Not enough

[ellachimera]

This sense of self-hatred, like anything I do is useless and will lead nowhere, the sense that stops me from applying focus and determination to anything I do.

This sense of urgency, like there's always something better to do than what I am actually doing, from washing dishes to coding, to reading a book etc, even though it's usually not defined, I end up just browsing mindlessly things way below my intelligence and thus dumbing down all of my day and ultimately my own self.

Her voice in my head disappeared, I have instead internalized her attitude towards me, believing the things that she used to say or show to me about my own uselessness. I am an adult and now I am the one not allowing myself to watch a good movie, read a good book, play a good game or follow through with a rewarding hobby.

It needs to stop. All this.

I'm at the end of my wits about it.

[woodsgnome]

I've been on that same up but mostly down wild ride with my self-outlook. I can tell myself over and over and over the upside --there's actually lots of things that are extremely commendable in my story, even obvious. Yet I feel I don't deserve any good vibes. This is one of the key stumbling blocks and often I don't feel like getting up anymore.

Yet so much of the cultural messages about this turns it back on the victim, and it becomes easy to internalize that. There's a famous author who prats about this and gets accolades for labeling those who suffer from abusive hangovers as defective, coining the term 'woundology' to describe their life patterns and coming just short of suggesting that the abused like wallowing in their misery as a way to define their rotten lives. Experts like that know only how to pile it on, and can hide wonderfully behind their self-importance.

Which makes for an additional stumbling block -- expert opinions that do a grand job of voiding the victim's own being. So okay, is it wallowing in misery that we're even on this forum trying to find our way through the thickets? Is it okay to have experts critique, not in the interests of those who need help but instead kind of subverting any legit help they say they're about? Are we too sensitive? I wonder why.

We can end up with such narrow outlooks when all the helpers can offer is thinly-disguised contempt. Oh well, at least we're used to shucking off the hurt while still pursuing whatever's left of the dream of peace -- inside and out. I just hope for that, and finding a way up from the void, even after I've slipped back again so often.

As you point out, ellachimera, we internalize these negative voices even when they physically fade into the background. I guess the only way i've found to begin anew is to treat the old as the old movie, and look on each day as a blank page of a new approach to life. The negative vibes (including the expert opinions) get stuck in the old while I do everything I can come up with in building the new frame for life. Some woundology that is!

[ellachimera]

Woodsgnome, woundology or not, I've never in my life been able to channel my dark side somewhere it was not misunderstood or to find words to express why I feel and act the way I do, in a safe environment before a few days ago when I started writing here.

If trying to improve my mental health and finding words to discuss about things that I feel are hindering my well-being at the moment, things that I can clearly trace back to emotional wounds -is called woundology, if specialising in healing yourself and learning that from other people like you by conparing the effects of the emotional wounds you have and the tacticts to counter those effects - is called woundology, then yes, I am a Woundologist.

And I am pretty proud of it, as well, looking at how much I have achieved in the space of a few days by simply having a community of people who know how it feels.

When their critique uses name-calling, is that an intellectual's critique, or a troll's rant?

When your opponent uses name-calling, all you can do is appropriate the term, if you can't ignore.

Who's a woundologist? I am!

[woodsgnome]

Thanks for that perspective, ellachimera. Reversing the woundology term is a beautiful counter to the hurt I felt on first encountering it.

It is precisely because we were wounded that we react the way that term seems to be suggesting. While the analysts and experts are free to use any words they like, in the end we're the ones that choose, based on our own experiences, how we play out those reactions whatever they're called.

Another saying that used to make me cringe was along the lines of "oh, you're just too sensitive." Meant as a negative, I'd rather be sensitive (and caring, and compassionate) and in regarding that as a positive quality to find a better way that we the wounded can incorporate into a healing part of who we are.

[bluepalm]

Thanks for that perspective, ellachimera. Reversing the woundology term is a beautiful counter to the hurt I felt on first encountering it.

It is precisely because we were wounded that we react the way that term seems to be suggesting. While the analysts and experts are free to use any words they like, in the end we're the ones that choose, based on our own experiences, how we play out those reactions whatever they're called.

Another saying that used to make me cringe was along the lines of "oh, you're just too sensitive." Meant as a negative, I'd rather be sensitive (and caring, and compassionate) and in regarding that as a positive quality to find a better way that we the wounded can incorporate into a healing part of who we are.

Yes woodsgnome: " in the end we're the ones that choose, based on our own experiences, how we play out those reactions whatever they're called".

I've had a lifetime of being accused of being too sensitive, too intense, too 'thin skinned', of being told I think too much, I analyse things too much, I'm too suggestible (as I desperately try to figure out how to please an abuser)...and for years I berated myself for these 'faults'.

I'm now choosing to feel proud of being a sensitive, thoughtful, caring and complex woman. I'm feeling proud of having survived years of traumatic assaults and abandonment with such traits intact. I feel the ability to choose to stand up to these accusations and see them for what they are - cruel accusations designed to 'cut me down to size' and thus to deny my human needs. Taunts designed to lessen the internal discomfort of the accusers, who know they themselves fall short on such traits and do not have the internal resources to meet my normal human needs.

I'm very conscious from the above thread of what a wonderfully rich resource OOTS is for those of us who have been wounded - particularly those wounded from birth. For those who have no safe place to which to return;  for those whose lives were shattered at the very start. The consistency of experiences recounted here is, for me, fundamentally comforting - it is a huge validation of my life's struggles. It demonstrates to me that we are all born as human beings with needs that, if not met or if actively thwarted, will inevitably end up struggling with our wounds. 

So those who accuse us with cruel terms such as woundology, as if we can choose to have our sensitivity, thin skins, and other supposed 'faults', deny the fundamental reality of our being human.