aria3Contributor
"Functional Freeze' in PTSD
Hello, I am new here and reaching out to see if anyone else with PTSD has had a "Functional Freeze" that lasted a long time and how they dealt with it.
I only just learned about this particular PTSD response to stressors tonight and it explains how I have been feeling for the past year, as my life has been slowly falling apart with major changes and stress. Events have been rolling like a tank over me while I cower in fear unable to feel emotions except panic and fear, a sense of unreality, inability to make important life decisions, feeling trapped, going blank, slowed thinking....a general feeling of unease, disconnection, and fear of making changes, treading ice cold water... while sharks circle...
It all started last year when I tried to wean myself off my PTSD meds...and then I crashed. My relationship with my husband tanked and I was pressured into buying an apartment, partly to have a rental income but mainly because I was panicking that I'd have to move out of our family home and need a place to live. I was put on anti-depressants and strong sedatives that left me a zombie unable to talk or even walk. Eventually I found a psychiatrist who put me back on my PTSD meds and I started to get some counselling help. Then my elderly mother had a crisis and was diagnosed with Alzheimers and my parents wanted me to become her full-time live-in carer. Meanwhile I am considering divorce as it seems my husband was using me for years as a cash cow, and became verbally abusive and cruel to me when I was at my lowest.
I am feeling frozen, unable to make decisions like applying for divorce, to pack up and sell up our main home and organise renting the apartment, and to complicate matters our main house is in Europe. Unable to start my life all over caring for my mother, who I love dearly, however my father is very difficult to live with and I doubt I could take living in their home so I would have to get a job and an apartment.......It just all seems too hard at 61 years old, I cant please everyone, not my husband who wants to just get back together, or my parents who want me to start over with them....rock and a hard place.
So, this feeling is 'Functional Freeze", or perhaps it's a combination of 'Freeze" and "Fawn" as I try to please everyone. One entire year of it; I am totally exhausted by it. How to deal with this? How can I trust myself to make the right decisions? I've had PTSD for 26 years, resulting from abuse and trafficking as a child, which I repressed until some domestic violence from a partner and the birth of a child brought it out. It's taken me on a journey through the mental health system that has included being put on all kinds of bad meds, ending up in hospital several times, attempts, relationship problems and deep shame and masochism. I had thought that by now it would have tailed off at last, but no, its still there, I guess I have to accept that it is permanent, that I'll be on meds my entire life.....
Any advice on how others have dealt with this feeling of being stuck and frozen with PTSD would be deeply appreciated. I know we are all stronger than we think we are.... after all, we are still here...
