#internalized gaslighting

how do i know if i'm okay? i can't recognize if i'm struggling or just actively triggering myself, and even when i do feel bad it's always with a thick layer of numbness/lack of actual care. i don't know how to feel the full scope of my emotions. bad stuff happened to me and i know to some extent that they're bad but it's hard to not take them lightly. and my memory regarding my feelings is pretty much non existent. if i feel overwhelmed at some point, i can't tell 5 minutes later what it was like.

i feel like i'm always in this middle ground of being fine but a little bit affected in some way. but when i feel good for a few days it makes me feel guilty, like i created all my problems for no reason and now i have to trigger myself again, i have to feel worse because it's unfair to act like things are bad and then be okay the next day.

i think i felt really bad yesterday, i must have despite the emotional detachment because i remember feeling overwhelmed. but now i'm normal. how comes i'm so normal?

thank you for your time bun. i hope your day's okay!

Hey etoilause, it's good to hear from you.

I'm sorry to hear about what's been going on. I think it can be hard to get a sense of whether or not you're okay - it can be hard to concentrate on certain signs, especially when you're unsure what to look for.

I would say that, first of all, perhaps this "thick layer of numbness/lack of actual care" is dissociation. If you're going through a hard time emotionally or psychologically, dissociation can make you feel removed from all of that, whether that's feeling foggy, distant, numb, etc. When you're going through this, especially if this is emotional amnesia, it may not actually be possible for you to fully feel your emotions during this time. That's the point - to distance yourself from your emotions, especially if they are emotions being emitted from a traumatic memory.

I also totally relate to your next to last paragraph. I feel like that can just be the stage that you're at in terms of your healing. As for the self-triggering (this is something I'm actively trying to deal with) there's a more formal and scientific PDF explaining what self triggering looks like here, or there's a forum talking about it here.

I can understand how you feel like it's unfair to act like things are bad and then be okay the next day. But it may help to remember that healing isn't linear - sometimes you will have good days and sometimes you will have bad days, and neither really say anything about what you went through. Just because you have a good day doesn't necessarily mean that your trauma wasn't severe, in fact you deserve good things in spite of what you've been through.

But this can be hard to internalize when you're dealing with other things like emotional amnesia, self-triggering, or even internalized gaslighting (does that term resonate with you? internalized gaslighting often goes hand-in-hand with self-triggering).