Healing Invasive and Intrusive Symptoms
This is the third part in a series of posts about my thoughts while reading A Practical Guide to Complex PTSD, by Arielle Schwartz, Ph.D. For more posts like this, take a look at my page on bibliotherapy.
Understanding Invasive and Intrusive Symptoms
I often experience anxiety and hypervigilance. I have experienced this for as long as I can remember. However, it has gotten worse over the past 10-11 years, and even worse since my father died.
I live my life at a high level of anxiety and hypervigilance, so it doesn’t take much to send me into full panic mode. For example, my recent crises and my latest argument with my partner both sent me into panic. These panics can seriously disrupt my life to the point where I get absolutely nothing done and start to sink further into depression. It takes some seriously hard work to become functional again.
I’m also extremely hypervigilant about my partner’s moods and perceptions of my productivity. I’ll often hide what I’m doing from them when I hear them coming up the stairs or into the house, if I’m doing something “unproductive,” like reading or surfing the internet when I think I “should” be working.
When I was a kid, I’d get in so much trouble for relaxing when my mother thought I should be working, instead, so I’ve carried that with me my whole life. It makes me feel really guilty for not being 100% productive all my waking hours.
This, of course, is not healthy, but it’s also a very difficult habit to break.
When my anxiety has been raised above baseline, I definitely feel tightness in my chest, as if my heart is squeezing. My resting heart rate is also fairly high, due to both not exercising regularly and due to anxiety.
Hijacking the Brain
I do have a very difficult time feeling safe. Even in my home, which I’m frequently reminded is not my house. I don’t feel secure in my housing situation. I don’t even know how I could escape if I needed to. I haven’t even gone to visit my best friend since my father died for fear that my home or my possessions would not be safe without me there to guard them.
I often feel defensive around my partner, too. I feel attacked by them when they criticize me for any reason.
Intrusive Memories
I think the things that most commonly trigger intrusive memories in me (note that I don’t say they “trigger me“, as I really can’t stand that use of the word “trigger.” People aren’t triggered. Thoughts and feelings are triggered.) are conflicts with my partner and making mistakes. My breathing becomes more shallow, my heart races, my mouth becomes dry, I become less able to think coherently. These things hang around for longer than the incident that instigates them.
Start Healing Yourself
Tamara
Tamara has trouble sleeping. She also has stomachaches. I have trouble both getting to sleep and staying asleep. I don’t have stomachaches, but I do sometimes feel nauseated for no discernable reason.
Healing Strategy: Restorative Breath
I have tried breathing exercises to calm myself pretty frequently. I have found that I need to do this for an extended period of time before it has any effect on my panicky feeling. I often start to cry when doing breathing exercises. I tend to suppress the urge to cry automatically. I hate having a wet face. I hate having my nose run. I hate letting my partner know that I’m crying, too, because I don’t want to seem weak.
I need to figure out a way to stop suppressing the urge to cry. My partner doesn’t think I’m weak when I cry. I usually feel better after I’ve cried, even though I have the wet face and stuffy nose to deal with after.
Ben
Ben loses his temper and doesn’t know why. I pretty much always know why I’m angry, when I get angry. I often don’t get angry enough, though, because being angry was forbidden when I was a kid.
Healing Strategy: Self-Awareness of Triggers
I have a long list of things that can trigger invasive and intrusive symptoms.
- Contact with my siblings or other relatives
- This can make me ruminate on past mistakes
- Makes me depressed
- Holidays and remembering how they were as a kid
- This can make me sad for how things could have been, but also can make me wish that I could go back to the times when good things happened
- Makes me sad and nostalgic
- Funny thing is, I know the nostalgia is misplaced
- Conflict with my partner
- This can make me feel like an errant child who is being disciplined by my mother
- It makes me defensive
- It makes me feel like they don’t like me and don’t love me
- It makes me feel like I get no credit for the good things that I do
- Makes me very anxious and stressed out and helpless and depressed
- Feeling alone, abandoned, or rejected
- Makes me feel like I’m not worth anyone’s time
- Makes me feel depressed and helpless
- Not getting a response when I’ve reached out to someone (via text, phone, or e-mail)
- Makes me feel like I felt in high school, like I was the social reject that no one could stand to be around
- Makes me wonder what dipshit thing I did to piss people off (when they’re probably not really pissed at all)
- Makes me feel depressed
- Making mistakes (saying something incorrectly, forgetting to do something, doing something incorrectly)
- Makes me feel like I’m worthless and makes me incredibly self-critical
- Makes me anxious and depressed
It looks an awful lot like my number one, most important thing that makes my life more difficult to manage is any conflict with my partner.
How Am I Doing?
I can relate to Tamara, but not so much to Ben. I have tried some of the healing strategies in this chapter, but I’m not all that sure that anything is going to help long-term until I can stop feeling so anxious around my partner.
Healing Strategy: The Weather Report and Forecast
Hmmmmm. Maybe I need to start taking stock of how I feel each morning and what is on my plate to determine whether I’ll be at risk of a melt-down.
We’ll be visiting my step-child for Thanksgiving. My partner doesn’t like their ex and their ex will be there. They have more or less committed to being civil, but I know that I’m going to get an earful either on the way there or on the way back.
The last time we were there, my partner’s ex was ill and was not masking, and was serving food. I did not feel comfortable around them and did not eat the food that they served. I need to make sure that I have eaten at least a little something before we go over there so that if the ex is ill and serving food, I won’t have to worry about going hungry.
I have already checked with my step-child to see if anyone else will be there, and I have been told who will be attending. Since I have social anxiety, and have had a few events lately that have stretched my anxiety to the limits, it’s good to have a preview of who will be in attendance so that I know what to expect. I just hope that I’m not met with any surprises.