Out of the Storm

I'm starting a new journal for the new year.  For the new rhythm that my life will soon have.  Such big changes are coming for me next year when I move after 24 years in a house I've loved, in a town that I've loved but which is changing.  I'm excited about the new town and the land and the water and the house, and about letting go of all the things that I'm not going to bring there with me.  There is also plenty of anxiety about the next several months, about the process of moving and of starting up a whole new situation, but I'm trying not to dwell on that because it is what it is and it is what it's going to be, and somehow I'm going to get through it even if I'm not sure quite how. 

I've started working little by little on getting rid of things.  It's very hard for me.  Both My Person and I have hoarding tendencies.  But I feel ready for it.  I feel really good about the stuff that I've gotten rid of so far, even though I keep expecting myself to second guess it.  I think I'm rather emotionally confused because I'm letting go of some things that I have felt for a very long time that it was important I keep around, and I don't understand why all of the sudden it seems okay and safe to let them go.  I've been acting out that confusion and anxiety a bit with food and cannabis for the past week or so, and I'm not very happy about that but objectively I'm holding up quite well.

I've been using a Fisher-Wallace Stimulator device for a few months and I think it helps.  I've also been doing somatic experiencing therapy in addition to my usual talk therapy for the past few months.  I think the somatic experiencing therapy has great promise for me but I'm worried about the cost, which I'm paying for out of my pocket because I could barely find any somatic therapists at all, much less ones who would take my insurance.  Lucky for me I'm a highly motivated patient with a great deal of knowledge about how to get as much as I possibly can out of my therapies. 

I'm really glad that the holiday season is finally almost over, and soon we'll be able to get on with life.  #1 issue is My Person needing a new job because the one he's had for the past two years that was supposed to run through the end of 2022 was eliminated at the end of November.  They paid him through Christmas, fortunately, and he's got some leads, but nobody does anything in our business during the last two weeks of the year.  My Person is highly employable in his field, but most of the work is contract rather than staff.  It's been such a luxury these past two years of his having a staff job.  It shouldn't be any problem at all for him to get more work, but there's always the question of what will it be, how much will it pay, how long will it last, will he have to work outside the home, etc.  I have NOT missed having to worry about that stuff.

You sound really good! The move sounds exciting and that's so excellent your person is so employable.

Back in November, My Person and I went down to my mother's house at the shore when she was staying in the city.  I had told her we were planning to go to the shore to take a walk in the sea air, and she offered that we could use the house if we wanted to.  So she left me a key and we went there.  It was weird being in that house again.  I used to spend a lot of time in that house many years ago when she didn't live there year round, and it was just sitting there empty and fully equipped for use during the winter, but she's lived there full time for many years now, and the place is choked with the detritus of Mom.  I had a poke around, something I've never been able to resist doing there.  Then I did something that I consider to be truly WRONG, and yet which I feel weirdly justified in doing.  What I did was copy personal files from her computer to my phone so that I could read them later, the chapters she has written thus far of what she has been referring to as her memoirs of her "great loves" (i.e., my father and my stepfather).  If someone went into my computer without my permission and read my personal files that way, I would consider it the worst of betrayals.  But reading the two weird disjointed chapters that my mother has written of this memoir had an unexpected result for me.  Somehow, it made me feel able to let go of my anger at her, to see her as a sad crazy old woman who cannot hurt me anymore.  It made me actually feel pity and compassion for her, because no matter what a monster she may have been to me when I was little, she is old and pathetic now, and I have learned too much about who I am and what I'm worth for any of the crazy things she might say to hurt me.  Somehow, I really understand now once and for all that it's not about me and it never has been.  I was never the crazy one.

Since then, I have been communicating a bit with her via text and it feels healthy.  I'm able to be nice to her in a way that conforms to my image of myself, while not having any expectations of what she'll be willing or able to give me. I know I have to always make sure to monitor where I am in that image of myself vs expectations of her thing, and not assume that she's completely toothless now, but for the time being, that's in a good place.  Thank Goodness.

Dear Bach,
Sending you a heartfelt hug and hoping that this New Year treats you well - there are lots of nice changes in your life, I can see that, and I wish you the best for all of those changes. 

:hug:

Hope  :)

Bach,

That's a super important realization you had

You never ever were the crazy one. It was always her.

You also still have the right to step away from her if you ever need to.

Quote from: Bach on January 01, 2022, 01:42:08 AM
  Somehow, I really understand now once and for all that it's not about me and it never has been.  I was never the crazy one.

Since then, I have been communicating a bit with her via text and it feels healthy.  I'm able to be nice to her in a way that conforms to my image of myself, while not having any expectations of what she'll be willing or able to give me. I know I have to always make sure to monitor where I am in that image of myself vs expectations of her thing, and not assume that she's completely toothless now, but for the time being, that's in a good place.  Thank Goodness.

Wow, Bach. That is really big.

Bach, I am grateful you had this experience and are feeling some release.  I appreciate what you said about acting in a way that aligns with your image of yourself and can take the experience for what it is.  Thank you for sharing your experience.

hey, bach,

glad to see your new journal.  a thought:  sometimes we do bad things for good reasons.  you had your own reason for doing what you did, and, in my mind, it was valid.  when my D1 went to the psych hospital the first time, i went into her room and looked thru her diary.  it provided profound information that answered some questions for me, provided missing pieces.  in the end, i was glad i did it. 

it sounds like you found something you needed for your relationship with your M to move ahead on a healthier path.  i'm so glad for you about that.  funny how something can change a part of our lives like that.  love and hugs, dear bach :hug:

Armee, Hope, Not Alone, rainy and san, I'm so happy to see all of you! I appreciate your responses so very much, especially with my lack of activity over the past many months.  I despair of how much energy it takes to communicate, and how little of that energy I have. There's so much I would like to say, if I only had the energy.

I guess that lately a lot of the energy for communication that I do have has been going to my mother.  I mostly feel good about our interactions, but I know I have to watch myself carefully, because I know that she will very quickly start to take more than I have to give.  The thing I understand now is that she won't even do that intentionally, or because she wants to, but just because that's the nature of HER.  She's a gravity well.  And the hardest part is knowing that when she sucks me in, it isn't even because she wants me.  She wants an audience.  She wants attention.  She wants to be witnessed.  She doesn't want me, and there's nothing I can do to make her.  I can fulfill that spectator role, but there's nothing I can do to be her daughter, or make her my mother.  I don't get a mother.  She doesn't get a daughter.  I feel cheated.  And how sad for her, too.  I'm a darned good person and I could be an excellent daughter.  But she's never known how to want that.  She never will, and I can’t teach her. 

I want to explain to myself why I don’t feel guilty about any of my snooping and thievery at her house (yes, thievery, never anything that she particularly cared about or probably even noticed, but thievery nonetheless), but every time I try to put it into words I get weird physical pains that won’t let me.  Which probably means that it’s important.  BLEAH.

Receiving is a form of giving, too.

Your insights are spot on about your mom. It doesn't really make it easy to deal with but better than just blaming ourselves.

i get it about the energy thing, bach.  some days i have enough energy to write here, others, not a drop.  it's funny how that works, but i guess it's all part of the process of healing.  it's not a straight line, is it.  love and hugs, my dear.   :hug:

I've been eating too much, and too close to bedtime lately.  I didn't sleep very well last night and was very depressed and angsty and weepy today.  I think that might be because of the realisation about my mother that I wrote about here yesterday.  When I wrote it here, I don't think I really realised that it bothered me.  But so much about my mother is like that.  I think what it is about her that bothers me is that she makes up her own life.  Whatever she tells you about herself and her life will always be based on true things that really happened, but there will always be a slant to them that paints her as completely disempowered.  A helpless victim at the exact center of an unfair world that exists to serve her and yet refuses to do so. 

On a more personal level, it bothers me that there's a part of me who she endlessly fascinates in a train-wreck kind of way, and another part who endlessly craves her attention.  Not because I want her approval or to make a connection, but because I want to gawk.  I want to gawk, and to endlessly prove to myself that I'm not like her.  That I won't end up like her.  That I'm better than she is.  I want to prove to myself that I don't need her love.  Because her love isn't real.  Her love isn't for me.  I guess wanting love from someone who can't give it to me will always be a dilemma for me. 

Bach, I appreciate you sharing your experience and reflections.  I am grateful you are here and finding ways to hopefully heal from the pain of not having the parental love you deserve and need.  I hope that you find a balance with eating and rest that feels right to you. 

hi bach! i understand how your realization about your mother affected you like that afterwards. pitying her and finding yourself able to communicate with her in a way that's healthy for you (and feeling great about that) and while also understanding the reality of her nature... oof. it's not fair :stars: thanks for sharing, it does make me a bit hopeful with my own mom

hey, bach, i've also had those realizations sneak up on me hours or days later and bite me in the butt, so to speak.  tricky little devils, but all the more painful than expected.  i truly hate when it happens - one minute i'm thinking, oh, so this is what it's all about, the next minute, OH! SO THIS IS WHAT IT'S ALL ABOUT! :fallingbricks:  it often feels that huge.  sending love and a hug filled with the hope of getting thru this painful realization and coming to a place of peace. :hug:

I have been talking to that woman too much for a couple of days.  Our interactions have been completely civil and haven’t been affecting me in any of the deeply personal flashback-inducing ways they were affecting me in the fall, and I have felt free to say what’s on my mind.  That makes me feel very strong and positive about myself, but it’s like junk food.  It tastes great at first, but you know it’s bad for you and that you can’t have much without it making sick.  So you tell yourself you’re just going to have a little, but then once you get started it’s hard to stop.  The next thing you know, you’ve eaten too much and you’re not going to sleep well tonight.  That’s where I am with her right now. 

I have moved past being hurt by her raging narcissism, but it’s still a horrible feeling to have come from that.  I guess I’m going to be processing that for a while, figuring out how to grieve the relationship I’ll never be able to have with her, figuring out how to understand and remember and internalise that I am separate from her.  I am my own person upon who she is no reflection.  I can have things in common with her without BEING her.  My understanding of myself can be informed by what I observe in her but that does not in any way indicate that I am “just like her” in any way that really matters.  I think that I used[ to be a lot like her in some toxic and harmful ways, but I have worked on myself and become a saner, kinder, more compassionate, less narcissistic person than she has ever been.  Working on herself is something that she never did, never really tried to do, certainly isn’t going to do at this point.  And that’s okay.  It unnerves me that she represents herself as having lived a fairly happy and satisfied life until her recent bereavement, because she has never really seemed to have anything positive to say about her life other than insisting over and over again that she and my stepfather loved each other and made a perfect match, but that’s entirely her business and not mine. 

It’s hard sometimes knowing that in her reality, she loved me and had my best interests at heart when I was a child, and did her best to serve them in the face of my being “uncontrollable and wild”, and her “not being a good parent [because she] didn’t know what to do with [me]” NOT because of  “anything overt like sexual, physical or emotional abuse”, when that reality is so vastly different from what I experienced, but at least I know that all the physical, practical and psychological evidence I’ve ever gathered supports my interpretation of the realities rather than hers.  The outrageous things she says in her displays of perfect unbridled narcissism that indicate her deep belief that everything she ever did was either inadvertent or was totally justified no matter who it hurt because she’s the only person whose perspective is reasonable and that she was only doing what anyone else would have done in her place trying to be happy have absolutely nothing to do with me.  This stuff doesn’t cut deep to the very core of my being like it always did in the past.  But still, ouch.  Ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch.

I wish I could have a dog.  A real dog, not just my heavy doggy buddy.  I love my heavy doggy buddy but that's not a real dog.  If I could I would have a pit bull. People think that they're bad dogs but they're wrong.  Pit bulls are the sweetest dogs ever when they have good doggy parents.  There are no good doggy parents in my house.  But look at this beautiful sweet baby:

https://flic.kr/p/2mXBBGF

I wish I could cuddle him, big sweet goofy doggo!

Middle B, I wish you could have a real dog too. The picture you sent is so cute!

Quote from: Bach on January 16, 2022, 11:07:57 PM
but I have worked on myself and become a saner, kinder, more compassionate, less narcissistic person than she has ever been. 

You have worked so hard. Good for you.

Quote from: Bach on January 16, 2022, 11:07:57 PM
This stuff doesn't cut deep to the very core of my being like it always did in the past.  But still, ouch.  Ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch.

Ouch indeed.  :hug:

Not Alone, sometimes I want to cry because I can't have a real doggy. I can almost feel the snuggling with his big fuzzy hard skull and smelly dog breath and sweet cuddleness. I never really liked dogs until we met Bach's friend Ladybird's big old sweet dumb doggo who was seriously almost as big as me! Then that doggo got really really old and died but Ladybird got another who looked just like her only way smaller and when I visit Ladybird she likes to sit on my lap and she's so waaaarm and snuggly and snuffly and I love it. I miss Ladybird's house. I wish I could go but we can't fly to England now. :'( I'm so sad.

Here's another supercutie pibble doggy I want to hug!
https://flic.kr/p/2mXCJhh

Middle B, that dog is sooo cute. It's okay that you feel so sad that you can't have a dog. It's really hard when we can't have something we want so much, especially since a dog would bring comfort.

Not Alone

i agree with notalone.  having a comfort doggy sounds like it would be ideal for you.  someday, i hope . . .  love and hugs, my dear :hug:

Not Alone and san, thank you for your replies.  Middle B is very sad lately, and I feel pretty terrible about the dog thing.  She sort of understands why I say that getting a dog would not turn out the way she envisions, but it's a hard thing for a child to really understand and accept, and I have no real way to console her.  She's crying all the time and she doesn't want to do anything.  I don't think I've ever realised before this just how much of my life-force comes from her. 

Bach and Middle B: Sending you lots of hugs and love.  :hug:      :grouphug:       :bighug:

Not Alone, san, and whoever else might read here:  Middle B wanted me to tell you that even though she's still really sad (like REALLY REALLY REALLY sad) we can't have a dog, she feels a teeny bit better now because we worked on all of it in somatic therapy today and she was able to feel that I am taking her needs seriously enough, and that I am committed to finding some kind of solution for that ache she has (TO SNUGGLE A WARM THICK SOLID WIGGLY SNUFFY SILLY SWEETIE DOGGY!) even though that solution might not be what she expects, or that it might not be very soon.  She's going to trust me even though I've broken a lot of promises in the past, and she really appreciates that I got a special therapist for her ME all locked up here in her body with the hurty stuff!!! instead of just continuing to bang on with the stupid useless confusing  :pissed: analytical talk therapy that I seem to still really need for my adult mental processes.  She didn't have enough words so she asked me to write it for her and helped a little with the words she did have.  And she's not sure when hugs are safe even when people say they are, so "no cartoon hug thingies", and she'd "put a flower if there was one."  She likes flowers.  She said to "tell them that, too."  And she said I could put one of these, :sunny:, which she says is the only one she likes "besides the AGH AGH AGH thing."

So, from me, Bach, to all of you, : h u g : :b i g hug: and :g r o u p hug: and thank you deeply from the bottom of my heart for caring about my (Little)Middle B. :sunny:

hey little one, i love flowers, too, so i'll send you one instead of a hug - how about a daisy?  they have always seemed playful and cheery to me.  if you have a favorite, let me know, ok?  i'm sure it's been hard to carry so much icky stuff on your shoulders for bach, but i think you've done a great job of it.  it sounds like bach is doing everything she can to lighten that load for you.  you've been such a good helper to her.  sending you love and  :sunny:

Hi Middle B. Thanks for letting us know that the cartoon hugs don't feel safe. I'll try to remember and send lots of sunshine.  :sunny:

I can't with this life.  And I can't take care of these children in here.  I don't even know which one is which right now, they are all miserable and upset and acting out and going crazy about their own separate things.  So many hurts.  So much trauma.  All still trapped inside here.  They all need the same things, but they all need different things, too.  I can't give any of them any of it.  And we ALL want hugs, even though we're afraid of them.   :stars:

Aside from what all of them need that I can't give them, what about ME?  :fallingbricks:

I'm really sorry you're hurting so much Bach. I hear you, I see you.

I have also been there. I used to have about 10 inner children and inner teens whose needs and emotions and things like that regularly overwhelmed me. It did get better though. Somehow the ICs and ITeens got better integrated. Sending care, support, good thoughts and if helpful   :sunny:

Hi Bach,

You do matter in this and it's a lot to have on your shoulders to care for all of the Littles and middles.

Hi Middle B if you are reading...I'm sending you over a snap dragon those bright little flowers where you can pinch their mouths open. I once found one dying in a public planter without any water so me and my little girl stole it and brought it home to raise it. It's been two years and it's now so full and has so many flowers on it. Sometimes I wish someone had seen me withering as a little girl and had taken me somewhere safer where I could thrive and bloom too. I wish someone had rescued Bach and all the good people on here too so we didn't all have to suffer so long.

Bach, I was in the place this week of so many of my Littles being in distress. It's difficult enough when one or two are feeling deep feelings; when many are distraught it is so overwhelming. Adult-you matters and needs and is worthy of care also. I hear you. I wish that each of the people here, with whom you feel relatively safe, could spend time with one of the children and do what we could to bring that child some comfort.

Be kind to yourself and your children. Are there little things that you can do to bring a measure of comfort? This week, a hot cup of coffee with a lot of cream, while sitting in a comfortable chair, helped to lower the distress a bit.

If you feel up to reading this, the following website gives suggestions for self-care.
https://www.beautyafterbruises.org/blog/selfcare

I care. You are not alone.

The hug thing is confusing.  Middle B is upset about it.  Seems like there was a miscommunication between us about what I was supposed to say in her message the other day but I don't have any grasp at all of what it was.  I have so little understanding of what she wants and needs, and I despair at that.  She never had a chance back when I was her and she had my mother, and I can't stand this feeling of failing her now that I'm me trying to care for her and she's her with all her beauty and spirit and creativity and life stuck inside because it's too unsafe to let out.  Why can't I be like those art teachers (Little) Middle B had early on who nurtured her instinctively and taught her about all those things that she misses so much but is too afraid of?

I think I might be losing my mind.

Hi Bach,
I just wanted to say that I admire how you're looking to provide things for all your Littles, and how you're doing your best to meet their needs.  I have read things about how to nurture and provide support, and what I noticed in the books I read is that it's a complicated and difficult thing, that it's challenging, and that very often there are people who try to help, and get it right, and it's difficult.

Middle B sounds like such a creative person, and I can hear your pride in her ability and in her beauty and spirit.  I wish that she could feel safer to let that out, and enjoy herself, and feel free to create and do whatever she wants to do. 

I am sorry that you feel you might be losing your mind, and I hope that you can keep some sense of safe permanence.  I hope that Middle B is ok and I hope that you are ok.  Sending you a safe hug, if any parts of you are able to take that  :hug: 

Hope  :)

Hope said it just beautifully. Injust want to add that it strikes me how much you care and how tender you are and I want to reassure you I guess a little....as a mom, I cannot be everything to my kids I can't be exactly who they want me to be for every part of them that needs nurture. I can just be enough.  I can love them and adore them and nurture them up to a point. I can get other people in their lives to help guide then as well. But I can't be everything for all parts of them.

I don't think we can expect that we can do the same for the fragmented parts of ourselves either, but we can be enough and we can show then we care and accept them and want the best for them.

I don't think you are losing your mind. I think you are gaining it. But that's a scary feeling to think you are losing your mind. And I just want to gently remind you it's OK to disengage from your mother if and when you need to.

This doggy wants a hug!
https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/51842853328_2951e568f0_z.jpg

This one wants to play!
https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/51842853383_d0e0eb560e_z.jpg

Look at the silly smooshy face!!
https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/51842853343_dd85446343_c.jpg

This one is trying to look all serious but I bet if you hugged him he'd get all smiley and go arr arr arr and probably slobber on you which is kinda gross but I wouldn't mind.
https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/51843106514_f4422d0857_o.jpg

Middle B, I love those pictures of the dogs. Thank you for sharing those.

Aaaahhhh that smooshy face is so so cute!

 :hug: Thank you for sharing those, super cute!  My cousin has a rescue pittie mix, and she's such a big baby.  Very sweet.

Staffies!!!

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/51845336153_898466bbe9_b.jpg

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/51844290867_117b36dfe3_b.jpg

Omg the SMILE!
https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/51844290862_8497106970_o.jpg

Look!  Here's a super-huggable staffy AND flowers!
https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/51844290872_83bf553c65_o.jpg




Bach said I can come here and post doggies anytime I want to if it will make me feel better.

I really don’t want to write about what’s been going on in the past 10 days but I feel like I should.  The Wednesday before last, an issue with the new mortgage came up, and we had several tense days in my house as we worked on a solution while inside me the kids went crazy with tension and fear as they prepared for the disaster they were certain was coming, even though My Person and I were both rationally quite confident that the problem would be resolved and we would not lose the house.  The whole time that the uncertain situation was going on, I was very aware of the separation between Self and the parts, and I did a great job of staying in Self and managing Little/Middle B through their intense and painful anxiety.  But then the situation resolved a few days ago, and since then, the kids are off doing their own things, almost totally absent from my conscious reality, and Self has also pretty much abdicated, and left someone else in charge here, and I think it must be Angry B, the inheritor of Lizzy B, who thought she had found a home in which she was loved and welcomed and didn’t understand why everything still hurt so much.  Well, Hi there, Angry B.  She thinks that’s a lame name, by the way, and that all this description-B stuff is stupid, but she doesn’t have any better ideas for what to call her and her sisters, so **** you, Angry B it is.

Hi that all sounds really stressful. Angry-B  reminds me of my sister. She was the "angry" one but it wasn't so much that she was angry as that she saw what was happening...the truth and essence of things and those things weren't alright. But she calls herself mean things because she was labeled angry, but she's really just loving and wise and brave and protective. Maybe Angry-B will show you another name that fits the intentions better. I admire Angry-B. Angry-B seems really important and special. 

Angry B is an almost complete mystery to me.  I can't remember what it felt like to be her at all.  I can remember some of the things I did when I was her but not much of it has any resonance.  She's kind of the Forgotten B.  I remember being Lizzy B a lot better.  But I don't think Angry B even wants me to remember.  Or is it me who doesn't want to remember her? 

I've been smoking and eating too much.  It's making me ill, and I need to put the brakes on it.  I can't figure out why it's so out of control right now.  It hasn't been out of control like this in years.  It's a huge reversion.  I suppose it's all about the house, and I guess that I'm probably doing better with it in general than I ever did at times of great stress in the past, but it's really upsetting to me to feel so helpless to bring it under control.  I also feel a lot of fear about how much harder it is to recover from protracted periods of compulsion these days.  It was hard enough in the past, before my body had really started breaking down from the lifetime of trauma-echoes the way it has in the past dozen or so years.  Not to mention menopause.  I can no longer afford to engage in the compulsions for months on end.  I'm worried about my poor abused heart.

In the process of sorting out my belongings to move to the river house, I'm careening back and forth between feeling great about letting go of things I've held onto for many, many years, and feeling dreadful about my life.  With the winter weather I've been stuck in the house too much lately with all my belongings to sort and figure out what to do with.  Most of it means very little to me, and that makes me uncomfortable because it makes me feel like my life means very little to me.  Everything reminds me of everything I never really did.  Everything I tried that didn't work out, everything I wanted to pursue that for whatever reason I couldn't stick with, every friendship I didn't maintain or that blew up because of trauma reactions I didn't even know I was having.  It hurts so much and makes me feel so empty.  I hardly even remember most of my life, really.  I've spent so much of it alone at home passing time or out in the world half-dissociating just to be able to cope.  I'm finding myself attaching a great deal of importance to pictures, because those sort of prove to me that my life actually happened.  That I've actually for real existed all this time and I'm not just a figment of my own imagination.

Bach, I am also in the process of moving and am encountering similar things as I go through my home.  I appreciate you articulating this all as I've been having trouble putting into words what is troubling me and it is helpful to have your example.  I hope that your move goes as smoothly as it can and will be thinking of you as you navigate this time.

Thank you, rainy.  I'll be thinking of you, too.  I hope that your move goes well and that you are happy in your new house.

Hi Bach,
Going through belongings like that, I relate to what you're saying in many respects.   :hug: 
Hope  :)

Thank you, Hope  :hug:

We're closing on the river house on Monday.  I've been doing a great job of staying on top of the business things I need to do with regard to buying the house, but my self-care is in the toilet.  Today I had to lock up the weed to force myself to stop smoking at least for a few days.  I'm burnt out from too much smoke and too much crap food.  I used to live like this pretty much 24/7/365 but I was younger and more resilient then. 

I've been enjoying giving things away on the neighbourhood Buy Nothing page on Facebook.  That's big for me.  Both My Person and I have hoarding tendencies, and we are challenging each other to get rid of as much as possible before we move.  I had been thinking about trying to make some money selling stuff at the consignment shop, but allowed myself to decide that would give me too little return on too much effort.  Giving stuff away on the Buy Nothing page is incredibly satisfying for me.  The part of me that is my mother doesn't want to let go of anything of value without getting something back for it, so the rest of me is rather enjoying feeling those impulses and rejecting them, then experiencing genuine joy from the thought of neighbours in this town that I have so loved being excited to get something good with no strings attached.  I have also been reminding myself that I don't have to keep or rehome absolutely everything, that although it's good to keep as much out of the waste stream as I can, it's also okay to just throw some things away.

I'm seeing a cardiologist next Wednesday, and I'm really nervous about that.  In 2009 I was having some weird symptoms that I thought were related to my GI issues that turned out to be from a minor heart defect that I've apparently had since birth that was never discovered before then.  I had a load of tests and was told that my heart was in good shape and that the defect was unlikely to be a problem, but that I should follow up if the symptoms recurred.  The symptoms had not recurred in all these years, but they are recurring now.  It's probably just stress, and nothing any more wrong with me than there ever has been, but between the unpleasant sensations in my chest, the extreme fatigue I experience, and the fact that I had Covid two years ago, I'm having trouble not worrying that there's something horribly wrong and I'll never get to enjoy a beautiful life in my beautiful new house. 

 :hug: Best wishes for your cardio visit, Bach. I understand the anticipation can often end up worse than the visit itself.

I participate in my local Buy Nothing group also, it's just wonderful. You get the joy of knowing something is going to someone who really wants it. And honestly, it makes me feel like that it reciprocated. I've gotten both my forearm crutches and my weighted blanket from that group and I am so grateful, as they never would have been in my budget otherwise. I love the idea of a declutter challenge. I may have to try that. :)

hey, bach,

good luck on all these projects you're pursuing, and especially with your cardio visit.  i hope it turns out well.  love and hugs :hug:

I was supposed to be with Other today but his flight last night was diverted because of the crazy weather in the Midwest and he couldn't make it here.  I was waiting and waiting and waiting to hear from him, and then just about the time that I realised that either he wasn't coming or he'd be arriving too late for me to go out, he called and told me in detail a harrowing tale of being unable to land the plane and starting to run out of fuel.  I know that telling me about it when stuff like that happens helps him calm down and shake it off, and usually the stories aren't as terrifying as that one, but I swear, that kind of story that makes me want to never get on a plane again, and makes me wish that my beloved wasn't an airline pilot.  I had trouble calming down to go to sleep and today all I want to do is cry because I so desperately need but can't have the comfort of being close to him.  I'm a mess right now, and I'm not allowed to be a mess, there's too much to do.  I'm sure I'm going to love the new house, but only if the move doesn't kill me  :fallingbricks:  And God, I am so weak.  I wish I would stop WHINING.

Bach, that is really scary for you and your Other.  I hope the situation resolved as smoothly as possible.

I'm sorry you are missing your significant other. I would too. And I'd be scared too and I'd just want them home with me and to always stay. That doesn't seem weak to me.

This move is killing me. But major points to My Person, who is being wonderfully patient and cooperative with me as we both deal with the frustration of my current major physical limitations and he carries the whole operation on his strong and compassionately willing shoulders.

Trigger warning: Medical testing experience














I had some cardiac tests this morning following on from my exam and wearing a monitor for the past week. Horrifically unpleasant in a variety of petty ways that really added up. The usual troubles getting the IV in. A camera rig that restricted my breathing (especially distressing considering that recently breathing techniques have become the main way I self-soothe). An ultrasound that involved being gooped up and having to lie in awkward positions and hold and release my breaths as instructed by the tech while the weird spooky squelching sounds of my heartbeat rang out from a monitor near my head that I could sort of see. And lots of waiting around in a fairly crowded waiting room in between these things trying not to be paranoid about sitting too close to people. It really sucked, and wiped me right out. I kept thinking that surely it seemed worse than it really was but writing it out here makes me understand that it really was legitimately difficult and that's not just me being a whiner.

I've been texting with my mother probably too much lately. I've been feeling a little too safe with her, and I have to watch that. I have to remember that no matter how well we seem to be getting along or how genuinely objectively compassionate I feel towards her at times, she is fundamentally dangerous to me by her very nature whether she means to be or not. It's hard though because at the end of the day she IS my mother, and it's very difficult for me to stop myself from craving her attention like a sweet, sweet poison. That bloody woman. It's good that I'm calling myself out for this here, because these are facts of my existence of which I can't afford to lose sight.

Oh Bach. I wish those medical tests hadn't felt so awful. I relate. I've had awful truly awful experiences like that but also I've felt just way overwhelmed just by even an eye exam. Depending on how brusque people are, just having them close to my face and how they ask their questions...it can leave me feeling very very shaky for hours even when there are no triggers. Lots of gentleness to you as you recover from the procedures and the crowds.

I'm glad you have a compassionate person taking care of you. You deserve that.

And you are absolutely right both about how hard it is to keep distanced from our mothers and also to reconcile the damage being done with how they seem in discrete moments in time. In any given moment maybe things aren't too bad in terms of what's actually happening but the damage is cumulative and historic and that is what is triggered. You deserve to keep yourself safe first and foremost. 

hey, bach,

so glad those tests are over.  i'm not a fan of medical procedures of any kind.  too many experiences with them.  ugh!  just happy you made it thru.

moms can be tricky, for sure.  there's a specific kind of bond there that's not like any other.  i hope you can hold your boundaries and keep yourself safe.  love and hugs :hug:

As another human in the moving process, I hope it goes as smoothly as it can.  I am sorry for the experiences you had with medical testing and it was a reminder for me how trauma unfriendly medical care often is.  I hope that you continue to find your way with your mother and the move and whatever else is coming.

Armee, san and rainy, thank you so much for your replies, for your understanding and support regarding all these difficult things I’m dealing with right now.  I’ve had the results from the stress test, and they said that it was fine and nothing unexpected was found.  I won’t get the results from the ultrasound until next week, but I guess I’m not really that worried.  The uncomfortable feelings in my chest have been joined in the last few days by a variety of other unpleasant physical symptoms that are so weird and random that I’m now feeling relatively emotionally comfortable assuming that this is all stress and that eventually it will pass if I can just continue to maintain some emotional equilibrium.

Once again, yesterday Other was supposed to be in town, and once again, the weather prevented it.  This time there was no scary story to go with it, thankfully, but I need his touch and it’s so painful and frustrating to expect it and then be denied.  It feels like being in distress as a child and having no one to turn to to seek comfort.  I want to cry but I can’t do it, which is also incredibly painful and frustrating.  I keep sort of almost crying, and the almost crying is almost comforting, but then totally not when I can’t actually do it.  I can whimper and blub, but that just makes me feel ugly and small and unwanted.  I need to cry real tears.  I read something somewhere a while back about how tear flow releases stress hormones.  Why can’t I just do it?

Last night I was texting with my mother, and got an example if I needed it of how she hurts me without even knowing she’s doing it.  We were talking about what we each believe or don’t believe regarding what happens after death, and in remarking that she wished she had a firm belief in an afterlife so she could see her husband again, she said “I think back on my life as interesting and happy, and if I had a chance to do my life over I would do it the same way.”  That’s really hard for me to hear, because in other conversations, she has talked about feeling that her attempts to please her husband and get her husband’s sons to like her often came at the expense myself and my brother.  When she said that, I didn’t take it particularly seriously, because my stepbrothers only spent a month every summer with us and any neglect that my brother and I suffered when they were around was pretty small potatoes compared to the execrable parenting we got from her the other eleven months of the year, but…She’d do it all over the same way?  What the everlovin’ blank blank blank?  I keep wanting to say “Oh, you’d do it all the same way again, would you?”  But that would be stupid and pointless.  She would backpedal and make excuses and say things that would just hurt and upset me even more.  I keep checking myself and reaffirming that I’m still less uncomfortable communicating with her than I am not communicating with her, but again I run up against the aggravating fact that there’s just no way to make her not a problem to me. 

big hug to hopefully comfort some of the hurt, bach.   :bighug:

Thank Goodness we’re back.

I’m extremely upset right now, strongly triggered because My Person is looking through his mother’s old papers, and came across notes from when she stayed with us for 17 days in the spring of 1996.  This is upsetting to me because I don’t remember it at all.  I have literally no memories that this ever happened.  I assume this is because spring of 1996 was early on in my adventures with psychopharmacology, five years of trying different meds and having each one make me sicker in some weird nasty way, until I finally called it quits for good after a med drove me closer to attempting suicide than I ever got without medication.  I don’t remember the sequence of horror very well but I do remember being at work having diarrhoea from lithium around the end of February, then having to quit what was to be my last ever steady job not long thereafter.  I don’t remember how long I was on lithium.  It wasn’t very long.  I don’t remember what came after lithium.  I remember the flat where we lived in 1996.  We lived there for a year and a half, the last place we lived before we bought the house that we are now in the process of leaving.  I remember time I spent in that flat by myself, lots and lots of time.  I remember what I did with most of that time.  I remember people I talked to, places I went, television shows I watched.  I remember other people who visited and stayed with us there.  I remember a lot of good things from there, and I remember a lot of lying around feeling zonked and crappy.  I mean, specific memories of that, like how there was a cable station that replayed L.A. Law in the afternoons, and I watched it because I used to love that show when I lived in LA and worked at a law firm.  I remember how that station also replayed The Golden Girls and The Commish, and how I loved The Golder Girls and never watched The Commish, but often would have that station on very softly in the background because if I had it on softly enough that I couldn’t quite hear it I could lie on the couch and close my eyes and sort of try to hear it, and trying to hear it would enable me to relax my mind enough to doze.  I remember the eventually deeply painful email-based love affair I had that summer, and I remember the beginnings of my relationship with Other.  But I have absolutely no memory of Mom staying with us there, and that is really bugging me.  17 days!  I REMEMBER stuff like that!  I remember her staying with us after we bought the house.  I remember those trips back to the Midwest to stay with her for varying lengths of time, first for visits and holidays, later to take care of her when she was sick.

My Person says I was probably still working during that time.  Maybe he’s right.  If I wasn’t there during the days, that might help explain why I can’t remember spending 17 freaking days closely sharing a not-very-big flat with a woman who was no small presence.  But I’m still totally freaked out.  It’s way past my bedtime.  I can’t imagine going to lie in bed now, blind behind my sleep mask, ignoring the distressed feelings, hoping for sleep to come.  I don’t know what to do.  I suppose I should take something to make me sleep.  But I don’t want to.  I want to cry.  I want to cry out my moving stress, my house-selling stress, my grief for the holes in my brain.  I read that stupid article somewhere a few months ago about how tears release stress hormones and ever since then I can’t get it out of my head that what I need is to shed tears, real liquid hot tears to wash out all the bad chemicals.  But those tears, as ever, elude me.  I’m sort of angry at every therapy and self-help thing I have access to, just because none of them seem to be able to help me figure out how to release my tears.

 I relate to a lot of this. Especially the knowing you need to cry and not being able to. I can't still. I get a tiny moist droplet in the corner of my eye and that's it. I also get so frustrated that therapy can't help me do this. I get annoyed that my therapist tells me about all the people who cry with him including the giant buff dude etc. It makes me feel even more broken. Like you, i want to experience the cleansing and relief that supposedly comes with a good cry. I have no answers but do have lots of sympathy. 

I've also experienced those disturbing lapses of time and know it is scary and upsetting. The only thing I can do is accept it. But usually I end up in a back and forth trying to convince myself I'm being melodramatic and then the opposite - freaking out that it means I'm more messed up than I thought.  The only modicum of relief I find is when I can hit a sweet spot of acceptance.

Sending you lots of support and wishes for some tears.

Bach, what a difficult and disorienting thing to experience and work through.  I am thinking of you.

Quote from: Bach on February 24, 2022, 04:22:58 AM
I kept thinking that surely it seemed worse than it really was but writing it out here makes me understand that it really was legitimately difficult and that's not just me being a whiner.

Yes, it was legitimately difficult. It would be difficult for many people. It was upsetting to you and that's what matters.

I can see where not remembering something would be distressing.

my dear bach, i can honestly relate.  tears connected to something painful, something specifically upsetting have eluded me for so long, yet i could cry to distraction because my D graduated college!  i can cry at commercials, soppy movies and the like, but it has been a difficult road for me to get to a place where i've been able to let out real tears for something like emotional pain from the past or present. 

for some reason i can understand my inability to cry naturally has been a defense strategy in my life.  i was scolded for crying, told 'crying doesn't help', and in my childhood that was true.  it's only been recently, within the past few months, that i've been able to cry over a past situation that was very painful to me. 

i think, as you continue in recovery of yourself, feeling safe within your environment, the tears will eventually come.  i'd love to just sit with you, wrap you up in a warm blanket, bring you your favorite beverage, and just let you know you're not alone.  love and hugs :bighug:

Hi Bach,
I read what you wrote before, and wanted to send you a hug of support,  :hug:
Hope  :)

Armee, san, rainy, Not Alone and Hope, thank you for your replies.  My two-way communication circuits are kind of broken right now which is why I'm not participating much on the forum but please know that I do appreciate you all very much  :worship: :grouphug:

The move is bumping along slowly.  Everything I own in the world is in this house, my entire history, and emotional reactions are inevitable.  The other day I found some old artwork of Middle B's, which was a very strange feeling for a few different reasons.  One was that I had sort of forgotten that I spent several years of my life bearing my stepfather's last name even though I had a father actively in my life and there was never any adoption or legal guardianship, and it was weird to see my paintings that were signed with this other name.  The other was that I had sort of forgotten that even though I never really liked my art, never thought it was good enough or was what I wanted it to be, I did love to do it, and approached it with real joy and sincere effort. 

One of the things I found was a portrait I did in chalk pastel that I think must have been of my grandmother even though it didn't really look like her.  I believe it's her partly because I can't think what other elderly woman I would have been drawing at that time in my life, but also because I feel that I have a vague memory of her sitting for it, and because the post, jewellery, clothing and facial expression have a distinct flavour of her even if not so much of a true resemblance.  This portrait is not realistic, but it's startlingly appealing.  I sent a photo of it to my mother, which gave rise to a very odd text exchange in which my mother completely missed the fact that it was MY artwork even though I mentioned that I'd found a bunch of my old artwork in the attic, and that I believed the picture to be of my grandmother done by me as a child.  She was adamant that it wasn't my grandmother, and insistently detailed all the ways in which the picture didn't resemble her and, as I mentioned, completely missed or perhaps ignored the remarks I'd made that indicated it was my childhood work.  I reiterated that it was my work, and made a remark about it being signed by "some kid named (stepfather's last name)".  That sent her off on grinding her axe about what terrible ingrates my stepfather's children are, so I took the opportunity to say some true things about the family dynamics among the two sets of children and the way we were treated back then.  I've found that when she's off on a rant about my stepbrothers, I'm able to do without pushback as long as I don't say anything that directly attacks her.  That's always satisfying, but the real import and value of me showing my mother that picture turns out to be the insight it gave me into why I didn't feel positive enough about what I produced to continue to pursue my art as I got older.  I've often blamed it on not having had my interest in art nurtured appropriately, and indeed, that was the case, but there's more to it than that.  I've realised that it wasn't personal.  I've realised that my interest in art is the one thing that my mother and grandmother actually did try to nurture, and the fact that they did it inappropriately wasn't because they didn't value me or the idea of my talent, but rather because of the family culture that they came from.  The attitude in my grandmother's family was to be very demanding with incredibly high standards, plus a strong belief in the idea that artistic talent is something that comes naturally if you have it, and that if you have it you will naturally excel simply by being given the opportunity to do it.  Perhaps I can fault them to some degree for not challenging the belief that either you were a prodigy or you were nothing, especially as they had both suffered and lost as a result of it, but looking back, I believe that this is one area in which they really did have sincere good intentions towards me.  That is VERY confusing.

When I was Middle B, there was a table in front of a window with a view of lower Manhattan in my bedroom, where I used to draw and paint and craft.  In my new house, I will have an art/craft room with a table in front of a window with a view of a river, where I'll be able to draw and paint and craft.  I am hoping that maybe I can recapture some of that spirit, and this time maybe not fault myself so much just because I can't deliver depth or realism. 

It's so beautiful to think of you producing art with love in front of your new window soon.

 :bighug:

I'm really angry at my life right now. I'm angry at the constant conflicts within me between the parts of me that love and want and believe and the parts of me that destroy. I'm sick of being messed up and unable to steer my own ship. I'm sick of anxiety dreams and emotional flashbacks. I'm sick of not being able to express myself in any way that satisfies. I'm sick of my constant feeling of need and deprivation and hunger. And I'm SICK to DEATH of therapy. Sick sick sick sick SICK! This is all the me's, all the B's. We are all sick, sick of all of it!

Oh boy do I hear you! Amen if that's all right!

This resonates with me.

I get it. I hear you Bach and all the Bs.

Therapy has been such a CHORE lately.  The only thing on my mind right now is practical stuff about moving.  So I have to work extra-hard to come up with therapy things to talk about.  Like everything else going on isn’t exhausting enough.

Lots of practical stresses and aggravations this week.  Water heater died.  Internet service went out, costing My Person a full day of work when we can’t really afford to spare the time to make it up, or the income otherwise.  Fortunately, the water heater was fixable under the maintenance contract even though it’s very old and I was fully expecting to have to replace it.  Cash flow is really tight right now, but our house just went under contract with a buyer for a good price.  So, everything is certainly proceeding apace, but I’m beset by feelings of helplessness and unreality, as if nothing that’s happening is really happening.  Like I’m watching it from outside myself and just being carried along.  That’s a very unsettling feeling.  I’m suppose I’m keeping up okay but I don’t feel like it.  I want to melt down and whine and moan and complain about how hard life is, how everything is hard, how I just want it to stop, how the effort it takes to try to have a productive life with a modicum of satisfaction is impossible and too much.  But my mostly-beneficial efforts to become a more even-tempered person and not be freaking out every five minutes have put a weird block on my ability to express angst.  I could perform that, but it would be more like a bad stand-up comedy routine than any genuine release, and that would frustrate me and make me hate myself. Still grappling with the problem of stuck emotion.

Lately I’ve been using a tapping meditation for gut healing that doesn’t exactly let me cry, but usually does move around some emotion in me. When it’s working, sometimes tears come out, not the liquid hot generous flow I’m looking for, but at least a few that actually come out of my eyes and run down my cheeks.  After that I start yawning and yawning.  Last night when I did it, I felt something shift way down deep in my abdomen, in the area adjacent to the place on the lower left side of my gut where I usually feel stomach sensations, deeper down, further from the surface and closer to the centre of my body.  It felt like a section of me down there that has been frozen is beginning to thaw.  It was an exciting feeling.  Exciting feelings are dangerous.  I’m both afraid to and eager to continue to seek it.  I feel like it could change something.  I’m pleased with myself that despite an immediate feeling of “OOH LET’S TRY TO MAKE THAT HAPPEN AGAIN RIGHT NOW!” after it happened the first time, I remembered that with stuff like that for me, too much of a good thing is a very bad thing, and a good thing becomes too much very quickly.  I backed off, but I can’t help having hopes for when I do that meditation again later today.  I’m tired of these heavy somatic feelings of doom.

dear bach, it was exciting to hear about your somatic experience, having actual tears, feeling some sort of movement inside.  i get it about something positive feeling scary or like it'll turn neg. may i suggest you take your time with it, do it again when you're ready.  it sounds like an amazing breakthrough, tho.  very glad for you.

a lot of times i talk to my t about the stressors that are going on in my life right now, and that is plenty of 'therapy things' to deal with.  from what you said, those feelings of helplessness and unreality, or like you're watching from outside yourself  sound a lot like 'therapy things' to me.  these things sound like trauma reactions, and deserve to be discussed with a therapist.  to my mind, that's what a T is for - to listen to us whine and complain and melt down if we need to, in order for us to get rid of some of that neg. energy we're carrying around, and also to help us discover what's causing those feelings, etc. to be there, making our lives unmanageable.  i think you have plenty of stuff to talk about in therapy without having to dig too deeply for something.  sitting with you while you're going thru this and sending love and a hug filled with warmth, compassion, and caring. :hug:

Hi Bach -  congrats on getting some movement in your meditation. I'm curious about this method, is there a name for it I could look up or something? At this point, I'm willing to try new processes to move things along. Best of luck on the home buyer, too.

san, thank you for your love and support :hug:  There are big things changing in my life right now, and I'm pretty evenly divided between a realistically hopeful part and a braced-for-disaster part, so it's a real push-pull and it's pretty exhausting.  I hear what you're saying about daily life stresses being just as much "therapy things" as anything, but although I like my therapist pretty well and think she does a pretty good job, the one thing that kind of drives me crazy about her is that she brings everything back to my mother.  As much as my mother is certainly at the root of my biggest fundamental problems, I'm not sure it's helpful for every conversation to end up back there.  I mean, if nothing else, I had other lousy parental figures in my life too!

Cactus, the meditation I've been using is called Healing Your Gut and it's on the app from https://www.thetappingsolution.com/.  I've been using that app on and off since the summer of 2020.  My results with it were always quite inconsistent, though generally good enough that I kept going back to it.  I first did the Healing Your Gut meditation early on in my use of tapping.  The first time I did it it was very powerful, but then subsequent tries only gave me very slight results, so I didn't do that meditation for a long time even though I was still doing others.  Then I stopped using the app entirely for a while and was instead focussing on breathing techniques.  I have always struggled with breathing techniques because I have trauma around my breath in my history.  Lately, though, I've finally gotten the hang of breathing through the initial feeling of panic that I tend to get from focussing on my breath, and I've been getting really good results from breathing techniques, especially 4-7-8, and 6-square.  Then, one day last week my gut was really bothering me and none of my usual methods of settling it were helping, so I decided to try the tapping again, and I really felt something.  I've done it several times since, and each time I've gotten constructive energy movement.   I wonder whether what's happened both with the breathing and with the tapping is that the work I've been doing for several years now has been moving me forward the whole time even though I couldn't feel it, and I've finally reached a point where I can feel it.  Whether it's that, or whether this is simply a mysteriously good time for self-healing, I don't know, but it's encouraging.  It shows me the value of not giving up.

Thank you for the info, Bach! I hope your daily stressors reduce. Sometimes it's really hard not to give up, but I do get inspired by seeing your and other people's journeys on here. Wishing you the best!

Eating more and more. Enjoying it less and less. It's a problem!

right there with you bach.  i'm going thru the same right now.  not fun, not fulfilling, not friends with myself.  still, it's where i am.  i have no doubt you'll find a balance that works for you as you continue your recovery.  love and hugs :hug:

Sometimes it seems that there's nothing in my life that really feels comfortable and familiar and safe that isn't self-destructive.

I need to put myself under threat to feel SAFE? What kind of messed-up garbage is that?

This resonates with me. 

hey, bach,

it's truly a paradox to have to take a risk in order to move forward into a better place for ourselves.  i've felt very similar to what you describe.  hang tough, ok?  hangin' right beside you.  love and hugs :hug:

Having control helps in my own personal experience. So if you PUT yourself in a threatening situation you have control of it and can therefore keep yourself safe. It's how things work for me when I get scared about my kids....if it is all my fault, then I can control it and keep them safe. If it isn't my fault...then...then I can't fix anything and I have no control. Not sure if that's true for you. But as messed up as it seems that you need to put yourself in a threatening situation to feel safe....it makes absolute sense to me.

Yesterday I was feeling overwhelmed after spending the morning working on sorting my stuff to move, and I lay down to watch TV for a while before I had to head out to the new house to meet the internet installer. An emotional moment on the show I was watching made me start to blub. Not real crying with tears, but sobbing vocalisations. I went with it and it turned into quite an emotional outburst that went on for a while and progressed from the unexpected sobbing to slightly hysterical howling to hitting a note loud and hard and clear from the very bottom of my diaphragm quite intentionally. All that vocalising loosened up something in me and even though I didn't feel better right away, I was able to get on with a productive afternoon, and ended the day feeling pretty good. Today I was feeling overwhelmed again and was wishing I could find a way to access that at will.  But like all other forms of meaningful somatic release for me, it doesn't seem to be under my control.

I appreciate you sharing this experience of staying with what was coming up.  I am thinking of you as you move - it is so difficult and brings up so much.

bach, so much of my emotional releases have come the way you described - from some show i was watching.  it's quite tremendous to me how incredibly triggering a word, song, situation on a tv show or movie can be, including reaching down into the gut of me.  i'm glad for you, tho, that you were able to be with it, let it go and grow, and ultimately feel better afterward.  love and hugs :hug:

That you were able to let yourself go with the feeling is great.

I'm completely losing my mind with this move.  The movers are coming for the furniture on Sunday.  After that we'll be living at the new place.  I am both so, so ready and so, so NOT ready.  I honestly can't even imagine how it's going to happen, and how it's going to be.  I'm more-or-less managing to keep up with the things that I really need to do, but it's incredibly difficult and requires a lot of downtime lying on the couch watching TV instead of sorting and packing.  Although we'll still have three weeks to finish getting the house cleared out and cleaned after the furniture is moved, I reckon that there will be more unsorted boxes of crap than I wanted coming with us to the new house.  Oh well.  I didn't succeed in making this move as smooth and organised a process as I had hoped I would given how much time there's been to do it, but at least I tried.  I'm feeling overwhelmed and unsafe.  I have lots to be thankful for, and believe me, I am thankful for it, and I am okay, but at the same time, I am also REALLY NOT OKAY.

I haven't been seeing my somatic therapist for a month or so because of time and money constraints, but I did a session with her last Friday because I wanted to talk to her about my experience with the TV show.  Something interesting came up as a result of that session, which is that I recalled the experience I had with my tapping meditation a while back when I connected with a place way down deep in my gut that I never felt before.  I realised that although my physical sensations are nearly all of fear or discomfort, way down deep in my gut underneath all of that there might be anger.  I think it might be baby-me's anger.  I'm told that my father really doted on me when I was an infant, and I'm sure that he cuddled me and handled me lovingly (the way I saw him handle my baby half-sister and brother when they were little), and I think it may have made baby-me angry to be tended by my mother.  So maybe that's what led to my mother trying to suffocate me.  Baby-me was angry, which provoked resentful mother, which further distressed baby-me, which upset my mother to the point of having impulses to kill me to shut me up (She must have felt so rejected.  I kind of feel for her in that way, but not very much because SHE STARTED IT).  Since I figured that out, I have had some anger creeping into my stress somatically.  I have been experimenting with vocalising the way I did from the TV show as a way to safely let it out.  It's a bit difficulty to tap into that, it's not very comfortable.  It doesn't really make me feel better, exactly, but it does seem to help continue to function.  Not at a particularly high level, but at an acceptable one.  Another thing I've been doing is deep breathing.  I've gotten very good at both 4-7-8 and 6-square.  In the past, any kind of focused breathing was a huge struggle for me that would usually end up making me even more anxious, but I seem to have finally gotten the hang of it. 

I want Other  :'(

It's really hard to move and especially without the help and support of Other and I think TV time is totally justified.

It wasn't baby Bach's fault that your mom was angry and tried to smother her. Babies get to just have and express their feelings. They aren't responsible for managing their parents connection, the attachment bond, or otherwise making them happy. They are supposed to just get to be babies. I can see why there would be immense anger locked up deep in your gut.

Hi Bach
I just want to give you the biggest hug if you'd let me.
I hope you won't mind if I read through your posts/story today if I can.
Our baby me's share a special connection and whether it's that part or others, they all want to love you right now. I hope that's ok to say.  :bighug:

I'm in a state of extreme anxiety today.  It might be fear surrounding the move, or it might be because I've been thinking about and talking about anger.  My anger.  Owning my anger.  Trying to feel that it is healthy and acceptable, and trying to allow it to be instead of seeking to deny it or reason it away, trying to live and function in its presence instead of shutting down.  That is incredibly difficult.  I always thought it was hyperbole when I said that anger makes me fear for my life, but I guess I was being literal all along. 

Thank you for the replies on my last post, Armee and Phil.  Phil, I certainly don't mind if you read, and I appreciate your reaching out to me with that love.  It's really hard for me to deal with right now but my wiser self knows I want and value it, so again, thank you. Armee, you say that it wasn't baby Bach's fault and part of me knows that, but that is very difficult for me to really feel and accept that.  There's a part of my mother in me.  Imagining the experience of the baby that I was seems like theory, conjecture, maybe even fantasy, but what I imagine my mother felt towards that baby at that time seems absolutely real.  I can almost feel it right now.  It's all very confusing and terrifying.  I've got to fight it all off and work towards my move, even though I feel like I'm falling off a high cliff towards a deep ravine, falling and falling and falling and falling, with anticipation and terror building with every breath.

 :bighug:

I felt overwhelmed and unsafe when I moved from the bedroom that I shared with H to my own bedroom. Moving your whole house and family. . .huge.

I'm feeling tender toward and what baby B went through. You/baby B had every right to feel and express sadness and anger.

We moved into our new house on Sunday.  We’re not completely done clearing out the old house yet, but we’re getting there.  Cleaners are booked for April 30 and the closing is scheduled for May 3.  I set up my bed-corner in my bedroom and my TV-corner in my living room to be similar to how they were in the old house so that I would have a couple of areas that feel as familiar and safe as possible, but everything is quite chaotic.  During the lead-up to the move, we got rid of a lot of things that we don’t need anymore and I’m really happy about that, but the grand plans I dreamed up to do the actual move in an organised fashion were a complete fail. 

I’m relieved that we’re finally living here, and I really like  the new house and town, but wow, the disorientation.  I’ve been feeling okay most of the time, mostly in control and able to function, though interspersed with waves of intense anxiety and overwhelm, and generally still smoking too much weed and eating too much sugar.  Fair enough, I guess.  I need to go to bed now and I’m struggling to do it, because mornings are the hardest.

I appreciate you reflecting on your experience, especially in creating familiar set ups to bring a sense of safety.  I resonate with all of this as a person that is still reeling from their move.  I hope that you find ease and comfort as you get settled in.

we moved nearly a year ago, and we're still not settled.  moving is so hard, so huge.  do what you need to do to get thru it, bach.  you'll find your way out of the 'too much' jungle in time.  love and hugs :hug:

Gentle hugs if you want them, Bach. Moving never goes exactly according to plan, but there will come a time when you walk through the house and realize it's home and it's natural. I like how you created your personal spaces right off. Hopefully you find more things you like about the new environment.

I couldn't say it better than CF did. Hang in there through the change and disruption.

Thank you so much for the kind posts, everyone.  It's all so crazy.  I really never thought I would leave my old house.  I loved my little house, my beautiful garden, my proximity to the main street of my town and all the safety and familiarity of a place I'd been living for 24 years.  And I loved my town.  It was a great walking town.  For many years, My Person and I had a hobby on Sundays when the weather is good (and I have the energy) of going to open houses that we could walk to from our house, and we figured that even if we ever did move it would only be to a different house in our town.  Over the years, we saw some that we liked pretty well, but even when we saw ones we liked that we could dream of buying, we would always come to the conclusion that our house suited us, that we were happy with it, that even with its limitations it was the best house for us.  In more recent years, our looking at houses became about getting ideas for a big remodel that would overcome some of those limitations and make our beloved little house even better.  I was hoping against hope for years that no one would be able to build on that lot on the corner, but even after the building on the lot on the corner was approved, I figured that we would just deal with it, and maybe it wouldn't be too bad.  We were even planning that long-fantasised-about renovation at the end of 2020.  We got drawings from an architect and borrowed money against our equity.  But none of the contractors that we wanted to use turned out to be available at that time, and then I got sick from whatever it was I got sick from last spring that had me pretty much couchbound for the entire summer, so the money was just sitting in our bank account.  Then builders showed up to start work on the lot on the corner.  All they did at the time* was build a retaining wall (butted right up against the driveway of the house behind ours), but the noise and the house shaking from them doing that was enough to make me start thinking about how maybe that remodelling money could go to a down payment on another house instead.  So we started actively looking for another house in our town.  We stopped restricting our open house viewing to houses we could walk to from our house, and spending Sunday afternoons going to every open house that we could.  We saw some houses that we could afford that weren't really suitable, and some houses that were a little more suitable but that we couldn't really afford.  I figured that we would keep looking and eventually something would turn up.  Then one Sunday there was only one house in our town available to look at, and because we had open house hunger, we decided to go for a drive and look in another town just for a lark.  Just to see what else was out there.  We went from "We'll find something in our town eventually, and until then we'll stay where we are" to "We're going to buy a house in this town we used to sometimes take a drive to on a weekend for brunch at the good diner and the farmer's market" in exactly five days. No wonder I'm disorientated!

Not a hint of regret.  This place is great, and we will make it our own, and this time maybe we really will never move again?  But loads of anxiety from my messed-up somatic wiring that causes things that make me feel happy and fortunate to backlash me with fear and anxiety. 

*I've been wondering since they built that wall when the actual construction was going to start.  Well, last week a bunch of construction materials showed up at the site.  So I guess we got out just in time!  The nice young family who bought our house was warned that the construction was coming and apparently they weren't fazed by that.  Hopefully it won't bother them too much!

hey, bach, i hear you on that backlash thing.  my D and i were just talking about it - i'm in the process of finishing my next book, and the excitement of that sent my anxiety sky high.  weird how that works.  but, i'm glad you have such a pos. attitude about making this new place your own.  i love it.  i have no doubt it will indeed happen.  love and hugs :hug:

Hi Bach,
It's such a big thing to move house, and I'm glad that you have managed to negotiate your way through all the practicalities of doing that, and also all the emotional stuff around it - that's big. 

:hug: to you, and hope that your day today is ok, and you have some nice experiences within it.  I hope you enjoy your new home very much.

Hope  :)

I'm trying to get my head/heart/body/nervous system around the whole question of anger. I talked a bit about anger today with my talk therapist and had a very uncomfortable somatic reaction. I feel it happening right now as I type. I am coming to feel that my self-destructive behaviours are a feedback loop created by that original primal wound of
(Trigger warning)












my mother suffocating me when I was an infant. I am acting that out over and over by doing things that are bad for me, then feeling anger because I am not being properly cared for, then stuffing that anger down deep into my gut in that place that has always been numb but that I've started to feel now that HURTS, that HURTS to feel when I feel it, OH PAIN PAIN PAIN...which makes me seek temporary relief/pacification/numbness in self-injurious behaviours (i.e. Irresponsible use of food and drugs) , which starts the cycle all over again. I don't want everything in my life that has harmed me to always come back to those things that happened to me so early in my life ("Before I even had a CHANCE!" cries out little-girl me), but I guess at the end of the day they kind of do.

Talking to my therapist about anger today led to a backlash of careless drug use. Which leads to me here now, awake and queasy and angry when I should be getting some sleep so I can do some more moving tomorrow  :'(  :fallingbricks:

dear bach,

as i was reading this most recent post, the image came to me of that baby being so angry and scared of what was happening.  it hurt my heart.  i can see her kicking her feet, waving her arms, violent motions against the monstrosity of what was happening.  i'm so glad you're still with us, but i totally get why you'd have problems w/ anger now - look at what happened when you expressed it as a baby!  it's so not fair, you didn't deserve this, and i can readily believe in that feedback loop you spoke of.

sending love and a hug filled with comfort, care, and the nurturing you missed out on.   :hug:

Hi Bach,
I spent most of my drive to work this morning crying after reading your post. (I spent the rest pounding on my car door - so not smart of me)
If you'll forgive me.... I had an image of baby me and baby you just on our backs, laying, smiling together. Not only were we worthy of love, but capable of it too. And also capable of remembering.  I too, believe you about the feedback loop. Never knowing a time where you felt cared for. You deserved so so so so much better. I'm sorry!!!

san, thank you for that hug.  I needed it  :hug:

Phil, your post made me cry a little, but in a comforting way. I can see an image of those babies, and it's difficult for me to relate to it as an image of me, but I can feel it as truth somewhere inside, way down deep in there mixed with the scary exhausting painful anger, and that feels like something big and important that I will revisit soon when I am able.  Thank you  :thumbup:

9 days until closing on the sale of our old house.  We're not all the way out of the old house yet.  We're getting close, but there's still a lot to do.  I was doing okay for a while, but I've really started to go downhill in the past week.  I'm really afraid that I'm going to get ill again.  Maybe I won't, or if I do, maybe it won't be too bad and I'll bounce back quickly after I no longer have a whole other house to worry about.  Trying to believe that things will be okay and I won't be laid up for another summer.

dear bach, leaving homes/houses, moving, getting settled, settling all the old details needed to let you be free of them - whew!  sending vibes of energy to get thru this as easily as possible so you'll be able to enjoy your summer.  love and a hug filled with 'you'll deal with whatever comes down the pike - i have faith in you.    :bighug:

There's an entity down there in my gut, and he is not happy.  He's not exactly part of me and doesn't exactly belong in there.  He belongs with me but he's not supposed to be trapped in my body.  When I realised that what was down there wasn't another child-me, I thought it might be a pet, a companion (A pibble doggy! With pretty eyes! Who could protect me and keep me from getting hurt!).  But now I think he's a boy twin, unformed, unborn, undeveloped, always meant to be part of me but also separate, trying to grow in there when he should be out here where we can love and help each other.  No wonder he hurts all the time.  But I am trying to learn that he loves me and I don't have to be afraid of him

Hi Bach,
I found what you wrote to be very strong in a positive way - it's hard to put words to the emotion that came up in me when I read what you wrote, but I related to what you wrote, and I think that it's huge that you're making contact with that entity inside your gut, and you recognise him as a boy twin.  I am so sorry that he hurts all the time, I wish there was a way to help him feel safe.  You said 'I am trying to learn that he loves me and I don't have to be afraid of him' - I hope that you can do this, and wish you strength or whatever you need to do that.   :hug:

Hope  :)

Thank you for your reply, Hope  :hug:  I'm trying to learn how to make him feel safe.  His name is Solomon.  Not Sol or Solly.  Solomon.  I can feel him in there right now, scared of being named and scared of being loved.  I am telling him it's okay.  It's hard for him to believe me.  He's like Other that way.  I love him.  I hope that's enough. 

hey, bach, thanks for sharing this.  i hope you can find resolution, comfort, and care for solomon.  lovely name, and it always brings to mind the wisdom of king solomon.  being you, i have no doubt your love for and patience with him will eventually help him not be scared.  sending love and a hug filled with the best of everything you both need. :hug:

Hey Bach, gentle hugs for you if you want them. It was very powerful to read about Solomon and I totally resonate with names being specific.  Wishing you both peace and affection.

I've been undone by the move and by selling the old house. The sale closes this week but I did not make it all the way through without getting ill. I have regressed 20 years in my self-care and emotional regulation. Eating poorly, doing too many drugs, blubbing, having emotional outbursts, staying up too late at night reading or messaging or surfing the internet in bed, because I feel safe in bed but only when I'm awake entertaining myself in those mostly meaningless but comforting ways. My Person is also massively stressed, which makes him uncharacteristically snappish and impatient with my need for understanding and reassurance. He does his best and I know that he needs space to be dealing with a full-time job, an arduous physical task and a laborious emotional transition because although he may not suffer from cptsd, he is still human. So I support and encourage him the best I can and don't lean on him any more than I have to, but that takes a toll on my health as well. I'm now at that point where I really MUST try to sleep, give myself a help with some klonopin or melatonin or something but I'm reluctant to face the insides of my eyelids.

Solomon says Hello to our friends here

Hi Solomon  :wave: Happy to meet you!!

I hope your day improves Bach and that you find some moments of peace and joy today ... just wanted to send a gentle supportive hug if you want it  :hug: 

hey, solomon.  glad you're here.

bach, my heart goes out to you as you're going thru all this.  i can relate to so much of what you've written, and i know it sucks.  self-care has also been a tough one for me - i've gotten by utilizing the same things you talked about.  some of it i've been able to let go of now, but that's only been after years of working on my issues.  you'll get there, my dear, of that i have no doubt.  please don't beat yourself up about it.  we've all done what was necessary to get thru.  love and hugs :hug:

Solomon is unsettled.  He is tired of all the bad habits.  Tired of me not taking care of myself.  He feels helpless because he's stuck way down there inside me with all the worst stuff that life threw at us during my infancy and early childhood years.  He knows what I need to be doing for myself, for us, and he wants to help me but I am somehow not able to let him. 

*says hi to Solomon*  Habits are not easy to change, it takes time. Have you thought about asking Solomon if there are other ways he could help you, see what might be suggested? Just a thought.  Thinking positive for you, Bach.  gentle hugs if you want them.

san, I was thinking about you mentioning the wisdom of Solomon, and it's apt even though the name comes not from there but from one of the weird old stories my mother used to tell about how I got my name. (I wonder which story is true.)

Cactus, he says I can ask, but since I'm the one on the outside it's up to me to heed. He's right, of course.

I've been making myself ill with food, probably because I'm just too morbidly fearful of actually getting on with my life in my new house. I am too afraid of evolving. It's been too easy to use the continuing house sale saga as an excuse to be ill and stressed, to behave badly and put off the upcoming project of discovering who I'm going to be in this new environment. But that saga will conclude today. The sale is closed. My Person has to go back today for a few items from the deck, but I don't have to go with him. There will be a crew in the house redoing the living room and kitchen floors for the new owners. The ones we often talked about redoing but never did. I hope the floors are beautiful and that the new owners love them, and love my house, the house that after 24 years is not my house anymore. I can't wrap my head around the TIME.

 :hug:

Bach, it's such a huge thing to have moved home and have those things happen regarding the house you were in previously.    I also hope that the new owners appreciate the house and love it.

Time is such a strange thing - how it passes, and what happens within it. 

I hope you can be kind to yourself, and that your time in your new home is something that will evolve and be ok. 

Hope  :)

I have transplant shock. I've been dug up and moved and replanted, and I've dropped all my leaves and am looking unhealthy as my roots try to find their way into unfamiliar soil. But perhaps yesterday with its explosion of leaning in to the sickness was rock bottom. I did a little better today at looking after myself than I did yesterday. So I will build on that. I will start by doing a tapping meditation in the morning.

hi Bach ....
That is quite a powerful analogy. I hope your day got better with the tapping meditation.
That reminded me of something else I read once about when you're feeling buried maybe it's simply your time to bloom. (forgive me if that's cheesy)
I hope your new place becomes familiar and you keep feeling better each day... and that it feels like home before you know it  :hug:

Thank you, phil  :hug: I needed that kind word.  I'm afraid I did not do a tapping meditation this morning.  I don't know why.  Because self-care is hard, I guess.  And I have a hard time getting started in the morning.  But I did do an okay job of taking care of myself today, took a nice walk, had a chat with a friend, put away another two things, and didn't overdo it with drugs and food.  So I'll try again tomorrow with the tapping.  It's such a good idea in theory.

My household continues its run of bad luck in employment, in that once again, My Person's job went away through no fault of his own.  That happens sometimes in our industry, but twice in a row so close together is a notably bad run.  This is especially difficult right now because we'd had a run of great luck with that for a few years before this past December, and we had such great luck with finding our new house and selling the old one, and this makes child-me who is always waiting for the other shoe to drop feel like we must have used up all our good luck and now everything is going to be hard and scary and overwhelming again forever and ever.

ugh - that forever and ever feeling is such a horrible thing to cope with, bach.  i know it too well, know it feels very real and is difficult to get out from under.  i'm so glad for your good luck, and hopefully this employment thing will be fixed pronto.

i have had to move from houses i thought i'd be in for the rest of my life.  your transplanted metaphor hits the nail right on the head.  i get it.  it's an awful feeling.  as far as evolving anew, please allow the time it's going to take to even get to a place where evolution seems feasible, ok?  and breathe.  if tapping is too much self-care right now, maybe 30 sec. of breathing can help.  and that's something i need to remember as well.

love and a hug filled with employment opportunities for your person. :hug:

I'm feeling so strange and unwell, like I'm on bad drugs or something.  I don't even know whether to be scared or not. 

 :bighug:

Quote from: sanmagic7 on May 17, 2022, 02:42:51 PM
:bighug:

:bighug:

Hi Bach,

I just wanted to say that moving sucks and it brings up so much stuff for me too. I think I read recently that it's one of the top emotional stressors for people. It seems understandable that you feel off by it and hope you can be gentle with yourself.

dolly

Dear Bach,
I really hope that you feel a bit better soon, because those feelings sound not very nice at all.   :hug:

Hope  :)

san, dollyvee and Hope, thank you for your comments.  I really appreciate knowing you're there and that you care  :hug: :grouphug:

I am not doing well at all at the moment.  Last night I had an awful dream that we still weren't finished moving out of the old house, and I was really confused because I knew the closing had already happened and I could remember the cleaners being there a few days before that, and that the house had been clean and fully empty after they left.  In my dream, the house looked the way it did between when the movers came and when the cleaners came, dirty and chaotic with random stuff all over, and I couldn't figure out how we were ever going to get everything out of it.  I was running around wailing  "I don't know what to dooooooooo!".  This dream persisted across at least two awakenings, and all day today I have felt like I was still in it.  It didn't help that I had to go by the old house today to pick up a parcel that got delivered there.  The address change has been a nightmare.  I haven't moved since the days when all you had to do was tell the post office you were moving and you were good.  Now you have to change your address in at least two different places on every website you do business with.  I just hope I've finally caught up with everything and not overlooked anything. 

The new owners are moving in tomorrow.  I suppose that's where the dream came from.  Will I ever get past the feeling that I've done something bad and wrong and I'll never be happy again?

bach, i have no words of comfort except to say i'm with you, you're not alone, and i hope you can be patient with yourself.  sounds like you're grieving, and that's always a messy time.  sending love and a hug filled with comfort from my heart :hug:

gentle hugs from me as well, bach. Disruptive dreams can really throw us off. Here's hoping they let up soon for you.

Bach, just want to send support to you, Solomon, Little B, Middle B, and all the others.  :grouphug:

san, CF, Not Alone  :hug: :hug: :hug:

I'm a disaster right now.  I'm keeping it more-or-less together but with great strain and little productivity.  It takes all my energy to "act as if".  Unpacking little by little.  Trying to get rid of things if they provoke a reaction of "Ugh, why do I still have this?" and I can't come up with any kind of answer.  Waiting for the world to stop feeling so overwhelming. 

Lots of love to all my friends.  I'm thinking of all of you and reading what I can when I can.  I'm mostly in the can't zone, but I'm still here and I still care :bighug:

Bach, thinking of you.

 :grouphug:

still here for you anyway, bach.  i've moved too many times, been uprooted, had my stability snatched out from under me - i so relate to what you're experiencing.  i hope you can be gentle with yourself, give yourself the time you need, and allow yourself to be messy for a while.  moving is messy on so many levels.  love and hugs :hug:

we're here for you not matter how often you check in. Hope it eases up for you soon. Gentle hugs if you want them.

 :bighug: thinking of you Bach.

Dear Bach,
Sending you my support and care, plus a hug  :hug:  I hope you're ok and that you're managing things little by little, in whatever pace feels best.  Thinking of you, and hoping you're ok.

Hope  :)

rainy, Armee, san, Cactus, phil and Hope, I so appreciate your thoughts and support.  I am less afraid to speak than I used to be, but so much fear is still here.

I'm trying to get better at tolerating fear and anxiety and other uncomfortable feelings.  I have spent my whole life either leaning into uncomfortable feelings or trying to escape from them, both of which ultimately make them worse.  I realised today when I was talking to my therapist that my body and my brain are constantly at war and kind of hate each other.  She asked me why I hate my body, and I realised that the meaning of "hate my body" has completely changed since I was younger and thought that I was defined by being fat and ugly, and that I was fat and ugly just because I was a pig with no self-control (It hurts to even type that out!  How unfair I was to that poor girl!).  I wish I could remember the conversation better because it feels like I came up with some really important stuff.  At one point she asked me whether it is because my body is the source of the unpleasant feelings.  This led to a discussion of how I lack a feeling of connection between my body and my brain.  I literally feel like my body is a separate entity from my brain, and that it sort of co-operates with me, but that I really have very little control over it, and we're certainly not friends.  I don't want to feel that way about my body.

Earlier this week, I heard a lecture on the Internet about havening.  Here is Wikipedia's basic explanation of havening:

QuoteHavening, is an alternative therapy developed by Ronald Ruden and his brother Steve Ruden; it relies on "amygdala depotentiation" that purportedly can help people with psychological problems, particularly those related to phobias, post-traumatic stress and anxiety.

"Havening Touch" is claimed to elicit delta brain waves and to act directly on receptors in the brain where trauma is believed to be stored, to down regulate the emotional charge, mostly while the client is distracted. This means the client does not have to stay in, or talk about, upsetting events or feelings.  Havening shares features in common with another alternative therapy method, eye movement desensitization and reprocessing.

It sounded very interesting, and I remembered seeing a reference on the Internet somewhere a year or two ago to "self-havening," so on Saturday I googled that.  I found a video (link below if anyone wants it) that showed me how to do it, and tried it.  As with most of these kinds of things, my initial reaction was to get antsy and want to stop, but I persisted through the whole video, and thought I felt something positive from it.  On Sunday, I did the touching technique casually several times throughout the day, sometimes with affirmations and sometimes not.  I don't know that it makes me feel better in particular, but it definitely does something.  Both on Saturday night and last night, I had very upsetting dreams with themes of rejection and abandonment in the face of my neediness, which is more-or-less my ultimate fear in life.  It's terrible to have those dreams and wake up feeling disturbed and not safe, but the really interesting thing is that it's a child feeling of being unsafe.  It feels familiar, but it also feels completely different from how I usually feel in response to the same kinds of thoughts and fears in the present day.  So this makes me think that maybe havening really works, and really does release the stored trauma from the body, this concept I've heard so much about and which I've had some little tastes of but which has mostly so far eluded me.  I have strange feelings right now that may be more awareness of my body.  They are incredibly uncomfortable, but they are not building, and they are not intolerable.  So...A new hope for healing?  Or a new false hope that will end up backfiring by stressing me into all my old familiar sick-making maladaptive coping methods?  I guess I'll have to wait and see.

https://youtu.be/IQXbZmuSbFs

I was supposed to see Other this weekend, but something is going on with him and I don’t know what it is.  This morning when I texted him to find out what the plan for the weekend was, he was short and snippy and left me hanging on an “I don’t know”.   I know that there must be something going on with him that has nothing to do with me and that I must have inadvertently triggered him.  In the past when this would happen, before I knew about CPTSD and triggers, when he would turn like this I would seek to appease and get reassurance, and that would inevitably cause the situation to blow up into a major conflict, so I’m leaving him alone to work out whatever he has going on by himself.  Being ignored or shut out or left hanging triggers me and makes me absolutely crazy. Everything has been good between us lately and I know I haven’t done anything wrong to earn anger, enmity or exile, but I am unable to stop worrying.  I’m in bad enough shape already.  If I’m in for another summer of tension with his stupid bum I don’t know how I’ll manage. 

 :hug: :hug:

Hi Bach,
I hope you don't get a summer of tension - I hope that you have a pleasant summer with some nice things happening in it.  I really like the flower in your profile picture - beautiful. 

I am sending you a hug Bach, I hope that's ok  :hug:

Hope  :)

thinking of you bach.  'havening' sounds interesting.  i'm going to do some research on it, learn more about it.  thanks for sharing.  love and hugs, and i hope things go smoothly for you.  sounds like you're making a lot of progress.   :hug:

So much going on.  So hard to write about anything.  My brother brought my nephew over from Australia to visit, and made the ill-considered choice to stay with our mother for two weeks.  I knew that wasn’t a good idea, and he pretty much knew it, too, but allowed himself to think it would be okay.  It was not okay.  It taught my brother once and for all that, yes, it really was that bad for us as children growing up with her, and it temporarily traumatised my nephew.  I say temporarily because my nephew is imperfectly but very lovingly parented, and he’ll have loving adults with whom to talk about it and work through it.  My Person and I did our part by having them to our house to rest and recuperate for a day and a half after they left the house of horrors, and I feel very good about being able to support them that way, but it was incredibly hard on me.  I visited with them at my mother’s house a few times while they were here, and I did a good job of protecting myself from her in the direct contact during those occasions, but hearing about my brother and nephew’s experiences staying there after I picked them up on Sunday late morning, and it being a recurring conversation until they left today at 6:30am has left me with a toxic dose.  I’m dealing with it incredibly well, all things considered, so there’s good news there, but ugh.  Sick, sick sick.  I hope that soon I will be able to write about what they told me and how it all fits together with my current life and my past experience because the information and insights are potentially very useful, but it’s too much right now.

Sweet friends, thank you for your replies to my last post.  Still no word from Other, no answer to sporadic texts, phone call, email, which doesn’t help, but at the moment is truly the least of my problems.  I know he’s alive because I can see that he’s been on Telegram regularly, and he’s done this before, so I can only assume that eventually he’ll be back and table any further attempts to communicate with him until such time as I can be properly ****** to care enough to risk being ignored yet again.

Bach, I am glad you could support your sibling and nephew and did your best to self-protect.

bach, sounds like one emotional mess after another.  so sorry this has all been happening to you, especially the behavior of your Other.  i hope things get resolved quickly and smoothly.  on your side w/ all this.  love and hugs :hug:

Gentle hugs if you want them, Bach. That's a lot to deal with. Hoping you feel better soon, our emotions can definitely affect us physically. peace and healing.

gentle hugs Bach  :hug:

rainy, san, Cactus, phil  :grouphug:

Okay, so here’s the thing that I learned fully from my brother and nephew’s experiences during their ill-advised stay with my mother:  My mother is a psychopath.  Literally a psychopath.  Not figurative literally, and not hyperbolic literally, but a simple, cold, factual use of the word.  Psychopath.  My mother is a psychopath.  She’s not just a bad parent, a crappy person, or a mere narcissist.  She’s an actual true-colours dyed-in-the-wool literal no-exaggeration hardcore psychopath. 

She is EVIL.  I’ve never wanted to say that.  I’ve always wanted to give her some tiny benefit of the doubt.  I’ve always wanted to think that she didn’t really mean to hurt us, she was just too bleeped up by her own crazy mother to understand.  But the passive-aggressive and mostly plausibly deniable disregard she showed for the basic needs of my brother and nephew while they were staying with her even after they called her out on it proves to me that the way I remember it really is the way it was.  I think I need to detail in writing the things she did which demonstrated that to me, but I can’t yet.  I did manage to say it all to my therapist during my session yesterday, that was really hard and included a lot of stuttering and gulps and frequent loss of volume control, but it was good.  It helped me define a crucial understanding of the difference between a bad parent and a psychopathic one:

Not taking care of her son and grandson = Regular crappy parent stuff
Covert passive-aggressive obstruction of her son’s efforts to take care of himself and his son and overtly insisting on continuing to do the things that were hurting her son and her grandson despite explicit dialogue = psychopath stuff.

I feel a little sick now, and like I might hurt myself.  I won’t.  I will ride out that feeling, but I’ve got to hit Post now before I chicken out.

I believe you are right Bach ... it's a hard thing to say... harder to live through (which you miraculously did)
Sending as much love and kindness and you'd like  :hug:

Oh Bach. May I send some gentle caring  :hug: :hug:  If safe for you that is. It did me so much good to read what you wrote about your M. I'm sorry that you have suffered so much and that your brother and nephew have as well.

But it did me good to read it because it gave me words for the antics of the whole of FOO versus me. So, sorry for hijacking a little. But also I'm glad you left it up. It deserves to be said and read and heard. Please don't hurt yourself.

Quote from: Bach on July 29, 2022, 06:50:32 PM
Okay, so here's the thing that I learned fully from my brother and nephew's experiences during their ill-advised stay with my mother:  My mother is a psychopath.  Literally a psychopath.  Not figurative literally, and not hyperbolic literally, but a simple, cold, factual use of the word.  Psychopath.  My mother is a psychopath.  She's not just a bad parent, a crappy person, or a mere narcissist.  She's an actual true-colours dyed-in-the-wool literal no-exaggeration hardcore psychopath. 

She is EVIL.  I've never wanted to say that.  I've always wanted to give her some tiny benefit of the doubt.  I've always wanted to think that she didn't really mean to hurt us, she was just too bleeped up by her own crazy mother to understand.  But the passive-aggressive and mostly plausibly deniable disregard she showed for the basic needs of my brother and nephew while they were staying with her even after they called her out on it proves to me that the way I remember it really is the way it was.  I think I need to detail in writing the things she did which demonstrated that to me, but I can't yet.  I did manage to say it all to my therapist during my session yesterday, that was really hard and included a lot of stuttering and gulps and frequent loss of volume control, but it was good.  It helped me define a crucial understanding of the difference between a bad parent and a psychopathic one:

Not taking care of her son and grandson = Regular crappy parent stuff
Covert passive-aggressive obstruction of her son's efforts to take care of himself and his son and overtly insisting on continuing to do the things that were hurting her son and her grandson despite explicit dialogue = psychopath stuff.

I feel a little sick now, and like I might hurt myself.  I won't.  I will ride out that feeling, but I've got to hit Post now before I chicken out.

That is a difficult and big realization. Very hard to say and to admit. I bolded part of your quote. The experience with your brother and nephew add confirmation that your childhood really was horrible. (For myself, I often doubt myself, so outside confirmation is extremely beneficial.)

In a previous post you mentioned that you wished you could have remembered more from your therapy session. With my T's permission, I record my sessions. I think I get 250% more out of each session by going back and listening to  and journaling the session.

Hey Bach,

You're in a safe forum here. I'm glad you're opening up and being very clear about your mother being a clinical psychopath. You're 100% right in that any other word, "bad mom" or "damaged person" isn't accurate. Those are just part of the long list of attributes of a psychopath/sociopath.

Any time you want to write out, in detail, the **** she did to you and others, I welcome reading it. Psychopaths/Sociopaths lose a lot of power once people stop keeping what they've done secret. Blast the airwaves. If she did it, then you can talk about it.  I was held captive by my sociopathic elder sister for decades because I kept taking the high road and making excuses for her evil behaviors. Sociopaths stay in power until their victims start talking openly about what they've done.  One of my very favorite books is The Sociopath Next Door by Dr. Martha Stout. She says 4% of all humans are born sociopaths. But 15 to 30% of all leaders are sociopaths and up to 50% of all prisoners are sociopaths. She asks the question, why do the 96% of us good people allow 4% evil people to rule us?  Her answer is because we take the high road. We don't believe that they are as purely evil as they truly are, so we politely soften what they are with kinder words. We, the good people, were taught to treat others as we want to be treated ourselves. But it turns out that rule only applies to how we should treat good people. We think psychos have consciences, but we need to fully understand that they do NOT feel bad for ANYTHING they've ever done. And they have NO intention on EVER stopping their abuse on the people around them.  She also teaches that sociopaths get worse with age, not better.

For the 96% of us, our war cry is "Oh, why would she say or do that?" But that war cry SHOULD be "Don't listen to her! She's lying!" We make excuses for them. We don't air their dirty laundry. And they know it. They KNOW we won't expose them, so they just...keep...doing...bad things to good people. Once we call a psychopath a psychopath, they lose a LOT of their power over us.

Confronting them yields nothing. They don't care if you confront them. I don't recommend it. The general rule is to get away from them. Never engage in conversation with them. Words are their playground. Just walk away if you can. If you don't like alligators, don't swim in their pond. If you don't like psychos, turn and walk away. But by telling us what she's been doing, you are exposing her to us. And that's a good way to get it off your chest. You're right to tell the truth. Be as open as you want to be here. I'm all ears and I love hearing the stories that expose them for what they really are. Monsters. MONSTERS.

(Sorry> Obviously I have a lot of anger built up around sociopaths, psychopaths and NPDs).

Gentle hugs if you want them, Bach. That is a lot to work through and realize. I'm sorry you and they had to experience that from her. We're here for you and thank you for sharing this with us.   :grouphug:

Oh dear, Bach. That is so very much, between Other not responding for 1.5 months, to directly and indirectly being exposed to your M's toxicity, to coming to the hard to swallow acceptance that your mom is a true psychopath. Your mom is a psychopath. Your mom IS a psychopath. You endured. The fact that you have for so long tried to find excuses to soften that reality and to stay in contact with her shows what a loving person you are. The opposite of her. You're doing good, Bach. And when you are ready to write it all out, we'll be here with empathy.

Safe hugs and deep gratitude for all the replies. I'm glad that my writing about it is helpful to others. That helps the struggle to put it into words be a tiny bit less shattering.

Still, though, I'm afraid. I'm filled with formless terror. Every little thing is a tiny panic attack, barely visible and mostly controlled but filling the back of my mind with catastrophic scenarios. My Person feels a little bit unwell and some part of my mind immediately starts trying to figure out what will happen to me if I wake up in the morning and he's dead. I'm afraid to go to sleep. Not because there's any even slight reason to think he's about to keel over and die but just because that's how my mind works. That's how it has always worked. I'm so much better now than I used to be at guiding myself gently away from disaster thinking, so much better at being able to perceive what the objective situation is vs what is the paralysing bafflement and confusion of a little girl who was never able to feel safe, but right now I am weak. So, so weak. I need to do some breathing, some tapping, some something. It is terrifying even to do that. Need to tell myself that I can do it, need to remember that although there will be resistance initially, I don't have to fight it, if I just leave it be and keep going, relaxation will creep in if I let it, and I will feel so much better when I feel better.

Hi Bach,

I'm having a lot of feelings over what you're going through. Especially the formless terror. I can so relate. Sociopaths have a goal: To make you feel isolated, afraid, and weak. It's in their DNA to do that to us. This might sound too simple, but I found a ton of healing from reading these two books. In Sheep's Clothing by Dr. George Simon and The Sociopath Next Door by Dr. Martha Stout.

These two easy reads really REALLY helped me get through the shock when I discovered how seriously I needed to make sense of my sociopathic family--and of myself as their victim. In Sheep's Clothing is thin. A fast read. It was written a long time ago, when this particular doctor called them Disordered Characters rather than sociopaths, but his words, in this short, simple book, gave me so much relief that I bought a dozen copies and started giving them to my friends as gifts. Next, I read The Sociopath Next Door, a more modern book that sealed it for me. It's also an easy read and gave me a ton of healing deep within my own soul.

I can't express enough, how these two simple books not only explained why these people are what they are, but really helped me to see how I can find joy in life again without these monsters driving me into an internal war with myself.

When I finally walked away from my family, in 2010, it took almost a year for me to get their judgmental, lying, hateful sociopath voices out of my head. But during that year, every day was better than the day before it, until Voila! One day they were just no longer in my head. I lost my shame and confusion around having walked away from them. I finally started saying, "My family got so ugly that even I couldn't love them anymore."

Meanwhile, I hope you keep sharing your thoughts here. We're stronger when we feel connected to others who are on our side. I see by the comments from other members, that you've found many empathetic ears here that welcome what you have to say.  We're pulling for you!

I hear you Bach. Safe hugs.

My Person left for a 10-day business trip yesterday.  I'm not used to this.  He hasn't been away for this long in many years, and this is the first time I've been alone in the new house for longer than half a day.  I was hoping that I would cope with this better than I am so far.  I don't want to spend the next week-plus doing drugs and overeating and lying on the couch feeling hopeless.  I had thoughts and plans about what I was going to do to keep busy and keep my spirits up but so far, nope.

we've got a safety net under you, bach - we won't let you fall.  :grouphug:   you've been going thru so much lately, realizations, understandings, and just surviving it all.  it's an awful lot.  we're here for you, tho, and if it helps, picture us there with you so you won't feel so all alone.  when i had to leave mexico and was in the car in line to cross the border, my fear and anxiety was overwhelming until i did picture several people here on the forum walking along the car till i got to the border and made it thru.  it helped me a lot - i just hope it could help you while you're on your own.  sending love and a hug filled w/ comfort and care and help to ease your fears. :bighug: 

gentle hugs if you want them, bach. We're here for you. I'll go for a virtual walk with you, get some fresh air. :)

Other has resurfaced. I haven't spoken to him yet, we've just texted a little. He invited me to come spend the night with him next Wednesday when he's in town. No acknowledgement of his 8-week absence, only the vaguest update about what he's been up to, no queries as my summer, just boom, he finally answered one of my casual texts and is treating the whole thing like we last spoke last week. I'm actually kind of okay with this, because honestly, I think I probably understand what happened eight weeks ago better than he does and, as much as I've hated it, I've done okay with it within myself. I was able to understand that it wasn't about me, and to give him the space he only knows how to ask for by trying to pick a fight. I was also able to be angry at him over his mistreatment of me without it producing the kind of anxiety from which foolish actions that increase suffering are born. That's pretty big, but I wish he could understand that it's okay to tell me when he's overwhelmed and needs me to back off before he gets to the point where he has to lash out and then exile me.

I'm anxious about seeing him, vicious-circling with the relief and excitement and hope that I can't help but feel because yep, here he is, back again.

best to you for the reunion, bach.  i hope everything goes well.  love and hugs :hug:

Hi Bach,
Wishing you the best for when you meet up with Other again.
Sending you a hug  :hug:
Hope  :)

I love you, friends  :hug: I really do.  But today I feel like I might be dying.  I know that is silly, that I am not dying and that I am feeling this way because of a combination of physical and mental factors, but I feel weak and my body is very tight, and all I can do is lie on the couch in my safe space, acknowledge the discomfort and wait for it to pass.

I would really like to cry.  A few months ago, I read an article about the physiology of crying that fascinated me.  I can't find the original article I read, but here is a quote from another article that addresses what I found so interesting:

QuoteEmotional tears are chemically different than basal and reflex tears. All tears contain enzymes, lipids, electrolytes, and metabolites. However, emotional tears appear to contain additional proteins and hormones. 

Preliminary research has shown that emotional tears may have increased levels of prolactin, potassium, manganese, leu-enkephalin, and adrenocorticotropic hormones.  The release of these hormones and elements during emotional crying helps regulate stress levels in the body and return it to a more balanced state.

Crying provides many benefits. Not only is it a signal for help during physical and emotional distress, but crying can also help relieve stress, decreasing the levels of cortisol in the body.

Ever since I read that original article, I've been thinking about how seldom I am able to cry at this point in my life, no matter how much I want to or need to.  I used to cry a lot when I was young, but then when I was in my early 20s, an incident occurred that made me notice that I cried far too easily, and in front of people that I did not know well.  It was a very small incident, not a big deal at all.  I don't even remember the context of it.  I remember that it was after a Buddhist meeting and that I was telling someone something about my father who at the time was having issues of isolation and loneliness after the breakup of his marriage to my stepmother.  I remember that at one point my voice caught and tears sprang to my eyes, and although the person I was talking to didn't say anything about it and possibly didn't even consciously notice it, I felt a change of energy from them and suddenly felt tremendously self-conscious about my tears.  I think I realised in that moment that I had a habit of putting people off by oversharing any time someone seemed interested in listening, and that I didn't want to be that way anymore.  I remember consciously getting hold of myself and promising myself that I would learn to listen more and talk less, and most of all that I would not cry in front of people if I could possibly help it.  The motivation to not cry increased during my struggles with psychopharmacology-pushing mental health professionals during my 30s and their insistence that there was no answer for me without medication no matter how bad my experiences with medications were.  35 years later, I reckon that learning to listen more and talk less has been very rewarding, but that I did entirely too good a job over the years of learning how to clamp down on my emotional tears.  Now I can seldom cry no matter how much I want to or need to. 

I've become slightly obsessed with the idea that, much like the way that the flaring of my chronic constipation has been causing such wearing, constant low-level misery in every part of my body and mind, I have a backup of stress chemicals that need to be discharged through emotional tears.  A few months ago, I was doing a lot of tapping, and although I was not able to provoke emotional tears with it, I was able to start myself yawning deeply in a way that caused my eyes to water.  For a while, I was finding a measure of relief from that, but then it started to feel more burdensome than relieving, so I haven't been tapping very much lately.  A further wrinkle to this is that I've had recent occasions on which I felt emotion rising in a way that I thought would lead to tears, but instead of tears gathering and falling, I've started yawning instead, and that makes the stuck poisoned feeling even worse.  I asked the somatic therapist I speak to once in a while what she made of that, and she suggested that even though I don't produce the tears, perhaps the moment of feeling their rise shows that my system is working on it, and the yawning is a symptom of the effort to get the emotions unstuck.  An indication of progress, in other words.  I don't know.  Maybe.  I hope so.  All I know is that currently the big-picture experience of being me is unrelentingly uncomfortable even when I'm feeling "well" enough to "function" or "be productive".  It's honestly kind of a relief to just be sick today, to just lie here with the suffering face on and not try to force myself to "feel better".  That probably explains why I went and inadvertently got myself all triggered this morning.  I guess it would be nice if I could more naturally have a down day without having to trash my nervous system to get it, yet another in the endless series of issues and issues and issues of being me.  Sigh.  :disappear:

Feeling like you might be dying sounds scary. I'm glad you are in a place that feels safe. If I was physically with you, I would do what I could to help bring comfort to you.

Quote from: Bach on August 14, 2022, 10:08:39 PM
I remember consciously getting hold of myself and promising myself that I would learn to listen more and talk less, and most of all that I would not cry in front of people if I could possibly help it. 

If my comments about this are too weird or just don't fit, please disregard. I'm wondering if there is a way for you to cancel the vow that you made to not cry in front of people. I have cancelled vows that I made about other things. Usually I wrote some things out and then read it aloud with my T. Just a thought, but it seems that what you promised yourself had a lot a power. Maybe the first question is if you want to continue to keep that promise.

Bach, it resonates so deeply with me to notice the energy shift in another person when we show emotion - I have a lot of those snapshots of looks on the faces of others that run through my mind and leave me feeling like it is better to not show any emotion.  I wish it wasn't this way.  I am thinking of you as you navigate this time.

Bach,

I certainly know the social pressure to not cry. I think it's a shame we do this to each other. I spent a lot of years without shedding a tear. Mostly I never cried from childhood to when my little sister died when I was 48. But then I cried. For two solid years I cried almost every single night. Sometimes for well over an hour. Even today, 14 years later, if I talk or write about her for more than a minute, I start crying again. It feels good. I wish I could cry for myself sometimes, but I can't.

I can only cry for my little sister, or when my wife, kids or grandkids are in pain. But, no matter who I might sob for, when I can actually produce emotional tears...it just feels good. To me, love is only a word until I can find some proof that it's real. And when I can really produce genuine tears, I feel like they are the proof I needed that love was really there. If I could cry for myself, maybe then I'd have the proof I need that I love myself as much as I love my family.

This is going to sound really backwards, but...I hope you can cry soon. (Never thought I'd ever say that to someone). But, you, me, and a lot of other people need to physically feel the love we have for ourselves. We deserve it. We've fought a long, hard battle, and we deserve to feel the appropriate emotion around it.

(Also: I yawn and belch a lot during therapy. I keep apologizing, but my T says that those yawns and belches are good. He says the yawning is another form of releasing energy. The belching that I do during therapy is me releasing anxiety from the gut, and the itchy skin I deal with during therapy is the release of nervous energy through the skin. Tears are good, but according to my T, so are yawns, belches and itchy skin. He calls them sympathetic and parasympathetic releases).

Anyway, I'm pulling for you! Let's all let ourselves yawn and cry and belch and scratch our way to sweet release. ;D :'( ;D

Hugs, Bach, we're here for you. The tears will come and maybe where you don't expect them, but they'll be there to wash stuff out. I used to not cry at things, even to the point where major disasters and such on the news were horrible, but I didn't cry. My reasoning back then was "It's terrible, but it's not like I knew anyone involved." The past couple years since I've started this work, though... Movies, news articles, you name it. Even some firefighter saving a kitten article can make me cry. I just let it happen, but it's so hard. At least, if anyone else is around. I definitely got that "don't let them see you cry" message growing up.  We're here for you, to cry on and cry with.   :grouphug:

it was a revelation to me, bach, about the info you found on crying.  being told not to cry because it doesn't do any good was one of the biggest lies i'd been told by my F.  thank you so much for this.  the differentiation in what our tears contain was fascinating to see.  having read this, i hope it helps me when i know i need to cry.  and i certainly hope it helps you.  if you can feel them at the brink, i have no doubt they'll eventually show themselves.  love and hugs :hug:

I hope you can cry, too. I also cannot and know I need to, and want to.

Friends, thank you for your comments on my post about crying.  It's been on my mind for a long time, and it's very difficult for me to write about.  Much like the various simulations of crying I occasionally manage to achieve, there was satisfaction in finally expressing it, and a temporary feeling of progress, but now I'm feeling as stagnant as ever.  I suppose I'm not surprised by that, nor particularly discouraged, but I'm certainly frustrated.

The following is a bit rambling and messy.  I'm trying to not to obsess about expressing myself perfectly and precisely and instead focus on just getting it out.  Words, as complicated and unsatisfying as yawn-generated tears when all I want is for them to flow freely and be what they need to be rather than what I'm trying to force.

I spent the night with Other last Wednesday and it was really nice to see him.  We got along fine, and I felt really good about the mindful decision I made to relax and have a good time and not try to say anything about how hurt I was by his 8 weeks of silence.  I did gather, through his casual answers to my casual questions about what he's been up to this summer, that exactly what I thought happened happened: He became overwhelmed with stress and didn't know how to ask for space.  I still have anger about it and I'll address it at some point in the future, but when we visited last week, I was able to take the time to read his energy and think carefully about mine instead of plunging right in. I wondered whether I would be letting him get away with it, so to speak, if I didn't say anything, and I considered possible ways that I could bring it up so that it would be at least somewhat a part of a natural conversation and not send him straight to the defensive, but I decided that it just didn't feel like a time that I wanted to make it a thing, and that my not saying anything about right away doesn't automatically mean that I "forgive", i.e., forfeit my right to say something in the future.  The important thing is that it was my conscious choice and neither a matter of me having something I wanted to say but being afraid to say it, or of feeling compelled by insecurity and angst to try to have a conversation when it wasn't what I wanted.  I think I might finally be learning at least a little bit how to tolerate difficult feelings while I think them through, without them making me feel so fearful and uncomfortable that I take impulsive action which backfires.

Although it was a good visit in all the ways I wanted it to be, I hit a low on Thursday morning when we were getting ready to leave.  I sat with that, just accepted it and let it be, and then I had a great deal to say to my therapist that afternoon.  While I was on my way home from the visit, I was thinking about my life and my relationships, and feeling really angry at the fact that, because of the weak father and the psychopath mother and the way I grew up, my relationships are difficult and few and always will be no matter how much I improve my general level of mental health and executive function.  Along with the anger about that came anger about how much work I put into making those improvements, and how limited are the results that I can ever expect to achieve.  On top of all that, anger at the cultural narrative that "your parents loved you and did they best they could, you have to take responsibility for your own life and can't just keep blaming them for things that happened X-years ago."  I AM taking responsibility for my own life, every chance I get.  And it's not a matter of blaming my parents for my problems in a childish or responsibility-evading way. It's working out how to be sane when what I grew up with was literally crazy. Everything I was taught about everything, values, beliefs, coping methods, self-concept, all of it literally crazy.  I have absolutely no foundation for sanity.  I've had to spend my entire life first coming to understand that absolutely everything I learned as a child about how to live my life, take care of myself, interact with others, get along in the world was warped, and then figuring out what all those things are and how to correct them.  Every little thing about my life, EVERY little thing.  Things I don't even know that I'm doing or thinking or feeling until something (usually unpleasant) happens that forces me to notice them.  I've actually done quite well with it, all things considered.

My therapy session on Thursday felt very healthy.  I felt that I was seeing progress in my efforts to feel my feelings, recognise them, understand them, sit with them, not be afraid of them, not try to run away from them, etc.  Also, progress in my efforts to understand the actual nature of feelings, particularly what it means that they don't only come from my mind and conscious thoughts, but also from physiological and neurological things that happen in my body, and how much contradiction is involved in that.  My therapist even said "That was very productive" at the end of our session.  So, good for me.  But yesterday I realised that I've been quite depressed since then.  I fret about whether it's this physical thing or that physical thing, what have I been eating, what drugs have I been taking, do I have some kind of illness, blah blah blah.  But in truth, it's probably a backlash of feeling so mentally healthy.  So healthily angry, so in touch with the entire range of my real and reasonable and valid feelings, so fundamentally sane.  It's probably my entire being telling me "NO.  No, that is not allowed.  You will not feel mentally healthy and angry and sane.  You will feel sick and depressed and * up.  Ever has it been and ever will it be thus.  HOW DARE YOU?"

bach, i relate to so much of what you've written.  sending love and a hug full of compassion and support. :hug:

Seconding san, I resonated to a lot of it as well. hugs for you and the energy you need as you process.  :hug:

hi Bach
I relate a lot to what you've said too... congrats though on feeling healthily angry.

Quote from: Bach on August 24, 2022, 09:46:51 PM
I've actually done quite well with it, all things considered.

:yourock: This is my favourite thing I relate with.  :hug:

Hi Bach,
I related to many things that you said, and I admire your progress - I wish I could find the right words to say more, but I will send you a hug of support and care  :hug:

Hope  :)

Being me feels just unbearable right now.  I visited my mother on Friday and it was a bit of a fiasco, but it was very productive because I got some clarity on how I feel about the question of whether or not she will sell the family house and go live in a retirement community.  This is a question that she's been holding over the heads of myself and my brother for the past several months, and I realised that afternoon that I'm ready to let it go.  The house itself and her drama of cogitating over the decision. 

Ready to let it go.  What a glorious wonderful thing!  Friday evening after we came home, and most of the day on Saturday I felt terrific.  Calm and at peace, sane and healthy and free.  But then on Saturday evening, I exploded into a backlash of self-destructiveness that I was weirdly helpless to stop even though I was fully aware it was happening.  I was almost but not quite able to stop it from continuing on Sunday, and then into today.  So I have to just accept my sickness for a while, try to relax.  Not make it any worse, wait for it to pass.  I'm not going to feel better tonight.  I'm probably not going to feel better tomorrow.  But I will feel better eventually.

HUGS   wishing you peace and energy until the better day comes.

Dear Bach,
That is a lot to have experienced, and I hope you're doing ok today.  Sending you a hug of support  :hug:

I wish you some moments when you feel better - and I agree with you that eventually they will come. 

Hope  :)

my dear bach, i can so relate to that feeling of knowing i'm doing something harmful to myself, but not being able to stop it.  it's a weird place to be, almost like looking at myself from the outside.  just wanted to let you know you're not alone.  love and hugs :hug:

Thank you, friends  :hug: :grouphug: I'm a little horrified to see that I last wrote in here three weeks ago and I still haven't properly regained my equilibrium.

(Have I ever really had it?)

The thing is, my mother is a problem no matter what I do.  She’s a problem when I don’t communicate with her.  She’s a problem when I do communicate with her.  Everything about her existence is a problem for me, and there's nothing I can do that will make her stop being a problem.  I don't regret ending my no-contact because I was really stuck in my healing, and I feel that having contact with her has enabled me to move forward, but now I'm here with the inescapable reality of her. She's a problem. Continuing to have contact with her presents difficulties. Cutting off contact would present different difficulties. All the choices are bad. Everything hurts.

At least I can stand up for myself with her now. She wants me to call and visit, but I've set a boundary that we communicate via text. And the other day she gave me one of her infuriating conditional apologies and I told that her conditional apologies are eloquent of her lack of concern for anything except letting herself  off the hook. That was incredibly satisfying. I know saying that stuff doesn't make any difference to HER, but it does make a difference to me.  I've spent my life keeping my mouth shut, which has always permitted her to assume that I accept her version of my life. The one in which every way that she failed me is understandable and forgivable because she was a loving mother who tried her best but had circumstances beyond her control against her, and anyway it was a long time ago and I was an inherently defective child for whom nothing could be done. I know she will never accept responsibility for anything, but I'm done being complicit in her spin and cover up. I wish I didn't feel the need to swim in these waters. Hopefully soon it will pass and I'll be able to let it go once and for all. Not forgive. But let it go.

Hi Bach,

I relate to what you said about not being able to get distance from your mother. It's really an awful feeling because either you're racked with guilt for what you're doing or angry and frustrated with her for what she's doing. At least it was that way with me. I always felt this damned if you do, damned if you don't pull. When she died it was like a freedom from that.

I don't know if you read it or if you'd find it helpful, but I read Will I Ever Be Good Enough recently and I found it really summed up  lot of my internal stuff that I didn't even realize was a legacy from my m.  Seeing if written down was like oh, that's why I'm doing this. It sounds like you're doing a lot of it already (feeling what you need to and not bottling it up for example).

Well done for your text back to her.

sending a supportive hug if you don't mind Bach.
I think you're incredibly brave for how you are navigating those waters you are in.
The way you describe her version of your life was pretty neat to read and likely helpful .. I can completely believe that and empathize.
Sending as much positive wishes as I can your way.

The self-loathing is the worst part  :'( :'( :'(

gentle hugs if you want them, Bach. Congrats on standing up to her and practicing boundaries. The self-loathing will ease as you get more comfortable with doing that. We're here for you and you're getting stronger and stronger every day.

hey bach, i agree w/ CF that practice in self-care, no matter what form it takes, is what is needed.  not being allowed boundaries thru much of our lives overcame our own sense of what's ok and not ok for us.  keep up the good work!  love and a hug filled w/ self-loathing repellant.  :hug:

Cactus Flower and San, thank you  :hug: :grouphug: I need that gentle support and encouragement.

I realised last week that my mother is like a drug, a very powerful drug which when managed properly can enable certain healing functions, but which comes with terrible side effects and the risk of addiction, and is extremely difficult to titrate. I definitely got too much of her last week. I was able to stay away all last week but I have reason to expect that she will contact me tomorrow or the next day. I need to be prepared.

I want to write more and will try again later.

i think that's a great analogy, bach.  yep, relationships can definitely be addictive, no matter with whom.  best to you with managing this particular "drug" so that it does more good than harm to you and your well-being.  love and gentle hugs filled w/ support. :hug:

more hugs to you and yes, the drug analogy is very appropriate, it seems.  Wishing you peace

 :hug:

I’ve known two men in my life who told me about having sexual encounters with older men when they were children but said it wasn’t abuse.  One was a friend/lover I had when I was about 30.  He lived in a city I had moved away from some years before to which I used to return from time to time to see friends.  I met him through one of these friends.  He was (5? 8? I don’t remember) years younger than I was, and he was a very sweet boy There was one visit we had where we took off after a party at a friend’s house and spent most of the night driving around the city going to see places that had had significance for each of us when we were younger, then found a hotel that was willing to give us an early morning check-in and holed up in there for a few days, talking, drawing, doing writing exercises, listening to music and playing a version of truth or dare in between long episodes of delicious leisurely sex.  During one of those conversations, he told me that he used to give his uncle blowjobs when he was a kid, but that he had liked it and didn’t think there was anything wrong with it.  I accepted this without question.  I suppose I didn’t really know enough at the time to question it.  I lost touch with this lovely boy a few years later.  I still remember him with great fondness and often wonder how he’s doing.

The other is, well, Other.  I don’t remember exactly when it was that he first told me about what he referred to as a relationship that he had with a male teacher when he was somewhere around puberty, but he mentions it from time to time, and is steadfast in his insistence that it was a genuine loving relationship that he wanted and participated in with not just full consent but enthusiasm, and that he didn’t consider the teacher to have done anything wrong.  He believes that he was special to this teacher, that the teacher really loved him and that being loved was a good experience for him as the affection-starved child of a narcissistic mother.  I have never challenged this belief, but over the years as I have gotten to know Other better and better, I have come to believe that there’s more to the story than he has told me, or probably ever will tell me.  Other is not very forthcoming about his feelings or his experiences.  He’ll talk endlessly about his profession, about the music he loves, about the movies he’s incessantly quoting, about his ideas for how to improve everything from his industry to the political media to the rules of baseball, but personal things about his life, not so much.  Nor is he always very truthful when he does talk about personal things.  I don’t think that he consciously lies, but I think that his self-protective mechanisms cause him to withhold, minimise and mislead.  Truths slip out in small bits here and there when something I can’t fathom aligns and more of him starts to show.  I don’t think he even realises when it happens.  The bigger picture is revealed only gradually, only because I cherish his occasional bouts of openness, and pay close attention, and as stories morph and details emerge over months and years, I add things up.  It’s unsettling.  Other says the relationship with the teacher was good for him and that he liked it, but subsequent to it, he had problems in school that led to significant trauma.  I have theories about connections between the relationship with the teacher and the problems that Other developed.  But what do I really know?  I’ve loved this man for the better part of 30 years and I still wonder almost daily about the great dark storehouse of Other.  He takes in more than I expect, and lets out less than he knows. 

I have no idea what the point of writing this was supposed to be, but it’s on my mind.  This is another thing that troubles me that I’ve been wanting to write about for a long time, but now that I have, I’m not sure that I should.

What it makes me think of is how important a male-identifying version of metoo would be and how far off it is. How eye opening it was to hear the stories that were coming up in public that I identified with but had never allowed myself the luxury of thinking they were a big deal.  Men still don't have that. I'm sorry for what happened to those men in your life and that they cannot allow themselves the luxury to feel grief for what happened.

Armee, thank you for reading and replying to my post.

Not sure what to do with these or any of my other feelings. I'm having a very hard time lately coping with all the pain in life, the pain around me, the pain within me, mental pain, physical pain, social pain, real pain, imagined pain, pain feared, pain felt. Pain, pain, pain, everywhere, nothing but pain, can't escape it. I wish I could go to sleep and not wake up until I felt rested and happy and ready to have a real life. But that's not going to happen. So I'll go to sleep and hope for the best, and tomorrow could be better. I don't really expect that it will. But it's always possible. I guess that's what keeps me going.

I resonate with your post.  I hope that you find ease and rest each day even if it is brief.

bach, i've spoken w/ men who have had similar experiences, either w/ males or females, and who have looked on them as something they enjoyed, gave consent to, didn't think of as abuse.  truth is, using a minor in such a way is always a form of abuse, even if they don't recognize it as such.  they often get different messages about it, fears and enjoyments they're ashamed of, trying to wash it clean in their own minds.  they're too often made to feel special, which is often lacking in their lives, so the attention makes them feel good.

i'm sure knowing these things are part of the pain you're feeling.  it's awful, i know.  just make it from today to tomorrow, ok?  we're with you. love and many gentle, caring hugs   :hug: :hug: :hug:

rainy  :wave: san  :hug:

I wish I could stop being so self-destructive.  I'd like to do something positive for myself, but all the things I can think of that would make my life better involve things I need to NOT do rather than things I can do.  I had a therapist once who asked me to keep a journal in which every day I would write down positive things I did.  They had to be positive things, though, not absence-of-negative things.  So I couldn't write "Didn't binge today" or "Didn't abuse drugs today" or "Didn't stay in bed all day today".  But I usually couldn't say something like "Ate healthily today" because "didn't binge" is far from equivalent to "ate healthily".  I couldn't say "Had a productive day" if I did one chore around the house and then lay on the couch for the rest of the day instead of staying in bed.  I couldn't say "Used drugs responsibly" if I had one of those days where I smoke weed all day so that I can do chores and then end up stuffing my face all night because I got the munchies.  What's my point?  F*** if I know.  But I'm really getting too old to live like this, and indeed, I won't live that much longer if I don't figure out a better way.

hey, bach, maybe it would help to break things down to smaller pieces.  instead of 'didn't binge today', maybe 'ate an apple' (which is healthy), or instead of 'didn't stay in bed all day' could turn into 'got dressed today'.  it may not seem like much, but it is a start, and don't we say here that every little thing counts?  i truly believe they do.  i get overwhelmed by those big categories and one statement has to fit everything into it kind of thing.

this stuff is overwhelming when we're not looking for it.  i've had to break trauma work into the tiniest of pieces just to be able to process w/o losing it for weeks (literally).  please, be as gentle on yourself as possible.  you are full of wonderful things.  sending love and a hug full of the goodness of you. :hug: 

Thank you, san  :hug: That means a lot.  It's a good suggestion, too, but I have to deal with my feelings of guilt and shame and inadequacy, like nothing I can do will ever be enough and so I shouldn't write anything down unless it's PERFECT.  I know all the reasons I "shouldn't" feel that way, but still, I do.

I had a ridiculous and frustrating therapy session today.  I talked about how I know all the "whys" about my depression and dysfunction now, but that knowing WHY I'm like this doesn't tell me how to fix it and not be like this anymore.  I told my therapist that I feel hopeless, and that I'm "done".  She asked me what I'm "done" with, and I couldn't really answer her.  She asked if I'm done trying, and I said no, because trying is all I know how to do.  Then I said "Done with hope, I guess.  Done thinking that anything will ever be any different.  I'll just keep trying because that's all I can do, but I suppose I need to just accept that I'm going to live this life until it's over and nothing is ever really going to change."  Do I really feel that way?  I'm not sure.  I suppose I hope not, but I'm just so tired of everything. 

Lots of intrusive thoughts.  "Why doesn't anybody love me?"  "Why can't I be the person I want to be?" "What's going on with my mother?"  "If I was dead, I wouldn't have to deal with any of this crap anymore".  "Why can't I just die peacefully in my sleep?  Go to bed, get all comfortable and cozy, happily drift off and just never come back."  Ugh.  It all sucks.  And I wish I could get free of my mother.  I haven't communicated with her since September 19, and I'm almost obsessed with wondering what's going on with her, why she hasn't contacted me lately, when she's going to contact me, whether I should contact her.  My mother is awful but parts of me just can't let go of her.  Parts of me still want her attention.  Very ambivalent parts, who want her approval, but who also want to call her out on her horribleness, stand up for me, for my sanity, for her craziness, for the things she did and didn't do that made me the festering stinking mess I am today.  But really, I just want to be well, and content, and loved.  I know there are people who love me but it never seems like enough.  I'm always chasing something.  And I'm gaining weight like crazy.  I can't tolerate any of this.  I want to self-harm, but I won't do that either.  I will just keep going, keep trying, keep withering emotionally as I fatten physically, keep growing older, ruing my life, and keeping my mouth shut about all the things no one can help me with.  Keep drowning in my unsheddable tears.  That's the one WHY I still don't know and never will:  Why I even had to exist at all.   

hi Bach,
I am sorry that you're feeling such despair.
I don't have any good answers for your questions ... other than I am so glad you exist and are here.
A lot of what you say resonates when I am feeling despair too.  I totally can understand how knowing the whys really isn't helpful sometimes. It's the how to escape it, that we wait for.
I am gaining a lot of weight too. I put some dye in my beard last week and told my wife I've given up losing weight, but that I'd try to look younger at least :) (it made us chuckle)
Sending positive wishes for that feeling to ease for you. I hope you can be gentle with yourself, Bach.
It was thanksgiving for us Canadians yesterday, and I'm so thankful for you and all you share. I'm glad to be here, hoping for any healing, alongside you.

I'm glad you're here, Bach.

I understand too the obsession with the mother. It's almost an addiction. I had the same when I went low contact still always wondering thinking and remembering to keep the drama alive. Once she died that all went away immediately. I hope you get relief from her one day. I know some here have had luck going no contact and eventually moving beyond that kind of obsession with the ones who hurt us. It wasn't something I could do because of specific circumstances but I hope for relief for you one day or another.

The hopeless days suck. Suck suck suck. The hopeless feeling will pass and give you a break, hopefully soon.

dearest bach, trauma sucks, period.  it can be a never ending source of all you've written about - the hopelessness, the striving for the impossible, the obsession w/ someone who continues to hurt us.  it is difficult to begin wanting kindness, peace, and calm to take the place of hurt, pain, and abuse in our lives.  difficult because we have so little practice at feeling comfortable w/o the pain.  yet we hate it and want it gone at the same time.  ugh!

sending love and a hug full of relief from the terrible whirl-away that you're on. :hug:

Bach,

I feel your pain. I feel the hopelessness with you. I'm glad that when your therapist asked what you were done with, you didn't say you were done trying. I'm glad you're still trying. I've been trying for decades, and it really does pay off.

You said you know that people love you, but you still feel unloved. I'm very happy to hear that you know you are loved. But the difficulty in accepting that sounds like trauma to me. You know the fact, that people do love you. So the issue isn't that you're unloved. The issue is that you are living with trauma. The trauma is not you. Your essence is a loving essence. The trauma is just a pest, like racoons in the crawl space. They're not supposed to be there, but they wreak havoc on your peace anyway.  No need to burn down the house, just keep working to rid it of the trauma racoons.

In an earlier post you talked about men you've known who were okay with their childhood sexual abuse. I've met men like that as well. Several in fact. In this world of 8 billion personalities, I can't begin to know how many different ways a boy can process what happened.

One of my favorite movies is Mysterious Skin. It's also a book. One boy (played by Joseph Gordon Levitt) and who's character was a bit narcistic, embraced the abuse he took at 9 by his little league coach. There was another boy being abused then too. But the other boy was a shy, quiet boy. The abuse made him go bonkers, (like it did me when I was 7) and he was so traumatized by it, that he went on believing he'd been abducted by aliens because that made more sense to him than what really happened.

The boys went their separate ways after little league, and their two stories are told in tandem, until the end of the movie, when at 17 years of age, the two boys reunite. Levitt's character, the one who liked the abuse, compassionately helped explain to the messed-up boy what had happened when they were both 9. I draw a few tears every time I get to that final scene. I relate to the confused boy, and I am always wishing someone would have had the compassion to explain my past to me.

When I read up on Melancholic Depression, which is the oldest term ever used for PTSD, coined by Hippocrates, I wonder if you and I feel that same sense of melancholic depression, still wishing we'de had better parents who would have protected us rather than make us feel unworthy. It's probably why I consider movies like Mysterious Skin and The Perks of Being a Wallflower to be my favorites, because I relate so strongly with the abused boys in movies like those. They just wanted to be loved, like me. I'm loved now, but I have to remind myself that when I feel unloved as a man, it's not reality, it's trauma reminding me that as a boy, I wanted to be loved back then also.

I don't know if my post here is relevant to what you're going through, but I just wanted to share that your post inspired me to write this response. It's how I am currently relating to what you are going through right now.

I like your posts. I hope you are able to keep separating your true self from the trauma. The trauma is not you. The trauma can be dealt with. And when it is, the loving essence of you is still there.

Bach, I have experienced feeling "done." It is awful. I wish I had wise words or a way to bring some light to your heart. I care and I'm glad you are here.

Sweet bach, I'm so sorry you're feeling this despair right now. While I cannot presume to say I understand, I have sometimes felt similar difficulty of hope knowing Fibromyalgia will be with me from now on. We are here for you and all love and care to you. Knowing you, even just on here, enriches my life. I hope this will lighten a little for you. Whether it does or not, though, I'm here to listen and care.

Hi Bach,
I related so much to what you said about your mother - and the obsession with mother and wondering how a mother is - no matter what level of communication (whether in contact, VLC or estranged etc) it seems that it's so conflicting for different parts of a person to cope with the interactions and relationship with a mother. 

I also wanted to say that I'm so glad you're here as well - I second what Not Alone said. 

I also relate to what you said about wanting to put something in a perfect way - and not feeling able to necessarily write something if it doesn't feel that way - such a heavy standard to try to aspire to, and I don't think it's normal or even possible to do it.  But the imperfect, maybe that's more normal, more relateable, and maybe it's ok.

Sorry - I have a headache just now, and I don't know whether what I'm writing is making sense, but I do care, and I send you a heartfelt hug - if there's part of you that is ok to have that hug Bach  :hug:

Hope  :)

I love you all so much

:fallingbricks: :disappear:

Hi Bach, I resonate with the experience of knowing "why" and still wondering why that isn't enough to move forward.  I am thinking of you as one complex being to another.

I love you right back, Bach.

Big hug!

:bighug:

love you, too. :hug:

Love you, Bach, and littles too! fun grouphug for anyone who wants to join in.   :grouphug:

There's a raw spot inside me, I can almost see it.  I can't describe it but it's slippery and hypersensitive, like an eyeball or the oozing place that's left if the skin is peeled off from a blister.  It's there all the time and it hurts all the time.  It's the wound that has been there since the very first day of my life from having a mother who never touched me with love.  That pain originated with my little baby self, and I still feel it every single day.  Nothing reliably soothes it, and most of the things that sometimes, sort of soothe it even just a little bit are things that aren't terribly good for me. 

Lately I've been putting forth a lot of effort towards emotionally disentangling myself from my mother, which is exhausting but about which I feel a certain amount of hope.  It has begun to seem possible.  I wish I could put even the slightest bit of it into words, but I can't, really, it's so complicated and weird and there is SO. MUCH. BACKSTORY.  Earlier today I talked to both My Person and my therapist about the stuff that I've been thinking about lately, and I felt like I was really onto some things, but now it's all jumbled up in my mind and I can barely remember what the heck I was thinking.  Except for the fact that Little B still wants Mommy's attention and approval, and Middle B still wants to stick up for all of us.  Those parts are clear.  What's not clear is what I can do about any of that to make myself healthy and whole, and to stop wallowing in my fundamental addiction to the toxicity.

Oh, I am so tired.

I appreciate you articulating the deep raw spot - I felt it in my body while reading the description.  I have no words for all of that. I am here walking my path and thinking of you as you walk yours.

rainy, thank you so much for reading and replying and acknowledging my struggle. 

I'm identifying a lot lately with that unloved little baby soul.  That's another thing that's hard to describe, because it doesn't feel like it was really me.  Lately, I've been looking at some old family pictures I have (I stole them from her house in 2006 when I was first doing what I refer to as emotional archaeology, but which i could also describe as ransacking her house when she's not there looking for documentary evidence of my life). I barely even recognise any of us.  "Oh, that's what we looked like?  Okay".  My mother was very, very thin and very cold.  I'm not in very many of the pictures, and when I am in the pictures, she's almost never touching me.  In some of the pictures I look like I'm trying to get her to.  There's one where it looks like I'm trying to cuddle up to her but she's leaning away and holding her arms behind her back.  There's another where I'm hugging her arm but her arm is hanging down by her side and her body isn't turned toward me.  Obviously I don't know what was actually going on in any of those pictures, and I don't really remember being that little girl, but I swear I can remember wanting loving touch and not being able to get it. 

hi Bach
I was doing the same thing this morning, hours before anyone woke up... looking at old pictures and at my M's eyes, trying to see if there was any love in them.
I like the term emotional archaeology. Very clever :)
I wish I could offer so much more, but you have my care and best wishes for you and that little baby soul.
You deserved to be so loved and I'm sorry you weren't.  :hug:

I too love the term emotional archaeology. Wishing you strength and peace during the excavation. Gentle hugs if you want them.

great term you coined, bach.  i know what it means to be touch deprived, and it's a horrible feeling.  so very sorry you experienced that.  i don't think a lot of people realize how important touch is.  well, during WWII, they found out.  so many babies were taken out of london for their own safety, but the hospitals who housed them didn't have enough staff to care for them more than shelter and food.  it was finally noticed that these babies weren't gaining weight, were 'failing to thrive' and it was finally determined that lack of touch was the cause.

i hope you get touched in a caring way now, at least.  if i could, i'd give you a hug in real time.  for now, i can only send love and a virtual hug full of care and comfort. :hug:

Thank you for the validation, friends :hug:

san, your use of the phrase "failing to thrive" gave me shivers, because one of my mother's crazy stories about my childhood involves her changing my name when I was a year old because I was "failing to thrive".  And my brother has told me about a visit to the paediatrician that he remembers from when he was 3 during which he and I were both prescribed something to stimulate our appetites because we were malnourished.  It all makes sense.  Ugly, painful sense.

I was supposed to see Other yesterday, but he had to cancel because of a work schedule change.  He said he was going to call so we could talk about getting together later this month, but I haven't heard from him.  That isn't helping.  Drugs aren't helping either.  Nothing is really helping.  I can't get what I need.  Mostly I know I have to keep my head down and keep going and it'll pass and I'll stop feeling so much like there's a howling empty black hole or a quivering raw membrane where my heart should be, and I'll be able to feel warm and smile again, but right now...wow.  Wow.  Ouch. 

what a horribly painful realization, bach.  i'm sorry for triggering that.  i didn't want to cause you more pain.  what you're experiencing right now seems like more than enough.  that icky black hole, life-sucking.  hang tough, ok?  hangin' right beside you.  love and hugs :hug:

Oh, san, don't worry and don't apologise.  It was helpful.  All of this is helpful.  Awful, but helpful.  I didn't start significantly understanding myself and healing until I first found those pictures and documents at my mother's house and even though my initial reaction to them was to have a total mental breakdown, I firmly believe that it was necessary and eventually beneficial for me to confront the feelings evoked by that so-called emotional archaeology.  I think it's the same now, and as terrible as everything is right now I feel that it is leading somewhere good.  So don't ever be afraid to share your thoughts and insights, they are important to me and truly appreciated :hug:

I think I actually repulsed my mother when I was a kid.  When I think about my issues around loving touch, I feel repulsive.  I feel like my needs are bad and wrong and disgusting.  I feel a lot of contempt for my physical body and its needs that probably comes from her.  I believe that this is my primal wound, and an even bigger source of ongoing trauma for me than the suffocation incidents.  I think that my yearning for loving touch is the pain that I’ve been self-destructively medicating all my life. 

Bach,
I'm so sorry for what you're going through. It's so hard to be in a body that makes you feel uncomfortable and repulsive. At times I almost feel like it's like being stuck in a prison that you can never escape. So, I understand how you might be struggling with feeling contempt for your body, whilst also longing for some kind of loving touch.
When I talk about this issue with others hardly anyone gets it, which always leaves me thinking I might be broken somehow, but I know that at least there are some people here in this forum that will understand what it means to be longing for a hug or other form of loving touch, whilst also being scared of making this kind of connection because being touched by others triggers so many negative memories.
I don't have a solution for what you're going through (I wish I had) but I hope it will get better with time as you get to process what happened to you as a child. Maybe all your emotional archaeology will help you resolve all your issues with touch even though it may be hard at the moment?
At any rate, your needs are not bad or wrong, we all deserve loving touch, but it feels so sad that some of us have to struggle with this all through our lives because of what our parents did to us...
Here's a virtual hug if you want, otherwise just ignore it, I wouldn't want to make you feel uncomfortable :hug:

Bach,

I'd like to send a virtual loving hug your way, if it's okay with you.
I understand the feeling of being repulsed by my M.. and my heart aches for you.
No matter how one can explain it, it doesn't make it better or even easier.
I'm trying to distract myself from it these days. I am loved, I remind myself over and over. (just not from FOO)
You are loved too.... while it sometimes feels like small consolation, I hope it is some.
:bighug:

bach, just to let you know you're not alone.  while i don't feel that repulsive feeling w/in myself, i can't imagine how painful it must be.  i know i'm carrying a lot of pain about it (even tho i can't feel it emotionally, my body screams at me daily) and being rejected by all 3 hubs re: intimacy/touch, just added fuel to that fire. 

just want to let you know you're not alone.  careful, but caring hug coming your way (wish i could give you one in person), and lots o love. :hug:

milkandhoney11, phil72 and san, thank you so much for the understanding and acceptance and hugs.  This is so hard and painful.  I've been in a swamp with it ever since I first started thinking about it a couple of weeks ago.  It took a huge effort to even start talking about it, because it brings up such awful feelings, and because thinking about it or talking about it makes me feel like a whiny little (insert derogatory words of choice here, hurtful insulting critical words) crying about some childish thing that I should have been over years ago.  I know with my rational mind that that is not true and totally not fair to me, that this is a valid issue, valid pain, a valid need, etc., but when I think about needing any kind of physical contact I feel like some kind of disgusting slime creature that any decent human being would be horrified to touch.  It's Little B, poor little thing, trying to cuddle up to Mommy who ignores or recoils or pushes away.

There is sex tangled up with this.  I'm 97% sure that I wasn't physically sexually abused as a child, but I was definitely exposed to far too much sex and sexuality and far too young an age.  This caused me to put an outsized importance on sex as I grew up, which caused me many problems throughout my life, compromised my relationships and greatly limited my potential for achievement.  That's a very complicated thing and hard to explain, and it hurts terribly.  I can't write about it right now.  Thought I would be able to, but like so many other things, it's a big mess of thorny emotional brambles, and possibly the worst part is that at the center of that mess is poor Little B, getting flayed alive just looking for the warmth and safety that should have been but wasn't her birthright. 

Hi Bach,
it sounds like you have a lot to process at the moment and I just wanted to say that I'm thinking of you.
I'm glad you managed to talk about your issues with accepting your body and I'm always here to listen if you feel you want/can discuss this in the future. It is so difficult to share our innermost thoughts about things that affect us so deeply and I really admire your courage in this situation.
Hearing about your story has made me think about my own experiences and it feels like I have been able to discover some important pieces and memories that I was missing, so thank you for your openness.

I hope you'll find a way to deal with all this awful feelings and gradually overcome your hurt, however slowly

Take care!

I got covid the day before Thanksgiving, and although I am recovering now, being sick and recovering is once again bringing up mental/emotional/childhood trauma issues.  At the moment, the less said about that the better, because as soon as I typed that sentence there was a reaction way down in my gut that told me it's too much to try to write about right now. 

This afternoon, I was texting a bit with my mother.  She was talking about the memoir she's writing.  I'm ghoulishly interested in this memoir, because although I know that all of her stories and recollections are warped and twisted by her need to remember things in a way that serves her image of herself rather than with any realistic perspective, I still get insights into my childhood experience (and in particular, why it really wasn't me) from them.  It gives me a lot of material for therapy and self-reflection. And so, I always encourage her regarding this memoir, and express my interest in reading it.  Today she made a remark about my past that prompted me to speak a small piece of my truth, and she did what she always does, which was offer a weak and insincere apology.  I barely even notice those anymore, but for some reason I was thinking about it this evening when I made dinner, and it occurred to me that a small part of me both wants her apologies and is made furious by them, but the much greater part of me finds them useful as an objective reminder that none of it is actually forgivable.  I'm not sure what the significance of that is, but it seems somehow important.   

Hi Bach,
so sorry to hear that you caught covid, I hope you are feeling a little bit better now. I know how much this can affect you (both in terms of covid itself and in terms of triggering trauma issues), so I am certainly feeling for you.
I also wanted to say how brave you are and how much admire how you are able to handle the situation with the memoir. It can't be easy to deal with this, but it's wonderful that you can see it in a "positive" light and just focus on the material you can get for your own therapy
Sorry for the way your mum is still treating you, hearing all these insincere apologies can be difficult but it sounds like you are handling them quite well

Thank you for the replies, milkandhoney11.  It's so hard to write about this stuff, and it helps to know people are listening.

Trying to figure out who I want to be and if it's even possible.

I think there's a mechanism somewhere very deep in my somatic programming that causes me to get sick when I start developing positive momentum.  It's happened too many times to be a coincidence. 

Bach,

I'm really tracking with your mother's memoires story. I know that feeling of wanting an apology but being angered by them when they come, too little, too late. It's an inner battle I've also fought for decades. To me, your curiosity is not ghoulish, it's a daughter still wanting love and attention from her mother.

When my far less than brilliant older brother decided to write his "letter of truth" that he spent a full week on, he was already deep in the clutches of our sociopath sister. He was her Man Friday. He did her bidding for her. When she said jump he jumped. And I had known for years that he was a compulsive liar himself, so I expected his letter of truth to be nothing but tainted versions of the truth, meant to put all the misery of his life onto me. But I was so emotionally fragile during that time in history, that I was literally terrified of the letter. So when he finally posted it online, I immediately deleted it, unopened. I then went into my deleted folder and deleted it from there. The computer kept asking me if I was sure I wanted to do this and I kept selecting DELETE again and again until no trace of it could ever be recovered. I assumed that the letter was written explaining why he and his devotion to our narcissistic older sister, were the two most abused people in the world. In order to do so, I was sure he'd have to make sure and place all the blame for his poor victim life onto me. So I was so close to suicide at that time, I knew I had to delete it. I couldn't just leave it in my inbox unopened, because I'd be like Poe's, A Tell Tail Heart, where I'd be obsessed by just knowing that poison was still within reach. Taunting me from beneath the floorboards of my inbox. When i hit that last delete button, I felt the weight of its presence leave me. I knew the rest of the world was reading it, and since I wasn't going to be able to deny any of his claims, I knew I was now the outcast. I estranged just weeks later from every man, woman, and child who might ever read and believe his lies.

I will say, that now, almost 13 years later, and estranged from them for 12 of those years, I am finally feeling curious enough that I kind of wish I'd have kept a copy of the letter so I could read it now. Now that I have the support of people on this forum, and of my own, stronger version of myself, I do wish I could read it.

I can see the conflict within you through my own lens as well. It's not ghoulish to want to know what your mom has the guts to say in her memoires. It may anger you to read it, and you may choose to stop reading if it's triggering, but it's not ghoulish. Not in my opinion. You want love from someone you know you'll never get if from. Been there! So many parts of me are still there.

And to your comment about the sexualization of your childhood, even though you were not physically assaulted. Sexualization from words, exposure to nudity and sex that you're not ready to see, is considered sexual abuse.

Dear Bach,
I was interested in what you wrote about noticing there's a mechanism that causes you to get sick when you start developing positive momentum - as I read it, I really related to it (from some part of myself) - but I couldn't put a finger on why, or what it meant - but it seemed meaningful.  I think you've noticed a realisation, and I really hope that it enables you to work out why.  Sorry - I'm getting tangled up in words. 

Anyway, I popped over to your journal to say 'hi' and to send you a hug (if that's ok)  :hug:

Hope  :)

I'm so full of self-hatred right now I can't even stand to be visible.  I look in the mirror every day and hate my $%^& face.  I look at pictures and see a squatty disgusting little troll.  I feel the urge to self-harm with an intensity that I thought I left behind at least 15 years ago.  I'm a piece of filth and my life is a burden.  I shouldn't have had to be born.

oh, Bach, it sounds like you are in a bad place right now and I just wanted to tell you that I am feeling for you.
I know what it's like to struggle with extreme self-hatred (I always try my very best to never ever look at myself in the mirror because I simply cannot bear the amount of negative feelings I get flooded with) but I am not quite sure how to get out of this situation, so I can't really give you any advice, I am afraid.
All I can say is that (to me) you are a wonderful person and not at all disgusting. I am grateful to have met you through this forum and your understanding has been a great source of healing for me, so you are most certainly not a burden and I honestly appreciate you as a person.
Sometimes it is hard to accept that as we our our own worst critics and that is totally okay, but I hope that someday you might be able to see you with the same love and gentleness as we see you.

Quote from: milkandhoney11 on December 15, 2022, 09:07:36 PM
I hope that someday you might be able to see you with the same love and gentleness as we see you.

:yeahthat:
sending as much love and positive wishes as possible Bach.  :hug:
Please know how important you are to me, and I am very sure to so many others.
I sure wish it was getting easier for you and I sure wish I could help somehow.

 :bighug: sending so much love and encouragement to you. You are beautiful and perfect just as you are and you have every bit as much right to exist here and breathe here as anyone else on earth. I'm loving you intensely right now. This massive massive EF will end. Just keep your self safe until then ok?

milkandhoney, phil and Armee, thanks very much for the support. I'm pretty useless right now and trying to find some way to relieve the pressure inside that makes me want to hurt myself. But I couldn't respond to encouragement and kind words yesterday and I can today, so I guess that's a little glimmer of some kind of light.

I don't know if it works but I've heard of twisting and pulling a cloth when those explosive feelings need a release. I bet those feelings against yourself are really pent up anger at people who hurt you that it wasn't safe to express. You don't really want to hurt yourself but that anger needs a release.

The other day when I wrote about hating myself, it made tears fall from my eyes.  It was good to get some tears out.  There weren't enough of them, though.  I need to get more of those chemicals out.  I'd like for there to be a way I could get to those tears that would be gentler and more healing than by leaning in to my self-hatred.  Even if it actually worked every time, which it doesn't, who has the energy for that kind of thing anyway?  So the chemicals just stay in here and I stew in them, stumbling through my life ineffectually and with a bad attitude.  I am so tired of all this.

Whatever the anger is, does it really even matter, I need to release it so I can nurture and care for myself and live my life.

I agree.

Whatever the anger is, it's anger. Anger isn't meant to stay with us. It's meant to get us out of binds and then release. So if anger is still pent up within us, we are wise to find ways to release it.

For me, I was taught by my family and church that anger was a sin. Mom taught me that protecting myself offended her. (How could I be a good little servant if I stood up for myself, right?). So, in cases like ours, the anger itself is the issue. Doesn't matter what caused the anger. It needs to be released.

It's a big task, but with help and with giving ourselves permission to be angry, even though we were originally trained to bow down and take the abuse, the way to inner peace is accepting our right to be angry, loving our angry selves, and releasing our anger in safe, appropriate ways.

I'm with you on this. I support your right to feel and release anger, no matter why it's there.

bach, i'm so with you as you go thru this.  may i just sit w/ you, drink something warm and comforting (i love hot cocoa), read your favorite book to you?  or, i'll read mine - alice in wonderland - just to escape to a magical marvelous place for a little while.  i think escaping from those dark places is the best medicine at times.  if not for you, please know i wish i could do more to help ease this distress.  sending love and a hug full of care and compassion. :hug:

Quote from: sanmagic7 on December 18, 2022, 06:02:27 PM
bach, i'm so with you as you go thru this.  may i just sit w/ you, drink something warm and comforting (i love hot cocoa), read your favorite book to you?  or, i'll read mine - alice in wonderland - just to escape to a magical marvelous place for a little while.  i think escaping from those dark places is the best medicine at times.  if not for you, please know i wish i could do more to help ease this distress.  sending love and a hug full of care and compassion. :hug:

Thank you, san.  This is such a comforting vision and is exactly the kindness I need right now. 

Papa Coco, I have realised that I have very little active present-day anger that causes me problems.  Mostly my problematic anger is historic and somatic, stuck in my body from all the years of my younger life and tangled up with the pain from the lack of loving touch and the inappropriate sexualisation.  For most of my life I honestly did not know what that was, did not understand it or even realise that it was there.  But now that I do understand it and accept it that it is there, I have realised that until I release it, I will not stop falling into self-destruction.  So I've been trying to figure out how to release something that isn't a definable mental/emotional thing but is a deeply buried set of physiological and biochemical responses.  I've never been very aware of my body, and have never had a very good relationship with whatever aspects of it I was aware of. I have realised that this is a subject that needs attention, so I've been working on it.  It is VERY uncomfortable, physically uncomfortable. But I think I'm on the right track.

Bach,

I love what you're written here. As of the past few days I've been exposed to my own lifelong anger again, and honest to god I have no idea how to deal with it.  I have neighbors who are letting dangerous dogs run loose. Our fences were damaged in a recent windstorm, and those dogs corner us in our own back yard growling and showing their teeth. We patched the fence enough to keep them out for a few days now, but they bark, 10 feet from our bedroom window, all day long. My city's animal control refuses to help, and all the other neighbors who are being cornered and barked at are afraid to report. I'm so angry I can barely make it through the day. Here we go again. Once again I'm a victim of crimes, and once again, all my peers step back and let me suffer. I've stood up for my neighbors in so many ways, and now that I need some support, they all hide in their little bubbles and hope I'll fix this.

My wife is not as bothered by it, so she's not really being too supportive either, so I'm in a rage that I know is an extension of an historic 60 years of pent-up rage that I've never been able to control or release.

THis morning, I made a drastic decision to move out of the house on the day after christmas. My wife and I have a cabin on the coast. I'm moving into it. She says she's okay with that. It's not a divorce or even a separation, I'm just going down there and not coming back, but for a few days every month to spend some time with her, do my yardwork duties, and head back. I now have to wear headphones all day and all night in my own home. If I could control or release this anger, perhaps I could calm down and deal with this in a more appropriate way. But my whole life has been defined by having been betrayed by all my peers and family and left to the mercy of mob bullying, and, though this may not be a repeat of my past, it SURELY FEELS LIKE IT INSIDE MY HEAD AND HEART.

Bach, if you find better answers than what I naively gave you a few days ago in this thread, please share them with me. I am at my wit's end. My anger is from 50+ years ago and it's raging right now again.

Funny how life moves along and suddenly turns on a dime, eh?  A few days ago, I thought I had an answer for you, then BAM!  I'm on my face again. Forgive me for thinking I knew more than I did.

I know, but can't control, the fact that if we can't turn and face our dragons, those dragons turn and face us instead.  I've not faced my dragon as well as I thought I had, so it has come back to life and I'm not doing well right now. Not even remotely.

Papa Coco, what I've been doing to try to deal with/release my anger is to put aside as much as possible my thoughts, logic and emotional feelings, and focus on my physical feelings.  I focus on the thought of "Release the anger" and try to tune in to how my physical body reacts.  Because I'm so unfamiliar with and disconnected from my physical body, it takes concentration to get those signals.  I help the process along with certain kinds of physical stimulation, such as chanting, tapping, lying on an acupressure mat, havening, and vocal exercises.  It also helps sometimes to sit in the sun and look at the river I live on and the woods on the far bank, and listen for natural sounds like water flowing and bird calls and tree branches rustling in the wind.  I try to imagine the anger leaving my body.  Sometimes I imagine it steaming off my body and dissipating into the atmosphere, and I look for where in my body I feel the most energy moving.  Sometimes I try to feel positive sensations in my body, feel any hints of little places within me that are relaxed and breathing and really notice them.  I've been trying to set aside short periods of time each day to work on this little by little, because it really does take a lot of effort and I don't want to burn myself out on healing like I've done so many times in the past when I felt that I was really onto something and charged ahead and overloaded myself because I was so eager to HEAL and BE WELL ALREADY.  I suppose it's a good healthy thing that I have finally learned that trying to FIX THIS NOW usually just makes everything worse, and that getting angry at myself for not progressing fast enough is the epitome of defeating the purpose.  So parts of me are feeling a real sense of hope because it seems like I finally have all the pieces of the puzzle, but there's also a lot of weary discouragement with streaks of despair, because it all feels so unsolveably too much. 

Thanks for sharing these Bach, there's some wonderful techniques here that I'd love to try sometime soon.  I feel like I've hit that same "k, you know what you need to do to heal, now go do it!" wall once or twice over the last year, your post is a good reminder to take things a day at a time.

Hope you have a great week!

Bach

Thank you!  Mostly for calling to attention that I too try too hard. When something works, I embrace it and push it and then get frustrated that it doesn't work like it did that first day.

There was a Seinfeld episode where George's dad, who had serious anger issues, went to a retreat called "Serenity now."  He learned that when his anger raged, he needed to calm down and repeat "Serenity now" but, because this show was a comedy, George's angry dad would get mad and scream at the top his lungs "SERENITY NOW!!!!!"

Your comments about pushing it too hard make me laugh because all too often, I'm screaming "SERENITY NOW!" at myself.

I'm heading to the beach house on the day after Christmas. This is a Pacific Ocean beach with a surf that is nearly always roaring. I am going to read and reread your post and find some times each day to bicycle down to the beach, sit on a warm blanket and let the roar of the ocean surf wash through me the way your river is doing for you.

The biggest thing I'm taking out of what you've posted here is to NOT try to force it. If I can move forward one quarter inch per day, then that's progress.  When I was in AA learning how to stop drinking, I learned the I would succeed if I strived for progress, not perfection. That rule applies here too.

From the bottom of my heart, thank you for jotting this down for us to read.

Thank you for your reply, CrackedIce.  The somatic stuff is new to me within the last year, and is often very confusing because I have spent my whole life living in my head treating my body like a subordinate with little to catch my notice and nothing to contribute to my emotional healing.  I have been so unfair to my body.  I am hoping to be able to make amends.

Papa Coco, your beach plan sounds really wonderful and like it could be of great value to you in getting through this painful time you are enduring.  Many things about the ocean and beach are soothing to the body and mind.  Remember not to think too much.  Talk therapy has been very helpful to me over the past many years, and it still is, but it’s been utterly revolutionary to me to discover that my mind and my rational understandings of my life experiences are not the be-all and end-all of healing, and that my physical body offers a significant additional path that I never knew existed. 

Dear Bach,
I've not been in your Journal for a while to write anything to you, but I have thought of you almost daily, as I do the exercises you told me about - including the cold shower - and I am ever grateful to you for sharing those - thank you!

I wanted to wish you the best for 2023, and send you a hug too, if that's ok  :hug:
Hope  :)

Hope, I am so happy to hear that I helped you! Thank you for telling me about it. Happy New Year with warm wishes and appreciative hugs to you, too  :hug:

hey, bach, i totally relate to this:

Quotemy physical body offers a significant additional path that I never knew existed.

altho i've been aware of the connection betw. mind and body, as i've grown older and understood myself a bit more, i can see the connections more clearly.  the length and breath of them can truly be amazing.

sending love and a hug full of connectivity  :hug:

san  :hug:

All this stuff is scary because I've spent my life basically unaware of everything but the broadest and most obvious aspects of my physical existence, and now that I'm starting to experience my body as a entity separate from my mind even as it is closely intertwined, I'm understanding that most of the time my body is not happy or comfortable.  In fact, just writing this out I came to a sudden understanding that my body is the part of me that most of the time doesn't want to be here anymore.  I'm not sure what to do with or about that.

I've written before about my distress at not being able to cry tears, and in the past few days I've been experimenting with screaming as a way of releasing that energy.  It's awful and very hard to make myself do, especially if I fear I might be overheard, but it definitely shifts my energy in some strange and interesting ways.  Not a throat-scream.  The keys are to bypass my throat and seek power and steadiness from my diaphragm, to sustain the sound as loud as I can for as long as I can, and especially to do it only once and then wait before judging the result, especially if I feel like I want to do it again.  Writing this out is very threatening, and I can feel waves of tension and aversion rolling along my arms.  I don't like it. 

(a few minutes later)
That almost got overwhelming.  I thought about going upstairs to scream again but that was too scary, so I called on my vagus nerve with the exercise where I clasp my hands behind my neck and keep my head still while looking to the right until I yawn, then looking to the left until I yawn, then a face rub and some havening motions.  Now I'm yawning and yawning and I need to lie down and try to find physical sensations of relaxing, but my mind is fighting against doing that.  Or maybe it's my body!  I DON'T KNOW!


WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY? 

I am really not doing well today. My body is all scrambled up. I'm shaky and clumsy like I've had too much caffeine. I'm doing my best to keep calm and carry on, as they say. Am a little afraid that whatever I try to do about it will make it worse.

I have to figure out how to keep Other's unpredictability from poking the touch-deprivation wound and bringing on the body-flashbacks.  When he's off in Otherland, that great dark chasm of my fellow mother-wound sufferer, and doesn't communicate with me, or when his schedule changes and he can't visit when he has said he would (an occupational hazard in the transportation industry), even though I know he is doing his best and it has nothing to do with his feelings for me, lately my body has been reacting as if he is actively rejecting me, which has been causing me intrusive thoughts and intense emotional distress.  "Nobody loves me.  Why doesn't anybody love me?  Why am I here?  Why do I even have to exist?"  That sort of thing.  It makes me want to hurt myself.  I will always love Other and never be able to stay away from him when he's available, but I have to find some way to not get so horribly triggered when he isn't. 

Bach, I wanted to check in to say I am reading and thinking of you.

Hey Bach, just wanted to empathize a bit - I've definitely been there.  I think it's easy for those of us with all these unresolved traumas to go to those dark places sometimes, as they're unfortunately places we've had to walk before.  I've definitely felt slights against me, whether they were accidental or not, build up to be huge traumatic problems internally with nowhere to discharge.  Before I know it I'm stuck in a shame spiral and my entire body and mind are sapped of their energy.

Working with my therapist, what's worked for me in the past, once I became aware of how I was feeling physically and emotionally (before therapy it was just a draining force in the background of my mind) was asking myself the question - "is it 100% true?"  Often that thought (repeated a few times) is enough to derail the spiral a bit and work on grounding and trying to work my way out of my negative thoughts.

I hope you're able to find some quality time with them in the near future and work through all these feelings together.

Thinking of and caring for you.

Just wanted to say I care about you Bach. :hug:

I feel such deep grief when I think about things I could have done and the person I could have been if I hadn’t had a narcissistic sociopath for a mother.  I try not to dwell on that, but I have times when it’s a persistent intrusive thought.  Tonight I was watching a television show in which there were some very tender and believable scenes between a mother and a teenaged daughter who were talking out a family issue, and the thought of a mother and daughter who had the love and trust between them to have that kind of a conversation felt like a weight on my chest.  Not the good kind. 

Yesterday I had an absolutely bonkers conversation over text with my mother, who was semi-melting down over some repair problems in her house.  It started out as reasonable exchange between an elderly mother with a problem and a grown daughter with an appropriate but calm level of interest and concern about the situation, but then she started catastrophising and pouring on the self-pity, and I had to call her on it.  I wasn’t nasty about it, but I did make it clear that I wasn’t going down that road with her.  This caused her to bait me about the past.  I’m never sure what she wants when she does that.  I don’t know if she wants me to tell her it’s okay, it’s the past, I love her, whatever, or if she wants to fight with me.  Maybe both.  She doesn’t get either, though.  Whatever she says about the past, I push back with my truths, but only gently with as little argumentative charge as possible.  This often takes several tries of writing what I’m feeling and then revising to take heat out of the language, and when I do it properly, it gives me a lot of satisfaction and reminds me that I am not now and never have been the crazy one.  It leaves me with a lingering icky feeling as well, but it doesn’t make me hurt myself and make myself sick the way it used to.  I believe that at least for now the benefit outweighs the harm.  It sure does make me susceptible to heartfelt scenes on television shows and stupid memes on social media about the sacredness of motherhood, though.

Quote from: Bach on January 18, 2023, 03:25:11 AM
I feel such deep grief when I think about things I could have done and the person I could have been if I hadn't had a narcissistic sociopath for a mother.   

I so get this, Bach! Standing with you in your grief.  :hug:

i can relate, bach, both w/ what might have been different about my life, the intrusive thoughts that i thought i'd pushed down enough, and the sometimes overwhelming feelings watching interactions i missed out on.  they regularly bring me to tears.  i'm with you.  it's trauma at its worst.  love and hugs :hug:

Yeah, you just described it eloquently Bach. 1000%.

It's really impressive that you can calmly interact with and witness your mom's texts without becoming terribly triggered. It was a state I aimed for in my interactions with my mom but couldn't attain. It speaks volumes to how well you've been able to heal some aspects of the traumatization. I know it isn't always so easy or even ok but that you've been able to do this without feeling compelled to self harm is actually really impressive and worthy of celebration. 

Bach,

I like how you handled your mom on those texts. You are right, the benefit outweighs the harm. You are a caring, empathetic person (the polar opposite of a narcissist), so even when you have to put your foot down with an abusive narcissist, your caring nature brings up some "Icky" feelings. But the benefit outweighs the harm. And, btw, standing up for yourself is really not harm. It's firm. It's strong. But it's not harm. And standing up to her is actually good for her too. It means you've reached a positive place in life where you are now able to stop enabling her bad behavior. Like Maya Angelou said, "Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better". Today, you're doing better. You're holding your ground in ways that were once impossible for you. Doesn't mean it feels good, but it does feel RIGHT.

My therapist often says, "You can't gain more potency without going through some anxiety."  The beautiful thing about this is that the reason it has an icky feeling is because you're a good person. Only scoundrels can say difficult things without feeling anything. We have to say difficult things to keep ourselves safe from our narcissistic parents. It's good that we are able to do it. It's also a good sign that it isn't easy for us to do. It means we are caring, loving people who have to deal with uncaring narcissistic selfishness.

Hey Bach!

Definitely empathize with you on the show thing - there's a few shows where parents showing reasonable affection for their kids have me in tears.  My wife isn't affected the same way and often doesn't understand, leading to some embarrassment, but that inner child seeing how they could've been treated, what normal parenting looks like, just breaks my heart sometimes.

I applaud your efforts with your mom as well.  I have a few relatives from my FOO that I keep minimal contact with, mostly because they also slip into similar patterns and make the whole exchange uncomfortable.

Hope you have a good week!

Hi everyone  :heythere: I'm still here.  I'm finding it completely impossible to communicate at the moment, but I'm still here.

and still here w/ you, bach.  i get it.  love and hugs :hug:

 :heythere: :grouphug:

 :wave: :grouphug:

we're here with you as well, bach.  Gentle hugs if you want them.

Thinking of you Bach.

Hi Bach :heythere: Thinking of you :hug:

Friends  :heythere: :hug: :grouphug: Your support means so much to me!

We're having renovations on our house right now and I'm a mess from the disruptions.  Today is especially bad because I went for a haircut, and I started having a ferocious emotional flashback when the stylist was combing the tangles out of my hair.  While it was going on I did very well with consciously relaxing and staying in my body, but once I got home I started feeling sick and panicky and completely overwhelmed.  I feel like I'm 6 years old and having a strange bright terrifying dream about my future life.  It's a good life, but something is WRONG  ???

Time to cope.  I get so tired of coping.  But really, what else is there?

Hi Bach,
It's tough having house renovations done.  Hope the mess from the disruptions will be over asap - really sorry that you had that ferocious emotional flashback at the hairdresser.  Combing tangles out of hair - I relate very much to some thoughts about that myself.  Glad you were able to cope during the hairdresser appointment, but so sorry that you felt overwhelmed when you got home.  I hope you're feeling a bit better now, and I wanted to send you a hug of support, if that's ok  :hug:
Hope  :)

Bach,

I'm sorry to hear of the flashbacks during the hair appointment. Also, I have lived through home renovations. They're disruptive in many ways. The house is a mess, but that's not the half of it. People are invasively tromping around in YOUR private space. That's unsettling in ways that are more subconscious. If we feel safe in our homes, but our homes are being dismantled, changed, repaired, by strangers... well...it's okay to feel unsettled.

I hope the renovations go smoothly and quickly and the renovators don't stay too much longer.

Flashbacks are awful. Having people working on your house disruptive too.

hey, bach, thinking of you.  you know, coping can be an awful lot of work.  i'm just glad you're finding the wherewithal to do that.  hang tough, ok?  love and hugs :hug:

Hope, Papa, Not Alone and san, your support is as always so appreciated  :grouphug:

Life is currently very uncomfortable.  My discipline for self-care is shot.  I'm really glad we're having this remodelling done but I wish it would be finished already.  I'm tired of peeing in a bottle in the middle of the night. 

I've been thinking a lot about anger, guilt and shame.  I feel that I need to express a lot of that, put that into words, but it's incredibly hard for me to do.  Something that has been happening lately is that while I'm going about my business doing whatever, I'll flash on being a younger self and have a very clear thought of "I am angry about how (element from my past) resulted in (difficult thing I remembered)", and I'll want to write it down so that I can name another of the experiences that I need somatic release from, but then when I get to the page I can't remember or I can't say it or I don't understand what it even was.  Yesterday I tried to start a journal in which to keep a record of things that I am angry about but I couldn't figure out how to start or even why I should. 

 :grouphug:

Oh going pee in a bottle would get old faster than it started. Hang in.

I have the same experience of when I am hearing or learning about things inside that I can't remember them a few seconds later. And also very big things that have been very clear that all the sudden same thing I can't remember why it was a big deal or why I needed to share it with my H or what I even needed to tell him. It's dissociation I guess. That little pocket of neurons that were firing stop and go silent when we return to our normal selves?

Today I had a pretty intense therapy session in which I put my finger on one of the biggest things that I feel guilt and shame about, which is that during my formative years I learned terrible values and almost no morals at all because no one really raised me but the parental figures I observed in my daily life were terrible people.  I started to figure that out at around 19 when I got together with my first boyfriend.  Not a particularly well-raised guy himself, but ever so slightly better socialised.  Then at 20 I discovered Buddhism and learned about karma and the law of cause and effect, and ever since then I've been working to improve my values and morals.  This has been extremely difficult and has cost me untold opportunities and relationships, because I've mostly had to find what the problems were as I went, learning the hard way every time exactly what those bad values and moral deficiencies were and how to correct them, because I never even knew they were there until they bit me on the bum enough times. 

I'm not done with this line of thought but that was really intense to get out so I'm going to stop and post before I burn out.

I appreciate you sharing and resonate a lot with learning and finding problems as one goes.

Armee, that's a interesting thought about that phenomenon being dissociation.  I never thought of it that way.  It troubles me a bit.  I don't have a very good understanding of what the word "dissociation" means when used in the context of understanding and healing from CPTSD, and as a word it has vague connotations of grave character flaw for me, even though I know that it isn't like that.  My feelings about it stem from overhearing conversations between my mother and my grandmother when I was a kid.  My grandmother was a psychoanalyst, and she and my mother had a lot of discussions about "crazy people".  In any case, it's really distressing that these things bubble to the surface and draw attention to themselves, like with a big neon sign with an arrow saying "LOOK AT ME I'M IMPORTANT", and then disappear leaving behind frustration and confusion.

rainy, thank you for your comment.  I think my biggest source of guilt and shame is the feeling I get when I figure out something I've been doing (wrong?) without even knowing it, the feeling that I should have known better or I should have figured it out sooner, and the weight of all the things I wish I could have known enough to do differently. 

Quote from: Bach on February 23, 2023, 05:01:22 PM
I feel that I need to express a lot of that, put that into words, but it's incredibly hard for me to do.  Something that has been happening lately is that while I'm going about my business doing whatever, I'll flash on being a younger self and have a very clear thought of "I am angry about how (element from my past) resulted in (difficult thing I remembered)", and I'll want to write it down so that I can name another of the experiences that I need somatic release from, but then when I get to the page I can't remember or I can't say it or I don't understand what it even was.  Yesterday I tried to start a journal in which to keep a record of things that I am angry about but I couldn't figure out how to start or even why I should.

Would it be helpful to verbally record your thoughts on your phone or some other recording device?

Quote from: Bach on February 24, 2023, 06:06:18 PM
rainy, thank you for your comment.  I think my biggest source of guilt and shame is the feeling I get when I figure out something I've been doing (wrong?) without even knowing it, the feeling that I should have known better or I should have figured it out sooner, and the weight of all the things I wish I could have known enough to do differently. 

I resonate with this.  I am trying to carry this too. 

Not Alone, I'm not very comfortable making voice recordings.  Even so, this problem is more that the thought or feeling or memory I want to express will come to me when I'm doing something I can't interrupt for it, and then by the time I'm able to write it down (or speak it), I have either lost it entirely, or I have lost the important aspects of it and there's nothing to express.  It's very frustrating. 

rainy, I stand with you, it is such a struggle.

Hi Bach,
I wanted to tell you that something you wrote the other day, where you shared some of your feelings about when Little Bach was helping her Mum to wash-up - it really meant a lot to my smaller parts to hear how well you expressed those things - and it helped me to have some clarity on some things in my own life and memories etc - it was like a key turned for me when I was considering the impact of those things whilst at night trying to sleep. 

I relate very much to the struggle/difficulty to express things, and to bring them to mind and communicate them - sometimes and oftentimes it's so difficult if not feels impossible, but you did communicate and the fact you shared it, it was so helpful.

Hope  :)

Hope, thank you very much for telling me that.  It means a lot to me.

I'm so depressed today, and so full of self-hatred. All my own fault, all the result of self-destructiveness and lack of discipline. I HATE being me.

Doesn't sound like your fault, sounds like Inner Critic and cptsd to me.

Please be gentle with yourself. I care about you Bach.  :hug:

QuoteI think my biggest source of guilt and shame is the feeling I get when I figure out something I've been doing (wrong?) without even knowing it, the feeling that I should have known better or I should have figured it out sooner, and the weight of all the things I wish I could have known enough to do differently.

bach, i've struggled w/ this as well until i came to realize i wasn't taught how to do a lot of things (like live in a relationship, be social, cook, do housework, be me in the world, etc.)  i wasn't given the tools by those who were in charge of me.  i was ridiculed or humiliated for getting something wrong, but not taught how to do it right.

there's no way we can do everything 'right' when we haven't been given the examples or information for how to navigate in this world.  please, don't beat yourself up for this.  i'm with blueberry - i care about you.  all we can do is experiment w/ words and behaviors, see where they land, learn from it all.  we're late coming to this game, it's true, but that doesn't make us bad, wrong, or worthless.  you weren't given what you needed to know what you don't know.  it's on them, not you.  love and hugs :hug:

Bach, I just want you to know that I care about you.

 :bighug:

Thank you for the support and encouragement, Blueberry, san, Not Alone and Armee  :grouphug:

I don't understand why I do things I want to not do,  that I know will make me feel bad either physically or mentally. I feel completely out of control of my life right now, unable to do anything I want to do, unable to stop myself from doing things that I want to not do, unable to find connection, gratitude or presence, slamming myself over and over with drugs that don't lift me and food that doesn't feed me. My frustration is a trash can fire and my legs are full of my child self's compulsion to run away from the inescapable sense of threat.

bach, in my opinion, it's trauma brain that makes us do what we don't want to do.  it can't be explained rationally, but it's been wounded, our minds have been wounded by what went on before and that distorts our thinking processes.  please don't beat yourself up, ok?  keep taking care of you, hang tough (hangin' right beside you on this) and know that i can relate.  we do what we need to do until we don't need to do it anymore.  keep going.  we've got you.  love and hugs  :grouphug: