Thread by @Merrsiful

New pet theory.

My meltdowns and panic attacks are because I am in an emotional flashback. I've triggered a part of my brain that has developmental trauma and C-PTSD.

This is a thread about what I have learned about trauma and meltdowns, and how I conceptualize healing. (1/25)

The trauma becomes my entire reality. I spiral. It's incessant. Usually I don't realize I am in a flashback.

At different points in my life, trauma flashbacks have lasted for hours, days. Months. My masking and irrational understanding of the world made that all worse. (2/)

As did harmful coping mechanisms and beliefs about myself. For a long time, I unknowingly doubled down on my own trauma.

Stuck in the fight-or-flight, fawn-or-freeze, I decided that it was the baseline for existence, and I just had to cope and work. And so i pushed myself. (3/)

Then I crashed. A lot.

Yet I had a place to live and the freedom to ... not heal, but be in pain more peacefully. I had resources to grow. I had sixteen years of therapy. Eventually, I found very good support and care.

...I always want to give background for context. (4/)

Anyway. This is what I learned.

The brain is plastic. It can develop and change. C-PTSD can heal. I am healing.

Because I think I know the logical principle behind it.

My meltdowns are actually trauma states from different stages of my emotional development. (5/)

I am beginning to identify if a trauma state is from infancy, young childhood, from this event or that.

Once I can identify the type of meltdown, I can give myself what I needed at the moment of trauma. Deep pressure, rest, diminished sensory stimuli, connection, insight.(6/)

Being aware of meltdowns allows me to detach myself from them. They are real and valid, but they don't have to be my current reality. They are automatic responses generated by my trauma and my nervous system.

Being detached from them has helped me slow down when I'm in one. (7/)

I've been working on feeling safe and slowing my mind for years. Of allowing myself to stop completely when having a panic attack.

Having the space to deeply slow my mind has begun to not only allow me to notice the panic, but also challenge it while inside an attack. (8/)

With acute self-awareness and compassion, I can choose to gently question whether my thoughts are rational.

I can choose to express the panic through somatic therapies like art or movement. I can choose to stim.

I can choose to redirect my thoughts. I can choose my mind. (9/)

I have found that I can choose to use emotional regulation techniques, even when those same techniques feel invalidating when someone else pushes me or forces me to do them.

Having the autonomy to trust my own ability to care for myself has been imperative. (10/)

My healing has been self-directed as well.

I have had therapy: CBT, DBT, family systems therapy, art therapy, trauma therapy, contextual science. Some of it was very very good, and helpful for skill-building.

I got very good at therapy. But it wasn't enough.
(11/)

I have had authentic love and acceptance as well, from therapists, from friends, from people who fundamentally changed my life.

But the primary factor in my healing has been me. I developed the resilience and the insight and the stubbornness to keep going.

(12/)

Even when I was living my life backwards and upside-down, with very little reward to show for it, I was always fighting to push forward.

I'm not being self-congratulatory here. I messed up a lot and lost a lot.

But I have always eventually chose to seek healing.

(13/)

The meltdowns are key to a certain part of that healing.

If I assume that I have trauma around certain triggers, that means that I can choose to do things to heal that part of my trauma, too.

With attention, careful insight, and compassion, I've started to do so. (14/)

I've developed ways to listen to the pain within me without judgment. To let myself express what I need. To feel the intensity through movement and art in a safe emotional space.

I wouldn't recommend this without helpful support and care. It can unleash a lot. 😬🌋🤯 (15/)

I have been finding ways to "reparent" myself. But I do so only in ways that feel real. That feel healing.

I want to support how my mind and emotions work. I want to assume my own competence.

So that means that I work to notice if I am ready to face harder growth, too. (16/)

For instance: challenging my assumption that I want to avoid pain and being overwhelmed.

Because I can allow myself to avoid it, without guilt. It's always okay if I do so.

But when I am a balanced place emotionally, I can also choose to sit with it when overwhelmed.

(17/)

Doing so in a safe way while finding ways to calm my reactions to the stimuli has been helping a lot

This is contrary to how I've experienced exposure therapy. Exposure therapy is awful and gruesome because it's not self-directed. It cannot respond to individual needs.

(18/)

At certain points, I've been able to allow myself to detach, even in the middle of meltdowns. Even when part of my mind is in extreme pain, I have been learning to notice and disrupt that pattern in a certain way.

I have found I can stim to escape, if only for a minute. (19/)

Every action I have been taking to gently question the meltdowns, my negative beliefs in myself, my irrational (yet understandable! and valid!) processes have all been helping heal the trauma.

I can feel my brain knitting together. I am noticing drastic changes. (20/)

I even have the excitement of having new and exciting varieties of panic attack, now from later periods of my life. 😝

The more connections I make, and the more I learn things that resonate with what I need and how I authentically feel, the more chances I have to heal. (21/)

As long as I am acting in accordance with my own values, with respect and self-knowledge and compassion for myself, nothing is wasted.

Everything that feels right to me can become a part of genuine understanding and growth. (22/)

This is another ridiculously long thread, with vague allusions of philosophy, claims of emotional knowledge, and several mentions of challenging my own thoughts and behavior.

It would be inappropriate and ableist for any of these practices to be pushed on someone else. (23/)

But because I am choosing it for myself, it is different.

And I am healing in ways that I could have never imagined.

I am posting this to make the knowledge I've learned accessible, in case someone finds it helpful while developing their own journey. (24/)

It is all very complicated and hard, to learn your own mind and respond to it differently. It takes a long time.

I don't think if it will turn out good or bad in the end. But so far, it has been incredibly rewarding.

#ActuallyAutistic #cpstd

(25/end)