Heeby-jeebies, exposition I feel a bit better The weather's getting warmer My aunt is like a sunshine avenger and is summoning her beach and brunch granny clique They're fantastic and terrifying If you ever experience having a meal with old Mediterranean women, just know that your plate will never be empty and they'll yell WHY DONT YOU EAT every 2 minutes like you're hunger striking/insulting their recipes The last time I saw them the Queen had passed away And they all teared up ....about princess Diana and Dodi 😅 Aussie, Ozzy? I'll just call him Ozzy. Ozzy has not disappeared. I think my hyper vigilant brain is just going straight to worst case scenarios. No reply= he's moved on and/or has died. Tiny funeral in head. Eulogy. Flowers. I keep forgetting I have CPTSD And-- there's a malfunctioning ice cream truck in the neighborhood playing melted demon jingles So that should be fun at night With the wailing bird/fox banshee And creaking I'm doing it to myself, well-- I'm not helping myself Don't sleep, so I chug coffee Which makes me panicky because I shouldn't have caffeine And then I'm jittery in bed and can't sleep And the cycle continues Le sigh It's okay, it's hard anyway Regulation Even if I do everything right, it's hard There's hyperarousal and hypoarousal and there's the happy middle road Imagine three horizontal lines, and your nervous system is a dot travelling along them Most people can swim up to the hyperarousal line and down to the hypoarousal line quickly And find their way back to the comfy middle road easily Sad thing, small dip, tears--back to middle road Exciting thing! Bloop up, huzzah! Back to middle road Hm bad example See it's not always sadness or excitement, that's another misconception That it's happiness or sadness and yoyoing between them Hyperarousal can look like this super stressed vigilant head I have right now, tears and snapping OR it can look like productivity and forensic cleaning of the house and chatty chatty chatty laughy laughy laughy Hypoarousal can be sad human burrito in bed in a dark room Or it can be numbed out sloth embracing rest and movie marathons It's not really about emotion, it's about energy If you have ptsd, your nervous system gets stuck Like the switch that allows other people to swim up and down is rusty and jerky Instead of sloping smooth waves, it's like an ECG Or chunky steps Or both Stuck at the top line or the bottom line, aiming for middle with breathing and meditation and chamomile but overshooting Some people have perfected these placid masks and can go through the day hiding the nervous system cha cha cha under the surface My mask kinda shattered Well not completely I mean if you looked at me right now, you'd see a very still person typing away with an occasionally restless leg Inside I'm heavy metal screaming and flopping around like a fish...in a puddle of acid And you might think, well just scream and flop around then, let it out But with cptsd that's really scary It's like a floodgate And letting it out doesn't feel safe I mean physically, it doesn't feel safe Even with a therapist guiding me through somatic techniques, I once ended up having this violent out of body flashback, vomiting and nearly fainting It's a very finicky process of leaking out a little bit, doing a bunch of guided exercises to come back to a safer place then pushing forward to the scary stuff again Like a pendulum And it's tiring, and expensive And sometimes I just want to give in to the reflex of mentally floating away, and sometimes I just want to chug coffee even if it's frying up the circuit board It's okay *pat pat* I've been really good at giving myself grace and space lately Yes you have *pat pat* :) I hope this might help someone understand themselves or others better |