We have not been around here much lately while the rest of our life intrudes. At times, it has felt like our whole world is falling apart. Having a place to go that is safe and accepting is helping so much in keeping ourself together. I-Amanda wish so much we could be talking about what kind of Easter dress to get and what shoes would go with it instead.
Work has been a major source of stress with a major project behind schedule requiring lots of extra hours. This also cuts into our Amanda time which adds to the stress and feelings of powerlessness. There have been days where so many thing are coming at one time that Maleme has been overwhelmed and I-Amanda have popped out for short times. Some of our coworkers have noticed that we have been more emotional than we normally act.
Added to this is the background noise of the news with all the hate groups becoming emboldened to act out and lawmakers introducing anti LGBT bills in many parts of the country, especially here in the South.
But, the part that is affecting us the most is at church which has been our refuge and sanctuary. The clergy are trying to change some things about the service to appeal to people outside our congregation and bring in more young people. Mostly, it is okay even though most of the changes are not appealing to us. But, some of them are extremely triggering. When the congregation does those things, it feels like aliens have come in and taken over the people I thought I knew and trusted. This triggers some of our deepest fears and destroys the sense of safety we had before. Our therapist has suggested taking a hiatus to protect ourself which we have already been thinking about. But, this itself is also triggering that feelings of being rejected by our parents and wanting to run away but have no place to go.
Being in the middle of the choir has been making it worse by adding to the feeling of being trapped and sending us beyond fight or flight into dissociative freeze. We are back being 6 on an OR table still awake but unable to move while nurses jam an anaesthesia mask over our face or 6 in the principal's office being beaten for being stubborn and also back at 5 trapped in a preschool bathroom with the Monster Man. We are also feeling being a teenager while our parents shred other apart verbally, but felt like they were physically harming each other and something about it related to us being a freak for being too feminine and not being masculine enough. The feelings of helplessness and wanting to be dead instead of feeling all the horrible things flow freely again in those moments. It feels like being adopted by our church family, then told we are not really wanted which feeds back into the feelings of being horrible and not deserving. The fears of having the real us removed but leaving the body and a robotlike, soulless persona to please everyone else are hit hard.
The triggering has been so strong that even thinking about the triggering events brings it on enough to cause us to dissociate a little. When we start an email to the head pastor, we find ourself unable to focus and finding excuses to do anything else. It has taken a week to be able to say what I have said here in a safe place. It has been affecting home life too as we fall back into the old modes of hypervigilance and feeling like something bad will happen any moment.
Thanks for listening. Just having someone listen and not feeling alone helps.
Hi Amanda,
I am so sorry to hear you are going through a bad patch, and I hope that is all it is and things start to go better for you soon. I don't really know what to say about your specific issues but I wanted you to know that someone has heard you and sympathises.
All the very best
Hugs
B
We are hanging on. At least the craziness at work is letting up now. Our wife is out for the evening with her women's group and we have a couple extra hours of Amanda time to help feel better about ourself. The bitter irony is that our congregation would be more likely to be accepting of us showing up in a dress than us getting up and saying how much we want to go back the way things were in worship mode.
Are you able to talk with the pastor about how you feel?
It seems to me that you are as much a part of the congregation as anyone else and deserve to have the pastor and those who run things go to some effort to find a way to avoid triggering you with the changes.
I realize that might be difficult for you; if so, perhaps you could talk to your wife and see if she can help. Or, if you have a therapist you trust, perhaps they could help you.
Our therapist helped talk me and Little One down and unpack what it is that is so triggering. I may be talking something heavy like one of the brake discs our son left behind to hold and keep grounded to worship. Taking a break from choir and sitting behind everyone else so it does not feel like we are about to be attacked and can sit where we do not feel trapped is a possibility if other things do not work. She had some good suggestions about finding times to be in the sanctuary outside of services and remember that it is a safe place and people and that it is the memories and not the place and people that scare us.
One of the greatest difficulties is overcoming the fear of telling. Just opening email with the intent to send a note to one or more of the pastors gets us feeling nervous and dissociating a little. We keep finding reasons to put it off and do something else until it is too late to send it.
Our wife is really trying to help, but feels so powerless since this is beyond reason. When we had a really bad emotional flashback in the middle of the night early in the week, she was nearly in panic herself.