Gonzo: Sertraline 50mg chaos and withdrawal

July 21

I keep having lots of good insights and journaling a lot, and many ups and downs, as usual. I need to work on my emotions. I won't explain things as I used to like I said because if I do so it will be in my recovery story.

July 22

Today I made great progress, I found some type of emotional closure for some of my worst traumas of the past 9 years of my life.

July 23

This is great I think you are very close to recovering keep it up.

July 23

Yeah but I still have many sh*tty moments during the day. I think I have been feeling so alone in my life and this is the reason of my "bad" MH. I suspect is the case for many many of us. Hopefully it will change sooner than later.

July 23

True that being alone makes everything much worse.

I could not trust anyone for most of my life.

I was most alone when I was surrounded by people who I had to 'trust'.

Which just means I desperately needed their protection.

July 23

My love, my every feelings, were always so easily sacrificed by those around me.

Few respected me, as I grew up I knew how to sort people out.

But still nobody could possibly understand the hell I've been through and was still being through.

And it still goes on.

July 24

I'm sorry. Yeah, I understand.

I'm trying to sort out my identity "disturbances"/issues, which were and are a lot, I want to share how many selves I had, different ways of being and react to the world and how psychiatry made everything much more complicated and difficult:

-My non drugged and non "psychotic" helpless, fawning false self, which I experienced more than half my life.

-My non drugged and non "psychotic" depressed and vulnerable narcissistic false self.

-My non drugged and non "psychotic" narcissistic and individualistic stoic false self.

-My non drugged and non "psychotic" narcissistic and individualistic egomaniac false self.

-My non drugged and non "psychotic" real self, which was very short lived.

-My non drugged and "psychotic" "shadow" self dominated by anger, fear, hate, fear, confusion and sadness, feelings and emotions of abandonment trauma.

-My drugged false self.

-My non drugged, "psychotic" and in withdrawal self.

When I started taking Sertraline I was "possessed" by my non drugged and "psychotic" "shadow" self, going through an identity, existential, moral and postraumatic crisis, very paranoid, trying to sort out all my identities and experiences in my life to become my real self, and when I stopped taking Sertraline my synthetic fake "happy" reality and self collapsed, which led to my non drugged, "psychotic" and in withdrawal self. After that I have been rotating between all the other selves, destabilized, hoping to become my true self one day.

Each one of those selves and identities is a different narrative and lecture of reality, a different perspective of life. Our identities and narratives give us this sense of control and safety, if we lose them we experience this death anxiety and dread, and I lost all my identities. I became this confused and scared person.

I stopped being able to understand and analyze reality while I was drugged and brainwashed by psychiatry, I was so confused and lost, I'd say specially during withdrawal, it all collapsed, the fake "happy" reality and identity of Sertraline, that fake and narcissistic relationship that I had, and later the scam of psychiatry.

It's difficult to understand and confusing from the outside, and hell inside.

July 26

I keep working on my abandonment trauma, I have identified a deep fear of rejection. Rejection leads to abandonment and loneliness feelings. Feeling alone, abandoned, so being rejected, is my core fear. My loneliness feelings are of a traumatic nature, coming from my abandonment trauma. All my life I had issues with being alone and I tried to avoid rejection as much as possible, isolation being one my coping mechanisms, OC behaviors other, videogames addictions too to avoid the feelings and emotions of loneliness. And so it goes. Until I became paranoid when I was 19, very, and my crisis happened and my psych intervention which was criminal and inhumane and Sertraline which made me disconnect from my feelings and paranoia, deceiving me for years, it masked it. I can't stand feeling alone, the psych pain is overwhelming, the anxiety, the fear, but I can't stand rejection either so I take no risk to connect with others anymore and I isolate. I experienced rejections too many times in my life and each time I do I relive my trauma and it shatters my mind and soul. I isolated when I was 19 because I felt alone again wich triggered my abandonment trauma emotions, feelings and postraumatic reactions and I became paranoid because I was afraid of being rejected and abandoned and end up alone due to my emotional and postraumatic reactions to my emotions and feelings of loneliness and abandonment, I was very angry and very scared and sad and confused, I had a lot of hate and violence inside of me, which shocked me, and I projected it on myself during my isolation and sef punished to avoid hurting inocent people. I wasn't crazy, I was paranoid and disturbed due to the intensity and traumatic nature of my loneliness and abandonment feelings and emotions, they were overwhelming and crazy making but I was conciouss about my issues and resisted my "psychosis" and wanted to recover. What psychiatry did to me was barbaric, doesn't matter if I wasn't injected with a powerful antipsychotic or tied up, they treated me like a criminal and chemically submissed me. Not even criminals in jail are chemically submissed, they have more rights than people in psych wards. In fact chemical submission is a technique used by rappists to subdue their victims. Pysch does the same thing. And it did it to me while I was disturbed, extremely vulnerable and looking for its help to recover and go back to "normal". Its betrayal was beyond evil. Then these evil people have the audacy to call this "help", and others as well, they say "it's for your own good". Humanity is full of scum. So I got trapped, isolated, trying to control or run away or overcome my traumatic feelings and emotions of abandonment, that no one understands and accepts nor validates, and my paranoia never improved, and I never recovered, and I can't count on MH workers because they're retarded. Abandonment and loneliness are core to the Western individualistic, narcissistic and egomaniac culture, they are part of its forbbiden emotional and psychosocial reality.

July 26

Many here have the same problems as you even without traumas as you wrote fear, anxiety, loneliness intrusive thoughts it seems more like an alteration of the drugs traumas exist I know I don't want to bother you That's my point of view, but don't underestimate the effects of these drugs and something very powerful.

July 26

I get that, but people start taking these drugs because they have issues and the drugs mask them. I'm very active in r/antipsychiatry, a subreddit/online forum for psychiatry survivors and victims, mostly a support platform, I've talked to many people there, many of them suffering withdrawal and there are always things that lead to the drugs and psychiatry, in many cases a trauma story/background. Then psychiatry makes everything 10000 times worse. This is my case.

July 26

55 minutes ago, Gonzo said:

I get that, but people start taking these drugs because they have issues and the drugs mask them. I'm very active in r/antipsychiatry, a subreddit/online forum for psychiatry survivors and victims, mostly a support platform, I've talked to many people there, many of them suffering withdrawal and there are always things that lead to the drugs and psychiatry, in many cases a trauma story/background. Then psychiatry makes everything 10000 times worse. This is my case.

These drugs are prescribed for minor ailments, not serious cases and from here on that lives become hell, I have been reading this forum since 2019 in my darkest times it was The only thing that helped me I read many stories of these drugs prescribed for the most simple ailments from nausea to headaches I have because they wasted a few hours of work, they are normal people with a life, a career, a degree, they have become disabled so that they can no longer live the life they Before taking these drugs, many developed real mental or physical disorders such that they were no longer able to do any physical activity or became sexually impotent. I read the most bizarre stories that are hard to believe but when you read you understand the suffering they went through and you understand that it's all true. Yes you are right these drugs are also and perhaps the greatest crime of psychiatry in cahoots with pharmaceutical companies not to mention how these drugs can lead to suicide or violent actions. I also have many traumas, I try to understand them and face them but I also understand that now my charge is 35% I'm not very clear to do it I hope that later I can be in a better position we don't have to try to speed up too much because you risk getting hurt a lot and going back much further I've learned over time I wait for favorable moments when I'm more lucid in this forum they're called reverse windows when you're in a wave it seems like everything is working against you and if I try to force your hand this discomfort tends to double so much as to make you incapacitated for any situation.

July 26

Yeah checco there are many different stories and cases sometimes it's things that are not that important that lead to these damn drugs, like a bit of sadness or anxiety due to work, then hell let loose because the person decides to come off due to adverse or side effects and wd happens due to neglectful shrinks and docs. I just think the focus should be holistic. We can't follow the same fatal biomedical reductionism of psychiatry. If there is no trauma beforehand awesome, then we can focus on wd symptoms only. Wd is a traumatic experience per se and lonely thx to psych malpractice.

July 26

1 hour ago, Gonzo said:

10 minutes ago, Gonzo said:

11 minutes ago, Gonzo said:

Yeah checco there are many different stories and cases sometimes it's things that are not that important that lead to these damn drugs, like a bit of sadness or anxiety due to work, then hell let loose because the person decides to come off due to adverse or side effects and wd happens due to neglectful shrinks and docs. I just think the focus should be holistic. We can't follow the same fatal biomedical reductionism of psychiatry. If there is no trauma beforehand awesome, then we can focus on wd symptoms only. Wd is a traumatic experience per se and lonely thx to psych malpractice.

Not just abstinence in this forum there are many stories of people ruined physically and mentally with 2 weeks or 1 month of intake without any abstinence in this forum they call it adverse reaction the drug is not tolerated by the patient and the psychiatrist insists on continuing to take it or even worse changes the drug causing even more damage to the patient in this the forum is full of these cases, I also consider myself lucky, my case is not the most serious, in fact I would say perhaps the lightest, it has not caused me serious physical or mental damage, all in all with great effort I was able to function.

July 26

Yes, it's true. So sad. And it's traumatic no matter what.

July 30

I keep having good insights, and by that I mean I'm recovering the insight I had and I lost due to Sertraline about my main issue which was paranoia, my main psychosocial issue, and that insight is my knowledge about how it is connected in a logical and emotional way to the complex trauma that I experienced in my life. And it all comes with great pain.

August 1

This will be my 800th post here wow. So I keep recovering the insight that I lost while drugged about my original trauma, paranoia and issues. I have learning about the shadow self. When I said I have insights means I'm recovering the knowledge and control I had over it, which I lost due to Sertraline use. The shadow is the repressed parts of our selves, it contains violent emotions such as anger and hate and violent impulses. Basically it's what we needed to repress from our selves to survive in our relational environments. Reintegrating the shadow means facing the trauma, I've been doing that for years at this point but I kept avoiding the shadow, all these violent feelings, emotions and impulses, in fact, I kept trying to avoid it, to repress it, to fit in and be fully "functional". If the shadow possess you, you become what psychiatry calls "psychotic". I hope this is my last post here until recovery.

August 6

I've been reading a bit lately about schema therapy, nothing too deep. In 2021 early 2022 I read books about metacognitive therapy and metacognitive interpersonal therapy, I'm not into that anymore but I need a new way to organize my personal identity because it got shattered in the past 9 years, it all started when I was 19, my abandonment trauma got triggered and I became paranoid, this paranoia destabilized my identity and led to and identity crisis, then psychiatry happened and I got drugged, the drug chemically distorted my already fragile identity in crisis, and I lost it gradually when I stopped taking the pills and I clung to the fake identity of my "OCD" psychiatric diagnosis which I adopted for close to 2 years until I went through an existential crisis in early 2023. Now I'm trying to organize the one million pieces of my fragmented personal identity, which is why I got interested in the jungian shadow and this schema therapy concepts such as schema mode (the jungian personas basically) and and early "maladaptive" schemas (trauma-based self-core beliefs and world views), also "maladaptive" coping responses. I don't try to "fix" myself with all this but to gain self knowledge so I can understand and manage better my "psychosocial" issues and move foward. I acknowledge that the problem is not me, my trauma or my postraumatic reactions but the lack of support, understanding and validation from others. I know I'm alone to solve my issues, I know most people don't understand nor accept them and that the MH system would quickly try to drug me again and "fix" me with its "therapies". So I'm alone to recover but I keep fighting.

August 8

I came to a conclusion, and it is the drug what made me lose control. Before it all my actions were logical even if trauma based, confusing and disturbing for others. And I lost control of my inner world and myself while I was drugged and going through withdrawal / "rebound effect". Everything else that happened to me for the past 7 and half years while I was hospitalized and once I was released was because of it. These drugs are powerful substances and it was not my fault. It was the drug what confused me and led me to this huge chaos.

August 9

On 8/8/2024 at 2:23 AM, Gonzo said:

I came to a conclusion, and it is the drug what made me lose control. Before it all my actions were logical even if trauma based, confusing and disturbing for others. And I lost control of my inner world and myself while I was drugged and going through withdrawal / "rebound effect". Everything else that happened to me for the past 7 and half years while I was hospitalized and once I was released was because of it. These drugs are powerful substances and it was not my fault. It was the drug what confused me and led me to this huge chaos.

My same conclusion, I too have many traumas and even serious ones but before taking drugs I was able to manage them but then they took control of my life turning it into a winter I just hope it goes away as time goes by, I really hope so, for the moment I can't do anything else I don't have much energy at the moment I think it's an effect of the last drug taken, many people talk about it.

August 9

Exactly checco, they took control over us while we had our consciousness "sleeping" on drugs, then they reclaimed our minds when we came off of them.

August 9

32 minutes ago, Gonzo said:

Exactly checco, they took control over us while we had our consciousness "sleeping" on drugs, then they reclaimed our minds when we came off of them.

Unfortunately, the negative effects do not appear after discontinuation of the drug if this were the case, this forum would not even exist. Years pass before the central nervous system begins to function again stable enough to regain self-control.

August 9

For me it's trauma. When I "woke up" after years of drugging I found myself powerless, confused. deeply hurt and unable to manage my inner experiences in a healthy way.

August 10

I have my doubts about trauma, even trauma is a product of psychiatry which does not recognize abstinence or the various side effects of these drugs therefore many adverse effects of the drug They are classified in other bipolar disorders, post traumatic trauma etc ...

August 10

With this I do not deny the existence of the disorder that trauma can cause, but those who have used these drugs are more vulnerable to trauma and emotions in general.

August 11

It's all interconnected checco.

https://sci-hub.se/10.3233/jrs-2010-0508

That document calls it Drug Stress Trauma Syndrome, to explain how these drugs make already existing trauma even worse and create new traumatic experiences through medical practice, withdrawal syndrome, side and adverse effects, etc.

Traumatized, lonely and opressed people are perfect targets for psychiatry, which pathologizes their experiences and profits on them, forever if the client/patient is not careful.

August 22

Maybe I already shared this video here:

This person is also a user here and he shared his recovery success story:

I commetend this on his video:

I'm almost 4 years since I stopped taking Sertraline 50mg. I recently learned about one type of therapy called schema therapy, this therapy tells about early "maladaptive" schemas that form when our core emotional needs aren't met (in childhood and adolescence, very linked to the adverse childhood experiences studies, or ACE, I suppose, it's early trauma). I haven't recovered sadly since I discovered this video. It's well known that many psych drugs/"meds" users have a trauma story, so it's obvious to me that these drugs numb the psychic pain and make people disconnect from their traumas or early "maladaptive" schemas, that they reconnect with during drugs discontinuation/withdrawal. This means using these drugs is mostly a "dysfunctional" coping mechanism no matter how much psychiatry tries to justify them, specially long term use. These drugs trick the mind and body, they're basically tranquilizers, Peter Breggin calls it medication spellbinding. It is my experience as well. So, anyway, these early "maladaptive" schemas trigger "maladaptive" coping responses ("dysfunctional" coping mechanisms), which are basically postraumatic reactions to the original non healed trauma. PAWS TMS is one of those. Because psychiatry is insidious and deliberately ignores trauma and withdrawal it says that original "symptoms" of the "mental illness/disorder" are "coming back" during withdrawal and calls it "rebound effect". In reality non recognized trauma is coming back plus withdrawal together with a loss of distress tolerance and healthy coping skills. There are two different narratives here: the trauma narrative based on painful life experiences that acknwledges, validates and gives meaning our reactions to them (painful and difficult mental and emotional states and various coping responses) so the unmet core emotional needs can be met and the trauma healed, and the biomedical psychiatric reductionistic narrative that denies the trauma and is all about the brain and "symptoms management" while giving no proof of physical abnormality nor recognizing psychiatric drugs dependence. So the confusion is huge, then we label ourselves and cognitively link in our racing and confused minds our withdrawal symptoms and postraumatic reactions/"maladaptive" coping responses coming from ourselves reconnecting and reacting with our reactivated early "maladaptive" schemas as our "mental illness/disorder" returning or something "wrong"/"abnormal" happening to us, as a relapse, that is, or simply as being in danger again the same way we were when our early traumas developed. Of course medical illnesses and disorders are scary, evil and dangerous and we want to get rid of them, reason why we can't understand and reprocess the trauma, relax and calm down our triggered nervous systems, and as a result withdrawal can't be overcomed. The problem doesn't end here, because each one of us have what Carl Jung said personas, these are false self/social masks that we create and carry to survive and "function" in society, they're are not our real selves, but some people identify with them as if they were their true selves. Withdrawal and our reactivated early "maladaptive" schemas/triggered early traumas can endanger said protective "persona", then our natural reaction is panic and confusion, terror even. Some early "maladaptive" schemas/early traumas can be dormant for years and years, psychologically repressed and/or chemically suppressed, until something triggers them... That is... Withdrawal. As a result our stored postraumatic stress gets released, it doesn't matter if it has been repressed for 20 or 40 years. Our personas can collapse enterely when withdrawal, mine did. I didn't even know how I was anymore. These drugs, AD at least and AP, can change your whole personality, it does for many people, it did to me. It is a synthetic, chemical persona. It blows apart when the drug is no more in our system, and if you have been drugged for years that means inner hell, an identity crisis, the natural thing to do then is to try to get back that "functional" persona/social mask/false self desperately, trying to recover stability, the issue is that it was never real, there is nothing to come back to in reality. This is why medication spellbinding is so twisted, so perverse. I linked my withdrawal symptoms and postraumatic reactions/"maladaptive" coping responses (that psychiatry pathologizes) coming from my reactivated early "maladaptive" schemas (that psychiatry deliberatly ignores, and I did too after years of drugging, confusion and withdrawal) as dangerous, evil, and became terrified of them, which made me very self conscious and obsess with myself, trying to control my inner experiences in order to be safe, in order to avoid facing my triggered early traumas overwhelming "negative" emotions and feelings, to distract myself. This is the PAWS TMS IMO. Of course none of this lead to feeling safe and calm down, which is needed to overcome withdrawal/PAWS. Tight self-control and using the body to self-soothe are two of the identified "maladaptive" coping responses triggered by active early "maladaptive" schemas/early traumas in schema therapy. In other words, my experience with psychiatry and Sertraline, the psychiatric indoctrination and brainwashing, chemical deception/medication spellbinding and traumatic withdrawal I suffered lead me to a reactivation and worsening of my early "maladaptive" schemas/early traumas, my body got stuck in a fight-flight trauma response and my mind was unable to make sense of it because my meaning framework was useless to do so distorted by the atrocious psychiatric views regarding suffering and psychiatric drugs use (abuse) that I had incorporated into my mindset. I used Sertraline for 3 years and that was simply drug abuse. Carl Jung also talks about the shadow self, or repressed/"immoral" self, I think its foundations are these early "maladaptive" schemas and their emotional content. There is also this concept of metacognition, how we interpret and react to our inner experiences, again not good for people like me, it becomes toxic due to these early "maladaptive" schemas/early traumas and psychiaty, also could explain PAWS TMS, "toxic metacognition" can be basically self-distracting. For all these reasons recovery becomes so difficult, if the body-mind can't calm down recovery can not happen, there is no reprocessing of postraumatic stress. It's a mental maze.

All this started for me while I was in a toxic narcissistic relationship. It was when I stopped taking the pills. This discontinuation of Sertraline made me reconnect with my chemically and psychologically suppressed early traumas and then this person triggered them with her narcissistic abuse (discarding phase of the "relationship"). Then my descent to hell began, in September 2020.

My theory is that I suffer from PAWS TMS, it all first started when I confused accute withdrawal syndrome symptoms and my normal reactions to this person narcissistic abuse plus my early trauma triggered (abandonment trauma, basically) in late 2020 with my original "mental illness/disorder" coming back ie my "(Pure O) OCD" when trying to make sense of what was happening to me and save that "relationship" and avoid reexperiencing my core fear: being rejected and abandoned. I didn't even remember my "OCD" psychiatric diagnosis until this woman's abuse in a desperate attempt to save that awful relationship because I was emotionally hooked to her, trauma bonded, and my OC behaviors were totally normal cosidering her narcissistic abuse and my early trauma being triggered by me stopping taking the pills cold turkey and her abuse, but I knew nothing about narcissistic abuse nor about withdrawal and I was still deceived by years of Sertraline abuse thinking that my trauma was over.

This video explains that this fixation with withdrawal symptoms, which I confused with all that, is basically a coping mechanism (self-distracting from deeper emotional turmoil aka overwhelming early trauma being triggered), with I expand linking to schema therapy concepts. His solutions are basically some metacognitive therapy and gestalt therapy IIRC techniques plus others such as expressive journaling. He propose to inform ourselves about all this, so gaining insight and metacognitive skills (self-awareness).

My theory is basically that following schema therapy concepts early "maladaptive" schemas or early traumas based on unmet core emotional needs get triggered by the withdrawal event (repressed post-traumatic stress is released plus withdrawal symptoms) and we engage in this PAWS TMS as a way to cope with them (an avoidance "maladaptive" coping response based on withdrawal symptoms sensations fixation to divert attention from the disturbing early trauma or early "maladaptive" schemas triggered "negative" emotions) that then becomes automatic and a chronic coping response because we engage in what schema therapy calls a schema mode, in this case we become stuck in a hopeless state called "vulnerable child" schema mode. It's all explained here:

https://www.simplypsychology.org/schema-therapy.html

https://www.schematherapy.com/id30.htm

Well, this has been my life since late 2019 actually when I came off Sertraline but didn't become hell until sep 2020-jan 2021.

What is my PAWS then? First of all it was withdrawal, its accute phase ended years ago, second it is early trauma that this woman triggered just when I was reconnecting with it when my withdrawal started, and third it is a result of narcissistic abuse, a very destructive form of emotional/psychological abuse that is. I fixated on my withdrawal obsessive compulsive symptoms and physical sensations in early 2021, after the break up of this narcissistic "relationship" happened as a way to escape from the overwhelming traumatic shame and guilt (one of my early "maladaptive" schemas) that she triggered with her abuse. I was trying to "fix myself" by "fixing" my "OCD" which I identified as the cause of the break up. I was blaming myself and in denial about the abuse for 2 years or so. It was devastating. Life shattering event definitely. The issue is that psychiatry says there is no cure for "OCD" so it's a chronic "condition" and needs to be "treated" forever, with "meds". I refused to believe that and I did everything I could to "fix" mine, to exorcice my inner demon... Until I got into antipsychiatry in late 2022 and I realized it was all BS, all these psychiatric conditions are beliefs of its belief system and by that I don't mean the experiences they describe are not real they definitely are real but what psychiatry says about them is total BS and it says what it says to create customers for Big Pharma, recovery is truly possible but they're not interested, they want lifetime consumers for their drugs. I also learned about narcissistic abuse in mid 2022 while I kept engaged in my journey to "fix" myself. So in 2023 I got deep into antipsych and in 2024 I learned all I had to about it. But I still was fixated on my withdrawal symptoms and I remembered days ago this video because I realized it must be linked to what I learned about schema therapy and everything else. Sadly I also got brainwashed by psychiatry when trying to escape from that traumatic shame and guilt, and I mostly overcame. So my PAWS is an avoidance "maladaptive" coping response that I've engaging with since at least early 2021 to distract myself from facing my early "maladaptive" traumas (abandonment trauma essentially) that this abusive person triggered with her narcissistic abuse from sept 2020 to jan 2021.

August 22

"Vulnerable Child" schema mode description: feels lonely, isolated, sad, misunderstood, unsupported, defective, deprived, overwhelmed, incompetent, doubts self, needy, helpless, hopeless, frightened, anxious, worried, victimized, worthless, unloved, unlovable, lost, directionless, fragile, weak, defeated, oppressed, powerless, left out, excluded, pessimistic (we can become stuck in this personality "mode" while in PAWS).

"Angry Chilld" schema mode description: feels intensely angry, enraged, infuriated, frustrated, impatient because the core emotional (or physical) needs of the vulnerable child are not being met (same as before).

Defectiveness/Shame (DS) early "maladaptive" schema (not the only one triggered by withdrawal) description: the feeling that one is defective, bad, unwanted, inferior, or invalid in important respects; or that one would be unlovable to significant others if exposed. May involve hypersensitivity to criticism, rejection, and blame; self-consciousness, comparisons, and insecurity around others; or a sense of shame regarding one's perceived flaws. These flaws may be private (e.g., selfishness, angry impulses, unacceptable sexual desires) or public (e.g., undesirable physical appearance, social awkwardness)... (This gets triggered during accute withdrawal).

Avoidance "maladaptive" coping responses description: means finding ways to escape or block out our early "maladaptive" schemas (PAWS TMS).

Excessive Orderliness, Obsessionality "maladaptive" coping response: maintains strict order, tight self-control, or high level of predictability through order & planning, excessive adherence to routine or ritual, or undue caution. Devotes inordinate time to finding the best way to accomplish tasks or avoid negative outcomes (some aspects of PAWS TMS).

Core emotional needs (unmet since childhood due to oppression and alienation basically or other traumatic events, reason why all this develops):

1. Safe attachment: love, validation, protection, acceptance

2. Free expression of emotions and needs

3. Playfulness, spontaneity

4. Autonomy, competence, sense of identity

5. Realistic limits, self-control

All this got triggered during withdrawal and what followed it. The result is PAWS (TMS). For this reason I believe that withdrawal chaos and inner turmoil releases stored and repressed post-traumatic stress and the worse and the more numerous these early "maladaptive" schemas the bigger chances of suffering PWAS (TMS). Because all these psych drugs do is chemical suppression of "negative" emotions ie emotional numbing. You really don't want to chemically suppress traumatic feeligs for too long because this is what happens and I did for 3 years straight at least which was simply drug abuse but of course I didn't know because no shrink ever ******* told me about it or withdrawal and everything else due to them being indoctrinated clueless robots and egomaniacs. Trauma gets healed when we feel safe again and there are multiple ways to do that but finding meaning for our traumas is paramount. Psychiatry doesn't even acknowledges trauma in most cases and if it does it is to tell that is wrong and abnormal and evil.

In late 2020 I was very emotionally unstable and reactive and I remembered my "OCD" psychiatric diagnosis that I didn't even remember until that moment because I didn't care about it. I was trying to make sense of my chaotic and overwhelming inner experiences and reactions like many others during withdrawal and on top of that I was suffering narcissistic abuse which triggered many of my repressed and most feared awful early traumas. People that experienced narcissistic abuse the way I did know what I'm talking about, how soul breaking and crazy making can be. This "OCD" thing was fatal in my recovery process the same way narc abuse was. I only remembered my diagnosis because my shrink told me 2 years ago or so that coming off too quickly of Sertraline can lead to "rebound effect" and a coming back of my "original symptoms" but I never agreed with what psych said about me... until that moment, because I was trying to desperately understand, to explain what I was going through, and to save that short lived but very intense "relationship", I was trying to get back control, so I said this must be it, what is "wrong" (with me), why I lost control. In fact I considered "rebound effect" just before I came off cold turkey in august 2020, but I told to myself not a big deal this thing if I have this person (my "ex") support. In reality my "Ex" scammed me with her lovebombing which was emotional abuse and manipulation and it ended just when I stopped taking the pills like that. I counted on her affection, which she gaves lots of during this honey moon/lovebombing phase, to get over this "rebound effect" thing. "Rebound effect" was actually withdrawal plus me reconnecting with my worst traumas and she was just a scammer, and my personality while I was taking the pills had been distorted by the drug so I didn't even really like her that much but still needed her "love" to stabilize my mental and emotional state so I clung to her like a desperate person. Clinging to a narc person is the worst thing you can do but you can't do otherwise when you are so trauma bonded (because these people play with your deepest and most traumatic unmet core emotional needs to manipulate you and meet their own needs, they know what emotional buttons to push to get you trauma bonded to them so they can get what they need from you, using you, deceiving you), desperate and overwhelmed and confused so I did it, that's the thing, and it ended very badly. What I called "OCD" was a coping mechanism triggered by my early traumas storming me by surpirse plus her narc abuse making everything 10000 times worse. I became very obsessed with her, clung to her, never I was dangerous but I was very obsessive nonetheless, desperate to feel safe. I was also trying to be perfect to avoid rejection and abandonment, I didn't want to reexperience my abandonment trauma, which was and is my core fear but in the end she made me go through it anyway. I confused my "OCD" with all this, not knowning that I was going through withdrawal, not knowing the reason of my lack of control, then I became hyperfixated on accute withdrawal physical and emotional symptoms while still suffering the psychological consequences of her narc abuse and after being revictimized/reexperiencing my abandonment trauma, reason why all this horrible horrible traumatic shame and guilt got released during the break up and overwhelmed me. I hyperfixated on my withdrawal symptoms running away from this terrible shame and guilt. So what I called "OCD" and "relapse" like psychiatry says was actually normal and logical reactions to her abuse and withdrawal combined plus early life traumas being triggered, and even when I learned that psych diagnoses are all pure BS I was still fixating on my withdrawal symptoms no matter if accute phase actually ended years ago, because it was still useful to me to avoid the excruciating traumatic feelings and emotions. This is my PAWS TMS.

August 22

I was still fixating on my withdrawal symptoms no matter if accute phase actually ended years ago, because it was still useful to me to avoid my excruciating post traumatic feelings and emotions. I was very very very ashamed of my "abnormal" and "immoral" OC behaviors, and after the break up and accute withdrawal that led to them they helped me to distract myself from the original source of shame and guilt, from the early trauma and breakup trauma, while I was focusing on "fixing" them, hyperfixated, hypervigilant, them being actually withdrawal and narc abuse logical and natural symptoms and a "dysfunctional" coping mechanism at once, they're not evil, dangerous, incomprehensible, like psychiatry says. They are meaningful.

So to recap... My OC behaviors while on accute withdrawal were not an illness but safety behaviors ("maladaptive" coping respones), a meaningful reaction to my early traumas7early "maladaptive" schemas that I was reconnecting with after they stopped being chemically suppressed by Sertraline and triggered by this woman narc abuse. After the traumatic break up and revictimization with this person in jan 2021 I kept being very obsessive compulsive hyperfixating on my logical and natural OC behaviors that I confused with a dangerous psychiatric condtion/medical illness due to psychiatric brainwashing and malpractice that I suffered from feb 2017 to late 2022 when I finally left the MH system, and I kept trying to "fix"/"cure" my "OCD", and then, when accute withdrawal was over years later, even when I finally realized that psychiatric conditions are BS 99%, I still kept being hyperfixated on all my withdrawal sensations because I never made the mind-body connection that I needed to relax and fully recover, because I've been stuck in the same dark mental place since late 2020-early 2021 trying to avoid my traumatic shame and guilt that got released back then (post traumatic stress and reactions; early "maladaptive" schemas/early traumas and unmet traumatic core emotional/childhood needs being triggered).

PAWS TMS is an unconsciouss tight self-control and avoidance based coping mechanism to manage overwhelming early "maladaptive" schemas/early traumas and traumatic unmet core emotional/childhood needs being triggered as an adult because they are endanger our "functioning" Personas/social masks in society, in other words, withdrawals triggers all this and then the triggered content triggers our ancient abandonment trauma, then PAWS TMS comes to the rescue but end up being a chronic "maladaptive" coping response to these triggered early "maladaptive" schemas/early traumas and it becomes a fixed mental and emotional state, a trauma driven Persona/personality: the "vulnerable child" schema mode.

I really believe withdrawal can reactivate dormant early trauma-made neural pathways, then because withdrawal is per se a traumatic experience that can lead to many other problemas and traumas (like it happened to me) they become reinforced by these new traumatic experiences.

Such a mess.

August 22

I keep trying to reframe my experiences with this new info because it is very confusing and difficult to explain... That video says PAWS (TMS) is basically a psychological and somatic coping mechanism for triggered psychological trauma, to keep it repressed, to control it, to run away from it. That even if the real accute withdrawal symptoms are now gone our minds keeps remembering and reexperiencing them and sending danger signals to our bodies in an endless cycle because it helps to distract from the traumatic content that was triggered during the accute phase of withdrawal. So our minds memorized accute withdrawal symptoms and reproduced them because we are using them in an attempt to escape from the unhealed early trauma and unprocessed post traumatic stress that got released by the withdrawal event. I suggested that we do this because we perceive the triggered early trauma (jungian shadow) as a danger for our adult "functional" persona/social mask, that we need to protect to perform and survive in society, this being the reason why we had repressed traumas to begin with and why we need a social mask/persona. So these withdrawal sensations are kind of "fake", like a copy of the original, a well done copy tho. It seems to me that this happens to some of us, PAWS (TMS), because we had heavy trauma repressed so withdrawal was all we needed to release it, and during the accute phase of our withdrawals we never made the mind-body connection between our sensations and our triggered early traumas/early "maladaptive" schemas and we ended up using the original and real withdrawal symptoms as a way to distract from the trauma content that got released in our mind-bodies even when they're gone and now they're just imitations of the original that we keep reproducing in an endless loop. This is 100% understandable because these early traumas were repressed for good reasons, for survival, and they manifest as somatic sensations and disturbing, overwhelming and very powerful "negative" emotions as adults and many times there is no clear visual memory of the event that led to these traumas attached to them, so it's very difficult to identify them and give them meaning, specially in the context of our societies that doesn't value emotions and pathologizes them all the damn time, for these reasons we are unaware of our early traumas and they're extra difficult to identify in our overwhelmed withdrawal mental and emotional states, while disturbed by the harmful drug discontinuation effects. And, on top of that, we are suffering real withdrawal symptoms, which psychiatry doesn't even ackowledges, psychiatry says "these meds are good, they cause no harm, they just help" which is a dirty and harmful lie, malpractice, so if the so called "experts" and authorities in the subject tell this then it must be us, there is something "wrong" with us for feeling "like this" and having all these weird and painful experiences and reactions. Then it all mixes up in our minds and brains. It's very very difficult to be able to tell what's early trauma and what's withdrawal symptoms when it's all mixed up, I'd say almost impossible, both things are already ovewhelming when dealing with them separatedly, so we end up stuck in fight-flight mode because we naturally never made the mind-body connection needed, we never found meaning to our experiences or it was incomplete or we simply never found the support we needed to do it, then our original symptoms disapear but we keep reproducing them to distract from the early traumas that we never identified nor accepeted and that were triggered during accute withdrawal syndrome, so we never calm down and recover. I'd say our withdrawal sensations are both of these combined, which is something I've been suspecting this year.

The early "maladaptive" schemas or early trauma content are these and they are basically the result of abandonment trauma (physical and/or emotional neglect/abuse):

https://www.schematherapy.com/id73.htm

PAWS (TMS) is what schema therapy calls an avoidance (or overcompensation?) "maladaptive" coping response triggered by early "maladaptive" traumas being triggered, in this case it is based on learned withdrawal sensations/somatic experiences:

https://www.schematherapy.com/id71.htm

So the PAWS (TMS) is a lack of awareness of deeper emotional processes happening AKA early trauma triggered, that is unconsciouss in many ways, but also a coping mechanism based on repression that can be altered if we become aware of it and how it works and why it exists. PAWS (TMS) can also be defined as "toxic" metacognition (metacognitive therapy calls it CAS: cognitive attentional syndrome), because the fixation on withdrawal symptoms (the way we react to our inner experiences) is protecting us, our adult "functional" persona/social mask, by avoiding facing our early traumas/jungian shadow that withdrawal triggered but also causing other troubles in our lives, because this looping coping mechanism is very strong, life and mind consuming, a life trap.

My conclussion is then: PAWS (TMS) happens, happened or keep happening in an endless loop because we never made the right mind-body cognitive connections/schemas, in other words, our meaning frameworks and metacognition are messed up due to not being able to identify and give proper meaning to the early traumas/early "maladaptive" schemas and to their "negative" emotions and somatic experiences that got triggered during accute withdrawal phase, but this was almost impossible to do anyway because we never were equipped psychologically and lacked support to do so, reason why it was all repressed to begin with, it all would have been kept well repressed if it wasn't because the psych drugs and their withdrawal destroyed with the inner turmoil that they caused our inner balance and broke our psychological defense mechanisms against them (that kept the early traumas and traumatic emotions and feelings repressed and our inner world in balance and quiet in order to "function" in society), and we were suffering accute withdrawal which can be hell itself and extremely confusing plus psychiatry, the medical and moral authority, basically says it doesn't exist or it's not an issue or that it's all a relapse of mental illness/disorder, which aggravates the already terrible confusion. I was able to identify my withdrawal and it's effects years after accute phase happened, in 2022-2023 and even this year, 2024, I kept learning about it. This tells how neglectful and clueless mainstream psychiatry is. So, we never made the right mind-body cognitive connections/schemas and it all got mixed up in our minds, our accute withdrawal symptoms/sensations got attached to our reactivated early "maldaptive" schemas/early traumas, part of them, and we used our accute withdrawal symptoms to distract ourselves and avoid facing our early "maladaptive" schemas, specially after the accute withdrawal phase was over, then it becomes just a somatic "disorder" type "dysfunctional" coping mechanism, PAWS (TMS), that needs awareness or a "purging" of our metacognition to be stopped. So... the sensations, "negative" emotions and "symptoms" that we are afraid of and we called PAWS (TMS) is simply our minds/ourselves reproducing original accute withdrawal symptoms over and over again to avoid facing the early traumas/early "maladaptive" schemas that got triggered together with withdrawal when we stopped taking the psych drugs, in some ways they're the same thing. I think it's better to frame it this way: PAWS symptoms are somatic sensations coming from the early trauma/early "maladaptive" schemas triggered by accute withdrawal that now years later is definitely over and that we rejected due to them being disturbing, we were not being able to identify as early traumas coming back and we confused with a "relapse" or our "mental illness/disorder" and/or withdrawal.

Accute withdrawal phase is definitely over years later so this is why IMO PAWS (TMS) is simply accute withdrawal symptoms that got attached to our triggered early traumas/early "maladaptive" schemas, part of them, during the traumatic experience of accute withdrawal (because it is a traumatizing experience, and even more once you realize the betrayal and malpractice of psychiatry). If we would have been able to identify, give meaning and differentiate between our triggered early traumas/early "maladaptive" schemas and our accute withdrawal this would have not happened, our meaning frameworks wouldn't be so ***** up, but it was unavoidable sadly. So PAWS (TMS) happened. Withdrawal is no more then, it's just the trauma of the accute withdrawal experience linked with the early traumas/early "maladaptive" schemas that we haven't found meaning for and reprocessed.

At first our withdrawal symptoms/sensations were truly just that during the accute phase of it while at the same time our early traumas/early "maladaptive" schemas got triggered by the inner turmoil that it caused, destabilizing our inner world and releasing our chemically and/or psychologically repressed traumatic feelings and emotions (ie post traumatic stress). It was pure hell. Then at some point we started focusing on these accute withdrawal symptoms/sensations and we starting using this fixation to divert attention from the traumatic feelings and emotions coming from our triggered early traumas/early "maladaptive" schemas. And then, when the accute phase of withdrawal it was over we kept reproducing the accute withdrawal symptoms/sensations by memory, because we memorized them, then it became puely a coping mechanism to avoid/control said traumatic feelings and emotions (jungian shadow self triggered) that are a danger for our "functional" persona/social mask and survival in society. So PAWS (TMS) is the result. We became stuck in the "vulnerable child"/"detached protector" schema mode.

August 22

So basically PAWS (TMS) is a somatic post traumatic reaction/avoidance or overcompensation "maladaptive" coping response to the early traumas/early "maladaptive" schemas that got triggered by the withdrawal inner turmoil and based on a fear cycle feeding from the memorized accute withdrawal phase symptoms/sensations that we reproduce endlessly in our minds and cling to to avoid getting in contact with the distressing traumatic feelings and emotions coming from our triggered early traumas/early "maladaptive" schemas (jungian shadow self) that we haven't faced/identified/give meaning to yet and we do this to protect our "functional" adult persona/social mask the we need to perform and survive in society and to avoid reexperiencing the original trauma which is the abandonment trauma and our core fear and what is feeding all this fear cycle and looping "dysfunctional" coping mechanism. And by the way the early traumas/early "maladaptive" schemas/post traumatic stress were not triggered/released in a "normal" manner, they were amplified by the messed up CNS, so neuroemotions, we became mentally unable to manage them and emotionally weaker, we lost healthy coing skills because while drugged and chemically deceived they became useless, and we lost our distress tolerance "muscle".

PAWS (TMS) is pseudo-accute withdrawal.

August 22

We memorized the symptoms/sensations of accute withdrawal in our body so we keep repeating them endlessly to divert attention from the repressed trauma that withdrawal triggered.

August 22

Yeah the way I've been feeling for the past year or two and tried to desperately relieve and get rid of was that this person described and I've been trying to expand with my comments: PAWS TMS, or pseudo accute withdrawal that I confused with my psychiatric diagnosis of "OCD" (which is BS, but I was extremely confused and desperate for answers, in reality my OC behaviors were mostly a symptom of early traumas being triggered by narc abuse and withdrawal) at first, from 2021 to 2022, then as a symptom of narcissistic abuse from mid 2022 to 2023 and later I identified it as withdrawal in 2023 but didn't help me to "fix" it because it was learned at that point and not real accute withdrawal so while I tried to get rid of it I was actually reinforcing this trauma based neural pathway, its cycle of fear and danger signals, in other words, I was aggravating my early "maladaptive" schemas and "maldaptive" coping response. We learned and reproduced unconsciously the feelings and sensations from our accute withdrawal to distract ourselves and cope with the disturbing traumatic emotions (the danger signals) from our triggered early traumas, to control them in some ways, and protect our adult personas, to survive in society and avoid revictimization. So it's an avoidance, somatic based "maladaptive" coping response for triggered early "maladaptive" schemas that led to being stuck in one of these schema modes, it's like a psychological trench.

August 22

I remember very well that moment when, extremely distressed and overwhelmed by my inner experiences and reactions, I confused my withdrawal symptoms and post traumatic reactions/"maladaptive" coping responses coming from my abandonment trauma being triggered by narc abuse, specially my OC behaviors, with my "OCD" "psychiatric condition" "relapsing" (like my shrink "warned" me), because this was the beginning of my PAWS TMS hell.

August 22

I've not been "recovering" from anything I've been dwelling in a ghost-like (post-)accute withdrawal syndrome, reinforcing it and masking it, running away from the psychic pain and post-traumatic stress that got released with my triggered abandonment trauma. Another thing that feeds my fear cycle and fixation on withdrawal sensations and feelings is that I fear that if I lose control over them I'm gonna go "crazy" ie possessed by my "negative" emotions ("immoral" emotions, shadow self) and be rejected and abandoned, this is my core fear, to reexperience my abandonment trauma.

August 22

I need to re-learn to feel safe.

August 23

I keep trying to use this new info to reframe my experiences in a more helpful way... I unconsciosuly memorized my accute withdrawal sensations at some point during my withdrawal and started to reproduce them automatically to distract myself/divert attention (avoidance "maladaptive" coping response) from my traumatic emotions and feelings coming from my abandonment trauma (early "maladaptive" schemas) that were repressed until then but that got triggered during the accute phase of my withdrawal due to life events (that devastating narc "relationship" that I had) and accute withdrawal itself. It is my belief that accute withdrawal can overwhelm/break our psychological defense mechanisms that keep our traumas repressed due to the hyperactive/messed up CNS during it. If trauma is repressed it "goes" to what Carl Jung called the shadow self, it's like the "immoral" part of ourselves, all the aspects of our nature, personality, identity and experiences that are not compatible with the social and moral system we live in, specially the ones from childhood and our families, then we create these personas/or false selves/social masks that Jung also told about to "function" in society and survive, to be part of the group. Trauma is repressed because it is a danger for our personas, it would break it apart. So when accute withdrawal and other triggering live events releases it, overwhelming our defense mechanisms, we engage automatically in "maladaptive" coping responses (basically post traumatic reactions) to try to keep our shadow self contained and protect our personas, because we are terrified or reexperiencing rejection, abuse, abandonment, revictimization, what led to being traumatized in the first place. This is the core fear and that deep anxiety/fear signal (death anxiety). We are terrified of reliving the abandonment trauma and dying due to being alone (natural fear). Then PAWS (TMS) is one of these possible "maladaptive" coping responses (avoidance) that trigger when our early "maladaptive" schemas or repressed traumas are released. The more traumatized we are the bigger the chances of PAWS (TMS) happening.

Gonzo: Sertraline 50mg chaos and withdrawal

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