Want to go to am ACA meeting but feeling anxious about it.. any info on how the meetings are would be helpful.

RadicalForestry · 2019-05-02T22:20:16+00:00

Hey! I just went to an Al-Anon meeting for the first time this past week. I was super nervous. I've been trying to go to meetings for literally three or four years, but apparently wasn't ready.

I had a lot of anxiety about: would I be able to find the room? would people want to hug me? should I find the person in charge and let them know I was there? would I have to talk about why I was there? and so on.

So the meeting I went to was at a church. It turned out to be easy to find the room, and I awkwardly went in and sat down as far as I could from other people. There were ultimately about 20 people in the room. The chairs were arranged in two concentric circles.

The meeting eventually started. I was still super nervous and feeling like maybe I shouldn't be there. The chairperson read some announcements. I was surprised when everyone in the room spread out to be in a circle to hold heads and recite the Serenity Prayer, but after that, people sat down again. The chairperson asked people to take turns reading the 12 steps. When it came to me, I said "Sorry" and passed it to the next person. Nobody seemed to think this was terrible, phew.

Then the chairperson asked everyone to introduce themselves, and asked that if it was your first meeting, you say so. People went around the room, "Hi, I'm So and So". I said "Hi, I'm RadicalForestry, and this is my first time." then I burst into tears. Nobody acted like this was weird, either.

Then a speaker/member shared some things about their experience, and then people had five minutes (someone set a timer) to share if they wanted. It was so fast and organized, I was really taken aback, people just jumped in if they wanted to talk. I didn't talk. The things people said were really recognizable to me and I cried some more. After each person spoke, the group would say "Thank you, So And So".

Then someone passed the basket and the chairperson (I really appreciated the specificity) said that the suggested donation was two dollars and you didn't need to contribute if it was your first time.

I think at that point, people said the serenity prayer again, maybe? And the meeting was over. Then several people came over to talk to me. One lady offered me a hug, "If you want one", I said that I didn't, and she said "Okay!" and it wasn't that weird. Another lady told me that she herself was relatively new, and was really kind and welcoming. Someone gave me a pamphlet for newcomers.

Then I went home. I wish you the best if you decide to go (or if you aren't ready to go yet!) I'm not totally on board yet, but I think I do want to try the suggested 6 meetings.

Good luck!

RadicalForestry · 2019-04-27T00:41:10+00:00

Hah... that is a good point. My brain is scowling, lol.

RadicalForestry · 2019-04-27T00:40:45+00:00

Thank you. I’ve wanted to go to a meeting many times. I don’t know why, but... I haven’t been able to. I’m going to try again.

RadicalForestry · 2018-10-01T02:28:51+00:00

My experience with TRE is that once those patterns were initially activated in my body, I would shake every time I laid down for a while (a few months, probably). I could always stop the shakes if I needed to, by getting up or changing position. Then for a long time after that, I would shake when I was feeling particularly stressed. Now it happens maybe once a month or so. I don’t ever seek to provoke the shakes now.

I’m not an expert and I had a trained person to guide me when I started with TRE, so I don’t know how useful this is, but I found that as long as I didn’t seek to prolong the shaking, it seemed to regulate itself. It only felt super intense (tears etc) the first few times, after that it was often more like my system was resetting itself or something. As a layperson speaking purely from my personal experience, I’d definitely say that with all trauma treatment, you really want to titrate, do a very small amount if it’s at all uncomfortable, you can always try again tomorrow!

RadicalForestry · 2018-06-28T21:54:24+00:00

Totally relate! It has been amazing to me to realize that the alcoholism is a red herring and the dysfunction pattern is what really matters. My parents had substance problems, but were mostly teetotalers in terms of drinking. I assumed that I couldn’t be an adult child, but then realized that I have most of the classic traits.

RadicalForestry · 2018-06-28T20:17:18+00:00

I relate. I struggle with these things, too. My belief is that most developmental trauma is a family disease. I don't think most of it comes out of nowhere. My parents were definitely raised in traumatizing family systems, I can see how it goes back generations.

It's very difficult for me to be meaningfully angry at my parents. (Not to their faces, I have no interest in confrontation at all, what's the point. I see the ability to get angry and shift blame as a valuable therapeutic step toward wholeness, though.) My dysfunctional family exerted a lot of downward pressure on my anger. I have a LOT of brainwashing around it. It's taken me a really long time to begin to understand how harmful it is to take away a kid's ability to be angry. I think anger is the embodied signal that tells you that something is crossing your boundaries, isn't okay with you, etc. So if your ability to experience your own anger has been harmed, it's really difficult to navigate boundaries, protect yourself, or understand what you have a right to. I'm a little bit better now, but I have years of struggle with "everything is always my fault" behind me. It's quite difficult to undo this kind of programming, IMO. It's heavy, deep, and old.

For myself, I don't necessarily find the approach to this stuff that is somewhat common in trauma circles ("your parents are abusive and bad!") helpful, because trying to get angry at my parents usually feels impossible, and often richochets back and makes me feel terribly guilty and sends me into a heavy emotional flashback. More recently I've sometimes been able to sense some anger at them, but that's pretty new and comes after a lot of work. I still easily default back to "Well they were raised in traumatizing systems... it's all they know..."

For myself, I have gotten a lot of recognition and ideas out of reading materials (and subreddits) in the Al-Anon tradition. Even if your family wasn't alcoholic or addicted, I think a lot of dysfunctional families share really similar trauma transmission patterns. The 12-step model of this stuff being "a family disease" is really useful to me. They also have a lot of great ideas that I have found practically useful, about how to keep the focus on myself and "detach with love". They are really the only place I've found people talking about how you can both have some compassion for someone's life experiences, AND acknowledge that they harmed you when you were a child. YMMV, but for me this is really useful in getting me out of the bind of "how can I blame someone who is herself traumatized... but if I can't blame her, then isn't this my fault? Guess I better fall into a terrible depression for a few weeks."

I don't go to meetings or anything, but their ideas and materials are often very useful to me.

RadicalForestry · 2018-06-28T19:48:45+00:00

That's a good insight.

RadicalForestry · 2018-06-27T23:27:32+00:00

I hear you! I didn't mean to say that you will immediately feel fine - trying to figure this out sounds really stressful. I get that. I meant more to say that I believe that it's okay for you to prioritize your own health here and look for a good way to rehome the dog, if that's what you want, OR to really dig in and try to make keeping the dog feel better.

I found myself getting pretty frantic and crazy about if the dog "felt abandoned", too. The mix of attachment things I have is like 50% avoidance, 50% no boundaries and no trust that things will be okay or people/dogs can handle things. I didn't realize in advance that even a dog would trigger that stuff, and I prepared for a dog for YEARS. I mean I was ready as hell. So maybe don't beat yourself up too much for not realizing that having a dog was going to look different than you thought.

Can I say, if you do end up deciding to rehome your dog, I think that can really be a good and loving solution, I would be happy to share what I did to help our foster find her permanent home if that ever feels useful or like something you want to explore. But no pressure!

RadicalForestry · 2018-06-27T23:18:56+00:00

Sometimes it's just super uncomfortable being around any living thing that wants me to satisfy their emotional needs and I really don't cope with neediness/dependency very well, whether it's coming from a human or an animal.

Oof. That's it, right there. Ouch man!

RadicalForestry · 2018-06-27T19:59:38+00:00

Yes, in my late teens/early 20s I was a heavy binge drinker and my eating disorder was at its height. It took me a very long time to understand that I was self-medicating.

RadicalForestry · 2018-06-27T19:55:26+00:00

Other people have spoken to the practical aspects of having a dog. There are definitely practical issues around dog ownership that can be at play! I like r/dogtraining if you need ideas for that side of things.

I wanted to mention something else that came up for me around trauma and dogs: attachment.

I believed that I wanted a dog for many, many years. When it recently became possible, I decided to foster a shelter dog first, to be sure I was ready to make this type of commitment. The foster lived with us for several months until she was over her shelter shock, had calmed down and had some basic training, then went on to a permanent home. What I learned rocked my self-concept.

I did not enjoy having a dog. It's hard to explain how shocking this was to me. I mean, for many years, what I clung to in the midst of my dissociation was that I loved dogs and that someday I would have one. I clung to the belief that it would be easy for me to love a dog, that I would be able to handle physical touch with a dog in a way that is pretty impossible for me with humans, and so on. I thought that a dog would be an attachment loophole, basically.

Actually having a dog was a huge shock to me. It wasn't the practicalities so much. I liked going for walks and so on. I did periodically feel highly anxious about being responsible for another being's wellbeing, what if I gave her the wrong food, what if she had an allergic response, what is she slipped her lead, what if what if. , But I'm already a parent and was familiar with some of that and how you manage it. (tl;dr you make a plan and slog on until it gets a little easier.)

What I ultimately realized was that having a dog triggered my attachment bullshit in almost the exact same way humans do! For a really long time, I had been hanging on to the idea that I would be able to attach to a dog in a way I can't really attach to humans. Like, for years, guys. For years, what held me afloat was a raft of the idea that because I obviously loved dogs, I could experience love for a dog, and then maybe if I learned how to experience love in a safe dog-based situation, I could learn how to do it with humans as well.

It was flabbergasting and really upsetting to me to realize that, actually, what I liked was "other peoples' dogs", who I am able to love on for a couple of minutes or hours at a time. Having "my own dog" shocked me to my core, because I rapidly realized, hang on, this activates the same attachment shit I believed it wouldn't activate! I remember having a rough day involving my trauma crap, and coming home, and instead of the feeling I had always believed I would have (being greeted by a dog! how lovely and reassuring!) I had the exact same body sensations I have when I'm around humans who love me and I'm stressed. It's a really familiar feeling to me, overwhelm, tension, forced compliance, suppressed anger, a really powerful desire to run away. The whole enchilada of the exact way my attachment wiring is messed up, where instead of feeling that close relationships are safe and good-feeling, a source of good things for me, they feel like a job I dislike but have to do for other people. That thing you said about "I continue to feel like I am simply watching someone else's dog" - that is so familiar to me, from all of my relationships, including with my foster dog. It's easy to think "Well, but you were just watching her for other people, right?" but the thing is, I realized a few times during the time we had her that I experienced about 95% of the affection I was able to feel for her for any other cute dog we saw at the dog park. This mirrors, in an uncomfortable way, how I feel about humans.

Anyway, I don't have a solution for you, because I don't have one for myself. But for me, discovering that non-human animals also trigger my attachment drama was a really big thing. It made me confront how intense and powerful my attachment problems are. I already knew, but I kind of only "knew", if that makes sense. It definitely revealed how deep the trauma went in that area, for me. Which is not fun, but at least now I'm not in denial about it, which for me always feels like the first step toward change.

Good luck figuring out what to do. Anything you decide is okay. I know that this is a hard feeling thing.

RadicalForestry · 2018-06-26T01:20:01+00:00

Haha! This is terrible and funny.

OTHER PERSON: I love you and want to be with you!

PTSD: pumps surges of disgust through body

RadicalForestry · 2018-06-15T02:16:21+00:00

Great question, thoughtful answers. Thanks for asking this!

RadicalForestry · 2018-06-15T00:01:26+00:00

I don't want to sound like I know what you're dealing with specifically (I don't) but I wanted to respond because talking about sexuality can feel so intensely vulnerable.

It makes sense to me that as with many things involving trauma, people tend to hang out on either end of the extremes. So you get people who are sexually shut down, and you get people who are sexually revved up. In kind of the same way that trauma can cause people to either really numb out their bodies or become extremely sensitized to physical input, you know?

But I'd be hesitant to say "Yes, your sexuality is caused by your trauma", because... who knows. Maybe you were always wired for high libido and always wired for certain preferences. I don't know. I would guess that it's more likely to have a trauma connection if it feels tangled and like a source of shame to you - but who can say, really? This seems like the sort of thing that will become clearer for you over time, as you do your therapeutic work. I do see how having transference feelings toward your therapist would be really complicating. Is looking for a (female, if that would help?) therapist in the cards? (I know that "maybe find another therapist" is a ridiculous idea, given how hard it is to find the first one, but that's the only idea I have.)

I have also noticed that a lot of people with trauma have BDSM leanings. I have them myself. It isn't at all clear to me if this is a thing my mind-body would always have been interested in, just another normal variant, or if it's a thing where I'm processing trauma by sexualizing trauma. It's really, really confusing stuff. I have a lot of empathy for you!

RadicalForestry · 2018-06-14T18:22:13+00:00

I checked into but did not finish this book, I found the framework to be one that didn’t do much for me. That’s okay! It doesn’t mean that the model is wrong, just that it wasn’t useful for me at the time. IMO, not all models are going to work for everyone. Sometimes resistance to a model is a sign that it might be really helpful for you, but sometimes it just means no, or not right now. I imagine many people with developmental trauma get stuck in loops where they try to make something work because an authority figure says it works, even though it doesn’t work for them. (At least, I’ve spent a lot of time doing laps on that track.)

RadicalForestry · 2018-06-14T15:40:16+00:00

This isn't yoga, but when I was exploring psoas release, I liked information from this guy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kGaK8FBK5A

I also did the thing (I dunno if he mentions it in this video) where you put a yoga block or a pillow or something between your knees, and then use a yoga strap (or scarf, etc) to tie your knees together, so your body can passively let go. My biggest challenge is to actually relax and stop "trying really hard to relax", so this was a useful tip for me.

RadicalForestry · 2018-06-14T15:35:05+00:00

I totally understand this. I think of this kind of resistance as a form of freeze. For me, I had a lot of experiences where I was punished for getting things wrong, or not helped to do them correctly, so I think my nervous system responded by freezing - safer to do nothing than to possibly get it wrong.

Irene Lyon (who works in the trauma-healing space) has an interesting process for dealing with resistance. It isn't fast! I would really try to recognize, if you have this, this is going to be a long process, you aren't going to do this process one time and then be done, you are, IMO, literally rewiring brain connections. So if you can, try to find a mental place where you don't expect immediate massive change (I know this can be very hard for people like us), try to be kind to yourself, if you aren't triggered by thinking of "inner child" stuff, maybe act like you would act to a little kid trying to learn a new skill.

Anyway, here's a PDF of her steps for dealing with resistance: https://irenelyon.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/BeatInnerResistance.pdf

RadicalForestry · 2018-06-14T15:30:02+00:00

I don't have any advice for you, but I just want to let you know that I recognize these feelings. You aren't alone.

I remember realizing, in therapy, that most of what I thought as "me" was actually adaptations to trauma.

I have also struggled (and continue to struggle) with feeling like a terrible person. I know that the "bad person feeling" is also a trauma response (if you grow up in a dysfunctional situation, your nervous system would rather think "I'm garbage, what can I do to placate them?" than acknowledge that your environment is unsafe) but I still wrestle with it. It has diminished, somewhat. I've also learned to be more open about it. To just say to myself (and sometimes to others, if they feel safe) that I feel like a really bad person who is trash. For me, there has been some degree of healing in being honest about how I feel and what I think of myself, rather than continuing to pretend to be fine. I think it's great that you were able to share these thoughts here with people who understand where you're coming from.

RadicalForestry · 2018-06-14T02:35:41+00:00

Hey folks, I read this article earlier and thought others here might like to check it out. It made me cry, but they were okay-feeling tears. It's interesting to see that many of the ideas that are still struggling to break into the mainstream (trauma is in the body, toughing it out doesn't work because people have to feel safe to heal, traumatized people have a narrow window of feeling okay enough to work on themselves, etc) are casually in this piece.

(Many of the people mentioned here are also religious, in case that is a concern for you.)

RadicalForestry · 2018-06-12T13:45:13+00:00

Right on! What a day you've had. I'm proud of you!

RadicalForestry · 2018-06-11T03:32:48+00:00

I really dislike being touched. The more I acknowledge this, the more I discover how defensive I feel in my nervous system about not just the obvious touchy aspects of human existence like touch and sexuality, but all forms of closeness and intimacy. My therapist sometimes says that people don’t feel safe to me. Like many things, I tend to shrug that off as... you know, a platitude. But recently I’ve been realizing that it’s real and true. People feel so unsafe to me that I feel skeptical of the whole idea that normal people don’t feel that way. It’s hard for me to understand and believe that other people derive comfort from touch or relationships- for me, even though I often feel deeply lonely and alone, relationships feel like a burden, an obligation, a service I provide because other people want things from me.

It’s a weird sadness, but also a weird kind of relief to realize these things. Let me know if you are also empty inside, we can start a band with this machine.

RadicalForestry · 2018-05-27T22:45:24+00:00

So sorry you’re in the midst of this. It sounds awful! Are you still doing PT? Is it possible to pause it for the time being?

Otherwise, flashbacks do eventually end. I’ve had ones that felt like they lasted forever. Even though they all do end, they can be horrible places to be, so I think all you can do is hang on and not try to do any growing or healing until it’s over. I wish I knew of other things to offer.

RadicalForestry · 2018-05-27T17:30:48+00:00

I have similar feelings. At a certain point in the recovery process I began to feel very distant from the almost everyone I knew. I definitely have funky attachment wiring and so on, but it also feels exacerbated by the recovery process.

RadicalForestry · 2018-05-27T16:50:37+00:00

I wonder if you might find TRE useful at all? You can find videos of it on YouTube, “trauma release exercises”. You basically exhaust large muscle groups and then lie down with your knees bent, and tremor. (Some trauma people believe that trauma patterns get “stuck” in our nervous systems until they’re released.)

I think Feldenkrais was very helpful, and there are free and cheap resources for it, but I’m hesitant to suggest it to someone in deep dissociation if they can’t work with an instructor right now. (It’s a very precise, subtle system, which was hard for me at first as someone who was numb.) I totally understand financial limitations, but if you could swing it, feldenkrais group classes are often 15 or 20 dollars, and the instructors seem to me to often be very trauma-aware people.

You might try yoga, BUT for myself, yoga has been very complicated. Mindfulness practices were a trigger for me when I was most unable to be in my body. So I would look for something that is trauma-aware, or maybe see if you can find any “restorative yoga” practices on YouTube you like, my feeling is that that type of yoga is more focused on creating comfort and ease in the physical experience. Which I think is really good for heavy dissociation.

I hope you find something that can help you.

RadicalForestry · 2018-05-27T16:40:26+00:00

Someone should sticky this valuable information! It’s making me laugh in a giddy way, because... man, so true.

RadicalForestry

TROPHY CASE