YOU ARE NOT ALONE - A companion online community discussion board for The Mental Illness Happy Hour podcast with Paul Gilmartin

The more I strive to understand myself the more flashbacks I have and it's a vicious cycle. I have found that as I age and my life evolves the flashbacks are also changing. Where they used to be violent palpitating events they now are more black and white movie. I'm detached from those events because I built a really high really strong wall to protect myself from them. But now I'm afraid that I haven't been protected at all. I'm starting to see every little thing I do, yes even writing this post, as a direct manifestation of a fear or phobia or learned behavior from my childhood. Worse than that I've begun to see my "father" in myself. I get angry over stupid shit and try to convince other people I'm right even when I know I'm wrong. I envision uncomfortable situations as if they are totally different circumstances like if someone is being confrontational at work I imagine I'm on a beach in a foreign country where I don't know the language and this person is just trying to help me. It's messed up I know but I guess it's how I've learned to cope. I get panic attacks when tension in the room goes up and if I'm at the center of it I feel like I'd rather die then be present for it. I'm so eager to run away from all my failures and flaws and just give up on life that it actually disgusts me sometimes. I don't know if there's anyone else out there who feels like this but I actually think that the harder I push down the abuse and ugly stuff from the past the more dysfunctional I become. I'm sometimes amazed that I go to work and function as an adult every day because in my mind I'm still that 4 year old who was kidnapped and beaten for 9 years. I'm still that kid sister that my brother tortures. I'm still walking to the barn in the dead of night with the coyotes howling nearby with nothing but my heart palpitations and the fear of what will happen if I don't do what I've been told to do. But I'm 40 years old, living every day in this body as if I'm a normal person just doing normal things while that child sits in my head and worries and stresses. I guess i just wonder if anyone can relate or if I'm just bats hit crazy. And there's a part of me that thinks maybe theres someone else out there who needs to know someone is crazier than them so it's okay if I'm crazy.

Hello Nevermore,

I know about DBT http://www.reddit.com/r/dbtselfhelp

and I am going to a professional counselor for EMDR

I am not sure your concept of hopefulness about professional mental health counseling or self-help

please take care, I read your posts, you deserve your burden of suffering to be lifted

please please please take care

Hi there,
I can totally relate to you.

I am 36 years old and feel like I don't know myself very well because I feel like I am still nine years old and trying to get my mother to "see" me.

I just replied to a post regarding narcissistic parents, which is similar to my issues. As fucked up as my mother was/is she still acted like she knew what was best, and she sure as hell did not.

Basically there was neglect, emotional as well as not being provided for and some molestation in my house as a kid. To this day I feel scared, anxious, unsure of myself, and all sorts of child hood emotions leak out at inappropriate times. My husband will say something that will trigger something that I didn't even know bothered me. A smell will take me back to something negative and I become livid.

I get what you said about the more you try and go back to examine yourself, the more feelings come with flashbacks. I totally get it.
And I also get that you go through doing day to day things, but there is a kid who is running the show in my mind. I don't know how I function some days either, it's like the adult is on auto pilot, and I just keep the kid inside as quiet as I can for as long as I can.

I react to things as if I'm still the scared little girl, but I'm working on the whole re-parenting thing and it has really helped me to separate the past from the present and the child from the adult that I am today.

Anyway, I hope this helps and you truly are not alone.