Barriers to seeking support (TW: Mentions self harm and CA)

Just catching up on your posts @NightFury and I will definitely share some of my thoughts with you. But also - how do you feel after having shared these parts of your story with us?

Hugs! 🫂🫂

@RiverSeal I'm not sure I know the answer to that. I wanna say...fear. But I don't know how to articulate it.

I made an attempt and it scared me.

@Jynx I can't like it to show you I've seen it!

Um...kinda edgy...like my anxiety is building. I really wanna hear your thoughts though.

I can understand that fear can present itself in many ways @NightFury, and I also became fearful of my actions, so I can relate. Do you find that the Forums and staying connected help with urges for SH? I believe that connection plays a part in our recovery journeys and can support us in many ways.

I would have loved to have found the Forums before I started working at SANE and would have found them really supportive. So I'm really glad to be part of the community now and here, being supportive and sharing my lived experience.

RiverSeal ❤️

@RiverSeal I find that the forums and connecting here helps. But I need to get better at communicating when I'm experiencing them and actually reaching out for support, rather than...just reaching out to "chat." I need to learn how to communicate when I'm not feeling very safe.

I did this..."I'm just gonna hang here and connect and not say why" thing a lot this week

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@NightFury wrote:

@Jynx I can't like it to show you I've seen it!

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@NightFury understandable frustration I am currently sharing with you, in that I can't just support this post!! LOL

I am writing my response now dw dw, haha you know how it can take me a minnit to put my thoughts together!!

Yes @NightFury, reaching out can be really beneficial when we are in the moment and talking about how we feel. It can be helpful to hear someone else's perspective on our situation and have a rational voice. Remember, though, the Forums are not a crisis service, so if you are experiencing SI and need a little extra support. Reaching out to crisis support services can be the best thing to do.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts with me this evening!

RiverSeal ❤️

@RiverSeal thank you for sharing your thoughts and experiences.

@NightFury your red button is probably familiar to many people here hey, I wonder if it's like, for those of us who had to hide our pain so often that we got too used to bottling it up, hey.

Aye breathing is probably the best to start with, it's the one I put the most practice into as well. Trying to avoid rambling on it too much cos trauma stuff is like, my special interest lol but essentially, our 'lizard-brain' as I like to call it (responsible for all the automatic stuff like breathing, digestion, and yep you guessed it, survival) doesn't really know the difference between getting-a-phone-call anxiety and running-from-a-tiger anxiety. Which I imagine you may have heard before?

Anyway, it also means that if we pretend we ran away from the tiger and we're fine now, it tells lizard brain to turn off panic-mode. So quite literally one of my coping tools when I'm getting those 'run away and hide' urges is to go for a run, then stop and just focus on my breathing for a while.

Lizard brain is literally dumb (okay, not dumb but just... simple). It only knows like three things! Chillin, Chargin, and Checkin out (aka 'rest and digest', 'fight and flight' and 'freeze and appease'). If we pretend we are chillin, especially after just charging, the lizard brain goes 'oh cool we got away from the threat? Neat, I'll stop pumping you full of adrenaline now.'

The freeze/appease, or shut down/fawn response, can be trickier. Especially when you're in a chronically activated state, which is pretty common amongst us folks with complex trauma. For me it's often associated with lots of dissociation, so that's where grounding and mindfulness come into play. Come across much about these?

PS - if you start to get info overload lemme know and we can come back to it all later. Good thing about forums is the posts ain't gonna disappear on us!! 😋

Also @NightFury ty for sharing more of your story too. It can definitely feel pretty destabilising, especially from what it sounds with how err... 'unpleasant states of being' were treated in your home growing up. Anxiety and illness are both perfectly normal human experiences, and you deserve to be able to express and experience them safely!

See I reckon this is where your lizard brain learned long ago that 'displays of emotions make primary caregiver angry. If primary caregiver rejects me, I will die, so I can't make them angry'.

So then 'expressing emotions = I might die' gets wired into your neural pathways.

Takes time to convince lizard brain that actually, every time you express yourself, you haven't died, or been rejected (which to our socially wired brains feels like dying), and that it doesn't have to hit the Big Red Button every single time you decide to get your emotional needs met.