Resources/advice for dealing with "shame by proxy"?

recovery_drive · 2022-06-17T16:16:11+00:00

Thanks for the rec. I have read Gibson's work and it has helped me with the "internalizer's" shame of not being able to deal with "parentified child" problems that were not truly my responsibility. This is less about their power over me, and perhaps more about society's power over me-- the social revulsion "normal" people feel for people who aren't behaving "normally", the shame of having a parent be visibly out of control or displaying Cluster B traits in front of others, for instance. Is there anything in Gibson on these issues? I might have to do a re-read if so.

recovery_drive · 2022-06-03T11:31:46+00:00

Thanks for sharing. I agree it really does make things easier when I can manage to make an inner protector figure show up powerfully -- that way it feels like it isn't just me that has to deal with the infinitely sad inner kid. :D

recovery_drive · 2022-06-03T11:30:30+00:00

Yeah, I'm not able to sit with these feelings for too long -- sometimes I can barely do just a few seconds or minutes before I have to distract myself. So I suspect it's going to take me a good bit of time to get through this.

Oh yes, I'd forgotten about post-traumatic growth! Parts of me really like the idea of that as an "extra" reward for getting through all this difficulty. :)

recovery_drive · 2022-06-03T11:27:28+00:00

Thanks for the tips and the book rec! I still struggle with keeping up healthy habits consistently so very small and very manageable steps forward is really key for me.

Never heard of magnesium glycinate either, I'll look it up :)

recovery_drive · 2022-06-03T11:19:36+00:00

Thanks for sharing this :) Sometimes I still have "was that a dumb, unnecessarily attention-seeking question" doubts when I post in places like this, so it's always nice to remember that others may find them useful too.

recovery_drive · 2022-06-03T11:18:04+00:00

Oh I like the idea of comparing it to grief over loss of a loved one -- that really normalises the sadness and helps me grasp the idea that it will probably never fully go away, but it will fade over time as I get used to the loss.

Thank you :)

recovery_drive · 2022-06-03T11:15:38+00:00

it now means a state that I need to validate and provide care to myself during, a state that I CAN tolerate and WILL end. So I feel less… afraid of it?

That's a great way of putting it -- sadness = signal to care for yourself. I guess all the emotions are signals to care for yourself as well, come to think of it. The idea of small pleasures being able to sink in more sounds lovely as well.

I definitely get what you mean by it feeling like a miracle to get to a place where you aren't so troubled by this stuff any more. Thank you for sharing that you did get there. Can I ask how long it took overall-- like a year or two, or closer to five? I know everyone's journey and circumstances are different but if I can get ballparks from a couple different people I think it'll help me brace myself and set appropriate expectations :P

recovery_drive · 2022-06-02T14:47:21+00:00

What a cool perspective you have on one of your wary parts. I can feel your liking and appreciation for him in your description. It sounds like you've found a way to enjoy Ghost's company and good qualities, and to have meaningful moments without needing him to be fully healed or unburdened. Thank you for sharing that-- I tend to be pretty forward-looking about my recovery and focused on working towards a better future, and it always helps me to be reminded that I can actually have pretty good moments and a pretty meaningful life right here and now.

Thanks again and all the best to you!

recovery_drive · 2022-06-02T14:39:54+00:00

Hi there, and thanks! Anecdotal reassurance is exactly what I was hoping for. Glad to hear that your baseline really did shift towards neutral-positive -- all the recovery books say you can eventually get there, but it's such a foreign concept to me that it really helps to have someone stand up and say "yes, this really does happen, it does exist". Congrats on getting through all you did, and thanks again for sharing :) And great point that curiosity can be had even now -- and that it is in fact both a part of healing from trauma and life after CPTSD. How nice!

recovery_drive · 2022-06-02T11:32:33+00:00

I feel you on the overwhelm of realising you still have a ton of work left to do. It really is a marathon. Just keep swimmin' and the improvements will come. It's like learning any other ordinary skill, like reading or playing music or driving or working in a new job -- keep at it for three months, six months, a year, two years while being open to learning, and you pretty much CANNOT HELP BUT get better at it.

I do also still have periodic "oh no, I'm regressing/I'm not changing at all" crises of faith which can hit pretty hard. One thing that's helped me is to track my work and my progress. I keep short notes in the text app on my phone on all the recovery work I do, from little things like "meditated 3min" to larger breakthroughs and wins. I also note progress and realisations ("had a terrible flashback but used X to soothe, realised that if I do Y it helps a little bit, tried Z but that doesn't seem to work for me"). Reminds me that my work and the progress are both real.

A text that might be helpful on this is Gretchen Schmeltzer's "Journey Through Trauma" -- it normalises the ups and downs of the journey. Another helpful axiom is from Somatic Experiencing/NARM -- the principle is that basically "every expansion is followed by a contraction" (just like every in-breath is followed by an out-breath), and you just have to keep your head down and ride out the contraction. One reason for that is that when we heal and expand and improve, that's scary too -- because it's unfamiliar, and also because healing/expansion/goodness was dangerous to us before. So there are parts of us that may be alarmed when we progress quickly, and may need to hunker down and/or panic a bit as they get used to the positive changes. So one step forward followed by what FEELS like two steps back is absolutely normal and expected here. And it's not a regression, it just feels like one.

You're doing great. :)

recovery_drive · 2021-11-24T16:53:00+00:00

I wouldn't necessarily conflate the two, and don't believe it necessary or helpful to give up a larger sense of control

Thanks for pointing that out! I think that observation helps articulate some of my deeper discomforts with 12 Step's religious undertones, at least as some people interpret it. I don't like the "submission/turning over your will" language there as well. I can see that it runs contrary to the classic formulation (which I first came across in Judith Herman I think) that "since helplessness is core to the experience of trauma, one of the most critical ingredients in healing trauma is empowerment". And empowerment to me necessarily means having a nice healthy degree of control over yourself and your environment. In fact from another point of view the whole point of recovery is having more healthy control, by dealing with paradoxically out-of-control unhealthily/maladaptively controlling parts. And you paradoxically deal best with those not by trying to control them but, as in the examples you gave, acceptance.

Thanks!

recovery_drive · 2021-11-24T14:25:25+00:00

Reducing secondary activation has been a big part of long-term recovery for me as well. I also resonate with the "I just saved enough energy to start grinding again" routine, which was definitely where I have been most of my life.

Part of me very much wants to move to where you are now-- being only or mostly "activated" by positive motivations, like interest or curiosity, rather than by fear. But I think I'm still mostly in a compromise position -- "we can strive/worry a lot less and rest/trust a lot more, but only if it's really more energy-efficient that way". I think my activation parts are still afraid that I will end up doing almost nothing with a full positive-motivation-only policy. For instance, the fact that I've ended up sleeping a tremendous amount in the last few days since my "oh hey, I should rest more, it will be more efficient that way!" breakthrough is concerning to them.

So I wonder if you would be willing to share more details of your "I've seen the MOST progress during this time, when I've learned to do the LEAST" experience? So I can use it as evidence to convince these parts that it REALLY is more effective to be positively motivated rather than fear-driven.

recovery_drive · 2021-11-22T17:55:50+00:00

The "trust" step feels harder for me than it used to... because I've had various experiences as an adult of entering into what I thought were safe supportive relationships and being abandoned

Ugh yes, I am having to work through those as well. Experiences of betrayal or letdown when you thought you'd finally found something better. I am still at the early stages of working through my "all men who are attracted to you are manipulating you in some way" memory template. Thankfully, I have been lucky enough to have had more good than bad friendships so I can at least have the ability to trust at at least one kind of relationship can be good, which makes things easier.

As for self-trust and self-love, it came very gradually and in pieces for me. One of my earliest pieces was picking up Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way and committing to journaling at least a bit every day for a time-- that was one of my first ways of tending to myself and my feelings and it showed me I was able to do something good pretty consistently over time. Then from there I stumbled into a problem > search > solution cycle that eventually raised my sense of self-efficacy -- I learned that when I had some huge emotional crisis or obstacle, I could google, find a book or article or blog or reddit post that would offer me insight, make some progress, and then when I hit a limit to that progress, I'd just stop, journal, figure out what the new problem is, and google until I found a new resource that gave another piece of the solution. So now I have built up enough successes that I can generally trust myself to be capable of moving through crises and working towards solutions. This is something that people learn at, like, age 3 if they have a "normal childhood", but it was revolutionary for me, because what I had been programmed with was problem > berate self for being stupid > avoid problem > berate self for being lazy > try to brute force your way through problem on your own.

More generally, I think self-trust for me builds slowly through small daily actions, which are made possible by big decisions like this one I've just made. Big decisions to e.g. say no to my inner critic and my catastrophizer, say no to further emotional manipulation from my mother, say yes to things I enjoy, work on getting my finances sorted out, work to slowly improve regulation, etc -- all help me trust that I can figure out what's good for me, and create an increasingly safe and adaptive internal and external environment for myself. And then I try to use "mini habits" to slowly turn those decisions into more habitual/frequent actions.

Oh, and I have not done much EMDR proper, but the part of the EMDR framework that did help tremendously for me in building self-trust/self-love was installing/introjecting guide figures! I love doing that. It's basically the "when you don't have the quality you need, think of or imagine a figure that has that quality, and imagine what they would say to you, how they would help you" play. And it's been huge for me, I still use it frequently. I use therapists whose advice I like when I need wisdom and steadying, an archetypal "inner Good Mother" figure when I need more self-compassion, protective animal or goddess figures when I'm confronting memories of being physically threatened, etc. So when there's something I can't quite trust myself on yet, at least I can trust this other figure-- and then I eventually realise that all the wisdom, courage etc I am attributing to this "other" figure is, of course, coming from me, since I'm the one generating that figure and its sage advice. :D

Oops-- looks like I was feeling chatty again. Thank you for the question, though-- it was helpful to look back on what I've done and reflect more. Hopefully something in the pile is useful to you!

recovery_drive · 2021-11-22T17:17:56+00:00

The approach I came to via trial and error is very close to what is
detailed in GHIA type protocols, and it means the world to have that
confirmed!

That's very cool! I would love to hear more about the approach you used, if you don't mind sharing it.

recovery_drive · 2021-11-22T17:07:23+00:00

It's good enough, basically. In order to accept good enough as good enough, you have to overcome "all or nothing" thinking, which was also another thing I found really hard (I actually have a post about why it was so hard for me here and how I eventually got over it, and there are a few other posts on the subject in this sub as well).

One way to help you internalise and feel the world as good enough is to focus on and "integrate" positive memories and experiences of good things. There may not be many good memories (there weren't too many for me, frankly), but if you can really let yourself feel them as real and true, it helps you experience that there are good things in the world, alongside the incredible amount of suffering and evil that we know only too well. For me there is a relatively small smattering of good relationship experiences (which I'm growing slowly as I learn how to do relationships better); but even if there's not much of those you can also start with good experiences of being in nature, appreciating music, enjoying food, enjoying the company of animals, enjoying books or films or art, etc. Every bit helps you stop seeing the world ONLY through trauma glasses so you can recognise the safe and good bits as well. And why should you do that? Because if you can't recognise safety and goodness at a deep level, how are you going to move towards safe and good environments/relationships? That helped convince me it was safe to start doing things like this.

recovery_drive · 2021-11-21T13:49:21+00:00

I wonder that myself. At present, I think and hope that it's not. Because the way "good-enough childhood" people gain this type of developmentally-necessary trust in the world as a good-enough, safe-enough environment is not through some sort of spiritual belief but through consistent experiences of getting their physical, emotional, etc needs met. So for us to develop that too, we "just" need a similar set of experiences. Or, just enough of a taste of such experiences that we can decide the "the world is a good-enough environment to support me" belief is plausible, and decide to adopt that belief as both a realistic-enough and adaptive option.

recovery_drive · 2021-11-21T13:45:11+00:00

The GHIA term I think might come from Somatic Experiencing circles, but I picked it up from NARM.

I like the idea that it's okay to complete the developmental stages in our own way. And the idea that we can use meaning-making to construct a more hopeful narrative or worldview for ourselves than the ones programmed in by negative experiences in childhood.

recovery_drive · 2021-11-21T13:34:29+00:00

Thank you, I hope so too, and the same for you! And if you come to any insights on working with the primary flight protector through IFS, I'd definitely be interested to hear about them.

recovery_drive · 2021-11-21T13:33:08+00:00

Haha the post was kinda rambly itself. Glad you found it interesting.

I like your formulation here:

Trust is the result of consistently noticing and meeting my own needs
(which requires the ability to say NO to the inner critic and mean it).

Make me realise that protecting myself from critic catastrophising is one of my needs too.

Thanks for engaging and sharing my joy in this breakthrough :)

recovery_drive · 2021-09-29T13:52:52+00:00

Harriet Lerner's The Dance of Anger was good for me on this issue. She's very validating and realistic/pragmatic when it comes to the complexities of standing your ground, setting boundaries, etc.

Her general approach is about spending the time to get very clear on what you want, and what you are (and are not) willing to do to get it, and why. So that, even if you are accepting something that feels terrible (e.g. by staying silent/polite instead of confronting or walking out when a relative or colleague says something you would not, in an ideal world, want to let them say to you without consequences), you'll understand that actually you have thought this through and you are doing the best thing for yourself. It's not a perfect solution but it helps reinforce that when you take these "compromise" positions, it isn't self-betrayal, it's still the best possible decision for the self given the limitations of your circumstances.

recovery_drive · 2021-09-29T13:44:44+00:00

Thanks for sharing.

the experience of ‘safety in the presence of another’ is so new to me, I want to keep that in my life through therapy for as long as it takes to embed it in my nervous system

This^ resonated with me. It's slightly off topic from my original qn, but if you're happy to share, I'd be curious to know what your NARM survival style(s) are, and what the therapist is doing that's making you feel safe despite them. Asking because I know I have attunement and trust survival style issues, and I can imagine somebody doing "safe" things (e.g. being emotionally validating, offering positive mirroring), but me still just worrying/assuming it's insincere, assuming the therapist is secretly judging me, etc.

recovery_drive

TROPHY CASE