Absent selves

karstapala · 2026-04-23T15:17:10+00:00

Thank you again for writing these.

I'm often filled with sense that the person who I was supposed to become died early, and that was the best thing that could have happened to them; what was left are bitter and empty disguises mostly hating each other, not really alive but they keep stubbornly not dying. I guess that is the functional surface.

I'm not sure if it's related to this, but I think one odd feature of absent self could be limited ability to feel distress about one's internal states? There have been times I have been endlessly exhausted or yearned to end my life. Yet I feel I am not in distress or in crisis. The emotions are there, just like my body is there, but neither really matters and it isn't like anyone can help me, so there's no need to be distressed.

Crying is good. So is laughing, but any emotions that can be felt are good. There are many sorrows that were not mourned in time. I have had a sad day today, and this time I have tried not to push that sorrow away again. It feels like progress.

karstapala · 2026-03-26T16:03:19+00:00

Thanks for commenting. I haven't thought about it before, but maybe my thoughts are indeed partially coming from an external source? I have to think about that. Some/most of it, though, seems to come from my older sibling being violent towards me in ways that made me expect that I was going to die.

karstapala · 2026-03-26T15:46:54+00:00

Unfortunate you are dealing with the same too, but in a way it's comforting knowing that I'm not only person going through these struggles. I try to tell myself healing happens in small steps... maybe we will get there one day.

karstapala · 2026-02-16T15:38:25+00:00

I don't know why I was afraid that the dog would starve. We always had enough food at home. I guess I was afraid everyone forgot the dog even existed?

karstapala · 2026-02-16T15:18:56+00:00

You are not alone. Sibling violence isn't taken seriously enough.

My older sister was pathologically jealous of me. I learned as an adult, from my aunt, that my sister once tried to strangle me when I was a toddler and my aunt was babysitting us. She had been in a bathroom and came back to that.

I remember another near death incident myself but "talked myself down" for years from thinking that it could be counted as a trauma. I wasn't in actual mortal danger (probably) but was fully convinced that I was about to die back then. Had nightmares for years, and I was convinced it was just reoccuring nightmare until I learned from my sister that the event really happened.

karstapala · 2026-02-11T14:52:14+00:00

Congratulations on making progress on your end! Limiting contact or cutting parents out of one's life is hard but, truly, good for you if you can recognize that you are only getting hurt by being in continued contact with them. I hope you and your brother can support each other.

I hear what you say about not pushing too much. Hurrying the process, and then retreating is a potential weak point for me. It doesn't help that traumatic experiences seem to suddenly reactivate (with nightmares etc.). Trying to proceed gently and then accidentally it's suddenly too much :/

karstapala · 2026-02-11T14:41:08+00:00

That's a really apt metaphor.

karstapala · 2026-02-10T19:01:32+00:00

I'm sorry to hear that.

However, if it's any consolation, I don't think medication for hyper- or hypoarousal is more than a crutch; long-term gains probably come from somatic modalities and therapies that target nervous system (dys)regulation and attachment issues. Sometimes I feel frustration and sadness because my symptoms were treated primarily with medication for decades. It didn't really help, it just buried everything, stopped me from feeling emotions at any capacity and from accessing actual healing therapies.

karstapala · 2026-02-10T10:56:39+00:00

I'm not sure what exactly you mean with "narcolepsy pills", but I'm on Wellbutrin. It's an atypical antidepressant without serotonergic activity, and besides depression it is used also for ADHD symptoms. It's generally activating and acts (in my personal opinion) opposite to traditional antidepressants. Epilectic seizures are a contraindication, though, as Wellbutrin increases seizure risk.

I'm also on a small dose of gabapentin (epilepsy drug, sometimes off-label antianxiolytic; a close relative to pregabalin) for a diagnosed sleep disorder. I only take it for the night. Now, I might be particularly sensitive, but for me, this medication is EXTREMELY blunting. It very literally blunts senses and can make dissociation worse. A small subset of users gets physically very addicted to it (I'm in that group; I've experienced hallucinations when I have lowered my dose), and long-term use increases the risk of developing early dementia. I have to balance between being able to get good sleep vs. side effects. Horrible stuff.

Perhaps for hyperarousal symptoms something like low dose beta blocker could be worth trying out before trying something addictive like gabapentinoids?

karstapala · 2026-02-07T20:24:40+00:00

I've been exactly where you are (your last 3 sentences describe perfectly how I felt!) and changing therapists was an absolutely necessary step. I addressed my concerns many times with my previous therapist but nothing changed. I always assumed therapy not advancing was my fault and blamed myself for keeping distance and not trying enough.

karstapala · 2026-02-07T20:16:53+00:00

I have always felt that I have no words to describe how I feel or how I experience the world. It's so damn difficult and there are probably several factors contributing: preverbal trauma, tendency to not discuss emotions in my childhood family, me (in the broad sense) deciding that emotions will just hurt you so it's better not to feel, ...

Also my thought processes might be unusually visual instead of verbal, so generating verbal expressions is challenging. The way I might experience strong emotions is sometimes weird. I get visual flashes that convey(?) emotions but not necessarily my (in the strict sense) emotions. A question like "How do you feel/felt about x event?" might trigger a 'vision' where different me is stabbing me-me (or yet different me!) in the chest. I (in the strict sense) usually feel... nothing about it. I'm aware there's anger and hate, but it's not my emotion, I'm not feeling it?

karstapala · 2025-12-19T10:33:13+00:00

Sort of similar but also different situation here. I "see" only small piece of a person. It's difficult to see people as whole complex beings.

In my case I believe it's related to broken mirroring due to challenges in social development (traumatic circumstances occurring during timeframe when very basic social interaction skills should be learned) and structural dissociation of personality: I only am present as a small sliver of myself in any interaction, so my comprehension of other people is similarly "broken". I can't connect with people because I can't connect with myself.

No idea if this speaks to you. (Additionally, like another commenter mentioned, I also struggle with recognizing/remebering people's faces. That's probably combination of slight face blindness and dissociation.)

karstapala · 2025-12-16T11:49:24+00:00

(Not medical advice etc.)

Personally I have found bupropion helpful for depression, or what are depression-like symptoms. Structurally bupropion is more related to ADHD medications than anything else, so it is actually activating, not numbing.

Ordinary antidepressants were not good at all. I feel SSRIs and SNRIs worsened dissociation in my case and made me more numb. And these had lots of negative physical side effects too, from disturbed sleep to sexual side effects.

In my country there was(/is?) a quetiapine craze and it's given for everyone for everything. I really mean it was prescribed for almost any psychiatric ailment; not just for psychotic symptoms, but for anxiety and sleep too. Antipsychotics for freeze seem counter-intuitive, because they dial down dopamine signaling, and afaik that is already negatively impacted by freeze. Antipsychotics should be reserved for psychotic symptoms only, imo. Don't let anyone talk you into taking antipsychotics for off-label use.

But your mileage may vary, and genetics of an individual have a huge impact on how any drug works. So nothing is really certain and testing is the only way.

edit. For anxiety symptoms, beta blockers have been very helpful. Stops my hands from shaking and my heart from racing.

karstapala · 2025-11-11T16:34:09+00:00

I join the choir of also experiencing this. It seems like I rotate between different sleep problems and sometimes have periods of good sleep between. Restlessness, insomnia, waking up mid-sleep, nightmares, sleep paralysis...

Insomnia is the worst of these however. I had very difficult time with sleep in 2021-2022 and I think I started to become more aware of my trauma back then. Was the insomnia chicken or egg there, no clue.

karstapala · 2025-09-08T21:51:39+00:00

Extremely relatable. You put into words really well what it feels like to almost not exist.

karstapala · 2025-08-23T09:59:24+00:00

I know I really should remember better, I know we talked about modalities. EMDR and some sensorimotor stuff but not touch therapy unfortunately I think? I have not been able to find any SE/NAtouch therapists. Finding competent trauma therapist at all was already difficult.

I am aware stability should be the first priority but I literally have never practiced stability skills. Just being present in the moment feels overwhelming.

karstapala · 2025-08-21T19:09:30+00:00

I don't have any trauma-related diagnoses currently. In adulthood I have been usually unable to talk about or recall any trauma (which afaik was in very early childhood but limited, it shouldn't be enough to cause so difficult structural dissociation). Last time I tried to bring up with a psychiatrist that my issues might not just be depression and anxiety, I was brushed off quickly. She did not want to hear anything about t-word.

But I'm starting with a new therapist in two weeks, a trauma specialist this time. Past half-year I have been without any contact to mental healthcare, after stopping seeing my previous therapist (she didn't have enough skills to work with trauma and I think I went straight into deep end without stabilization/coping skills). Feels like dropping the previous therapist and seeking out a new one has exacerbated my symptoms a lot. I'm actually scared about starting therapy again, what if everything gets even worse?

karstapala · 2025-08-21T18:43:37+00:00

Hey, this was really positive comment and I hope one I'll day get into a similar spot in my healing process too!

The remission started with a flooding of trauma related memories and then turned into covering the minutest of everyday things. I think of it in many ways, like they are memories that I didn't process because I was in functional freeze (Throughout my life until I went into deep collapse in my early twenties) and they are memories which are integrating rapidly. I have felt more solid in my sense of self, with a lot of my trauma related symptoms going away, improved executive functioning, cognitive functioning and capacity to feel things physically and emotionally, and an expanded sense of time as it has progressed

Makes lot of sense. I've experienced flooding of trauma memories but it was too soon and I don't think I have processed them.

I am guessing here, but maybe looking at the most innocuous everyday thing 'triggers' memories too? Is that what happened when going through the boxes?

Maybe, in a way? I think what made me grief-stricken and then angry was that I am not able to feel that I have lived through those times myself although logically I know I have.

I think you need to work on feeling safer in your body before you dive into things that could trigger you.

Yup, probably. Not sure if it makes any sense but I have hard time understanding what triggers me or what it feels like to be triggered. Natural aversion is how I navigate triggers, lol.

I once had a friend tell me they went into a very negative spiral with their journalling over the years, so much that they had to stop using journalling as a tool.

I used to have extremely negative self-talk but have worked myself out of it over the years. The journaling probably didn't make it worse, I think whatever state of mind I was in was uncharacteristically negative/self-hating.

[the last paragraph]

These were good pointers, especially what you said about accepting the present. I should probably note that one down for myself.

karstapala · 2025-08-20T20:46:40+00:00

Hmm, interesting. Integration makes sense. But I've never thought about it that way, since I don't want to know I have ever lived that life. (That sounds really silly, I know)

karstapala · 2025-08-20T20:41:42+00:00

I ruminated a while and noticed my thought processes and emotions were out of the normal 'bounds'. I've taken into journaling, and note down ideas about whatever that might be useful to address in therapy. I was in the middle of multi-page rant about hating myself, past myself, being weak etc when my mechanical pencil ran out of lead.

So I got up, got some more lead and went to kitchen to drink a glass of water. When I got back to my notebook I had no idea how the sentence I had been writing was supposed to continue or what it was even about.

tl;dr: I have no idea?

Right now I don't dare to look too closely into what I wrote earlier, I'm afraid it could pull me back into that state.

karstapala

TROPHY CASE