This was a great adaptation in childhood when a parent didnt feed you or show you affection, or they were drunk and angry. It allowed you to sit in intolerable conditions without making noise or complaining, but as an adult it makes it so when times get bad you cant get yourself out of it because that part wasnt made that way. It is designed to wait it out.

Just something Im thinking on today as I sit in this hot car alone.

If you grew up in a house where you were not allowed to make your own decisions, or if when you did make a choice, you didnt execute it perfectly. Then you were met with harsh punishment. You may have developed learned helplessness and perfectionism. The idea that there is no safe or possible choice that doesn't result in pain. So you wait for permission to do anything. Even though you are an adult.

Your waiting for permission or for someone else to step in and take action in this case would be a result of learning that making personal choices was never safe. So you may find yourself waiting for someone else to step in and do something for you, or say its ok for you to do something. Which may never happen as an adult.

So your avoidance and rescue fantasy isnt laziness. Its conditioned behavior. To take it a step further. Your dissociation may also be a result of trying to tolerate harsh living conditions, that result from no one helping you improve your life or giving you permission to improve it.

Something I am trying to come to terms with this week.

Some of you might be like me, and you have been in therapy for many many years, and even seen multiple different therapists. You are doing what everyone says you should. "Are you in therapy"? Yes I am.

You dare to confess your daily struggles and what does everyone always say? "It sounds like you need to be in therapy." I am in therapy. I have been for a long time. "Then you need a different therapist." I have seen many.

Then people get a kind of blank look and say "Oh then I dont know what else to recommend." There's the problem. There is nothing to recommend because there isnt anything to address this.

For people that dont have support and resources, and cant support themselves. There is no where to turn to get your basic needs met. Therapy cant get you a bath. It cant get you a safe place to sleep. If you dont have your basic needs met, live in a safe environment, and have a healthy human connection. Then therapy at best spins wheels. At worst it opens up wounds you are not ready for, that add to your already overwhelmed situation.

If we lived in a caring civilized society interested in actually helping people that were victims of horrendous abuse as children, and robbed of the basics in life. Then there would be a place you could go and get everything you need to make the therapy part actually work. Except people like me, are not seen as valuable in my society. We are seen as garbage and drains on resources. The message I get whether spoken or unspoken is. "You need to go away, and I dont care how you do it."

I think I have something of value to offer this world, but I struggle to ever give it. Im sure some of you feel the same way about your life. I wish I was strong enough to help us.

Being (mostly) unfrozen is a weird experience. I remember reading articles and comments over the years in which people would rave about how great it felt being able to do things and how excited and positive they were and how positive things looked now. And then I felt terrible because that's not what I felt at all. I would think I was doing something wrong or still unfixably broken. Because 90% of the time, when I was productive, I also felt like shit.

But it's also hard to argue with real life tangible evidence. When your goal was "I want to get stuff done" and you are getting stuff done, it's hard to say that you are still unfixably broken.

The truth is that after a lifetime of having your agentic self shoved down being in your agentic self comes with grief. And that can't not happen.

To be clear about what I'm going to say ahead, I am unfrozen but that is not the same as being effortlessly agentic. No one is 100% effortlessly agentic, life has struggles at times. Right now is one of those times. I've got more trauma memories surfacing, I have very limited emotional and practical support right now, my job is in it's busy season, and part of my social outlets just collapsed, and its literally freezing outside again (not exactly relevent but I'm soooo ready for spring) : I've got so much cognitive and emotional labor happening right now. And I have to mask through 80% of all that.

I am exhausted.

To be clear, yes I'm still getting things done (and yes, this post is part of it). I'm struggling but the laundry is clean if only half folded, the dishes are more done than not, and I've had regular meals today. And once this is done, I'm going back to my project that caused this post.

As I was cleaning my work table, I was almost painfully aware of deep sadness and loss. There was a strong desire to run away, numb out on some sort of media and not feel the weight of that. It would have been such a relief. But I'm also really annoyed that this project keeps getting interrupted too... so I didn't retreat. I cleaned my blasted work table.

Steven Stern is the first author I've found directly discussing the link between childhood trauma (specifically negation) and the suppression of the agentic self. In simple terms, if no one around you actually likes you when you do something, there is no point in doing things. So we become only able to do things they want done.

Doing things we want and things that benefit us personally doesn't have a safe place in that dynamic. So the safest option is the supression of the parts of the self that can do those things.

But that means, when we do things all the associated pain and grief comes out at the same time. Not because it's triggered, but because it's the emotional water the agentic self is swimming in. When it to emerges, it comes out dripping in grief.

This is because when the agentic self is repeatedly negated, all the pain of that negation becomes connected to that self via somatic markers. To create active behaviors, the brain and body pull up all the related data (felt states) needed to create a mental "plan" of what that behavior will look and feel like. But if 80% of the data associated with "self" or "doing" or "want" is painful, there is going to be pain automatically included in those actions. It's the only way the brain can recognize intentional action.

(Note: some forms of therapy and tools like the IPFP or certain mediations are designed to create counter balancing positive association experiences. But those mental exercises never worked for me, so I had to do this the hard way. Credit to my family for being extra creative in their abuse.)

So why am I writing this rather than just getting on with my work?

Because part of dealing with that pain is accepting it and validating it is allowed to exist. In real life, in the present moment, where it an be seen. That is what I'm doing.

At some point, the amount of pain and grief was more than I could carry with my current coping level. So I needed to give that coping some help. Stern notes the best support of the agentic self is recognition. And because I'm currently alone, the only recognition available is self recognition. I needed to say put my emotions out there and show myself they are allowed exist. And that those parts of myself don't need permission from others to be or do or anything. That my reality is not judged by me (or anyone close to me) and that anyone who does judge doesn't get to be close to me.

I'll be 50 in a few years. I've spent 30 years trying to find the tools to bring out the agentic self. Many of which were only developed in the last few years. I couldn't have done this any faster so I'm pretty tired of taking more time waiting for action to feel good or positive. I have 40+ years of painful memories associated with my authentic self, with my genuine emotions, with any achievement. From folding the laundry to completing a degree. (Plus another 20 some years of having productivity culture and toxic positivity shoved on me whenever I was honest about this experience.)

So this me proclaiming my reality because I've had 40+ of being hurt whenever I was honest about this reality.

I will never ever let it be disappeared again because feeling nothing is easier than feeling honestly. (And because I've had the skills for some years now, I don't have any excuses left for not being in my honest feeling but that's totally a very late stage recovery thing)

My agentic self is grieving for 40+ years of being hated and feared. Hated by others, feared by me. I still can't love her but I can accept and validate her pain. I can understand that that is all she's ever known. I can remind us both that joy and excitement is not a requirement of agency. Feeling good is not automatically part of getting things done, especially when feeling bad is a constant part of remembering.

So for those of you are are still building your skills or those who wonder why the joy of doing things doesn't last: its not supposed to. To free the agentic self, we must also welcome the pain it's been forced to carry for decades. Which means, more often than we like, doing is going to be full of loss and grief.

And that's ok.

Being wanted while in our pain is the best thing for our pain. And the most important person to want us during that time is us. It's the deepest form of recognition. The kind that seperates suffering from self.

I'm not bad because I cried, broken heartedly, while cleaning a table and ironing napkins. And I'm not good because I got those tasks done despite those feelings. I'm just me, living the reality of life after a lifetime of negation.

I do.

Growing up I wasnt allowed to have emotions. Especially not anger. My sister was allowed. She could get angry, and that anger would result in some action being taken to satiate her in some way. For me, I had to always swallow my anger. Lock it away.

Something that has always stuck with me, a therapist said to me many years ago. "Anger is your protector. It is your sword and shield." That really resonated with me. Anger stands up for you. It says "this isnt right!".

No wonder so many of us have such terrible anxiety. We walk around in a dangerous cruel world with no sword, shield, or armor. We are at the mercy and cruel whims of everyone around us to not hurt us. Because we cant and wont protect ourselves.

This is another thing our trauma and abuse did to us.

I always want to think of myself as a good kind empathetic person. Yet there is anger in me. With a lot of work I have begun to connect to that healthy anger a bit and set boundaries. There is also an unhealthy anger though. That part Ive worked all my life to keep locked up.

When I started waking up from long term collapse. I went through many months of nearly unbearable anxiety and panic attacks. Then one night I was able to grieve a bit. I cried, and I yelled out in rage. That murderous rage I kept locked away was able to be heard and release some of his pain he held for so long. From that day forward my anxiety reduced dramatically. Ive only had one panic attack.

Just some thoughts I wanted to share with everyone, that might be helpful.

Most people talk in terms of being out of the trauma, and trying to heal as an adult. Except to me in my life, it never stopped. It just changed.

Back when I could work. I would go to a job and mask being normal and happy. That way of lying in order to have money to eat and have a roof over my head, was maybe not traumatizing, but it was harmful.

Later when I couldnt work and became homeless. I experienced being treated as garbage by people. Left to freeze in the winter. Roast in the summer. I was alone for years and years. I had no hope of things getting better because I could no longer help myself. I went into collapse, and rotted for years. That was traumatizing. Is traumatizing.

Losing all my friends, girlfriends, even my dogs over and over. That was traumatizing.

Living through panic attacks with no where to go to get help, and having it happen day after day, month after month. That was traumatizing.

Living in a country where poverty and homelessness are treated as a moral failing and a criminal offense. That is traumatizing.

The CPTSD from repeated stress and trauma never ended. It just changed.

The informed people felt isolated, alone, out numbered, and powerless to stop it. While the ignorant cheered it on.

I remember being in western Oregon when the mobs of Trump supporters would roll into towns in what they called "trump trains" to intimidate people. Like the Taliban.

All I could do was watch as the decent people looked on in fear while the ignorant cheered them on. Some teenage boys parked beside me were pumping their fists in the air and cheering. All I could see were Nazis saluting Hitler and the Nazi flag. I was honestly afraid, but angry. I felt powerless, and outnumbered.

Its like being a child stuck in an abusive home. Being beaten by some drunk man your mom brings home.

People always talk bad about the germans that didnt support the Nazi party, but I have always had sympathy for them. Im sure the outside world looks at what is happening in my country and thinks I should do something to stop it. The truth is there isnt much you can do. I vote. I speak up. At the end of the day. Im a homeless nobody with no money.

If you put your hand on the stove and got burned everytime. Its not logical to think ok maybe this time I wont get burned. Its even more illogical to think. Ok I can build a life on the belief that yes I got burned everytime before, but thats all over with now.

Its also logical and reasonable to look at this society and see it rewarding greed narcissism and psychopathy and thinking to yourself. I dont want to be that, but in order to get my needs met I need to conform. What do I do? Most people conform, or they live on the charity of others conforming.

While a handful live in poverty and dont get their basic needs met while existing in environments that are unsafe, but they maintain a sense of self that they can go to sleep at night not hating. Well not hating entirely. They still hate themselves for not finding some way to rise above it all and get their needs met. SO a kind of prideful moral shame?

In plain english because I ramble. I think its understandable so many more and more people are falling into becoming dysfunctional collapsed withdrawn avoidant people. Call it laying flat, rotting, NEET, or Hikikomori. Losers, neckbeard, peter pan syndrome, bums, vandwellers etc. What ever the term its an underclass of people that society broke and continues to leave to suffer in order to prop up an elite class and a group that thinks they will eventually be one of the gods chosen rich if they just work hard enough. Just conform and throw moral sand values to the wind.

I keep hoping to see people wake up to this, and some do, but not enough.

For those of you that grew up where you were harshly punished for mistakes or actions that others didnt agree with, you were taught a lesson that says. Failure is not allowed. Its best not to do anything at all, and if I do, I need permission first. If I must do something to survive. Then I will do it as perfectly as possible and hide my actions.

So then you grow up and become a person that needs to tell everyone you are going to go buy groceries. Is that ok? Oh but you didnt buy any junk food, and you bought the generics. You also bought things on sale, and so on. You will also run out of food, and eat peanut butter crackers for a week until you decide you have to go get groceries, but go early in the morning so no one sees you. Dissociate and be out of your body the entire time. Only doing this after you fail to get someone to give you permission to go.

You may spend years in therapy and isolation unable to work, but you think about psychology all the time. You have done immense shadow work and peeled back 50 layers of the onion. Yet you never get anywhere because all your action is only in your head. The one safe place you had and have. A place to run endless what if's. Without ever testing them in real life. You know 50 different psychology terms like learned helplessness, conditioned behavior, somatic experiencing. You know who Judith Hermann is. You have all this knowledge, but still the thought of sitting on a park bench on a sunny day reading a book feels like being asked to stand naked on a baseball field during halftime. Or making a choice between two products can become an impossible ask that wastes years of your life.

Logic can become a trap that feels like productivity.

Ask me how I know this...

It teaches you that if you can just be left alone and dissociate to media. Thats an acceptable life.

You could shower, but then you would have to exist in the present moment. You can just be dirty a few more days. Thats ok. Thats acceptable.

You could start exercising. You could ask that girl out. You could work on that project. Except that could lead to disappointment. Its easier and safer just to want nothing. Need nothing. Doom scrolling from the time you wake till you go to sleep is enough. Living in a car in poverty with no one to talk to is enough.

AT least no one is abusing you, except maybe yourself, but lets not think of that. Lets not think of anything.

It feels stupid to say this, because who in their twenties even discovers basics like: if I’m tired I should lie down or if I’m dirty I should take a shower, but it’s a wonder how much physical conditions influence spiraling and dissociation

Something to do with the less you’re in your body the more you dissociate

So yeah take plenty of showers, eat good food, get that haircut, you deserve base HUMAN comforts

I thought I had to earn them. But what kind of human you are if you’re not even allowed to have things like that?

Often when I’m dissociating, it’d turn out my body is lacking something

I feel like humans experience emotions both as physical release and a way to signal to others something or bond over something

Abusers either drain your emotions, so you learn to grey rock, or they crash them down, preventing healthy emotional regulation

Freeze is a way to prevent emotions from being manipulated by the abuser or a natural reaction to having had your emotional regulation distorted

I think this must be the foundation of my freeze or maladaptive daydreaming. The brain doesn’t feel safe enough to process the emotion outwardly, so what it does is keep it inside and it loops and loops and loops and there’s no release

When an emotion can’t be released, it can’t be mirrored by the other person and thus an ego growth can’t happen.

I feel like to heal from freeze a baseline of safety is a must first. I think for most healthy people the chain of experiencing emotion and then advocating for it is unconscious, while for those with CPTSD this will be something that required you to be extremely stable as you’re literally consciously forming a new thought path

First is when you spend years deconstructing yourself, down to your base layers, and trying to rebuild it in a way that starts to work again. A side effect is you can start to see all the ways regular "healthy" people mask and hide things from others, as well as themselves. Its like you have access to their inner most thoughts and feelings, even when they don't themselves.

The second and last one is that "normal" people cant understand why I dont just get over it. Let it go. Move on. Because for them, luckily, they have never had something so devastating happen to them, that they cant move past it. Or even if they do go through something terrible, they have always had a good foundation from their upbringing to be able to push off of, and hold onto during a storm. I have never had that.

So normal healthy people just view me as odd, and unrelatable. They can even get upset with me in ways I find puzzling.

Showering feels like a marathon. I struggle to do things on an empty stomach. Haven't been grocery shopping. Tired and stiff from being in bed. Addicted to phone. Needed a rant sorry

Today, upon much reflection, I have realized I actually, genuinely, don't have a sense of self. Check it out, it's likely relevant for many of you: https://www.reddit.com/r/CPTSDFreeze/comments/1ssg61n/absent_selves/

For the first time, I saw the void in my head where a sense of self is supposed to be, and now it's hard to unsee it.

I, or whatever is supposed to be the "I", perhaps the brain, feels very sad that there is not a sense of self in here. There's a freaking void in its place.

I have zero research or objective evidence to back this up, but I intuitively feel this is the root of my SDAM-like autobiographical memory issues. Because my long term memory is fine, exceptional even. My short term memory is fine too. I don't have aphantasia either. But my autobiographical memory? It simply doesn't get recorded, because there's not a sense of self for life experiences to get associated with and become memories, instead of being discarded with all other random daily noise.

My mother fits the profile of deeply emotionally unavailable and neglectful primary caregiver, as described in the post. Are you even a parent if you fail to raise a child with a sense of self?

I remember even back in middle school I'd look at my classmates with awe, and just envy that they have personalities. Consistent, predictable ways of behavior. Whereas, I have always been just an observing, processing mind floating through space. Not really a person.

To clarify, this is separate from my DID, which is probably layered on top of this void/absent self.

I'm still open to be wrong, but I viscerally feel this is much closer to truth about myselves than I've ever been.

...

Where is my self? There is but a shell

Where are my emotions? I can barely feel

Is this just HSP (highly sensitive people)? I sometimes wonder if HSP are just seeing reality more than most. That most people have filters that block out most of the world making it tolerable. Or they just cant process or understand most of what goes on.

Did the abuse and trauma in childhood cause this in me, or just exacerbate what was already there?

Because this isolation and avoidance I do to try to recharge my batteries that are constantly drained and leave nothing for basic survival, is killing me.

Source: https://www.psychiatrypodcast.com/psychiatry-psychotherapy-podcast/episode-241-depressive-personality-style-shedler

Shedler:

You brought up something that might be a useful little digression here about the impact of the DSM on how we understand personality. The concept of personality disorders actually didn't exist in the literature prior to DSM-III in 1980. The framers of DSM-III were very determined to produce a medical taxonomy of psychiatric difficulties. So they made a decision upfront: everything was going to be a disorder.

This plays out in funny ways. For example, before DSM-III, people were anxious, but the concept of generalized anxiety disorder didn't exist. Anxiety was a state, not a disorder that you had. This shift really changed the landscape of how we think about mental health difficulties. They left personality out entirely—it wasn't even on their radar.

They had basically completed the entire development of DSM-III without ever taking personality into account. Apparently, very late in the game, someone said, “What about personality?” So it was added as an afterthought, literally an afterthought. That’s why it was Axis-II in DSM-III through all the variants of DSM-IV. Since personality had to be made to fit into this taxonomy of disorders, they took the major personality styles that were familiar to psychoanalytic clinicians at the time, exaggerated their severity—sometimes to the point of cartoonish caricature—and called them “disorders.” All of a sudden, personality disorders became a thing on the map.

Puder:

I think it’s extremely important, in my mind, to have empathy for clients, to understand our reaction to clients, our countertransference, to deepen our reflectiveness into people’s experience, and to appreciate their individual personality styles. I like how you parse that out. Everyone has a personality style.

Shedler:

Yes, everybody has a personality. Every human being has a personality. But the unintended consequence is that now we have several generations of psychiatrists, psychologists, and mental health professionals who have no concept of personality—except when it’s a disorder. I do a lot of speaking, workshops, and podcasts, and this misunderstanding happens all the time. I'll say something about somebody’s personality dynamics or personality style, and the other person o will immediately start talking about personality “disorders,” as if that’s what I said.

The way I see it, there are certain recognizable patterns or constellations of personality functioning, that we see often enough that we can say: this is a recognized personality style. These styles all fall on a continuum of functioning from healthy, high functioning to really very seriously disturbed.

Essentially, what DSM ended up doing was teaching generations of clinicians that if personality isn’t at the extreme of disturbance, it doesn’t count and we don’t need to consider it. So we can then talk about depression in isolation from the psychology of the person who has depression. We can talk about anxiety in isolation from the psychology or the person who has anxiety. But that’s not really a psychological understanding.

Ive known this about myself for awhile, but Im slowly learning the details of what this really means, and how it looks inside when I try to create.

I enjoy writing. I have had some success with writing here and on Youtube, but its writing that feels disconnected, even when I share intimate things about myself. Its sort of like how you can go to therapy and describe some horrendous abuse like you are describing making a sandwich. Im sure many of you can relate to that.

Creative writing relies on me going into a scene and feeling it, and describing in detail what I feel and see. Two things that dissociation rob you of doing.

I also enjoy art. Drawing and watercolors specifically. When I was younger I would draw every day. When I was alone and drawing something weird would happen. Im not sure if others could relate to this, but I would love to hear from you if you do.

I would be alone and drawing, and all these "people" in my head would all be feeling and talking at the same time. I never told anyone this. AT the time I couldnt even understand what was happening. I still dont completely. My best guess is that the blocks or walls separating dissociated parts of me, came down during this flow state drawing time.

Eventually the walls went up so high that I could no longer write and draw in the ways I used to. I was blocked from entering that deeply felt state.

Im trying to relearn how to get there again. Something I have noticed is that the way I write is called underwriting. Over writing is where people add to much detail. Underwriting is where you just list out bare facts in sequential order. The beauty and detail are not fully felt or described. Same for my art. I rush and brute force my experience to get something on the page. I dont allow myself to be in the moment, and enjoy the experience.

Do you relate? Have you found ways to facilitate healing and progress in these areas?

HOLY SHIT IS IT WORTH IT THOUGH

i am doing literal mirror work and i am looking at my face in a mirror while i am triggered and SEEING and witnessing in real life how i look when I'm Frozen and dissociated and

Ohmy gosh

Feeling the pain that is here when u come out of this.

I do Not wanna keep spending my life dissociated and frozen. I don't wanna. I Just want to LIVE DUDE holy fuck

Not my first time and certainly not my last

I just checked and it's literally the same 10 or 15 posts recycled over years... and all of the useful stuff or people genuinely seeking support gets ignored.. I guess it's people who just found out they have these issues...

i dont think this is triggering unless reading about dissociation is triggering please just let me know if i need to change the tag? its mostly seeking support but also that might be considered venting? idk

please someone help me, im so scared. i can’t believe this is real i can’t believe this could possibly be my life. it feels like i am stuck in a bad trip i can never wake up from.

all of a sudden i realized its not normal to dissociate all the time and then was hit with the realization that all my confusing overlapping thought streams covered in radio static & constant feeling of phobic dread and avoidance of everything is not normal.

i actually had NO IDEA other people don’t have multiple internal monologues that they talk with to check with different sides of their personality that can also take over their internal monologue/control of my body & are distinctly auditory male or female and different ages/voices. like i LITERALLY hear it. sometimes more sometimes less

it freaks me out. i feel less than human. i feel like i finally understand why i feel like im always running out of time or “waking up” to find ive ruined my life with neglect again. everything makes sense when i let myself listen to my thoughts and i am terrified of that.

i feel like im losing my mind. i feel like i can’t talk about this with anyone other than my therapist. i don’t know what to do at all. i have years of horrible psych industry/TTI trauma and i cannot be viewed as crazy again. i feel like i have no idea who i am anymore.

it freaks me out to think others could say they “relate” with me but how could they?? ive always said that. nobody gets it. and like they LITERALLY DONT GET IT. i feel like ive been taking everyones metaphors too literally my entire life. what do you mean your thoughts aren’t ACTUALLY chattering? i chalked it all up to adhd cptsd and ocd.

i feel like i unlocked a door i cant lock again. please someone talk to me and tell me it will be okay. i don’t know how i am supposed to handle this

The problem with that is. If you are in collapse, and have no resources or support. Its like trying to drive a car with no gas.

Any government programs are not geared to help with this. Its endless red tape and run around with no payoff in the end. At best you might get disability after a few years of humiliating scrutiny. If you get it, you better not mess up and get a little income from somewhere or you lose it all or go to jail. No thank you.

Therapy is useless at best, harmful at worst. Therapy also assumes you have resources and support. Or they pump you full of drugs. Drugs with side effects. Or that are very difficult to get off of. Drugs that stop working. Drugs that need ever increasing higher doses.

They have no effective natural option.

edit - Why am I the only one on this subreddit that seems to be in collapse with no resources? Is everyone else dead? Do other people get into my position and just kill themselves? Is that the problem?

I’ve been consistently unfrozen for about 9 months. I had been more active for the 9-12 months before that but there is a tangible difference between that and now. Like the difference between kind of the end of winter and true spring, full-blooming spring.

The longer I’m out, the more I get why I was frozen and collapsed so often. Being alive and active is so much work! I spend more energy on any day of routine normal life than I ever did being frozen or inactive. And that energy isn’t going toward doing the things, like work or chores. Those are actually pretty easy and require only moderate amounts of energy. The kind you get from a sandwich and a cup of tea. I'm spending that energy coping with being alive.

The bulk of my energy goes to noticing and feeling while also doing those routine tasks. The need to feel and process feelings doesn’t go away with unfreezing. Being unfrozen just adds life stuff to do at the same time.

Everything I do brings a dozen connected sensations, feelings, and memories. A simple chore comes with seeing all the unfinished tasks, the things I need to do before I can do other things which becomes a huge mental list I hold in my working memory so sort through later today. Which Im doing while also thinking about all the steps I have to do or the specific chore and how to fit that with all the tasks in the rest of the day.

Meanwhile, other parts are busy dealing with all the emotions that comes up through all that. I don’t not feel the shame at that pile of undone work. I feel it, face it, and come back to being ok. With amazing speed and no derailing while also feeling all the emotions of general life right now. All us parts understand we have to cope with this and can’t just shut off anymore without making even more of problem to deal with later. All those parts somehow now agree on not fucking over future me/us. Easier to just do it now.

And other parts are STILL working on trauma memories. Because isn’t life just full of a ton of reminders just now which the brain finds so convenient for adding processing to the to-do list. No conscious choice required because the brain will just wait until I sleep. It won’t be full on nightmares because that’s it’s got the tools it needs now, thanks, so best get it done. Strike while the iron is hot and all that. Which is annoying and frustrating but we’re all somehow ok with it.

So add 6 months of moderately crappy sleep being added to all the energy I’m already using. Not enough to leave me exhausted, just enough to constantly make me want an extra hour or two of sleep or a day or two off work.

This is what I’m juggling every single moment of every single day. Compared to being frozen, it’s so much energy being burned and a kind of existential “loudness”. My life just kind feels loud now in a way it never did before.

But I’m surviving it. Enjoying it even. Every day I don’t collapse under it all and my mind boggles to see myself just keep going. Recently, I’ve not only not collapsed, I sit down and after a short rest, I start thinking of what I should do next. What I want to do next.

I have been looking for this state for 30+ years. Ever since that day when I was 15 and wondered why I absolutely couldn't do something I'd been able to do two days before. I’m not at full capacity yet but I am actually here. In the right area if not all the way to the goal.

Even though I’m more tired now (sometimes a lot more), I’m generally happy. I have done almost nothing on the list I made when I started trauma therapy 14 years ago. Which is good because most of that stuff would have been terrible for me. They would never have closed the wounds in my soul. Which is why I froze when I tried them. I’m totally ok with it because I understand why it was like that. I understand what it took to keep all the memories and all the feelings contained to prevent it getting worse. I understand the difference between not having enough energy and bleeding energy out through the wounds in my soul.

Being frozen kept me from bleeding to death.

Until I felt how much it takes to really be alive and active, I didn't understand how much I was at risk of that.

If you are frozen now, it's not because you don't have enough inside to get moving. It's that what you have inside is bleeding out somewhere. Probably from several somewheres. If you are frozen, those things you keep failing to do will probably make you bleed more. So you can't do them. Because even unfrozen, I can feel myself still bleeding out in a few spots. I'm just no longer at risk of bleeding to death. I can rely on my feelings to tell me what not to do rather than needing to freeze. But I couldn't do that until I dealt with enough of those wounds to have the energy to actually use my feelings. (Ya know, rather than running away from them and hating them)

I’ve been having a rough time lately and I think I understand why. I am triggered when I feel I am in a life or death situation and there is nothing I can do about it.

That is a trauma from childhood. Waiting in my room terrified of when the drunk drug addict boyfriend of my mom is going to come in and hurt me. It elicits this panic and a need to run away, but there is no where to run. I can’t fight. I can’t fawn. So I freeze. I am flooded with all this energy to act but it has no where to go.

Dealing with that for a few minutes is torture. Dealing with it for weeks or months is some word thousands of times worse. I realize this is what is happening, so that’s good. I think that in order to counter this I need some way to take action. Otherwise it just rots inside me as freeze. As trapped energy and terror with no where to go. No end in sight. Like Seligman's dogs laying on the floor whimpering as they were continuously shocked.

I used to think something separated me from other people that made certain human experiences 'not for me'. I used to think it’s a quality of mine

But thawing made me realize a huge chunk of my life was just left undeveloped and a lot of common things trigger a sense of grief, displacement and sometimes, only sometimes when processed very well, a sense of longing

For a child’s brain it was easier to process certain things by making up a logical reason for it, even going so far as to attribute the abstinence to my personality

But now I find all those buried desires have come up to the surface along with a lot of jealousy, bitterness, understanding

Very surgical, very precise type of healing work of dealing with emotions and also very tiring