Yep, may even be caused by certain forms of c-PTSD. I was required to develop hypervigilance as a method of survival, so everything bad/unfortunate/uncomfortable sounds the alarm, while anything good/normal/producing joy is *mostly glossed over (*extremes are still registered), as the main goal is staying alive and the latter won’t kill me.
I don’t think people who haven’t experienced it really can understand.
It’s like something crazy happens.
People without complex PTSD freak out.
My ass is like, “oh, I was preparing for this” and then I deal with the issue.
I’m always right on the edge of losing my goddamn mind, so that when some crazy shit actually happens, I’m like, oh, okay. Ah, yes, this is what I was preparing for. Ah, feels so good to finally let the vigilance down and just actually experience life for a second.
And when it’s something from neutral to good, my brain goes: “Oh… ok, unexpected. Is it dangerous? Well, then don’t waste my time with it, I’m busy waiting for shit to get real.”
For me if things go well, I sometimes keep on looking where the bad in it is. I keep thinking: Okay, this seems good, so what am I missing here? And if people are nice to me and I feel I can trust them, I get scared and want to flee and be by myself. The more I feel there is genuine contact, the more scary it is.
Very much so, yes! A constant state of expectancy, like a perpetual calm before a hypothetical storm, but the storm’s potential has real weight to my mind.
And yep, same urge, to overcompensate security when things are “suspiciously” safe, just in case. It’s like ‘things being good’ in and of itself is perceived as dangerous by that entire mechanism, because it is an unknown to my mind when sufficiently intense. And it’s fucking exhausting. It’s like @bizarroland said, it feels like catching a break when things go to shit, because I know exactly how to deal with it.
I’m really sorry you’re in this mess, too, and about all of the things which were done to you to get you in it :( … But we’re in this mess together, in a way! At least we still have people who get it, if nothing else. And, hey! Silver lining is we make for good crisis responders, we friggin’ thrive in the shit!:)))
And, as a last note, it can be relatively easier to sort of see it for what it is and manage it, because, in most such cases, it’s an artificial mechanism born out of a concrete need and not in-built psychological specificity.
Yes. I always say that it seems like my mind just does not have the program to process good situations and respond. It just does not know what to do with it and starts looping and responding as if it were a bad situation but it cannot find the danger.
Much (not all) of my trauma is due to emotional neglect and psychological abuse. Someone literally baked me a cake a week ago and now part of me never wants to see them again because it feels too dangerous. :-( It takes so much effort to go back and act like everything is okay. If someone hurts me, I do not like it, but at least I know how to deal with that. It feels less dangerous.
I am sorry to hear you have experienced so much you are in the same boat. I wish it wasn’t the case. I am a good responder in crisis as well. I immediately get energy and feel like I know what to do! Although in some cases I tend to underrespond.
A couple of years ago I saw some people fighting in the street. It was a typical situation where people seemed to be feeling the bystander effect and did nothing. So, I thought I should probably do something and I went calmly to the police station nearby to get them. Looking back and discussing with others that were there, in hindsight, this was a situation to run and get the police, not walk calmly. But I just thought it wasn’t that big of a deal. At least I did something.
Another time the fire alarm went of at my work. I started to search the building for people that needed help to get outside or did not hear the alarm instead of going outside myself. This was not my job. We had dedicated people for that. I should have just gone outside, but my automatic behaviour was starting to try and save people. It was a false alarm, by the way, but apparently it still triggered some kind of trauma response or something. My boss was angry with me as they could not account for me outside of the building.
I think you are right. I was ‘trained’ to always put others first even if it harms me. So that is what I do when the alarm goes off.
Have you found stuff that works? I write a lot of letters to express what I cannot say. This helps a bit. Also, some forms of massage help me. People touching me also triggers me, but I have found a message therapist that I somewhat got used to now. EMDR only worked for some of the more recent trauma’s, not for the more structural earlier ones. I recently started doing somatic experiencing as well, not sure yet whether that helps. I still have a long way to go before I start functioning normal again. (I did for a long time until suddenly I did not a couple of years ago.)
Well, the bad and good news is that it’s pretty much exactly that - we lack the protocol for dealing with good stuff. That’s bad news because it took us at least 25-26 years to “train” ourselves to the world, a large chunk of which was crisis response mode, and it’s much easier to pick up a new habit (or thought pattern) when younger and more malleable. The good news is, it can still be done, although it takes more work…
Oh, we have those in common, then!:)) I also have a hefty dose of physical abuse in the form of slaps from a big army guy, leather belts, and hefty wooden shovel handles. And I must say, the psychological and emotional parts are way more impactful in the day-to-day… The physical bit at least showed me that I can take one helluva beating, so that’s the shittiest way to gain some confidence, although, same, don’t do well with random touching. My whole body flinches away reflexively when I accidentally touch anything, from people to objects. Plus that confidence is but a drop in a busted bucket, because the emotional stuff left me with a 7-year depression after I nearly married my grandmother…
As for your crisis responses, yeah, I’d say the main problem is that you forget that you gotta protect yourself as well. The delayed action may, honestly, stem from the fact that your mind is just that good at gauging the variables, evaluating the danger, that it also knows instinctively just how much time it has to act before shit gets really real, y’know? Found this out during my brief stint in management, estimations and identifying potential risks and their impact on the timeline were on point way more frequently than they weren’t. At worst, I undersold and overdelivered.
And now to what helped me. I have no idea if any of these will do anything for you - I very much hope they will and am preemptively sorry if not:
The main thing which helped me reprogram myself was looking for the hidden benefit in every single element - what skills have I developed to be an ace undercover fireman. Writing these out really did help, as did writing it as a sort of character study on a clone of myself. This last part especially, because it was impossible for me to give myself credit for anything when starting out, as everything was “bare minimum” at best from the standards imposed by my family. I also think it’d work regardless of who embodies your traits, all that matters is to keep (as) objectively (as possible) true to who you know yourself to be, then evaluate who you see as you would any other human being around you.
That imposed standards bit. It was VERY important for me to see exactly what was expected of me - again, list form helped immensely, because that represented most of my standards. And the shitty part is, they’re actually not Mine, they were crammed into my head without my consent and I was gaslit into believing they’re the only valid ones.
After I’d set everything on a list, I gave it a Voice in my head. I made one up, so that it sounded best-fitting for all of that oftentimes vile and mostly unreasonable shit. After that, every time a critique would come, I’d take the brief time to see if it was on the list, and if yes, I slapped the voice onto it. Did this for a while, and then they started coming out directly in that voice, so I kinda’ know to avoid them without needing to look too closely. Dimmed a lot of the psychological impact and cleared up some self-confidence - enough to trust myself with Life In General, not enough to trust myself around people. Living with that Voice for a while also helped me understand just how artificial they all were.
I then did the Voice thing for a couple more elements which I knew were taken from my folks, such as my grandfather’s quickness to anger and his urge to respond excessively (this is honestly just an angry version of myself, because it turned out to be useful when adequately directed), my tendency to underevaluate myself (that one’s whiny as fuck, because of course), my innate thirst for justice (this one isn’t really a Voice, as much as it is a… hmm, a nuance of feelings, I think), because it could very easily get polluted by the anger and just turn into Blind Vengeance, and because it developed as a result of the fact that I started understanding pretty early on that what was being done to me was immensely shitty, but I couldn’t do anything about it, so there’s over-boiled frustration in there. Again, this helped me while digging for my Core, because I thought it would be easier to attach new programming closer to the stem:))
and finally (although still a huge bit of it all), I started doing sanity checks on myself. Every time something new came up and it wouldn’t fit any of the Voices, I’d start slowly opening up and asking people. Specifically just about that, how did they see the cause of my conundrum and how they’d react to it. Asked as many people as I could, also posted a lot of it on the old reddit mental health boards. And I’d just wait to get a relevant enough sample, average out the sanest-seeming response, then compared it to mine. Very important, every single time, I asked myself specifically what I WANTED to do. Checking my own opinion and making a conscious choice made me feel like I “owned” myself, and really helped with starting to prioritise myself a bit more (when justified, within reason, and that last one’s a lie, because I still give slightly too much, although I’ve limited it to people I love, in whichever way).
Other than that, and to bring this to a close, because fukken Jesus!, did a lot of therapy with people who would let me drone on, rummaging through my own head, and helped me do the exact thing I did with other people, although it was frequently faster due to their professional training. Practicing a sort of exposure therapy to saying “no” when I felt it was a no, forcefully taking care of my biology (“I’m not gonna eat just yet, I’ll finish this Spreadsheet and then I’ll get something” - he said, 8 hours ago), opening up more to and to more people (most won’t get it, but with luck, they’ll at least be interested in hearing it, so free sounding board/Squash wall!), and Letting Life Happen™, Going With It™, and other such very contemporary and youthful sayings. It’s brushing teeth, wiping ass, telling myself I’m not a worthless piece of shit, daily care routine.
Again, sorry for droning on, wanted to offer all I have on this. Genuinely hope with all my heart at least some of it will be marginally helpful… And stay strong!🤗 You’ve made an internet friend today, and I would happily bounce around ideas if you’ll decide to do the sanity check thing!:D
P.S.: oh, and that instinct to protect others from what you know is shitty is 100% noble! Like, objectively! Don’t forget that!
Yep, may even be caused by certain forms of c-PTSD. I was required to develop hypervigilance as a method of survival, so everything bad/unfortunate/uncomfortable sounds the alarm, while anything good/normal/producing joy is *mostly glossed over (*extremes are still registered), as the main goal is staying alive and the latter won’t kill me.
I don’t think people who haven’t experienced it really can understand.
It’s like something crazy happens.
People without complex PTSD freak out.
My ass is like, “oh, I was preparing for this” and then I deal with the issue.
I’m always right on the edge of losing my goddamn mind, so that when some crazy shit actually happens, I’m like, oh, okay. Ah, yes, this is what I was preparing for. Ah, feels so good to finally let the vigilance down and just actually experience life for a second.
Exactly!
And when it’s something from neutral to good, my brain goes: “Oh… ok, unexpected. Is it dangerous? Well, then don’t waste my time with it, I’m busy waiting for shit to get real.”
(still me, btw, managed to get into this account)
For me if things go well, I sometimes keep on looking where the bad in it is. I keep thinking: Okay, this seems good, so what am I missing here? And if people are nice to me and I feel I can trust them, I get scared and want to flee and be by myself. The more I feel there is genuine contact, the more scary it is.
I was diagnosed with cPTSD as well, by the way.
Very much so, yes! A constant state of expectancy, like a perpetual calm before a hypothetical storm, but the storm’s potential has real weight to my mind.
And yep, same urge, to overcompensate security when things are “suspiciously” safe, just in case. It’s like ‘things being good’ in and of itself is perceived as dangerous by that entire mechanism, because it is an unknown to my mind when sufficiently intense. And it’s fucking exhausting. It’s like @bizarroland said, it feels like catching a break when things go to shit, because I know exactly how to deal with it.
I’m really sorry you’re in this mess, too, and about all of the things which were done to you to get you in it :( … But we’re in this mess together, in a way! At least we still have people who get it, if nothing else. And, hey! Silver lining is we make for good crisis responders, we friggin’ thrive in the shit!:)))
And, as a last note, it can be relatively easier to sort of see it for what it is and manage it, because, in most such cases, it’s an artificial mechanism born out of a concrete need and not in-built psychological specificity.
Yes. I always say that it seems like my mind just does not have the program to process good situations and respond. It just does not know what to do with it and starts looping and responding as if it were a bad situation but it cannot find the danger.
Much (not all) of my trauma is due to emotional neglect and psychological abuse. Someone literally baked me a cake a week ago and now part of me never wants to see them again because it feels too dangerous. :-( It takes so much effort to go back and act like everything is okay. If someone hurts me, I do not like it, but at least I know how to deal with that. It feels less dangerous.
I am sorry to hear you have experienced so much you are in the same boat. I wish it wasn’t the case. I am a good responder in crisis as well. I immediately get energy and feel like I know what to do! Although in some cases I tend to underrespond.
A couple of years ago I saw some people fighting in the street. It was a typical situation where people seemed to be feeling the bystander effect and did nothing. So, I thought I should probably do something and I went calmly to the police station nearby to get them. Looking back and discussing with others that were there, in hindsight, this was a situation to run and get the police, not walk calmly. But I just thought it wasn’t that big of a deal. At least I did something.
Another time the fire alarm went of at my work. I started to search the building for people that needed help to get outside or did not hear the alarm instead of going outside myself. This was not my job. We had dedicated people for that. I should have just gone outside, but my automatic behaviour was starting to try and save people. It was a false alarm, by the way, but apparently it still triggered some kind of trauma response or something. My boss was angry with me as they could not account for me outside of the building.
I think you are right. I was ‘trained’ to always put others first even if it harms me. So that is what I do when the alarm goes off.
Have you found stuff that works? I write a lot of letters to express what I cannot say. This helps a bit. Also, some forms of massage help me. People touching me also triggers me, but I have found a message therapist that I somewhat got used to now. EMDR only worked for some of the more recent trauma’s, not for the more structural earlier ones. I recently started doing somatic experiencing as well, not sure yet whether that helps. I still have a long way to go before I start functioning normal again. (I did for a long time until suddenly I did not a couple of years ago.)
Well, the bad and good news is that it’s pretty much exactly that - we lack the protocol for dealing with good stuff. That’s bad news because it took us at least 25-26 years to “train” ourselves to the world, a large chunk of which was crisis response mode, and it’s much easier to pick up a new habit (or thought pattern) when younger and more malleable. The good news is, it can still be done, although it takes more work…
Oh, we have those in common, then!:)) I also have a hefty dose of physical abuse in the form of slaps from a big army guy, leather belts, and hefty wooden shovel handles. And I must say, the psychological and emotional parts are way more impactful in the day-to-day… The physical bit at least showed me that I can take one helluva beating, so that’s the shittiest way to gain some confidence, although, same, don’t do well with random touching. My whole body flinches away reflexively when I accidentally touch anything, from people to objects. Plus that confidence is but a drop in a busted bucket, because the emotional stuff left me with a 7-year depression after I nearly married my grandmother…
As for your crisis responses, yeah, I’d say the main problem is that you forget that you gotta protect yourself as well. The delayed action may, honestly, stem from the fact that your mind is just that good at gauging the variables, evaluating the danger, that it also knows instinctively just how much time it has to act before shit gets really real, y’know? Found this out during my brief stint in management, estimations and identifying potential risks and their impact on the timeline were on point way more frequently than they weren’t. At worst, I undersold and overdelivered.
And now to what helped me. I have no idea if any of these will do anything for you - I very much hope they will and am preemptively sorry if not:
The main thing which helped me reprogram myself was looking for the hidden benefit in every single element - what skills have I developed to be an ace undercover fireman. Writing these out really did help, as did writing it as a sort of character study on a clone of myself. This last part especially, because it was impossible for me to give myself credit for anything when starting out, as everything was “bare minimum” at best from the standards imposed by my family. I also think it’d work regardless of who embodies your traits, all that matters is to keep (as) objectively (as possible) true to who you know yourself to be, then evaluate who you see as you would any other human being around you.
That imposed standards bit. It was VERY important for me to see exactly what was expected of me - again, list form helped immensely, because that represented most of my standards. And the shitty part is, they’re actually not Mine, they were crammed into my head without my consent and I was gaslit into believing they’re the only valid ones.
After I’d set everything on a list, I gave it a Voice in my head. I made one up, so that it sounded best-fitting for all of that oftentimes vile and mostly unreasonable shit. After that, every time a critique would come, I’d take the brief time to see if it was on the list, and if yes, I slapped the voice onto it. Did this for a while, and then they started coming out directly in that voice, so I kinda’ know to avoid them without needing to look too closely. Dimmed a lot of the psychological impact and cleared up some self-confidence - enough to trust myself with Life In General, not enough to trust myself around people. Living with that Voice for a while also helped me understand just how artificial they all were.
I then did the Voice thing for a couple more elements which I knew were taken from my folks, such as my grandfather’s quickness to anger and his urge to respond excessively (this is honestly just an angry version of myself, because it turned out to be useful when adequately directed), my tendency to underevaluate myself (that one’s whiny as fuck, because of course), my innate thirst for justice (this one isn’t really a Voice, as much as it is a… hmm, a nuance of feelings, I think), because it could very easily get polluted by the anger and just turn into Blind Vengeance, and because it developed as a result of the fact that I started understanding pretty early on that what was being done to me was immensely shitty, but I couldn’t do anything about it, so there’s over-boiled frustration in there. Again, this helped me while digging for my Core, because I thought it would be easier to attach new programming closer to the stem:))
and finally (although still a huge bit of it all), I started doing sanity checks on myself. Every time something new came up and it wouldn’t fit any of the Voices, I’d start slowly opening up and asking people. Specifically just about that, how did they see the cause of my conundrum and how they’d react to it. Asked as many people as I could, also posted a lot of it on the old reddit mental health boards. And I’d just wait to get a relevant enough sample, average out the sanest-seeming response, then compared it to mine. Very important, every single time, I asked myself specifically what I WANTED to do. Checking my own opinion and making a conscious choice made me feel like I “owned” myself, and really helped with starting to prioritise myself a bit more (when justified, within reason, and that last one’s a lie, because I still give slightly too much, although I’ve limited it to people I love, in whichever way).
Other than that, and to bring this to a close, because fukken Jesus!, did a lot of therapy with people who would let me drone on, rummaging through my own head, and helped me do the exact thing I did with other people, although it was frequently faster due to their professional training. Practicing a sort of exposure therapy to saying “no” when I felt it was a no, forcefully taking care of my biology (“I’m not gonna eat just yet, I’ll finish this Spreadsheet and then I’ll get something” - he said, 8 hours ago), opening up more to and to more people (most won’t get it, but with luck, they’ll at least be interested in hearing it, so free sounding board/Squash wall!), and Letting Life Happen™, Going With It™, and other such very contemporary and youthful sayings. It’s brushing teeth, wiping ass, telling myself I’m not a worthless piece of shit, daily care routine.
Again, sorry for droning on, wanted to offer all I have on this. Genuinely hope with all my heart at least some of it will be marginally helpful… And stay strong!🤗 You’ve made an internet friend today, and I would happily bounce around ideas if you’ll decide to do the sanity check thing!:D
P.S.: oh, and that instinct to protect others from what you know is shitty is 100% noble! Like, objectively! Don’t forget that!