![[Valid Atom 1.0]](valid-atom.png "Validate my Atom 1.0 feed")
Why, or perhaps I should say, how, is it that the feeling of fear or panic can strike at any moment? One minute I could be at the bookstore having a lovely time admiring and skimming through dozens of books, and the next minute I'm in complete fear. Or, I could be walking down the street on a perfectly sunny NYC day, and all of a sudden, wham!, I feel completely alone, unsafe, and on the verge of tears. These feelings aren't cause by anything external, but rather, feelings that sit in the depths of my soul and permeate through my psyche--their only release coming in the form of a panic attack or a heavy crying spell.
Does this ever happen to you? My instinct tells me I'm not alone in this.
Immediately, when this happens, I call my therapist for security. It's interesting that my first thought is to reach for something or someone external. It used to be food, now it's my therapist. The only things more soothing are my iPhone or shopping at Anthropologie. As a person who has been through hospitilizations, day treatments, outpatient, long-term residential, years of 12-Step, and more, it is somewhat disheartening that I haven't been able to sharpen my ability to "self-soothe," one of the many palliative prescriptions recommended by H, my therapist.
Once again, this shows me how there are SOOOO many levels to this eating disorder. Actually, this has NOTHING to do with the ED itself; these are the feelings that led me to seek out ED in the first place. It's amazing how powerful feelings can be, isn't it? After all, rationale tells me, Feelings Aren't Facts, but when you're living in a state of fear, it's rarely rational... at least, that's what I've learned.
...Just one more piece of evidence that proves that the ED and all of it's pathological accoutrements are, indeed, a disease (or, at the very least, dis-ease) of the mind.
More on this later
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
4 comments:
hi! when i read this i felt a wave of relief. finally someone i can relate to who is talking about actual -feelings- i can relate to. even in the world of sufferers and recovered survivors i still often find it hard to relate to others. your post is exactly what most days are like for me. i feel completely insane almost every day from the mounting stress of just...living with my memories. and that's what makes the depression, anxiety, dissociation, bulimia, seem to continue to get worse.
now, of course, i don't want to just say "i relate and it sucks!" because while it's nice to relate i know that doesn't help either of us, haha. so heres my input; perhaps we are experiencing a combination of long term PTSD combined with hormonal imbalances/additional trauma that result from eating disorders and brain imbalances we're each experiencing. i've been reading about c-ptsd today which through some combo of search results led me here, and a lot of the symptoms and reasoning behind them makes a lot of sense for someone with bulimia, especially.
bulimia is such a conundrum of a cyclical disorder that it would make sense that, even though it's a symptom of initial trauma of some sort, it becomes it's own trauma and begins to alter the original trauma as we know it, weaving itself into our memories and continuing to validate our negative self-experience. i heard the term "pathological self-soothing" today and it clicked in my head, with my combined experience of having serious bulimia (pathological reaction to stress) and c-ptsd (pathological trauma/stress from such, continuously happening again and again).
then you lump the physical toll it takes on our body, nervous system, hormonal cycles, and voila, it's like the perfect compounded trauma recipe. perhaps even would go on to pose the idea that bulimia itself is a form of c-ptsd because when it becomes pathological and you feel as if you are no longer in control of the disorder you begin to feel helpless to the constant re-experience of binge and purge cycles. just like a child in an abusive household that might develop c-ptsd. the re-experience of trauma keeps coming up over and over and feels unavoidable, making us feel helpless in the face of the stress.
(cont. because i talk too much)
so maybe this has something to do with it. because i really get where you're at with this. in my experience i've always been able to "handle" the trauma because i tell myself "i've handled worse trauma before this" and that's usually what gets me through it in the moment, but then a year or so later i begin to break down in the aftermath when things seem "good" and find myself spiraling into intense bouts of depression, joblessness, inability to function outside of isolation from others, etc, because the feelings are simply unmanageable in the day to day world with their intensity and unruliness, popping up out of nowhere. nowadays i'm at this point of build-up without getting proper medical help, that i feel often as if i am going to die soon or real help is never coming or doesn't exist, and that i'm going to live like this until i die, at which point the epidemic you're describing begins and my daily existential panic gets going, and i have to go out to my car and drive to the lake to be alone and curl up in my honda to let the attack pass.
the freezing of trauma in the moment and strong reaction when looking back afterwards is def a mechanism of childhood abuse. i lived in a verbally/physically abusive, alcoholic household. at the time of the trauma i would often feel trapped and unable to escape the impending consequence so i would either numb out or go out of myself in a dissociative way and become aggressive, so the pain of it all didn't come out until i was alone in my room or on the side of the road somewhere (they kicked me out a lot) at which point i would feel safe finally in the aloneness to let the mourning and pain feelings i bottled up spill out, since alone was as close to safe as i could manage at 16 living at home. so again, it's like a complex of complex ptsd. i feel often as if my emotional upheavals about traumas i've dealt with over the years are a regression into being 16 again and handling the first initial huge traumatic event of my life.
the only thing i've found to be helpful directly in the moment is talking to close friends. not just close but people who will understand and validate your feelings or act as the external mirror and debunk your negative self-perceptions. i don't have many but there was a time when i moved away from home before this to try and get away from the abuse and start to deal with the symptoms, didn't live under the pressure of my mother, and found myself surrounded by good people i had chosen to surround myself with, who helped me simply through daily interaction, and only then did i begin to make progress with my emotions.
having a community is a huge plus too. feeling accepted as one of "us", someone who adds value and is wanted there, is huge for sufferers and survivors. in that safety we can relearn trust and positive self relations. when i didn't see the people around me as a threat, emotionally or physically, and knew they truly cared for me and had my well being at heart, i was able to react less (although it's a learning curve in emotional development so my emotional shit wasn't cold turkey but over time felt less important than the bigger idea of community) and over time i began to react, a good chunk of the time, more like how i imagine "my self" as i would like her to be would react to the world. if you can find a support system, whether 1 or 2 people or a whole community, and be honest with them in the moment when those feelings arise, it can do a number on your inner demons.
(cont again i suck)
i can't tell you how many times i sat on the bench outside my job in tears, crying like a baby, trying to hide my snotty face from passersby, only to find myself laughing ten minutes later when someone found me there and sat down to talk me through the moment and ask me about what had triggered the crying spell or panic attack. one of my friends would relate to me a lot through our similar parental issues and would tell me absolutely heart breaking stories about the craziness of his mother but with that comedic edge that has you laughing together ten minutes later, as if to validate the feeling that this way of acting that our parents choose really is crazy and we're not alone OR the crazy one. that type of listening and responding is truly the most therapeutic way to release these things, and you'll know who those people are because the ability to listen and respond with compassion is a key characterization truly helpful and supportive friends. to this day the memories i have with them, whether i can be there with them now or not, is the most important lifeline i have in moments of hopelessness when the muscles in my face begin to hurt and the waterworks start.
if you can find people like that, releasing the emotions and having them validated can be such a learning experience that over time it can really change the way you approach your own trauma, because you begin to be able to use your friends whom you trust as guides for how to handle difficult emotions and situations. i really do consider the few people who have accepted me and loved me in this life to be the only reason i'm still here today and honestly, i never thought they existed or that anyone could understand what was going on, until i found people who treated me more like family than my blood relatives ever have, and realized that's the biggest, most important factor to changing self-perception and beating the panic attacks.
what's even more interesting, on the topic of regression and symptoms, is that i found upon moving back home i now have a hard time remembering what i was like before i came back under the stress and negativity of living with my mother, and find myself definitely regressing into a state of fear and stress where i no longer handle stress as i did before returning to the traumatic environment, and have basically reverted back to the old mechanisms that handled these situations when i was a teenager. strange, funny, ironic, and terribly, terribly painful all at the same time, lol. all the same, i've gotten to the point where i would have willingly driven my car off the road some nights just to end it all, wanting it in every burning bone of my body, but that shred of sanity kept me from letting the desperation completely consume me. i want you to know that hope is out there.
i know that my story isn't like "yay i'm all better!" because i mean, i'm definitely in the worst place i think i've ever been, having close to 5 or more intense panic attacks on the daily and full fledged bulimia. but at this point, with the stress and symptoms, as blunt and horrible as it sounds, i would have killed myself, if i didn't know through a tiny window of experience away from the hopelessness of toxic environments, that i can trust people in some way and i'm not entirely hopeless and alone in this.
my only other thought, seeing as i'm totally writing you a fucking essay (and i'm sorry lol) is that maybe there is treatment related to the hormonal and physical imbalances we get from eating disorders and mental health issues, and maybe that can be treated and help to reduce the reactivation of fear and panic that seems to click in our brains so easily?
anyhow, i would love to talk more about this and your experience or thoughts, and i really am relieved that i found your blog today, i needed to hear this from someone else so bad tonight, i've been feeling utterly insane.
thank you for being so awesome and strong and putting yourself out there.
i just saw your homepage and now my advice feels silly. congratulations on your book, i will have to hunt it down! you don't need my advice at this point i'm guessing, but i would love some of yours if you ever see this. you seem incredibly awesome and intelligent. anyways, i hope my rambling discussion of ptsd and bulimia and community can be somehow thought provoking and if you ever have time, your recovery advice would be more than welcomed in my corner, i can't wait to read the rest of your blog and wish you all the best!
Post a Comment