Making attachment challenges smaller rather than expecting myself to be normal immediately

I just had a good insight about the attachment disorder challenges.

I realize that if I am just easier on myself and more accepting of the way that distancing/separation are challenges for me, and if I try to ameliorate the suffering, then I am more likely to stay in good emotional condition where I can retain self-control.

I think what I've been doing is basically trying to become a normal person, as though I didn't have these challenges, as fast as possible by just expecting myself to handle any separation challenge through self-control alone.

But then after more and more of these challenges, where I'm keeping up a good face and denying the pain and stress I'm going through, one challenge at some point breaks my self-control and I crash.

Continual coping really is not a good long-term plan for optimal behavior and self-control. We are able to cope effectively and control ourselves for short periods, but when it goes on for days our ability goes down. There's such a thing as self-control fatigue, documented in research.

So the thing for me to do is to bite off small, manageable chunks of separation/attachment challenge. Like after this phone call, I'm going to sleep with one of his clothing items, just to feel safer, since it did make me scared about our closeness.

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I had a good breakthrough with my boyfriend, where the two of us finally realized that he probably has no idea what the abandonment triggers feel like for me because he hasn't experienced it in this way and does not have PTSD from it.

I said, 'Imagine that you are in a spaceship and you are sent out alone hurtling through space in a solo spaceship, and then all connection to earth and humanity is cut off, the power dies, and you will be alone forever and die in space.'

Even a mild separation or letting him get off the phone after what felt like an argument without making up can feel like that. There's this panicky feeling of, am I throwing myself to my doom if I let this separation happen?

It is really too bad I have baby PTSD. But it helps SO much that between the two of us, at least we have an acknowledgment that it might be more severe than he can understand. That helps so much.

I did have really good emotional control while we were talking. I've been doing really well lately. I think these binaural and subliminal tracks are helping, even if from placebo effect. If it's placebo effect, that would be impressive - that my body knew how to fix itself once given permission to do so.

I really do want to get over this.

Here's an interesting question. If I got over it, then what? I'd probably be closer with my boyfriend and see him more. Maybe that scares me a little bit. Maybe I need to work on feeling really excited about life without attachment disorder, and feeling ok with things that might happen if I didn't have it, in order to feel ok moving on.
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Reliving abandonment trauma with a positive outcome

Alright, so at this point I know I need to create a trauma blog to express what I am going through.

I just can't say enough how intense this is, trauma therapy and the nervous system reorganizing.

It's something like a very long drug trip that never ends, where you never go back to how you were before.

I feel good being able to describe what is happening with adequate analogies. If only I can get an analogy:
1) It finally makes sense to me, and
2) I know that I can pull that out of my hat if I need to explain it to someone else.

Another one I came up with earlier was that these abandonment triggers are like going through drug withdrawal in rehab, but having the drugs you are withdrawing from given back to you and taken from you randomly, so that you oscillate between your nervous system crying out for them and going through physical (HPA axis, digestion, energy, physical symptoms) withdrawal and then what feels like complete relief and euphoria and everything being as it should be again. (Where when you feel that the person is distant and you can't talk to them/be around them it's like drug withdrawal, and when you are in touch with them and things are good between you again it's like being satisfied again.)

The more trauma I process, the more strongly I feel these two poles. The "complex PTSD flashbacks" are so intense and so physical that I worry I might be physically harmed or get sick from them, and sometimes I do develop a sore throat. But as this article states, the feelings are always easier to handle if I just allow them and don't try to make them go away.

It's funny because the past few times when I have gotten back in touch with my partner after a time of crying out and needing them "no matter what" (it feels), I have felt such intense and wonderful physical relief. I felt it again now just thinking about that situation, of not just feeling safe but feeling capable.

It sounds perverse but I feel so capable and great in the world when I can call my partner 20 times when he is in the library and doesn't want to be called and finally he picks up. That is like "Major Success" for a baby. That's what the attachment system evolved to do. I get a very big built-in reward for doing that. My body says, "Good job baby for not giving up, for continuing to cry. You saved yourself from certain death. Here are some wonderful chemicals for your trouble. Keep it up!"

Maybe I can just run through a "positive outcome" for attachment trauma in my mind over and over, where I'm a baby crying in the forest ... or where I'm in "that place" (people with trauma might know what I mean), and then I cry out and reach out and someone or something comes and then All is Right With the World again.

They say that that kind of therapy is useful for survivors of adult trauma: where you relive the event but do something that shows your capability to protect yourself, like using martial arts on an actor who is play-acting your traumatic scene with you.

It's almost too much to imagine reliving that story with a happy ending. That "place out there" has seemed until now way beyond the reach of any human being, somewhere that only existed for me. It's just delicious to imagine that someone else could be with me while I felt it that perhaps if I cried out while I was there, someone would come.

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