Tag Archives: trauma

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Relationships

Everyone gets disregulated sometimes, and when we’re in a state of disregulation we are more likely to trigger old responses from Trauma or trauma.

When we’re in that state generally people can respond in one of three ways:

A supportive re-regulating way.

An unsupportive way that either doesn’t help or even worsens our disregulation.

They can get triggered too.

In a healthy relationship mostly the first happens.

The second can be dealt with by teaching new skills/responses.

The third one is the hardest to deal with. Both people need their own therapist and a couples therapist is needed to help re-regulate both during interactions. It’s a lot of painful work and most often is easier to end the relationship and find a less challenging pairing.

For those recovering from anything really, if someone doesn’t already have their own therapist/recovery group, that’s a huge red flag.

The two choices are they don’t need one, or they need one and don’t recognize it.

If they go to therapy for you instead of for themselves, that doesn’t really work.

The likelihood that they don’t need therapy is pretty slim, especially since we tend to be drawn to our counterparts or people who feel familiar. And if they are drawn to us, it’s probably the same for them.

So it’s pretty safe to assume that if they aren’t doing recovery work, that’s a huge red flag and we should run the other way and that we’re not passing up the magical unicorn that doesn’t need to do recovery work and is still interested in being our partner.

For more info read How to Stop Losing Your Sh*t With Your Kids or watch some School of Life or Heidi Priebe YouTube videos on trauma & relationships.

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Scheduling grief

I didn’t think to share this on my own, one of my wonderful friends suggested it.

I was reading a book in a waiting room and got triggered and was about to break down crying.

I took a deep breath and asked myself if I could wait until a better time. I thought through the day and figured out a time when I’d have more privacy and promised myself I would come back to this and allow myself to properly grieve and that I would do it today and not forget about it or stuff it down trying to ignore it. It was just a temporary pause for a better time.

And it worked, I was calm the rest of the day and when I sat down outside the library before my next appointment when I had about 20 minutes to spare, I asked myself what had triggered that moment originally. I remembered and was right back in it but this time I just curled over my knees and cried and let it out. I think I only cried for 5 or 10 minutes so I even had time to recover afterwards before walking to my appointment.

I’m sure this trick won’t always work, and it requires you trusting yourself (or your systems – like to do lists or alarms).

And when I say I ask myself, it’s more like I ask my inner parts. Something like “Hey gang, can we hold onto this until later today? I promise I won’t forget and just stuff it down.” That’ll be fore another post on IFS – Internal Family Systems.

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Ehlers Danlos & Neurodiversity Research

I’m so excited, a friend of a friend just shared all this:

Dr. Eccles specific research areas are Neuroscience, Psychiatric and neurodevelopmental features of connective tissue disorders, Mechanisms of chronic pain and fatigue.

The quickest way to see a summary of all her 67 published medical research with active links to each is here: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jessica-Eccles-3

Some titles of pubs just within the last 2 years:

  • Towards a Neurodiversity-Affirmative Approach for an Over-Represented and Under-Recognised Population: Autistic Adults in Outpatient Psychiatry
  • Joint Hypermobility Links Neurodivergence to Dysautonomia and Pain
  • Variant connective tissue (joint hypermobility) and dysautonomia are associated with multimorbidity at the intersection between physical and psychological health
  • Connecting brain and body: Transdiagnostic relevance of connective tissue variants to neuropsychiatric symptom expression

You Tube Videos:

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Schemas or Distortions

Stub

Homework assignment, identify my maladaptive schemas/cognitive distortions

All or nothing thinking. Perfectionist – if not perfect then why bother

Black & white thinking. – using extremes, always, never, ever, completely

Mind reading

10 common cognitive distortions – mental shortcuts or assumptions about how the world works that helped you survive but are no longer supportive

18 maladaptive schemas – thought structures that helped you in one or some situations but are now harming or restricting you.

18 Early Schemas Defined (schematherapy.com)

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Trauma

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ybld6IG1KtA

YOU are enough. YOU are worthy of love. I love you and I hope you love you too.

If you aren’t able to understand the other person’s reality, then what reason is there to choose the explanation that hurts? You’re only hurting yourself that way.

Don’t believe everything you think. It’s just a thought, an untested hypothesis, until you’ve tested its validity.

Trauma – stub – I believe the definition would be damage

Emotional trauma is pain we cause ourselves via our thoughts.
To recover we need to choose to heal our thoughts.
To make a choice, we have to understand what choice is.

Physical trauma is pain created by outside sources.

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The Daffodil trait… I mean Narcissism

Narcissism is a trait, if you have none, then you can’t care for yourself, if you have too much, then you can’t care for others.

Empathy and compassion are learned skills.

A “Narcissist” is someone who needs to improve those skills.

Most folks learn some degree of those skills on their own.

Some ND/HSPs do not learn self-regulation without being directly taught. So some ND/HSPs with neglectful/traumatic/unhappy childhoods can develop narcissism as a coping strategy. NTs tend to be more resilient.

The core of narcissism is anger.

If you only understand your own mind – then if someone does something different from your expectations, it makes sense that you would assume they are being mean and get angry. Anger is an emotion that is supposed to protect us, encourage us to defend our boundaries. At the bottom I have an example of how this works.

Correlation is not causation. And being HSP doesn’t imply Narcissism. I believe being a Narcissist, especially the vulnerable kind, implies being an HSP with childhood attachment trauma.

PersonA & PersonB – both have autism.
PersonA may or may not be aware of it in themselves and is not aware of it in PersonB. PersonB is not aware of it in either of them.

Having a discussion.

PersonB replies to PersonA.

PersonA: You just hurt my feelings. (see trauma)

PersonB: (had no intention to do so, feels like they are being gaslit as hurting the other person is not their experience)
“<Explains why PersonA is wrong/mistaken/shouldn’t feel that way – without first acknowledging PersonA’s experience.>”

PersonA: (feels gaslit and ignored/unheard)
“Why is it so hard to apologize? Don’t you care that my feelings are hurt?”

PersonB: (Now confused and angry, why should they apologize for something they didn’t do? Feels emotionally blackmailed. In addition to feeling gaslit, is also hurt that PersonA thinks that PersonB would try to hurt PersonA. Gets defensive and lashes out in anger – says something deliberately hurtful = Narcissim.)
“Why would I care when you don’t care about what I’m feeling?”

This is why starting with I statements and sharing needs is so important. Both people had a chance to get things back on track.

PersonA could instead say:
I’m feeling really hurt, I need <support/connection/clarification>.

Or PersonB could have replied with:
You’re feeling hurt in response to something I said? Do you need a hug? And can you explain what part was hurtful and why? I’m confused and I want to understand because I care about you. Hurting you was not my intention, so I think there must be a misunderstanding/miscommunication occurring.

Post Oct 5 2022 ^

Edit Jan 10 2023

I can only speak for myself. Before I learned more about Autism, I thought my husband was a Narcissist. I think the reason most Narcissists don’t agree with that label is because it is a label of the external behavior that others observe more so than a description of their internal experience. So if you try to explain to someone exhibiting Narcissistic tendencies they will believe you are trying to attack or gaslight them, so then of course they get defensive and strike back.