I have my therapy appointment later today, so I thought I would blog about how I am doing before I go. I am sure that therapy will point me in a different direction, so I want to capture my progress so far.
My “homework” from last week was (1) not to react to my emotions but, instead, observe them with compassionate awareness; and (2) not justify or explain myself to others. I have done a better job with #1 than I have with #2. As for #2, I have made progress in noticing when I am explaining myself but have not been very effective so far in stopping myself beforehand. However, I have done a very good job with #1.
I gave myself a third homework assignment to help with #1 that my T did not suggest but did support – ceasing all mood-altering drinks and pills for now. I have not drunk any wine or other alcoholic beverage, taken any Xanax, or even taken any sleep aids in over a week. Before I continue, let me assure you that I have no addiction issues other than food (binge eating). I use alcohol and Xanax to numb the difficult emotions, but there is no physical or compulsive element to this. Food has been a harder demon to slay because I do struggle with compulsive overeating, but I have been making progress in this area as well.
So I went a week without using any external means to numb myself or help me sleep. You know what? It was a much better week than I have had in a long time. That isn’t to say that I did not feel any difficult emotions – I did. The differences were that (1) I did not fuel them; and (2) I did not numb the “good” emotions, like joy. By not fueling the hard emotions while, at the same time, enabling myself to experience the “good” emotions, I achieved an emotional balance that I have not experienced in a long time.
I found that I have an internal “anxiety geyser” that shoots out anxiety several times a day with no apparent trigger. I could be doing something throughout my day, not thinking about anything in particular, and become flooded with anxiety. In the past, I would immediately try to analyze it, which would fuel the anxiety, snowball, and drive me to food, wine, or Xanax to detach from it. Instead, I would simply notice the anxiety without attaching to it, and it would pass.
Giving up sleep aids (which does include wine and Xanax but also melatonin and herbal sleep aids) was harder because I struggle so badly with insomnia. My sleep patterns actually improved this week. I had three nights lying in my bed at 3:00 a.m. looking at the ceiling. Instead of taking a Xanax to fall back to sleep, I popped in a DVD with a comedy I had seen before and listened to it until I fell back to sleep.
I don’t know where I am going next in therapy, but I am very pleased with the results so far!
Photo credit: Hekatekris
Blooming Lotus 
Good job Faith!
Well done, Faith! I hope the appointment goes well, too.
I’m off the alcohol at the moment, too. Thankfully I’ve never been addicted, but it interferes with observing my emotions; the same reason I’ve always avoided antidepressants. I find that mood altering substances only delay the mood variation, so sometimes if I “use” one, afterwards a whole heap of feeling hits me afterwards and it’s too much.
I have a tip for anyone suffering from comfort or compulsive eating. I realised that the problem with that for me is that I can’t stay aware of how my stomach feels and whether I’m hungry or not. No matter how hard I tried, the numbness, both emotional and physical, would always set in. It’s like my stomach can’t protest loud enough, or I can’t hear it protesting, when I try to put food in it that it doesn’t want. The only thing I feel at all is the taste. So I thought the way forward would be to make sure I had feeling in my stomach area the whole time, especially when I’m eating. The solution I came up with was an underbust corset. You can get them for men, too, incidentally. I fasten it just tight enough that it presses into my stomach very slightly, and strangely that feels quite nice in itself, like a comforting hand :). But it’s so helpful when it comes to eating, because the awareness of that area of my body slows me down, increasing enjoyment, and helps me stop when full.
I don’t know if anyone else has a problem with their stomach area going numb. I’ve wondered whether that’s one thing that contributes to overeating for quite a few survivors, but I’ve never seen it mentioned. My theory is that I carried the terror in my stomach and had to numb it/dissociate from it because otherwise I’d just have been sick continually. Learning how to feel that part of my body is proving to be a long process.
Also a little tip I learned from a book to see if you’ve got a problem with physical numbness. Close your eyes and place your hand palm down on the part of the body in question. If you find it much easier to feel your body through your hand rather than your hand through your body you may have been numb without realising it.
Turned into a bit of a splurge, sorry! But someone might get something from it 🙂
Jan,
Just wanted to say thank you for that tip about how to tell if you have a problem with physical numbness – that really does help.
I’ve always had a problem with temperature – I would know that I didn’t feel right, but couldn’t tell if I was too hot or too cold. When I put my hand on my face, or wherever the discomfort was, I could tell there was a large temperature difference but I could never tell which side was hot and which was cold. That always made me feel crazy so never told anyone about it. I imagine that may be a version of what you were describing.
And I too carry the terror in my stomach. I was diagnosed at 4 or 5 years old with celiac disease (at least I was told I was), but never given the biopsy. But I think it was just a classic physical response to early child abuse, and it was just easier for doctors to diagnose celiac than child abuse.
So thank you for the splurge – I got something out of it.
I’m glad :). That’s very interesting, what you say about temperature. It does sound similar; a bit like the brain is so unused to actually processing signals from the nerves that it doesn’t quite know what to make of them and gets mixed up. It reminds me of a problem with my stomach where I suddenly feel really really sick, like I have to lie down, but I don’t know whether it’s that I’m really feeling sick or that I’ve got really hungry without noticing. I just don’t know how to make sense of the messages my sensations are sending me. Dissociation can make someone so physically disorientated, it’s really strange. I have very little memory of a lot of my life, but not just that, it’s like I’ve never had the practice at moving through, and interacting with, my immediate environment. I have always had difficulties with temperature; apparently ones internal temperature control is the first thing to go in times of great stress.
My mother is verbally/psychologically abusive, and I know that she was a victim of that herself as a child, also I have good reason to think she was sexually abused. She is convinced that her chronic stomach problems are down to a wheat intolerance, which is like celiac disease, isn’t it? She’d rather that than face the truth. Hmm. This is why abuse needs to be talked about; people can spend years of their lives chasing red herrings.
I really like this post. I need to learn how to not ‘react’. Too many people can ‘push my buttons’. I like your statement “simply notice the anxiety without attaching to it, and it would pass.” I do believe I think and analyze too much.
I am with you and Jan on the drugs…I try not to use anything. Sometimes I have to take a 2mg of valium but other than that nothing. I used to take melatonin, but I found it would work for a few hours and then I would be wide awake! Beer has been a serious problem for me. Sometimes I go on a binge…just not every night anymore. A couple days after a binge and I am so depressed I can hardly pick my head up.
Anyway, thank you for sharing! Take care.
The none explaining things is new to me. It is important to us both with our relationships and the relationships we have “internally” I could explain it more. Smile
Hee hee hee! You funny. 🙂
Hi Faith,
I’m really happy to read that you’ve turned your recent challenges into a tool for positive growth, and I’m glad that my comments about “compassionate awareness” resonated with both you and your therapist. Wish I could take credit for that, but all the credit goes to Malcom Huxter!
Wish I could say that I’ve taken to “witnessing with compassionate awareness” as well as you, but I find myself struggling a lot these days. The more I take the time and opportunity to ‘witness’ the truth of my own life the angrier and angrier I seem to be growing, no matter how much compassionate awareness I’m trying to use.
I had a very strange reaction to the video your therapist recommended, one that is very very unlike me (at least I’d like to think so). At first I was enthusiastic when she described her “researcher” personality and approach, as that is me to a ‘T’. But as she got further into the video my reaction got decidedly bizarre. It was as if I ‘split’ (I’m not a multiple) and there were two distinct parts of myself that reacted equally strongly, each completely unconnected and distinct from the other: the emotional side that felt furious and enraged and wanted to reach into the video and grab her by the lapels and scream at her, and the logical side (the one that ‘feels’ like me) that felt calm and quiet and detached and I could hear the words clearly in my mind: “I wonder how many victims of sadists she interviewed when she researched vulnerability?” As I type this I have a strong image of that picture of the monkeys (“see no evil, etc…”) applied to the parameters of her research. And then I immediately feel guilty and am aware of the thought that that makes me an angry, ungrateful, mean-spirited crank. And I’m trying to apply compassionate witnessing to *that* too…
I have been using compassionate awareness to observe myself lately and realize that what’s probably happening is that all of those emotions that I thought never existed and that I thought I never had are all probably starting to come up for the first time, and it’s so threatening because it’s all so unfamiliar. And that, because I’ve never had practice with them, they’re coming up at the level of what I assume to be a young child. But I’m finding that there is stuff in me, and feelings, that are SO frightening because they are so new and up to now unsuspected. And I thank god that I’m in a period of isolation these days,because if I had to walk around in the world with these thoughts I’d be constantly diving for cover. For the first time I’m glad that I seem to be having a Shania-Twain like reaction of having no voice and not being able to speak. (I know, I know – “You’re pretty verbose for someone with no voice…”) Because each time I compassionately witness I see another new truth that makes me angry, which once I accept it then leads me into another truth, and so on and so on. But so far each of those levels of truth make me angrier and at some point its hard to be *that* compassionate and I just have to numb myself back up again.
But, as always, I used that anger to research. And I came across the following article by Don Catherall (the author of the book I linked to a few posts ago) on the difference between fear reactions vs. anxiety reactions. It just blew my world open and helped assuage a lot of that anger because so many things started to make sense. Which in turn made me angry because I wondered why on earth I’d never heard about any of this before? (That’s me these days, angry stew.)
Anyway, it seemed like it might relate to your comment about your “anxiety geyser” (wonderful term btw). It seemed to explain some of the ‘anger geyser’ reactions I’ve been having, and a whole lot of my body triggers. I hope you or your readers might find it of interest.
I’ve included the editor’s description because I think it’s a good introduction:
http://www.fsu.edu/~trauma/V9/V9i2_EdNote.PDF
http://www.fsu.edu/~trauma/V9/V9i2_Fear-Anxiety.PDF
Kindest regards and so happy to read that you’re in a much better place these days!
birdfeeder
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