Night Mind

My anxiety has been really bad lately, and I'm not sleeping well. The thoughts keep me up later than I want to be awake, and they wake me throughout the night, making sleep restless and uncomfortable. When I do sleep, I have bad dreams. I don't know why I call them just bad dreams, because they really are nightmares. Endless scenarios of being chased by a man through a rundown compound, a giant house, or a massive hotel, all of which have secret corridors and creepy areas to get turned around and lost in, increasing the chances I'll be captured. I wake in damp sheets because I'm sweating so much as I try to get much needed rest and respite from the anxiety and reality of life. Typically every morning when I wake, long before my alarm goes off, the anxious thoughts repeat over and over, tormenting me. I try to talk them down. I try to comfort myself. I try to reassure myself. I try to distract myself. I try to fall back asleep, willing myself to escape in a pleasant dream while knowing it's likely that I'll have another bad dream. Another bad dream is better than this anxiety though. At least I know those are just dreams. Eventually I get up - most days not speaking a word of the thoughts that are weighing me down, stealing my confidence, and making me feel like a failure. That energy doesn't need to be put on other people regularly, especially my wife; it's my burden to bear.

Laying in bed with these thoughts day after exhausting day is becoming increasingly challenging. So this morning, instead of letting the thoughts beat me up at the start of another day, I got out of bed to write. Writing always makes me feel better.

At the start of therapy, I read a massive book that detailed in great depth how to cope with trauma related dissociation. Having complex PTSD and a dissociative disorder means that I'm quite often battling becoming dysregulated and spiraling. Guilt and shame bubble up and boil over like a pot of milk on the stove, turning sour and ruining whatever was sure to be a treat. The bubbling up and boiling over is the state that I've worked so hard to manage over the past four years. This overwhelm happens when the voices in my head become so loud that I can't think over them. My thoughts and actions are taken over by their own. The parts that bring the anxiety and dysregulation are known as the trio - The Critic, Fawn, and Hothead. I wrote about them in great detail a couple years ago because they're extremely disruptive and challenging to share space with. They're a dysfunctional group of three parts who never seem to be in agreement. I'm always in the middle, desperately trying to keep them from attacking one another. They have contradicting thoughts, beliefs, feelings, and ways of moving through life, which makes it feel like I'm being quartered - viciously torn apart, limb from limb. The Critic does nothing but belittle and berate me, making Fawn feel smaller and smaller, incompetent and worthless. Eventually she crumples into the fetal position on the floor, covering her ears, trying to pretend like she isn't there. Hothead loses their temper under all the criticism and pressure, panicking and leaving a path of destruction as they rip through like an F5 tornado. Despite all the work I've done and the progress I've made over the past four years, this trio still gets the better of me, particularly the critic and Fawn. Right now, in this moment, with each of them so very present, along with the writer and many other parts, I'm struggling. The relief of death, a deeply sad thought that enters the mind. Suicidal ideation is something I've struggled with since I was a teenager. I will never act on it, but I also won't pretend like it's not something that enters my mind when I'm feeling like this and staring into the impossibility of adult life.

I think most people would call this imposter syndrome. I feel like I don't know how I got here. I don't know how I've built and managed the life that I see before me, and I don't know how the hell I'm going to carry on. In a state like this, in the depth of the darkness, I can't easily grasp at the tools and skills I've learned in therapy and practiced over the past four years. It's like that's all gone. Those resources are made invisible by doubt and insecurity and a disbelief that I've accomplished anything. I don't know what to do with it. So I write.

I write and I write, in the hopes that the writing will help me unblend from the the trio and rise above what's weighing me down. Unblending is the process in which we create distance between ourselves and these parts. Unblending changes the perspective from their point of view to that of an observer. Creating this distance makes their feelings and emotions less intense, and invites productive mediation and resolution to take place. Or at the very least, it allows you to slow down and breathe. Sometimes I'm able to unblend rather quickly, within minutes, but other times it can take me hours. Dysregulation happens for a reason, so these things that might seem so small to us are monumental to these parts. The severity of dysregulation is often bewildering in regard to the little but many triggers that brought it on. Clarity comes once I've been able to step back and see all the parts who were involved, each of them standing side by side in camaraderie rather than face to face in battle. Unblending is a beautiful process, one that typically happens for me when I write. Writing is sometimes the only way I can create that distance between myself and each of them. Writing about what they're feeling and experiencing is the only way I can come to know what is troubling them so much. It's the only way I can learn how to help them, and in turn help myself. I'm so incredibly grateful for the Writer - the part of me who figured this out about myself, that writing is the key.

I sat down this morning before the sun rose, enveloped in darkness, weighed down by anxiety, fear, doubt, and insecurity. I rise feeling more present and aware, empowered by leaving the weight of it all on the page. This is doing the work.

Remember : You're not alone. We've got this.

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One of my favorite songs, Nightminds by Missy Higgins.