For 6 days, my emotions have been yo-yoing!!!! The news, what is currently happening in Ukraine has reactivated me a lot.
Last Saturday, at the very first I was invaded by massive fears of the end of the world, of war... I was in "survivalist" mode. I spent Saturday on survivalist sites listing everything I had to buy to survive, how to make my survival bag, thinking about where to flee... At that moment, I was like in a kind of tunnel, unable to see the kilometric distance between Ukraine and France, unable to understand that the soldiers were not heading towards my house. I had to flee and I only had a few hours to do so. Everything was going to blow up and go to hell in a few hours, my speed to prepare for the worst was my only chance of survival... I exchanged by text with my mother and my sister, telling them to do the same...
Sunday, suddenly I found my ability to see things with nuances. I was able to discuss the situation with my sister, calm down... I tried to understand where these massive anxieties that had invaded me came from.
The guru's wife in the sect in which I grew up had a very survivalist, end-of-the-world discourse... I was immersed in this discourse and these beliefs throughout my childhood. The guru's wife wanted each house of the sect to be autonomous with its garage, its bakery, its garden... Officially it was to know how to do everything, its garden to feed itself, the sewing to make its clothes... A discourse of "returning to the earth" like "bio values" but its real values were concealed. As an aside, she had very paranoid and totally survivalist remarks.
I think I have dissociative parts that are still very steeped in that discourse.
I think that parties also reacted to the announcement of this war in reaction to the "civil war" that I experienced in Africa when I was little.
And I also have parts that sent me the image (memory) of body photos that the guru showed me when he returned from Rwanda after the conflicts between Hutu and Tutsi. He had threatened to do the same to me as to these people if I was not obedient.
Sunday, I had a kind of "respite". I was able to reflect, to question myself, to dialogue internally to identify what were my thoughts, my reactivations....
Then Monday. The horror. It had really been several months or even years since I had had such strong panic attacks and anxiety attacks!!!!! I could hear non-stop crying in my head (dissociative parts crying because they are terrified). It was really unbearable!!! It started as soon as I woke up and didn't stop until late afternoon. Associated with this, I had a fucking urge to vomit, a cannonball that weighed my stomach and a lump in my throat. I was overwhelmed by the urge to throw myself on the floor, roll into a ball and scream and cry.
It's quite strange. Saturday my vision of things was "shrinked", I could not see all the "reality. I did not perceive the kilometric distance, the complexity of international agreements, the protection offered by NATO and Europe.. But I was in "fighting" and "survival" mode. Conversely, on Monday, my vision was also "narrowed" but there, I was really "lost" in my much too strong emotions and my "inner world" with internal tears that took up all the space. I was unable to concentrate, feel, hear anything other than these tears of terror and the bodily sensations associated with them. I was like "paralyzed", "powerless", in "little girl who undergoes and suffers".
I called my psychiatrist urgently and asked her for an appointment. She received me on Monday at the end of the afternoon. We readjusted my treatment to manage anxiety attacks and discussed a lot to resituate current events in the reality of the here and now.
Internally, we have set up certain things. I no longer read about the news in Ukraine because it reactivates me too much. And we agreed to a compromise with my "survivalist" parties, I prepared a small survival bag that I keep with me in my car. The downside being that these parties stop worrying and thinking about the worst-case scenario.
It took me a few days to calm down and regain some serenity but I think that's it, calm has returned inside.
I really believe that the mechanism of reactivating itself is a constant attempt by the brain to get us to repair a malfunction. At the time, we couldn't integrate what was happening because we didn't have the keys to analyze and understand the events. But now we can and our brain tries again and again until we get there... In the end, it's a very good mechanism! Even if it's boring to live as long as we refuse to face it and run away from it...
Personally, I don't agree with people who put "warning triggers" before writing things about rape or violence. Because I find it silly. The brain unlocks when you are ready to face it and if it is not, it manages so that you do not know either by an episode of amnesia or by derealization or depersonalization... For me, being reactivated is helpful, it's always an opportunity to move forward, to understand each other, to change your vision of things, your beliefs... Ukraine helps me (sorry, it's weird to say it like that) to better to realize that I have anchored beliefs linked to the beliefs of the guru's wife, that I make amalgams with past situations that I have experienced. It helps me to dig and put back scales between events, to separate past and present... In the end, we can't protect ourselves from life! Being confronted with everyday life is what helps to heal. If I had been put in a bubble without information, without contact with anyone, I would not have been reactivated by the war in Ukraine. But suddenly, I wouldn't have realized that I have dissociative parts that have integrated an end-of-the-world survivalist thought, that forces me to be curious, to question myself... What am I thinking? What do I believe? What reactivates me? What is it associated with as thought, belief, action? How can I "reset" my world? Without these reactivations, nothing changes inside...
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