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Yay, Kizzie... it's great that OOTS is being included in the WHO's conversation about the definition of CPTSD.

I echo that! And it's thanks to Kizzie's work that we're being included.    Kizzie

Noticing further progress, and noticing is beneficial. My usual coping mechanisms like eating, SH, giving up and going to bed or 'wasting time' aka putting off and procrastinating are not working, obviously. But now I'm really noticing it. They aren't working and I *have to* find another way of getting through this contract. Today I'm not even resorting to eating when I shouldn't be or eating anything that I shouldn't be - because it's not working. Usually I wouldn't care that it's not working, I'd do it anyway.

SH - well I'm doing a little of it semi-automatically while I work, but I'm stopping myself faster than I was yesterday, and I'm not doing it in a way that hurts, the way I was yesterday. Now it's more a kind of absent-minded and 'soothing' activity as opposed to self-punishment.

More healthy coping: today when I noticed my body really wanted to move and I wanted to enjoy a little of that sunshine, I went out for a little walk. Often I feel too self-conscious to go outside, I want to stay inside and hide from the world. But my body knew it needed to move so the impulse to do so overrode my feelings of self-consciousness and whatever else was there.

And just now I put some music on and allowed my body to move as its impulses were. I wouldn't say 'dancing' really. It's more a way to allow whatever emotions were trapped and causing blockages to be released which will hopefully de-fog my brain as well.

The whole thing feels like a breakthrough. I think it's the first time I've noticed in such a deep way that my old mechanisms don't work! They're not beneficial.

Thx Hope 

It's beneficial for me to notice today that there are no SI thoughts going through my head about this contract work that's so difficult. Not that long ago (weeks? months?) there would have been. I never would've acted on those SI thoughts but they would've been passing thru my mind like 'you might as well throw in the towel' in a more literal sense though.

I wouldn't have acted on them but they showed the amount of desperation I used to feel and the amount of  effect. I guess I'm managing to not get sucked totally into an EF and I'm managing to stay better in a healthy form of my Adult. I'm not disappearing into a teenage form of myself (which used to happen in various types of my professional work) who is / was in absolutely no state to do this professional work. Neither psychological state nor intellectual/comprehension level, or organisational skills or even linguistic. That sentence isn't very well worded or constructed but I'm leaving it!

1) I felt a physical need to go for a walk and I acted on it 
2) I managed to find a few rays of sun on my walk
3) Bit by bit I'm finding solutions for all the individual problems in the contract work I'm doing.

Now I know what the bad habit is: it's the hope that some entity outside myself will galvanise me into action when I can't do it myself. Most of last week I spent in a very depressive state, couldn't get out of the house etc. My T suggests I should be kind to myself in this state, knowing it's part of an EF, and not expect myself to move mountains.

But instead of being kind to myself and understanding of myself, I grabbed at a chance of an outside entity to pull me back up. That used to work, sort of anyway, but it doesn't anymore. As a teenager / young adult I would've liked shock therapy because, yes, I believed some outside entity could galvanise me into action. I never got shock therapy (though someone else in FOO did).

I'm not suggesting shock therapy works, in fact I bet it would just be retraumatising for me or something, but obviously there's still a part of me that doesn't believe in the slow, bit-by-bit work towards some manner of healing and towards some way of earning a bit more money.

The outside entity: I have a deadline = pressure; I could be sued if I mess up = fear; and some more that I don't even want to write down.

NTS in future: avoid at all costs. It just isn't worth it. Not a contract that is this difficult.   

No other replies, huh? I guess people think I'm crazy after all.

I don't think you're crazy. I'm just having a super difficult weekend myself. I wasn't in a good place all week either though for different reasons.

Thanks blues_cruise. It's a bit different in my case because I'm self-employed and do contract work. I could've said 'no' but  I didn't. I usually do say 'no' because I'm officially taking a break from this part of my profession.

Somehow my brain shut down on Friday. And/or partly FOO isn't getting back to me about money combined with I have been starting to feel ready to attempt to do other work, other than profession-related, which is good because then I would be earning a bit more of my own money. But instead of looking into the low-skilled, exceedingly part-time work I saw advertised in the paper, I go  I'll do this super difficult contract   

Maybe it was an EF that led me into this situation. How am I dealing with it? Eating. And procrastinating. I have started, yes.

This is just an analogy. I can ride a bike, so I offer to teach somebody to drive a car so they'll pass their test on Tuesday. That's the kind of mess I'm looking at. Except there's nobody else I can pass the work on to because it just doesn't work that way.

Another bad habit of mine, which maybe ties in a bit with feeling responsible for other's well-being:

When somebody 'needs' me to do work for them - for pay - there are times when I seem to shut down my brain and yell  of course I'll do it for you! Instead of realising that it's way too hard for me and that it's the other's duty to go find somebody else. I'm not quite sure what the 'theme' is here: feeling 'needed' maybe? So I have my spot on this earth? Something like that.

Anyway, babbling about it is not going to get the work done. I'll definitely be having a couple of Difficult Days. e.g. last night I dreamed for what seemed like hours about doing a form of SH that I've actually stopped doing...

  to you Rowan.

Unfortunately, I bit off more than I can chew.  But I'm going to have to push through with it anyway. Should have declined. Should have declined. Should have declined. But I can't now. Too late. If I'm lucky another freelance colleague might help me with part of it tomorrow.

I'm making some progress here too. When I have that feeling about "best throw in the towel" work-wise, I recognise it immediately as an EF and don't bother going into the feeling any further. Or thinking any further on working or not.

Today I even accepted a contract of the type of work I'm not doing    but I don't feel like throwing in the towel. I'm just going to start getting on with it. 

  Dee

post from old server entitled 'non-comprehension'

on: January 29, 2018, 04:53:01 PM »
                I've had to tell somebody for the second time in a few weeks and the third time in about 6 months that I have next to no contact with FOO so I don't know the answer to his question, he needs to ask FOO directly. He's not really a friend, I'm friends with his wife, good friends in fact.
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Elphanigh

Re: non-comprehension
« Reply #1 on: January 29, 2018, 06:39:59 PM »
That is so frustrating Blueberry! I am sorry to hear that is still happening, but glad you are obviously standing your ground with him
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sanmagic7
   
Re: non-comprehension
« Reply #2 on: January 30, 2018, 09:19:51 AM »
i hate it when people want to use me as a middle-person, instead of doing their own questioning, talking, whatever.  i used to love it, funnily enough, when i thought i needed to be in the middle of everyone's business.  i'm glad those days are gone.  sorry these people have attempted to put you in that position again and again.  hoping it stops soon.  glad you're taking care of you and standing your ground.  big hug, sweetie.
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Blueberry

    Re: non-comprehension
« Reply #3 on: January 31, 2018 »
Actually his wife, my friend, has stopped. Once I explained roughly why and also said that if she passes information on to them about me, she is undermining my boundary-setting towards my parents. She realises I mean business. I think I detect a slight change in the friendship. I can't really put a word to the change yet. But it's still a good friendship.

I've never been that close to her husband anyway. He's a lot older than me too. I'm not sure how seriously he even takes me. My not feeling close means that I don't want to explain why I've reduced contact to FOO and don't want to be asked about them. I also feel that I can hardly ask his wife to remind him to shut the * up and leave me in peace if I'm telling them they have to contact my parents directly. Then surely I should deal with her h directly too?

 Reply #11 on: January 31, 2018, (from old server)

One of the biggest issues I have with myself is hardly being able to work and certainly not being able to work enough to earn my keep, but OTOH due to other issues I have like the amount of effort that goes into setting boundaries, I sure would not want to go back to roommates, in order to spend less money on rent. It was OK when I was a student, but I couldn't imagine it now.

I think that if I'd grown up with less emotional and psychological abuse alot of things - including earning enough money to live off - would have been a lot easier. I'm intelligent, I have good qualifications, I have good, useful and creative ideas, I'm a hard worker, I'm responsible and I used to be reliable. When it comes to decision-making, IC gets pretty loud and I self-harm compulsively. If any person puts pressure on me now, I go into an EF where all sorts of bad things can happen, especially brain blockages.

I think that if I'd grown up without physical and sexual abuse I wouldn't be so frightened of intimate relationships and I might even have had a partner at some point in my life.

Despite the good I got from FOO, I do feel robbed if I think about it.

I copied what I think are all my remaining posts from this thread that were still on the old server over here 

Since I do re-read what I've written quite often in order to see the wisdom I came up with previously for a problem, or in order to see how far I've progressed, it's important for me to have my old posts too.

It's often quite confusing for me to do this type of thing. My brain goes all foggy so  for me.