Menu

Show posts

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.

Show posts Menu

Topics - annakoen

#1
Letters of Recovery / Letter to my inner child
October 30, 2018, 07:28:00 AM
I wanted to write a letter to my father, yelling: you *, you made me terrified of cancer!

But I realize what I need, what my inner child needs is reassurance. So here goes.

Dear little Anna,
I know how much the cancer disease scares you. Your father dumped inappropriate information about adults dying of that disease on you. And you couldn't cope. You were too young to be able to handle that information. I know how it terrified you. How you lay awake at night, terrified at the thought of having cancer.

Please know this:
- The odds of not having cancer are greater than the odds of having it.
- We will have to figure out, together, what bodily changes are normal as we age.
- I'll speak up for the both of us when we are worried

I can't ask you to have faith. You weren't given any when you were young. All I can tell you is that we will live life the best we can, and care for our body the best we can.

Look at the family tree. Mom has never been sick. Her parents are in their eighties. Dads side of the family is different, but look dad's drowning his body in alcohol and he's in his sixties. Grandpa was 71, but he was overweight. He could have gone on to in his eighties, nineties maybe.

I know what you're thinking: dad's mom died when she was 42, of liver cancer. I can't take that fact away. But here's what I can say: Healthcare is better now. And your odds of cancer aren't any higher than that of anyone else.

I don't know what else to say. I'd like to ask you to not be so afraid. But that's not fair, you've had to hide your fear your entire childhood.

So maybe it's time to learn how to be afraid. Just like a lot of other people. Being scared isn't fun. It's awful. But if you tell me what you're scared about, I'll do my best to listen, take appropriate action, and comfort you.

I hope it's enough.
#2
I wrote about this in my journal once before and I'm wondering if anyone else recognizes this.
I also have PTSD-type flashbacks, but more often than not I find myself in a flash 'forward', a hypothetical one. For example, I am now 'flashing' towards a situation where my father or mother would be in a therapists' office (will NEVER happen) and going over all the things I want/need to say. Imaginary angering, 'proving' what is wrong with them. I used to have this when biking to work, I would, in my mind, go over highly threatening situations that, in reality, never came to be. These are emotional flash-forwards, where hope, anxiety, fear and anger all come together in an imaginary situation that I play over and over and over and over in my head.

Does anyone recognize this? It's maddening
#3
Just found this:

https://www.buzzfeed.com/javiermoreno/this-artist-is-making-intense-drawings-highlighting-mental-h

The image for PTSD, for me it also depicts my C-PTSD. Amazing.

(Tried to post this with attachment, the upload folder is full it says. Now it's saying I already submitted this post but I don't see it...)
#4
Letters of Recovery / Letter to my father
October 19, 2016, 11:34:06 AM
Dad,

I've told myself I would write this letter, so that I may voice what bothers me, without having to go through the usual motions of you nearly starting to cry and me feeling guilty for having voiced anything. I know you feel truly remorseful for the fact that my little brother and me grew up in a war zone, but you always end up making it about how your life didn't work out the way you intended. You're always in learned helplessness mode. It's just how you are, I guess. Or at least, how you have become. You are traumatized yourself. You had an accident when you were younger and I think you have brain damage. Grandpa had PTSD from the war and selective mutism (yes, there is a word for people who never talk). Grandma I never knew because she died from cancer when you were a teenager. Nobody ever taught you how to mourn and so when I was six, you would go on and on about the day your mother died. You never told me anything else. Nobody told me anything about who I am, to build character and to support me in my challenges as gifted and highly sensitive young girl. It was always about you. When I was a teenager, you were afraid of my growing up. I know now it is because you were afraid of me becoming a separate person. I always felt I had to stay at home and be your surrogate mother and wife. I'm glad I didn't and moved out when I was 20.

You married a woman with autism. You've threatened to kill her, divorce her, you've said all sorts of awful things behind her back. But you never did, because you are afraid of being vulnerable.

Your brother died two years ago and now you are alone. You have been in mental pain your entire life. And you drink. I know you have been drinking like crazy, 'cause mom said you had mentioned that if you weren't allowed to drink, you didn't want to live anymore.

And you used to get so angry.

You were such an angry thirty-five year old, forty year old, and we were so afraid of you. It doesn't matter that you never hit us, you gave me the sense that there is no safe place in the world, that at any time anyone can burst out of their skin and threaten to hit me with a balled fist and red face.

And you've programmed me to be worried about you, always. From the time I could talk, you found out I had loads of empathy. Empathy mom with her undiagnosed autism doesn't have. And you abused it. You came to me for all your troubles, and pains, from age 6 onwards. And now I am empty. I have so little empathy left to give to anyone, I don't even know how to be emphatic towards myself. All I was ever taught is that empathy is a bucket of ice cream that other people will take from you and eat everything from, not leaving anything for you, never replenishing it.

You have taught me that there is nobody who will care for me. Instead, I had to care for you. You have taught me to be hyper vigilant, to expect danger in the form of being emotionally used and abused around every corner. I am terrified at work. Someone else taught me how to mourn the death of grandpa, because the only coping mechanism you have is alcohol.

During a surgery the anesthetics that was supposed to wear off within a few hours, didn't wear off for a whole day. I know for sure now that your liver has gone to *. You're in your early sixties and every day I expect a phone call that your liver has given out and you're in hospital. Or that you killed yourself.

I have always known that you are who you are because of what happened to you. But * man, pull yourself together and find a therapist. I'm done with always having a background thought worrying about you, even though I live on the other side of the country.

I'm going to visit an adult children of alcoholics support group in two weeks. See what that brings me.
I'm done being so scared of the world.
I'm done worrying.
I know it's not your fault for being this way, life happened to you, trauma and brain damage happened to you.
But sometimes I wonder... am I really your daughter? Because I'm in therapy, I sought out help and am still seeking help. I will not sit in a corner and hide, like you do, I will engage in the world the best I can and do what I must, even if it is briefly enduring discomfort to learn, to have a happier life. I wonder who I got this strength from. My therapist wonders about this too. I'm happy I'm strong, even though I sometimes push myself too hard to do things when my highly sensitive body is screaming at me please don't. But I am strong enough to dare to be vulnerable. That's a gift I don't know where I found but I'm cherishing it.
#5
Recovery Journals / annakoen's journal
June 01, 2016, 01:29:27 PM
I've joined support groups for children of autistic parents. Haven't joined a support group for children of alcoholics yet, but I'm seriously considering it. In the meantime, I've decided that writing a recovery journal might be a good thing to do. The positive word "recovery" in "recovery journal" might help me keep an eye on the road I *want* to be traveling so that I may slowly make my way towards it. I once did a car skid training thing, where the one thing they kept repeating was "Once the car starts to skid, don't look at where you don't want to go. Look at where you want to go. Your hands will steer towards where you are looking".

Where do I want to go?

I want to feel more calm and in peace with my life. In my private life, I have a great husband (talked about him in the first thread I opened) and things are well. However, work is a major pain in the *. I causes me loads and shitloads of anxiety. Which isn't a lot of fun for my hubby of course, in the long run this puts a strain on our relationship. I keep falling back into anxiety and I want to find a way to manage that.

So, for this journal, that's going to be my main topic for now: How to manage my anxiety with respect to my job.

What I'm doing currently: I take three walks a day during work, one at 10 AM, one around noon and one around 3PM. I have marked it in my calendar and my computer at work pops up a reminder at those times.
#6
Hi all,

I'm new here and feel like I should write up an introduction first, but for some reason I'm struggling. I've rewritten this post over and over, there just aren't enough words to describe what I'm struggling with.

Quite frankly, my story is just .. it's too much. I can't write it all down or it'll be a book. It's been a * growing up with my parents, who were both emotionally dependent on me as a child but never actually *saw* me for me. I've never felt safe, or loved. Nobody realized I'm in the gifted range. Nobody *helped* me as a child, with my anxieties, my sensitivities. I stopped interacting with the world and my social confidence and skills have suffered.

It's been 7+ years in therapy since I first discovered the word 'parentification'. I knew my relationship with my dad wasn't healthy. He always leaned on me for support from age 5 upwards. He's an alcoholic in denial. Told me he'd throw my mother off a mountain on holiday. (Can you imagine what it's like to be disappointed when *both* your parents come back from holiday?) Would tell me about sexual and financial problems from as young as I can remember. He would confide *everything* in me, regardless of whether it was age appropriate. I knew about his mother dying when he was 15 (traumatic for him) when I was around 8. He was afraid of me growing up to become a woman and would tell me I should "hit puberty in your own time", i.e. he didn't want me to reach puberty. When I finally made a (female) friend, he could not cope with that and told me he'd be fine if I was a lesbian, right when I was hitting puberty and got all confused. I thought he meant that I then *should become* a lesbian, because my dad wanted me to. I realized I wasn't a lesbian and at some point got a boyfriend. My dad was jealous, would always be pouting when I went out. He would never say these things, instead he would get drunk and tell them to my mother, who would then tell me, with a weird expression on her face.

It's only since last year that I realized my mother has autism. She just has no clue. TBH, she *wanted* to be a good mother but her autism really crippled me as a child. I had no adults in my life who helped me in my journey from baby to growing up. She didn't even know why I cried as a child and whether I was hungry or not. This led to her stopping breast feeding because I "never wanted to drink anyway". I'm just so angry. It's so unfair. A mother should be able to be intuitively emotionally empathic and responsive with her children.

There were so many fights in our home. My parents only really saw me when I cheered them up, when I emotionally supported them or when I tried to 'fix' their marriage. The few emotions my mother recognized in me, she put up for display for all to see by pointing them out with a loud, childish voice. I have huge anxiety issues, feeling 'never good enough'.

It's just so heartbreaking to realize that I've never asked my parents for help, as I grew up. I knew they wouldn't be able to meet the expectations.

There was just no emotional reciprocity when I grew up. Nobody seemed to be able to really really *show* that they gave a * about me. Sure, they repeated the words. Afterwards, I wish I could go back in time to yell at them "SHOW, DON'T TELL!". I considered running away as a child, hoped that someone would ring the doorbell and tell me I was adopted and that my real parents wanted me back, I considered setting the house on fire. I was afraid of my parents, because they would never support me but always come with their own issues or point out my emotions without really *helping* me cope.

I've finally found a therapist who *gets* my issues, even if I don't quite seem to "get" them myself. I just can't seem to be able to cope with life, working life in specific. I am overwhelmed, anxious, exhausted. I haven't held on to a job for 2 years, I get anxious and have to flee. All employers are happy with my work and surprised when I quit. But I just can't handle it.

I feel so tired. I just want to quit my job, I want to quit working, but am unable to give myself permission. My husband (yes, I'm in a happy and, surprisingly, very healthy relationship... it's ok if you don't believe me, my therapist is very surprised as well since statistically speaking it's very unlikely) has told me on various anxiety-filled occasions that he's willing to provide for the both of us, that he wants me to be happy and that if delivering mail is what gives me peace of mind, I should go ahead and do that. God, I'm all emotional now, he's awesome. And yet, somehow, I can't. I *must* continue, I must be strong, I may not quit. But I so desparately want to. At home, I feel safe, I can relax, I hardly ever have anxiety attacks like I do at work.

I've got a therapist who gets my issues now, who has confirmed what I've always felt, that I've been "emotionally raped". On the one hand I'm thinking this is a festering wound that is finally opening up and starting to bleed, but god it hurts so much. Does this ever get better?

Sorry to barge in with this story, but I am hoping here I can find people who are going through the same things I am... Please, does someone understand?