A Safe Place To Be Visible

[Not Alone]

I'm sorry it is so hard. I know you said it to yourself, but maybe it will help to hear it from someone else, this will pass. You won't feel like this forever.

[Bach]

I survived today with only a little more medication than usual,only a morsel of narcotic, a small and very contained food binge, and no letting missing Problem Person and wondering if they're mad at me trick me into retraumatising myself by doing something stupid like texting and then feeling stupid and bad and wrong and pathetic and end up making the situation between us even worse when I can't get the reassurance I want.

[Bach]

I'm sorry it is so hard. I know you said it to yourself, but maybe it will help to hear it from someone else, this will pass. You won't feel like this forever.

It helps very much. Thank you. All responses in this thread are so appreciated. I don't know how I would be surviving all this horrifying new information without the support. To all, thank you 

[Tee]

Glad you made it through

[Bach]

Imagine a life in which you don't freak out and get adrenaline sick wondering if the world is about to come crashing down on your head just because someone in the next room gets frustrated and yells at a fly they're trying to swat. 

[Tee]

Right

[Bach]

This grinding brain is starting to get to me. I'm doing so well in so many ways, understanding so much and taking care of myself instead of running away into self-destructiveness, but even the fact of doing so well is triggering me. The constant low level trauma reactions are starting to wear me down. I wish I could get a break.

[Tee]

  remember to breathe and give yourself a some grace.  These are the hardest things for me to do for myself too.  But what my T keeps telling me. Good luck Bach!  Be kind to yourself!

[Bach]

My brother is out of town with my nephew and my sister-in-law texted to ask me to babysit my niece on Thursday afternoon. I love my brother and his family and I like to say Yes whenever possible if I''m asked to help with the kids, but Thursday is my busiest day with strength training in the morning and therapy in the afternoon. I've been doing some very interesting and helpful stuff in therapy since I was thoroughly traumatised in early June when I was kicked out of my group and found out about complex ptsd, then had to stay alone in the house for a few days when My Person had to go out of town for a business trip, but it's incredibly draining. It's six weeks now that I've been in this state, coping like a boss and not giving in to a self-destructive spiral but needing everything little bit of strength I have to keep functioning.  So after much thought I decided to tell my sister-in-law that I would do it if she couldn't find anyone else, but she should find someone else if she could. She's fine with that but said that my niece will be disappointed. That made me really want to just decide to do it, but it's a long drive to a hot city where it's hard to find parking and just thinking about it exhausts me. I restrained myself from saying "You know what, i'll Just do it." Then a while later she texted that she found someone else. I said I was sorry to disappoint my niece and she said it's okay, she'll be fine. But I feel guilty and ashamed. When I tell My Person I'm not going to do it, they will make me feel guilty too. They thought I should say Yes and just do it even though it's hard. My Person understands as best they can but some things they don't really get because they are big and athletic and physically strong and don't have trauma. I'm soooooo tired of everything being so hard.

[Tee]

Bach you did what was best for you, sometimes that's important.  You were there if you needed but you weren't needed.  Don't feel guilty or shame.  It was good self care.

I'm on vacation with my kids and part of me would rather be at home in bed. 

You will have other times with your niece that you will be able to help and spend time with her.   

[Bach]

Thank you for the support and reassurance, Tee.  I felt really bad about it last night and had to fight against letting it get to me, but this morning I felt confident that I did the right thing, and less guilty about it.  I know there will be other times, when I will have more strength and stamina and thus it won't be a choice between self-care and being there for my family, but only if I do exactly what I'm doing now, choosing the self-care when I really need it.  I have to learn to worry a lot less about whether people are thinking badly of me and saying it's okay when really it isn't.  I know that when I say No, it's because I really need to, but I always worry that other people are angry and thinking it's because I'm lazy, selfish and unreliable.

It helps that My Person actually did get it and didn't make me feel bad at all.  Also, my brother called today from his trip, and we had a nice little talk.  I think and hope that I'm coming out of this hyperreactive phase I've been in for the past six weeks. 

[Bach]

Trigger warning:  My narcissistic mom did a lot of weird stuff to/with me.  References to physical abuse, suicide.












Now I know why I tend to flip out in the middle of the summer when it gets really hot and humid.  This morning I had a frantic spate of manic activity figuring out how we're going to get through the super-hot and humid weather expected in our area in the next several days, and another one of those connections fell into place.  My mother loved the heat and was obsessed with tanning, so she had to get to the beach or the swimming pool immediately after lunch if the sun was out.  I had to go with her even if others in the family weren't going.  We would stay for hours and hours.  She used to tell a story about how when I was a baby, a doctor told her that I was sensitive to the sun so she should be careful about my sun exposure, and she said "No daughter of mine is going to be sensitive to the sun!" and proceeded to take me out into the sun whenever and however she wanted because she didn't see any obvious consequences.  To my mother, basically, anything that didn't immediately make me sick or kill me was okay. 

I came to understand several years ago that a part of her hoped very much that I would die, so that she could get attention for the tragic loss of her child AND be rid of me at the same time.  That has never changed, either.  For a good deal of my life, one of my primary motivations to stay alive and heal myself instead of committing suicide was to deprive my mother of the satisfaction.  She would have LOVED playing the tragically bereaved mother of a daughter who committed suicide, "such a bright and talented girl" out of one side of her mouth and "I always knew there was something wrong with her!" out of the other.  Only by dying could I have ever made my mother love me.  I think the only reason she didn't keep squeezing that one time when I was somewhere around...11? that she put her hands around my throat and choked me until I started blacking out was that at the last moment, her self-protective instinct kicked in over her rage at how I had stolen my father's love from her and reminded her subconscious that MOTHER MURDERS CHILD was not the narrative she was looking for. 

This isn't the story I meant to tell here.  I was going to talk about having noticed over the past many years that I get especially unstable when the weather is very hot and humid, and especially in the month of July.  I don't know why July, was July maybe the month that the stepbrothers visited?  Anyway, in the past I assumed that my problems with hot and humid weather were purely physiological, but lately I have come to realise that, as with everything, there are big reasons that dealing with intense summer weather is an area of trauma and triggers.  I was going to reflect on how being hustled off to the beach or pool to bake in the relentless sun all day, do my best to enjoy what there was to enjoy and try to find ways to hide from the sun dealing with my mother and her manic sun-worship must have been an area of trauma for me then that makes heat and sun hard for me to deal with now, and maybe mention that I've been in the process of taking summer back since I started gardening, but this is enough of this kind of thing for now.  I've surmounted the heat-panic and need to get on with my day.

[Three Roses]

An evocative post. Thank you for sharing this today.

[Tee]

Bach I hope that you find some peaceful shade in the coming hot days. 

[Bach]

Thank you so much for being here and for replying, Three Roses and Tee.  I worry that I am maybe too much.  I don't want to abuse this space or anyone's patience or psyche with my tales of woe, but there's so much bubbling up lately.