feeling the emotion, but no relief (UNTIL I GOT INTO THE SEWER)

I am having a bad time, for the last month, when I realised that my pain levels had gone down by 80 percent, I have been having dreadful insomnia, anxiety and depression with loads of old and new symptoms putting in an appearance for a few days or hours, and leaving me even more anxious. I have been for the last two days, caught up in my past when I let myself feel the emotion, I have been crying, and saying "I want my Mummy", even though I am in my mid seventies. I cannot let it go yet... So I am feeling so depressed and tired, I have only been sleeping 2 -4 hours a night for weeks, but it has got even worse for the last few days. I couldn't feel very much when my mother died because I was in the middle of a 30 year addiction to Ativan, (a powerful benzodiazepine) so I am hoping that is why I haven't yet got any relief from from this letting go of my emotions...?
I have been trying to comfort my inner child, but am finding it extremely difficult to remember anything positive at all at the moment.(I am hoping that all this is an extinction burst)

 

i just read a post by baseball where he advises getting into the sewer, so I have done that, abut my anger at what caused me to be unable to feel anything when my mother died:

I hate those fucking complacent shits the doctors, Dr B, Dr Sa, dr Si and dr L all male who prescribed all the fucking shit I took over the years, from when I was 20 and went to see one of them about my mother who was phoning me every day telling me how she was being beaten up by my father and two schizophrenic brothers, and being alone in london for the first time, I had nobody else to go to for advice. well what I GOt was drugs, nothing but drugs, and when i had hallucinations after the first week, i was told I was schizophrenic by the IDIOTS who knew nothing about the side effects of the crap they were prescribing,,,, of course schizophrenia was the thing I had always been dreading, and there was no web in 1966, so every time I came off the stuff, I hit withdrawal symptoms and had to believe that i had gone mad. in fact the last two times that I came off before my final cold turkey in the 1990's, i overdosed on paracetamol, because I decided that I would rather be dead than mad and had to be pumped out, and was only let out of the hospital when i PROMISED TO TAKE EVEN LARGER DOSEs of Ativan. AND THE ANTIPSYCHOTICS AND THE ANTIDEPRESSANTS ETC ETC. THIS WENT ON FOR YEARS until I read a bk about tranquillisers. it was full of crap about stopping taking them and how you would be better in 6 weeks, but at least it described the side effects (which I had always thought were the result of my madness and I CAME off all my drugs in a month . I am not going to write about the hell that I went into after I came off, a worse hell than I was in while I was on the shit, because this is about the anger I feel about all the injustice that was heaped on me for the rest of my life i would like to put everybody who treated me with contempt, on Ativan for 10 years and then get them off it in a month, i'd make them live in utter poverty, unable to work because they were too afraid to leave their homes,, so living as recluses in terrible accomodation, and suffering all the terrible and bewildering side effects of the drug. and then I'd like to bash them wth a baseball bat until they died. which I have just done, and my walking over their bleeding remains made a satisfactory crunch as I stamped on their old bones

 

Yes!!!!

 

and I HATE THOSE STUPID SHITS, THE DOCTORS WHO DIDN'T LISTEN TO ME WHEN I told them that I was having hallucinations after the first emergency operation that I had at the end of last year, nor when i had the second emergency laparoscopy a few days later. and the idiot nurses who chided me for my bad language in the critical care unit, I have never been so terrified in my life, and I wrote this piece to try and show them what was happening to me:


"My hallucinations.

The creatures from Heironymous Bosch are wobbling about leering and smirking beckoning me to join them in their hideous repast, filling my mind with obscenities which I have to call everyone to save my life.

On the other side 2 or 3 toothless obscene “angels” look disapprovingly at me, pointing at me, gesturing with skinless arms, revealing all their bleeding innards, bones like enormous joints of beef, making it clear that I must join them in their den which is covered in shit and vomit and blood.

That’s what I see when I close my eyes. With my eyes open I see all the furniture moving slowly around and everything is festooned with thousands of rats and I can hear voices whispering about me

This is easier to cope with during the day but I feel frightened at night."
this happened every single day for about 3 weeks until they changed the medication for a different pain killer, which had bad side effects but not hallucinations.
I was i hospital for about 5 weeks, with a few days at home after the first laparoscopy, which went wrong so I had to go back in for another one. I nearly died on both occasions (from a blocked boweL).
anyway, possibly because its almost a year to the day that I had the second operation, i am going through all the feelings that I had successfully repressed
mainly fear, terror,shock, anxiety and hopefully some anger
I would like to stick it to those nurses who found my struggles so amusing, and to all those fucking doctors who ignored everything that i told them about my drug history.

the one doctor who i would thank if I could was the one female doctor, who ordered them to give me some food after I had gone for seven days with nothing except iced water chips to eat, i will never forget how the fucking idiot nurses were saying that I could have something to eat when THEY HAD HAD TIME TO WASH ME, when the doctor came back in, unexpectedly and shouted "Give that woman some food, she's starving"

anyway, enough about that, i need to get angry!!

I can't get angry, I am too full of the fear that that experience engendered in me, so I need to talk to my inner child, who must have been so terrified and try and comfort her, and me

 

Nowa, I deeply admire your willingness to get angry and your courage in doing it right here,where I can be inspired by it. Thank you.

 

Nowa, I applaud you for releasing your anger! But I am also looking forward to watching you rebuild yourself, now on the solid ground of self-awareness and determination. Best of luck to you!!!

 

thank you Aimee and TG, unfortunately I am having a battle with insomnia at the moment which leaves me feeling desperate and despairing, and I don't know how to think psychologically about it. I would welcome any ideas. (I haven't had a decent night's sleep since i came off the opioids that I had been prescribed in hospital last year, came off them in march, and it is the worst that it has been at the moment, i haven't had more than two hours sleep a night for weeks). and before that I was averaging about 4 hrs a night, I don't understand why it is so bad at the moment, unless it is part of the same extinction burst as all the other stuff that is going on.
I haven't been able to get angry yet, i just don't have the energy, so i am still feeling very depressed and anxious...

 

Nowa, I am so sorry that they did it to you... I had a severe insomnia for decades.

It is all gone now, thanks to my knowledge of TMS and meditation. As strange as it may sound to those who haven't tried it, it is the best treatment for the oversensitised nervous system. It took me many attempts at it before I was able to figure out how to make it work for me.

Sometimes, I still get bad nights with little sleep, but if I carve out 20-30 minutes for a meditation, my brain feels refreshed without any sleep.

And yes, it very well can be extinction burst. When I had those, I had a sharp increase in anxiety, depression and insomnia.

 

its 5 am and i have been awake for the last 4 or 5 hours or so, full of anger about how my father broke my nose when I was 3 years old and I have had breathing problems ever since, i have been a mouth breather my whole life, and it is worse now that i am so old. so I have beaten him into a pulp (again) and left his remains in the garden of our house in new Zealand. and then I changed into my 12 year old self, and I am so angry about how he treated me, a typical incident is the day that he attached the hosepipe to to a tap in the lower garden (of a house in Scotland, where we lived for 3 years, which was built in the bottom of an old quarry, so it had an almost vertical garden at the back), and then went up to the top of the garden saying "Touch that, and see what happens". which I did, being anxious to help, and got a terrible shock when my father snarled and threw a stone at me. I hadn't understood the threat. anyway, I have dragged him down from the top of the garden, making it impossible for him to escape, and beaten him up when his damaged body hit the bottom. I left him with a broken body, and tramped on his face...



It feels as if there is a lot more anger to come, but it is too early in the morning, (I am worried about waking the neighbours) and I am tired from lack of sleep

 

thank you so much TG, as you know from my pm, I have read your book, and am going to try your method of meditating now.

 

i can't do it, i am completely unable to get comfortable in any position, and I am swamped with negative thoughts, all i want is to go to sleep. but my thoughts are telling me, correctly, that I haven't seen anybody for about a month, although i have spoken to them on the phone, that I have lost all my friends, apart from a few, but none of them live near enough for me to see them, and i don't have the energy to even want to see them at the moment. So what is there to look forward to, nothing. how can i meditate through this barrage of negativity? i have got the horrible feeling in my head that i always get after a bad night, and i don't want to face the coming day...

this is the only hope "It took me many attempts at it before I was able to figure out how to make it work for me." from your post TG

 

i think that my fear of not sleeping is linked to my experience of coming off ativan after decades, I didn't sleep for more that half an hour a night for 3 years after I came off it, and during the first year I had 3 episodes of not sleeping a wink for 14 days, I was much younger then, and I couldn't cope with that now... i am so sick of complaining, and long to have some good news to post about!

 

nowa, fighting TMS is like running a marathon. It is about aiming at the nearest mile post, not worrying about being the first one to cross the finish line. You set your short-term goals and pat yourself on the shoulder each time you achieve those, even if they are meager. You have these negative thoughts, but there are also positive ones. Give yourself credit for what you have: you have spoken to some people on the phone, you still have a few friends, you were able to meditate, you had a decent night of sleep the other day. As for negative thoughts, I suggest that you should stop fighting them, see if you can accept that they come and let them be in your head. They may eventually go away, no matter how unpleasant they are. It is part of meditation and dealing with negative emotions. I learned in the Buddhist class on negative emotions that if you don't cling on them, don't fight them but acknowledge them and focus on something outside, like trees, water, sand on the beach, they will eventually go away. It is the unpleasantness that we fight, not the thoughts themselves. From my experience, if I am able to tolerate the unbearable feelings for a minute, two, three - they eventually dissipate.

 

thank you TG, I will try.
I am a little confused about thinking psychologically and/or taking Claire Weekes' advice about sensitisation, when she recommends that you should accept, float and let time pass. for instance, it is 3am in the morning, and i have been awake for the last hour, feeling very anxious, should I try and think psychologically or should I accept, float and let time pass? I am worried that I won't have the energy to get to a yoga class tomorrow morning and what I should do, i normally force myself to go, and don't get any pleasure out of the class, but at least i haven't let TMS stop me from going. At the moment I am going to watch some tV and then go back to bed, without thinking psychologically. What would you do in this situation?

 

I wentback to bed,couldn't sleep so am out of bed now and getting breakfast, (it is 6.15) I am going to go to the yoga class at 11 am.

 

There is no contradiction between two concepts. Thinking psychologically means accepting that your pain has psychological roots. Sensetisation speaks of the same: your nervous system is in the overdrive and keeps you alert. I have been awake at 3 am many times, worrying that I would not have energy to go to work, until I concluded that worrying only adds to the stress but doesn't solve the problem. I think you did the right thing getting up and letting time go by.

I applaud you for going to the class, but don't force yourself too hard. Even if you spend half the class in child's pose, you have done something useful for yourself.

 

I wish that I could sleep, i felt so tearful during the class...thank you so much for sharing your experiences

 

Tearful is good, you are letting your emotions out.

 

I read this on dr David Hanscom's site yesterday and it is not helping!! :" If they did not get to sleep, I would aggressively keep switching meds until sleep was attained. Not sleeping was not an option. None of the rest of the DOC program will work without sleep." Medication is not an option for me, so I am even more worried about not sleeping now.

I am glad that tearful is good! but is it good when it's all about self pity for not sleeping?

 

As long as you recognize your self-pity as something that you don't want to have, it is OK to feel it. But it is much better if you meditate, and when your thoughts of self-pity come along, you continue to acknowledge it and focus on your breath, on the warmth of your body, on your hara (dan tien). Self-pity comes with exhaustion at the time of weakness. It will pass, too. I highly recommend that you re-read chapter 5 of my book, especially sections on meditation, fear and faith. Your brain right now is dominated by fear. It fuels your anxiety, which fuels your insomnia, which fuels your fear. You need to de-sensitize yourself, get out of this positive feedback loop of negativity (no pun intended). Any physical exercise that you can handle right now is good for you. I had a bout of depression last Friday night. I forced myself to go hiking. By mile 7, depression was gone, by mile 13 I was back to my normal self. But getting to the balanced self may take years for you in your state now. Just accept it and move on with patience.

If there is anything I would highly recommend to dwell on - it is any little improvement or achievement you may discover in your condition. Give it a full round of appreciation!