Lots of internal musings, and learning to trust the process.
My world is absolutely shattered. Not exactly in a sad way, I should clarify. Like my ground razed, earth scorched, foundations crumbled over the past few days. It’s painful. Hopeful. Equal parts terrifying and peaceful, grievous and redeeming… And I’m learning to trust the process. Actually leaning into pain as opposed to intellectualizing it all.
And it’s ALL messy. Be that as it may, this may be one of the first times in my life that I’ve actually kind of felt… Whole? At peace? Bear with me, this is so much.
On the tail of publishing “This is me at 33”, I really dove hard into self-research mode:
Trying to fill in memory gaps from my dissociative amnesia. Trying to build a new framework for why my brain works the way that it does. Reaching out to family members for perspective on my childhood. Lots of ChatGPT sessions so that I wouldn’t externally process Nathan into an early grave.
It’s been a lot. But for the first time, I feel like the pieces are finally beginning to fit in a way that I can fully embrace and accept. This journey forth, building trust in the process of breakthrough, is insanely vulnerable, but worth sharing.
I’ve felt for too long that I’ve needed validation and permission from others… Tell me who I am, so that I can understand me. I can’t trust myself or how I process things. No, I was taught that I couldn’t trust myself. I sustained trauma and endless gaslighting through my formative years that it’s no mystery why I need someone else to define me.
Not That Complicated
I am Occam’s Razor personified.
Throughout my 33 years of life, I have been mislabeled and misdiagnosed so many times. As a 13-year-old victim of sexual abuse, one of the biggest moments of betrayal within the mental health care system, and from my parents, came when I was blamed for the incident.
The perpetrator was a 24-year-old man. And my parents believed him when he said it was my idea. Once in counseling, I was victim-blamed, diagnosed with Oppositional Defiant Disorder, and placed on ADHD meds that I didn’t need. And that didn’t help.
Sure, I was too hyper-focused from the “legal speed” to step out of line too much, but the meds tanked my appetite. I lost 10lbs in a week. Pushed past any signals of physical fatigue, running laps after school everyday until I couldn’t physically hold my body upright when the crash finally hit.
Second round of unfortunate therapy that I remember? I was stonewalling, not speaking. It felt like the only part of my autonomy that I had any control over. I’m 16 or 17 in this memory, thrown back into counseling with the woman who labeled me ODD.
I remember my mother telling me that I better not be diagnosed with depression because she wouldn’t be paying for anti-depressants. After the session, the counselor advised my mother to “just put her on birth control because I can’t handle my daughter either”.
Since then…
I’ve had doctors tell me that maybe it’s Major Depressive Disorder. Maybe it’s Generalized Anxiety Disorder, and I’ve tried meds for both to no avail. Maybe it’s Maybelline.
During my career as an RN, especially while still in contact with my parents, on top of being newly married, I was having chronic, dysautonomic health issues. I found a doctor who’d actually listen. A little self-advocacy and a referral to a cardiologist later, I was diagnosed with Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome, or POTS.
POTS that conveniently remitted when I broke contact with my most traumatic triggers. Hmm, that’s sus. But the manifested symptoms were real. The Raynaud’s, the dizzy spells, the daily, stress-induced hives. But with the triggers gone, the allostatic load reduced, and so did my symptoms.
Moving on…
I mentioned major trust issues within the therapeutic setting (“Shady Shrinks”) in an early Mamasaur post. After so much deliberation, though, I finally submitted that there were things plaguing me that I couldn’t heal on my own.
I’d been pouring through books, devouring psychological education as much as I could, trying to teach myself what was wrong with me. Cope with chronic trauma. Learn how to parent well in spite of it. Propelled by the same terror that racked me from the start of my marriage to Nathan.
I was doing meaningful work, but I really felt like I needed someone’s professional guidance to help me truly apply it. Looking back, I think, in a way, I was pathologizing myself purely through a trauma-informed lens. All too easy to write things off as a fucked-up trauma response as opposed to recognizing what all was truly underneath.
Oh, It’s just because my C-PTSD has left me broken. Bad feelings or sensations I can’t control? All trauma. Everything is so brutally hard and always has been? Just the wages of suffering abuse. I am wholly broken, completely fractured, and I need a mental health professional to glue me back together.
So, that backfired massively…
Square Peg in a Round Hole
Looking back, I’m ashamed to say that I didn’t see the warning signs sooner. Even after all that happened, I still believe that there are capable therapists out there. However, I think I missed the forest for the trees this time.
I was proactive in my search for therapists. I knew I wanted someone who was trauma informed. When I found the therapist I went to for a year, I was drawn in by her TF-CBT certification. It seemed like a great fit when my trauma was all that I could recognize.
Whomp-whomp.
Over the course of the year, different issues irked me that I pushed aside. Small things at first… Like this weekly feeling before our sessions that I needed something to give her. (Performance.) What offering am I going to bring to her for therapy this week? What if I show up “empty-handed”?
Sometimes, it just felt like a gossip session. I do not enjoy talk therapy.
There were more glaring issues during our time together, too. Like leaving every therapy appointment feeling more dysregulated than before I arrived. “Things have to get worse before they start to get better. Trust the process”. Yeah, I get that, as long as progress is being made.
But, over the course of the year, I either felt stuck in the same loops or getting sucked backward.
The best metaphor I have to describe this is meal-prep. Week after week, you’re doing the painstaking work of buying and prepping ingredients. Cooking and storing multiple meals. Hoping for nourishment that never comes. Preparing food that you never get to eat.
Add insult to injury…
The most damaging consequences of a misattuned therapist: she had biases. Trauma-focused, indeed.
She actively fed my mistrust. Fueled suspicion that I was being taken advantage of or manipulated by the people around me. And even in the times the lack of context felt glaring, I didn’t speak up for myself. I brought that shit home with me. And that is my fault.
By the time she verified my C-PTSD diagnosis and then mislabeled me as OCPD, I accepted it without question. In a way, it made true what I already felt about myself. That I’m defunct. I just have a broken personality. It’s always been that way, and that’s why I make everyone around me miserable.
In truth, looking back, all that OCPD label gave me was another reason to suppress myself. Oh, bad feeling? No point in validating it or examining it with curiosity. It’s just because I’m a bad person with a broken mind. I’m struggling today? Might as well give in to the shame spiral. I’m fractured.
It’s just who I am…
Trust the Process: Breakthrough
Up until very recently, I was locked in this mindset. Especially after my last post, though, it felt like pulling on a loose thread. Unraveling the knotted mess to see what’s hiding beneath… And I’ve broken through to something true and real about myself. Something that was merely a vague idea before has been fully conceptualized…
Back to Occam’s Razor.
I’m not ODD. I don’t suffer from MDD, GAD, or POTS. In fact, I don’t even have Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder. I’m not that complicated. And the wild thing to me in retrospect? After being invalidated, misdiagnosed, victim-blamed, etc… The fact that I’d take point blank, without question, any misfit label is baffling.
Yeah, my therapist keeps me in a headspace of conflict, sees my trauma-responses flare from triggered dysregulation, and comes to the conclusion that I have a personality disorder characterized by a pervasive need to control everyone… Nathan even tells me that “controlling” is not a word he’d use to describe me. So, what is it then?
I do have C-PTSD. No question.
I am also autistic. No question. Breakthrough.
OCPD, maybe, if just looking at a year-long window of time. That could explain the issues I was having. Autism explains that window AND everything that came before.
I’m sure I’ll write more about the infinitesimal ways this plays out in my life later. But, suffice it to say, I’m sure. I believe me. Nathan believes me. About the only imposter syndrome I fear with this self-diagnosis is that other people will think of me as an imposter, and I’m trying to brace for that.
Although I can accept myself as autistic, I know this doesn’t rewrite my past or erase any of the pain that I caused when I didn’t understand who I was. What it does provide, however, is context to all of the pain I’ve had to endure. Childhood suffering. Deep loneliness, yet utter social ineptitude. Always outside looking in. Intense fixations. The ways in which I’m rigid…
But NOT controlling.
As I begin to trust myself and process this, it changes my internal narrator. It frees me from constant self-persecution and shame. I see myself as someone worth loving and supporting. Not lazy. Not worthy only if I’m productive enough. Maybe I don’t have to continue masking. Maybe it’s okay if I’m super awkward. Trying can be enough, even if I sometimes fail.
It gives me a true framework for growth. I don’t put struggles in an OCPD-labeled “bad box” anymore. I look at them with curiosity. Try to learn the root. Is it something that needs accommodation? Space? Time? Or is it something through which I can safely challenge myself to move?
I can trust this process. It is the first time in my life I’ve begun to feel any peace with myself. Love and acceptance and self-compassion. It’s the first time that I don’t feel like I’d benefit from some medication I just haven’t tried yet. Yes, I have suffered trauma. But, at long last, I feel like I don’t need to let that define me anymore.
And it gives me permission to rest when I need it. To listen to what my body is telling me. And to COMMUNICATE to other people. Yes, I am autistic. I am also a wife and mother. People need me, and I need them. And in order to function well together, communication is vital.
Now, I finally feel like I have the words.
