you to make the kinds of sounds and words you might make in a traumatic situation, including swearing. But you generally lose fluency when blood flow prioritize the amygdala over the frontal cortex. So you are absolutely correct about your insights regarding high stress and speech.

I would like to encourage you to keep considering how you might become ready to reduce/eliminate the weed when you can. No judgement here, I have just seen that it can have some long term negative effects on some people. So I salute you for giving this some thought, and hope that soon you might feel ready to make some changes there.

[dealzz15]

Do you process your thoughts through writing?

And/or by speaking them aloud? If yes to this, does another person have to be there or can you talk aloud to yourself?

At first I was processing my thoughts unintentionally. I sort of stumbled into journaling after there was a second suicide at the hs I went to and was very triggering because of my own experience there and almost losing a really close friend from suicide. Also unrelated but I think it was because he couldn't deal with  narcissistic abuse from his father which we unknowingly related to and dealt with the same feeling and problems because of it which was the reason why we grew so close.

I think there were a lot of thoughts in my head that I wasn't willing to admit or say but I was able to write and I think journaling became my safe space when my head didn't feel safe because I still had a lot of false beliefs and immediately thought everything I was thinking was wrong so at first I only knew my true thoughts from journaling, but as I started to break the false beliefs and give myself positive reinforcement I've been able to do more thinking in my head without needing to talk or write it as my mind started to feel like a safer place. Now I'm able to do like good amount of thinking in my mind, but I do often talk out loud because its another way for me to focus on what I am saying, but I'm likely not to remember what I said so writing helps with the memory part. But once I say something or process something that was unprocess I feel a little relief like it left my body and if I didn't address the root of the unprocessed feeling it would still bother me so I only know if I moved on by not remembering it.

Right now I just do a combination of everything that has worked depending on what the thought is. If I have to structure it more I type it out but If I have quick relaizations I think it in my head or talk to myself if no one is around 

I feel like when someone is with me its a lot hard for me to explain or articulate my thoughts because I have to keep up with a certain speed and I'm unable to identity what I'm thinking in a short amount of time. I think I have a freeze response because of my dad's constant yelling when anything upsets him so I'm not a big talker already and I feel like when I'm talking with a group I don't really say anything because I can't keep up with them and my body is telling me to be silence so I don't get a bad reaction from the group because I learned from my dad its better to say nothing than say something wrong.

I really do want to reduce/stop the amount of weed because I know overall its a lot, but I have such an emotionally crutch to it that before using weed I realized that I had no tools for self regulation and was so burned out that I couldn't do anything and I couldn't sleep because of sleep problems from my close friend who almost took his life and I had trouble calming down my thoughts before I went to sleep so I would go to sleep earliest at 3am. I was really unwell in highschool because of the pressure and stress from the school and my parents for not being able to excel. It also took away any negative physical and mental feelings from the narcissistic abuse. So after HS when I started smoking it literally changed my life and for the first time I was able to relax and think. For the first time I had the energy to do certain tasks and somehow I became smarter. Not even kidding I was doing my hw high in college and my GPA is 3.7 compared to my hs gpa at 3.0.

I know its an excuse and I'm working on a way to provide this naturally for myself but sometimes my mind and body bring me down and I'm in such a internal struggle where I can't do anything. Weed calms down so many symptoms for me and even helped me not hear the negative interalizations from my parents which was a huge reason why I was able to use my brain more when I was high than when I was sober and I wouldn't be triggered by my environment. I am somehow really high functioning using weed and wonder if the way I feel high is how normal people feel. I do hope after all the rebuilding I'm doing it'll be enough not to need weed as emotional crutch, but right now I'm just at the beginning of finding other ways to regulate my emotions because before weed it was nothing. I just pushed away my feelings and continuously doubted them.

 

[Cat of the Canals]

I'd suggest reading The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. I can relate to a lot of what you wrote, and his books have helped me so much.

[Invisiblewoman]

I can write out the abuse but the idea of talking in public or in front of others about it overwhelms me still.

I feel like I will be accused of bullying and lying by my family if I talk about it. i know logically I am not saying anything wrong, and I am not lying but they have painted me as lying so much I fear it coming back at me, hard.

And the reason why I have this fear because I had rightfully sought help, or explained difficult emotions caused by them to someone outside the family; and for that I was physically attacked, and smeared into a permanent scapegoat role.

I could have been killed by my abuser. That was my biggest fear. My family tells a story as if I had lied and harmed my abuser with my lying. It's completely backwards, and they do not care if they cause me irreparable harm in the process.

[Call Me Cordelia]

Does your college have student health? Most colleges offer counseling services. Early in coming Out of the FOG I very much needed an emotional crutch. The feelings were so overwhelming and I still had a life to manage besides just trauma healing. An SSRI was that for me. That would be safer than self-medicating with weed. If that's a good option for you, student health would be able to give resources for getting off the weed, counseling, and possibly other medical intervention to help you.

Even now, I still need to feel my feelings through writing or talking them out. Sitting and thinking in my head just gets me spinning. But if I can write, I can figure myself out much better. In conversation with multiple people, forget it. I don't think there is anything wrong with us for that. Certainly nothing wrong with saying, "I'm not sure my opinion/how I feel, I'll have to think about that."