Trying to understand and change a sense of a 'foreshortened' future

[Yipeee]

Bluepalm, the paintings of yours and peoples faces sound really interesting! Particularly knowing what it means to you to be making them. The motivations for this. In exploring in flesh and blood what it is to feel alive at that time as a baby. That makes sense that you want to feel grounded and rooted, painting landscapes and gardens! I can relate to this! I like the freedom, joy and creative use of form and colour in the work by Mattisse and the fauvists for example. Very joyful and celebrating humanity! When I look at those types of works they make me smile inside! What are you painting onto... canvas, board?

It is really moving what you experienced as a baby, and how this must have effected you. As the story of your mother describing how she felt she had somehow failed your father with presenting you at birth, him turning his back. How her telling you this must have effected you. Alongside her telling you that she  left you on your own for long periods of time, easily it seems. It must be confusing and gut wrenching understanding why one would do this!?

I can relate to the sense of neglect you experienced in many ways, and a lot of the work I am doing now in therapy is in confronting the script that my parents needed to hold of me and project into me. As in their eyes (mind) I had to be less than  and serve as their scapegoat. So it effects how I relate to others now as it feels familiar. A lot of creative making I find helps me to slowly somewhat overcome this faulty script also. Its a way of externalizing the internalized.

I've been looking at a child development theory connected to creativity and the imagination that you may be interested in. Its by Donald W. Winnicott and can be found in a book called 'Playing and Reality'. Its certainly helped me with a theory of making, which for me has helped me feel more rooted as an artist generally. To develop meaning around my creativity. So I like to pass this on when I can! My T recommended it to me a few years ago.

I'd be interested to hear what you think sometime if you get a chance of course to have a look!

Wishes 

[Regret]

This is an absolutely wonderful topic for me. I've read through it several times. Each time it opens up new insights into my life as it is today, what I missed out of in the past and together that presents a future that scares the heck out of me.

Reading through also sparks feelings that I've never had before, good feelings that encourage me to keep moving forward.

So thank you to all who have contributed to this topic. Your words have helped me greatly.

[Yipeee]

Hi Regret!

Yes its very affirming, validating, and generative of good feelings as you describe, just to be able to share in ideas around this! Its maybe that part of us in out inner child is getting that understanding. Not feeling so alone. As naturally the warmth and emotional needs would have been there in a healthy FOO.

I just re read your post and can relate completely and feel relieved to know I am not alone in being dumb founded when asked where i wanna be in five years time!

Errr...If only you knew is usually my first thought to that question! with a slight inner chuckle to myself at the perverse ridiculousness of that question!

I am really pleased you having good feelings around this, as they can pave the way for a 'different' sense of future do you think!?

[bluepalm]

Yipeee thank you for your warm response. I have ordered Winnicott's 'Playing and Reality' that you recommend. Given drawing and painting are now so central to keeping me reasonably stable, I'm interested in exploring more about what creating my art means to me. To answer your question, I draw in pencil, charcoal and pastel on paper, paint in watercolours on paper and paint in oils on board and canvas. I'm grateful that I have enough skill that the results are satisfying to me and once created, help me to feel alive and comforted. I look at the art work and feel I have made something valuable, something from inside me has come into being and will exist into the future. I think this is a powerful way for me to defy all the contempt and attempts to erase me, to make me invisible, to which I've been subject for so long.

To give you an idea of the pressure placed on me to deny me any way to express myself, many years ago I asked my then husband why he stopped me, with his anger, from playing the piano. He replied that he didn't like me doing anything he couldn't do and he didn't like me doing anything he could do. The absurdity of this is comical but the impact on my life for many years was not at all funny. He was denying me any way of expressing myself, of feeling alive. So I'm grateful I now have the freedom to create my art works.

Regret, I'm so pleased that this topic has been helpful for you. It's certainly been invaluable for me to be able to share my concerns and receive understanding, validating responses.

[Yipeee]

Bluepalm, Ah thanks for sharing your experiences and I look forward to hearing what you think of the book!

I understand how you must feel having been denied expression of yourself by your then husband, and feeling erased and invisible by someone you must have loved. It must have been awful for you.

It is comically absurd looking is'nt it, the reasons why he or, why anyone needs to do that! Sounds like you were between a rock and hard place and I am glad for you that you managed to get out of that situation.

The comic framing though feels like it helps you! but yes despite this the impact is very real still. It kind of takes the wind out of ones sails.

I am pleased that painting comforts you and you feel alive with your creations!! It is so affirming when you put a part of yourself out into the world to be celebrated!! Well done with developing the skill you are pleased with, and working across the mediums aswell!

I think I am going to try and adopt and integrate the comic viewpoint a bit more to my own situations if I may!? As its made me smile and resonates with me you see! Its funny isnt it how a sense of humour develops out of things like this!?

[Bix]

This term "foreshortened" future is interesting.  Also your quote hit me like a ton of bricks.

I came to this board because I have a constant sense that I'm about to die shortly.  I wonder if this fits the definition.

[bluepalm]

I wanted to thank everyone who responded to my original post yet again and from the bottom of my heart.

I feel that my articulation of this issue, your responses, and working with my therapist on this issue have all contributed to my making significant changes in my mind, and in my body, as to how I view the future. It's like I've taken a confident leap to allow myself to have a future.

Bix, you said: 

This term "foreshortened" future is interesting.  Also your quote hit me like a ton of bricks.

I came to this board because I have a constant sense that I'm about to die shortly.  I wonder if this fits the definition.

One thing that has changed in me is that I no longer look around my home, at my kitchen bench, at my bedroom, each time I leave the house (for however short a time), wondering whether it is clean and tidy enough for someone to come in to sort out my belongings because I will die while I am out (for however short a time) and away from home. The ridiculous nature of this behaviour has somehow become obvious to me (because I do not in fact live in a war zone). And I'm grateful that I've somehow shed that behaviour quite abruptly, like taking off a coat, in recent weeks.

Indeed, my sense that the future will not come has left me to such an extent that I have in the past month extended the lease of my home for two years (which involves assuming that I will live for at least another two years) and, even more amazingly, next Monday I am bringing a puppy home to live with me and my older dog companion - an eight week old puppy who may have a life span of 18 years. I can now envision my life continuing, with this little puppy, out far into the future!

I feel this is all a hugely important advance into relaxing into my life. And the permanence of these changes (new lease, new puppy) makes me feel confident that this is not an issue that will come back to plague me again.

Thank you again to all those in this community whose words have contributed to my feeling this way. 
bluepalm 

[Three Roses]

 

[Silverspoon]

Dear bluepalm and everyone else
Your posts have been very interesting. I can relate only too well.
blupalm your story about what happened to you as a baby makes my heart bleed for you.

After my diagnosis and learning a bit about C-PTSD, I did some self-help visualization stuff to do with the inner child. One day I felt a strong urge to write about my losing my identity as a child and wanting to connect with my myself back then. This poem helped me to accept my condition and love myself as a whole.(me and my inner child, whom i continue to care for through my mind and soul) My writing this poem gave me hope and peace.
Despite the adversities associated with my disorders, I simply won't give up trying to live a happier life; I will forever try to go beyond my symptoms, and I hope the same for you.

Its called a Shadow of a Child.

The real me is still inside
Only a shadow of a child
But I will find ways to bring her to the fore
More and more, more and more
My identity was taken from me
I was only a child you see
Because of trauma and tragedy
A false me was destined to be
My mental ways are here to stay
But I will not let them have their way
At least not every day
I will fight for me come what may
The real me is still inside
Only a shadow of a child
But I will find ways to bring her to the fore
More and more, more and more
Lost she has been
So, lost she couldn't be seen
Her happiness and kindness is what I need to glean
I take one step at a time
I don't want to frighten her
She stays a while and then she is gone
She stays a while and then she is gone
Each day as the sun shines bright
I will bring her into the light
We connect with love and respect
We connect with such love and respect
The real me is still inside
Only a shadow of a child
But I will find ways to bring her to the fore
More and more, more and more
She loves to play
She loves to sing
Everything happy she does bring
So, tender I must be, with the little girl who's me
If all I have is a snippet of her
Just now and then, just now and then
I will be so grateful to the end
To the very end
I am older now you see
I can only change certain things about me
But each day I try for differences
Anything to do with the authentic me.

With love
Silverspoon

[bluepalm]

Hi silverspoon - I know some months have passed since you posted this wonderful poem but I still would like to acknowledge on this thread how moved I was as I read it just now. and I hope you eventually see this post.

Your opening lines in particular resonated with me:

"The real me is still inside
Only a shadow of a child
But I will find ways to bring her to the fore
More and more, more and more
My identity was taken from me
I was only a child you see"

The words "I was only a child you see" are important. They underline our innocence. They underline our helplessness in the face of cruelty and  all the abuse and neglect that caused such dreadful damage to our unfolding sense of ourselves. 

Thank you for responding. This thread has been very important to me inmy attempts to deal with that central issue of foreshortening. I had no expectation when I wrote it that it would bring forth such an understanding response from so many. That response has been healing for me.

It has been a testament to my inner healing that over the past three months I have been struggling hard to regain my equilibrium after my antidepressant medication was discontinued in my country and I had to find a new medication. It amazed me how quickly I fell into deep depression without the support of my medication. But it also amazed me that I knew it was my body reacting, expressing my 'base state', and my mind was actually quite clear. I felt that I held onto my healing, including the fading of my sense of 'foreshortening', and I felt no need to go back to my therapist to discuss anything. It was heartening to have this experience, but the dramatic decline in my mood meant I retreated from OOTS and from people in general until I've stabilised in the past couple of weeks.

Hence the lateness of my seeing your post and responding to your wonderful poem.
bluepalm

[Dark.art.girl]

Hi! I'm new, and I just read your original post. I hope I'm not hijacking, but you've just taught me another thing about this condition that I didn't know was common. I've definitely felt this exact same thing. And it makes a lot of sense that since we've had to be surviving so much, our brains couldn't really comprehend a future. I'm not sure if this is how you experience it, but for me it feels like the future is possible but just intangible. Or surreal. Like I can't imagine what another year or another decade could even look like. Or if it even 'exists' so to speak.
It's similar to things in the past that just don't seem real or tangible. Like it never happened, or it's just a dream. Like it has to be right in front of my face for me to grasp it. I don't know if this is exactly what you're talking about (I can't validate any of my own thoughts or feelings lol).

Is this similar to how you feel about it? I haven't read all of the replies but a few seem to feel the same way about both of our experiences. I'm sorry that you and everyone else has had to deal with this, because sometimes it brings a lot of harrowing thoughts and sometimes an existential crisis. I wouldn't wish that on anyone. It's scary, but I'm glad that you have the comfort of knowing a name for it and that you're not alone. 

[bluepalm]

Hi Dark.art.girl, and thank you for posting your thoughts in response to this thread. I feel that my experience of foreshortening and what you describe are essentially the same.

The more I think about this topic the more I feel that the inability to imagine the future (or remember much of the past) and the difficulty some of us have in validating our thoughts and feelings all flow logically from the destruction of a sense of self that traumatic abuse and neglect by caretakers in infancy and childhood cause. If I have no solid sense of myself, if I feel, as I have done, that I am blown through the world like a bit of paper, utterly without agency to determine my fate, and I have never known anything else, then it makes sense that I have trouble imagining a future or holding onto a past. 

I come back to what I quoted in my first post - it seems to me that what can happen to abused and neglected infants and children fits the definition of torture, even if those responsible for the harm may not consciously understand that their actions serve to destroy a child's psychic being.

The quote was: "What makes interpersonal trauma distinctive is the subversion of interpersonal trust that it involves. The other person recognizes one's vulnerability and responds to it not with care but by deliberately inflicting harm. The aim of torture has been described as the complete psychological destruction of a person: "the torturer attempts to destroy a victim's sense of being grounded in a family and society as a human being with dreams, hopes and aspirations for the future" (Istanbul Protocol, 1999, p. 45). It is a "calculated assault on human dignity," more so than an attempt to extract information (Amnesty International, 1986, p. 172)

This is why it is so important to raise awareness in the community that parents who betray their child's trust with abuse and neglect are responsible for inflicting psychic harm that can adversely affect that child's entire life.

[Dante]

I know this is an old post, but I am new to the board, and this really spoke to me.  As a child, I remember expecting I'd never make it to 20.  I just knew it as a fact, it wasn't even something that consciously disturbed me, it was just a fact. 

I never realized it was the same thing, but I go to bed each night expecting that I'll die that night, so I sort everything out for those surviving me.  As I fall asleep, I have a massive panic attack each night (I guess that's me feeling like I'm dying).  It's actually a relief once the panic attack comes, because then I can just accept it and fall asleep.  But the panic attack itself sucks (hammering heart, terror, etc.).

My father died 5 years ago, and I had really mixed feelings about it.  I was always terrified he would died without ever being able to show that he loved me or accepting me (he also had CPTSD I think from abuse in his own childhood) and also leaving me with my narcissistic, manipulative, abusive mother (who also has PTSD from her own abusive childhood).  On the one hand it broke me, but on the other hand it was a relief - both because I didn't have to worry about him anymore and also because I now knew my "expiration date".