Regulation

I asked a friend last night to write a blog as she hadn't in a long time and now take my own advice. As I'm sure the whole country knows, we have just had the summer holidays. Now I enjoy my kids being off,  enjoy being able to travel, love seeing friends and sitting in the sun. I relish experiencing new things as the kids get older and this year we have reached a stage where we can all ride a bike on the road.

But as someone who also struggles with my brain the summer holidays present another challenge. My therapist is on holiday to which means the ability to upload offload discuss how situations can or are being handled is not there. I usually see this as a chance to put into practise all the things I have  learnt over the previous months, I see it as a marker as to how well me myself and my others are getting on and co operating with each other. I like to see how well we can remain in the present and not be swallowed by past flashbacks or future anxiety.

Triggered and overwhelmed.

Overwhelm is a funny thing. Everything is exaggerated, every sense on full and above full. 

Sounds hurt, they are to loud. Crisp packets and ice cream wrappers thunder. Metal gates are as loud as shotgun bullets, crunching shoes on pavements can seem as if the very ground they were built on may crack.

Whispering becomes loud talking, talking becomes shouting, and shouting makes you want to curl up in protective ball.(overwhelmed).

Switching regulating emotional states in any appropriate way seem impossible, far to hurried. It's as if you need everything to go into slow motion to understand or comprehen. 

So standing there shaking the world of touch, taste, sound, reaction, vision all in Incredible Hulk mode! What and earth do you do!

Nothing that's what! ABSOLUTLY nothing! There is another element to this crazed sensitive state of overwhelm and that is the world of paranoia. If the world outside your door is dangerous, if your head is telling you that no one is trust worthily, that everyone will try to kill you, that you are separated, that isolation shut down is the only option. That no one will understand and so you must never rely on anything. What do you do?

Now I could give a text book reply here or I could give you the truth. As I have never been one for being fake I'll give you the honest truth. You sleep, lift your heavy body to do the bare minimum and sleep more! Gradually you become hungry, you try to eat well, and you sleep. Slowly each time you have enough courage to push the boundaries of the paranoid voices and heightened senses they become manageable. 

When you feel safe enough you start to re establish contact with the outside. A trip to the shop a text. You then sleep heavy exhausted day and night, a five minute conversation can be a marathon, and you sleep. 

Safety creeps further into all the damaged pain, meaning returns, thoughts return. People in a non threatening perspective return. You test the waters to look for truth. Eventually a wobbly corner is turned,

you carry on.