Why isn't anyone like me?

the isolation of mental health struggles

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This past week in therapy I was yet again lamenting that I feel so isolated and alone in my feelings/emotions. “I have yet to find anyone who feels things the way I do—who fear sensations the way I do,” I said.

This has been an ongoing theme throughout my life. It’s a clear trauma response—my mind obsessively body scanning, even without my consent. Then, zeroing in on the sensation that scares me the most and ruminating about it for days, weeks, sometimes months. Have I ever felt safe in my body or my mind?

When I bring up feeling unsafe in my body, even people closest to me don’t completely understand it. When I bring up obsessively ruminating about a sensation I don’t want to have (i.e. an ocular migraine), I can tell people are not terrorized in the way that I am. I should be able to feel things, notice them, and let them go, right? My body/mind doesn’t do this and instead encodes the sensation as a fear; a terror. The body remembers and rivulets of thoughts cascade.

I don’t know how to break this cycle. Every sensation I don’t like feels like a trauma. I spend my days trying to get through them, not enjoying them. By around 4pm, my mind eases up a bit. There is a sense of, “Oh good, we made it through without being crumpled by a painful or uncomfortable sensation.”

In therapy, I spend time trying to feel neutral. I can’t jump from scared to joy, so neutrality is the current focus. Rarely does my mind catalog pleasurable sensations. When I try to focus there, I begin to worry that I’m jinxing it; that just by noticing a nice sensation means it’ll leave.

I take solace in the fact that nothing is forever, but not when I’m feeling good.

I want to meet other people like me; who struggle like me. I want to have a “lightbulb” moment where I suddenly snap out of this or something suddenly clicks. I know this stems from a lot of bullshit I see on social media of people claiming [insert somatic exercise/or herb/or supplement] cured them! I know I am not a thing to be cured. I know that healing doesn’t have a end point. I know nothing is “wrong” with me.

And yet, how unfair it feels to have been in and out of therapy and on an anti-depressant for 23 years (and slowly reducing the dose), and still struggling with the same shit, just differently packaged.

I know I have made huge strides with my mental health, but it’s frustrating to feel like I still have no idea how to shift this one major thing. I’m tired of living in functional freeze, hypervigilance, and having a body/mind that is switched on to “alert” 24/7.

I want help from those who have experienced what I have experienced. I want to feel less alone.

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