A Safe Place To Be Visible

[Snowdrop]

Bach, you're not whining. Things are objectively hard at the moment, and we're your friends. I'm glad you're here.

Which tapping app do you have? I downloaded the Tapping Solution app, and in the Crisis Support/First Aid section there's a guided tapping on releasing anxiety from the current madness. It also has a Military/Veteran section, which includes some PTSD type tappings. I've found these helpful too.

[Hope67]

Hi Bach, I am also sending you a hug, and I agree with Snowdrop that you're not whining - and you're amongst friends here.     I'm also glad you're here.

Hope 

[Not Alone]

I agree with others, you are not whining. You are welcome to talk about this and I am happy to listen. Sometimes our fears come from the past and are triggered. This--coronavirus---is real, is now, and is scary. The cptsd makes it even more challenging to manage the feelings.

[Bach]

I'm a mess and I can't express myself at all right now.  I want to write.  I want to reply to posts.  I want to check on friends.  But I can't, I'm locked up tight in my tired anxious mind, the one that can be stilled and quieted by various methods when I'm awake but which presents me with awful panic dreams all night.  I wake up sweaty and queasy and shaking, and I struggle to get out of bed even as I fear being asleep.  This coronavirus thing might kill me even if I don't get it 

Lots of love to all my friends out there    I hope you are all physically safe and healthy, and are managing the rest of it.  I'm thinking of you even though I'm even less able to participate than usual. 

[Snowdrop]

I'm so sorry you feel like this right now, Bach. It makes me want to put a soft blanket round your shoulders and wrap you up in a big, safe hug (if that feels ok to you).

Thinking of you, Bach, and sending lots of love, big hugs and support.

[sanmagic7]

i feel just like snowdrop towards you - just want to gather you in in a caring, gentle embrace, let you know we're here, we've got you, we won't let go.

this situation is like no other in my lifetime - the anxiety, fear, worry, they all take a toll, and it can feel too heavy to move under them at times.  you're not the only one.  sending  a hug filled with love and comfort

[Not Alone]

Bach, I'm sorry you are in such distress and that sleep is even more disturbing. I join with the others and would like to wrap you in a warm blanket, hold you, read some safe stories to you. You are not alone, my heart is with you.

[Bach]

I'm having a lot of trouble writing lately, or really, communicating at all, but I keep thinking of things that I need to examine with regard to finding ways to modify some of my problematic daily behaviours.  One of them is "I do X because it gives me a reason to hate myself."  I don't want to try to tackle that right now but I'm noting it down here because it feels significant and like something I should remember to work with instead of just letting it float away like it's just another one of those things I think of a million times a day that seem significant when they pop into my head but don't stand up to any scrutiny.

This being human thing is hard.  I'm lucky to have a really good Person to be pseudoquarantined with here in the house, but in my head I am locked up alone with the emptiness and anger of everything I feel about my parents.  During the first few weeks of this, emotionally I felt like I was back in the summer house under the black piano of my mother's relationship with her mother, but recently (and coincidental with a random flurry of menopausal cycle activity) I feel much more like someone I don't even know who is furious looking back and feels hopeless looking forward. 

My Person is awesome and very much the best person for me to be in this situation with, but I have another Person and it hurts not to be able to see them.  I should explain about my People some time, but it's really complicated and people tend to judge it harshly when they don't understand all the nuances of the situation.

[Not Alone]

 

[Three Roses]

I should explain about my People some time, but it's really complicated and people tend to judge it harshly when they don't understand all the nuances of the situation.

Only if you want to. You don't owe us anything at all - only share if it's helpful to you. I will say, tho, that I seriously doubt you'd get any negative feedback. Our individual trauma and resulting damage makes each of us unique in how we deal with emotional ties.

[Bach]

I should explain about my People some time, but it's really complicated and people tend to judge it harshly when they don't understand all the nuances of the situation.

Only if you want to. You don't owe us anything at all - only share if it's helpful to you. I will say, tho, that I seriously doubt you'd get any negative feedback. Our individual trauma and resulting damage makes each of us unique in how we deal with emotional ties.

I do want to.  It's complicated though, a very long story.  As briefly as possible, My Person is my husband/best friend who I live with, and my Other Person is a longstanding intimate relationship that my husband understands and accepts.  My Other Person and I are damage twins, having had very similar childhood experiences of parental neglect and abuse.  He also has a friend-partner with whom he lives who cannot relate to those traumas, and the whole thing works because we need each other in a very compelling way, but we are not well-suited to living together and also need our stabilising day-to-day friend-partners.  It has never been ideal, but it has been going on for a very long time and has worked better for a hundred reasons than any of our conventional relationships ever did.  He lives in another state so we don't see each other very often, but we stay in touch and see each other when we can, sometimes planned in advance, sometimes on very short notice responsive to his work-travel schedule.  Now we have no idea when we will be able to see each other again, cannot even plan for a future visit, and it's incredibly painful.  I feel like a jerk moaning about it, since I know how lucky I am to have such a great friend to live with and there are many people locked down in much worse situations, but there it is. 

[Snowdrop]

No judgement here, Bach. You're not moaning, and I understand it hurting.

[Bach]

Thank you, Snowdrop

Life is really really hard right now.  I've been doing some good work on building positive habits, but I'm in a cycle where I'm abusing food and medication to motivate myself to do it.  I have to get my eating under control because my carelessness with my dietary restrictions is messing with my physical health, and I need to stop just smoking pot every time I feel bad.  Smoking pot helps me do constructive things by giving me a mood boost, but if I do it too much especially in the wrong part of my hormonal cycle, it starts to be less of a mood boost and more of an agitating factor that triggers me a little bit and forces me to do constructive things to calm myself down.  After a while, this becomes a downward spiral and that can get very ugly because after a while, it becomes more and more anxiety and agitation and less and less benefit.  Then also, of course, more and more munchies.  For the many years that I illegally smoked whatever marijuana I could get from wherever I could get it, this was a huge problem to which I lost big chunks of every year of my life.  The coming of medical marijuana to my state a few years ago was a big step forward for me, and has enabled me to much better manage my marijuana use for more benefit and less compulsive consumption, but quite frankly, I've fallen back into compulsiveness since the lockdown began.  I've been making excuses for myself about it for a while now, and it's at the point where I must confront it, whatever that looks like.  At the very least, I need some kind of tolerance break. 

Today I feel overwhelmed.  I know what I have to do about it:  Be more careful about my dietary restrictions.  Check off as many of the daily habit items as possible.  Drink lots of water.  Hug My Person.  Hug myself.  Continue to teach all of us here in my head how to do things well and feel good about ourselves.  Don't smoke any more pot today.  Especially don't smoke any more pot today.

[Not Alone]

Bach, I wish I had something helpful to say, but my head is a mushy mess right now. I just took some sips of water and am sending you and your Littles a big hug. 

[sanmagic7]

no judgment, bach.  we do what's best for us, no matter what form that takes.

if it's in your best interest to confront your pot intake, then all support for that.  you'll be able to do so when you're ready.  i'm a recovering drug and alcohol and cigarette addict, and it took me many stops and starts to get rid of them.  i'm not saying you're an addict, just that i understand the process of cutting back, trying to control it, getting deeper into it, stopping and starting up again.  it can be a difficult cycle to cope with. and, yes, when my stress was the highest, it was more difficult to take any steps i wanted to in my mind.  it was like my brain had a mind of its own 

one foot in front of the other, bach, ok?  things will work out, of that i have no doubt.  love and hugs, my dear