Confrontation with Numbing and Avoidance

[NightOwl]

I was wondering if anyone has any ideas on how to transfer from avoidance and numbing to confrontation and starting to live again? Getting too close to my emotional feelings makes me feel sick and gives me a headache, all I want to do is curl up in a ball and cry; I can almost feel the shutters going down on my emotions inside me.

How do I get over this step? I'm trying so hard to make that next step onwards and I'm finding it so difficult. I seem to be living in a narrative World, existing and coping, but I can't attach emotions to myself or how I feel and yet I can feel and care for other people.

At the moment I'm going through therapy and the nightmares have got a lot worse lately and yet I seem to be more confident in my everyday self. I'm just a bit confused at this stage and how to move forward.

Many thanks

NightOwl

 

[Andy]

Hi NightOwl.

I don't know to much about PTSD so I'm going to bump this up a little bit to see if someone else can help you.

I hope you get this figured out and can move on in your recovery process.

 

[David Baxter PhD]

Have you talked to your therapist about how this is affecting you?

 

[NightOwl]

Thank you STP and David for your replies, I read them yesterday just before I was about to leave for my therapy session and felt that I could answer you a little better after I had been to my therapist. I discussed just how difficult I am finding it to let myself associate my emotions with what happened and she was very kind and understanding; she was trying to reassure me that I survived through the original attack and that I will survive with feeling the emotions again; she was telling me that it is not happening now and that I am safe.

I've heard from other survivors that have been through therapy that it has helped them but the best way to describe this feeling I have is if someone tries to eat something that they hate the taste of that is very spicy and hot then they will get a physical reaction of revulsion and their body will react to it; even though they know it won't kill them, they can't stop their feelings. With all the knowledge that I have that it is not about to kill me, I can't stop my physical reactions. From what I understand, it's a matter of learning how to desensitize my reactions, but it is so difficult to do.

Many thanks.

NightOwl

 

[David Baxter PhD]

The problem is that when you remember and feel those things, your mind takes you back to the danger, to when you were small and helpless and powerless. Your therapist is right: There is no danger now and you are not small or helpless or powerless. You may have been victimized back then but you don't have to let yourself be victimized any longer. Whoever it was cannot hurt you any more. You are safe, as your therapist said.

You can repeat these things to yourself for now. In time you will learn to believe them too. It's not true that you cannot stop your physical reactions. In time, in therapy, you will learn how to do that.

 

[NightOwl]

Thank you David, it happened 7 years ago as an adult but I did feel helpless and powerless and since then I've rebuilt my life to some degree; I'm ready to move forward and put a lot of changes into my future, that's why I'm trying to confront things and stop using avoidance to cope. One of the things that still plays on my mind is he was never convicted of this crime and is probably still walking free; he told me he would come back and kill me if I went to the Police, which I did; I've been told to call them out if he ever comes near me and they will come straight out.

I'm sure you are right that with time and good therapy I'll be able to move forward, it's just a very difficult thing to do.

Many thanks

NightOwl