My therapist asked today, ‘What holds me back from talking?’ The easy answer is that I freeze. I blank out and suddenly feel like I want the earth to open up and swallow me. The more complicated answer is that I fear the reactions of what I’m about to say. And it’s irrational cause I know the other person isn’t going to react badly or be upset by what I have to say. I trust them that they won’t have a bad reaction. I don’t trust myself that I won’t mess up what I’m going to say and then no one would understand me or think I’m weird and awkward. And I’m weird and awkward. Then if I do have a lot to say, I start becoming overwhelmed and feel like it’s a lot of work to talk and then I start freezing and second guessing myself. Then finally I talk myself out of talking and I sit quietly. My therapist says I’m reliving my past, as those with PTSD do, when I talk. We talked about the effect my past has had on me when it comes to conversing. Sometimes I feel like I’m in my own little bubble, even when I’m around a lot of people. I forget(afraid) to come out of that bubble and interact with others.
My therapist doesn’t share a lot of coping skills. Which sometimes makes therapy harder cause I’m used to getting told some coping skills and calling it a day. I’m made to actually talk more about what and why I do things the way I do or why my brain is the way it is. I think the reason that EDMR therapy didn’t work out for me too well is that we never actually worked through the problems. We used gadgets to try to divert the brain. She took out this thing that has two vibrating paddles and turned it on. She told me to keep talking and just hold one in each hand. It alternates which hand vibrates for brief pulses. It diverts a fraction of your brain’s “bandwidth” to process something, into a completely irrelevant and non-stressful distraction, therefore hindering my hard-wired automatic stress response from going full speed ahead toward shutting down and having a panic attack. It almost feels like the equivalent of using a fidget toy to help someone with ADHD focus when otherwise we’d just be stuck trying to overcome our own brain.
While this can work and sometimes does have a calming affect to diminish the start of a panic attack. I would still have flashes of the past and nightmares of what we were talking about. It was very draining. Though I did like my last therapist, she retired. I’m happy to have a new approach in therapy. But I do feel kind of lost not having much for coping mechanisms. But I always feel that therapy should be more than just spouting off some coping mechanisms and calling it a day. Even if I am forced to talk more. Dealing with my PTSD is a struggle. While learning techniques to deal with triggers and episodes is nice. I think talking about it more is helping. However, it is anxiety-inducing at times.
I feel like I’m babbling now and writing all this is giving me anxiety. It’s giving me anxiety because of how much I’m “talking” right now. To believe that no one will have a bad reaction to what I say, or write, is hard. Even though there is no reason for anyone to have a bad reaction.
Today was researching on how to JavaScript a Roman numeral converter. And making a big pot of beans for dinner tonight. It was started kind of late so I do hope the beans will be ready by dinner.
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Roman Numeral Converter
Convert the given number into a roman numeral.
Roman numerals Arabic numerals
M 1000
CM 900
D 500
CD 400
C 100
XC 90
L 50
XL 40
X 10
IX 9
V 5
IV 4
I 1
All roman numerals answers should be provided in upper-case.
function convertToRoman(num) {
return num;
}
convertToRoman(36);
