[Guest]

I don't know how well my thoughts and feelings are going to come across in this post, but I am going to give it a shot anyway so please humor me. Have you ever truly tried to connect with the person and the way you used to be and come up with absolutely nothing. It is so horrifying because you feel that the you that you used to be is completely gone and you can't even remember what it was that made you the person you were. I don't know if this is making any sense or not. Any thoughts??????
Kate

 

[Sojourner]

I'm not sure I completely understand you, but to the extent I do, I would get that during a panic attack only. I would, in fact, cease to be "human," and the word "person" had no real meaning. There was no sense of being a "person" -- either in the past or in the present.

To me, it's definitely a subset of anxiety/panic, which is probably hiding repressed anger or other strong emotion.

Before psychotherapy, people went to films for emotional release. If you can, try to see a highly praised film that's known as a beautifully done "tear-jerker":

http://www.channel4.com/film/newsfeatur ... 00-91.html
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/li ... 96-2028849
http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:xhbD ... lr=lang_en

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/li ... 96-2028849
http://www.filmsite.org/melodramafilms4.html

 

[whiterabbit]

Just to say I know exactly what you mean, I have no idea how to recreate the reconnection to living self, I only at the moment have access to dead void and its all pretty horrible. I've been in this latest episode for six weeks now and my sense of self - feeling, thought, memory, words, concentration - could come back hurtling to me in the next five minutes, in a month, in three months or as I always fear....never! When it happens and I hope to God it does, it is ithen impossible to understand what this No Self was and why I couldn't function, because all functionality is totally restored and things seem fluid again. The trouble is I have spent more of my life in this dead state than in the living one, so the dead thoughts and perceptions are very powerful. The only way I have found to reduce the power or length of the dead epsiodes is to keep connected to other people, to doing things, to keep moving basically - although I am not doing very well at that just now, because it feels painful being continually aware of the 'not' being and the 'not' doing - all I want to do really is lie on the sofa and stare into space, that is my preferred mode, reflecting most perfectly the zomboid state of my mind. Anyway, yes, sorry rambling, your thoughts and feelings make perfect sense to me....! Sarah x

 

[Sojourner]

I think (and I know from my own experience) that the disconnection is because we have cut ourselves off from our feelings.

You are still there, but you have "defended" your castle so well that even YOU cannot get in and turn on the lights.

You have to let yourself back into your castle.

----

As I am coming to understand it, you find a way to get un-stuck by fully experiencing the feelings that you've repressed. It may take time to get to them. I see now that I am beginning that process of really getting at the feelings.

I've been feeling the beginnings of feeling a bit odd lately and when that happens, if I am able to tell myself that it's not physical, but most likely emotional, I let the tears come. I let them come for as long and as hard as they want. Those moments of weeping are the salve of heaven, because they actually constitute the healing, provided we let ourselves totally go and feel the pain in its awfulness completely, without any attempt to flee.

Within seconds, after the weeping stops, I am back to normal. There are more tears, and some will come when I am alone, and some will come when I am in therapy two times a week, and I will always remember that tears are God's gifts of healing to us -- particularly when we need to reconnect with feelings long buried by us in our unconscious because when the events that caused them occurred, we were unable to express our pain in a healthy way. We CAN express our old pain in a healthy way today and we are thereby transformed.

Two great sites with information:

http://www.guidetopsychology.com/

and

http://www.aboutpsychotherapy.com/TMain.htm

----

To avoid making it sound easy, let me just add that I wanted to avoid crying at first, and then I remembered the truth.

There is something very scary about the moments just before one "agrees" to let go. I always seem to at first want to run away, and there's something frightening in those moments, but I think I am getting a bit better at skipping that whole routine, which can last hours.

From now on I am "cutting to the chase" and getting the waterworks started as soon as I get that glimpse that something's not right.

Of course, this is alone, not when I'm out and about.

 

[Sojourner]

OK, now the reason psychoanalytical psychotherapy works is because you are sitting face-to-face with a therapist (not necessarily lying on a couch) and you are talking about "whatever comes to mind."

Those are significant words for psychoanalytic therapy, because the road into you unconscious mind, where you will find what's really bugging you, is often through the associations you make when you speak without self-censorship.

You are so well-defended that just sitting and talking with a therapist isn't enough to lead you to the unconscious mind and what it's doing. It's only when you speak whatever is in your mind at the time and allow the therapist to interpret, ask questions, and so forth so he or she can point you perhaps obliquely to a facet of what you've said that could well help you contact what you are not consciously aware of. In doing that, the emotions connected to the repressed material will usually spontaneously appear. If you haven't been able to cry and get relief from it, when you cry from the direct perception of unconscious material, you are crying the salve of heaven, not just tears of frustration that have no real "meaning" to you but "I am miserable -- somebody help me." When the tears you cry are connected to the old injury, they heal the old injury. Maybe not all at once, but over time, over and over, you do heal enough to not need to revisit some of those old injuries. You HEAL. We all know what that means.

The sore gets better. The skin over it becomes normally sensitive. Eventually, you cannot tell the sore was ever there.

That little child who was emotionally injured 15 years ago -- or yesterday -- really needs to cry and NOW is not too late.