I started this post in Recovery from CPTSD / Set Backs. I titled it: Steps forward, Step back. But then decided really it should be the beginning of a Recovery Journal especially since I'm writing my inner dialogue further down.
The past couple of days I've been doing so well IRL, getting on with things. Even this morning that was the case and then suddenly I plummeted this afternoon, and went to bed, my alarm set. I slept too, so that's OK but then got up briefly and then went back to bed again and didn't re-set my alarm. Which isn't so good. I do have a list to hand (right by my bed) of Today's Could Do Things, which includes fun things too not just chores. But instead of having a quick look and staying up and doing one of the easiest or funnest activities, I went back to bed.
Had I attempted to do too much? I did mention to a possible employer that I could work one morning a week starting April. Yes, as I write that, it's clear that was the problem. Instead of going back to bed, what could have been a more useful internal dialogue? I've merely inquired about the job, that doesn't mean I have to take it if it looks as if it might be too many hours after all or for one reason or another too difficult. But I have done similar work before and it was a welcome break from my profession because so different. Non-sedentary, outside in the fresh air, work including at times of year when my profession tails off for a bit.
And most important to remember: the employer is not FOO and I am not a dependent child. I wouldn't be - what's the word??? (that problem again) - completely defenseless. OK now I understand. Worries about turning SG there as well. So again I say to myself it is different though, as an adult I can leave if I have to. Not like a dependent child in a FOO who can only leave alive by dissociation or by being removed, but the latter wouldn't have happened in my case. And it's not necessarily a forever job, maybe just 6 months to give me a bit more income at a time I need some. Also it's good to ask and try and then see. If I discover before I even start that thisn't the right time for this job, then I can turn it down.
With worries about turning SG in my subconscious or unconscious mind, I can understand why my energy plummeted and why I went back to bed the second time.
Whether subconscious or unconscious is pretty irrelevant, I know what I mean and this is a space where I can let worries about wrong word/spelling/ grammar go.
I'm back on my feet now. Even before posting on here I did a few small jobs from my list. So I got back on my feet pretty fast. Good job, Blueberry. :bigwink:
Yes, good job, Blueberry! :applause: :applause:
Quote from: Blueberry on March 18, 2017, 09:26:28 PMI've merely inquired about the job, that doesn't mean I have to take it if it looks as if it might be too many hours after all or for one reason or another too difficult. But I have done similar work before and it was a welcome break from my profession because so different. Non-sedentary, outside in the fresh air, work including at times of year when my profession tails off for a bit.
And most important to remember: the employer is not FOO and I am not a dependent child.
Yes, that's a useful dialogue: self-reassurance about something that was causing you unnamed anxiety.
QuoteWhether subconscious or unconscious is pretty irrelevant
Indeed, because after you'd had a nap the anxiety had a name that came to full consciousness: workplace bullying, aka scapegoating. And you know exactly why you have that fear, and why it's irrational. There's a handy saying:
name it to tame it. That's what you've done here. :cheer:
Thanks, Candid. I didn't know about name it to tame it. Now I do.
So back online when there are kazillions of things to do, and it's sunny and warm outside. Granted most of the things I should be doing are inside, but even if I decided not to do them, I could do a couple of things outside rather than sitting at the computer.
So what's up? Too many ideas of things to do, too many impulses. Even though the impulses are for healthy activities - whether emotionally, physically or both, sometimes that can be too much as well. Too many upcoming appointments, i.e. work seems a bit too much at the moment. Even forgot an appointment yesterday, though it's a regular one. Other upcoming appointments seem too much too. Where can I cut back for the moment? What can I outsource? Some of the upcoming appointments and commitments seem too much because I can't find out the exact agenda yet. So the answer there is: let it go for a few days. Don't worry about things you can't change until you can change them. ;) (self-dialogue BTW)
Don't worry about a whole bunch of other things either, just keep going bit by bit on your tasks. OK, that's my answer to myself for at least the next couple of hours. Now to get on with the tasks... Oh, I see, formulating and writing and 'proving' is the problem and I have a letter to write which involves all three. But the letter's almost finished! You could... No I can't actually. OK, then, go and do something with your hands which doesn't involve writing or explaining or justifying or anything like that.
Thanks, OOTS for providing a space where I can write that and in so doing figure out what's most useful for me to do next. Oh, it seems FOO is in my unconscious, hovering just under my conscious mind. That would also explain why things difficult. However, physical activity helps me not to dissociate, so I will go and do some, like vacuum.
:cheer: relatively non-verbal these past few days but I wanted to say something supportive. Keep talking care of you - you're worth it! ;D
Quote from: Blueberry on March 23, 2017, 12:52:36 PMDon't worry about a whole bunch of other things either, just keep going bit by bit on your tasks. OK, that's my answer to myself for at least the next couple of hours.
And it's a good answer, that involved self-soothing.
QuoteOh, I see, formulating and writing and 'proving' is the problem and I have a letter to write which involves all three. But the letter's almost finished! You could... No I can't actually. OK, then, go and do something with your hands which doesn't involve writing or explaining or justifying or anything like that.
There's another possibility: call on your Internal Mother, who says: "You're feeling a bit under par at the moment. How about taking a nap?"
Three Roses,
thanks for the cheer leader (she's so cute and inspirational, I love her) and your support and validation.
Candid, thanks for the ideas, also to another post of mine recently. I don't think I have an Internal Mother, tho I do have various Helpers, all of whom are women, girls or animals.
So continuing my Journal:
Yesterday I had too many things on my Could Do list, so many that I couldn't even see the one item that involved doing something fun. Result was I did very little from my list, ate junk food, stayed up half the night on the computer, of which the most useful activity was reading and writing on here. Today I spent most of the day in bed, so back on the computer in the late evening, however at least this time with some realisations.
One is: don't overload your Could Do list, even if the items are Could Do, it still obviously overwhelms when too much on list in general and not enough of do something fun, take a break. Some of the fun stuff actually includes mindful activities. I noticed after checking mindfulness, thanks to post from Candid on mindfulness to postpone / prevent onset of Alzheimer's and possibly bring back buried good memories. :hug: to Candid.
The other thing impeding activity was the resurfacing of one of the ideas my M at least often implied in the past, even if not necessarily said, and that is: If you don't grab the bull by the horns in this situation, you'll never get the chance again, forget it, you'll never succeed, if you turn that person down (possible employer in this case), you'll never be able to approach them again. etc etc. In a real case in my childhood she did say this to B1 about an issue in which I also was involved and even blamed, which is probably why it made such an impression. It turned out not even true!
But still today in the here and now I need the validation from a friend I spoke to a few hours ago that I can tell the employer that it was a spontaneous idea on my part and that having reviewed it I've decided that it wouldn't suit my schedule in the next months after all. End of story, not a big deal, but not an idea I would've had on my own. The moral of the story: don't put too much reliance on old ideas from FOO, ask somebody with relative emotional health in today's society. But actually until I spoke to this friend, I wasn't really clear on what was going on. The memory had resurfaced but then disappeared again.
Now I want to write some stuff to a FOO member that's been going round in my head for the past few days. It might not make sense to anybody else on here, since none of you know the situation it's referring to. Please bear with me. I think it's just a rant to somebody rather than about somebody. I can't keep the sarcasm out of my thoughts. Sarcasm normal in my FOO to suppress feelings or something like that.
Dear B2,
And your plan was??? Oh, you didn't have a plan? You just figured it would be OK to repeat the family myth that I was the cause of all family problems, in this case ruining the family holiday, without looking at which of your actions helped lead to the problem during family holiday? It's just so much easier to blame me. And you thought it would be OK to phone me up at home afterwards as if nothing had happened? It's not OK! I'm done with this crxp! I'm not the family garbage dump.
I'm really sad and hurt that it seemed so unimportant to you that I spend time with your DD. After all I am her godmother! You asked me if I would be, even though you knew I have various psychological problems. I'm healthier now than I was at that time. For a few years now, I've planned to try and come to your country sometime to see my little nieces and nephews even though it would be very difficult for me. I won't be coming now, no way. I'm not visiting people who think it's OK to make snide remarks (in public, even, in front of lots of other people!) about 'mental health issues' and suggest I go home before I'd even mentioned that myself.
As I build a stronger relationship year by year with my other godchild, I notice how much I have to give! So you were happy to deny me and your DD the chance to strengthen our relationship because you were unable to set our M a limit. That's what it comes down to.
Now that I've written and 'posted' but not mailed ;) this letter to B2, my thoughts have stopped churning or returning to the topic. That question: "And your plan was?" has disappeared from my head. Seems to have been cathartic. :cheer: Now to do that with the rest of my emotions regarding FOO last summer.
:thumbup: :applause:
Good to hear, Blueberry! Onwards and upwards. ;D
QuoteThe moral of the story: don't put too much reliance on old ideas from FOO, ask somebody with relative emotional health in today's society.
This is so healthy. What a great thing to realize.
QuoteDon't worry about things you can't change until you can change them. ;) (self-dialogue BTW)
Don't worry about a whole bunch of other things either, just keep going bit by bit on your tasks.
That is really good self-dialogue. I need to do more of this.
Thank you for all your posts. Even if I don't reply to them directly, or not right now, they help me. They're validating, and they're encouraging.
Trigger warning:
Just been reading somebody else's Journal where SA and other forms of abuse mentioned along with those fears and thoughts which are common to us survivors, e.g. (in my own words) Am I too sensitive? Am I making mountains out of molehills? To the other poster I can say in my head "Of course you're not being 'too sensitive'! of course you're not making stuff up. Of course that was real, your feelings count!" But I can't feel that for myself yet. Cognitively I sort of know that what happened to me wasn't right, and I have talked about it sometimes to the odd good friend or especially among fellow patients and had my feelings validated. Even as a child I felt that 'something' was wrong.
Not even here can I write it for fear of ridicule. Though I know you all aren't going to do that! I'm maligning you, but you'll understand, I'm sure, that bits of me don't feel safe enough yet. I guess I don't even need my Trigger Warning up top.
Presumably I don't feel safe enough yet because I still have some form of contact to my abuser, even if "just" email, and fairly seldom. Blanked out now. End for the evening.
I feel this way too, am I being too sensitive, was it really that bad? Every time someone validates me I want to jump up and down and cry with gratitude. To finally be understood. To be told yes it happened and it wasn't your fault. I kept in contact with my abuser for years with no real awareness of the extent of damage he did to me.
I hope you can feel safe enough to speak your truth soon.
Quote from: Blueberry on March 27, 2017, 09:54:33 PMAm I too sensitive? Am I making mountains out of molehills? To the other poster I can say in my head "Of course you're not being 'too sensitive'! of course you're not making stuff up. Of course that was real, your feelings count! But I can't feel that for myself yet.
I hear you, Blueberry! I'm fed up with the Doubts that keep me revisiting old wounds.
QuoteEven as a child I felt that 'something' was wrong.
I assumed it was me. After all, Mother
said it was me. And Mother's always right, isn't she?
Quotebits of me don't feel safe enough yet.
Me neither. There are Things I choose not to think about, much less write about. I can feel them like a rock in the belly but I don't know how to begin seeing them for what they were.
QuotePresumably I don't feel safe enough yet because I still have some form of contact to my abuser, even if "just" email
I had "just" email contact with my mother for a few weeks at the end of 2012. I used it as a way of expressing my outrage about things she'd said and done over the years, and I was living a long way from her so no fear of reprisal. She stopped replying in the end and I naively thought I'd had the last word... then found my siblings had dumped me as well. So... lesson learned:
Mother always wins.
It's been a weird kind of day, difficult too. My T did say this week that I'd likely notice how deep the work went in the last session as the week went on. So I've been allowing myself to lie in / on bed processing, I guess you could say. In and out of sleep, dreams but no real nightmares, some realisations in my semi-waking hours. I guess more and more willingness coming to let FOO go. Though it saddens me too.
A flying monkey of an email came today, which I've just read. Is F asking when I'm finally going to get back to him on some financial issue? No. He is informing me that the brevity of my last email to my M - a short response to the question in her email to me - is distressing her. i.e. you are hurting your mother.
Keep it up! Teh more flying monkeys of this type, the faster I will get to the point where I'll go VVVVVLC.
Since I'm however not yet at the stage where I can break loose, I did - wisely or unwisely - reply to the email sending a copy to M and saying that in future the person with an issue should tell me directly not via someone else.
For those of you further along the road to permanent separation from FOO or who have at least stopped the dance of anger / dancing around in arguments, please be gentle in your comments. Everybody takes their time. I know I'm enmeshed still, though far less enmeshed than I have been.
Obviously I shouldn't have answered or even read this email from F. I had wanted to add a second post, more about what has been going on internally this week. Even though I knew it was going to be a bit disjointed, now I'm so foggy I can hardly write.
Let's see. Today and on lots of other days when the going is hard, I deny myself simple pleasures, like a nice cup of hot tea. Or a drink at all. I know I'm thirsty or I'm really craving a hot drink, but I just don't bother. Well I did bother an hour or so ago. :cheer: My T said that in this type of situation for me the only way to heal is to keep going doing what's appropriate, i.e. self-care, listening to and acting on healthy physical signals.
As I write and read "I just don't bother" I see particularly F in his depression in my childhood not 'bothering' to protect me from M or B1, so maybe you could say I'm repeating that neglect in other situations in my life now. I was fed and given enough to drink. I wasn't neglected that way.
Even in therapy I haven't yet managed to say that I feel I was betrayed by my F, and that in my FOO, our F is regarded as the good guy (not just by me), not at fault. If anybody is/was at fault then depending on whether in my childhood or adulthood it was me or my M, or maybe even a mix, but B1 and B2 and F are just never at fault. Except of course if F was not bothering to protect B1 from 'crazy' me. :fallingbricks: [ Added a bit later, after my post below it: Then, according to B1, F was negligent. For men who claim to be feminists, there's quite a lot of blame-the-females going on in my FOO. Though even my M says the males are all feminists in our FOO, it was just me being 'wrong'. Me now under own :fallingbricks: with thinking about this. Now I really am shutting down the computer.]
Don't ask me why I'm still dancing around in this FOO. I don't have a FOC, could be one reason I suppose. Though since the blow-up last summer I'm spending more time and energy on friendships. I mean, I don't have a partner, never have had. Too frightened of conflict and other things. No, but really probably the reason for still having supposedly meaningful contact with my FOO is my enmeshment and the hope that they'll finally understand and change, which they won't.
I said to my T a while back that I obviously "have to get out of this family" but knowing how allergic I react to words like 'must, have to, ought to, should' he said I didn't have to at all, that some people in my sort of position never do. So it really is down to me to decide: No, not continuing with this crxp. I don't want to anymore! I know it's what many other people here or on OOTF write, and also the necessity to take responsibility for your own life and decisions now (not just expect FOO to do so for themselves) and stop acting like a victim, but I needed to write this for myself now.
I know, I know I'm a bit slow. Well, this is what my inner critic is saying.
That's enough post for the evening.
I always say I'm allergic to those words, but I presume that more importantly I'm allergic to the feelings and ideas behind them. This just hit me so I'm writing it down.
Well, I guess that wasn't enough for the evening, because I went on to read some other posts.
So continuing my response to another member here, so as not to hijack her journal,
...They were continually ashamed of me, my very existence and I'm still projecting that onto little Blueberries, still ashamed and unforgiving of how I was as a child in various different ways and situations, where I was a child and learning! Not even adults are perfect! Healthy ones permit themselves to make mistakes or minor infractions, forgive themselves, move on from them, whereas in my FOO every 'mistake', every 'misjudgement' I made as a child was a disaster. It wasn't seen as a way to grow and change. Well, my M doesn't believe in forgiveness so it's not too surprising really. I've gone non-verbal on this topic again.
So another ranting letter, which I won't send in this form, to a member of FOO. But probably still cathartic for me to write it here. The other FOO letter I wrote in here was helpful.
Dear M,
Really?? After only one week, you decided you had to ask if post had arrived?? And then complained that I answered that question only instead of going into paroxysms of delight ie. your complaint was not about not knowing whether the post had arrived, it was about you feeling lonely or unappreciated or something. Essentially a guilt trip on me. I know that B1 and B2 don't always send you all the information you desire when you desire it, because you complain about it, but you expect it from me, the one who has suffered most under you. [Well of course she expects this because I always do eventually answer :doh: Well, mostly anyway. And if I don't, somebody in FOO runs to her aid, shielding her from her hurt feelings and then telling me later how hurt she was. Up until now I've never managed to tell them that I didn't want to hear it either].
I also know that, a good number of years ago during a phase when I was not contacting you and hardly contacting F, B1 told you both that I was not punishing you by not writing in receipt of something, I was not writing because writing was so difficult. You may or may not recall that I said last summer that my health problems are not going to go away. Some things may improve, and given time undoubtedly will do, but writing remains a problem. Yes, even writing emails.
So I repeat, after a week you thought you'd complain???? *? I'm feeling good that I got N's birthday parcel into the mail, probably in time to get there by N's birthday. N is you know, unlike you, under a decade old. I could give you dozens of further examples of written work and / or mailing that either I have managed to do recently or have not done yet and is in desperate need of being done... I could also give you a number of examples of how friends are much more forgiving and patient about things taking their time from me, even very young friends, under the age of 12, but what's the point?? You steadfastly don't understand, for all your intelligence, or you don't want to. You prefer to send along messages like "I don't see how it could hurt you / be too strenuous to send me this reply.... " Well it is too strenuous! There are far too many more important things to be dealt with that have been waiting far longer. But for you, it's all about ME ME ME. The significant children in my life - all under the age of 12 - show more patience and understanding than you. And what they especially don't do is shout out expectations about what I ought to be doing.
_______________________________________ End of letter
I know, I know when I write and then re-read this, I realise how enmeshed I still am. That I complain to M about her expecting things from me, though I'm still expecting things from her, like understanding or something.
And though my ranting and raving in /Recovery from CPTSD/ really doesn't sound too much like recovery, I think the best place for this is in my own Journal. So please bear with me. At least I am realising the odd thing. The fact that I was ranting earlier in my own head actually gave me the energy and impetus to wash the dishes and then have my shower and more particularly wash my hair (written at Achieved today).
Hi Blueberry,
Your letter is really great. Well said on all accounts. I completely relate to what you said about 'enmeshment' - it is a tough thing to deal with - how we still hope for the type of parenting that we didn't necessarily receive - it is tough.
Well done for expressing yourself in your letter - really well written, and hope you found it helpful to write it.
Hope :)
Quote from: Blueberry on March 31, 2017, 07:20:40 PMHe is informing me that the brevity of my last email to my M - a short response to the question in her email to me - is distressing her. i.e. you are hurting your mother.
Oh, snap! After the devastating Most Horrible Event, my father rang me many times to tell me: "You've upset your mother." Infuriating.
QuoteI did - wisely or unwisely - reply to the email sending a copy to M and saying that in future the person with an issue should tell me directly not via someone else.
This is
good, Blueberry! A clear statement of what you prefer.
Quoteprobably the reason for still having supposedly meaningful contact with my FOO is my enmeshment and the hope that they'll finally understand and change, which they won't.
Easy to
say, isn't it? But Blueberry, don't be as hard on yourself as M was. You're a good, loving,
normal person with all the good, loving and normal feelings about your FOO. I can't say I hate my mother, only that the choice was NC with her or kill myself. It was the hardest decision I've ever made, that anyone
can ever make. The mother-child bond is the hardest of all to break.
Quotethe necessity to take responsibility for your own life and decisions now (not just expect FOO to do so for themselves) and stop acting like a victim...
You stood up for yourself to the flying monkeys. That's not behaving like a victim. The problem, I believe, is the shaky self-image we're left with. It goes like this:
I have to get away from mother. But what if she's right about me? Never mind, I have to get away from her to start clearing my mind and finding out who I am. But what if...? There's nothing quite like standing up for ourselves in FOO to bring out a vicious inner critic!
Quotein my FOO every 'mistake', every 'misjudgement' I made as a child was a disaster. It wasn't seen as a way to grow and change.
Yeah, me too. And the result of that was what I call instinct-injury, with plenty of whopping bad choices and self-defeating decisions to reflect on. I know all about the
shame of it. The worst thing is when we see our abusers' opinions reflected by the unrelated people in our lives now.
Quote... your complaint was not about not knowing whether the post had arrived, it was about you feeling lonely or unappreciated or something. Essentially a guilt trip on me. I know that B1 and B2 don't always send you all the information you desire when you desire it, because you complain about it, but you expect it from me, the one who has suffered most under you.
And this is the pain of it, the knife to the heart. We do our very best to please Her, or at least not to inflame Her, and we get kicked in the teeth for it again, while siblings and flying monkeys get away with anything. Why do they get away with it? Because they're sure of our abusers' support, in fact they don't even have to think about it.
They don't care. We do, because we still feel impotently outraged at the wounding we received and the monstrous unfairness of it all.
QuoteThe fact that I was ranting earlier in my own head actually gave me the energy and impetus to ...
That's the way, Blueberry! :pissed: A good burst of harmless :pissed: gets our 'frozen' feelings unstuck.
Lots of :bighug: to you, my friend.
Hi Hope,
Thank you very much for your comments and validation of my feelings. Yes, the enmeshment is a hard thing to deal with.
I was NC with M for about 5 years, and although I told F I wasn't going NC with him, he then went VVVVLC with me. I did miss having a family though, missed my family despite all what had happened in my childhood and right up to when I went NC, when I was definitely no longer a child. Eventually when I felt stronger and better healed, I took up contact again, partly supported and helped by B1 and B2. Partly because NC didn't seem to be the answer then either. But I'm veering back that direction now. I've been very badly re-triggered twice, the first of these two times caused imho a retraumatisation, or at the very least about 3 weeks of the very worst dissociative state i have ever been in. And M and F actually witnessed the first few days of this.
I suppose that when I went NC before I was emotionally still very enmeshed so it didn't work so well, and of course I had quite a few flying monkeys to deal with and didn't know how to do this. And various "well-meaning" people criticising me on top of it all. And then B2, the only member of FOO I had any kind of real contact with, didn't like the whole contact with FOO hanging on him (tho I realise now that was his problem, but of course he didn't see it that way) and I didn't ever manage to tell him that I managed contact with him because he hadn't been a problem towards me in my childhood, unlike B1, F and M. Bit late now though since he accused me of the "ruining the family holiday" last summer. I'm ranting again, but I'm getting it out of my system.
Hope, when I read your posts, there are often things I can empathise with too. Your posts often do me good, even if I don't always comment.
Candid, thank you too for all your validation, and your disagreement with me ;) That's helpful too to hear that you don't think I'm behaving like a victim and that e.g. a clear statement of what I'd prefer is actually a good thing.
I understood here and maybe elsewhere that discussing and arguing isn't helpful, you just have to go NC and forget FOO. Though M and F have changed a little. There are sometimes glimpses of that, but way too insignificant and slow for me to imagine that it could ever be enough. Or sometimes I think they've progressed and then I get hit with some totally unexpected thing from a completely unexpected source about e.g. "ruining the family holiday".
I think sort of like you that my choice will be between NC and constantly being re-triggered and constantly under-achieving. If I want to reach some permanent stability and reach some goals, my goals, in life, then it's got to be NC or VVVVVVVLC.
You wrote so much! I will keep coming back to it to digest. I re-read my own Journal and comments anyway because it helps me.
So got a return email from F proving a) that he's enmeshed with and codependent on M and b) that he doesn't understand. What a surprise. Have decided after posting a few other replies on here, that I'm not answering, not at the moment anyway. Prefer to put the time and emotional energy into something constructive for me.
So that's good to notice too: reading other people's posts on here and replying to them is not just a way of avoiding dealing with my own problems, no sometimes it can help me deal in the subconscious with a question I have.
:cheer:
So I've just been re-reading most of my own Journal posts as well as responses. Thanks again everybody. It's helpful to read your responses again and again.
The employer I mentioned a while back, I turned him down today, after realising that the time i'd have to work is really bad for me. It's the morning after T, starting in the early morning. Often I'm so exhausted after T with all that stuff happening subconsciously that I'd never make it to work. Last week I didn't make it out of bed till my shift would've been over... And often at the moment I'm exhausted days later, almost until the next T appointment.
The employer was disappointed, he really needs people that one day a week. Then this kind of I-need-to-help-him gets going, maybe? Or is it my own desperation? - oh, look, here's somebody who'd give me a job without me going through a whole application process and proving myself on paper first. Which is something i can barely do. Writing is really difficult for me anyway in most situations. Situations in which my emotions scarper. Writing on here is a lot easier because I'm more in my emotions and less restricted by any intellectual whatevers. Or if I'm not really in my emotions, at least I don't have the feeling that I have to cut them out and/or ignore them, push them down.
Anyway job applications on paper - a disaster. In my country in this type of job, they fortunately don't require a whole application process. They just try you out for a few days. Would be very part time anyway.
So anyway I'm still not exactly sure whether it's a feeling of: I need to help this person. YES, that's certainly part of it. So watch it, I say to myself. Don't push yourself to do too much, or too much at once.
The other reason I'm interested is good - I've done this kind of work before and I liked it. Has nothing to do with my professional work.
The professional work I trained in - I decided after I finally got the last job done last week, that I'm not taking on jobs in it till I'm through trauma confrontation or trauma exposure or whatever you might say in English. A somewhat related branch of work that I'm self-taught in, I'll keep doing. I have to write in it a bit, but I hardly ever pull any hair out while I'm about it so that's a sign it doesn't stress me so much. But even of this I can only do so much per week.
The potential employer and I ended up agreeing that I might be able to work in odd weeks a reduced number of hours. Certain weeks in the year they need even more people than usual.
Other than that my energy and my feelings and thoughts are pretty tied up with setting small, very basic limits in FOO, and realising how overdue these limits are. :pissed: :pissed: It's so hard :fallingbricks: But I guess that's not so surprising when you end up doing it about 3 decades too late, 3 decades after adolescence. :stars:
Quote from: Blueberry on April 09, 2017, 12:53:36 AM
Then this kind of I-need-to-help-him gets going, maybe? Or is it my own desperation? - oh, look, here's somebody who'd give me a job without me going through a whole application process and proving myself on paper first.
The latter is a good start, specially if it's an understanding employer. I'd like some of that!
QuoteAnyway job applications on paper - a disaster.
I'm having the same problem. An employment counsellor had me send her my current CV, then sent it back with suggested improvements all over the place. And references! Where to get them? Thing is, without them I can't prove that ever I've worked at all...
QuoteI'm still not exactly sure whether it's a feeling of: I need to help this person. YES, that's certainly part of it. So watch it, I say to myself. Don't push yourself to do too much, or too much at once.
It's nice to be needed, though, isn't it? I always find it empowering to help someone out.
QuoteThe other reason I'm interested is good - I've done this kind of work before and I liked it. Has nothing to do with my professional work.
Well, now I'm jealous. I can't think of anything I'd enjoy doing right now apart from writing here.
QuoteThe potential employer and I ended up agreeing that I might be able to work in odd weeks a reduced number of hours. Certain weeks in the year they need even more people than usual.
Sounds to me like you're doing really well. :cheer:
QuoteOther than that my energy and my feelings and thoughts are pretty tied up with setting small, very basic limits in FOO, and realising how overdue these limits are. :pissed: :pissed: It's so hard :fallingbricks: But I guess that's not so surprising when you end up doing it about 3 decades too late, 3 decades after adolescence. :stars:
Ah, there it is. The FOO curse. The hurt that keeps on hurting. Best not to self-flagellate, my friend. :hug:
I'm continuing my Journal, not sure about the "recovering" part.
I'm just so exhausted at the moment. I suppose it's just 'this stage in my healing journey'. Or maybe it's because I've been giving into my sugar craving today. Not pulling out any hair though as far as I can recall. This is good, hardly ever happens though.
It's hard work retraining our brains. Stay with it!
Thanks, Candid. I tend to forget very basic things I do know (e.g. hard work retraining/rewiring our brains).
Continuing my Journal....
I did some really hard work today in T. I made the move to talk about one result of the sexual abuse which I have a lot of trouble talking about. I'm not going to describe it here. The point is I find it really embarrassing and I'm ashamed, which is saying something since I find the whole topic of sex shameful and I'm not engaged in it. And then even worse talking to a male therapist about it. I've only done that before in written form, not face-to-face.
And the brilliant thing in addition is: I stayed in my body! :cheer:
Not only was there absolutely no numbing, but my posture stayed good - I didn't slump down in my chair, I could physically feel all parts of my body including sitting on the chair, which is often difficult. Even my feet stayed warm. Even when they don't go numb, they may feel cold. No, not this time! My head felt a little spaced out, I felt a bit giddy you might say, head and mind not quite 100% attached to rest of body, but I still felt my emotions and could find my words. What progress. :cheer:
The way my T reacted was really good, so that helped. But that's to do with my decision too. I noticed in my first session way back whenever that was (quite a while ago) that he would be an excellent T for me, and I was right. He's turned out that way. Non-judgemental and very understanding. Only asks questions he really genuinely needs in order to understand or questions which will help me further my understanding of myself if I'm ready to hear my own answer.
Seems as if I haven't written in my Journal for aaaaages, but it's like only 3 days. Today has been kind of a difficult day. I had intended to go to Good Friday service at church, which is in the afternoon so not that hard to get to but I remained in bed. I read and slept on and off all day, and had very weird dreams, though not really nightmares. I didn't finally get up until the early evening where I finally granted myself a cup of tea and milk, which I had wanted all day but had denied myself because ??? Because I tend to deny myself very basic things when i'm in a bad way. Oh well, I say, I can go to Good Friday service next year, which is true, I can. On one level I seem to forgive myself for lying in bed most of the day. That's what I said when I spoke to a friend (also with C-PTSD) this evening. She can't forgive herself that kind of thing. So on one level I do seem to forgive myself or at least I realise that I probably needed that time lying in bed not having to do anything. I must do this, I ought to do that, I should do the other are all triggering statements for me. But as I feel deeper down in my feelings (which is easier after reading other posts on here for a while), I notice I'm not really forgiving myself.
Also I'm feeling the :fallingbricks: effect at the moment. There are so many things I ought to be doing (oops, that 'ought' word) and am not doing. And I 'ought' to be doing them because I have time with all the public holidays around Easter. Well today, I lay in bed looking at the sun shining outside and enjoyed seeing it and also felt quite OK about not going out into it, just enjoying from inside. So I still don'T know what it is exactly that I'm not forgiving myself for. So I'll accept that. The answer will come when I'm ready to realise it. At the moment it's too early I guess.
Hey Blueberry, I can relate to a lot of what you said about feeling the :fallingbricks: It might feel like you're cheating yourself of productivity, but you taking time just to sit and recharge sounds almost like self comfort imo. Maybe in small doses this could even be healing, but not if you do it all day, of course. It's heartbreaking to hear that you're feeling so tied down in bed. It can be so hard to find the energy to get out, and thats ok. You're allowed to have days where you can't get up.
I also tend to deny myself food/basic comforts when feeling in a bad way, like you mentioned. It only succeeds in making me feel worse than before. What I do to combat this is by looking at my situation with an objective view, and eventually coming around to the idea that my body will only feel better if and when I take proper care of it. Whether that self-care comes in the simple act of getting out of bed to make a cup of tea, or in the form of self forgiveness, it will make a world of difference.
Enjoy that moment, it sounded like a nice one :)
Generally I'd go to Easter Saturday Night service at church but if I don't wash my hair and shower in the next 30 minutes (a long overdue activity anyway), I don't think I can really go. I remember back to an old piece of wisdom of mine: if the answer isn't definitely "yes", then the answer is "no". And then of course there is the I ought to / should / must / had better / it would do me some good if I did.... etc etc are not really my words and feelings. They are FOO words. They just tend to make me rebell. And sometimes they send me into a tailspin or if I really push myself way over my own limit I've been known to go semi-crazy and start screaming. So really it would be better to permit myself to do whatever I want including going back to bed where it's warm and reading a book. That's really the thing: what do I want to do?
Hi Blueberry,
Whatever you are doing, I hope it is things you want to do. Wishing you a good weekend, and hope it's going ok.
Hope :)
Thanks Hope. At least I haven't been doing much of what i don't want to do. That's something.
Except in my dreams which were full of FOO. But then it was good to wake up and realise: those were just dreams. In reality FOO is far away and accepting the limits I've set, at least for the most part. I guess that has been a worry - that some member of FOO would try and phone. But they haven't, and I don't think they will.
And although Easter was never such a big celebration in my family as Christmas, I still imagine there might be some expectation that I'd at least email and say Happy Easter. And I also had some expectation of myself that I'd *finally* thank my parents for what they sent in the last little while. That somehow that should be taken care of before Easter. Though that's just a hunk of junk. It can be taken care of when I'm far enough along to do so without endangering myself emotionally in this messy family set of emotions or lack thereof.
On of my pets is ill, not really badly ill, but a bit of a skin problem. What with public holidays and various commitments on Tues and Wed, I won't be able to take her to the vet's till Thursday. When my pets are ill, I might become very active or I might feel the :fallingbricks: effect and really struggle to look after them correctly. Or sort of in-between: go to the vet's, follow the instructions, but get really exhausted while doing it and hardly able to look after myself. It's just as well that I don't have children of my own. I tend to feel guilty and/or overwhelmed when my pets are ill, and that doesn't exactly help anything.
I've been lying around reading lots of books I already know - that's my comfort reading. When I realised - hey, this isn't C-PTSD per se, this is depression, I tried reading some Holocaust literature including Victor Frankl's "Man's Search for Meaning" since that sometimes catapults me out of where I am back into being active in real life. But if it's not the right time for it, it doesn't work either. It seemed not to be the right time...
At least I'm feeling in a better mood then a few hours ago. Had I written then in here, I would've written something along the lines of "I'm grumpy and triggered. Leave me alone." I had wanted to show that things are sometimes that bad, that I'm not always mostly reasonable and sensible and in my Adult, and I hope that even when I say things as they are: 'grumpy and triggered' I'm still welcome on here. Nobody has to save me, I just let some time go by and maybe I do something that helps me. (I have phoned a couple of friends IRL and did a bit for my pets and then did some cleaning - on Easter Sunday, lol).
In my FOO, they are concerned with me not hurting M, or M is concerned with my not hurting sibs (by setting boundaries - that's the biggie, I'm not allowed to say No, I'm not allowed to set boundaries, but others are :stars:) but nobody seems concerned with me being hurt. Oh well, Blueberry is crying again, what do you expect? Blueberry always cried too much. And somehow the last time this happened with this big blow-out in the summer, they didn't feel the anguish, the utter devastation I was going through. Don't cry, Blueberry, you're just upsetting yourself. (Or being upset by you lot, maybe??)
That just occurred to me in some other context. I wrote it there and moved it here, where it belongs.
Blueberry, if you're NC (or any variant of C) with your parents it's probably best
not to thank them for any cards or gifts you've had from them. That just lets them know they can get a response from you any time they like. I know how hard it is not to do the polite thing but sooner or later it gets too much to be reeled in on special occasions. We start to dread our own birthdays.
I'm sorry to hear you have a sick pet. I know how important they are when FOO fails.
Frankl's book had that effect on me, as well. Lots in there about not giving up, and about the freedom that can't be taken from us: to choose our way in any circumstances.
QuoteI hope that even when I say things as they are: 'grumpy and triggered' I'm still welcome on here.
Of course you are! I've woken up pretty grumpy myself this morning. I gave myself permission not to have a shower and will get through the day somehow. So will you. :hug:
Candid, thanks for the encouragement about taking things at my own pace as regards contact to M and F. And not thanking them because that's what they expect. So they'll just have to get used to that not happening. Arrgh. It's hard, going through this whole withdrawing oneself from FOO, but remaining in FOO going along with all their expectations was not the answer either, putting it mildly.
Without feeling too much into the emotions, I try and remind myself of the utter anguish and devastation I went through last summer when I heard via B1 what B2 thinks of me, that B2 had never told me. And even if it isn't all true (B1 does have a history of adding his own spin), some of it is. Add to that the anguish of realising, really realising at a deep-down level of my emotions, how no one in FOO is willing to go out on a limb to help me stay in the family, stay on at the family celebrations, though they expect me to do it for M... The only one who asked if I couldn't somehow stay was SIL1 (my nephews and nieces weren't given the chance) I have to remember this anguish, to not allow myself to be reeled in again. Some members of FOO don't care, some just don't get it, they're not in contact with their own emotions enough to really understand, I think anyway that might be the problem. But it's not my job to get them in contact with their own emotions, or preserve them from their own emotions.
Oh by the way I hadn't seen most members of FOO for four years, just F I had seen more recently.
There's no kind of answer except just keep on going and trying to take the best care of me I can, which I haven't been doing too much of over Easter. I could do with some :hug: :hug: My pets are too small to do this. Maybe monkeys and koala bears could do that, but private zoos aren't allowed in my town.
Quote from: Blueberry on April 17, 2017, 05:35:27 PM
no one in FOO is willing to go out on a limb to help me stay in the family, stay on at the family celebrations, though they expect me to do it for M... [...] Some members of FOO don't care, some just don't get it
I know. It's the same for me.
QuoteThere's no kind of answer except just keep on going and trying to take the best care of me I can, which I haven't been doing too much of over Easter. I could do with some :hug: :hug:
That too. I'm at a low ebb but will keep going. It is, as you say, "no kind of answer" but it isn't like we
chose this. We had no choice.
Can only send you :hug: :hug: through cyberspace.
Sorry to hear one of your pets is ill, Blueberry, and hope they will recover soon. :hug:
Thanks Hope, she's doing better already with the medicine I had at home. I didn't even have to take her to the vet's. :thumbup: Because vet trips cost money and time and hassle. Of course I take my pets if I need to, but if I can cure the problem at home with own knowledge and experience, all the better.
So I wrote the first of my FOO letters under Recovery Letters and have noticed some progress today already. Just now I finally wrote an email to one of the clients I was having trouble writing to yesterday. The one who is always pushing the limits I set her. She owes me a penalty fee for her late payment, and I requested this, no qualms and no self-destructive behaviour or self-haranguing thoughts. I was teaching her daughter this afternoon and I was much more 'daring' with the daughter too. Your mother has to tell me this and this by tomorrow! You have to work out whether it is more important for you to come for extra lessons before your super-important final exam during the time slots I can give you or whether it's more important to do a myriad of other activities you've been listing (there's nothing like finding excuses for not coming to extra lessons - not that I added this bit in so many words)! It's fine by me if you don't come, but I need to know before Monday!
I, Blueberry, am unashamedly setting limits, in an area where there is no reason for me to be ashamed, except all what I learned from FOO! This is not the first time I've had difficult clients and the past few days have not been the first time I've had a lot of trouble standing up for myself and/or being completely incapable of it. The sign for/proof of this inability is me not being able to stop doing something which the forum rules do not permit me to write about in regular threads (with good reason).
I also got on with various jobs I was incapable of doing yesterday, like washing dishes. If I can't even settle down to do the dishes or don't have the stamina / concentration to finish them, life is bad. ie bad sign. That's the way it was yesterday. Normally washing dishes is grounding and makes me happy because the visual improvement in the kitchen is immediate and great.
And I started using up food leftovers (in fridge and in packets) instead of using 'new' food. This is good because 1) it's been on my medium-term To Do list for a while and 2) it's obviously more efficient and cheaper for me to use what I immediately have available than keep leaning further and further out gathering supplies from further afield. Which seems to be a habit of mine despite not really having the money to do this. So instead of using some form of mental blunt force to, well, force myself into white-knuckled abstinence, thereby causing myself to expend even more energy and eventually causing the :fallingbricks: effect, which leads back into addiction and big problems emotionally :sadno: :blowup: :sharkbait: (as you can see from the number of different emoticons).
Glad you're feeling more organised and getting things done today, Blueberry!
I wanted to write something on here or on OOTF yesterday, but I somehow didn't dare on OOTF, and I couldn't think where to post it her. Until I remembered today: my own journal!!! Because here I can write what I want, don't have to think whether this is the correct thread for the topic.
On Friday I went on an outing to an amusement park with a group of people with a few psychological or other problems, most of whom I know a bit. There was a social worker with us, who knows all of us. Well, on OOTF I would've written something like: don't go on a trip with a group of PDs!!
I told one woman I wasn't happy at all with her behaviour towards me, with reason. But she'd already blotted her own behaviour out. Another member of the group decided I was being impatient and suggested I do a round of EFT tapping with the sentence "I accept and love myself even though I'm impatient." At that point I argued back.
At the end of the day when I saw the EFT guy again, he once again tried to convince me of the appropriateness of this sentence combined with the suggestion that I imagine a lovely meadow as a way to calm myself down. Although I had actually been quite calm, thanks very much, until he started in on the subject again. I couldn't contain myself and argued back. Fortunately the social worker was in hearing shot and told "EFT guy" I was much further along in my healing than him and knew what I needed (!) all by myself. Which had been set this woman a limit, even if she didn't understand, apparently.
The next day I got an email from EFT guy who'd explained the situation to his wife, who had agreed with me, the woman on the outing had behaved selfishly, but EFT guy doesn't see it that way. I actually answered that email and received a reply. I'm leaving it that way, no more PD ping pong. Not telling him he sounds severely co-dependent, or anything like that. Not my problem. One other thing he wrote: none of us are that healthy psychologically and we're all in T, but this woman is at the beginning of her T (tho I know she's been in T before) and I'm much further along, so I should give her a break.
But it's taken till today for me to figure out why I couldn't go over to Medium Chill earlier in the game. One reason: I'm just not that practised at Medium Chill yet.
Second reason: Not continuing to discuss in FOO meant that you lost, and if you lost because you backed out of the argument you were a Total Failure. In my teens when I still lived in the FOO residence I was perversely proud of being "weird" and "difficult", but "failure" and "loser" were too hard-hitting, too hurtful to be even perversely proud of. If you backed out of an argument (or were shut out of one for being too illogical/irrational), you were an intellectual failure, and that counted against you in my FOO biiiig time. It counted for all eternity too. I guess that's part of the traumatisation when the inner children bits of us don't realise that time has moved on, that what was spouted then is no longer applicable in my world today.
Third reason (and revelation): a man (EFT guy) was protecting a grown woman from my setting a limit. "...this woman is at the beginning of her T ... and I'm much further along, so I should give her a break". It feels like F protecting M just recently; and B1 protecting M in our childhood (from me and my criticism) "Look at how weird her parents are, look how she was brought up, no wonder she's a bit strict/weird..." Though he exempted himself from taking M's upbringing and criticism into consideration when he was angry at her. And it feels like a whole long line of me being blamed for everything under the sun and not protected throughout my childhood. Somebody was always in a "poorer state", to be pitied, and granted some help, maybe even be given something of mine as a consolation. Or me, I was just to put up, and shut up. I didn't do so on the outing, I've had enough of that, but there was still criticism coming my way.
It wouldn't have been 'always' in my childhood, that's just the way it's stuck in my brain, but often enough for it to seem like always.
OK, so that's at least one of the reasons why I spent most of the day in bed (public holiday) sucking cough drops.
The other thing going on right now at least in my thoughts is, as I withdraw more and more from FOO, I'm re-thinking accepting financial help from them. I'm actually meant to be sending them a rough estimate of my monthly expenses, not just for now but for the foreseeable future. Well I'm not planning on that, but rather an estimate of my monthly deficit. This task was on my list of stuff to do today, not an overtly compulsory thing, but covertly. Well, that sure backfired since I simply didn't get out of bed till very late.
Partly it's not even wanting to know so clearly myself. That's all that I can write on self-realisation at the moment. Difficult topic. Need to let sit for a while.
That sounds like a horrible day out for you, Blueberry. You can't know till you go along, can you? And I assume you were all transported together, so you couldn't bail out at the first sign of things going wrong for you. I am really reluctant to go along to things I can't get away from under my own steam. Hate the feeling of being trapped with it, as you were.
As to accepting financial help from FOO, I say go for it. If 'strings' or conditions appear, you can always back off.
:bighug:
Actually, it was a really good day out. There were just these couple of incidents, which got me thinking. I went along last year too and it was great.
I've been accepting financial help for a long time, as compensation (in my mind). My thinking now is that there maybe are some unseen strings attached, which are affecting me unconsciously into self-sabotage etc.
Quote from: Blueberry on May 02, 2017, 10:46:42 AM
as compensation (in my mind).
Yeah, that's what I was thinking. It sounds as though your imagination is working overtime to guilt you for accepting it.
What if they too are thinking compensation, and you're giving them the chance to assuage
their guilt?
Quote from: Candid on May 02, 2017, 10:55:12 AM
Quote from: Blueberry on May 02, 2017, 10:46:42 AM
as compensation (in my mind).
Yeah, that's what I was thinking. It sounds as though your imagination is working overtime to guilt you for accepting it.
What if they too are thinking compensation, and you're giving them the chance to assuage their guilt?
The thing is: they don't seem to get their guilt. At all. Last time I saw FOO in the summer, M mentioned something like it was good for me to be staying with B's family because of the lovely scenery and the birds, that would help with depression. :stars: :stars: :stars: Sorry, no, not the problem nor the solution. Like you, Candid, I've tried so often to explain what's going on and they don't get it. They even know of my CPTSD diagnosis and would be quite capable of researching online about it, if they wanted. But they'd still read about it and think: "What has that got to do with us? We didn't abuse Blueberry. That was all normal upbringing. Blueberry is being too sensitive." :blahblahblah: :blahblahblah: :blahblahblah:
If they wanted to assuage their guilt, assuming they felt any, they could've done that already because I have had a fair amount of financial help over the years. Well so have my sibs without actually really needing it, I'd say. None of them have been incapable of work for long stretches of time. They see it differently of course.
I'm not sure that I'm guilting myself, more wondering: Is it really good for me in the long run to be still accepting money? Haven't come to a conclusive answer yet, nor do I need to. It's just one of these topics-for-consideration at the moment.
Now I know why things are being a bit difficult at the moment: I'm starting an additional job tomorrow. Just 3-4 hours in certain weeks, but that's obviously enough to throw me a bit.
And it's the very job I wrote about right at the beginning of this Journal. About 6 or 7 weeks ago. I no longer feel so worried about turning into an SG, I'm just feeling generally FOGGY. Which means I should do something other than reading and posting on here like maybe listen to some music and move a bit, that usually helps.
Of four little tasks (all to do with my professional work) I wanted to get done this evening before I start my additional job tomorrow, I did one. I'm just putting things off. It's good to recognise. And give up on these tasks for today, because I'm obviously not going to do them.
Quote from: Blueberry on May 02, 2017, 05:41:12 PM
The thing is: they don't seem to get their guilt.
"What has that got to do with us? We didn't abuse Blueberry. That was all normal upbringing. Blueberry is being too sensitive."
Yeah, I thought that while I was writing it. My FOO are exactly the same, except that instead of "too sensitive" they would probably say "difficult as always". Or "Candid is mad."
Quotemy sibs [...] see it differently of course.
Mine too. It stings, I know.
QuoteIs it really good for me in the long run to be still accepting money?
I asked my Dad for money when I was broke and alone and very scared in a foreign country. M answered the phone and immediately hung up on me. Dad rang back a few minutes later and talked to me (I was crying) for some time. There were strings attached, of course; for a while there I was obliged to write letters to him and M telling them all about my life and not mentioning anything they'd done in the past. It was such a chore. Apart from anything else I didn't
want them to know about my life and receive M's patronising replies. It was always she who wrote.
I say if you can manage without their financial assistance, better to do that. Obviously I'm totally cut off now, Dad's dead anyway and M wouldn't spit on me if I was on fire, as the saying goes.
QuoteI'm just feeling generally FOGGY. Which means I should do something other than reading and posting on here...
I agree. Most days I sit on the forum way too long, until it feels like CPTSD is all I am. Good luck on the work front, Blueberry!
Woah, Candid. About turn of opinion overnight. But I haven't actually made a final decision on the financials myself. Big topic, needs time.
Continuing my Journal:
I turned up at my new job today to be looked at blankly and told: "We forgot you were coming and don't need you today."
Fortunately it's literally 2 minutes from my front door. So I didn't waste any time getting there. And the positive side-effects: I was up early by my standards and had a shower and hair wash before I went. I'd been putting off washing my hair for a while, so that was definitely good. Then seeing as I was up, I washed a pile of dishes, which was in desperate need of being done.
So once again I notice: It's not so easy to get into the gig economy / minimum wage jobs, even if you wanted to be there in the first place. I just wanted an extra little job where I'm not struggling as a self-employed person, which is often a struggle, but the best i can do atm.
I noticed a correlation with the outing on Friday: it seems easy to 'forget' or 'overlook' me. I'm healthy enough now emotionally speaking to not say it always happens. It doesn't. My friends remember to include me, even acquaintances do. Or ask after me, send emails - Where were you? We missed you. - etc. Being forgotten / overlooked reminds me of the old emotional hurt of having that done in my FOO. M was especially good at that, "Oh, Blueberry will be OK. She doesn't need any help / compassion / consoling." Or "Blueberry doesn't get to go with us / have that treat / be forgiven, she's too difficult." And if I objected, which I did on occasion, then I was being "difficult, stupid" or M "didn't get anything from me" so couldn't be bothered with me. Um, parents aren't meant to 'get things' from their children really, but anyway....
So this is the old hurt, or at least part of it, being dragged up. I tried a bit of EF Tapping but I feel an internal block at doing it. Did two rounds anyway, and then gave up. Felt so exhausted. Maybe I just need to say what happened? Or maybe that then try EFT later?
I've jsut sent a short email to M, she had actually expected this email about 4 weeks ago. Never gone so long not passing on information when I had it. I think it was pretty Medium Chill. I worded it in such a way as to show I don't expect or want an answer. FOO is actually fairly good at not trying to communicate when I expressly say I don't want that.
Still going into my emails will probably be a bit hard tomorrow.
I looked in my emails, I had to for other reasons. Relieved there was nothing from M though.
I asked my psycho-doc about increasing my meds but he doesn't think it'll be helpful. I also asked him if I'm getting early-onset dementia, but he doesn't think that either.
Before my doc appointment I was left in the lurch, this time by friends, for the third time in 6 days. :stars: I wanted to phone someone and share this disappointment / (dump this disappointment on somebody else?) but I couldn't think of who I could reach in the morning... So I think the lesson to be learned is that the strength is within me. Maybe it's a bit of a test of my resilience. I made myself a cup of a special kind of tea, in compensation. I needed a drink anyway.
And the other lesson: I need to concentrate more on my friends and acquaintances. I'm pulling back from FOO, I need to cement friendships IRL more and revive whatever it is I have with people I know just a little, in order to expand the number of people I can fall back on when the going gets tough as well as to increase the number of times a week I'm meeting up with other people, even if it is to do something together rather than chatting about problems, solutions or the weather.
Hi Blueberry,
Glad you coped ok with looking through your E-mails today, and I sense some resilience in what you wrote today - really good! :hug:
Hope :)
Thanks Hope, :hug:
A couple of days ago in another thread I wrote "A realisation coming and/or memory resurfacing is often preceded by a day or two of not being able to get on with things." And then realised today that I'd forgotten that piece of wisdom again, for the hundredth time. When I'm in the middle of such a time period, I somehow don't have access to this realisation, although I come up with this realisation again and again once a new realisation has come or a memory has resurface, and was even able to tell somebody else here of it.
Today I've been feeling a little less stuck, things have been moving forwards again a bit, i.e. I have managed to do a few things that I've been putting off for weeks or merely days. I got not one but 2 FOO emails and I was still able to put that aside and continue writing my Goals poster for next few months and put it up on my wall. The Goals poster had been lying unfinished on the floor since Monday. So that's good. Once it's more or less complete and on the wall, I can start checking off what I accomplish whether it's a regular activity like getting up at my alarm and taking my meds or just a one-off thing, like arranging a particular appointment. It's really useful for me. When I don't have a current one on the wall, I tend to go a bit crazy internally or a bit haywire because I know there's stuff to do but somehow addictive behaviour is sooo much easier. And :thumbup: to myself for finishing this despite the two FOO emails.
I did notice though that the two FOO emails had an effect. One was a message from M, the other just pics from F (out of the blue seemingly, and not just to me), fortunately almost none with people in them. The effect was: I started questioning myself on whether things had really been that bad....
I know from some of the posts on here that some of you had it far, far worse than I did, especially in physical and sexual abuse. I don't usually compare any more, knowing that things in my childhood and teenage years and on beyond that were quite bad enough to affect me the way they have, I didn't need anything else. I mean, the symptoms and what I live and deal with almost daily speak for themselves. But now I see: just a tiny bit of contact, and it's sucked me back into FOO thinking.
In the summer when I last had contact with parents, sibs, sibs-in-law, also cousins and other members of FOO and ended up in a major EF and was absolutely devastated for days and believed all the crxp I was hearing about myself, I just needed to remove myself geographically to stop believing all the stuff I'd been hearing. But now I notice even the most minor contact throws me for a loop.
I'm grateful I can write these realisations here and that at least some of you will understand. I still feel kind of sad aobut contact not possible, which was undoubtedly why I clicked on the emails and read them after all. Yikes, bad move, Blueberry. Having you all here will help me stay LC or VLC until I'm through trauma therapy and on beyond; I'm sure that on beyond will be necessary. So now I'm going to go and write a bit under Recovery Letters.
I tried to attend a self-help group this morning, but it had been cancelled. This didn't bother me in the least, because I was concentrating on the fact that going had got me out of the house and into the fresh air and onto my bike. I then I did a row of 'infectious health' activities, meaning doing one healthy thing leading to another and another and another... I guess it's a type of flow, or being in flow, listening to my body and soul - what can I do now that would be healthy? What's the next healthy impulse?
On my second little cycle I was mindful of my senses, looking at all the green leaves, hearing the river rushing and feeling the moist air on my face. I have my new Goals poster up on the wall and one of the means to achieving the Goal of Looking After Self is to be mindful of the six senses. I differentiate between Touch and Feel. Touch is when I actively reach out to touch something. Feel is more passive, like feeling the wind or rain on my face. I'm allowing the wind or rain to touch me, but I can still concentrate on feeling it, or not. I think that's what being mindful is - to anchor me in here and now. Having mindful of the six senses on my Goals poster means that I will be more mindful of it. That's how my Goals poster works, because I put a check mark next to a completed activity. It's all colour-coded too, which draws my eye toward it on the wall much more than if it were just black on white.
One of my healthy activities: I did a round of Tapping to clear up some feelings from last night and it worked! For Tapping I'm giving myself :cheer: :cheer: because it's often very difficult for me to do something healthy for myself, especially if it's a physical thing or if it will take my body into some traumatic realm, even if I'm not really going in far at all, just dipping my little toe in (as my T says) and not really feeling into my feelings. They come sort of anyway, but not in words or even in pictures, I just yawn a lot, which can be exhausting. I don't know what I'm writing any more, so taking a break. Need to re-centre and re-ground.
Hi Blueberry,
Your goals to be Mindful of the 6 senses sounds really great. :cheer: for achieving so many healthy things, and being in a 'flow'. I can see the difference between 'touch' and 'feel' and that sounds meaningful. We are lucky to have so many senses - and tuning into them sounds like a great idea. I have been focusing on getting more in tune with my body, and being mindful of it - and I do think it's been helpful. Wishing you well with your goals.
Hope :)
Feeling a bit bad today. Can hardly be bothered doing things combined with I have so many impulses that I don't know where to start. That's often difficult because I think if I start that I'll make a misjudgement or a mistake. And that is in fact what happened. It's not a grevious mistake, but it's a mistake. It's the kind of mistake which I think will make people ridicule me. I tried to rectify it but it didn't really work. Ridicule hurts because that's what FOO went in for, big time. It took me a long time to realise that it's not just that FOO was insensitive, no, that was their way of keeping me small, keeping me down.
Not a mistake that will harm anybody else though, but just hold me back in my creativity. As long as I let it. But it's better to let it than do addictive/self-destructive behaviour.
For not the first time, I think I should spend less time on here and more in my real life.
I managed to somewhat rectify the mistake of yesterday. It doesn't look so bad anymore.
Today I tried out a part-time job of a type I've done before. It was very difficult for me, although that in itself was interesting information. It's fairly unskilled work, learn as you go. You have to be able to handle a simple cash register and do some mental arithmetic because the cash register adds but doesn't tell you the change. You have to learn the products and their prices, and some of the prices vary from week to week, you can't always see the prices from where you're working. And some products you have to wrap in newspaper etc. I'm not very adept with my fingers.
My real profession, which I do as a self-employed person, you can't just learn on the job. So it was interesting to note that the problems I have in my profession (almost) all cropped up at this job. I did some EFT (tapping) afterwards and it's all my old 'themes': Even though I feel like a failure, / even though I had trouble with the cash register/ even though my mind went blank/ Even though I work slowly/ Even though I was doing a job students do (and I'm decades beyond that), I love and accept myself. + Even though I made mistakes, ... there - I can't even say i accept myself. In addition, even though I kept forgetting what I'd just done,.... Not a problem I have any more in my professional work, because I've pared it down to just what I can do, just what is manageable, like working with one person only rather than a group.
It was certainly an eye-opener today. I haven't written it under: And Others/ Employment because mostly these are problems in my own psyche. Not in my own head really, they're more likely engraved in my heart or somewhere. And yes, I have done tons of therapy on accepting myself, not all even just cognitive, but some deep-seated emotional work too. It's when I work for pay that things get really bad. If I were working as a volunteer, I wouldn't put myself under such stress; some stress yes, but not so much. Working with other people and having to perform with customers waiting
I don't remember it being so hard at the beginning the other place I worked. But I started out with 3 hours instead of 5 1/2. And I think at that time I was less aware of the messages in my mind/heart/body or whereever exactly they are stored.
One problem today was that they showed me how to work the cash register once, too fast for me. When I learn a new action of any type, particularly physical action, I need to practise it a few times. I didn't have that opportunity, I just had to do it. After about 3 hours maybe I'd got the hang of the cash register all the time, but shortly thereafter some part of my brain went on strike again, and I kept making mistakes.
It's good that I tried. Now I know that doing some 'easier' job isn't the answer. In fact it probably makes more sense to still keep trying to work freelance in my chosen field(s) and similar ones, which I can take some training in. That makes more sense than giving up my freelance work, which I think about every so often. I have to spend money in order to make money. Wouldn't it make sense to take my available time and be employed somewhere? The answer is 'No'.
Trying out this job and it not working out threw me fairly badly by this year's standards. I mean 10 years ago a low-level EF might've gone on for 3 months more or less, whereas as now it's just a week or two. But I don't always notice it for what it is, because in some ways I can function, but in other ways, like getting up in the morning, I can't, or only with great difficulty or only a few days a week.
Part of the not-working-out is very bad news because it showed me that I'll probably never be able to work enough to earn my basic upkeep. I had kind of assumed (who knows why) that if I were to give up my freelance work and spend those hours I can work earning only instead of spending money in order to work (as freelancers do before we even get onto paying taxes, which I don't because I don't earn enough), then I would manage that with some basic not-so-skilled job. But that turns out not true.
And probably inspite of everything it would make sense to keep accepting money from FOO combined with learning to set more and more limits, as I have begun doing this year.
I don't suppose so much of that will make sense to anyone else on here. It does when I explain it in detail to non-cyber friends in my country, but they don't really understand the possible implications involved in keeping accepting money from FOO. They say things like: "your family can afford it" (which is true).
I've accepted money from my family when I was NC. Honestly, they tend to draw you in again. NC ended shortly after that.
See if you are strong enough to deal with that pressure. :hug:
I appreciate you posting your thoughts on this, Blackbird, but I think I'm taking a different route.
I'm not NC. I'm LC to VLC.
My T was working with me today along the lines of I state what I want from M and F: send a whole bunch of money all at once and I get to decide what I use it for. And I ask them how much roughly they were thinking. But I don't go into explaining and justifying etc etc. And I don't give them the information they asked for which is: how much are my monthly expenses, for what. No, I go into adult mode and say: this is what I want. Otherwise I'm accepting my parents keeping me in a child mode, begging for extra pocket money and explaining and justifying why I need it. Although I've already explained to them several times over the years that I have C-PTSD and it is not going away. My T says things will get better i.e. improve, but not get good, and they certainly won't get easy. And I personally don't think all the problems will ever go away, they 'll lessen, they'll become more manageable, but disappear, no.
I know that on here and on OOTF most people suggest not taking FOO money and not being in any contact when going through trauma therapy, but my T says you can differentiate there a bit. My FOO is obviously not as bad as some in the present day. My parents are now accepting my rules of: no phone calls, just occasional emails. I'm only sending emails now on financial stuff, no chit-chat, not even about the weather. Their behaviour in the past month or so has precipitated that. My sibs are accepting 'no contact till I get back to them' which might be never I suppose. None of FOO will unexpectedly end up on my doorstep or any of that kind of stalking behaviour. For one thing, they all live far to very far away. And for another, it's just not their thing. Plenty of other stuff is, but that, no.
Working on negotiating via email with my parents - well it's working on other topics too. You're meant to go through a separation phase and self-discovery phase either during the Terrible Twos or as a teenager. I did neither, it wasn't permitted and I lived in far too much fear as a teenager to even try, and presumably as a toddler too. Now the direction I'm headed with the support of my T is taking this step and to hexx with what my parents think or say or whether it hurts them. I don't actually want to hurt them, but I can't keep wondering if setting a limit is going to hurt them, so I can't set a limit. No, I'm starting to set limits, place boundaries. And although many Ts and also fellow patients will say that if you want to be treated as an adult, you have to act like one and e.g. earn your own money, I choose to disagree. Even when I was earning enough of my own money, my parents didn't see any reason to change their behaviour much and treat me as an adult. And now the problem is: I can't work enough to earn enough. One of the big problems I have working is: sticking up for myself in a way that is not JADEing. You have to be able to do that as a freelancer (which I am) or in other ways as an employee, that I manage even less. So that's where I'm going with this.
Oh, I thought you were NC... I'm sorry.
Good luck :hug:
No need to be sorry, Blackbird. Explaining the issue helped me straighten it out better in my own mind. That often happens and is really quite useful.
Quote from: Blueberry on May 16, 2017, 02:47:50 PM
You're meant to go through a separation phase and self-discovery phase either during the Terrible Twos or as a teenager. I did neither, it wasn't permitted and I lived in far too much fear as a teenager to even try, and presumably as a toddler too.
Hi Blueberry,
I relate so much to what you wrote here, that was the same for me. It really helped me to hear you say that - I just wanted to say that. I think that's a tough thing to have been fearful to even try to separate.
Hope :)
Thank you, Hope, for your validation. I'm sorry it was like that for you too.
My M has always been proud that none of her children went through the Terrible Twos. Even my sibs have joked that we were probably too fearful to do it. It's terrible she's so proud of it because it turns out it was actually harmful my not accomplishing one of these phases. Now M and F seem confused about me doing it now. But that is their lookout.
So I've written the email on money issues to F and M. I think it's pretty good - factual and not overly much explaining myself etc. Still I'm going to let it sit till tomorrow in case I want to change something after all.
This morning (long before I wrote the email) I had a pretty desperate craving for something sweet. I got on with various things and ignored it. I had a good long conversation with a friend with whom I can be very open on feelings and generally what's going on emotionally (as she can with me). We didn't actually even talk about any kind of cravings, but about other progress of mine. That might have helped lift the sugar craving. In the evening I finally got on with making spinakopita using garden weeds instead of spinach since I'd been putting it off for a few days and it was high time I used up the dough. It's not easy for me to make this kind of thing. There are various steps involved, hands are involved in wrapping... Cooking can be triggering for me, partly because I'm using my hands, partly for reasons I don't really know. But not tonight. No, I suddenly noticed in the middle of it all: Hey, my sugar craving is completely gone!
I have vague feelings of why that could be and other feelings of why it's definitely not. When I try and keep the feeling and express it in a word or two even just in my own head, it disappears. Meaning it's too early for me to know or acknowledge the connection between preparing that meal and losing my craving. But I know that once it's been revealed to me that there is a connection, then I will at some point realise what it was about the preparation that made the craving get lost.
Quote from: Blueberry on May 19, 2017, 11:18:56 PM
It's terrible she's so proud of it because it turns out it was actually harmful my not accomplishing one of these phases.
Hey Blueberry!
You might be interested in Developmental Needs Meeting Strategy, http://www.dnmsinstitute.com/therapy/wp-content/docs/aboutdnms.pdf.
Hmmm... I love spinakopita ;D Good for you on the cravings!
candid, good to see back around. :hug: Thanks for the link. I will check it out but not tonight.
Blackbird, um, do you love normal spinakopita or made with stinging nettles, ground elder etc? Thanks for the praise on getting rid of cravings. :hug:
Today I woke up either with an EF or just very tired. I didn't really want to do any of the things I listed as possibilities for today nor in fact any of the things on my Highly Recommended list, which includes basics like getting up, taking my meds, feeding the Little Furry Critters. I did get up a few times but went back to bed. I fed the Little Furries because they can't procure their own food and it's not their fault I have EFs. I guess it was some form of EF because being 'just tired' wouldn't continue that long.
Sometimes making progress, which can include doing things which could be emotionally tiring or seem to include some hurdles, can set off an emotional flashback. So things like cooking meals that involved a bit more work, a few more steps than usual.
Or maybe it was because I set a friend a limit yesterday but not before allowing her to talk too long about something I didn't want to listen to. My inner voice was saying "I don't want to listen, I don't want to hear this" but I let her talk and didn't pay too much attention. But obviously not paying too much attention didn't provide me with enough buffer. She has CPTSD too and although she can tell me about things stressing her in the present, like her next-door neighbours, and I can confirm that she's not in the wrong etc, like the kind of validating we do on here, I didn't feel like and didn't invite a long spiel from her past. Not from her childhood but still past.
It wasn't till she got onto talking about people who talk too loudly triggering her and then mentioned a mutual acquaintance from a group we both belong to that I decided to put my foot down and say "I don't want to talk about that group." :cheer: myself on here. Instead of accepting that, she commented that "it's a red flag" for me. I decided to neither agree or disagree but simply say "It's not useful to talk about that group", to me that is. It might be to her but I've already stopped her on that and said that I find this group pretty dysfunctional and that's triggering for me. So it really annoys me now thinking about it that she thought it would somehow be OK to mention this group again. There's a bit more to the whole issue than this, at least more history.
The most important part at the moment I suppose is that I allowed somebody else to use me as a "listener" for her problems whereas she's not 'hearing' me when I've set a limit e.g. not talking about "that group". She doesn't have to agree that the group's dysfunctional but she has to accept that I don't want to talk about it anymore because it is triggering for me. I'm hearing between the lines that the effects of sexual abuse are worse than the effects of emotional abuse and what I call verbal/intellectual abuse, which was rampant in my FOO. I guess that's a type of psychological abuse.
So next time, if there is a next time: cut her off early, as soon as an inner voice demands it. Because when an inner voice of mine actually demands something it's usually high time, 5 to 12 kind of thing, so not a good idea to ignore. Putting someone else's needs above my own. So I'm making note of that without slamming myself over it. Just another thing to practise.
Sorry, just saw this now. I love normal spanikopita ;D But with love to try differently.
Kudos for setting boundaries, I need to do that constantly, it's so tireing. It's not even their fault, or ours, we're just wired to be triggered. :pissed:
Well, I finally sent an email to M and F. It's just on financial and inheritance issues. No past stuff. Since I've actually sent it, I'm not posting it in here under Recovery Letters. Nonetheless, it's not easy for me stating what I think would be best in the present and future since that's different from what M and F are suggesting. Nor is it easy because of my recently setting a couple of limits via email. Not that there's any reason they would even read it tonight far less finish discussing it themselves and send a reply, but to be on the safe side, I've closed my email. The progress is that I've not shut down the computer and left the room which is what I did last time I sent those difficult emails. Yay! Progress. :cheer: :cheer: :cheer:
So just posted under having a hard day (or hard night?) No, actually, it's maybe not such a hard night as I'm awake and beginning to realise why yesterday was hard. After posting under Having a Hard Day, I'm now capable of writing in my Journal. [To help with readability of long posts / walls of text, I'm going to bold rough topics per paragraph or so.]
A few things from the past few days: 1) dreaming about FOO - I came across my sibs, their SOs, and kids, somewhere outside going for a walk, but they were all turned toward me each family as a little group. In the nearer group my SIL with whom I have a number of problems was very dominant - I didn't really notice the others. In the other group, I noticed particularly the kids and was happy to see them. B1 I noticed too, that wasn't as bad as noticing my other SIL. I would have had to get past SIL and the near group to get as far as the further group and especially the kids. That actually felt nightmarish. In the past I had nightmares about coming across FOO all the time, I'd always try and hide and not be seen. This time I was seen but it didn't feel good to me.
Maybe that's the message too. I decided a number of months ago not to have contact with my sibs before I get over the nasty happenings last summer just in order not to lose contact with the kids (all under 12 years at the moment), especially my god-daughter. Does that sentence make sense? The old me, before last summer, might have swallowed the pain and kept in some form of contact with sibs and SILs in order to keep in contact with kids, but the new developng me decided: "No. Not worth it. Me and my healing and peace of mind go first." The only contact I do have with the kids now is the occasional card I write and send or birthday cards and presents. And none of that with their parents. I know it's a tricky situation, but I feel at the moment that none of what went on last summer had anything to do with the kids.
2) (another thing from past few days) remembering how FOO especially M and B1 used to berate me for being on my own when I was growing up, and call me a "loser". "You don't have any friends, you're such a loser". Remembering was triggered by my going on a talk /guided tour on my own on Saturday and going to some sort of other event on my own for max. an hour on Sunday. On the Sunday event, I was actually gleaning information and making a couple of decisions; in this particular case having somebody with me might have been just distracting. I didn't miss anybody anyway. On the Saturday event, it was easy to chat to the other people on the tour and I didn't feel lonely or awkward. I personally don't even have a problem being on my own! It's just this old memory. And the fact that this loser/failure theme out of my past is pretty painful. I do do things with friends, I'm not even on my own all the time or anything, but I also happen to like being on my own too. And I certainly prefer to do something / go somewhere on my own than not go at all, just because I can't find anybody else interested in going. Aha, yes, this topic came up in T for some reason last time. Maybe that's why it's come up again now. I'm working against FOO and their mores
When I try and write Recovery Letters of anger to post on here, the anger disappears, as do the words. So for the moment I'm posting these realisations on here. Like the amount of hurt with the loser/failure theme. I also thought today: is that what caring parents do? Accuse a child of being a loser/failure for not having (enough) friends? In what way is this accusation going to help?
I don't actually remember F joining in, but he didn't say anything to the contrary either. And B1, though not actually that much older than me, had a position of great importance in FOO, especially his opinions, his word, in some ways he was a bit like M's partner. So the accusations from him, which also went uncommented by F, hit really hard.
3) my own email to M and F recently. It's good in a way that there's been no answer, on the other hand, I could do with an answer sometime to know where I stand, since it's on financial issues. It's only been a few days though. It seems longer. My feeling for time is often all pretty mixed up. Something to do with being in Inner Child mode some of the time, apparently.
Trigger warning!!!! Sexual abuse
Spill over from OP's thread on sexual re-activity:
I joined in M once pulling B2's pants down. My grandparents were even in the room, it was totally open, above board what M was doing. I wouldn't have initiated it. GM left the room in tears, calling me a heathen, but M, her DD, she didn't call anything. Now my reaction to GM ignoring M's behaviour and focussing on mine is :stars: At the time I felt kind of defiant. It's just GM, who cares? I also thought to myself that I wasn't a Christian anyway, so why care?
It's not till I wrote this in the other thread, that I thought "Wait a minute, GM was reprimanding me and I guess was upset, but didn't seem to think there was anything wrong with what M was doing???? It's OK for an adult to do that to a kid, but not between kids? Or what?" Now there's no question in my mind, of course it's not OK between kids, but it was learned behaviour on my part, as is mentioned on the other thread. And I certainly did not initiate it.
(My sibs don't remember M doing this kind of thing to any of us and/or they see it as 'normal behaviour' for that generation.)
I'm having trouble getting on with stuff today. I literally start to do something then pull back physically and try something else or do nothing. I have phoned a few people to organise this or that next week, but basically not one of my more active days. Then I remembered I'd written on here before that before there's a breakthrough I tend to have a few days of this type of thing. So it's good I wrote that!! It's helped me notice and remember. So I don't need to berate myself.
There was a bunch of stuff I wanted to write but now I can't seem to. Maybe on some other thread? Or maybe it really is just too early for me to see it black on white.
Quote from: Blueberry on June 03, 2017, 06:26:25 PM
So I don't need to berate myself.
There's never any need for that, Blueberry! We're doing our best, and that includes some days of wallowing. I can only make appointments on a
good day -- some days I can't even make the calls -- so to me you are The Star.
The other stuff you want to get down will come clear in your mind, and then you'll know whether to start a new thread or put it here. All things in their proper time, right?
Thanks Candid. I guess I mean it might be easier to stop berating myself when I remember that I often have a few down days before something comes up to the surface. But nothing seems to be coming up to the surface right now. There are things I could be doing like getting in touch with the 5 senses BUT last time I berated myself in therapy about not doing the things I could be doing to get out of this, T said he didn't agree with forcing myself to do something when part of me doesn't want to. It's better to try and find out what's preventing me. We have been working on a method to find what's holding me back but I don't even want to work on this new method. T's suggestion remains: don't force it. Which also means: don't berate yourself for not forcing yourself to do it.
Aha! Where's a lightbulb emoticon when you need it?
Over at OOTF I checked out The 5 Stages of Grief and discovered that after Bargaining (which I've been doing with FOO in setting limits and in discussing financial stuff via email) comes Depression and then Acceptance. So atm I'm at stage 4 :woohoo: This means that my present difficulties are to be expected. Other people have been there before me. As I've discovered in the past, depression is a symptom for me, not even necessarily the worst. Just because I'm feeling depressive atm does not mean that I've gone back to square one!
Good for you, Blueberry! I see you pushing yourself and I admire you for it, but when Depression hits it's time to take a break.
Quote from: Blueberry on June 07, 2017, 09:59:00 PM
T said he didn't agree with forcing myself to do something when part of me doesn't want to. It's better to try and find out what's preventing me. We have been working on a method to find what's holding me back but I don't even want to work on this new method. T's suggestion remains: don't force it. Which also means: don't berate yourself for not forcing yourself to do it.
I agree with T here. I really do. And look what happened ... you got a :lightbulb:!
For a while I was processing sexual abuse. Now I've moved on to physical abuse. Not really consciously, it's just happened that way.
I knew a long time ago that my inner children hadn't forgiven my B for physical abuse, but I thought I had on an adult level. But really that maybe just meant keeping a lid on my feelings in order to manage to be in contact with B and not go ballistic. Or in fact in order to have contact with FOO at all.
In therapy we're working on keeping my momentum going. It's hard. I might have energy and motivation to get on with things for a few days or just a few hours or maybe just an hour. Then I have to re-motivate myself to continue. It can be something as simple as finishing washing the dishes or getting out of bed and staying up rather than giving up and going back.
I had the spontaneous image of a raging fire in a nuclear power station and B as a teenager. The raging fire seems to be B's violence but somehow not allowing myself to feel power/energy within myself is connected to keeping this raging fire at bay. I'm doing that because the rage feels dangerous.
* * * TRIGGER WARNING * * *
The rage was dangerous when I was a teenager. B was out of control and M and F didn't care. "Oh, he won't harm you", M said. Or "It doesn't happen very often." Or from both M and F "He only does it because you provoke him. And because you annoy him." And "It's all your own fault." One of the things that was dangerous was: he went into a ballistic rage and didn't care what I might hit e.g. with my head on the way to the floor. Because he was out of control. His face would be contorted with rage at the most ridiculous things, e.g. once because I dared to hit back. I suppose it wasn't ridiculous for him but rather a threat when victim refuses to put up with some of his behaviour.
Power and energy seem to be connected to violence in my mind and in my memories, probably in my deep-seated emotions too, like in layers of fear. So I've tried to keep this violence out of my life (except directed towards myself unfortunately) and in so doing, I cut off my own source of energy, because I didn't realise that energy isn't the same as violence. I've been doing that for years. Today I started self-talk: energy and power can express more than just violence. Violence was the path B chose. I don't have to; I can take my own energy and power and use them to keep going, managing my life, doing constructive things for myself.
The realisation is pretty new, needs a bit more time to 'mature' and become clearer e.g. my own goals, into what channels other than depression and suppression of feelings I can put this energy into. And undoubtedly I'll need to keep practising tapping that energy to keep going instead of giving up by returning to bed (and things like that), and keep practising finding a happy medium. If I open up to the raging energy too much and too fast, it'll destroy me (temporarily). That's not just the way it feels. It is that way. I've been too close to the fire before, several times. The results were never pretty, putting it mildly. Among other things they caused a set-back of several months each time and severe dissociation.
Although it is still hard for me to say with any real conviction: what B did to me was actually physical abuse. And even though he has apologised, that doesn't erase the effects. I've never been in a relationship, I'm too frightened of violence even though I was never black and blue and as B said himself in self-mitigation: I didn't have to go to hospital so it wasn't 'real' beating up. The word 'violence' was never used in FOO for that type of thing; I didn't use it either. I said he beat me up.
* * * End of trigger warning
Sorry everybody for the very long post.
It's your journal, it can be as long as you want. :thumbup:
I strongly identify with your feelings about violence in your FOO. There was a lot of violence in mine as well. It's very triggering to be around people that I feel I've irritated or annoyed, bcuz in my mind that is the first step to someone losing their temper.
I have a very skewed definition of the term "brother". That word does not have the same meaning to me that it does for the general populace.
3Roses, I have difficulty believing that there was "a lot of violence" in my FOO. Because "a lot of violence" brings up images where I think "FOO wasn't that bad". That's just the mindset of FOO, which I'm unfortunately still somewhat stuck in. By beginning to write about it on here I'll hopefully begin to accept more in my head that there was actually violence in my childhood/teenage years, even if it was often verbal and/or only threatened. But the physical was often enough to keep me suppressed, frightened and under control.
I'm actually triggered with merely being around people I could irritate or annoy, especially people in positions of authority (e.g. employers). It used to take a long time for me to speak up about any problems at work. In retrospect I can say my inner children were terrified of punishment, the kind of punishment meted out to children. I used to feel the fear at work, even though logically/rationally there was no way that this punishment could have occurred. I'm now self-employed, partially to avoid the constant EFs of when I have supervisors/bosses.
Today I've been staking my claim, so to speak. I've been putting signs and posters up on the walls outside my apartment and my office (same building) that make it clear that it's my space. Otherwise other people in the building dump their stuff there 'temporarily'. This is also a topic that's come from therapy with me setting boundaries around myself without even saying anything, simply demonstrating by body language: "you can come here and no closer" OR "Hey! This is where I'm standing. You can't move into my space and push me further back" Or "I was here first, you can't just come and push me out of the way." If I have to say it, I do. I've been learning that this year. But simply showing it can be effective too. Because then you don't have to argue with people or JADE.
Staking my claim is strenuous, so I've taken this break to write about it.
I have been working about an hour at something which is quite strenuous for me. I feel exhausted, though it could be an EF. So now I'm going to take a break, quite consciously. :cheer: for me.
Good for you Blueberry :cheer:
Lingurine
Thank you, Lingurine! It turned out to be like an EF, and I haven't gone back to the work yet (though I have done other work in the meantime). But anyway the most important thing was that I consciously took the break so that I could even figure out that I was in an EF! You probably knew that, but important for me to notice that now again.
This is the continuation of a post I started under Three Good Things Today because the realisations I came up with while writing about the incident would have been way too much to write out in that space.
So here goes:
When I mentioned to the tradesman that the proposed solution - which I'll have to do myself every spring and fall - will be a bit tricky for me, since I'm not very good at 'handyman' jobs, he suggested I try it out right then and there!
This was the best idea because when I do things myself, I learn them. When somebody shows me and I don't get to try it out, I'm liable to forget and then when I have to do the action later, I automatically go into such an EF, that I can't do it. Or maybe I even go into an EF while the tradesman is explaining? Yes, that's it, the 'inner head' is nodding.
OK, so somebody explains something to me which I don't quite understand or can't picture and then presumably some sort of fear or panic sets in. Yes, that is also correct, I notice how I'm holding my breath. (So take a brief break and consciously breathe!) Aha, it is the old fear of that painful ridicule. Note to myself: Keep breathing! It's not easy for the breath to flow round the stopper in my throat, I have to keep concentrating on it, but I can do it. So I go into an EF due to fear / panic when something is explained, even if I do understand on a cognitive level, I don't really understand enough to carry out the instructions later with my body (e.g. with my hands or feet) and then the fear of not being able to do the job later makes me feel useless, worthless, hopeless, stupid, and then the whole problem compounds itself. So this has been a very useful exercise - writing out what happens in my mind and my feelings.
The great thing today was that some person who didn't even know me and isn't a therapist or doctor or anything like that realised what I needed in order to be able to keep solving the problem of my heating and got me to carry it out!
So now instead of feeling useless, worthless, stupid and potentially having to rely on somebody else every spring and fall, I'm feeling great, full of energy and the impulse to keep going! i.e. not to give up, stay in bed, curl into a depressive ball and give up again. Because something that is often so difficult worked out, I'm feeling self-confident!
I'm also feeling very tired with this realisation and with having remained in my emotions and in my physical body enough to write what was going on within me. So that's enough on this topic for now. :cheer: for doing all that in past few minutes and :cheer: for ending the post now.
So glad to hear this! :cheer: Way to go Blueberry :cheer: :cheer:
Now go get some much deserved rest
Just a note to myself: it was good to read in here right now because I realise that the mental exhaustion and huge reluctance to get back to the work I mentioned on June 22/23 has to do with feeling into the EF that I normally experience when hearing or reading instructions, particularly when about actions to be carried out with my hands.
I had been thinking the reluctance was due to the type of work itself or because I stopped after I pulled out some hair. That may be the case in part too, but only in part.
It was still good to feel into the EF because that taught me a lot and this year therapy and healing have higher priority than work. The EFs connected to work with my hands are a major long-term problem which I've been working with on and off for a good few years.
I haven't spent the rest of the time since June 22 knowingly in an EF. I have done other things, including quite a lot which normally grounds me: being outside in the fresh air, cycling and walking in the forest, with other fairly safe people, talking about interesting topics, but not anything like therapy or emotional work. But I have been avoiding getting back to completing this work due tomorrow. But it does seem to me as if it's been a comparatively long time (4-5 days) since I was last working on that particular piece of work, but it's only been 3 days. That's one sign of not being completely in my present-day adult body and mind: remembered activities seem further away than they really are.
So for not the first time I was unknowingly in some minor form of EF, which can be re-triggered into a full-on one if I push too much in one way or another. So now I will try some foot-stamping, that usually helps me get back into present day adult body and mind.
Now I have done a little more work on the project due tomorrow. I can feel my brain beginning to spin and a fuzzy EF feeling coming so I need to take another break and I'm going to act on that. This is progress. :cheer: In the past I've often pushed myself to keep going, just another 15 minutes or another hour or something. Often that was very unhelpful because I couldn't work at all efficiently.
Huge kudos to you for your get-up-and-do while feeling rotten. :worship:
From the outside I'm sure it looks like procrastination. I've known cognitively for a good number of years that it isn't.
Now I'm beginning to accept at a deeper level that my not getting on with my paid work or with any number of other things including giving my pet her medicine, doing the housework, taking my own meds, personal hygiene, doing things that are good and healing for me are not procrastination. It's not laziness, it's not lack of skills or lack of organisation in any kind of way that you could improve by doing a weekend course in "Organisation".
So what is it? EFs certainly some of the time. Other times it's intuition that something else is far more important, e.g. a different step in healing is paramount right now. Like writing this in here.
I also realised today that with the harder part of work I do (harder for me that is), I can work about half an hour and then I need a few hours break. Whereas the norm would be a few hours work and then a quick break of less than half and hour. Almost the exact opposite to what I can manage. Sometimes I even need a few days' break ;)
It could look as if I'm doing anything other than the work I'm meant to be doing, but actually this morning so far I've mostly been doing much easier things for which I had an impulse like laundry and hanging it out while there's such good weather to dry it, foraging for food for my pets, tidying up a little here and there, and even eating 2 small healthy meals (which I don't always do either, especially when working for pay). Impulses of that kind are generally good because they help my brain to sort itself a bit too and jobs like going into the garden to hang up laundry is grounding for me / helps to keep me grounded. (It wouldn't work if I was totally dissociated, but it's part of the day-to-day keeping myself grounded.)
There are also times when I'm incapable of tidying up at all or doing the laundry but am able to do the easier part of my job. So the important thing is that I'm beginning to accept these limitations more and at a deeper level, where thoughts don't reach. With accepting these limitations I'm beginning to accept myself better. Mighty progress for me. :cheer:
Considering asking the client if she could wait till Wed. instead and I'll give her a bit of a discount. The job has been particularly useful for the above realisations rather than for the pay.
Quote from: Blueberry on June 26, 2017, 12:12:22 PM
Considering asking the client if she could wait till Wed. instead and I'll give her a bit of a discount. The job has been particularly useful for the above realisations rather than for the pay.
:cheer: :cheer: :cheer: Client accepted!
The rest of this post is over at CPTSD And Others / Employment.
well done, blueberry! and i'm very glad to hear that you're more and more getting into those little things that make up a familiar and comfortable routine for yourself. i think that kind of thing is very important - it is for me. still working on it, but it's coming together a bit at a time.
meanwhile, i hope you keep it up. the garden is a grounding place for me, too. big hug to you!
Later on I did my other type of work, the type that's easier for me. I ended it feeling so happy, almost elated! This is something I can do well! I don't feel I'm constantly struggling with it. Of course sometimes it isn't easy, sometimes I have trouble with the odd client especially Troublesome Client, and there are some days I can't be bothered because ??? Or days when I'm in a low-grade EF and it's difficult, or it takes me a long time to prepare for it. But generally it's something I can do well, for which I get good feedback, and which energises me. And the rate per hour is much better, I earn proper money.
So once again thinking: take a break from the other type of work for a longish time e.g. till I'm further on in T or maybe until I have a real longing to do it again, if that ever happens, and if not, discontinue! Though there is a sub-type to the difficult and triggering type of work that I've always wanted to try and have been looking into a bit in the last few months. I think it will be less triggering for various reasons and also it's one of those things I've wanted to try for years but cognitive reasons have got in the way. There are some steps I could be taking there to see if I could in fact take it somewhere. After that I still could discontinue forever. But actually it won't run away if I give myself more time till I'm really ready to try it out.
I have a really bad cold or maybe it's tonsilitis which I tend to get when everything becomes too much. It's a shame, I had something fun planned today with other people.
I'd actually decided to hand back the work I was trying to do and had done so, and then got sick anyway. I must've taken too long in handing the work back. my body had decided to get sick by then as the only possibility in stopping me.
I probably won't be on here often in the next few days.
:hug: I hope you feel better soon, Blueberry. In the meantime just focus on being well.
feel better soon, sweetie. funny how our bodies will let us know when too much is enough! that's happened to me more times than i can count. getting better at taking those breaks before it happens, which is nice.
rest, rest, and more rest, plenty of fluids, all that stuff. it's the nurturing earth mother in me coming out. :hug:
Thank you Candid and sanmagic! There are worse things of course. But I hate being sick in summer. Or this summer. I used to quite like being sick because it gave me a real excuse for lying in bed and sleeping half the day. But now I'd rather be up and around and doing things. But I'm too sick!
sending you soothing tea and nourishing soup and the hope that you get better quickly, blueberry. big hug from across the room cuz i don't want to get sick as well! :hug:
Thank you! Certainly, stay on your side of the room. No point in you getting this too. In the night I was awake and felt better and thought woohoo! I can probably even get back to the work I enjoy by Friday. Noooooooo. I woke up this morning with all the cold symptoms back in seemingly worse form, except fever's gone.
So what does this tell me? I need to concentrate on things other than work. Paid/professional work is not the only barometer of health. Other things count too. Am I doing adequate self-care? Cleaning my teeth? Showering? Washing my hair? Do I even feel any impulse to do these? Or am I having to force myself? Am I doing basic housework? Am I looking after my pets adequately? Am I finding ways to experience moments of joy?
I do hope you can find room in your heart for all of those things Blueberry, get well soon!
:hug:
Lingurine
Well, I did a little bit of tidying today, which helps me feel better, less depressive. And I went out into the garden twice and poked around, looked at what was blooming. I also finally acted on the impulse to look out my window from my bed onto the garden with binoculars. That was interesting and colourful. My garden almost always brings me joy.
I am feeding my pets, at least. (I always do that). Yesterday an acquaintance came by and did some longer-term pet care for me, which means the pets are happier today. And a friend brought them some extra delicious food yesterday and another dropped by with a donation today too.
got a smile on my face that you were able to get into the garden (always one of my favorite places. i miss having one) and that friends have been helping you with the animals. that's so very cool. it gives you more energy for just getting well. yay!
This morning I even felt well enough to go into the garden and take the animals with me. They had great fun, racing around and eating. I was a bit quieter and calmer with my time, tho I did hang out a bunch of laundry. Yeah, so back doing some housework too.
Noting to myself more than anyone else that I'm having trouble again with showering and washing my hair, i.e. I find anything and everything else to do instead.
you'll get there. loads of hug.
Thank you sanmagic for the encouragement and the hugs. An article 3Roses linked on another thread has helped me understand why self-care is so hard.
So for the rest of you who read my Journal and have problems with self-care, here's a good read: http://www.new-synapse.com/aps/wordpress/?p=1911
I've been affected by that article too, Blueberry. Now I understand why I know what I could do for self-care, but I don't do it. Occasionally I might have a go at it, but it always falls down very quickly.
It's official! I've been observing myself today and I find all sorts of 'useful' things to do to avoid doing things in general and especially to avoid practising and doing trauma-processing. I can process really small stuff with EFT (tapping) and all the bigger stuff with Screen Technique in Stills (as opposed to Films). So therapy homework this week is try some processing at home. And I've spent all day running away from it.
As a more minor example, this morning early I remarked to my Little Furry Animals that I just had to go and have a shower and hair wash, like it or not, since I'd been putting it off for about 2 weeks. Then I put if off some more by doing a little tidying up and this and that. Tidying up is definitely useful in my apartment, no question about that. But in that moment shower and hair wash definitely had priority. Had I put it off any longer, I wouldn't have had time before some appointments including work-related. So :cheer: I did finally have a shower and wash my hair. But even more important was the realisation that I was putting it off.
And then instead of taking some time today to try and feel into what was going internally / emotionally to make me want to put off showering, I spent the day running from that too, by: sleeping, doing crosswords, playing patience (card game), reading the Internet news (for several different countries too), eating. Any readers may think there's lots of time left today, but actually there isn't in my time zone. Right now I have not read much of what everybody else wrote here today on purpose. I wanted to write this.
I know in therapy yesterday I immediately got to the emotion that has been putting me off from doing processing at home. It's fear. Fear of being overpowered by whatever comes, but as my T points out, I have a number of methods to avoid being overpowered: making the Still minute, like the size of a postage stamp, putting the screen it is on far, far away so it's just visible on the horizon, and putting up a special shield made out of transparent armour. I can even tint the armour to make me feel safer. And then I can remind myself that it is presently 2017 and everything and especially everybody on the screen is a memory only.
So it's more a fear of feeling overpowered rather than actually being overpowered.
And the other fear / worry is the exhaustion to the point of physical weakness that comes when I do EFT. Though I know that this exhaustion is just a sign of how much work, how much processing is going on. As you all say on here: "The only way is through." I've been avoiding that a bit by doing other things. Don't get me wrong, one of the most useful time-fillers I have is reading and writing on here. Making steps IRL is good too, but I think some of those steps would often come easier and with less effort if I worked more on releasing the blockages behind them by doing trauma processing.
Earlier on today, I thought I should be doing some processing and my mind went totally blank. I had no idea what I should or could usefully process. Now I know: a round or a few of tapping - "even though I have the feeling that I've been shirking a bit, I still love / accept myself". Otherwise I'll harangue myself too much for not having started Still processing at home earlier and not having done more EFT processing at home. And then probably a round or two of "even though I feel totally und utterly exhausted after tapping about the feeling that I've been shirking a bit, I still love / accept myself".
And now I'm going to promise everybody who might be reading this OR sitting on The Healing Porch that I'm going to shut down the computer without zooming off anywhere else on the Internet and go and do my tapping before I go to bed. Maybe I even need a corner on the Porch where I can do my processing? I can think on that after I've done my processing.
Thanks everybody for this wonderful, helpful forum.
blueberry, i'm sure there is room on the porch or the beach or in the gardens or woods for you to do your tapping/processing. you can have your own space totally alone, or knowing that there is someone there to help find a resting blanket for you afterwards, bring you some refreshments, or just sit with you if you'd like the company.
i also read that article 3 roses posted, and it was eye-opening to say the least. i've certainly had my own struggles with the concept of self-care and putting it off. one of the things i've done that's helped me is to tell myself that i can't do x (something i enjoy or am looking forward to) until i take that shower, or whatever it is. i don't know that it would work for everyone, but it has helped me.
for example, there were some attachments i needed to send to my daughter today for her to print out for my doc appt. fri. i've been putting it off since mon. today, i told myself that i wouldn't come on to the forum until i'd sent those to her. kind of my own personal reward system.
good for you for closing down your computer to take care of your tapping. well done, dear blueberry. big hug to you. sounds like you're making some progress!
Quote from: sanmagic7 on July 13, 2017, 01:39:05 AM
one of the things i've done that's helped me is to tell myself that i can't do x (something i enjoy or am looking forward to) until i take that shower, or whatever it is. i don't know that it would work for everyone, but it has helped me.
Unfortunately that doesn't work for me, I've tried it. I wouldn't take the shower and then I wouldn't do the thing I was looking forward to either. I actually often have a lot of trouble doing something I normally enjoy or I'm looking forward to. And also if I don't shower (or whatever I'm meant to be doing), then depriving myself of the other activity is a form of punishment. I do quite enough self-punishment anyway. Even an out-and-out reward for e.g. having a shower doesn't necessarily work. Although I did have a reward system going for a while, including using stickers, since there were inner children involved too. Or sometimes I could tell that an inner child and my adult needed a reward.
So yesterday I shut down the computer and went off to do my processing. I did a round of EFT to make sure I didn't start haranguing myself for feeling that I had been shirking. It went easier than I'd envisaged so I then went on to working with a Still on the Screen, looking at my reluctance to shower.
An image of one of my abusers came. I did pretty well with employing methods to keep the image small. The next part of the exercise is to envisage the connection between the image and me and then cut it. But you can't cut before you have a picture or a sensation of what the connection looks or feels like. First there were 2 flimsy, wobbly connections, one after the other e.g. one of them was a very, very long blade of grass. Really long, could never exist in the natural world. and I was surpised at that, thinking: This is going to be easy. But then
TRIGGER WARNING
the connection suddenly changed to the mouth of the abuser coming at me, like trying to do mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Yuk. I snapped out of the exercise and re-stabilised physically by stretching, pushing off walls and patting my arms and legs.
End Trigger Warning
And then I did another round of EFT, to reinforce that I love and accept myself despite feeling nauseated and frightened of the image. My therapist had told me to do that in my session the day before. I'd totally forgotten, as I often do after therapy, but I write these things down in my diary immediately within the session.
Overall I felt good about having tried processing, including the more difficult form, for more difficult cases. EFT wouldn't work for the shower problem atm. It could some time in the future when the shower problem is much reduced. I can try the shower problem again with Screen processing or take it with me to therapy next session and try it with my therapist. But actually I'd prefer to try it again myself and see if I get a bit further or see if I can imagine even more protections so that I don't have to snap out of it, but can continue and cut the connection.
The interesting thing I noticed is that it really didn't take much time to do either of the processing types. That too made me feel good. It seems less of a huge mountain to overcome. And afterwards it was then good to do the kind of things I do to put off doing whatever I'm meant to be doing, e.g. I did some tidying, amalgamated my garbages and put the garbage out. That all felt good - doing easy little physical jobs. Reading or writing wouldn't have been so good.
Today I tried out some more trauma processing with Screen Technique. Topic: the feeling of fear about the magpie's break-in.
This time Screen Technique went even faster; I was really surprised. Atm I don't feel as if the topic is dealt with, though it usually takes a few days or even longer for the process to work its way down into my subconscious and then further my healing. Atm I'm not even sure what the magpie symbolises. I do have my suspicions though.
I now have a little list of topics waiting for either Screen Technique or EFT. I can give myself :cheer: for doing one today.
wow, blueberry, you're really moving right along with your processing. good for you. i'm impressed at how you keep going at it. you're getting there! big hug.
Thank you sanmagic! :hug: It helps me when someone else notices the progress too.
It seems that the processing is working because I don't feel so much fear in my stomach when I now read my own post about processing the magpie break-in. I feel a bit calmer in general. I didn't get up when I intended today, but sometimes that is also a sign of processing in the subconscious.
I didn't get up when I intended today either. Sometimes when there are too many things on my day's could do list, I just don't get up. Even though I don't have to do the things since they are under could do. I've been putting off doing some trauma-processing all day. Doing it might get me more motivated.
But I did do some particular small important thing this week that I've been putting off for 4 months. :cheer:
I do feel much calmer about the magpie now, so that must have been working away in my subconscious for past couple of days.
I helped a good friend today IRL via the phone. We've been helping each other on and off for years with this psycho stuff, nothing new there. When it's a real emergency or an EF has being going on for several days, then we both take that seriously for the other person. But a less good friend with CPTSD phoned later in the day and just wanted to chat, (though that turns into 'this is where I am atm and this is what has been going on emotionally'), I felt so exhausted all of a sudden, I refrained. I couldn't possibly support anybody else, that was my feeling.
Well, I do remember and will hereby remind myself, that I tend to move forward in either actions or realisations or both and then have the feeling that I either drop back a bit or stagnate. But actually I'm probably not doing either, I'm probably re-sorting and re-grounding and re-energising so that I can move forward again.
I would like to eat some chocolate, but that's not the solution. I don't have any at home anyway, wisely enough.
Last night I dreamt that somebody got hold of my advertising brochures, tore them up and scattered the bits all over the place. The basic theme has been common in my dreams/nightmares in the last 8-10 years: somebody comes and ruins something of mine. For a long time I had dreams about my part of the garden ('yard' for the N.Americans on here ;) ), that neighbours dug it up, or planted their own things in my part, after destroying my plants, once I even dreamt that the landlord came and paved our whole garden in concrete. Compared to some people's nightmares this will sound like chicken feed, but for me it used to feel so frustrating and so unfair during the dream and I also felt so powerless. People came and did things, over and over again, and I couldn't seem to stop people destroying my part of the garden. While I write this a permanent image of B1 is hanging around.
So one thing behind these bad dreams will be my powerlessness to stop B1 harming me psychologically and physically in my childhood / teenage years (and later) and my inability to enforce boundaries with him. He was older and bigger (still is, but that was particularly bad for me in the first 20-odd years of my life) and I wasn't safe from him anywhere if he wanted to have a go at me. And nobody was there to protect me from him.
i lost my response. i think i said that i hope you're safe from him now, and that those dreams seemed very telling about the powerlessness you've felt with him.
your strength is really coming thru. sounds like you needed a break to re-think just what your next step is. not a bad idea. you're doing so well. big hug to you my dear.
Thank you san :hug: I am safe from him now.
I don't feel very strong atm. I feel very weak in fact. but that is undoubtedly 'something' telling me I need a break. I was reading in my diary last night and saw that my T warned me after one trauma-processing session that it was likely I'd be pretty exhausted in the days afterward. Ah ha! I thought yesterday, that is what is going on now too. Not surprising. I had Abuser no. 1 and my fear of her through all the years on the processing screen this week. Not surprising that that's knocked me for six. And then add to that all the progress I've been making IRL in the past week... It's really no surprise I'm feeling so exhausted.
Yesterday I felt overwhelmed at the thought of putting respectable clothes on. So I didn't. Spent day in a fairly old t-shirt and fleece jacket and shorts I wear for gardening or mucking around the house. Even though I had contact with one client and other freelancing colleagues. I had got to the point where I just didn't care. I knew it was a choice of go to the effort of putting something more business-like on and then collapse, or remain in gardening clothes and work and then meet up with colleagues. So I chose latter.
Thank you for telling me my strength is coming through San, because I really don't feel it. So it's good to hear from somebody else.
Hi Blueberry,
I just wanted to pop by and say that I admire the fact you managed to still meet up with your colleagues yesterday, and that you chose to wear your Gardening (more casual) clothes to do that - I am sure you would have looked fine, and probably 'more relaxed' (outward appearance) and there's nothing wrong with that.
I know it's a draining time for you currently, from what you've written, and I would like to give you a hug :hug: and say I hope that you have a good day today.
You replied to one of my posts recently, and I so appreciated what you wrote. I've not had chance to reply to that yet, but I will - and I wanted you to know your reply meant a lot to me. Thank you.
Hope :)
Thanks Hope :hug: Your reply means a lot to me too. I actually didn't look fine in my gardening clothes, I really didn't. But I accepted that. Because as I wrote that was the only way in which I could go. Otherwise, better clothes and neater appearance + collapse.
I've done a few rounds of EFT (tapping) so far today and it's not helping noticeably, though it is good I tried it out. Possibly helping at subconscious level anyway. Sometimes I just have to leave my subconscious time. Because more and more EFT and/or screen processing just exhausts me more.
I can't remember where I wrote about daring to take up space by putting some chairs in the space outside my office where everybody else in the building used to pile junk of various sorts. I felt pretty self-conscious about these chairs for a while, as if everybody in the building was grumbling about them and noticing that nobody sat on them. But now clients are beginning to sit on them. so I feel less self-conscious.
Today I just lay around reading and dozing most of the day. It feels pretty lazy. Maybe I just needed a break? A few days ago I was close to exhaustion. I don't know. No time on Monday for lying around reading and dozing. I don't know how those of you who work 8 hour days manage it. I've been putting off doing any trauma processing or at least EFT. I could have at least tried that today. I didn't even go down into the garden.
i remember about the chairs, blue, and am so glad that people are now using them. good for you for sticking to your guns about that space and getting rid of the garbage. it was an excellent idea and has produced excellent results.
i always believe that our bodies let us know what we need, and it sounds like yours told you that you need to just have time to do nothing that might be energy-sapping, or nothing of importance. i call that physical and mental recovery/healing time. i don't think there's anything lazy about it. i'm glad you did it. i think it's something we all need to do from time to time.
big hug to you, sweetie.
Thanks san, that makes me feel better, about the lying around being mental recovery/healing time.
Work-wise I was quite active today and then this evening I went with an environmental association I belong to to a prize-giving. We won first prize in one of the categories. Something I've been involved in for years, even if through the worst years of exhaustion I was just there in mind.
well, congratulations!!! well done! what a wonderful accomplishment.
Noticed today that one of my pets is in a terrible state. I had a vet appointment on Tuesday and I just didn't go. Now I need to try to get one tomorrow before I go on holiday. I gave my pet some meds just now. Lying around is one thing, neglecting my pets is another and it's not OK. But that's what I've been doing. It's like with children - they can't do anything to help themselves, they rely on me to do that and when I don't, well, it's pretty bad. I've been neglecting myself too, but I could change that.
On Friday I'm going on holiday for a week. And although I'm sort of looking forward to it, I find getting ready to go stressful, so I tend to disappear under the bedclothes and sleep instead of doing anything useful in order to leave home for a week. But I know that at least the first 3 days of the holiday will do me a lot of good, and the remaining days probably too.
I'll be offline the whole time. Which is good in its way too. I can always waste a lot of time online.
I hope there'll be a lot of self-care in that holiday. If we're not taking care of ourselves we can't take care of our dependents or our environment. I hope it's a nice relaxing break.
Hope you have a lovely holiday, Blueberry. :-)
Thank you Hope and Candid! It's a place that makes it easier for me to do self-care. Not therapy! But an all-inclusive place. I will eat and drink properly and healthily because the food is there. The really unhealthy stuff isn't there ;) I won't sit up half the night reading instead of sleeping because lights out at 10 pm. There is an exercise program every day which is compulsory, so I will do it. Once I start, I will actually even enjoy the exercise.
It's a place where there is space for emotions, but in the first few days because of the exact program I'm doing, I am more likely to tap JOY than anything else, and it is essential for me to feel joy in order to want to keep going. Keep going looking after me, looking after my pets, getting up in the morning, taking my meds. In a word: self-care. I tend to forget that joy = essential, even though it's written all over my home in places. I still tend to discount joy as a luxury, as something superfluous. You 'have to' keep going. That 'have to' word I'm allergic to.
I will come back emotionally stronger. I always do.
Quote from: radical on July 27, 2017, 07:33:20 AM
Something I've learned the hard way is that abuse sets us up for more abuse. As long as we are being victimised we can never heal.
... It will likely be a tough transition, getting away, finding safety and safe people, finding your place in the world. The biggest step is moving out of the certainty of misery into the chaos of uncertainty. ...
Quote from Radical from another thread. Didn't want to hijack there. Made me realise how essential it is for me to keep to my VLC with FOO. You have to remove yourself from your abusers. Otherwise I won't heal. If you can manage to protect yourself with Medium Chill / Grey Rock, then you can do that. But if you can't, then change has to be more radical. And now I'm in the chaos of uncertainty.
i agree with the idea that we can't heal if we're still in the middle of abuse. i have no doubt that you'll find your way through and out of the chaos of uncertainty in due time. it's new and weird at first, but i have faith you'll be able to sort it out for yourself. big hug, blueberry.
Blueberry... take me with you!!!!
That place you're going to sounds like just what you need to raise your spirits.
Agree with sanmagic7, the uncertainty will clear. Look after Number One!
Candid:
"It's great to see you back, Blueberry, but I'm sorry to hear the retreat didn't 'take'. Did you learn any useful strategies? What worked for you there, and can you continue now?"
Kizzie:
Re: week's holiday
« Reply #8 on: August 10, 2017, 09:15:35 AM »
"Yes, welcome back Blueberry. :hug:
Sorry to hear you are depressed Do you think it is because you realized at the yoga seminar just how exhausted you are? "
Thanks for the "Welcome backs"!
It's more the realisations that I made while I was there. For instance, one of my pets died while I was there, not completely unexpectedly. I suddenly realised that it's time to expend my time and energy on looking after me, not on them! If somebody had recommended to me the week before my retreat that I send my pets back to the Humane Society they came from, I would have looked at them as if they were crazy. But suddenly this idea was there. I've been home a week now and haven't acted on it though. I think not acting on it is giving me depression. I'm certainly not looking after me atm either.
Little did I realise that not wanting my pets anymore might become a result of trauma therapy. Logically, I think after about 20 years of looking after these pets and others, it's maybe time I took a break, but haven't quite managed yet.
Also I can't feel that I love my pets or anybody else for that matter atm. This makes me feel worried. I don't even feel that I love my little godson, though his M, a very good friend of mine, assumes I do. Of course I like him! But would I jump into a lake to rescue him kind of love? I don't know. Probably actually, yes. But I can't feel it.
It's another period of uncertainty, from which I will emerge some time again.
Also since I came home I've read most of Karyl McBride's book on narcisstic mothers and came out self-blaming. Thinking: I've done so much T over the years, it's time I got my act together. Especially in comparison to M, who has done a little, but nothing like the amount I've done. Also something that sticks in my mind is K.M's thought that most mothers didn't really mean what they did. Well, mine did. She positively likes hurting other people, whether by words or any other means.
Candid:
"It's great to see you back, Blueberry, but I'm sorry to hear the retreat didn't 'take'. Did you learn any useful strategies? What worked for you there, and can you continue now?"
What worked there? Being away from home in a clean, fresh, tidy and colourful environment. Exercise (yoga) daily, singing daily (mantra chanting). I have CDs I could chant to, I have CDs I could do yoga too, in fact I am well-enough versed to do quite a few yoga poses without any instructions.
I could continue now, but I'm not. I'm not sure why not, except what all I wrote in the previous post in here. Well, I finally listened to some other music while I was washing the dishes. So I washed the dishes too! And washed some windows and some other pesky things I don't wash that often. So at least I've sort of got going again.
Hi Blueberry,
Welcome back. I hope you are having a reasonable weekend so far, and I just wanted to say that I am happy you're back.
Hope :)
Hi Hope, Thank you. I wouldn't say I'm having a reasonable weekend. But I could be if I wanted to be having one.
On another topic: I've been on this forum 6 months to the day. Despite everything I've been feeling in the past couple of days, I have made progress. OTOH there are always going to be difficulties I guess e.g. with bothering myself to shower and wash my hair or even get up.
I get it. A holiday's great... until we go back to Real Life. Well done to doing all those pesky things, and to music, too!
How do you feel when you consider giving up your pets? I'm sure you love them, AND your godson. Depression always means we're not feeling the love for ourselves, so it's only to be expected that all our other positive feelings get numbed at the same time.
At giving up my pets, I actually feel relief and a bit of guilt. A friend with CPTSD worried today when I mentioned it, that I might not get up at all any more if I gave up my pets. That is possible, except for when working. But even when working when I get really depressive, I end up jeopardising my own work. Doesn't bode too well if you deal with clients and haven't showered in days etc. or stayed up all night and are so tired you can hardly think. I can be really self-destructive. That I developed in my childhood. Not being allowed to display anger outwards or punish those who were mean to me, I turned it on myself.
hey, blueberry,
my d was going to give me a plant for my new home here, and i told her i didn't want one. didn't have the energy to take care of it. maybe someday, but not now. now is for me, no matter what form that takes.
if you felt relief at giving your pets up, my guess is that you made the right decision. those feelings of love may be there someday, too, but you deserve to learn how it feels to love you as well. and congrats on 6 mos. of recovery. you said that you can see progress. that counts. the rest will come.
i don't think we can put a time limit on how our therapy is supposed to work for us, or how fast. yes, if you really don't think it's been helping you, you might want to talk to your t about it. however, if you have noticed progress, then i believe that something is working. baby steps, and who's to say how long is the road that each of us is on.
but, ugh! to comparisons!!! the last time i talked to my narc ex, who has seen more therapists than i have, has spent more actual time in therapy, when i asked him about something re: his therapy, he actually bragged to me about what a great liar he is! so much for comparisons. all that time and money, and he was never getting to actually work on his issues cuz he was lying the whole time. he thought he was pretty smart at putting one over on his current t, too. very smug about it.
you, my dear, are doing what you need to do. it's slower/faster for some than for others. all credit to you for putting that one foot in front of the other. you're getting there. big hug
Please guard your sleep, Blueberry. You can't expect to function when you're sleep-deprived. It's widely known as the most effective form of torture.
My sleep tips:
Natural daylight (ie. go outside) as early as possible in the morning; apparently this keeps the melatonin in line
No coffee after noon
Internet cut-off before the evening meal
Satisfying evening meal
Start winding down an hour before bedtime. Yoga and a tub are both good.
san, I haven't actually given up my pets yet. In fact it's nice weather and I'm going to take them out afterwards. Just the idea of not being responsible for them any more brings relief. For years, I kept going because of my pets. That's shifting now I think. Shifts in thinking are good, but a little frightening. I said to myself I'd keep my pets till end of August, and then see.
I have made a lot of progress! My t has definitely been helping me, but at the end of it all, or even before the end ;) it's up to me to get my own act together and, well, act. Sleep at night, get out of bed in the morning, do things that are good for me. Nobody can do that for me. And if anybody tried to force me, part of me would rebel. I know that. That's why it has to come from me.
Quote from: Candid on August 14, 2017, 05:56:03 AM
Please guard your sleep, Blueberry. You can't expect to function when you're sleep-deprived. It's widely known as the most effective form of torture.
My sleep tips:
Natural daylight (ie. go outside) as early as possible in the morning; apparently this keeps the melatonin in line
No coffee after noon
Internet cut-off before the evening meal
Satisfying evening meal
Start winding down an hour before bedtime. Yoga and a tub are both good.
Well, I had a go in the tub yesterday... Feeling clean is certainly helpful.
good for you, blueberry! i also like your attitude about what to do with your pets (sorry, i guess i misunderstood). i think it's healthy.
i agree about the shifts. shifts in attitude, perspective, perception, thought processes - they can all be helpful, but yes, definitely on your own timeline in your own way. don't want to push you into that rebellion state. that usually isn't the best for anyone. i think you're doing just fine in the progress you're making. big hug, my dear.
Just wanted to write about an incident an hour or so ago. Probably not too triggering for anybody else, but who knows.
I came home and saw that other people from the neighbouring house (we don't know each other) we're having a small get-together in the garden, to which they legitimately have access, and they were using my table and chairs and there was something biggish lying across one of my flower/herb/berry beds. Also my washing line was covered in some one else's washing. I know (think I know) that this situation would be fine for most people. It's mildly triggering for me.
Most people in my experience, even bystanders, will say something along the lines of: "But you weren't using your table and chairs at that moment, the people weren't doing any harm. Can't you share with other people??" Yes, I can share actually!! But I like to be asked in advance i.e. "Can I use your washing line when you're not using it?" My only stipulation there is: "Go ahead, but please leave me a bit of space too." The person doesn't then need to scrape and bow and ask every time, that's not what I want or need, but I want to be able to state my conditions. As I write this B1 is in my head. I remember he came into my bedroom to take something, I cried and got hit by Parent. All I wanted was for B1 to say "Please" and not take it for granted, and maybe not barge into my room. The object in question I would have lent, no question. I tended to cry, which drove FOO adults up the wall, because I often couldn't express verbally what I wanted and/or my emotions were very upfront and they still came out at that age.
So I want to be able to state my conditions and I imagine also show that I actually have boundaries, people can't just barge in and take what they want.
I went out and spoke to these neighbours today. I didn't say "Hey! What are you doing with my garden furniture?!?" but I thought afterwards that somebody without my triggers might have said "Hi! Nice day!" and introduced themselves. Which wasn't quite what I did either. My reaction was in between. Today I accepted that I can't pretend everything is fine and "be normal". I need to figure out the lay of the land first, in order to feel safe! And that's OK. I need this. What I need is important. I've had nightmares on and off for a good number of years about neighbours digging up my garden, uprooting my apple trees (I don't actually have any, but I did in the dream), planting their own things in my space, or the old landlord covering the whole garden in concrete. It was always so sudden: (in my dream) I looked out the window or came into the garden and discovered how everything had changed (been destroyed, basically). Nobody had told me in advance never mind asked if I minded. I would have minded most of these changes, so that's why they wouldn't have asked.
That particular example with B1 was only once, I think, but it has obviously left a pretty strong mark on my soul. Him barging into my room (e.g. to hit me) or into me and just ignoring or overriding my boundaries happened pretty often though.
I suffered a lot under M in my childhood and later, but one thing we did have in common was this thing about my space / my boundaries, except that M didn't accept my space, my boundaries, just she had a need for her space / her boundaries to not be overridden. F and B1 (who was just a kid himself compared to M) always argued M down or made jokes about how when M was away, neighbour kids would come and sit on our property (though they could have sat on their own). Some of this is I think a North American / European divide, with M and I reacting like people in (some) European nations, but undoubtedly exacerbated by childhood history, M's and mine. There was no room for a difference of opinion or compromise in FOO. Except of course B1 made sure I didn't use his things at all (with or without asking). As for M's childhood, I do have some idea of what went on, even though wasn't exactly the same as what was done to me.
This topic was triggered a bit recently when a magpie managed to get into my apartment and was hopping around causing a bit of chaos and having me worried and so on. I realised: appearance of magpie triggered memories, including 'feel' memories of B coming barging into my room.
I know (or think I know) that the original situation at the top of the post would be fine for most people, because F and B1 represent "most people" at least that's the way they put it across. M and her actions were considered crazy in these types of situations and that was it! No looking into why that might be or even accepting that different people see things differently. My feelings of empathy towards M are pretty limited because this is the way she treated me too. But what this situation does remind me of is how last time I had FOO contact, with the whole lot of them, it became clear to me that in B1 and B2's estimation, they are both as innocent as the day they were born with regards to modern-day FOO problems, F is pretty innocent (except that he could maybe put M in her place a little more often). But the real problematic one is Blueberry of course, and if it isn't her for some reason, then it's M. Men-folk in FOO - all innocent! Nothing whatsoever to do with any dysfunction. Nor do the SILs play any kind of role (according to B1 and B2, but also if you look at behaviour in FOO. It was clear last year that I was the one who had to clear out, there was no point discussing anything with SIL2 according to B1 (she's not going to change for you - understood). SIL2 "gets on with people really well! A natural talent! So if she can't get on with somebody, then obviously the other person is at fault." Like Blueberry with her "mental health issues" (as SIL2 kept slipping into the conversation with other people and with me last time I saw all of FOO). B1 and SIL2 would be the first to criticise me openly for the little incident in the garden, whereas I discovered last summer that B2 might try to say something a bit more tactful to me, but behind my back: condemnation and criticism.
Kudos to anybody who managed to read this far ;)
It's really helpful for me to form my thoughts adn write them out. Helps me understand things about myself.
more later, but wanted to say that situation would not have been okay with me, not one little bit. i've heard people say - but you're not using it, etc. so what!!! maybe i will want to in 5 min. how do you know? maybe i just don't want someone else touching my stuff. it doesn't matter.
i totally believe this was unacceptable behavior to use your things without your permission. ugh! no, no, and no. big hug, blueberry. gotta run.
Hi Blueberry,
I agree with sanmagic7 that this situation is just not right. Your stuff is your stuff, and I think they took liberties to use them without asking your permission, and it's not right that they did what they did.
I would feel the same way about that, as belongings are personal and it's up to the owner to decide who they want to share them with.
I hope you're ok.
Hope :)
San and Hope,
Thank you both for your validation of my feelings! Yes, Hope, I am OK. Maybe because I came here on wrote about it all fairly soon afterwards? Also I had a good day doing completely different things today. Helped mood-wise.
glad you're ok.
just wanted to add that i've had too much experience with people 'borrowing' my things without asking and, while i'm normally generous if someone asks, i have stopped excusing anyone who doesn't ask. there is no excuse, in my book.
besides, what i do or do not do with my personal belongings is nobody's business, whether it's lending them or not. i don't have to have a good enough 'excuse/reason' anymore for doing what i want with my stuff. ooooh, this just irks me! you would have been well within your rights to just march over there and take your stuff back if you'd had a mind to. not saying that you would, cuz i don't doubt you're extremely generous and tolerant, but i wouldn't have blamed you if you'd done so. a pox on inconsiderate people! (just my own ire about this subject). love and a big hug, blueberry.
Quote from: Blueberry on August 14, 2017, 10:38:32 AM
I haven't actually given up my pets yet. In fact it's nice weather and I'm going to take them out afterwards. Just the idea of not being responsible for them any more brings relief. For years, I kept going because of my pets. That's shifting now I think. Shifts in thinking are good, but a little frightening. I said to myself I'd keep my pets till end of August, and then see.
I decided about 24 hours ago: my pets are going back to the Humane Society they came from. They're being collected on Saturday. They will be in very competent and loving hands there, and kept until they are re-homed, ie. not euthanised due to lack of space or anything. The adoption criteria are really pretty strict too, so I know when re-homed it will be to good people.
I'm sad, even on the verge of tears. Part of that seems sadness that I just can't cope at the moment. I hear various FOO voices in my head telling me I'm "such a loser" since I can't even look after my pets properly. But FOO is totally wrong there and I'm therefore shutting FOO out. No, FOO
messed me up so badly, that I don't have the energy atm to care for myself, my pets, work on my healing, clean the apartment about once a month (yeah, you read right: once a
month) and do the amount of professional paid work I do which is not full-time by any means. I don't want to moan and groan completely in victim mode, but it's true! FOO had a big hand in this. So they can keep their comments to themselves, and they ought to have done so years ago as well. (Not that I'm telling them anything atm, far less about my pets).
good for you, blueberry. we all need to do what's best for us, and foo voices can just go take a flying leap. i give you much credit for your decision, as difficult as it may be. you know you're welcome to enjoy all the pets on the porch anytime you need one. there are plenty to go around. taking care of yourself is priority number one. big hug.
Someone using my stuff without asking? :no: I'm at first shocked, then I realise I feel invaded. Like I don't matter. It isn't something I would dream of doing, putting my stuff on the neighbour's outdoor table or washing line without so much as a how d'ye do. Something carelessly chucked over whatever's growing in my garden bed? Definitely not on, Blueberry.
I have an issue with believing people don't see me, like I don't count. An incident like that would rankle big time with me, and I doubt I'd be able to square up to the neighbours as you did.
The garden is your territory. Your dreams show it represents personal space. It's bad enough having to share the space with people you haven't got to know, but their use of whatever you've got out there is crossing the line.
I've had to give up pets, too. I got myself into a place where I ended up not caring for myself for months; all that mattered was the pets (tortoises) and I worried constantly about them. I know how much it hurts to give them up. :hug: For adults wounded as children, pets are our babies. Afterwards, for me, there was the relief of having done the right thing. It came down to them or me, and if I went under I was going to lose them anyway.
All my former pets are on or around the porch. Yours will fit in nicely.
Quote from: sanmagic7 on August 22, 2017, 10:48:24 PM
good for you, blueberry. we all need to do what's best for us, and foo voices can just go take a flying leap. i give you much credit for your decision, as difficult as it may be. you know you're welcome to enjoy all the pets on the porch anytime you need one. there are plenty to go around. taking care of yourself is priority number one. big hug.
Thank you san for validation and credit-giving! :hug: I haven't been on the porch for a while actually and had forgotten about the pets there. Mine are there too actually, as well as the dog from my childhood.
What I have been noticing the past couple of days is how many animals and birds there are around to observe and communicate with without one having to take care of them. There's a blackbird family in the garden, there are a bunch of different water birds on the lake near my therapist's place. They're all fairly tame, for wild animals, and come hopping up to you. I observe, I talk to them whether they understand or not. But no work involved.
Quote from: Candid on August 23, 2017, 06:09:23 AM
Someone using my stuff without asking? :no: I'm at first shocked, then I realise I feel invaded. Like I don't matter.
Wow, Candid! Thanks for giving me words for what's going on! Feeling invaded, now in the garden, and in my childhood thru FOO and especially B1. Feeling invaded and that I don't matter :'( :bighug: :bighug: for both of us, with this in our past.
Quote from: Candid on August 23, 2017, 06:09:23 AM
The garden is your territory. Your dreams show it represents personal space. It's bad enough having to share the space with people you haven't got to know, but their use of whatever you've got out there is crossing the line.
Thanks here too for explaining what's going on, i.e. garden in dreams = (my) representation of personal space. No wonder I had so many dreams like that, for so long, and no wonder it's been so hard for me when somebody just goes and does something in the garden (or 'yard' for the N.Americans on here) without asking how others feel about it first. It
is a shared garden, it's not mine alone to decide. Also the use of it has evolved since I've been here. There used not to be 'my' bits and 'your' bits and 'their' bits of ground, though furniture roughly yes. But nobody in my building or next-door one knows of that old situation except me, so that's no excuse. Maybe I need to work with Inner Children a bit though or EFT about the whole garden not being mine. That might reduce the internal stress levels a bit. But my belongings are mine, and so are my beds and plants! You and san and Hope have been shoring up the idea for me.
Quote from: Candid on August 23, 2017, 06:09:23 AM
I've had to give up pets, too. I got myself into a place where I ended up not caring for myself for months; all that mattered was the pets (tortoises) and I worried constantly about them.
I've downsized before, from 5 guinea pigs in two different groups to 3 guineas in one group. That wasn't altogether easy either. The two 'downsized' guineas from then went to this humane society for guinea pigs that is taking the current two back on Saturday. I knew when I gave them up that I couldn't possibly continue to care for two groups. I remember I told each guinea pig: "This is Mrs. So-and-So and she is going to be able to look after you better than I can at the moment." Same goes for now. Hard as it is to give them up, I'd much rather give them up
living to somebody who can care properly than have them die in my hands because I can't care adequately.
Oh, yeah, I've gone through lots of phases of not caring for myself much, but having a bit more energy for my pets. I'd get out of bed because my pets needed me to care for them. I had to procure food for them, so I'd procure some for myself too. I'd only eat because the guineas needed to eat too. I'm not sure if I'd still be around now if I hadn't had guineas for years. I often kept going day to day for them. A reason for being, when I was a child too.
Quote from: Candid on August 23, 2017, 06:09:23 AM
I know how much it hurts to give them up. :hug: For adults wounded as children, pets are our babies.
You hit the nail on the head again with these words. :bighug: :bighug: :bighug: for all of us adults wounded as children who have pets as close and dear to us as babies.
I think too sometimes that looking after my pets represented looking after my Inner Children. Some of my Inner Children particularly liked looking after the guineas too.
Quote from: Candid on August 23, 2017, 06:09:23 AM
All my former pets are on or around the porch. Yours will fit in nicely.
Actually the present guineas are there already, but they will remain on the porch, even when they're no longer living with me.
I'm glad you've got "fairly tame" animals and birds around, Blueberry.
I haven't had a pet since I gave up my tortoises in 2004, but at my last address I had a couple of Australian magpies who visited most days. I kept a bowl of water on my porch and I fed them small meaty biscuits, the ones sold for kittens. If I was sleeping they'd call me (and I'd drag myself out), and if the back door was open they'd walk right in. I have the photos to prove it.
Where I lived, a lot of people had FIFO jobs: fly-in fly-out, which meant they spent weekends in town then went back to the mines out west. Well, I had FIFO pets. And, oh look! They're swooping into the healing porch!
very cool, candid!
I'm trying to give my pets as much enjoyment as I can atm, as much time outside running about and eating. Me just sitting there watching them, and talking to them. They know it's me, so they listen, and they feel braver, because I'm there. It's dark now, they're back inside. Pesky things like housework are on hold, because I have my pets just till Saturday morning. I'm still sad. I notice the sadness when I stop rushing around doing this and that.
i think you have your priorities straight, blueberry. enjoy them, love them, just be with them. they're loving it, too. sat. and time for housework will come soon enough. big hug.
My darling :hug:, there'll be some mourning on Saturday afternoon, for your babies and for Little Blueberry. I hope you'll make time for it, and that you feel safe to do it on the healing porch where we can just gather round and make a space for your grief. Also hope you've been able to take photos.
Your sweet post has put me in touch with my own grief, about so many things. I've been hammering it down for a long time -- "rushing around doing this and that" -- but I'm off to the attic now to process it. Thank you for your courage.
:bighug: :bighug: :bighug: :bighug: :bighug:
san and Candid, thank you both for your reminder to go back into guineas' room (my computer is somewhere totally different) and be with and love my pets, while there's still time! And thanks Candid too for pointing out that I'll probably be doing some mourning on Saturday afternoon and that it's good to make time and space for that.
I'll be back on here on Saturday or Sunday probably. :hug: :hug:
Hi Blueberry,
Thinking of you today, and hope that you're ok. :hug:
Hope :)
Thank you so much Hope. :hug:
My pets got collected 5 hours ago. I couldn't help :'( :'( just before they were driven away. I told the woman from the Rescue Society how hard it was for me to realise I couldn't look after them and myself properly atm and how hard this realisation is, but that I'm very grateful to her that my pets are in good hands now, better than my own atm. It's this realisation that keeps making the tears come. I just sat with that for a while. And then did a few rounds of EFT on accepting, loving and forgiving myself despite that realisation. Forgiving myself - way to go! :cheer: That's the first time I had an impulse to add that to EFT.
When I first started learning EFT with my T, I couldn't even say 'love', the only word I could use was 'accept'. Now all three words. My pets certainly have ways of showing me my steps in healing. Thanks, my little pets. :chestbump:
On a completely different topic:
"Don't take things too personally" was some advice I got this morning, when I attempted to clear up a problem I had on Thursday with today's advice-giver.
This morning I set a boundary. I said "Do not tell me whether or not to take things personally!" She explained that what she had meant was that now that we had cleared up the problem from Thursday, I didn't need to feel hurt any more. OK, I can leave that with her, but I know for myself that that is not what she said! Possibly she felt criticised and decided to turn that back on me with a spot of advice? Though actually I hadn't criticised her directly up till that point, I'd just tried to get to the bottom of why mysuggestion on Thursday was profoundly ignored and that she especially was looking for different suggestions without even acknowledging mine!
Me, I think it's better to try and clear up this type of problem than have it continuing on for days in my mind and possibly weeks in this group she and I are both in.
And this is the first time I've ever told somebody in a non-therapy setting where to take their "don't take it personally" / you take (everything) too personally." I have noticed that these remarks tend to come when the other person is incapable of seeing that their behaviour could be hurtful, or annoying. I don't actually know if somebody has ever said that to me in a therapy setting. It's possible, and I have been in types of therapy where you are definitely encouraged to clear up these types of problems with fellow patients, often with a therapist or two mediating. So it's a big step to do it in a non-therapy setting. So I've tackled the "don't take it personally" topic now!
On Thursday, I kind of grumbled while being ignored / not aknowledged. I felt annoyed and 'passed over' but couldn't yet figure out exactly what was wrong so didn't feel able to say much. And anyway, it's even worse in a group. Because everybody has their own interpretation on the situation and/or doesn't want a discussion / argument. But I am sick of swallowing things so as not to make a fuss.
first, :hug: for you and your pets. you'll get back to a place eventually where you can take on the added responsibility if you want.
second, good for you for setting a boundary. go with your gut. too many times those attempts to smooth things over - 'i didn't mean it that way' - are an attempt to assuage the guilt of being caught. i know that one from experience. you did good, honey. big hug.
Quote from: sanmagic7 on August 26, 2017, 04:19:02 PM
first, :hug: for you and your pets. you'll get back to a place eventually where you can take on the added responsibility if you want.
Thank you :hug: and thank you for believing in me, that sometime I'll be able to take on the responsibility of pets again. so I guess that really means thank you for believing that healing in that area will come eventually.
Quote from: sanmagic7 on August 26, 2017, 04:19:02 PM
second, good for you for setting a boundary. go with your gut. too many times those attempts to smooth things over - 'i didn't mean it that way' - are an attempt to assuage the guilt of being caught. i know that one from experience. you did good, honey. big hug.
Thanks also for validation here and putting it into words for me "
attempt to assuage the guilt of being caught". Yeah that.
I decided a couple of hours ago that a little later I may do a round of EFT on something like "Even if this person didn't completely understand, I still love and accept myself, oh, and forgive myself [just popped into my head automatically], for setting her a boundary".
Forgiving myself seems to be a new step in my healing process. Not till after I do EFT on this will I feel exactly what I'm forgiving myself for in this case. Possibly just 'existing' and speaking up. It's certainly really good to feel self-forgiveness, even if boundary-setting is not something you'd normally have to forgive yourself for. It's so good for me because self-forgiveness is the total opposite to self-harm. I tend to self-harm after speaking up about this kind of thing. I'm not doing that today. :cheer: :cheer: :cheer:
Thanks so much, san! See, I reply to your comment and I make a whole lot more progress. OOTS is a brilliant place of healing, despite the hardship most (all?) of us face IRL most of the time. :cheer: :cheer: :cheer: for and to OOTS!
A few hours ago it suddenly occurred to me: now that I don't have pets to look after, I can make sure I do more sport and lose some weight / reduce my girth. So I'm just writing that to myself here to remind myself that losing weight though healthy enough in itself is not one of my goals atm, nor a priority at all. Not even any of my docs/T think that.
No, the new time I have instead of pet care is for emotional healing and some basic physical self-care. As I've written in other posts, I often feel really exhausted doing even simple things like brushing my hair, showering, washing my hair or putting on skin cream. All of that needs being done / done more often. And they are way more easy than losing weight. Heck, I haven't even managed to work in trauma T on what is behind my over-eating or do a round of Screen Processing on it. The only thing I myself as well as 2 docs and 1 T know is that me having allowed myself to gain weight seems to have been healing emotionally. I've accepted my body, my physical self far better than I ever did when I was thin.
I told H yesterday afternoon that my friend Blueberry was becoming a 'relinquishing mother'. :'( He was sad for you too, and obviously he knows how I felt about 'losing' mine. I was sending you strength because I knew it was about that time.
This isn't a time for "stay strong", it's about you being very kind to you. That means :sternvoice: letting the business and the housework go for at least a day. Let those little Blueberries do... whatever they want to do.
Thank you Candid and your husband too for your sympathy / empathy. And to you for sending strength.
Actually my Little Blueberries haven't make themselves known much, except maybe through unusual physical tweaks and twangs (?). And when I praised internally for not *** Ewww, Gross Warning *** wetting the bed. Yes, I Blueberry have bladder incontinence for no physical reason - that's been checked. When things are too much in general or when there's a need to expunge something from myself - out with it now! - out the liquid comes.
This early AM I dreamt that that happened (which usually means it has happened) but when I woke up it hadn't. So I praised the Little Blueberry who was around. It hadn't been her but she's going to pass the praise on. So I guess that means she's not the one with incontinence problem, even though she's pretty young. Nod, nod. She's agreeing, it's not her.
I did kind things to and for myself yesterday but in a big whoosh all sorts of things are coming up internally and making changes. I have in fact just done a load of housework, but it really felt good! I wanted to start it. I was listening to music and singing along while I worked too. I don't always manage to do that for whatever reason. And now I'm taking a break. I realised I needed one and since I haven't spoken any meaningful words to anybody today, I decided I'd at least come and communicate here. A reply will come in some form, it always does. Later I will probably phone somebody IRL too.
Hi Blueberry,
I'm glad you had a day where you did that housework - and that it felt good to get that done. Great that you listened to music and sang along while you worked. You sound in harmony today.
I wanted to thank you so much for the very meaningful words you said in reply to my post - you validated my experiences so much. I read what you said earlier, and I haven't replied there yet, as I want to process things a bit more, but I wanted to come across to say 'thank you' in your Journal - because I really appreciate your support and validation. You truely 'get it' and that is incredible for me.
I have been thinking about the fact you have had a lot on to cope with this weekend, and (sorry - I am avoiding saying any words with connotations of endings/'Goodbyes') - yay, I wrote the words - I find it very emotional to talk of any 'goodbyes' or endings - and I felt empathy to you for the fact you gave your animals back - it must have been very hard to do that.
I am glad that you have done some kind things to and for yourself yesterday - and accomplished things today. :hug:
Hope :)
blueberry, if it's my place, may i say i'm so very proud of you. what a wonderful thing you've done for yourself, these realizations. after a very difficult action, placing your pets where they need to be for now, you also gave yourself some beautiful gifts.
i know the one about feeling exhausted after doing the most menial things at times. they surely don't seem menial while getting up the energy to do them. yet, i'm finding myself gradually getting a bit more energy here and there that wasn't available before. not always, but it spits and spurts. i choose to believe it's coming about because of releasing the tension i've been carrying around, releasing the stress that i've been holding in my body for ages and ages. it takes a lot of energy to keep holding onto that stuff.
slowly, step by step, blueberry, we will find our way. walking beside you with this. big hug.
Quote from: Blueberry on August 27, 2017, 01:09:20 PM
I praised the Little Blueberry who was around. It hadn't been her but she's going to pass the praise on. So I guess that means she's not the one with incontinence problem, even though she's pretty young. Nod, nod. She's agreeing, it's not her.
You have
much clearer IC access than I do!!
It really sounds as though the tide has turned. Well done! :cheer:
We love you here, you know. :bighug:
:grouphug: for all the Blueberries, large and small, seen and unseen.
Dear San, Candid and ThreeRoses,
Just want to say how much your posts above move me! I'm very tired and not capable of forming more thoughts.
I've been clearing up some paraphernalia belonging to the pets and cleaning out their humungous home for the last time. I'm surprised at how sad that makes me feel. I haven't been sad about giving my pets up for seemingly quite a while though at most actually two days (my feeling for time is somewhat warped atm and in fact often).
Of course the fact that I haven't cleared the stuff up till now tells me something about how hard it is anyway, or if not exactly hard then that there's still something I'm hanging on to. Something left to process. I'm not sure yet what it is. It seems to have more to do with me than with the pets themselves. In fact I've only cleaned out the bottom level of their home, not the top. I can't do the top yet. I'm leaving myself the time I need.
Plenty of time, sweet Blueberry. :hug:
My little visitor is in bed asleep so thought I'd come on here and write briefly.
This morning through carelessness I ended up having to spend quite a bit more money than I'd intended on something important. I thought I was going to have to tap at least three topics through with EFT but it only ended up being one, and surprisingly enough, nothing to do with the money. I only needed to tap through accepting and loving myself for being disorganised. As with last time, I tapped through in my imagination (so that the people round about me didn't look at me as if I was crazy), and it worked.
I notice that with my godson I'm much more relaxed than how I was last time. I'm much less of a helicopter parent (well, godmother). That hasn't come through working on the topic, because I hadn't even thought of it as being a topic to work on. The change has just come about through working on trauma topics in trauma therapy. :cheer: :cheer: :cheer:
:cheer: to acknowledging positive changes!
My little visitor is once again in bed. We've decided that he'll stay an extra day, so I'll take him home on Sunday instead of Saturday. I'm pretty tired, but that has a lot to do with me, not with him. He's actually really pretty easy for his age, but since on quite a number of days I can hardly get my own act together, having an extra person around who still needs some 'looking after' is an added difficulty. But OTOH having a child here means I have to take care of myself to take care of him: 3 meals a day, getting out of bed, drinking enough water, even going to bed at a reasonable time.
And we are having lots of fun.
Today, quite a bit earlier as in before noon, I felt ready for a nap, and had to figure out another way of re-energising. I listened to some particularly helpful music and sang to it while washing the dishes, and my little visitor worked with his colouring book. It worked. The sleepiness disappeared. It had possibly been more EF-ish than anything else.
:cheer: :cheer: :cheer: Yay, you!
I'm really glad you're taking care of yourself, Blueberry. :) And it's good you're having fun. Hope it lasts!
Quote from: Blueberry on September 01, 2017, 09:43:27 PM
having a child here means I have to take care of myself to take care of him: 3 meals a day, getting out of bed, drinking enough water, even going to bed at a reasonable time.
When he goes back, do you think you can go on treating yourself as you treat him?
Now that you're living alone you can focus more on caring for your Little Blueberries. I'm glad they have an outside playmate to stay awhile.
I think just trying to talk to him or guide him differently when he does something slightly dangerous or just something I don't want him to do e.g. wipe jam-covered fingers on the upholstery is having a healing effect on Little Blueberries. Because instead of sighing loudly or shouting or telling him how stupid he is or how in the way he is, I tell him in a normal tone of voice and then maybe second or third time around explain, and then praise when he does as I asked.
Also I've explained to him that I'm not good at multi-tasking (not in so many words). But I'm sure both his parents can look up a bus time table and answer his questions on a completely different topic at the same time even though they're tired and their feet ache. Well I can't, but instead of trying to demonstrate that it was his fault or exploding, I gave a really brief explanation of 'I cannot do this' and then told him when I was finished with the bus timetable so he could ask questions.
With my M, one really bad thing was that she was unpredictable.
Mild TW!!!
Of course I realise now that's even more reason to prove that her yelling and remonstrations and "you stupid child" / "you're in the way" / Shove! had nothing to do with me. But how could I have known at 7? End TW!!
I was also remembering how my M expected me to automatically know what her next move would be.
Trigger W!arning! So if I was standing with my back to her and she wanted to be where I was, she'd just shove me out of the way instead of asking me to move. End TW!! How could I possibly have known when I couldn't even see any of her body language. In my early 20's I was still asking people round about me if I was "in the way". Now, about 20 years later, I realise how strange that must've seemed to people.
Candid, when I'm with my godson and/or his 2 siblings, my Little Blueberries make themselves scarce. I think this is because my Adult really has to be present. I can't have a 4-year old and a 6-year old looking after a real-life 7 year old. Also I used to have to make deals with certain Little Blueberries: this weekend godson, when I get home again it's your turn.
It'll be easier for me to treat my Little Blueberries / myself better after I've taken my godson home, which is Sunday. Then I'll come home myself on Monday. I mean it'll be easier because of treating him and in certain ways myself better the past couple of days.
Another thing I notice is more interest in my surroundings / the natural world. My godson has lots of questions to which I don't always know the answers. That sparks my interest too to find out more. So more impetus to get out of bed.
I am however really tired after these few days!
I think you're doing a really good job in looking after your godson, Blueberry. :)
Being able to gently tell him what is wrong and right, and just being honest with him - telling him when you can't do something, instead of just saying something like 'go away'. lol
I applaud you. ^-^
I bet you're tired though, lol, people that age really suck the energy out of you. :)
sounds like you're doing a great job, blueberry, both with your godson and with yourself. congrats! :thumbup:
yeah, those little cuties can be draining, but it seems like you're doing a stand-up job of dealing with it.
it also sounds as if your tapping is becoming more efficient for you. that's great! keep up the good work. big hug.
All good stuff here, Blueberry! :hug:
Thank you all for your validation and encouragement, Candid, san, ThreeRoses and Atrophic!
Wow! So much seems to be finally coming together in therapy, a bit like the puzzle pieces are fitting together as I understand more and more. Also in a session like today's we can work on several different topics in one 50-minute session, and at least one of these will go deep. This used not to be the case. I'm so, so glad that I got those additional 20 sessions.
I'm on to the subject of self-forgiveness. This is huge for me because I grew up in a family with a mother, who did not believe in forgiving, and with an emotionally pretty absent father who generally wouldn't stand up to M to protect us children and of those occasions when he did, it was most rarely for me, the convenient family SG. Yeah, you read right, M didn't believe in forgiving other people. Not that she could see it was inherently a good idea but she couldn't do it. No, she thought of herself as a Christian (still does in fact) but doesn't believe in or agree with this part of Christianity.
I was able to realise today in T with my feelings what it was like for the Little Blueberries and I felt very sad about that little girl who tried so hard to be who and how M and F wanted her to be, but e.g. couldn't stop crying. They wanted perfection, expected perfection. Crying was absolutely imperfect. i endured punishments and ridicule from M and F, and ridicule from B1, egged on by M and F and their behaviour towards me. My T showed me in body language what happens to small children who endure this type of upbringing and he had it down to a 'T'. That was me, crouched down, shoulders up, head moving from side to side as I looked first this way and then that to see what might be coming my way or how M, F and B1's body language was so I could judge the mood, as a sort of warning system. Basically, it was so hard-going, so strenuous that I didn't want to exist. And all hunched down the way i was, I couldn't develop properly. In later years I got flak for that too from M and B1 because I deprived them of the pleasure of watching me grow up. I didn't owe them that pleasure. Look what they did to me!!! Talk about living in denial.
There is more on this but I can't write more atm.
:hug: :hug: :hug:
@Blueberry: Nice to know your therapy sessions are productive, efficient, and in general just going well! :) it's very nice to hear.
Quote from: Blueberry on September 05, 2017, 10:47:50 PM
I felt very sad about that little girl who tried so hard to be who and how M and F wanted her to be, but e.g. couldn't stop crying. They wanted perfection, expected perfection. Crying was absolutely imperfect.
You were and are perfect, Blueberry. It was they who couldn't see beyond their own neuroses or PDs or whatever to realise what a bright and beautiful little girl they'd brought into the world. Instead of delighting in you, they made you cry.
I'm wondering how many times since then you've struggled to work the unworkable. I can see I've done a lot of that; it's something I'm 'working' to release now.
Candid, I am beginning to forgive myself for actions of 'imperfection' like missing the train :whistling:. This is huge, as I mentioned, and probably trying to be perfect all the time is struggling to work the unworkable. So I'm moving out of that. If that makes sense.
you go, girl! that sounds like major progress to me. big hug!
Now that I've read all the new posts and maybe answered the odd one, I have no excuse but to look at myself and write in my own Journal.
What I really have to watch atm is being too helpful. My new neighbours are refugees and I notice more and more I am allowing myself to be roped in to help. I don't mind sitting and talking or helping with spoken language or answering questions about daily life, but now being roped into helping write a job application when I have enough trouble myself. No, I need to put my foot down, even if politely, and insist they find somebody else. Helping somebody else write a job application is actually easier than trying to do one for myself. When it's about myself, my brain blocks because it's very difficult for me to write good things about myself, which you obviously need to do in an application. Not just good things, but prove why you are the absolute best for the job. Proving with words is triggering for me, has to do with life with FOO. For somebody else's application, I make suggestions but don't go all out for it, but still it's tiring for my brain.
It's at least one of the reasons why I didn't get up this morning. Because I'd promised to help a bit in the afternoon. At least today I set some small limits: I said I couldn't work on it with my neighbour smoking away and the smoke blowing straight in my face. I don't smoke, I never have, and the smoke really bothers me. It was their apartment, but I was doing them a favour and I couldn't stand the smoke any more.
They also wanted me to actually physically write it because my writing is better. Well, it is, but after writing Dear So-and-So I noticed my internal No!! and insisted they write. Same thing when we moved to the computer. They had to type, I corrected language. They also asked me to contact a woman I introduced them to to ask for help. I said that now that they know her and how to contact her, they have to do the contacting!
I know it sounds as if they are just using me, but I've been told by others who regularly help refugees that it's often this way at the beginning. A refugee family will latch onto one family or person. That person/family has to be clear on their own boundaries and also say quite plainly what's what in this new country! These neighbours have actually invited me for a meal a few times, which I've accepted, so it's not that they are just using me, but OTOH with all my own problems, I need to be careful of myself!
A few days ago I had a bit of a run-in with a member of a group I sometimes go to. This person was annoying me by being consistently negative and by pretty consistently interrupting other people and talking over other people. There is a social worker in the group who moderates, but I suppose she had her own reasons for not reigning this person in a bit more. She did try sometimes, but he seemed pretty blind to what he was doing and so didn't seem to comprehend what she was saying. Eventually I said something, then so did the woman next to me. The person blew a fuse and left, swearing. I did well because that didn't upset me. It would've, not so long ago.
But then I further considered why this person annoys me so much. Negativity = mother; Interrupting / Talking over people = whole of FOO; Aggressively interrupting / talking over people = B1 and M; Know-it-all behaviour, which leads to interrupting / talking over people, = B1 and M; Person in position of authority allowing one person to consistently break rules = M and F; somebody spewing negativity and problems everywhere instead of getting the psychological help s/he pretty obviously needs = M, B1 and to some degree rest of FOO.
No wonder I get edgy and triggered!
What can I do to help me not get triggered? When the usual social worker is there, I often look to her, which we're meant to actually, so that she can maybe judge the mood of the group. But I could maybe also take a few coloured pencils and doodle - having something I can do with my fingers (other than pulling my hair out) helps me. Or just have something to hold in my fingers, which is what I always do when I watch movies to help me deal with suspense. When that no longer helps, I need to explain to my Inners that time has moved on, this isn't FOO, this is just some other people having problems, that the negative interrupter is in a bad way himself, that's why he does this. Also that it's not my Inners' job to save the rest of the group from any feelings of annoyance, as I unfortunately consistently attempted to save our whole family from its dysfunction as I was growing up. Don't have to keep repeating that behaviour.
Well, I think now I will go and play keyboard to practise some choir pieces and then phone a friend.
blueberry, it sounds like you were a help to that group. sometimes the leaders don't always do their jobs. the fact that someone else joined you seems like you were right on. i would think that the leader would have taken that opportunity to explore some of the group dynamic that was going on.
i also give you a lot of credit for realizing how and why those behaviors triggered you. may i suggest that just because they are personal triggers doesn't automatically mean that it's ok to ignore them in a group situation. i think you did a brave thing for the good of the group.
you have been making such incredible progress, blueberry. it's showing all over the place. big hug, sweetie.
Quoteyou have been making such incredible progress, blueberry. it's showing all over the place. big hug, sweetie.
I second that! :cheer:
Thank you so much, ThreeRoses and san, for pointing out how much progress I'm making. I know I'm making progress, but you're calling it "incredible progress" so that means it's big. It helps me to know that other people see it too. I was at my GP's on Thursday and he saw it and commented.
In the group situation there was a little discussion after I and my neighbour said our pieces. It was actually in the middle of that that the person went off swearing. But we didn't go into the group dynamic. I know that at least one person in the group thinks I'm too impatient but I know that he is pretty codependent, so I'm not toooo interested in his opinion in this case. It's not a therapy group, it's a group for people who are long-term unemployed or underemployed. Some people are in therapy, some aren't.
But you're right san, just because something is triggering me because of my personal history doesn't mean I have to put up with it. Thanks for reminding me.
Today I told my refugee neighbours that they need to find somebody else for help with the application. It was not easy for me, but I did it. Then I 'wasted' some time for a while playing Patience but then I played keyboard and sang, which I did yesterday too, and that helped. Since playing and singing I've started doing other useful things for myself. Like sending a few emails that desperately needed to be dealt with.
:applause:
Bravo, Blueberry! Good taking care of you.
Yesterday evening (my time) I wanted to post here again and I couldn't. OOTS and OOTF were both down. That was hard. So I could see I'm addicted. ;)
I'm taking things easy atm. Lie in bed, dozing and reading The Body Keeps the Score. I've had the book about 6 weeks now, on inter-library loan, and haven't been really able to get into it until today. I have a translation of it rather than the English version. I thought that maybe that's why I couldn't get into it, but now I think that the timing wasn't quite right for me in the past few weeks. Now that I'm getting into it, I may order it in English so I can write in it and mark important passages.
Taking things easy also allows me time to figure out what my impulses are atm. What do I want to do? Today I picked the remaining elderberries and cut back one elderbush which is cutting light from one of my rooms in a major way. Haven't done anything with the elderberries though. They had better go in the fridge!
Yesterday I was out picking various weeds to go in my dinner and I made a huge pot of vegetable (and weed) soup for today and tomorrow. I noticed now that I don't have my Little Furry Critters to look after, I'm in the garden less often. So I'm thinking of what else I could do in the garden this fall, what do I have to plant that needs to be planted anyway? How can I use that space to help support myself more? Or just to encourage myself to go outside?
Yesterday and the day before I was missing having my Little Furry Critters, with a pang in my heart.
My professional work is taking a bit of a break for various reasons. In some ways that's just lucky, good timing for me that various people are taking a break from my services. Because I really don't feel like doing much atm. It's not good for me to force myself when I really don't want to. It may be good for other people, but not for me. I even started shaking a little thinking about a contract I might start in October. I tend to start shaking when there isn't enough of an Adult around to take on the work. Though there could be reasons for shaking which I don't know of too.
I'm considering doing a long weekend of group therapy at a place I used to go to quite often, like where I used to do Inner Child work, which I've described elsewhere. It costs money, big money. So partly I think to myself I should keep this money handy for when I don't have any one-on-one trauma therapy left and partly I think to myself doing this weekend at end of October might help me stabilise atm and even keep on going for the next months (always a bit of an issue for me), as well as help me to make the most of my one-on-one therapy. Because this long weekend group therapy tends to help a lot of what is going on internally 'settle' so I can move on. Also one reason I had for giving up my Little Furries was to give me more money for this type of thing and to make it easier for me to go away on a weekend. It would be good for me to grant myself one such weekend fairly soon. Especially as I recently found out how much family money is coming my way sometime.
i'm pretty dependent on this place as well, and wasn't real pleased when it went down. addicted? don't know about that. it's so comforting to me when i need that, makes me feel better about me, gives me a sense of purpose that i lost when i couldn't work anymore, and helps stabilize me when i'm feeling rocky. i don't know if it's forever, but for now it's quite important to me on a lot of levels.
glad you stood your boundaries, sweetie. that's terrific.
your flc's were pretty active in your life. i'm not surprised you're missing them. that may take some time.
i'm sure you'll make the right decision for you about that weekend. it sounds like it's helped you a lot in the past.
keep taking care of you, blueberry. you're so worth it. love and a big hug.
Hi san,
I wasn't being too serious about the 'addicted' bit.
My T helped me see that the weekend would do me good and that storing the necessary money up for a time in the future where I might need such a weekend even more doesn't make too much sense. I feel the need now, I should go now! Hard as it is for me to believe, I might get to a point where I don't need these weekends anymore, I say to myself.
T also told me that the patient rumours about having to wait two years for further therapy once you've had a round of sessions are not true. So if need be, I could look for a new therapist in a year and continue! This is a big relief.
Continuing Journal ...
Back in contact with my refugee neighbours, that came pretty fast. I managed to get them linked up with somebody else to help them with one thing really quickly and an additional person to potentially help them with a less important thing.
I'm hardly working in my profession at all atm and the little I'm doing I feel I'm not doing very well. All the more reason to do one of these weekends :bigwink:
Well, I've been in periods of stagnation before. They always end sometime! Mostly without me actively working on them ending too.
Earlier in the week I was working on a farm I used to work on. On hearing that they'll be really short of people in the next 10 days and then all of November, I'm considering continuing one day a week most weeks till end November. Unfortunately my day of choice has just gone belly-up for that work.
Hi Blueberry,
Just popped into your Journal :hug: I've not been in the forum much for a couple of weeks - or maybe it was just a week - I lost track of time.
Hope you can get the day you want for that work on the farm - and it works out ok. I think you said the day you wanted hadn't worked out - but hopefully you can find something that fits in with your schedules.
Hope :)
Thanks, Hope! Good to see you back. :hug: I've missed you, though I do appreciate that some of you all here take a break for a while and go off and deal with things IRL!
I would've liked Monday for the farm, partly because I work well with some of the Monday people, but I'm giving priority to a paying client for whom it would be best to come Monday morning. I meant then to phone farm and ask about Friday, starting :blink: tomorrow, but then didn't get out of bed for past couple of days. Now I've decided I'll just see. If I get out of bed early enough tomorrow, I'll turn up at the farm, and if I don't, I won't. It's not a real job anyway. Just something that does me good and pays in kind.
It's good to check into my own Journal because I see what I've posted recently and that helps me get things especially time a bit into perspective.
Right now I'm meant to be singing in the choir at a fellow member's wedding blessing. Well, I'm obviously not there. The thought of showering and finding something suitable to wear in the appropriate colours was just too much for me. So I sat in the kitchen singing to a helpful CD before coming on to PC. Getting dressed in something appropriate other than my hanging-around-the-house-clothes is often very tiring for me. I know something is triggered but I don't especially want to find out and wake up any more sleeping dogs atm.
I also have an invitation tonight, getting dressed for that will be less effort, because I don't need clothes in colours I don't have. Though actually I got as far as borrowing clothes for choir. But then I didn't use them. :stars: :stars: Well, because I needed to shower first.
Also I have a well-meaning friend in choir.... Well-meant advice is not always appropriate or good advice. Avoiding such advice can lead to me avoiding whole situation. Although I've told this friend before. Well, my T has at least mentioned that a further step for me will be learning not to care what people might or might not think. But atm it's hard for me to stick to my own views when other ideas are coming from all sides.
I guess it's hard for me not to not care because I spent all my time with FOO, even when I was an adult and had left FOO, hearing what somebody had said about me from someone else - this triangulation. Some of my friends who understand far more what's going on say to me: "Just look what you've been dealing with all year, no wonder you need a break / no wonder you're slipping around atm." I ought to give them and their words more weight.
Since Thursday I've been in a bad mood, I recognise that now. I recognised it yesterday too. Then I tend to hide away and not dump this on other people. Because when I'm in a bad mood, I tend to start spewing it out all over other people. Just like my M used to do to me.
"I do sometimes stress about what my parents used to say and still might, but I am learning not to care so much." I posted this in a comment to somebody else on Sept. 14th. I have realised now for a few days that unfortunately I'm still stressing. I do need to answer an email some time soon, but keep putting it off. I mean, it would be to my benefit to answer. And even though I checked the relevant Tools at OOTF like Medium Chill and all that, still haven'T done so.
And as I write this, an email comes in with a new realisation (from a FOO member) that communication from me is unlikely to happen followed by the usual "I don't understand..." which I've been hearing / reading for years now. Well, I have T tomorrow and I will take the topic there. Good that I stayed online this long, so I know to take this topic with me to T.
Great that you can talk about that topic with your T tomorrow, Blueberry and I hope it goes well.
Hope :)
Thanks, Hope. It did go well.
So, I finally started crying last night. Just a little tiny bit. But then in T a whole lot more came out. It's what I read over at OOTF from people who've been through it before: going various degrees of VLC to NC brings you to a point where you end up grieving and mourning for the parent and/or FOO you never had. I have a family-of-origin in name only. The pain of that is becoming less cognitive and more something I can really feel.
F seems to have realised that there's no meaningful contact coming from me, just the occasional email answering an 'administrative' question. He points out that he's sad. Well, me too. In fact last summer when this all came to a head, I was absolutely devastated. Now probably part of me is devastated. Probably some of the Inner Cs, whereas I think my Adult is just really, really sad. I think it's so sad that I have one parent who does actually care about me in a way but not enough to question what has been going on in his own marriage for 50 years and not enough to stand up to his wife or elder son in order to protect me. Not then. Not now. Not ever. In our family he's traditionally been seen as a victim. I saw him that way too for a long time. How warped is that? You're in your teens and in your twenties, thirties, later and see your parent as a victim, but not yourself. Not your poor little inner selves including the pre-teens who were desperate for love and protection. Anyway, I don't see him as a victim anymore. He took the easy way out. If he were able to really look at his part in this, then maybe I could see him as a victim too. But he's not able apparently.
That's all I can write on that.
My therapist said that I've made an absolutely gigantic step towards healing today. He also said this thought that I've been doing 'nothing' for a week is not true. I've been making space and time for this painful realisation to come up. I even thought yesterday that 'for all I'm doing otherwise' I might as well have kept my Little Furry Creatures (except that it's better for them to be having proper care atm) but my T disagreed here too. Can't remember his exact reasoning but I figured out myself that it's something like since I no longer have them to pour my affection and caring into, I've hit some sort of rock bottom which I probably wouldn't otherwise have hit now. Later maybe, even months from now. But it's so much better for this gigantic step to come today / last night.
There is more on this, though some I put in my RL diary too. However, for the moment that's all I can write in this entry.
I could certainly do with :grouphug:
:hug: :hug:
:grouphug:
:bighug:
Thank you 3Roses. I'm still feeling tearful so it's good to get hugs.
:hug: :grouphug: :hug:
Joining in with this Group Hug Blueberry and 3 Roses.
Blueberry - glad it went ok. Your therapist saying that you have made a "an absolutely gigantic step toward healing today" - that is really good.
:hug: :grouphug: :hug:
Thank you, Hope. :)
I feel sad again. I've been sitting with the sadness. I got up today before noon ;) and I was able to sleep better. I did a few chores in the morning, like laundry and some tidying and a bit of shopping. Also dropped by on the Long-Term Unemployed group I sometimes go to and had some tea and dropped off some food somebody gave to me which I don't eat. (That's good because it's called decluttering the kitchen.) Didn't stay long. The last thing I did before coming on to the computer was hang up the laundry. I didn't feel like it, I felt too sad, but I did. Because if I don't it might well remain a few days wet in the laundry basket which will make more work in the end. Doing laundry is a bit like washing dishes for me - a chore I can get on with fairly easily after a down phase and helps me feel that things are moving again.
So coming onto OOTS is a kind of reward for getting up and getting on with things. And then for keeping the sadness on hold a few more minutes while I hung up the laundry. I used to think I felt too tired and exhausted to do these minor jobs, but now I realise that sometimes I actually feel far too sad, or far too confused (because not able to distinguish which feeling) or something like that.
So I'm sad at all this family stuff. :'( :'(
I'm sorry to hear about the sadness, Blueberry. It will pass. :) Hopefully really soon. At least you got the laundry done! It's good to celebrate the little things. ^-^ The little things can feel so difficult to do some days.
Yes, the sadness will pass. I'm not frightened of it or worried by it, now that I know what's going on. In fact, I think it's healing. It would be strange if I didn't feel sadness at what's going on in me, the realisations.
Years ago, F said to M that if she ever wanted to see B1 again, she'd better apologise to him! He said that in front of me. She did apologise.
F is busy wondering why I'm pulling more and more back. Well, if he (and anybody else in the family) ever want any kind of meaningful communication with me again, they have to look at the family dysfunction as a whole. They have to look at their own issues, not just scapegoat me. I know they won't. That's part of the sadness.
It's grieving really. Not just grieving for the non-existence of a family but also sadness that there's a family member (F), enF needless to say, who's so blind and so, well, enabling that there's no way he'd ever say to M (or anybody else in FOO), you'd better apologise to Blueberry if you ever want to see her again! He doesn't even know himself that there's anything he could or should apologise to me for. Not that I'd accept just an apology (the way they're done in my FOO), I'd want a change in behaviour too. I know I'm not going to get either.
Wasting so much time, giving FOO chances etc. I know that's a point, but I'm not feeling that deep down yet. It's more the sadness at the blindness of F, and the knowledge that there's nothing I can say that can or will change him. He made his choice, and it wasn't for protecting me against abuse, scapegoating etc. He's not all bad but he's too uncaring for me, too wrapped up in caring for others, like M. It's his choice. You can't have your cake and eat it too. That's for him, not me.
This is more an explanation of my sadness than anything else and good for me to find words for it. I don't want to be rude or sound ungrateful but I don't need anybody to tell me that this is how dysfunctional families work. I know, I've known for a while. It's getting visceral now though. I'm really feeling it. It's this that my T says is a huge step forward in healing and will bring a whole lot of good changes in its wake.
I first wrote this as a reply to James' post on his crying therapist, but then thought it was a bit too much of a hijack, so have it here instead: I remembered on Tuesday in therapy how in a group therapy setting about a year ago, a therapist cried for me. I had requested a family constellation and both therapists insisted on one therapist being behind me the whole time to protect me from the overpowering feelings coming from FOO. I said first that having had no such protection last time I was with FOO, I didn't need it in a family constellation ( :rofl: in hindsight), but they insisted. I did feel during the constellation, enough to feel what was going on, including viscerally, and to react to those standing in for family members. But when I turned round to disengage the therapist from her role as my protector, I saw the tears streaming down her face. It took her a little bit to recover too. She's known me for a long time and has worked with me. She's also an experienced therapist - seen and felt a lot. So not overwhelmed as a newbie or anything. I was shocked but also moved. She bore the brunt of all this pain for me, and it was so bad that even she as a detached and removed person couldn't stop crying for the duration.
Conversely, I first started crying for other patients in inpatient therapy, a couple of weeks before I started to cry for myself. A couple of weeks being quite long in inpatient therapy. I just used to well up.
As usual read around and answer other people's posts before I get down to posting for myself, which is what I came on to do. I posted earlier in the day too, thinking that if I allowed myself to do that, I might not come on at night and post half the night instead of sleeping. Well, that didn't turn out exactly. I was playing Patience with myself again. I have 2 decks of cards, one with animals and one with trees, so I can learn the tree types and Latin names while I go and some new animals too.
I noticed while playing Patience that it's so automatic that I was ruminating while doing it. I don't think ruminating is all bad. I think this is partly what my T means when he says I'm allowing myself time and space for things to come up.
As I posted somewhere else (prob. The Potting Shed), I notice that without my Little Furry Creatures to provide for, I'm going into the garden less, and picking and eating wild herbs aka weeds less. I'm doing less of all sorts of things which are good for me. OTOH not having a bale of hay in the house means I have a lot fewer moths around - this is all to the good. They like my wool clothes too much and I'm very much attached to my wool clothes including wool socks which I wear almost all year.
But I'm thinking: how can I keep Little Furry Creatures without the care and upkeep becoming overwhelming? There are some ideas coming...
I remember a couple of friends wondering if I'd get out of bed at all if I didn't have my LFC to look after, and this worry is starting to look as if it's based in reality. I had thought if I didn't have them any more, I would have more time for other things, including the garden. Some part of me - my 6 year old - really likes being outside, especially pottering in the garden. But I'm not doing that. I knew that without LFC I'd have more money for myself, but OTOH they were a reason to keep going earning money, a reason that I don't always feel for myself. Without them, I could just curl up in bed and give up. Nobody needs me on a day-to-day basis and there's nobody on a day-to-day basis who gives me what they did. :'( :'( I know people say that animals can't give you what people can, e.g. my animals can't hug me and they're not much into being stroked by humans either, but I'm discovering that people can't give me what my animals did either.
However, I'm seeing this as a learning experience rather than as a mistake. Which is progress in itself. :cheer: A little while ago when someone asked me when I might get some pets again, I said airily "in 10 years", thinking "maybe never". Now I'm having second thoughts on that. It comes back down to: how can I provide for them without exhausting myself? One way might be spending more money, e.g. buying bagged hay rather than farmer bales, because bagged hay doesn't bring so many moths in. Or seeing if my present vet would be open to boarding a pet or two when health care gets too much for me LFC do get ill sometimes, especially when I'm in a bad way. My old vet, since retired, used to take them occasionally, when she noticed I couldn't keep going with medication or pipette feeding. She'd say to one of them: "You're coming to stay with Auntie for a few days." Or is there some acquaintance who'd drop by and do it for pay?
How do I afford to spend more money? Well, theoretically I'll inherit a lot and supposedly I'll get a whole lot of that before either of my parents pass on, quite soon in fact. That's the plan. But I can't bank on that until I really have the money. Since things could go 'wrong' i.e. my biggest fear that my pulling back and setting boundaries and being in very VLC will be punished in some way. Though about 10 years ago FOO was shocked at the very idea that I might worry about that. But it's a worry again. Whether or not FOO might still be shocked.
I notice there's a reason for my being up at all hours on here. I feel safe in the night. Nobody's going to knock on my door or ring my bell. I don't feel compelled to answer anything. I can just be here with my tears or my tear-stained face. My computer is in my office space, so in the daytime it's conceivable that a potential client could drop by. Really unlikely, but possible. That alone would prevent me from reaching the deep-down sadness I've been feeling and expressing in Unsent Letters.
I also know that some of you others on here might suggest I set up a computer or Internet or both in my apartment. But unfortunately that's not the answer because the tiniest little setting up of any kind sends me into an EF of utter exhaustion. I do set up or install things from time to time but the endeavour is not to be taken lightly, putting it mildly.
I came onto OOTS because I feel somewhat lonely. I have a mild stomach bug, which means that I'm staying away from people IRL and also that I slept and/or lay in bed and read most of today. Since I don't feel that I need a break psychologically-speaking, it's a bit of a downer. But it's also the way it is.
It's also the first of October and well and truly fall. I'm wondering as usual how I'm going to manage the next months since I seem to be getting ill all the time, either physically or psychologically or both. Neither is conducive to work and earning money.
I'll maybe read a while on here, but may be short on commenting on others' posts since my brain feels numbish and I need my energy for other things, like getting better.
Hi Blueberry,
I am glad to see you here today, because I had missed you in the forum the last couple of days - so sorry to hear you're suffering from that stomach bug, and also that you're feeling a bit lonely - glad you came here - sending you a :hug: if that's ok.
I was just in my Journal, and my mind went blank - literally - couldn't think - then I spotted you'd written here in your Journal, and I just want to wish you the best for a speedy recovery.
Autumn is a month for colds, bugs, and stuff like that - but if you're feeling 'run down' then you will be more susceptible to those - so take extra care of yourself and hopefully you'll feel stronger and healthier as time goes on.
Hope :)
Thank you so much Hope for your reply. A hug is great!
My mind quite often goes blank like yours did when you were in your Journal, so it's quite apt that you then wrote in mine. ;)
You're right, autumn is a time for colds and bugs, but somehow I'd forgotten it was autumn! The weather has been so nice and sunny here the past few days, and not even a frost at night here yet.
sorry you're feeling crummy. i hope you're better very soon. take your time, do what's best for you.
funny how those intrusions can be so mind-numbingly exhausting. i hear ya, dearheart. big hug to you.
I hope you'll feel better soon, Blueberry. ^^ No pressure to post anything here. If your mind is feels too numbish, shouldn't try too hard to think. Do what's comfortable for you. :)
Thank you both! Stuff was coming up. I tend to forget that - things are hard IRL just before things come up. Pre-Come-up-Syndrome. PCS. Or maybe PCuS. Yes, that's better. Now that I've made myself a mnemonic * , maybe I'll remember in future.
* I admit, I googled this! The word for this thing is way easier in my current language. In fact, I need a mnemonic in order to remember the word mnemonic.
Really, there are some Unsent Letters to be written. Several. Woah. That means a whole lot has come up and is still doing so.
Yesterday, after playing Patience for quite a few rounds until I was bored of it, I decided to try out Hope's card trick. Which is probably explained a few posts back in this Journal.
I turned up a diamond which in my books means doing something with colour, so I got out my water colour paints, but before setting to work with them, I sprayed around some very nice room scent that I have, put one of my healing CDs on that I like to sing to and I lit a candle. Then I got going with my water-colours. I colour in with them as opposed to painting pictures. I did that all for quite a while, and in so doing I made myself remember that even-if-things-are-bad (which they often are with C-PTSD), I can still make my surroundings nice for myself and do pleasant activities. :cheer: :cheer: Even though actually doing these things is difficult for me. That probably goes with the trade for a self-destructor. But yesterday I managed the inner hurdle and did it. :cheer: :boogie: :yahoo: :yourock:
Now I'm really embarrassed at telling myself "you rock". But I'm leaving it here. What I think is embarrassment is probably actually shame. Shame is part of this Beast, correct? And a good thing to get over bit by bit because it's not my shame it's M's shame. Oh great. (Sarcasm.) Another topic for Screen Processing, because M has just popped up. That's how I know it's her shame.
Actually using my water-colours in the way I described above functions a bit meditatively. Things started coming up after a while so I went onto doing Screen Processing yesterday. That was difficult but good because some symptoms, which had been making themselves known again especially images of SI, disappeared. :thumbup: :thumbup: Big relief.
QuoteI turned up a diamond which in my books means doing something with colour, so I got out my water colour paints, but before setting to work with them, I sprayed around some very nice perfume-for-the-air that I have, put one of my healing CDs on that I like to sing to and I lit a candle. Then I got going with my water-colours. I colour in with them as opposed to painting pictures. I did that all for quite a while, and in so doing I made myself remember that even-if-things-are-bad (which they often are with C-PTSD), I can still make my surroundings nice for myself and do pleasant activities.
Oh wow, Blueberry that sounds so nice! :D I'm a little envious, haha! Should do that for myself later tonight when I get back from work. Oh my it sounds so good, I'm getting giddily excited. XD
I'm so happy you did this for yourself though. :) Good job!
But you can tell yourself 'you rock' all you want, haha. It's good! Everyone needs their own little pep talk every now and then. :)
Thank you, AphoticAtramentous! It was nice, and it moved things along too.
I'm feeling sad because I discovered someone from this site is no longer on this site. Although I understand and accept the decision cognitively, I still feel sad and.... the word keeps coming: abandoned. So I'm just going to accept that that is the way it is at present. Obviously that is an EF.
Feeling abandoned was very short-lived. This is good! A reminder that a feeling can disappear fairly quickly again. It doesn't always, but it can.
I'm just reading around on here instead of getting on with things I should be getting on with, such as billing someone, writing or at least attempting to write another one of those Unsent Letters, writing a job application for a part-time job in November and December. So just writing that for myself, as a little reminder.
Quote from: Blueberry on October 06, 2017, 04:53:11 PM
Feeling abandoned was very short-lived. This is good! A reminder that a feeling can disappear fairly quickly again. It doesn't always, but it can.
Glad to hear it, Blueberry. :)
Quote from: Blueberry on October 06, 2017, 06:25:42 PM
I'm just reading around on here instead of getting on with things I should be getting on with, such as billing someone, writing or at least attempting to write another one of those Unsent Letters, writing a job application for a part-time job in November and December. So just writing that for myself, as a little reminder.
Ditto. Though I have written the bill, at least. Need to scan it and mail it though.
Hi Blueberry,
I just read in your Journal about when you used the card thing, and your use of the watercolours - really want to say to you 'You Rock' - :)
Hope :)
Thank you Hope and it's nice to see you back. :)
:hug:
I've been feeling off and on as if I have no compassion left for other people. I intended to write that as soon as I came on here. What did I do instead? Read around and replied to other people's posts. This was my decision so nobody to whom I answered should feel bad in any way whatsoever. I've just seen a post by a new person wondering if s/he has CPTSD and even though I know roughly what I could write, I'm not doing so because I feel all spent. No energy left for that.
Growing up I was meant to have compassion for my abusers and their enablers. And now I seem to expect of myself that I have compassion for these people and those people, whereas I probably need to practise compassion for myself. Especially considering how turbulent things have been since last T session. The session was actually good! But often things are really hard for me after a good session. I have difficulty channeling the energy that gets released into anything constructive.
I finally did get a haircut today. One good thing.
I know how you feel, Blueberry. If you don't feel up for writing any posts, there's no pressure to. :)
And good job on getting that haircut. ^-^ Hope it looks as you want it to look.
taking care of others before taking care of ourselves. i've come to believe it's one of our self-destructive tendencies, something that's not usually spoken about like that. i know i've nearly self-destructed several times in my life because of that.
you do rock, and i was really glad to see you be able to acknowledge that for yourself. if we can't see the good in ourselves, acknowledge it for ourselves, we'll continue to see and acknowledge the neg. about ourselves as we've been trained. and, isn't that the foundation for not taking care of ourselves first?
sending a warm, loving hug.
I achieved some good things today and enjoyed the sunshine. But now by the evening I'm shaky and feeling not up to par. Pretty wobbly emotionally-speaking. It's noticeable in the few hours of paid work I'm still doing per week. I'll be doing some intensive therapy at the end of the month and I can't wait to go. Hoping that might stabilise me for a bit as well as give me more motivation and energy.
Keeping going is difficult for me. I followed up on a lead I've been intending to for a while, for some freelance work. Turned into a dead end. That's hard. I'm not actually feeling like throwing in the towel work-wise, which is good. But I just notice things are often a struggle. I do feel as if one thing more and I'm going to start shaking physically. At least I have T tomorrow.
Quote from: sanmagic7 on October 15, 2017, 04:45:29 PM
taking care of others before taking care of ourselves. i've come to believe it's one of our self-destructive tendencies, something that's not usually spoken about like that. i know i've nearly self-destructed several times in my life because of that.
New idea for me, that taking care of others before ourselves is a really self-destructive tendency. So thanks for that.
Quote from: sanmagic7 on October 15, 2017, 04:45:29 PM
you do rock, and i was really glad to see you be able to acknowledge that for yourself. if we can't see the good in ourselves, acknowledge it for ourselves, we'll continue to see and acknowledge the neg. about ourselves as we've been trained. and, isn't that the foundation for not taking care of ourselves first?
Some new ideas here too, thank you.
hope these new ideas are helpful. it seems my perspective on this beast is broadening cuz these are not ideas that i've been holding for any length of time.
i'm glad you're not ready to throw in the towel. you've got a lot of strength in you, blueberry, maybe more than you realize. sending you a hug filled with support and love.
Sometimes I can't make up my mind what to do, so I don't do anything. This evening I knew I needed to get on my bike and go and check on something and then I could either do A or B. Typical would be not checking on the Thing to be Checked until A and B are both over, but this evening I managed to Check and then get to A half-way through. I wouldn't have managed to get to B at all because further away. Good job, I tell myself. :cheer: Because if I hadn't managed to get to A or B I would have felt as if I let myself down.
I posted in Progress that I stayed in the moment. The situation I triggered for myself by posting about hugs and thanking people for giving them to me. I want to write about that a bit. I used not to be able to hug people. I couldn't raise my arms to do so. Of course it wasn't a physical thing, it was an emotional thing.
When I first chose a place I wanted to go for inpatient treatment I saw in the brochure that they obviously used some forms of safe touching in body therapy, I knew: I want to be able to do that too, I want to go there. So I did. I had to fight for it, but I did get to go. And I learned to say "No" and then I learned to say "Yes" and bit by bit I started allowing people to hug me. People - fellow patients - would ask: "Can I hug you?" And if I could allow it because I felt safe, I'd say "Yes, but you know I can't hug you back." And that was fine, these people hugged me anyway. This makes me so sad. I know my FOO is deranged, but how could you bring a child up to not be able to hug other people?? I could hug as a child, but somewhere something broke when I was a teenager.
** Trigger Warning **
Ah yes, now I know what it was. Having to hug B1 back when I was about to go away for months, because it was expected and I couldn't say "No", although he used to hit me.
End Trigger Warning
How sad to have to re-learn something as 'simple' and 'everyday' as hugging somebody else! Before I could put my arms up to join in the hug I was learning to feel the hug and to stay in my body, not freeze. Then I learned to join in the hug too, put my arms up and be part of the hug. I don't believe if there were anything romantic or sexual in the hug that I could remain and not freeze, but non-romantic hugs are great and so healing! It's great that they've been back in my life for about 16 years now! :cheer:
** TW **
How sad to have the ability to hug other people broken by physical abuse. Because that's what it was that B1 did, even though FOO has been denying it for years - it wasn't often, it wasn't much, I provoked him, I didn't end up in hospital etc etc.
very sad, indeed, blueberry.
the idea of safe touch not being ok - i've run into it on many occasions, both as a t and as a client.
when i was working with adol. girls, they had an art therapy class with an art teacher and me together. i introduced shoulder rubs as a way to get them to relax. some said yes to the idea, but many refused. they, too, had had abusive backgrounds, and safe, pos. touch was unknown to them.
however, things changed. those who had been willing encouraged the other girls to try it, telling them it really helped. soon, they were asking for them every day. we had to limit this, so we told them that if they finished their weekly project, they could get a little massage when they handed it in. it was amazing how enthusiastically those projects began being turned in every week. their behaviors in class improved as well.
i'm very glad for you, blueberry, that you discovered the power of hugs/pos. touch. it's been proven that hugs induce feel-good endorphins to be released by the brain, which, in turn, helps our entire being feel better. babies fail to thrive if they're not touched enough, not held. touch is something intrinsic to our survival.
to have that denied to the point that someone fears it goes against life itself. sending you a safe hug filled with warmth and comfort.
I am sad that you had to go through such an experience that left you unable to hug people back.
I am not big on physical contact either. I can't read the signs, I rarely know what sort of hug it is. And mostly I just feel uncomfortable - and hope for it to be over quickly. Eventhough there are times where I wish someone could just hold me. They say that a hug for 2 minutes will increase serotonin or dopamine levles in your body and it'll help you fight off stress in the longterm. I wonder if it's the same for trauma-people.
I think it's incredible brave that you signed yourself up on such a body-healing course. It sounds amazing, and really difficult to go through. But it's great it has had such a lasting positive effect on you. I am really happy this was something that you could work through and get help for.
Sceal, I'm actually big on safe, physical touch now because it has been so healing to me. I no longer normally feel uncomfortable in normal life with hugs at least from female friends. Part of this is because I can say "No" and enforce that if need be.
The place I'm going at the end of this week implements a form of this body work and is trauma-informed which the method wasn't when I first did it 16-17 years ago. But there were quite a few other people with bad trauma in this inpatient place. It's just that doctors and therapists seemed to know less about trauma, especially FOO trauma, then. I've been in quite a lot of inpatient treatment so it wasn't just that stint 16-17 years ago. I didn't get re-traumatised through this type of therapy. It was very healing, but it wasn't enough. It didn't help me with all my problems with work, e.g. and with using my hands for other things, like changing the light bulb or the vacuum cleaner bags.
Hi Blueberry,
Just wanted to wish you well at the place you're going to at the end of this week - hope that it goes well. I've just been reading the 'letter to your friend' that you wrote - felt a bit speechless to know what to say - so didn't say anything in reply - but now I've popped into your Journal and just wanted to say that I think you worded your letter really well and conveyed your thoughts and feelings - and I was shocked to hear how your T had behaved and how he triggered so many topics in such a very short space of time - anyway, glad I was able to say something to you here about it. :)
Hope :)
Thank you Hope for the good wishes and the validation. :)
Over the years I've unfortunately had a number of therapists or other psycho personnel provoking me terribly badly and refusing to back down and then sometimes having the nerve to complain about me going 'crazy' afterwards like screaming hysterically. I don't do the latter anymore, nor did I 3 years ago, but I have been pushed to it before. OTOH a number of health-care professionals have validated me and my reactions for this situation 3 years ago, saying e.g. that it's true that therapists sometimes misjudge and push a patient too far but that it is then their job to provide a safety net so to speak and help the patient come back to a safe place. That so didn't happen in this case.
I'm back from my 4 days of intensive group therapy. It'll take a while for it all to settle. One or two things have become clear. One being I really hadn't noticed how close I was getting to "collapse". One of the therapists said "you know, you could come a little more often, you don't have to wait till you're up to the eyebrows in whatever."
When I'm having 'impulses' towards throwing in the towel, whether work-wise or in general, it can be because everything seems too much. And when everything seems too much, it really is too much. Really. I need to get to a place where I can believe that. And stop comparing myself with other people on here or elsewhere who get less therapy paid for by the state and who don't have money for private sessions like these 4 days of intensive. I wouldn't have the money if FOO hadn't given me a bunch. But I decided to take that money. Different issue. Others decide not to. Legitimate. I decided to. Also legitimate.
I spent a fair amount of time crying. Tears kept welling up. Somebody was kind to me; somebody validated what I suffered as a child; I remembered a time when somebody had helped me; somebody agreed that FOO really is so crazy; somebody paid me an honest compliment etc etc Sometimes the tears just came, no tangible reason. I think sheer emotional exhaustion over months, which I hid away even from myself.
That's enough for the moment.
Hi Blueberry,
Welcome back and glad to hear that your 4 day intensive time away was beneficial - it sounds like you did a lot of stuff, and I just wanted to welcome you back.
Hope :)
Welcome back Blueberry. ^^ Hope you're satisfied with what you got out of all that.
I also experienced a 5-day intensive in April. Parts of it were life-changing; parts indescribable in the sharing that became so wonderful in an atmosphere of trust and love.
I also did lots of crying and for the same reasons you speak of. There's no feeling like that of being accepted for who you are; for me that's overwhelmingly beautiful and...people understand; didn't consider me a freak or soft for expressing my deepest, raw self that way.
I also experienced, as you said: "Sometimes the tears just came, no tangible reason. I think sheer emotional exhaustion over months, which I hid away even from myself." Whatever the cause, I also felt like I'd released years of emotional blockage. Sure, I can and do cry here, sometimes; but within a group like that, it's even more powerful.
While I've had a bit of a drawdown since then, the effects are still growing on me--mainly in the sense that I truly am okay, and that there are possibilities to stay grounded amidst the swirls of life. As I told someone in the group who wondered how I was doing in the "real world" again, that experience was also the real world; as much or more than the old world where I was nothing but a broken remnant that tumbled out of a bad dream.
Enough from me, just happy you seem to have had a meaningful time. Congratulations for finding the means--and the courage--to go with where your heart led. :hug:
Welcome back Blueberry!
Wonderful that you have the opportunity to go to such an intensive treatment. I've not heard of such a thing in regards to other things than OCD.
Sounds like you felt you got something good out of it! And the T is probably right, to not push yourself until your limit, but to try and slowly start seeking help before you've reached the limit.
Keep up the good work!
welcome back, blueberry. it sounds like you experienced a very healing space and place. i'm so glad for you.
i've been to a few weekend workshops for healing and discovery, and every one of them touched a part of me i didn't realize needed touching. it can be exhausting, too, and take some time to get back a sense of everyday life.
i like that you got the message that you don't have to wait till you're at wit's end before taking some sort of break like this. i don't know that i fully put that in play in my own life all the time, altho i can tell that to others all the time. i need to be aware to practice what i preach.
big hug to you, sweetie.
Hi Blueberry. I'm new here and I thought of checking other's Recovery Journals.
It's an injustice for this world to be so hateful towards vulnerability. It causes much of the world's depression, anxiety and other similar conditions. But it's not too late to heal. Not too late to spread the word to the world that it's worth showing yourself this way. And it can start here.
Take care.
I came back online to check contact info for my landlords. I intend to phone the Tenant Association tomorrow morning from my place of (volunteer) work, where I have no email/Internet access, to see what they can suggest about my landlords not bothering about what is presumably a leaking pipe somewhere in a floor (? or wall?). Although it doesn't look as if it can be in my apartment, it's in the one next door and dripping into my storage part of the basement, and spreading.
Whenever I have to inform any people in position of power about anything like this, I go into a mild EF state for days. I have informed my landlords. First almost two weeks ago (yes, thank you for informing us we will deal) and then on Monday because I noticed it's spreading and dripping into different areas of the basement e.g. my storage part and because they obviously haven't dealt. It feels dangerous to me to inform the Tenant Association. OTOH why pay an annual fee if you don't use it? Though I have used its services before for previous landlord.
I am frightened of stirring up trouble. Feeling of "better keep my head down, put up and shut up, don't defend myself, stop making a fuss about nothing, curl into a ball on the floor and let it ride over me". All that going on internally. It's good I started writing about it because only with that do I come up with these sentences. Thanks FOO ever so much. Not. It's M I have a picture of in my head. Cognitively-speaking, B1 ought to be there as well. He's the one
*** TW Physical Abuse ***
who yelled "How dare you hit me??" and got ready to send me flying with an almighty punch, after he'd already hit me and I so incensed hit back. Anyway he got ready for another go, except the dog attacked him. M was actually there and didn't remonstrate at all with him, nor did she remember the next day, convenient case of early-onset Alzheimer's as regards one item.
* End TW*
So no wonder it takes so much courage and energy on my part to confront landlords and then keep going, getting help elsewhere. Another topic for screen-processing, though actually M not B1 at this time. Actually I was intending to go to bed so as to get up before the crack of dawn tomorrow and go up to the farm.
I did realise one good thing though, which I want to write down: in the fairly recent past I've told two acquaintances where to get off. I've set two different sorts of limits, but limits none the less, and in so doing i've put myself first. Today a third actually, while I'm about it. Sorting the sheep from the goats among my circle of friends. Who's really a friend? And who's just an acquaintance, that I should maybe even do without?
blueberry, how perfectly wonderful for you with all that limit-setting. showing so much progress - it's so great to see.
i hear you about not rocking the boat and all the rest of that balderdash. it takes practice, for sure. i think it's a safety issue, and your landlord or tenant assoc. or whatever needs to know. who knows what that water might be doing inside the walls! you're only seeing where it's coming out.
best to you with this, sweetie. big hug full of strength and courage.
Thank you san! My landlords do know, they're just not acting on it. Possibly so that the building will fall apart around us and then they can kick us all out, demolish the building and re-build. Or something like that. It seems as if they don't care about the damage being done by water over the space of almost 2 weeks. Hard to believe.
Aha, so you see this as rocking the boat. No wonder I'm having such trouble. I realised last time I had contact with all of FOO that my sibs were preventing me from rocking the family boat. Sibs are allowed to tell our parents where to get off, sibs are allowed to set limits, but me?? No.
In fact a good few years ago B2, who's younger than me, forbade me to ever mention CSA to M (she's the culprit) in case she committed suicide. B2, don't ask me how I feel. I said at the time I thought it was pretty unlikely she would. I now think it's even more unlikely. What with everybody protecting her and each other.
It's 3:30 am. I did my Screen Processing, but now I can't go to sleep. I was lying in bed tending towards self-harm. Didn't actually do any, I was merely running my fingers through my hair, self-calming measure. But that's how self-harm gets going, well one way at least. So thought I might as well come and post here for a while.
This evening when a friend phoned, I grabbed my Life Basket (as in life jacket, life ring etc.) which I described here http://outofthefog.net/C-PTSD/forum/index.php?topic=6910.255 18th page of healing porch, 3rd post from the top, because I sometimes get fidgety on the phone. But this is a really good friend and we support each other a lot. So I figured I'll listen and just have one of my worry egg type objects in my hand, instead of running fingers through hair... So I did just that and it helped. I listen to her and validate and sometimes make suggestions. She does the same for me. But still I get fidgety sometimes. She helped me with the Landlord Problem, as in: inform Tenant Assoc.! Now I have this worry egg at the computer with me and it's helping me not even getting close to running fingers through hair. So that's good.
Actually my worry egg isn't an egg (or egg-shaped stone) at all, it's a little wooden animal and I'm sure the carved face with smile is keeping me from self-harming. Fits nicely in my hands though and is pleasant to hold.
I have an odd-shaped stone that's very comforting for me to hold. There's something about the smoothness, isn't there :hug:
6 am. Time to get up and go off to work on the farm. Oh wait, i am up, not having been able to sleep. Just need to shut down and get ready to go.
Wishing you a good day at the Farm today, Blueberry. :)
:heythere:
I have something called a fidget cube that's calming to hold. With buttons, switches, a smooth surface and so on. Interesting how touch can calm, huh?
well, blueberry, how wonderful for you that you were able to calm yourself before the self-harm began. what progress, my dear! so glad to hear that. wow!
that really sucks that the landlords won't do anything about such a problem. tenant assoc. sounds like a good idea.
i was told anytime that i brought something amiss to someone's attention that i should quit 'rocking the boat'. leave it, ignore it, let someone else do it, etc. etc. ad nauseum. i give you so much credit for flying in the face of those messages. it can be difficult, for sure, but it's part of standing up for ourselves, honoring our boundaries, and self-care. i'm just sorry you're having to go thru this.
glad you've got your 'egg' to help calm you. it's such a good idea, especially since you're able to put it to use.
wow, again, blueberry. you are so making progress. i hope you're proud of yourself - you deserve it. sending a hug filled with strength and love. also hope the farm makes for a good day.
Thanks everybody! :hug:
I came back from the farm pretty exhausted yesterday, even though I don't think that I did that much. But not sleeping the night before is not too helfpful, obviously. I'm probably still feeling the after-effects of my 4 days intensive group therapy too.
I bounced back this afternoon / early evening though and have the impulse to get on with various things. I've already done a round of Screen Processing and sorted through and thrown out some papers, which I really like to put off. So it's good when I actually want to do it.
I have the impulse to make some advertising for the window of my business because tomorrow is Sunday Shopping and a festival in the town centre, where I live and work. Wanting to make some advertising material also means I'm keeping going with my business in my soul rather than just in my head. A few days ago I wanted to go back to inpatient treatment, but that was just some after-effect of the group therapy. Next week I'm going to phone somebody who was interested a few months ago because I now feel that I could take on one more customer. So that's slow but steady progress.
:bighug:
:bighug:
Well I did make a poster for my business window and it's up and I'm feeling OK about it. I mean, it doesn't make me feel self-conscious.
I notice now that I've given myself permission to drop one type of work for the time being that I'm feeling less stressed about the other type and a little less stressed in general. Possibly that even led to me being able to make the poster for my window. I feel I can approach a potential client about the work I'm still doing without the fear i'm about to collapse. :cheer:
My T said today he imagines it's because I'm beginning to accept myself and my right to exist in this world, just like everybody else. Instead of feeling like a burden and thinking I have to keep working, working, working at best for no pay, just to make up for taking up space in the world. A few weeks ago in T, I was working on saying "I have a right to exist just like everybody else" so this is that progress moving into my emotions now, undoubtedly helped along by the long weekend of intensive group therapy.
My T also said that my acceptance of my own inability to work in the field I've stopped working in will free up so much energy. I recognised myself that I'd been fighting for years to keep going. "Inability" isn't even the right word. Partly it's unwillingness, but in a good way. I'm unwilling to do something that is mentally so strenuous because of all the psychological stuff going on. All the FOO sentences causing so much self-doubt and leading to continuous self-harm while I'm working. The cognitive ability is there. Clients and previous employers praise (d) my results but have no idea of the cost to me personally to produce the work. They have noticed that it can take quite a long time for me to finish the work, that it's hard for me to meet deadlines, but the mental and psychological cost - there they have no idea! I do though. And it's been my decision to take a long break, possibly forever.
I just wanted to add that my landlord got back to me today and that I didn't even speak to the Tenants' Association. Some specialist is going to come and look at the problem tomorrow. So I just needed to be patient and believe that help was coming. Believing help is forthcoming is apparently difficult.
This evening I had the feeling that the puzzle pieces are fitting together again. Not the puzzle pieces of memory but the puzzle pieces of healing. They are slotting together. I'm sure it won't always feel that way so I want to make note of it here!
My T said today that it's understandable that it really hurts me that my FOO - both parents and both siblings - don't understand me and don't accept me as I am and don't accept my opinions on the past or my views on how they treat me. Also that it's understandable that this fact isn't irrelevant to me. Then I thought of the reactions of one brother and my father - they basically shrug and say "Oh well" / "Tough-o" when it's my pain, though my F reacts differently when it's his pain. For me the "Oh well" / "Tough-o" reactions are mind-boggling because I'm not like B and F in this respect. I'm not that insensitive to other people's pain! Sometimes I do have to protect myself from feeling other people's pain but I can nonetheless validate it, and have done so in the past for friends, even for members of FOO.
It's been a long time coming, but better late than never: I'm moving more and more out of the emotional sphere of influence of FOO. Finding out who I am and what my values are and certainly that they are quite different from FOO's. Even noticing that B2, who is GC, is not as admirable as I had believed. I'm moving out of the FOG and this even feels exciting. :)
Give myself :cheer: :cheer: :cheer: and :applause:
may i add to that, blueberry -
:cheer: :applause: :cheer:
and a big :bighug:
well done. what a great feeling.
That's wonderful that you're starting to find a basis for your own identity! Just amazing! :hug:
Sceal, thanks for the wording "finding a basis for [my] own identity". I'm like "is that what I'm doing? Yes, I guess so."
Today I've been playing games, having a good time and sleeping. Playing games - playing patience, an apt game - seems to be helping me process. I have to remind myself that it's OK to spend a day doing this. It's often this way the day after therapy. My ICr. doesn't get to have a field day instead. I'm not interested in what ICr. has to say on this. ICr. is behind the times on what all this means.
I feel as if I'm being held back internally by FOO but the change now is that I'm formulating what to write to enF and B2 since there are a few things to say, at least potentially. In the end, I may write them here or under Unsent Letters and not send them, instead let healing take its course. The progress now is feeling I'm being held back internally by FOO.
Today I saw a job ad in the newspaper (for a job for 2 weeks in December) and I thought of applying but remembered quickly how trying it is for me atm to just get on with 'normal' things like getting dressed in semi-respectable clothing, and also last time I tried similar work, I gave up after a few hours because it did my head in. No, atm I'm staying with healing. And I'm getting closer to accepting myself as disabled psychologically-speaking and unemployable in the 'normal' non-disabled workforce. So I'll just leave that here, though I'd like to change the words I used, though I'm not sure to what.
Hi Blueberry,
You're allowing healing to take its course, and that sounds really good. You've been playing games, having a good time, and sleeping - and that sounds great too.
I think the 'unsent' letters part of the forum is really helpful - good luck for when you formulate your letters.
Wishing you well with everything and standing with you :grouphug:
Hope :)
hey, blueberry,
i think a games day is absolutely in order at times. we use so much mental and emotional energy with this stuff, that our brains need a break to re-group, too. good for you, i say.
psychologically disabled, and unemployable in the 'normal' workforce. i wonder if these attributes are permanent or temporary. i know that i had to come to terms with not being able to work either a full-time job or even a day-to-day part-time job. that was almost 20 yrs. ago. it was a struggle at first, but acceptance did come.
the disability part has been a little trickier. at one time i was nearly curled up in a ball, unable to look past my own essence. today, i see more of the outgoing part of me beginning to shine again. i'm interacting differently with people, have made some friends in the house where i rent a room, am smiling and laughing more.
i don't know if that will ever be completely 'cured', but i'm liking the level i've reached a bit more. sometimes, it's all about levels, isn't it. i'm also beginning to feel more secure in myself, something i haven't felt in a very long time.
the point is, i think it's a wonderful thing to be able to see yourself more clearly for who you are, what your level of capability is at the moment, and i think you're doing a great job of that, blueberry. definitely moving forward and showing lots of progress. love that you're telling your inner critic where to get off. sending you a hug filled with acceptance and love.
Hey, Blueberry.
Just wanted to send a good luck to your self care and a gentle hug.
:hug:
Thank you DecimalRocket :hug:
- - - --- - - -- - - -
I note that I wrote a response on somebody else's thread yesterday about cutting ourselves some slack when things don't go according to plan. So note that for self today. I didn't get up and stay up till 5 pm, and as such did nothing that I'd intended to do except take something important to the post office.
Partially it was a case of: shall I do A or B? Then do neither. Partially avoiding a possible conflict at the farm. Partially a bunch of stuff being triggered over the past few days and my not dealing with them. I do have methods, but haven't been using them. :spooked: I mean, that's sometimes how I react, I run away.
I also hide away. Avoid stuff for as long as I can, until there's no more time.
Have you considered writing pro-con list for A and B? And see if that helps clarify one step for you?
:hug: Be kind to your self.
i think a lot of us have what we've been trained to think of as 'unproductive' days, but maybe they aren't that at all. maybe those are the days that we are needing to let our minds have some space and time for healing, especially after being overwhelmed.
i hope you are kind to yourself, too. we've functioned thru the worst of times, maybe we just get worn out once in awhile. sending a hug filled with acceptance and love, sweetie.
Thank you Sceal and Sanmagic,
I can only practise being kind to myself. It doesn't come that naturally. I get worn out pretty regularly. I like to ignore the fact that it often takes me the best part of week to get over therapy, which means I'm right on track.
Sceal, I used to write pro/con lists but now the decision on what to do is not a cognitive thing. I'm psychologically so worn-out I can hardly write a list kind of thing.
Hi there. :heythere:
Practice can be hard. Like any skill, it takes time. But repeated practice makes things easier.
Good luck, Blueberry,
Blueberry,
I can relate to being too worn out to write lists. Is there any way you can give yourself a couple of days with intended rest? Where you allow yourself to not make any desicions, and just focus on doing what feels good in the moment? And in a couple of days see if you feel more up to actually making a choice?
Sending you a hug with some strength and rest.
Thank you Sceal. I'm not too good at allowing myself that, but it often just happens. That's when I'm too exhausted to get out of bed or do manage that but just the effort of finding semi-respectable clothing or even getting dressed is too much. Thank you for your suggestion because it reminded me of this connect.
Today I've ended up exhausted though I started out OK. So I allowed myself to not take part in two activities I otherwise wanted to do. I slept instead.
Something has been in my subconscious and flickering up again into my conscious mind re FOO but atm it's in subconscious. I had wanted to write it. Oh well. It will come back up.
blueberry, you're working so hard mentally and emotionally, no wonder you're exhausted. this stuff drains us as badly, or more so, than even physical work. i do hope you're being patient with yourself. sending a hug filled with self-care, kindness, and love.
Quote from: sanmagic7 on November 12, 2017, 07:21:24 PM
blueberry, you're working so hard mentally and emotionally, no wonder you're exhausted. this stuff drains us as badly, or more so, than even physical work.
Thank your for saying the first and reminding me of the latter. It's hard to believe this all the time.
yeah, it is. i have to remind myself of it, too, and even writing it to someone else helps as a reminder for me. big hug.
Quote from: Sceal on November 12, 2017, 12:30:24 PM
Is there any way you can give yourself a couple of days with intended rest? Where you allow yourself to not make any desicions, and just focus on doing what feels good in the moment?
I sort of did this today. I allowed myself to lie in long, reading and dozing, until I really felt a physical impulse to get up and stay up and felt an impulse to get up to do something particular, which was: clear the things out of my part of the basement into the part that is really mine and which was usurped by a previous tenant in the building. She moved out in the summer and I've been trying to get up the energy since then. And now it's done!
I threw out quite a number of things today, including from my basement bit. That always feels good, so long as I'm really able to let go of the thing.
And then I oven-roasted various vegetables. This is something I've been wanting to try on and off for a long time, but something psychological was stopping me. I finally did it and could feel my heart pattering while I was chopping the veg and I can still feel fear in the pit of my stomach, though the roasting is long finished and was mostly successful. And certainly nothing bad happened. The oven didn't go on fire, the house didn't burn down... I'm not sure what the fear is I'm feeling, though undoubtedly it has to do with my childhood and trauma. I should put it up on the Processing Screen at some point but I don't want to go in there tonight.
Great job!
Cleaning out requires so much energy, yet it feels so nice once it's actually done!
You've really challenged yourself today, both with cleaning, throwing out stuff and the cooking, as well as allowing yourself to rest. I hope you feel good about it yourself
Quote from: Blueberry on November 14, 2017, 10:00:09 PM
Quote from: Sceal on November 12, 2017, 12:30:24 PM
Is there any way you can give yourself a couple of days with intended rest? Where you allow yourself to not make any desicions, and just focus on doing what feels good in the moment?
I sort of did this today.
Unfortunately I didn't allow myself this today. Instead I thought I
should go and join a group of friends/aquaintances who meet up every two weeks, but I went to bed really late last night (well, this morning actually), turned off my alarm and went to sleep again. Woke up at a time when I still could have got there, though late, but realised that deep down I really didn't want to. It wasn't so much of an issue of not wanting to ride my bike over in the cold etc. as I know some people in the group will say, but more
should isn't a fact. I'm spending time and energy processing and developing emotionally, even if I think it's not enough, and I'm thinking a lot on my employment status and how I could find what sort of work so that I can earn more and be less financially dependent on FOO. And I'm trying to figure out what to write to various members of FOO, or not write.
And this week I've biked to the farm and back twice and will do tomorrow too. It's quite a long way in the early morning darkness, but I can do it because I want to atm. It's good for me in various ways I've mentioned, and this week it's been a good test of "how do I manage when I work away from home 3 days a week?". Something that until recently would have been impossible. My clients come to me, I don't have to go somewhere else as I would if I were employed.
So note to self, "should" is not good. It's not useful.
You did recognize two things though. You did recognize that you thought you "should" go rather than actually wanting to go. You seperated the two of them, which when you're not on top of your game can sometimes be hard to differentiate.
Second, you recognized that "should" isn't useful in this setting.
I think that you did an important job in those two distintions alone.
Thanks Sceal, you're right! It was really useful to take the time to note that "should" isn't useful in this setting, and also to note: Oops, I did that "Should" thing again, no wonder I didn't get up and stay up!
It's also good for me to note that really taking the time to feel what I want and need on a particular day or at a particular time is so important at this stage in my healing, so that I pick up on these nuances and don't force myself to do things because that would be "normal" or other people think I should. Do they know?? No, they don't.
no they don't, indeed, blueberry. it sounds like you are really moving forward, and all credit to you for all the hard work you've done to get you this far. warm hug filled with love.
Thank you san, I guess you're right, I am moving forward. There is another Unsent Letter to prove it where I'm finally expressing anger as words towards FOO, but especially to F. Not just screaming the way the Inners do if I allow them. My T says that's not so good for me because it reminds me of the helplessness I felt as a dependent child, and a financially-dependent adult which I was as a student and am to some degree atm.
I'm just back from church. I'm so distracted by the thoughts and emotions flying around in me that I couldn't concentrate all the time. The priest told a long story about a little girl who sounded like Lost Child tbh with a GC brother. Apparently a true story too. It could've been me, to a degree, tho it wasn't. But anyway that moved me and part way through the service I had another aha moment about "how on earth FOO can possibly feel 'badly done by' with me not wanting contact when they were so unmoved by my indescribable emotional pain last time I was there??" How on earth can they be so blind (and deaf)? OK, neither M nor B1 are big on compassion but both B2 and F do have some emotions. But with F, it'll be like in my childhood: pat Blueberry on the head when nobody's looking or otherwise inconvenienced and expect that that is somehow enough for Blueberry. NO. It's not enough.
I'm really angry, but under that :'( :'( which I felt while sitting in church too. Tbh atm I don't want to phone any of my friends and hear them reeling off what they did this week or the past few days, or even the ups and downs of that, since some of my friends have emotional problems too. Though not necessarily C-PTSD or not diagnosed anyway.
So for the anger: :blowup:
You have every right to be angry!
:blowup:
Thank you for validating this 3Roses. Means alot. :hug:
i echo what 3roses said.
as far as deaf and blind, that's their normality, i think. look away, turn a deaf ear - like those 3 monkeys - and never acknowledge the reality, never offer comfort, care, kindness, or nurturing. it absolutely sucks. even more so, cuz, like you said, they make it out like they're the victims when you do for yourself what they should've been doing for you.
blecccch!
keep getting that poison out, sweetie. it only hurts you to keep it in - i know that one from experience. you really are moving in a healtlhy direction, blueberry. good for you. sending a hug filled with compassion, kindness, and love.
Today I'm feeling drained, emotionally. Not drained of all the tears, though, ha ha. There are more to come. But I remind myself it's important to re-ground. Take a peak at your trauma then re-stabilise, re-stabilise, re-stabilise. Take another peak and re-stabilise, re-stabilise, re-stabilise.
Since I'll be doing more professional, freelance work tomorrow and the day after (as opposed to farm work), it would be good to get re-grounded in a healthy way. Up till now today I allowed myself to lie in bed dozing and reading, but now I'm up. I came online to check when exactly a Dance-Your-Emotions-Out event is taking place this evening. I think it would be good for me to make the effort and go. The past few times it was offered I always found some reason not to go, or just didn't go.
I'll also be at T again on Tuesday, so it's good to be regrounded for that too, so that I can make the most of the session, dealing with something I can't do on my own.
Hi Blueberry,
I hope that you get to your Dance-Your-Emotions-Out event safely. Your mention of 're-grounding' - and 're-stablising' - very wise.
:hug: to you.
Hope :)
I decided not to go, but to stay home and listen and move to music while dealing with the remains of my Jerusalem artichokes. I've finally boiled all of them up before they go bad or soggy and then skinned some to eat just as is. I know that doesn't sound like much of a meal but it's a lot better than a packet of cookies, which is what I sometimes resort to. Couldn't this evening since I don't have any and shops all shut (fortunately). If I let all my Jer. artichokes go bad because I was too depressed to deal with them I wouldn't feel good either. So I made a conscious decision to not go to the event. That is different from just not getting round to go.
So listening to 80's music and dancing around the kitchen and even more vitriol coming up. Too early to put into more Unsent Letters but they'll be coming in the next days or weeks too. I do feel better grounded though.
If anybody's keeping an eye on who's hanging around the forum, they'll see I've been here for a few hours. Which is kind of long. I've been reading some of my old posts which is illuminating and I've also been commenting on some other people's posts which is good in a way and bad in another. BUT I've also been getting up ever so often and dancing around to the music I've been listening to. :cheer: Because this is re-grounding for me. And it's fun. And I've been having trouble with it in the past little while. Been feeling self-conscious about my taste in music. I know that's an EF (thanks FOO for mockery and criticism) but so long as it is an EF it's hard to impossible to re-ground with this method. In fact, I didn't really realise, I just let it run its course until I noticed I could dance around again without feeling self-conscious.
I had been intending to write another one of those Unsent FOO Letters like to B to print out and take to T tomorrow. But I guess re-grounding is more important, or maybe just not bringing up and verbalising any more feelings / realisations / memories? Print out something i've already written instead and take that. Yeah, that sounds sensible. Glad I got that sorted out.
My computer is on almost all day, and I have a tendency to forget to close the browser once I'm done - so I too appear to be online when I am infact not. :)
I am glad that you are now able to dance to the music that you like. It's such a fun excersise to do! and definitively grounding!
That's great that you're enjoying your dance Blueberry. :)
I'm not really interested in dancing myself, but I hear that it's cathartic to many people. It allows people to express themselves and feel a certain freedom with the music. In life, you're often stuck doing what others think you should be doing, but when you dance, you can move in the way you want to.
I hope you feel better when you make another one of those letters Blueberry.
Well, see ya.
Rocket.
HI Blueberry,
I love the 80's music. I am so glad you felt able to dance and enjoy that freedom of movement and expression - I also want to say that I hope that your session goes well today with your T.
Hope :)
I read an example on OOTF, but I no longer know where, of somebody being given a choice and then the choice being criticised and not accepted, e.g. "what do you want coffee or tea?" "Tea." "No way, tea's really stupid, you're having coffee." Um, why ask if you're not going to let the person decide for themselves??
Today I remembered that SIL2 did this to me. She gave me the task of choosing a toy for my niece with the gift certificate they had received. So when SIL came into the store I was in, I showed her a few things I was considering, she immediately criticised one of my choices. "That's really stupid, that's the dumbest toy I've ever seen." and then she went on to make the final decision herself as to what to buy. But instead of leaving it that way, when other guests were visiting B2 and SIL2, SIL2 went on this big spree of "Look what Blueberry chose for us" though she was the one who had chosen :stars: I think now it was a type of flattery to try and groom me with praise, but my SIL still holding control. I didn't even like being asked to choose what to get with the gift certificate, I may even have said that, but SIL doesn't take 'no' for an answer.
I am remembering this incident today because I bought a Christmas present for my niece, who is also my goddaughter, a couple of days ago and I am regretting the choice because of what SIL might think. There's nothing whatever wrong with my choice. It's not 'off' in any way but here I am wanting to self-harm because of my choice. It's not totally easy for me to return the purchase either. I might be able to but wondering about that is kind of triggering too!
Anyway, returning or not is not the point. The point is: :pissed: :pissed: :pissed: about SIL2 and either the way she maneuvers herself into the front and centre stage or the way I allow that to happen or a bit of both.
When I think of the present I bought, all I see and hear in my head is SIL criticising. I don't see my niece enjoying. It's as if my niece isn't even in the picture, it's not about her. Which confuses me because at the time I was buying a present albeit spur of the moment that I thought she would enjoy and now I'm filled with self-doubt: the present is 'too young' for her or 'too stupid', niece is way 'too advanced', my present will be 'too boring'. 'Too expensive' too, SIL and B will see that negatively too (should I lie on the Customs label and reduce the price a bit? - is going through my head - I'm not asking for advice on this.)
All this stuff needlessly churning around in my head. And although I realise that it is in my head and is just conjecture, it is based on how I have experienced SIL. Last time I had contact with SIL, I couldn't get her out of my head for days. Dominant and domineering, like M. OK, that's a VENT.
This B, who is Golden Child, and his wife, let's just say the gold is losing some of its shine.
Oh Blueberry, I know exactly how you feel. My M does this especially with me all the time.
"Pick a dress to buy" "No not that one, that's ugly"
"What do you want for dinner?" "Seriously, that? Let's just have this instead"
"What do you want to do for your birthday?" "You're going to do THAT? Why?? Do this, it's way better"
You really feel like you have no choice, and that everything you want/think is best is actually wrong in some way. :\ I hope you can see past that voice in your head though and reassure yourself that the present you chose is what YOU chose, and it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks. :)
:hug:
i've run into many people, especially men with whom i've had relationships, who simply stopped voicing opinions because that kind of thing had happened from previous partners so many times. i'd ask what they want to do, eat, whatever, and they'd shrug their shoulders and say 'i don't care'.
what happens with that is that i never get to know the person. i ask questions in order to get information, and when they've been damaged to the extent that they lose their voice, it's like there's no one there. so frustrating to be on the other side of this abuse.
i have no doubt you got a perfectly lovely gift for your niece, blueberry. you can be proud, and revel in your niece's delight when she opens her gift. you'll be able to tell if her mother is doing the same kind of thing to you if, when she opens it, she looks over to her mother to find out if it's 'acceptable' or not.
that would be a crying shame, and i can see how it could take all the joy out of gift-giving. i hope it doesn't happen, and that little girl loves it to bits. i know in her heart she will. i just don't know if her mother's force field has already ruined those moments of joy for her. i hope not.
big hug full of hope and promise and love.
san,
Sadly, I won't know whether or not my niece likes the gift. I'm at a point of VLC with B and SIL, but as my niece is also my goddaughter and has nothing whatsoever to do with the estrangement, so far I've still been sending post. She's too small to send 'Thank you' notes of her own accord.
Her "mother's force field" is a good way of putting it. Idk. My "mother's force field" had a pretty negative impact on my development as an individual and as an adult. And the more I have moments of revelation both in T and outside, the more I realise how well SIL fits in with the family dysfunction and how much she is like M! I can only hope my niece grows up able to take the good from my B and SIL and discard the dysfunctional. Sounds rather a slim hope, I know.
Yeah, I'm one of those annoying people who used to shrug her shoulders and say "I don't care" or even worse say/do the complete opposite of what I wanted because I thought that was what 'normal' people would do or say and what I wanted was by definition wrong. What Blueberry wanted was wrong because Blueberry is wrong. Crossing that piece of wisdom from FOO out because it is completely warped. Unfortunately though as a young woman in my late teens / early 20's I believed that through and through. Once somebody, totally frustrated, even said to me: "Can't you just say what you want instead of what you think you ought to??" :pissed: :pissed: Rhetorical question. But my answer in my head was "no, I can't." Thank God for progress! I've moved on since then.
Thanks, Aphotic Atramentous, I'll try. :hug: Sorry you grew up with the same.
Blueberry, I think your niece will like the present that you have chosen for her - I certainly hope so anyway. Because you are thoughtful, and because you care. :hug: to you.
Hope :)
Thank you Hope! I really appreciate the good characteristics you can see in me. :hug:
____________________________________________
So now I'm one of the Mods. Everybody can see it too, beneath my name in whatever that box-thing is called. It's stressing me a bit already. Because I think every time I respond to anybody else's post my response has to be absolutely perfect: no infringement of guidelines (though so far my time on OOTS I haven't even had a warning - what am I so worried about?); perfectly worded; perfectly healed - no mention of slip-ups like reverting to SH or eating or doing both and not caring.
I even notice that I feel I shouldn't post so much about myself, I should take a step back from that, even though I'm at a stage in healing where it's really important to me to write here in my Journal or Recovery Letters, or on other parts of the board when memories resurface or I have a realisation. I feel I'd like to write: this is Blueberry Person speaking, this is not Blueberry Moderator. So just wanted to post that to remember how it is at the beginning of moderating, because any type of 'work' I do tends to trigger a bit of this and that but also leads to progress in healing.
Blueberry wrote: "...it's really important to me to write here in my Journal or Recovery Letters, or on other parts of the board..."
And it's equally important you continue just being you. Probably more important than ever. Moderator is just a change of wardrobe, most of us will relate first and foremost to the wonderful Person who's shared so well with us.
You just be yourself Blueberry. :) You don't have to be a perfect moderator. Everyone makes mistakes, moderators included. So even if you do ever make a mistake, it's perfectly okay! ^-^
blueberry, i echo the others. we put recovery first here, so i believe it's important for you to keep posting. we love and accept you just as you are, and the fact that you're now a mod only means you have another job on the side. that doesn't have to take anything away from being you.
i'm very proud of you for doing this, sweetie. there may be a period of adjustment until you get comfy wearing 2 hats here, but you've got spunk, and that counts for a lot. love and hugs - so glad you're in my life.
Ho boy, if you had to do this perfectly I'd have been disqualified!! :rofl:
Moderator is just a word that lets others know you can be trusted. No pressure, just be you. That's good enough. :hug:
Oh Blueberry. . . You've done so well writing to others from what I've seen. I'm grateful for the things you've said to me over my stay in this forum and I think other people are too.
People didn't make you a moderator to add expectations of you. You've added expectations to yourself so you became enough to be a moderator.
Even people who are in authority some way need support . . . every human being does.
Take care, Blueberry. :hug:
Thank you so much everybody for the votes of confidence :hug: I'm really moved by what you say.
The I-must-be-perfect ICr. was having a field day yesterday ;) but it was really important for me to write it, because ICr. is part of me. Not a separate entity. Arrgh this effect from FOO's semi-constant criticism sits so deep.
Finished my moderating for the evening. Oops it's actually the next day already. Well I'm a bit of a night-owl. I started out feeling a bit EF-y or maybe dissociated would be a better description but I stayed with the job and it got better.
That happened on Friday too now I think about it. I felt so weak and so spaced out on the way to the farm and cycling into the wind, I thought by the time I got there I would just sit down, drink some tea and then head home again and leave somebody else to do my work. It's sort of volunteer too ;) but when I got there and had something to eat, I felt better, and got on with my job no problem, even though some muscular power is required and I had been feeling weak.
Anyway today with moderating by the end i didn't feel dissociated anymore. I have the feeling that not so many, varied words are present in my mind, but that tends to happen to me. For me atm especially considering my problems in the working world and especially in my fields of work, it's just good to observe what happens to my thoughts about myself, to my feelings and to my physical body when moderating.
Sounds like you had a very busy day yesterday, Blueberry - and well done for completing you first day of wearing your new Moderator hat - you are bound to be extra tired as a result of taking on a new role - but remember that you're the same person, just taking on new things - and you're much appreciated as the person that you are, if that makes sense :)
Glad you felt better when you got to the farm - that muscular power clearly came from within, and glad that you got through the dissociation and coped so well.
I hope I've not been too wordy in replying to you - I know this is your journal, but today I feel like I have more to say. Wanted to say, I value your presence in the forum, and I am glad you are a Moderator here now.
Hope :)
No, not too wordy at all Hope. I appreciate it! :hug:
I hadn't thought of that correlation: taking on new role makes me tired in general. But you are undoubtedly right.
Cognitively I really appreciate all these words of comfort and votes of confidence I've been getting from you and others since starting as Mod, but unfortunately emotionally the words aren't getting through yet. Yet. I have hope they will sometime.
:aaauuugh: this perfection streak I developed is terrible, gave rise to a concrete wall somewhere in me protecting hurt...... Mind goes blank and feelings numb out. Gonna step away from PC and move to music to re-ground.
:hug:
:hug:
Today has not been a very good day. I've felt nauseous and even had to sit down from time to time while working at the farm. I help in milk-processing and the smell of warm milk really did it for me. I managed as long as I could then took a break so as not to toss my cookies into the milk.
Years of therapy and my emotions speaking through my body tell me: What - other than food - can your body not digest atm? What else can't you stomach? What else does your body want to get rid of? I noticed that asking myself those questions while working was not helpful. Made me feel even less able to hold it in.
I would say something is "too much" atm, but I don't know what that something is. It's not always the thing that you'd think, like: starting as Mod, have increased SH, that must be the problem. No, not always so easy to detect.
I couldn't sleep last night at all, but I yawned a lot. A few hours ago when I was massaging my fingers and yawning tons I made the connection. There must have been something in my unconscious in the night too, keeping me from sleeping.
One of my clients didn't come today and I was glad about that. The other came and I managed quite well. I managed to stay out of brain fog.
Sorry to hear about your nausea, Blueberry. I hope your day tomorrow will be better. ^^
Thanks AphoticAtramentous :hug:
Today I feel all spaced out and brain-numbed. Even thought about writing under A Difficult Day, but decided on Journal instead. Spent most of the day so far in bed dozing and reading. It's OK. I was allowing myself this. There were a bunch of things I wanted to write but they've all gone AWOL. They will come back, I know.
Ah yes, a friend has a court date tomorrow. I phoned her to wish her good luck with it but also to say I'm feeling so bad myself that I can't otherwise be there for her emotionally today. She appreciated the fact that I even phoned and she appreciated the honesty and that I'm looking after myself. I'm not totally surprised because both of us do manage to set each other firm but gentle limits, but it still feels good. :)
She's better at setting limits than I am. We talked about that recently too. It's difficult for her to set limits in her FOO and be accepted and taken seriously, especially by sibs, but it is possible. In my case, it's completely impossible. Not because I can't set limits, but because they don't want to hear, don't want to know, don't want to change. Don't even see any reason why they should change. So I have a long legacy of being terrified of setting limits and not knowing how anyway and then coming out with over-the-top, way-too-angry limit setting because I didn't know any other way. The latter doesn't exactly endear you to people. They go :stars: What on earth is wrong with Blueberry? Why is she getting mad over something so little?
This friend and I, we shared a room in inpatient therapy for about 8 weeks - not always an easy situation sharing space with someone as emotionally unstable and injured as yourself but possibly either in completely different ways or in much the same, which can be pretty explosive. In fact I was frightened of her at the beginning. But anyway, she was able to set gentle limits in a way that didn't leave me feeling rejected and in time I learned to ask her not to do x or y, knowing that she (probably) wouldn't reject me and hate me forever more while making the remainder of my time there torturous. She didn't do any of that! She isn't my FOO. But it's not just that. I've shared space plenty of times with others in inpatient therapy or even just 4-5 day retreats and limit-setting versus accusations and blaming is really difficult terrain, and not just for me.
slowly but surely, blueberry, the ability to set those limits will come. i used to be scared to death of setting limits with my daughter (altho i was the only one in our family who would put boundaries out, and she raked me over the coals for it), and the last time i did was when i knew i had to go nc. things wouldn't change, and her venom was worse than ever.
it took me about 30 yrs. to do that. i know this stuff doesn't necessarily come quickly or easily. small steps, sweetie. they all count, and will eventually get you to where you want to go.
by the by, you're doing a great job as a mod. warm, loving hug to you.
:bighug: thanks san, I appreciate your kind words.
Hi Blueberry,
Wishing you continued strength - I can imagine it is tough taking on this new role as a Moderator - but you are doing so well at it. :hug:
Hope :)
Setting boundaries can be difficult when they've been crossed over all these years.
I had a tough time with limits. I had more of a freeze response and just withdrew when someone was harming me. I couldn't stand up for myself, and I didn't even know it was because I was hurt at times that I withdrew.
Anger is our independence, our call for our rights and our confidence. And I wish the best of luck for you to earn that. It takes time but you'll progress. You've come so far, after all.
Quote from: DecimalRocket on December 02, 2017, 01:51:31 PM
Anger is our independence, our call for our rights and our confidence.
:thumbup: Apt way of putting it.
I have a long history of freeze response with limits too, sort of switch back and forth between freeze and what I've been told are over-the-top responses as well as also managing bit by bit to find a happy medium.
Thanks for your validation.
Advent has started. I live in a country where Advent plays a big role both culturally and religiously. I enjoy Advent, much more than Christmas if truth be told. I was at church this evening and we sang our first carol. It's more a carol for Advent than Christmas, so it's appropriate.
OTOH other topics are knocking at the door. Do I send FOO an email saying: "Enjoy the xmas season. Pls don't call" ? I'm certainly not writing Xmas cards to them. Card-writing is really strenuous for me. Writing in general triggers SH.
I've noticed for years now that if I write something I don't want to just because "you're meant to" that saps my energy terribly. Like I had a colleague a long time ago who tormented me at work in various ways. After she'd left, other colleagues heard that she'd got married and asked me to sign a card. I'd been in a very long phase of therapy by then and could feel what was good for me or not in certain ways. I refused to sign, because I knew my energy would disappear. So same thing with FOO. I need my energy for me and not to spend it on them. So no, I'd probably better not send an email to FOO.
But there are a few friends I'd like to send cards to. And there are a few children who get a present from me. Even though I like to choose or make presents, I then need a couple of days break before I can wrap them, then more break before I can take them to the post office. It's rather strange, but that's the way it is. I'm not quite sure what's behind it. Some extreme form of self-consciousness holding me back from giving the gift? In case it's not good enough or 'right' enough or something? Idk because it's not just that way with presents to little FOO members but to friends too. These are question marks for myself, because I simply do not know at this point. But it may come clear quite soon, now that I've written about it.
I realised today that I'm less EF-y than I have been for a while, in fact I started getting less EF-y yesterday. How can I tell? Yesterday I didn't feel like throwing the towel in anymore work-wise. In fact I even phoned a potential client! Today's been even better. Even though various small things have happened today that could each throw me for a loop on EF-y days.
hey, blueberry,
just wanted to let you know you're not alone with taking breaks between the various 'parts' of chores/errands. i also encounter energy depletion after each part, and need to rest between to build the energy up again. that's been happening for a long time for me. don't know why, either. big hug.
Thank you, san. It is good to know I'm not alone with this. :hug:
I've just thought right now that it could be connected to stress-avoidance. I can't hurry and rush anymore. I read that rushing tells our brain that it's an emergency situation. It makes sense to me that someone with CPTSD would want to avoid emergencies (unless you belong to the contingent who gets 'high' on it). When I think of doing all the steps towards getting those presents to the post office, in my mind's eye I see myself rushing around. So maybe it will work if I imagine myself doing it slowly, methodically step-by-step.
Yesterday my day was partially productive, and partially something came up that was pretty triggering. I went to bed really early to escape and because i couldn't face doing my Screen Processing. I did fall asleep right away which I don't usually. So today instead? Hm. I don't feel any more excited about it this morning. BUT I remind myself that I fortunately do have a method or two I can try and what was triggered won't get better by being ignored. It'll come back up again like a raging beast sometime, possibly in a situation where I can't take recourse to either of my processing methods. Better to start to deal now. I have therapy tomorrow morning after all, where i can get help with any remnants I don't manage to deal with on my own today.
Ah, it's great you're able to figure this out like that. Taking it slow first in your mind is needed to take it slow in real life after all. People are actors after all — they can only really do things when they first pretend to do so.
Nice that you're able to manage triggers like that and it's nice to see you were able to sleep earlier. We people with Cptsd could often really use the rest.
interesting about the 'rushing' theory. never thought of it. i think my thing with expectations would fall in there - it's a pressure to perform kind of thing. there are certain chores here in the house that we take turns doing, like cleaning the bathroom that 3 of us use. it takes me 2 days - 2 areas a few hours apart the first day, the third area on the next day. have never been able to do it all at once.
hope your session goes well. big hug, sweetie.
Quote from: sanmagic7 on December 04, 2017, 04:41:47 PM
there are certain chores here in the house that we take turns doing, like cleaning the bathroom that 3 of us use. it takes me 2 days - 2 areas a few hours apart the first day, the third area on the next day. have never been able to do it all at once.
This is how cleaning is for me, except way worse. I need
way more time. But I have only myself to please, so.... Still helps me to know I'm not the only one. It's presumably one of these CPTSD things. When I know that, it's easier to forgive myself.
good, altho, personally, i don't see that there's anything to forgive. i totally believe it's a c-ptsd thing. we've used up so much energy battling, so much fight and flight hormone stuff, i think we've exhausted those, and they need frequent recharging. that just came to me. that's what i'm going with. love and hugs, blueberry.
Forgiving myself means accepting myself the way I am instead of haranguing and criticising myself the way FOO did. And the way I, i.e. Inner Critic, still tend.
gotcha. i was thinking of the word 'forgive' a little differently. accepting ourselves as we are is also a very good thing. you're doing great, blueberry. kudos to you. big hug.
:hug:
There are two parts of me. Maybe it's just the conscious and the sub-conscious, I'll know better after I've written all this out. There's the part of me that keeps going in daily life and then there's the part that's processing therapy or whatever else has been going on of that type.
Yesterday after therapy, I went to a café as I often do, sat in a big comfy chair with a large mug of tea and wrote in my real paper diary as much as I could remember from therapy. I had also written some points during therapy. I do that because I tend to blot it all out again.
I had the feeling that a lot of aspects of healing are slotting into place again. :cheer: :cheer: But somehow made the mistake of thinking that yesterday's session wasn't particularly difficult. It was though. Just the number of realisations and possibly also the amount of "slotting into place" that was going on.
I don't go to 12 Step groups anymore, but a saying I did hear there comes to mind: "When you're in a bad way, go to your meeting. When you're doing well, run to your meeting". Can be hard for me to handle making progress, doing well. So as I don't go to 12 Step anymore, that means that I have to take special care of me in other ways after making progress.
Today I didn't take care of myself well. Didn't bother to get out of bed till the evening. Missed my dentist appointment at a new dentist's. Missed opportunities I had just to be among people on my own terms and have a bit of fun. But maybe I was taking care of the other part of me well, by staying in bed.
My T said to me a few months ago, which I forgot until yesterday. Something along the lines that if I start to feel unfocused. I need to rest. I need to cancel the rest of the day. And maybe step by step I will be able to remain focused for longer, if I allow myself the breaks in-between and not keep on pushing.
This is also after good sessions with my T, where things felt good and needed and not too hard. Only to later realise it hit me harder than I thought.
Maybe it's something similar for you? Since you're no longer doing the 12 step programme, maybe you need to take more often breaks after you've been pushed a bit, or done something challenging (regardless of how challenging it was for you).
Not sure if this made sense, I hope so.
Thank you Sceal, it does make sense! My T encourages me to allow 'down time' too. If I don't take it, then I remain in bed for the day and take it that way instead.
I haven't been in 12 Step groups for a long time. I remember some of the sayings, that's all.
My computer and Internet connection handily needed a break, so I gave them one and used the time to move to music aka allowed my body to move according to impulses, which usually allows stuck feelings to come unstuck.
wow, blueberry, sounds like lots of stuff going on for you. i'm a big proponent of 'down time', time just for self, however that means for a person, but just not 'doing' something, interacting, going somewhere - just being with you quietly, reading, writing in your diary, enjoying something that you especially like where you don't have to put out a lot of energy. a time to recharge, as it were.
i know that when i don't make enough of that time for myself, my body will make it for me. i'll get sick and can't do anything. not as much fun as voluntarily taking time to just be.
kudos to you, my dear. i don't do 12-step programs anymore, either, but some of the sayings are helpful, especially (to me) step by step. sounds like that's exactly what you're doing, taking this step by step. big hug.
I am spitting with rage about something in the not too distant past. It's not even about FOO but obviously a situation which reminds me of FOO otherwise it wouldn't go this deep or affect me this badly. I thought about writing a letter to not send but once I came on here, I discovered it's too early for that.
We touched on it in therapy this week so it's also not surprising that I've had so much difficulty doing anything constructive since. In fact my T suggested a topic for Screen Processing which I could do involving B1, but I haven't so far done that either.
I am beginning to realise that I will do that when I'm ready, but apparently I'm not ready yet.
I desperately need to have a shower, and I know that will make me feel better. And then this evening there is Open House at the local church with lots of singing after the church service. I would like to go, I think it will do me good. Showering first would be good though.
you go, blueberry! sounds like some good plans for today, some self-care and self-enjoyment. a great combo.
yep, you'll do what you need to do when you're ready. look at you - you're figuring this out so quickly now. a huge step of progress. it makes me smile for you.
thanks for posting about this. it's inspirational. big hug filled with good feelings and readiness.
Thank you san. It's inspirational? Really? Well, glad my post is of some use to somebody else.
~ ~ ~ ~
If I'm honest with myself, what I feel would do me best in the next few days is go back up to the farm to do my few hours on Monday morning. However, the weather forecast is pretty bad, or at least not too conducive to cycling at the time of the morning I need to to get there. Getting back home again in time for other morning appointment OK because by then it'll be daylight. If I'm also honest with myself, I don't specially like the selection of hymns we're meant to sing tomorrow evening at choir, so why not head to the farm tomorrow evening instead? Even though I 'should' go to choir. Except that Should is never good, for me. And the Monday morning farm work is good for me, so long as I have an impulse to do it! A bit like washing dishes. Fairly simple job with my hands, which helps me get regrounded. I also work with somebody else, which helps me too.
Atm I feel as if there are too many projects I'm meant to be involved in. "meant to be" is like "should" - not good for me. As usual there are people who will criticise me for not turning up to sing in the choir, though not our choir director. She told me a while back not to worry about it. But there are others in choir. They are just busybodies, they don't actually know what it's like to have CPTSD and be in healing. They seem to think it's a simple case of depression where it's best to go and join other people and get out of the house. Idk even if that's always the case when you have depression, but it is sure not the case with my healing from CPTSD, and I have said this! Do they listen? No. Big surprise there.
yes, really, it's inspirational. with all that you've had to deal with, blueberry, all that you're still being very honest about dealing with, to share this kind of progress shows hope that we can make it thru if we just keep moving. we all need to see such progress, as well as the fight to make it. you're doing so great. thank you.
i like that - should is not good for me. ain't that the truth! 'must', 'ought', 'meant to', 'it's your responsibility' and anything else in that line is linked to guilt and shame, in my mind. blueberry, you're shining. big warm loving hug to you.
It can be tough when people don't take your pain seriously. I get that. CPTSD makes people pretty weary. But your pain is real, and even if they don't listen to you, at least we will.
Take care, Blueberry. :hug:
Thanks DR and san :hug: :hug:
~~~
No farm, weather's too bad for me to get there. Decided against choir too. Just went to my expat Xmas party. I noted it was quite strenuous getting out of the house to go there. So it was good I left it at that and didn't force myself to go on from there to choir. When I was getting ready to go, I was jittery. It's good for me to notice my feelings sometimes.
After the expat party, I noticed a feeling of depression in the pit of my stomach. I used to always get that feeling whenever I was visiting a family, any family. Sometimes it felt more like sadness than like depression. Anyway I don't have that much any more, so that's a relief.
do you look on them as a surrogate family of sorts? sounds like it.
keep taking care of you. i give you so much credit for picking and choosing, being good to yourself. big hug, sweetie.
Quote from: sanmagic7 on December 11, 2017, 01:33:46 AM
do you look on them as a surrogate family of sorts? sounds like it.
No actually, not really. For other members, especially those who never learned the local language that well, it's a surrogate extended family. But that's not my case. I'm pretty well integrated locally.
I think it was more having contact with a bunch of 'normal' people my age and older who have 'normal' lives and especially careers that was triggering. Nobody even talked about jobs or careers! It's just me who immediately has these weird ideas.
Added later: I think also connected to mixing with ex-pats from FOO's homeland, and Christmas connects you to traditions from childhood anyway. Shows me once again how important it is that I live in a totally different country from the whole of FOO. Often just the thought of living in and/or trying to work in either of the countries I grew up in is massively triggering.
I relate to feeling different sometimes. Seeing people live normal lives is oddly surreal to me sometimes. Even outside the CPTSD, I can be pretty different in many ways.
Well, I guess the different can always hang out with other different people like this forum. Heh.
"The different hang out with the different.." DR, that's undoubtedly why I come to this forum (almost) daily. I was doing that long before I became a Mod. From day one really. ;)
Now I've finished all my reading as Mod. There are more posts I'd like to respond to, but I just can't. So I'm choosing myself and my health and I'm not responding.
I even got sent a little freelance work today of the type I don't do anymore but since it really is super easy, I agreed to do it. I need my concentration for that. It's not super easy emotionally-speaking of course but I could do with the money and it's the easiest version of the freelance work I "don't do anymore".
Quote from: Blueberry on July 13, 2017, 09:40:04 PM
My T also said that things that need to be worked on and to be healed will keep coming back up to the surface in some form or other (tiredness, colds and flu, addictions, nightmares) so long as I don't work on them actively. You can't keep pushing them away, postponing them till whenever. No, I have to promise myself that I will look at a particular 'topic' by a specific date that is not too far away (like the weekend or next T session). I wasn't doing that. I have to be reliable to myself about this kind of thing! The 'have to' in that sentence doesn't even bother me. :)
NTS again! Because my eating addiction is way up AND I'm pushing topics I should work on away.
I copied this out of one of my Employment posts. Unfortunately the 'have to' is bothering me right now. My throat feels all choked up. So the other NTS is: yeeees, but take it slowly.
I feel very contradictory today, I mean as if I'm contradicting myself internally.
I'm going to post a bit more about my reactions to this thread of my own: http://outofthefog.net/C-PTSD/forum/index.php?topic=8398.0
So apart from having enough energy to go off and do some cleaning, which really equals channelling the anger into something constructive to me, I also went to choir practice and sang unashamedly full of gusto though I missed lots of practices since September and think I can't sing at all anymore. I intended to go and whisper-sing. I really actually do have problems singing, even that seems to be CPTSD-related. So it's really good when I don't feel self-conscious and just sing, whether or not I hit the correct notes. As I posted over on the other thread the channel (my stove-pipe) from my guts up to my mouth got freed with this expression of my anger.
I have got an email response to my anger, but I haven't read it. I just decided to leave it as is, and go with allowing this anger. Just a few days ago, I thought that there's no way I can express anger in LETS because I'd be making myself vulnerable and so on, but in a certain way I already felt vulnerable. It's one of the reasons I refused to go to any more meetings and have hardly taken advantage of help despite the fact that I have credit in points. That's all pretty EF-y.
So now that I've expressed anger, I feel as if I don't have to hide all my feelings away. I don't want to blow a fuse in quite that way in my own FOO (yet) because I don't want to quite burn all those bridges (e.g. the inheritance bridge). I have less hesistancy in LETS. They deserve a whole pile of anger.
The head honcho at the time I was in the Steering Committee, well, she was actually self-appointed Head Honcho and everybody went along with that though according to the Statutes, we didn't have a Head Honcho. Anyway it occurred to me today after my angry email, that she's waify. She used her waify-ness to avoid taking responsibility. She was always making excuses. This was pretty triggering for me because enF made excuses for M, and M made excuses for B1 and B1 used these same excuses for himself (throughout my childhood and teenage years) and the last time I had contact with the whole of FOO, B1 made excuses for SIL2 (ie. not even his own wife but our joint SIL!!). And somehow, I'm just meant to stick it all. B1 even said that my problems with SIL2 were just a projection. But they weren't and aren't.
It's the same with my problems in LETS - these problems (denial and waify-ness and refusal to follow own rules...) they really did exist and still do to some degree. There were people who left LETS because of these problems and other people who didn't use it as much as they could have, which is not good for the overall running of the system. So I mean I didn't invent these problems but because they trigger me in about 3 different ways, it's been harder for me to get over it. I think I stepped down from my post 1 1/2 years ago, but it might have been 2 1/2 years ago. Yikes. But it is the way it is. It often takes a long time for the wheels to turn internally, for me to figure out exactly what's wrong cognitively and emotionally and then be able to work on it.
My T suggested I do some Screen Processing on B1 finding fault with my argumentation in the past (childhood / teenage years). It was a bit like the donkey and the carrot (you have to argue better / present your arguments better and then we might believe you) but actually it was more like moving goal posts because however I presented my arguments, there was always something, some logical argument I'd missed or somewhere where they could prove I was wrong because they were better at debating etc and so they didn't believe me. Actually my brain used to blank and still does, so EFs, when arguments get difficult. Anyway, I could be putting this issue with B1 on my imaginary Screen but have so far not.
OTOH when I feel other people are arguing illogically or are ignoring and/or distorting facts, I get enraged, which is also probably an EF based on FOO stuff. Maybe I'm then also behaving a bit like FOO in shooting other people's arguments down. Idk and it's probably too early for me to deal with that emotionally, if it's the case. Though actually in FOO's case, it was more a kind of sport, rather than needing to argue a point in order to then move forwards with decision-making (or follow statutes etc.) so maybe I've just been maligning myself needlessly. It was also often more or less the only subject of conversation, e.g. at the dinner table, and as I was still trying to engage with FOO 25 - 30 years ago, I joined in. Though I do remember once on my birthday, I objected to them having that as conversation and when I was asked what I wanted to talk about instead, I replied that I would prefer to have no conversation at all. They were pretty surprised, possibly even shocked, but they did comply that one meal.
blueberry, it sounds like you are doing a lot of processing on a lot of levels. whew! that anger stuff is a doozy all on its own for nearly all of us - either it's not there, or it's right there all the time, or it has to be coaxed out of hiding, but usually the overriding theme is fear of it.
sounds like you're getting a handle on yours, and kudos to you for that.
maybe there's still a lot tied up with your b1 stuff, and that's what's keeping you from doing what you had set a goal to do. just a thought.
i am really glad for you about singing out. you've talked about singing before, and how it hits different parts of our brains than when we talk. now that i think of it, wow, you just triggered something for me (not a bad thing) that i hadn't really consciously processed before.
i used to love to sing, enjoyed it, always sang along with the radio in the car, etc. i've stopped singing many years ago, and i see now that i was shamed into stopping by my narc daughter. wow - does this stir up a bunch of feelings inside my body. thank you for this, blueberry. ugly stuff for me, but something i can put a finger on now and process. possibly someday i shall sing again - even tho i'm not hitting all the right notes, like you said. that's not what's of the utmost importance, is it.
thanks, sweetie. sending a hug filled with that beautiful music we can make all by ourselves, and lots of love.
I was so angry last night I couldn't fall asleep and then I started sweating too.
I read one of the email replies to my angry email from yesterday, and actually it seems to have done some good. Because that which was 'not possible' has suddenly been done, which lessens some of the work I have to do because a third pary messed up, as usual in LETS.
Thanks for your validation, san. It really means alot. And yeah Idk always what to do with anger. Apparently it's not good for us to dwell on it, at least that's what I read last night in bed when I couldn't fall asleep anyway. OTOH just swallowing it down isn't the best either. Nor is self-harm, obviously. Though I don't recall doing any yesterday, certainly not when I was in bed too angry to fall asleep. I totally feel the emotion and there's no impulse in my fingers to do anything form of physical harm to myself. Interesting.
I sang alot as a smallish child but I was shut down. We moved and M couldn't deal with the move and I turned into SG. Not that moving had anything in the least to do with me. NOthing that rational. But I went into hiding so to speak. Apart from crying and being frightened and getting physical pain through tension, as children do, I didn't express much any more. Singing is a form of expression. When I sing out, I hit the notes better BTW. More relaxed probably, don't care if they're wrong. I hope you have the time and energy to process and then maybe go back to singing too. You're doing a lot of processing atm too.
Hmm. . . sometimes it's a good idea to dwell in anger, and sometimes it's a bad idea. When people feel angry, sometimes they really need to to grieve until it hits a certain point where they have to find some way to cope other than grieving. I somehow have an instinct for this as I examine how my own feelings stick around or lighten with different ways of coping. Just giving some ideas here, Blue. Glad you're not self harming.
I used to go to singing classes for a year as a distraction from my problems — as someone told me my voice had a lot of potential. It's a strange comfort somehow — especially when I do it less because I find it "fun" than I find it "healing". Still sing a little at times and can still hit certain notes. The greatest comfort I found isn't being able to express myself, it's being able to relate to someone else's situation in a song.
I hope you can find a way to heal with music, Blue. Take care. :hug:
Hi Blueberry,
You've been doing a lot of stuff lately - expressing yourself in your E-mail, and expressing some anger - I hope you're feeling better for having let some of it out and channelled it - I know you didn't sleep very well last night, so I hope that you get a better night's sleep tonight.
:hug: to you Blueberry.
Hope :)
Thank you Hope :hug: At least this morning I was so energised by my anger that I almost bounced out of bed. That was certainly useful, since I usually have a lot of trouble getting going.
DR, you are giving me some new ideas, thank you! :hug:
I feel calmer this evening than I did the rest of today and yesterday. I'm feeling the anger and rage less, so I suppose I actually got some of it out of my system.
Sometimes by the time I get through reading other posts as Mod and replying to some of them as well, I don't have any energy or words left to respond to posts made to me on my own threads. It's not that I don't appreciate responses... But since yesterday I note that I'm responding less to other people's posts. I think it's good to wait and see who all else on the forum responds. Just because I'm a Mod doesn't mean I have to 'save' everybody, though of course some threads and posts need more attention (like Welcome). So that's just my particular healing journey ;)
Originally I intended to go to the farm today, but then thought there were a number of things I ought to do for myself finally instead. Haven't done much of them either.
I bought a book today on forgiveness, though I had a good read of it in the shop first. According to this book, the first step to forgiving is understanding what was done to you and expressing it, they suggest in written form. The first step is not 'forgiving and forgetting', 'sweeping it under the rug' etc. I'll be interested to see where this book takes me. I felt pulled towards it emotionally rather than intellectually and that's a sign for me. I also hope the book might help me with forgiving myself more, which really means accepting myself as I am.
I've started reading the forgiveness book. It is a bit triggering. In my mind, I replace the "must" and "should" with "want". Maybe I'll even write them in the book, even tho I don't like defacing books. Before I read further it would be good to do some of the exercises, might help reduce triggers.
I'm glad you're getting calmer and learning something to help you. Forgiveness is a tricky concept to many of us. Often oversimplified negatively or postively, when it's often more complicated than it seems.
If you won't mind, would you mind sharing some of the info and your experience with them? Just an idea.
Take care, Blue.
When I'm ready, I'll undoubtedly share. ;D I share everything else on here after all.
I feel pretty drained and shaken. I also have a very very bad cold, which isn't helping any.
There are posts I'd like to reply to on here, but I'm not because my brain and my words go AWOL when the reply window opens...
I hope you have a good rest, Blueberry, and that you recuperate from your cold - take care
Hope :)
hope you feel better soonest. :hug:
Getting sick is never fun. Take care, Blue, and rest up as much as you can.
Thank you all! :hug:
So I've been reading a bit on forgiving and forgiveness. In the culture and language where the book is from when you pray for forgiveness, you actually ask for peace to be bestowed. I find that interesting, because when I'm feeling guilty or ashamed about something I've done in the present day, peace is certainly not in my mind or feelings! It would feel better if they were.
The other thing I'm thinking about is even if you think you are correct and the other person wrong so they ought to be apologising to you, it's good to step in their shoes for a minute and try and see how it feels from their perspective. I've been doing that a bit for a few people in LETS. That certainly calms me down a bit; I feel less like raging. OTOH I do think I need to be careful here, especially with FOO not to revert to seeing myself as bad and at fault and all that.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
The good thing about having a really bad cold is that I got on with some more of my Christmas post yesterday evening. Not that I'm sending much, but to a few friends, yes.
One of the bad things about having a cold is that they could have done with me at the farm on 3 different days this week and time-wise I could've done it, but I'm too sick to go up there in the cold, sneezing all over the produce too - better not.
Hi Blueberry,
Great that you got some of your Christmas post done yesterday, and that you're recuperating from your cold. I know you wanted to work on the Farm, but I feel sure they will be ok - and your health is important. Hope you feel better soon.
Hope :)
That's great Blue that you're learning. When I had more anger problems, I used the same technique. Trying to see how other people think and feel — trying to see how different events in their lives might affect their worldview . . . it really makes a difference to how we see them.
It reminded me of something I read in "The Mind Club", where how people saw their enemies or who they hated as often simplified versions of them. As often having no major problems or not having little likes or dislikes — such as loving jazz music or not having a sweet tooth. The more we find something we relate to others, the more we're kinder to them.
that whole forgiveness thing is a sticky wicket to me. i hope you're finding it helpful.
very good to hear you're getting some of that anger out. i can't help but think that's always a good thing, especially when it's something we've avoided.
big hug to you, blueberry
I came on to moderate, but notice I'm really tired. My brain is tired, my feet are tired, so at least I'm writing that to begin with. It's good for me to pause and think how I am doing instead of going to care for somebody or something else right away, 'sth else' being everybody else's posts in this case.
I'm actually beginning to get into a Christmassy mood. I went along to some carol singing on the street an hour or so ago. There was hot mulled wine too. The streets are all decorated, mostly with trees and lights. There's a bit of snow lying. Today I also got an invitation for Christmas lunch with the farming family where I sometimes work. Before and after I'll be in church services, partially singing myself and partially enjoying a really really good choir (not the one I'm in!). Bit by bit Christmas post has been arriving. I'm not bothering with branches this year, never mind a tree, because I still haven't tidied up my apartment :whistling: Maybe I'll have tidied up by next year.
Yesterday evening I was at a different farm up in the hills, buried in the snow. They had a big bonfire on the hillside and cooking fires as well with huge vats of soup and and pots of hot punch. St. Nicholas came by on a sled, pulled by an ox ;) Someone had brought various dried herbs to throw on the bonfire: St. John's wort to tempt the sun to come back, sage which is cleansing including spiritually / emotionally or if you've had a disagreement with somebody, and yarrow which helps strengthen you by centring you and something more which I've forgotten. At least, that's in my country. Folklore might say something else in a different country. Anyway, these 3 herbs were thrown one by one onto the bonfire and it reminded me that this is the time of year, when the year is coming to an end, that I look back at the year and think how things were, what's in store for next year, what my goals might be.
Today I was working at the normal farm, just a few hours really, then stay for the main meal and head home. Working at the farm makes me physically a bit tired but it also energises me because nobody there sits around for hours on end doing self-destructive things. Once I'm finished my own jobs, there are small children who like to be played with or read to, dishes to be washed, floors to be swept, meals to be helped with.... I refuse to cook, it's far too mentally confusing for me because triggering somehow for more than myself, but if I'm handed potatoes to peel I'll do so. So when I come home from the farm, I'm more likely to wash my own stack of dishes or do some tidying or cleaning than on another day where I've already worked a few hours.
blueberry, what beautiful traditions. they are so spiritual and festive at the same time. i've used sage as a cleansing agent in my homes through the years, and have been to native american spiritual sessions where sage is passed. i love the smell and the feeling i get from it.
i also love how we can get energized from energetic behaviors. i've had similar experiences and they're wonderful. i'm very glad for you that they work like that in your own life. very cool.
very glad that you can take stock of your self first before 'tending' to others. you are really moving right along in such a pos. way. i just love seeing this. big hug to you.
Thanks san for seeing the change in me and commenting. Made me smile right away. :hug:
So as written elsewhere, I'm exhausted. I feel more than I've felt for a while that it's an emotional exhaustion. But because I can't contain it just within my emotions, everything becomes exhausted. My body, my mind. It's been that way since I first completely collapsed 17-18 years ago, so CPTSD-related. Physical exhaustion also leads to mental and emotional exhaustion.
So yeah, a break from Modding is important atm. A little tidying including removing the stack of whatever on my favourite chair so I can sit in it and do some Screen Processing and / or EFT could also be on the agenda. Listening and moving to music. Colouring in. Sleeping. Dozing. Reading.
sounds like a plan, blueberry. a good one. enjoy - you deserve it. big restful, relaxing hug.
It must be stressful to be so hard on yourself all the time, Blue.
But I agree with San. I've seen the self care you've shown in your posts around the forum, and you're improving.
:hug:
Wishing you some peaceful time - and sending you a hug :hug:
Take care Blueberry
Hope :)
Quote from: DecimalRocket on December 28, 2017, 02:09:43 PM
It must be stressful to be so hard on yourself all the time, Blue.
Didn't notice I was doing that. It used to be way, way worse.
Well, I have been lying in bed dozing and reading and doing word puzzles. The other thing I'd most like to do is: eat. Not because I'm hungry but because it's soothing in some way. I know I could sit with my feelings instead or try and figure out what's behind it. Or do a few rounds of EFT. But I don't have enough motivation for any of that.
I could go back to bed of course. I don't eat there. It is evening, almost night so being in bed is completely legitimate.
Thanks for comments and hugs, Hope and san. :hug:
I hope you find a balance in how to approach your emotions. It's really hard work.
I wish you a good night's sleep! :hug:
Hi Blueberry,
I often turn to food as a source of 'comfort' and I know that it's probably better to see what is behind the urge to eat - but like you said, it can often be hard to do that, and eating is the result. I've eaten too much this Christmas.
I hope you've had a good day - that you're ok - and I want to thank you for all your support and help to me over 2017 - and I want to wish you the best for 2018. :hug: to you Blueberry.
Hope :)
Thank you so much Hope :hug: I had quite a good day. I went to a big lights display with other events going on round about. I particularly enjoyed the story teller tent. Heard fairy tales which were completely new to me.
I'm no longer so exhausted, but I have the feeling I'm coming down with something instead.
Particularly when I'm coming back up out of a bad phase, the only goal I have in life is eating. I may have other goals on paper, but they're not visceral at all. Somehow I can't get myself interested much at all. But that phase will pass too.
i've done the eating thing myself. when i say the words 'i don't care' to myself, i know i'm past the point of no return. it's not as bad as it was, but it's not where it could be. still working on that.
that lights display and other extra-curricular stuff sounds absolutely fabulous. very kind of medieval in a way that it's including fairy tales. how enchanting.
hope you're not getting sick. please take care of you as we move into the new year. big, warm, loving hug to you, sweetie. well, i'll have my medi-mask on in case of germs, but the hug will still be genuine. : )
I can relate to eating as a means of comfort too. It's somehow deeply soothing to munch on the salty taste of a potato chip and its crisp sound.
I guess some things can't be completely avoided when we're stressed. I think relapsing to some kind of addiction is some kind of rest. But not just for physical rest, but for the rest on willpower. To use up willpower with such a streneous effort each day is stressful, and indulging every once and a while is needed.
That doesn't mean you shouldn't work on it in the long term, but I'm sure you're the type to work too hard than laze around too much.
Hope you can rest, Blue. And not get sick again. You really need to take care of yourself these days.
:hug:
;) Actually I've been in bed all day, dozing and reading. And allowing myself to do this. :cheer: :cheer: :cheer:
~ ~ ~ ~
Yesterday a friend's husband, who has had contact with M and F and quite likes them, asked a neutral question about F. I answered. He asked a further question, more about F's plans. I answered that I have almost no contact to M and F atm so I don't know. Friend's h. was then quiet. I hope it stays that way. But still things are whirring in my head. Friend's h. would probably side with M and F. That kind of thing. I dreamt weird things too, not nightmares really, but being aged 12 and trying to get to school on time. Best to let those memories be atm.
Quote from: DecimalRocket on December 31, 2017, 07:04:40 AM
I guess some things can't be completely avoided when we're stressed. I think relapsing to some kind of addiction is some kind of rest. But not just for physical rest, but for the rest on willpower. To use up willpower with such a streneous effort each day is stressful, and indulging every once and a while is needed.
If only it were "every once and a while"! It used to be.
The only time I had my eating totally and utterly under control, I didn't have the energy for anything else, except I suppose looking after my pets and 12 Step groups. Other self-care for me? Nooooo. Some form of work? No. Creativity and fun? No. Reading? No. Housework? No. Finish washing the dishes? No. Hanging up the laundry? No. So, yeah, all my willpower was going into eating the way I'd been taught in-patient.
Re: strenuous - reminds me that last time I had a difficult piece of work to do in my contract work, I managed to finish only because I was munching cookies at the same time, or maybe during my break. But I knew: without these cookies, I will never finish. Which was one of the reasons I decided against doing that type of work again. OK since then I've taken on 2 small contracts but they were a sub-type that is per se much easier. That type of work is really, really strenous for me and my head.
Quote from: DecimalRocket on December 31, 2017, 07:04:40 AM
but I'm sure you're the type to work too hard than laze around too much.
So I've been told multiple times, and although I still find it difficult to believe, when the opposite is said or insinuated by Ts, I always get raging mad :pissed: :pissed: So that means that my not believing has to do with FOO.
Thanks for pointing these things out to me DR.
Quote from: DecimalRocket on December 31, 2017, 07:04:40 AM
You really need to take care of yourself these days.
There's a post on the Boards that I really think I
ought to answer but thanks to your suggestion that I take care of myself and coupled with my remembering that "ought to" is like "should" and Should is never good for me, I'm going to let it go. Somebody else has been and will continue to answer this other post. It doesn't have to be me all the time.
Tahanks once again DR :hug:
No problem, if you need more validation, I'll be up to it if I'm well enough.
And yes, again, you need rest. We all need it in different amounts, but everyone does. And people aren't supposed to judge how others need much rest based on how much energy it takes for something to do for them. So please respect your energy levels, not how others see it.
:hug:
Quote from: Blueberry on December 31, 2017, 04:28:53 PM
Yesterday a friend's husband, who has had contact with M and F and quite likes them, asked a neutral question about F. I answered. He asked a further question, more about F's plans. I answered that I have almost no contact to M and F atm so I don't know. Friend's h. was then quiet. I hope it stays that way. But still things are whirring in my head. Friend's h. would probably side with M and F. That kind of thing.
I think this is still affecting me. It doesn't take much to knock me off kilter and make me question what I'm doing, being VVVLC. Friend's h had PTSD due to a sudden medical condition. As far as I know, he's through T and healed and possibly expecting that I'll be healed at some point and go back to normal contact with FOO. Without realising that I can't. He's not somebody I feel comfortable talking about any of it to, so I don't, but I do know he picked up once that there was CSA in my FOO. Crazy to think I'd go back to FOO with that in the past. But the point is: I myself
did go back after a long period of VVVLC and NC. So can't be surprised when people who have little to no knowledge of CPTSD are still assuming I'll go back some day.
Difficult topic for me. Need to get to the point where I don't care what other people think of me.
i wish you the best with that, blueberry. try as i like to tell myself i don't care, way down deep i still do, and i don't like that i still do, so i guess (have to guess at this, cuz i'm not sure) i get angry with myself for still caring what others think. wow, suddenly in my head i started going on about 'it's stupid, i know', and 'i shouldn't care, but i do', and 'i hate it that i still care', and just a bunch of gunk came up. yuck.
wow, where that came from and why i don't know. i think i'm still kind of reeling from the holidays, and am not quite all put together yet. anyway, i truly understand and relate to what you're saying. going off kilter doesn't take much, especially around this time of year. i know that has to do with my nc daughter. too big a hole in my mother heart, and it will always be raw and sensitive.
i skirt around those kinds of questions as well, only want to answer so much and no more. don't want to share - there's so much invalidation out there. warm, loving hug to you, sweetie.
I want to be left in peace. B1 chose his path during Horrendous Event. I'm still healing and taking the time I need. I stayed up late posting on here, then didn't sleep a wink. Since I'm still eating my problems down, I got up a 5 AM and ate a raw carrot. NTS raw carrot on empty stomach is not helpful in the least. The opposite in fact.
I'm feeling out of sorts. Not just physically cuz of the carrot. No, sorting out my feelings on account of FOO and dealing with friendships and what I'm going to take or not - that's where I'm at. Sorting out limits in friendships automatically makes me wonder if FOO isn't right after all. NTS: that's once again ICr. speaking. ICr. sides with FOO. ICr. is having a field day. ICr. isn't right.
As I'd say to FOO if they could understand: you have to say 'No' when you mean it, instead of saying 'Yes". Same thing goes for me - I have to say to friends 'Sorry, can't hear your problems out atm'. I didn't yesterday when talking to the friend I'm going to see today. I need to learn to not be so accommodating. Now I'll feel bad if I go later today than planned, not for her but for my godson. Towards her, I'll not feel like a bad person, but more like a bad friend. Totally crazy. I know that for some of my friends, I'm the one good friend they can tell stuff to. I need to start protecting myself more. I'm carrying enough as it is. To one of those friends i've been suggesting other people, like what about Friend So-and-So, won't they listen? (Yes, she agreed, you're right, they will.)
As I wrote somewhere else, maybe even further back in this thread, it's a time of chaos in my head and feelings. I've been told in T, a long time ago now, that times of chaos are good! It means things are re-sorting.
Quote from: sanmagic7 on January 02, 2018, 02:08:04 PM
i wish you the best with that, blueberry. try as i like to tell myself i don't care, way down deep i still do, and i don't like that i still do, so i guess (have to guess at this, cuz i'm not sure) i get angry with myself for still caring what others think. wow, suddenly in my head i started going on about 'it's stupid, i know', and 'i shouldn't care, but i do', and 'i hate it that i still care', and just a bunch of gunk came up. yuck.
I'm sorry that brought up a bunch of gunk for you. :hug: :hug:
I actually am beginning to care
less. :thumbup:
I'm remembering in inpatient therapy I got the sentence to announce whenever I spoke: "I'm Blueberry and I couldn't give a * about anything", and then carried on with whatever I wanted to say. The asterix really was a bad word. It was empowering! Other patients asked "Why does she get to use that bad word??" My own T told me in private that it was because a lot of my energy was hiding behind this sentence. When I allowed myself to say the sentence, I allowed my own energy to come out to be used constructively for me.
It also allowed me to see more clearly what I did actually care about and what I only thought I cared about due to FOO influence. I'm sorting that kind of thing again atm.
I'm continuing my thoughts from my own post (Jan. 5, 2018) from this thread: http://outofthefog.net/C-PTSD/forum/index.php?topic=8509.msg60478#msg60478
In the aftermath of the last Horrendous FOO Event, a couple of Ts suggested strongly that I never spend time with any FOO members again without a very loyal friend from outside FOO with me, as a protector, a buffer, somebody FOR me. I'm thinking back to that now too. Contact with FOO other than via emails is so dangerous and so destructive for me that I really shouldn't allow it. I'm using "should" consciously because unfortunately internally I'm not far enough to be able to say "I'm not allowing it!" There's not much conviction or strength behind that sentence.
Another aspect to all this difficulty which has cropped up today is: one of the little kids is injured. Not really badly as far as I can make out, not life-threateningly. But it's obviously still not a time when I can confront FOO with anything, or would even want to. For the sake of little kid. But in FOO there never is a good time. I would always be causing somebody a problem; somebody would always object, because they don't want to know. So just a bunch of circular thoughts to no purpose.
Except that I realise: I'm a caring person. I don't want little kid to suffer, I want little kid to get better, their parents present emotionally for them to help healing. In spite of everything. If I treated FOO the way they treat me, I wouldn't give a hoot. I'd just go wading in whenever shooting my mouth off and destroying other people's swimming pool walls and then telling them their walls are obviously too weak or they set them up wrong or something. I'd find some reason to blame them.
Hey, Blue. Yes, I can relate to having problems with boundaries too. Though, instead of helping others too much, I distance and withdraw too much. Growing up with trauma does that to much of us, it seems.
Well, best of luck. You do deserve to say what you want and need too.
:hug:
I realised on the weekend that part of my problem is my loving, compassionate heart. I know I've been giving in the wrong place to the wrong people all these years. Forgiving FOO because they seemed to have understood and seemed to have improved, only for them to continue their abuse in some other way or form. Not realising till the last Horrendous Event not just how clueless they are about their own behaviour towards me, but how callous too.
Or maybe they're not even clueless? I think M is possibly Borderline, witch variety. Up until now I haven't dared think what the males in FOO might be or have, except that F enables and B1 (as with M) could possibly be traumatised too, but neither of them are working on healing themselves. No, just seeing the problem in me. F always gets of scot-free. Everybody thinks he's a great guy. If anybody in our family has a problem it's me. And if it's not me, then it's M. The males? Innocent as the day they were born, in their own eyes, and in each others' mostly too. M isn't innocent, she is and was abusive.
Bit by bit, memory by tiny memory, things become clearer. As I keep realising more and more of the verbal / emotional / psychological abuse. At some point, it'll be enough for me to
:blowup: or else I'll feel in a safe enough place to do so. Not around FOO. They just use that as proof for themselves that I'm crazy, volatile, difficult etc. B1 and M nicely forgetting their own explosive and abusive behaviour towards me when I was growing up. And although F seems more of an innocent, enabler type, 'hounded' by his own wife and all that kind of nonsense, atm I notice how much I fear standing up to him.
I also fear finding out I've been hoodwinked all these years. I would feel that way if I discovered his problems are more than 'just depression', like if he turns out to be a covert narc or something.
I'm going to put some of my posts from over at the old server in here.
Post from Feb. 2nd
I really miss OOTS in its proper form! Where we can post and know that everything will be saved. And where far more of the community are reading and posting, and therefore also validating and supporting, than are doing atm.
I've started writing some of my pain and grief at OOTF, but there I get far fewer responses, sometimes none at all. I also write differently there. Like in my earlier time on this forum. It's harder for me to link emotions and thoughts. Or maybe better said: I can write what happened in my childhood, but I can't feel the emotions, I can't express the anger and grief I'm feeling or ought to be feeling at what was done to me.
:cheer: Brainwave: :cheer:
I guess what I could do when OOTS is finally running again properly is copy the posts I made over on OOTF into the relevant sections here and edit them to what I'm feeling at that moment. Because at that moment of writing on OOTS I'll be feeling different anyway - more acceptance, validation and understanding of me here, and you know me here which many on OOTF probably don't feel they do. With all that in mind, it makes sense that my posts on here end up different and are more healing for me.
Quote from: Hope66 on November 23, 2017, 08:25:20 PM
Blueberry, I think your niece will like the present that you have chosen for her - I certainly hope so anyway. Because you are thoughtful, and because you care. :hug: to you.
Hope :)
She did! B2 sent a short email to say that.
:cheer: Really great. Glad she did. :)
Hope :)