Member of The Club

[Papa Coco]

Lolly

Feel free to call me Jimmy or PC or Papa Coco. I answer equally to all.

OMG! COVID! I'm sorry to hear that it hit you so hard. Anything that raises anxiety, especially with migraines and fatigue... I feel for you. I hope you recover quickly and completely.

Being gentle with yourself is, itself, a beautiful blessing. I think it's a bit of self-forgiveness for being vulnerable, or ill, or scared. I am often reminded of that old saying, that we should love our neighbors as ourselves. It wasn't "Love your neighbor more than you love yourself" it says, "love your neighbors AS you love yourself." When we can forgive & accept ourselves, while we forgive & accept others, that, to me, is when we start to find peace in our hearts. For most of us, we feel like we can forgive and love others far more easily than we do ourselves, which is how we come to feel disconnected and unforgiven.

It's nice to hear that you are finding gentleness for yourself. When you said that you remember to mother yourself gently now, I felt a warm reminder to do the same. My mom wasn't a horrible person, just selfish and anxiety-ridden. Now that we're the adults, we can bring in more qualified mothering when we need it. All I ever wanted in life was to be forgiven and embraced. By doing like you're doing, mothering ourselves, we can do it better than they knew how to.

Take care of yourself and thank you for the kind words you've said about my personal experiences with love, connection, and miracles. I'm glad I'm alive now too.

[Lolly728]

I'm feelin' Jimmy, gonna go with that, haha.

Covid blows, so bad. I am happy to tell you I'm doing better today. Anxiety is down although I feel like I can feel it lurking, low level. The headache finally quit and while I'm still fatigued, it's less and less every day. I am hoping I'll be back to regularly scheduled programming by next week.

I think I it's possible I have long Covid though. I started having anxiety out of the blue in the spring of 2023. Panic attacks too. I'd had them briefly in my 20s but all of a sudden they started up again. I had had Covid not too long before then. I started having gastro issues as well. Saw a functional med doc and also did HRT. All of that seemed to straighten me out for the most part but with this round of Covid, the anxiety came back and it feels identical to how I felt in 2023. So now... I'm wondering if LC... but it's really hard to say. Trauma? Covid? Hormones? My marriage falling apart? My incredibly talented and gifted daughter who we recently discovered has ADHD? All of the above? It's really hard to say. I guess I'm just glad I don't feel like I want to crawl out of my skin today.

I wish there was a doctor who could say 'oh, it's X and you should do Y to fix that'... but there only seems to be things they can try.

I kind of think it's all of the above and maybe in about 5 years I'll be doing a lot better. This is just a sh*t storm I have to get through. Excluding my daughter. She is not that, she is my blessing and my joy. Challenging sometimes but hey, who isn't?

It's a very new thing for me to be gentle and kind to myself. And yes, I was certainly capable of doing that for others and it's my general MO but when it came to myself... not so much. New days, new skills.

Glad I reminded you of that self-care. It's so important for people like us. And while it's not what it should have been, it's still valid and works and feels good.

You sound like you're farther along in forgiving than I am. Or maybe it's just that the wounds were re-opened with my mother's death, feeling some of the pain all over again. I've had a lot of flashback recently, not fun... I'm going to do some EMDR again. Found it to be super helpful. Have you ever tried that? My therapist also wants to start doing 'parts' work with me (internal family systems) – I only learned about this recently but I've it is also very helpful for trauma survivors.

It feels good to be alive, huh? In spite of what I lived through, I always come back to a place where I know how lucky I am to be alive and I am grateful for my life and all the possibilities I have just by being alive. I try to keep myself in that frame of mind as much as possible.

Take care of yourself as well!

[Papa Coco]

Lolly,

Gads, I'm sorry to hear of the issues with Long COVID. I know how it feels though to wish a doctor could figure out the real truth to all that ails us. And I wouldn't be surprised if your laundry list of health issues is sort of caused by all of the above put together: COVID, daughter with ADHD, Marriage dissolving... you said it best, it's kind of a Sh* storm.  Your mother's passing likely has a bigger effect on you than you are consciously aware of. I was estranged from the family when my dad died. I heard about it through a friend of the family. There were some bizarre electrical issues happening in my house while he was passing. On the very day that the electrical anomalies simply stopped, I got a call from that friend reporting he'd died during the night. If they can mess with my electronics, they can surely mess with my human wiring as well, right?

HOLY CRAP! I just realized today is the anniversary of his passing. August 27, 2011.

I'm sorry to hear your daughter is dealing with ADHD, but I know people who have it, and they are intelligent, caring people regardless. My Daughter-In-law has it, and I see her as one of the most amazing people I know of any age. She's bright, together, deals with life's stress with grace and strength. It's not easy for her to deal with it all, but she comes out of everything shining like a star. She takes amazing care of my son, and my grandsons, while holding down a high stress job. I couldn't be prouder of her, and her ADHD isn't stopping any of it. In fact, it might be one of the things that makes her so able to balance so many things all at once day over day. I don't know. I have hypervigilance, but I don't think it's quite the same thing as ADHD.

As far as forgiveness goes, I vacillate a bit. I have days where I feel like I've forgiven the world for everything. Then I sink back down to feeling like I want to strangle half the people I've known.

Someone on the forum, about a year or so ago, said that she wakes up each morning and has to discover who she is today. I remember the comment because it rang so true with me too. On any given morning, I could be in any of my many moods for the whole day. Check in with me in a week and see if I still feel like sending love to the most horrible person ever in my life.

I will say, however, that all this talk I do about loving myself finally and letting go of emotions and pain, and how helpful it's been is something I couldn't have done even 4 months ago. In fact, today, my therapist, who I've been seeing in various capacities since 1989, said he has noticed a major shift in me in the last four months. When I read up on how to exercise forgiveness, some sources report that a person has to evolve to a certain level of dealing with their pasts before they can even do such a thing. I guess, 35 years of therapy could be what finally evolved me to the point that the process is starting to take. That and MDMA and Ketamine and reading this amazing succession of books as of late, plus a little hypnotherapy from a spiritual healer, plus support from the forum...all these things together may have helped me finally reach a point where I'm starting to feel actual love for myself. I'm 64. It's about dam time I start to love myself.

I think the world is changing right now too though. When I started therapy in the very beginning, it was 1980. And this concept of loving one's self was never, ever approached by anyone. Therapy was one level above blood-letting and electric shock back then. If I were to start my healing journey today, with all the great books that have been written and all the new therapies emerging, I maybe could have gotten from there to here in a little less time than the 44 years it's taken since I started at age 20.

My current therapist did do some very light EMDR on me way, way back in around 2005 or so. He just used his thumb. Told me to follow his thumb with my eyes without moving my head. We talked about my past abuse and my family's abuse while he had my eyes following his motions all around me. We did it a few times and I think it really helped. Back then, my dissociative trances were really, really powerful. When hit with stress or emotion, my face would turn as white as paper. Eyes would go blank. Many of the 55-minute therapy sessions we had back then only lasted 5 minutes. Or so I thought. I would sit down. We'd greet each other. We'd start talking about my past and five minutes later, he'd say, "Our time is about up." I'd look at the clock and was SHOCKED that it had been almost an hour. The EMDR seemed to help stop that blacking out issue for me.

Take care and rest up. I hope the symptoms you're dealing with continue to improve day over day.

Sincerely,
Jimmy

[Lolly728]

I am getting better every day. Thanks

Several things resonated in your post! '64, time I start loving myself' > yeah, I turned 60 in July. Also thinking it's about time, lol.

I don't know for sure if it's long Covid or not. Fortunately, it's nothing super debilitating although it's definitely been hard at times. Particularly the anxiety. I'm hoping EMDR can help release some of the junk in there. It definitely did last time.

Thanks for the support on ADHD. She's a pretty amazing kid, an incredible musician that is going to be professional and I don't worry for her overall. Getting her the right help feels a little overwhelming as there are so many options and I'm not keen to just stick her on any medication (not opposed to it, but you have to be careful, from what I've read) so it's going to take some work to figure out what works for her. Just more on my plate in an already difficult time. And she'll be applying to college in a few years and there's already prep for that that needs to happen... it's a lot. And I do it all, my husband is fairly incapable of navigating any of that (one of the many reasons why the marriage has failed.)

I totally get you on waking up to 'what's it going to be today?' Particularly with the anxiety, I feel like I never know what kind of day it's going to be. That alone can be exhausting.

I hope for a better life for myself in a few years. My divorce will hopefully have been finalized by then. I see myself in a cute townhome with a pool. I make some new friends who are loving, available and supportive. Maybe I can even totally let my hair down with them. Hard to say, so many toxic people out there, so many with unresolved issues. But even with that... I dream of better times where I have a peaceful, calm home that is my haven of self-love, self-compassion and security. I might get a dog. I will have time and space to sing and write songs. I will work. I will eat healthy food and workout. I will feel good most of the time.

That's the plan. Wish me luck getting there

Hugs to you, my brave and strong friend. Enjoy your day and I hope you find beauty in it.

[Papa Coco]

Musicians. I love musicians. For a time, my younger son wanted to be one, but he didn't take it quite seriously enough. Still, I DO believe the music world has a large population of singers, songwriters and performers with ADHD. And I see what you're saying about the medication. Good if it's needed, but if it's not needed, it's good to steer clear. People I know who have been on Ritalin, have told me that it calmed their ADHD, but also their creativity, so they ended up refusing to take it. Without their creativity, who are they? Right? And yeah, I also agree that there are a million directions to go and it's tough to navigate the route that works best for you.

I send you the best of luck that you and she are able to carefully wade through the possibilities of how to turn ADHD into a superpower without letting it become a problem.

I also send some extra energy for the condo with the pool. As I read your words, I could feel the peace that you are expressing of living in such a place. I hope that the divorce leads you to a new happy place, with a pool.

Hugs back atcha! The weather is perfect today. I need to get outside and soak in it.


Jimmy