I Am

[Bach]

I can't with this life anymore, with this brain.  Something has to change.  I've been really annoyed with my therapist for a long time now, with what seems like her lack of ideas, hammering the same things over and over again, unable to help me figure out how to move forward, but I think she's onto something with the thing about my not being able to accept or believe that I have any power over my life.  She says that I'm afraid to have power.  She might be right.  The thing that bothers me the most about this is that I want to say that it hasn't always been that way, but I think maybe it has.  I don't think I've ever believed in the idea that I actually have power over my life as anything other than a theoretical concept.  @#$% it hurts.

[Blueberry]

  Sitting with you Bach

[TheBigBlue]

That sounds really painful and exhausting. I'm so sorry you're in this right now. 💛
Sending support

[Hope67]

Hi Bach,
Also sending you support. 

[sanmagic7]

hey, bach, just a thought.  what would your life look like if you did have power?  maybe this is something that, if you haven't felt powerful in your life, could be scary.  i know, when i began feeling the emotion 'fear', it was extremely distressing cuz i didn't know how to live like that, didn't know what to do with it, how to be with it. 

i do hope you find your way through this 'stuck' point soon.  it's not a fun place to be.  love and hugs

[Bach]

Something interesting came up in therapy today, which is that while I was moaning and crying and bitching about things in my life that cause me pain I came out with the notion that not feeling like I truly have any power is what's kept me alive.  Because if I had ever truly believed I had power I might kill myself.  She said, "Or maybe kill your mother!".  I think it kind of annoyed me that she said that, because I think I was was trying to express the pain of feeling that I have no power and not go back to the "it's all because of my mother" theme, but I suppose it is a valid point.  She's told me before that she thinks I'm afraid of having power.  I want to reject that idea, but it's so obviously true.  Being afraid of having power makes me very angry.  Being angry makes me more afraid.  How's that for a stuck place!

[sanmagic7]

sounds quite stuck, bach.  ugh.  sending love and a hug filled w/ support.

[Hope67]

Sending you support Bach 

[HannahOne]

Reading along, Bach. It occurred to me that anger and fear are in a way the same thing, one is fight and one is flight but they're both a survival response. Being stuck in a survival response makes total sense when we have CPTSD and were raised by wolves, or by unqualified parents operating without a license. I don't know the secret to shifting our state to a "rest/digest" mode, but there are a lot of ways to try. I'm with you in the trying. Solidarity.

[NarcKiddo]

The power thing is interesting. My own mother clings to power for dear life and she had to have it ALL. Our experience of people showing their power is that it is a really bad and unpleasant thing. If power means dictating whether someone lives or dies then I guess it could follow that if not having power means you live, does it mean that having power means you die? That's not true but it's easy to see why it could feel that way.

I think maybe some learned helplessness could be also at play (I speak in general/my own personal terms here, and am not pointing that statement just at you). Are you aware of that experiment they did years ago when animals were caged until they gave up trying to escape and then when the cage doors were opened the animals did not even try to leave? Well, I think we get conditioned into that. The cage might be unpleasant but it also feels kind of safe. We don't believe we have the power to function outside the cage.

 

[Bach]

Learned helplessness, indeed.  A bit of self-taught, too, I think.


Trigger warning:  Violent impulses.





 

The stuff I wrote about wanting to beat up Other and make him cry, that's what I usually think about my mother.  Except that those impulses towards Other are more about something like smacking him across the face to wake him up, and him crying because he understands the pain I feel from his withdrawal than they are about doing him any physical damage.  Whereas, when I have these thoughts about my mother, they are sometimes truly aggressive and violent.  I imagine beating her up with my own fists.  Getting in her face, scaring her, screaming at her not to cry.  Beating her worse if she cried. Those aren't nice thoughts.

Recently, my mother has been complaining to me about an issue she's been having with her female parts.  Also not a nice thought is that in light of the way that her obsession with sex when I was growing up screwed up my values and my psyche, I feel a sense of poetic justice at the idea that her female parts are making her suffer.

[NarcKiddo]

They're not nice thoughts, but what angle are you coming at that statement from? An objective statement is one thing, but if you are shaming yourself for having the thoughts, rather than being upset you are experiencing nasty thoughts, then maybe it would be good to try to stop that and be kind to yourself. There's clearly a part of you who would like to imagine the retribution, even if she would never act on it, and maybe an occasional revenge fantasy is not the worst of things. Perhaps allowing yourself to sit with the thoughts a little, rather than immediately trying to push them away and shame yourself (if that is what you are currently doing - I don't know) could get it out of your system? If you are pushing them down perhaps the part of you that wants to think about that revenge is just going to keep rebelling against adult you periodically? Just throwing a few ideas around. Please ignore if not helpful or relevant.

As for the poetic justice - oh yes! And why must they burden us with TMI about their bits anyway? I sometimes think both our mothers must somehow be related.

[sanmagic7]

bach, back when i used to bowl, i can't tell you how many strikes were made by imagining someone as being the pins!  i think sometimes we're reduced to animal sensibilities when we get frustrated or angry, and yes, a 'wake up!' smack would fit the bill.  i've had a lot of these myself, kind of spur of the moment things, but they go away.  i don't really want to harm anyone, no matter what they've done.  but in my mind, i can get at least a little satisfaction, get it out of my system, and go on w/ my life.

your mom stuff sounds icky to me.

love and hugs

[Bach]

Today I had a moment in which I felt like it's possible to accept that I'm not going to be the person I vaguely and abstractly "wish" I could be, and be okay with the person I am.  That was a good moment.  Then came the overthinking.