#attachment trauma

[m-d-s-a]

Peg Streep, Mean Mothers: Overcoming the Legacy of Hurt

[rainofthestorm]

how the fuck to be normal about emotions

So I guess this is a part 2. Don't ask, it just sort of happened. Part one is here:

how the fuck to process emotions

For those of us with parents who failed to teach us how to handle our emotions; give us the necessary stability, safety, comfort, and reassu

This is where we talk about the difference between having emotions and acting on them -- which, some of you who know us personally are probably aware is still a thing we struggle with, too; it's a work in progress, this is part of how we go about internalising things for ourselves -- as well as who's responsible for our own emotions.

Foreshadowing is a literary device--

Yes, yes, we've all heard of it. Now, where do we start.

Many emotional dysregulation issues, which are quite common for folks with BPD and/or CPTSD, seem to stem from attachment issues (or, if you prefer, attachment trauma).

Let's roll up our fucking sleeves and get started. This shit doesn't resolve itself.

why the fuck is this shit so complicated

Before we even begin, we need to accept that sometimes we're going to be miserable about things. Sometimes that isn't our fault, sometimes it is. Sometimes it's someone else's fault -- or at least it sure fucking feels like it. The really annoying thing is just because something happened and regardless of whose fault it was, those emotions are still ours to deal with. Not someone else's to fix.

We'll get a proper example in a bit so it all ties together hopefully well enough, but to cover the absolute basics:

Sometimes you will have emotions that fucking suck to deal with.

Sometimes those are the result of what other people have done.

Sometimes those are the result of something we've done ourselves.

However, that does not mean that other people are responsible for dealing with that emotion for you, and it does not mean that whatever response that emotion is pushing you towards is reasonable.

Also, it doesn't mean other people can't or shouldn't help at all. It just means we can't expect other people to fix all that shit for us; we do have to deal with our emotions for ourselves, too.

Sometimes we just have emotions that are bigger than they need to be, and it's on us to deal with the brunt of them. It can be downright miserable. Harrowing. Terrifying. It feels like a fucking crisis, often enough.

Shit happens, and sometimes we can feel catastrophically bad about them for a good while. When this happens, there's a couple things we need to do for ourselves.

First, take some time to feel and process the emotions associated with whatever's going on. Sometimes that has to be alone, because we know (or we think) that we can't express them to others in that moment without trying to make them deal with our emotions for us. Sometimes others can help us talk through what's going on, or offer comfort. I'm not going into detail here, go the fuck back and read part one for that.

There's also a really fucking common complication: when other people with trauma are involved, sometimes we have to be more careful with that estimation, because they may feel obligated to do something even if we don't really force it on them.

To mitigate that, you need to be really fucking clear with communicating and reinforcing ahead of time that emotions don't need to be fixed and sometimes you just need to be heard out and listened to, sometimes you just need some fucking space. Sometimes, though... it can help to have someone to work through and problem solve with you.

No, you won't generally get that right first time and nor will anyone else. That shit takes time and mistakes to learn; you're gonna fuck it up, and that is okay. Figure out what the fuck went wrong and handle it better next time. There will be a next time, there always is. Make it better than this time if you can. You will have times you handle it worse than the last, too; none of this is linear progression.

Second, when the strong emotions have had some time to get worked through, when they've passed and you feel safer and okay talking about them with the person involved, take some time and try to figure out a reasonable request to make to honour the underlying need, or the emotion that you were struggling with.

Some emotions are more of a bitch to figure out than others. Anger in particular can be complicated and people are fucking terrified of it, which often can be unhelpful (and one reason why it's sometimes best to handle alone). Whatever the emotion, there's pretty much always a valid as hell need buried under all of it -- even if the initial response and degree of the emotion was outsized.

what does that even look like though

Okay, it's personal experience time. ✨

Recently one of us (⛈️) got extremely upset and hurt at the fact that we got left out of a hangout involving our wife and one of our closest friends. For some context, they'd been reconnecting recently after a huge fight and not talking for a year.

We wanted to be involved, we were hurt because we weren't involved; but... we also wanted them to be able to have time to exist around each other again without us being in the picture -- especially as hurt and clingy as we were feeling at the time. It wouldn't have been fair to them to force them both have to focus on us; they've got their own shit to figure out together.

To be crystal clear, there's nothing wrong with that feeling. It fucking sucked to deal with, but it's as valid as any other emotion. Even so, we spent that evening crying and hurting. On our own, curled up in a room away from our wife. While they hung out. It fucking sucked.

But you know what else? It passed. It ended. And we felt a hell of a lot better for the time spent. We spent some of that time talking to another close friend of ours, who was more than happy to give us a little time to process and talk things out.

It's okay to reach out for help in those times; just sometimes you're going to need to ask it from people who aren't directly in the situation, who aren't targets of those emotions, who it's safer to ask for help from. Who can be present without feeling a strong need to fix things for you. Talk it out, figure out the shape of things, whether there are things you might want to do or talk through when you have a handle on the emotions.

Eventually we traced the feelings back to basically… ⛈️ (and maybe others, too) was afraid we'd be left behind, forgotten, ignored, by this friend who was deeply important to us.

Was that a reasonable expectation? No. But we had the feelings anyway; no point blaming ourselves for having feelings.

And then a few days later, 🔅 mentioned in conversation to this friend that one of us was feeling very insecure and afraid of being left behind and forgotten, and asked for some reassurance. Which they freely gave, and then suggested that they spend a little time talking with ⛈️ about it.

Which… we were honestly surprised at, it was more than what we expected. We agreed to chat more another day, and a day or so after that we wound up talking about it with them. From that conversation the main outcome was just "let's arrange a hangout with ⛈️ so that she (and the rest of you) get to spend some dedicated time with me, too."

And we did, and she had a good time, and she feels a hell of a lot better about the whole thing. And we're gonna do it again sometime: probably more than a few of us would like to; they're a very good friend of ours and we care about them a lot.

It wasn't a chore for our friend. It wasn't an unreasonable request. It was a bit of a conversation to let things be heard out, it was a "oh hey how are you feeling about it, ok gotcha yeah that's hard, absolutely." Just listening to us, and to ⛈️, for a bit. And then a few days later we had a fun hangout with our friend that they enjoyed too, and ⛈️ got to do something with them herself for once.

it's harder than it sounds

Any time you're dealing with other people, you may run into stuff that triggers various kinds of trauma responses or otherwise really intense emotions. It's hard as fuck sometimes, we've been through a lot of it too.

The crucial part is: if you get to an emotional state that's overwhelmed, you need to communicate that (even if it's just "I need to take some time and do something on my own for a bit" / "I need to go home for now" / "I can't finish this conversation right now, can we pick it up later?") and take the necessary time to work through it and figure out what's up and how to communicate properly around it and meet those needs without being unreasonable.

This is really hard at first. Raw emotions can be really unreasonable. When we're not used to dealing with them, they can be intense as all fuck, and we just want them to go away. And the things we might try to get other people to do as a result will not be pretty.

I'm not gonna sugarcoat it, it's fucking miserable at times dealing with the intense emotions you can run into. But it will get better.

With time, with practice, you'll get better at realising what needs the emotions are expressing. As you spend time actually processing through them from time to time, you won't need to seclude yourselves as much to do that.

You will find you eventually can manage a conversation through rough emotions without it getting intensely overwhelming. And you will find you can trust yourselves enough, eventually, that the emotions won't be as intense; there will be enough internal trust that this can be handled and isn't a crisis situation.

That takes time. Things can and do improve a lot.

Sometimes it doesn't feel like it will ever change; intense emotions have a habit of feeling fucking permanent while they're coursing through us.

It will change, all the same. It takes effort, it takes time. You will get there.

[sae-something]

Woops i started a debate heh I actually just meant she wont take it personally. As in she will have plenty of clients with all sorts of transference and sexual transference is so common we learn about it early in trainings so I was just saying any good therapist will be very used to working this through vulnerably with many clients

It's not a debate, I am just having a deeply personal experience and writing about that. I don't think anyone online can decide what A will or won't take personally. She knows it's personal and she knows, in a way, it is about her. And of course she also knows everything that it isn't. She's an excellent therapist or, as she likes to say about herself, she's absolutely brilliant.

However, I absolutely do not agree that "any good therapist" will be very used to this. Ideally that would be the case, but there's nowhere near enough therapists who are comfortable and trained enough to work with the kind of transference and confusion that can happen with people with DID. My previous therapist - T, for long time followers - was very well trained and experienced, but completely fucked shit up because she couldn't see through the fog of my transference.

So now you did actually start a debate because I will never agree that "any good therapist" can do this shit. I've had too many therapists fuck up and I've seen too many people I love been deeply hurt, abandoned or even retraumatized by therapists who don't know how to do the deepest attachment and transference work.

And that's not an accusation, because I don't expect any good therapist to be able to do this, because this work is not for anyone. It's simply a statement and I don't really feel like having more of a conversation about this.

PS - yes I'm being prickly. I'm writing about my personal experiences (which are not "so common" because there's barely any research/literature on mdsa/attachment - especially cases where the mother also has DID) and truthfully I don't care about any blanket statements about what "you therapists learn early in training" (which, idk to which magial therapist school you apparently went, but over here working with the deep relational bits of complex trauma and dissociation is absolutely not taught in early therapist training, and also not in late therapist training unless a therapist is personally motivated to focus on it)

PPS - I am not prickly at you as an individual because you are anonymous to me so you don't have to explain or defend yourself. I know I'm not being fully reasonable here but this is my private blog and not some psych 101 class. I'm sorry for being harsh but I am tired of being so very vulnerable and some people online trying to be like "actually it's very standard and general :)" - I don't care. to me it's not standard nor general, it's actually quite horrifying, and I'd like to have some space for the unique horrors of it without "hey it's actually normal" because to me it's hell. #myhell

[vanalex]

Childhood trauma can follow people into adulthood in ways they often blame on their personality.

Many adults are still living with patterns that started in environments where they had to adapt to feel safe. They may feel reactive. Guarded. Anxious. Avoidant. Exhausted. And they may not realize those responses once made sense.

Nadia Addesi made this guide to help you understand how childhood trauma can affect you across a lifetime, and how to begin making sense of the patterns you were never properly taught to understand❤️

I'm sharing this because this information is very insightful and helpful in better understanding of how trauma, especially in childhood, forms a person and follows it into adulthood.

Part 1 of 2

Part 2 coming up next

[honeydewdrops333]

I love my bf and all but I really hate long distance (I’m also viciously mentally ill and think he’s abandoning me every time he leaves me on delivered so yayyy!!!)

[cetigapolo]

Pony Comforts Steve

Steve walks into the Curtis house and slams the door behind him.  He tosses his backpack across the room and plops onto the couch, resting his head in his hands.

Ponyboy looks around, bewildered.  No one else is home.  Shit, he has to say something, right?  “Steve?  You okay?”

Steve huffs out something vaguely resembling…something.  A growl?  A laugh?  Jesus, Pony has no idea.  Where the hell is Soda when you need him?

“You…” he swallows hard.  “You wanna talk?”

Steve shakes his head, but he leans forward, folding his arms and putting his head down.  He sucks in a sharp breath.

Pony can’t just ignore what’s happening, can he?  Glory, he wants to just pretend he was never here.  But instead, he walks over to sit on the couch, too.  He lifts a hand, hesitating, and then tentatively rests it on Steve’s shoulder.  Steve is tense, and he doesn’t react other than curling in on himself a little bit tighter.  At first, he doesn’t make a sound, but then Ponyboy hears a hitched gasp and then a couple of sniffles.

It's several minutes before Steve adjusts to pull up the collar of his shirt and wipe his face on the inside.  He shrugs Ponyboy off as he does.  “I’m good.”

“You…well, you don’t seem good, Steve,” Ponyboy says.

“What do you know?” Steve mutters.

“I know you.  Lord knows we been around each other enough.”

“More than enough,” Steve mumbles, and Ponyboy rolls his eyes.

“Yeah, yeah.”  Ponyboy sits quietly for a minute.  “Come on, Steve.  What happened?” he says softly. 

Steve growls in frustration.  “Just a fight with my fucking dad, okay?”

“He hurt you?” Pony asks.

Steve shakes his head.  “Didn’t lay a hand on me, this time.”

“That ain’t the only way for someone to hurt you,” Ponyboy says, and Steve looks at him sharply enough that he doesn’t push it.    “You want a hug, man?”

“Glory’s sake, you really are Soda’s brother.”

“Shut up and let me give you a hug, asshole.”

“Fine.  But you tell anybody about this I’ll skin you, ya hear?” Steve threatens.

“Loud and clear,” Ponyboy says, suppressing a grin.  He gives Steve a hug, and if he hadn’t already known that Steve was upset, he would sure know now.  His breath is shuddering a little, and he takes a lot longer than what’s usual, for Steve anyway, to pull away.  When he does pull back, he swipes his arm across his eyes, swearing.

Steve doesn’t say anything else, and the silence in the room, for once, feels stifling.  Ponyboy doesn’t leave and go back to what he was doing before, honestly, because Steve seems really sad.  His jaw is clenched tight, but every so often he sniffles or swipes angrily at his eyes. “You can talk to me about it, if you want,” Ponyboy offers eventually.  “I ain’t gonna tell nobody.  Not even Soda.”

It takes several more minutes before Steve says anything.  "It’s just a lot of the usual stuff, Ponykid,” Steve says wearily, pinching the bridge of his nose.  “You know.  He’s ashamed of me, I’m a piece of shit, never gonna amount to anything, yadda yadda.  I’m the reason-” his voice breaks, and he swipes at his eyes again.  “I’m the reason Ma left.”  His voice sounds thick.

“Shit,” Ponyboy breathes out.  Steve is staring intently across the room.  “God, Steve, I’m sorry.”  He hears Steve swallow a sob, sucking in a rapid breath after.  Knowing how embarrassed Steve is, Ponyboy stares at a spot on the wall across from them.  Steve’s breathing gets more and more ragged, and Ponyboy sees him press the heels of his hands into his eyes. 

Steve clears his throat.  “It don’t matter.  Just being a goddamn baby about it.”

“You ain’t being a baby,” Ponyboy says simply.  “I’d cry if my dad said that to me, too.”  And then he doesn’t know if he said the right thing or the wrong thing, because Steve curls in on himself again, wrapping his arms up and around his head, and he starts to sob.  “Shit, Steve.  I’m sorry.”  He isn’t even sure what he’s apologizing for, but it doesn’t work because if anything Steve cries harder.  Ponyboy wraps an arm around his shoulders, and Steve doesn’t shrug him off this time.

When Steve calms down, he doesn’t say anything else.  Just scrubs anxiously at his face and avoids eye contact.  Soda gets there not too long after, and even though he’s kinda worried, Ponyboy keeps his promise.

[molly-s-hillery]

[growing2glowing]

It's a parent's job to teach emotional regulation. Mine failed me.

It's a parent's job to be a safe and compassionate listening ear.

Mine failed me.

Kids aren't pets, they're full people that need support to mentally develop correctly.

If you'd get more out of short term dopamine hits then connecting and talking to your kids- don't even have them. Yes, that includes excessive doom scrolling or smoking weed. You'll be too pacified and distracted to care or play a positive role in their development.

High expectations with no affirmation, comfort, or positive attention creates narcissists. We feel like we only have ourselves and being above/better than others is the only way to get any respect, love, adoration, etc.