Brain moving too fast. Iz tired.
Keep thinking I'm going to get around to making a real post filled with real thoughts. I've surely been having enough of them in the past 24 hours. Had one of my honors meetings today with my professor and another woman who did her graduate work on PTSD. The whole meeting was very useful and highlighted some aspects of PTSD that weren't particularly clear in my head... not that I could recount them for you just this minute.....because I am...tired. Tired in that special kind of way. Why am I still awake you ask have that "can't sleep the future will eat me" feeling like
agrnmn's icon.
Too much to do, not enough lifetime, feel like I can't do it fast enough. I know all of this to be untrue... AND. Have spent much of the day neutralizing extreme thoughts of "can't, won't, don't" angst... No, not angst....that implies that it's not real....and the feelings are real all right.
One of the things I was warned about today was to watch myself for developing symptoms of secondary PTSD. I've heard of compassion fatigue or caregivers fatigue...which is really the same thing...but the latter two mostly equate as *tired* in my head. But in reality... one develops secondary ptsd from being "exposed" to first hand accounts of other people's trauma. And there are specific thought patterns and behaviors that go with it.
And this afternoon I came to the stark realization that I have some of them. And in the 20ish minute drive from school to home did some of the fastest processing ever. I'm not going to map out my thoughts here...but the most interesting part was hitting a very low point...and stepping outside that feeling and asking myself...how do I change this thought pattern...How do I keep from falling back into this feedback loop? And I ended up using the exactly same language on myself today that I had offered to someone else. I make a different choice and I choose to belive things that in that moment seem implausible. And while I'm still feeling the fall out from this whirlwind of revelations and ache today...I feel like my coping skills kicked into overdrive... It was just very intense....it is very intense...to apply what I've been learning about PTSD to myself...when all this time I've been focusing on those in my life who suffer with it...and those that I may help in the future.
Depression, panic attacks...these things I have pretty high self awareness on... I know my tricks...and black holes...and generally how to take a detour mostly around them. Recognizing this thought pattern today was ...well, I've said it already... intense. The word that kept coming to mind as I was trying to explain it...was my thoughts felt "contaminated" I knew that it was as if I had a filter on my thinking...and that to some extend it invalidated my thoughts. I knew that the thoughts and emotions I felt stuck in were a symptom - a product - not my actual beliefs or truth.
I'm rambling now... just repeating and I'm not interested in going into any more detail here frankly. Though I wanted to post about it since I've been talking about my research on PTSD.
Tomorrow perhaps I'll link up some of what I've found.
Now... sleep.
agrnmn's icon.
Too much to do, not enough lifetime, feel like I can't do it fast enough. I know all of this to be untrue... AND. Have spent much of the day neutralizing extreme thoughts of "can't, won't, don't" angst... No, not angst....that implies that it's not real....and the feelings are real all right.
One of the things I was warned about today was to watch myself for developing symptoms of secondary PTSD. I've heard of compassion fatigue or caregivers fatigue...which is really the same thing...but the latter two mostly equate as *tired* in my head. But in reality... one develops secondary ptsd from being "exposed" to first hand accounts of other people's trauma. And there are specific thought patterns and behaviors that go with it.
And this afternoon I came to the stark realization that I have some of them. And in the 20ish minute drive from school to home did some of the fastest processing ever. I'm not going to map out my thoughts here...but the most interesting part was hitting a very low point...and stepping outside that feeling and asking myself...how do I change this thought pattern...How do I keep from falling back into this feedback loop? And I ended up using the exactly same language on myself today that I had offered to someone else. I make a different choice and I choose to belive things that in that moment seem implausible. And while I'm still feeling the fall out from this whirlwind of revelations and ache today...I feel like my coping skills kicked into overdrive... It was just very intense....it is very intense...to apply what I've been learning about PTSD to myself...when all this time I've been focusing on those in my life who suffer with it...and those that I may help in the future.
Depression, panic attacks...these things I have pretty high self awareness on... I know my tricks...and black holes...and generally how to take a detour mostly around them. Recognizing this thought pattern today was ...well, I've said it already... intense. The word that kept coming to mind as I was trying to explain it...was my thoughts felt "contaminated" I knew that it was as if I had a filter on my thinking...and that to some extend it invalidated my thoughts. I knew that the thoughts and emotions I felt stuck in were a symptom - a product - not my actual beliefs or truth.
I'm rambling now... just repeating and I'm not interested in going into any more detail here frankly. Though I wanted to post about it since I've been talking about my research on PTSD.
Tomorrow perhaps I'll link up some of what I've found.
Now... sleep.