SharpAndBlunt's journal. A way to remember my commitment

[Hope67]

Hi SharpandBlunt, Well done for sitting with feelings instead of avoiding - hope you cope ok with your big day tomorrow.  Well done for still plugging away.  Just wanted to wish you well with everything.
Hope 

[SharpAndBlunt]

Thank you Hope 

My main issue seems still to be avoidance and disassociation. I'm reading about it in order to learn how to control it.

My day yesterday was tough and I got through it!

It's nice to feel that sometimes, just that little bit of light, or progress. Feeling together even if only for a minute.

It's such a good thing to know that this board exists. Thank you again 

[Hope67]

Hi SharpAndBlunt,
Glad you got through yesterday, even though it was tough.  Well done.  I agree with you, it is nice to feel some light or some progress. 
Hope 

[Three Roses]

My day yesterday was tough and I got through it!

[SharpAndBlunt]

Possible mild TW

I am feeling very angry at the way I have been treated. I deliberately made myself small since i was very young in order to protect myself. I took an interest in small things, so now instead of fulfilling my potential I am stuck doing small things. If I had been nurtured and secure i could have taken an interest in worldly things, things that can make a difference, and could be living a worthwhile life, doing adult things for the world.

I have great shame that I've wasted my potential. And I have further shame because I know people have it worse than me and I know people had it worse than I had.

At the same time, I have met people who are just like me but who haven't been through what I have and they are happy and thriving. It has killed what could have been fun friendships because I can't stand their happiness and success. It reminds me of my own failure.

These emotions may be temporary but they are very powerful and I get very angry at the abandonment I felt and still feel. That in turn makes me feel childish which pours fuel on the fire of shameful feelings.

It ends in a kind of paralysis. Knowing I am wrong to feel this way but unable to do anything about the deluge of emotions when it hits.

I know the key is self compassion. But I feel so alone that I don't see that it can do anything except help me feel better in the short term. Which is no doubt enough. I just know that this feeling and drowning sensation will always come back and in the long term I am a kind of social loner or outcast.

[SharpAndBlunt]

Both my parents were cruel. My M at least was aware of hers and tried to overcome it or at least mitigate it. My F was like a boxer. Trying to win his love was like being in the ring with him. He'd hold me at arms length until I was exhausted then just give me the merest of shoves to make me fall over. This made me stop trying eventually but I feel it is a very cruel way to do it.
I wonder if this is all just self pity on my part. I also believe it's important to honour the hurts done to. So, I don't know.

[Hope67]

Hi SharpAndBlunt,
I hope you don't mind my saying that I think the behaviour of your F sounds cruel - I am sorry you had to experience that from you F.  Sending you a supportive hug, if that's ok.     I am sorry to hear that both your parents were cruel.  You are expressing your emotions, and I hope that you find that helpful.  Feeling angry - understandable. 
Now I've written that, I feel that I may have intruded in your Journal, so apologies if I have - but I just wanted to express some support towards you.   
Hope 

[SharpAndBlunt]

Hi Hope, thank you for writing and I want you to know that you are not intruding in my journal. I often write here when I feel I can't add anything to the wider forum.

I would like to be more active in other threads too but right now it is difficult for me.

I agree that his behaviour was cruel. Trying to come to terms with that and forgive him and M and deal with my own recovery is overwhelming - I know you and everyone here knows how that is.

It's really nice to have support. Thank you

[SharpAndBlunt]

Yesterday had first therapy session and today feeling horrible. I want to run away from the feelings. I suppose this is normal. I also feel a bit guilty because I'm recognising traits in myself I've inherited or learned from my F. Why this should make me feel guilty I don't know yet. I read it is normal to feel bad especially at the beginning and that this should improve.

[SharpAndBlunt]

TW. Abandonment

For me, so much of this is about feelings.

About shame of expressing a need to be loved and belong.

About feeling deficient by doing so. About being made into a mascot for doing so, only to be very quickly dropped again.

Every feeling now results in a huge snowball of shame. First therapy session eventually the other day and maybe (I hope?) things might finally be moving.

Why fill a small house with so many kids if not through a desire to love them? I feel guilty for saying this. Like I'm giving them up. I feel like I was only born because of their religion. I was a burden on them imposed by stupid rules made by stupid men who don't know anything about human love. I should just be happy to be alive and forget about all their abandonment.

In some way this is the advice I've been subtly getting all my life. So, in the only way that matters to me i was told I don't have family and certainly not to expect anything from them.

[SharpAndBlunt]

TW : descriptions of low self worth

As part of becoming mindful of my feelings and emotions I am naturally becoming aware of my thought processes and how I beat myself up. I don't deserve it, I'm not this important, it makes me ashamed to be so egotistical. But, I have lived like this for so long. I'm putting a sequence of events that took place in my head over half an hour as a record of how I usually treat myself and how I am usually not even aware of it.

Meeting with boss about big work project. It is all going well. He is happy with the progress and so am I. It will be a genuine improvement to the company. All my achievement.

Felt nervous and restless after.

During the meeting I noticed a woman outside who looked away. Felt slighted. Glad to be not interacting at the same time. I said hello to her this morning.

Decided to distract myself for 10 minutes to decompress with an app on the phone that's my hobby.

Felt sad that I had to withdraw from class doing the hobby because I'd get too wound up to go and do it.

Felt sad that the teacher is no longer sending me the notes. I will fall behind the class and they will keep going ahead without me. They will succeed and I will fail (again)

Thought about everything else I've failed at. Work, career, education, relationships. That brought a judgement of what a * childhood I survived (me and many others).

Felt an admiration for a colleague from the class. Consequently felt bad I could no longer be their equal (I have failed)

Felt physically cold and trembly. I wonder if this could be anger? I have tremendous physical tension.

Started thinking that self care is about denying what i want. I want to go back to class, but I can't, it's making me sick. But to give it up, means I fail, which contributes to low self worth. Therefore, self care results for me in low self worth. Either that or I am wrong. Either way I suspect there is a cognitive failure or fallacy going on here. I am simply thinking wrong.

I want so much to be well NOW, that I have been in denial that I am not well at all. In order to be better I have to take the pain of not being well. I am not good at accepting this.

Realise my thoughts are tumbling and ask myself, What is this? I do this all the time. I then isolate so that when I am alone no one will notice and I won't feel ashamed. When I'm with others, I can't hide this. They usually are bemused or amused. I can't communicate this distress is real, even though i know it may well be * that is causing it. I feel more ashamed, and the cycle gets worse.



I can kind of recognise that my fear of failure is linked to abandonment. I was taught to be very fearful of failure and my self worth was based on not failing. It still is, though I recognise the non truth in there.

I can understand that bit. But the successful meeting with my boss triggering feelings of inadequacy?
I get it too with friends and colleagues.

I am quite quite sick of my mental processes which are clearly not serving me. I'd trapped, and the prison is my mind and I helped build it myself. There is more shame here and I feel inadequate. As a grown man I feel like I should laugh it off. I can't be who I want to be. Is it that simple? I will never find answers right now so I should probably stop trying.

[Libby183]

Hi, SharpAndBlunt.

I have found myself being drawn to your posts recently, so I have dipped into your journal. I hope that is OK.

As I suspected, I can relate very much to everything you say. The history of violence and emotional neglect and abuse that leads to shame and abandonment and to beating oneself up all the time. The contorted mess of thoughts that are ever present are just so exhausting.  It really does seem too much to bear. We just keep trying, and I hope so much that we find some peace in our heads, sooner rather than later.

Take care.

Libby.

[woodsgnome]

Okay, I too feel a bit odd to butt in to your journal, but like Libby183 your entry resonated here as well and I feel like saying a couple things, if that's alright.

I guess what most hit me was your expression of low self-worth and the role of abandonment, then the cycles that set in motion. And how it's all so pitifully confusing. Me too, and I'm not going to beat myself up anymore about feeling I'm using that as a crutch to explain my 'failures'. The abandonment plus other abuses from multiple people -- yes I could use that as a crutch; except that was my whole life for so long and really has so often inhibited all my tries at self-compassion, setting in motion yet another cycle. It's truly maddening and when in that mood, I can be very disoriented and rambling, too.

You end by wondering about the urge to "stop trying". Yep, that's part of my cycle as well. It's also vicious, especially as I have no one other than my therapist I can feel safe sharing about this trait that others see as weakness or outright failure. Still, somehow, my wondering about 'stop trying' cycles back to an equal discomfort with just dropping my quest to better understand and do what I can to take steps while resisting the urge to look for giant leaps instead. That's where the self-compassion, the re-parenting as it's sometimes called, seems important.

[SharpAndBlunt]

Thanks Libby and woodsgnome and Hope. For your insights and support.

By yesterday evening I had almost completely dissociated. I still am. My brain is protecting itself. It might be days or hours it lasts, I don't know yet.

The whole cycle is indeed painful and confusing.

I know people here 'get it' which is why I feel safe posting here and why I'm happy for people to post here too. It's nice that you do.

Like you Libby I wish we could all find peace of mind.  to all.

Wishing us all all the best.

[SharpAndBlunt]

I have been in an emotional freeze since January 9 and now I'm beginning to thaw. 3 days. That seems about normal for me.

I don't have the feelings of joy or exuberance I usually get on a thaw, this time it's tempered by the sure knowledge that this is a cycle. It will happen again.

Although I said I was in an emotional freeze actually what I think I meant was I was at an absolute low. Maybe I think of it as a freeze because the way I interact with people seems cold during that time. Life seems copeable with, that way. Now, I have to deal with uncertainty every minute again.

One of the hardest things for me to deal with is the idea that being isolated, alone, emotionally depressed, is not that bad. It's an understandable state albeit limited and I can certainly cope with it.

I want to be alive and live though, I need to work and have hobbies. But when I am hurting (not depressed) these things seem impossible to do with any grace. I lost all fun, grace or cheek or charm or whatever. I became a different person, concerned only with myself, pre occupied and absent. People can make comments about me, as if I am not there, comments I might even make about another, if they were behaving how I behave. If I was well and feeling tired and uncharitable. But, these comments I can hear, because I am there. I'm just locked inside. It's such a weakness. It's not a valued trait, especially in a male. It maybe seems trivial now I describe it. But at the time the carelessness hurts all the more. Knowing that something so easy is out of my reach. I'm outcast.

I used to wonder why people got bullied but now I know it's when they don't have the strength to fight any more but have no choice but to carry on they are vulnerable to the slightest knock and it becomes an ever decreasing circle.

There are short term solutions for this. Acting out, anger, blame.

But ultimately I want to learn the compassion for myself that prevents this in the first place.

I think there are issues here to do with my true self, being a mascot, people pleasing, and acting out. I also am aware that people can 'see through' my behaviour as if it is a choice (easy for them to say) and denigrate and minimise it. I have not been above doing that myself in the past. It seems such a reasonable and convenient way to deal with the issue. I also know it is my responsibility to fix. Sigh. To the picking up and starting again. Internal drama, not as interesting as on TV.