Taking those concrete beneficial steps

[sanmagic7]

wow, blueberry, this really seems like a lot in a short time.  i loved that visualization you used - i'm going to try that when it feels like it would fit.  it seems to give impetus to pos. messages behind it.  well done, you, is right!     keep it up - you're amazing!  love and hugs, my dear.   

[Snowdrop]

 

[Not Alone]

I celebrate your progress in dealing with people and being able to talk on the phone w/o freezing. 

[Blueberry]

Thanks everybody 

[Hope67]

 

[Blueberry]

I seem to be dreading tomorrow. When I am, I tend not to go to bed. If I go to sleep tomorrow comes faster - could be a reason to stay up? Also I feel there are things I ought to have done and /or know I ought to do tomorrow morning before my first client comes.

I want to write about the activity I did right after coming home from T last time and the preceding work in T.

*** TW Yuk! Gross! A bit sexual, maybe tmi ***


There are often problems in the building I live in, with not everybody pulling their weight. One issue is: my new business neighbour makes a real mess of the shared business toilet. Like urine on the seat and on the floor. I mentioned in T but without the details, saying it wasn't a thing to deal with there. It felt like a hugely embarrassing, shameful topic. My T is male too, which makes it worse for me. Toilet trips involve sexual organs and anything to do with those organs is a grey, foggy half-dissociated, shameful area for me due to CSA. But bit by bit my T got the story out of me. The way he talked about it was so neutral but also matter-of-fact that my feelings of embarrassment and shame disappeared so he was able to help me find a strategy for attempting to deal with my neighbour.

My T said that men do - naturally / anatomically - tend to make that kind of splash/splatter mess, but instead of telling me to 'just put up with it because that's the way men are', he said a man has to clean up after himself and it's perfectly reasonable to expect that. If the man doesn't, then you tell him. I mentioned how a married friend said that some men including her husband don't even notice the mess they're making (whether bathroom or elsewhere). My T said "That's why you have to show them." Lightbulb for me - when my friend's husband still claims not to notice, he's playing her. Some 'game' going on there. I know there are men who are really fastidious.

So according to my T's instructions and armed with his encouragement, as soon as I got home after T, I asked my business neighbour if he had a couple of minutes and then showed him visible, sticky spots, explained that it's not acceptable for a shared toilet. It's simply horrible and disgusting for a woman to have to sit on that. Here is the brush, you need to use it for... (me pointing). For the seat you need a cloth, for the floor as well, everytime that stuff doesn't land in the toilet. My students use the toilet too on occasion, one has already complained, after cleaning up as best she could.

My neighbour actually seemed to accept my complaint quite well. Later on that day I checked the toilet again. The applicable part of the floor had been cleaned. The brush had been used to good effect. Seat a bit better. But that was Wednesday. I checked it again this evening and the seat's a total mess. So that's something to dread about tomorrow. Either clean it myself, or take it up with business neighbour again. My T said I should stick to the topic with neighbour. If he lapses, then take it up with him again. I do see my T's point because otherwise I'll just be seething with rage about having to clean a mess that isn't mine every day, also feeling genuinely disgusted and also exhausted because cleaning exhausts me. So it's better to give push-back again: "This is not acceptable. I am not accepting this!" It's hard for me to think that, write that, say that. But it is getting better. I'm yawning, combined with forgetting to breathe.

The whole issue has brought up realisations in other areas, other than boundaries and limits. Maybe I'll write about them later.

[Blueberry]

One positive thing in the building: the smoke/heat detectors in the stairwell were beeping when I got home a few days ago. They beeped for two days, but now somebody has finally dealt with them! They're no longer beeping anyway. NTS not all technical problems are left to me.

[Jazzy]

I'm sorry you're stuck in this situation Blueberry. The way you feel is certainly understandable. I can't even imagine how someone thinks this is acceptable behaviour. Hopefully it gets resolved soon, in a permanent way. Until then, stay strong. I hope you get the rest you need to help you through the day as well. Take care!

Huzzah for no more beeping!   

[Not Alone]

It felt like a hugely embarrassing, shameful topic. My T is male too, which makes it worse for me. Toilet trips involve sexual organs and anything to do with those organs is a grey, foggy half-dissociated, shameful area for me due to CSA. But bit by bit my T got the story out of me. The way he talked about it was so neutral but also matter-of-fact that my feelings of embarrassment and shame disappeared so he was able to help me find a strategy for attempting to deal with my neighbour.

I get this 100% I would have been really triggered by that entire situation. Blueberry, I am proud of you for confronting/educating your neighbor about this. Too bad it seems that it will not be a one time thing. Maybe a note in the bathroom, possibly one with humor, might be a good reminder for him.

[Blueberry]

Thank you so much for reading, commenting and validating Jazzy and notalone! It means a lot because the topic is difficult for me and my post long as usual, and then my TWs might well put people off.

This is one of the other realisations/memories: 'just put up with it because that's the way men are'. An expectation from me in FOO that I'll put up with things because whoever it is that's harming me sees no need to change. Or somebody else in FOO sees no need for this to change. It's not necessarily men in FOO. At Horrible FOO Event no. 2, B1 told me I had to put up with SIL2's rude behaviour towards me "because that's the way she is and she's not going to change". Of course this expectation of me is way older or I wouldn't have been so triggered and upset during Horrible FOO Event no. 2. When I was growing up, F hardly protected me from M or B1, while M protected me from B1 even less often. There was a sort of inevitableness about it. "Oh well, that's the way he is. We can't do anything about it". I'm not sure that they ever said that in so many words but that's the way they acted. I feel tightening in my gut, I feel the fear, so I'd better close up this memory a bit.

A different realisation is that I somehow feel I have to take the other person's assumed circumstances into account to such a degree that they become more important than my own circumstances. No, I guess that is a similar topic after all. The way it played out here was cultural. I actually live in a foreign country, but by now I'm very well integrated. My business neighbour is also foreign but from a much more different culture. I know that generally speaking the position of women is lower than men in his home country, that sexually-speaking things are definitely different - women more covered up etc. That made it even harder for me to speak up because there's this voice in me saying "he's foreign, you have to take this into account". I know that's something old. Maybe it's connected to M not wanting to integrate in the country my parents emigrated to? She didn't. She considered herself 'above' the people there and gravitated more to other homesick, unhappy immigrants even if they came from wildly different cultures whose general outlook on life, treatment of women or whatever was way different from my parents' home country. It was like taking sides: home countries / original culture 'good' whereas country immigrated to 'bad'. As a child, I unfortunately tried to be as much like M as possible in the hope she'd love me. This was one of the things I emulated: a rejection of the country and culture we'd moved to.

I wonder if that's playing a role here? I'm not sure actually. Maybe it really just is the usual case of 'other people's opinions, feelings, needs are more important than my own'. Though there is something about him coming from a different culture which seems to be affecting me. Not that I band together with other foreigners here against the locals the way M did in certain circumstances. It'll probably come clear in a day or two or week or two.

And the other topic here is: me putting myself in a position of victim / wrong-doer reversal. 'Poor foreigner-from-different-culture-where-women-clean-and-don't-speak-up and where it's shameful for women to mention anything vaguely sexual to men they're not married to' versus 'inconvenient, overly strict me, causing problems again'. Though actually it's me saying "This is not acceptable behaviour!!" I'm impinged by a problem and speaking up about it, rather than causing it. 

[Snowdrop]

I can relate to your post a great deal. I often heard "oh that's just the way he is", with an implication that I had to just accept things, and that my needs were less important.

Your needs are every bit as important as your neighbours. Your neighbours behaviour is not acceptable, and it would make me feel icky. He should absolutely clean it up himself. You've done brilliantly by showing it to him and telling him what to do . I'm sorry it's happened again, but I agree that pushing back each time is the best course of action. I like the idea of putting a sign up.

[sanmagic7]

blueberry, also having the experience of living in a foreign country with cultural difference re: bathroom behavior of men and women, it was always a conflict to get my hub to put the toilet seat down.  i told him that when a man lives w/ a woman, he always thinks of that, cuz otherwise i end up sitting into the toilet, especially in the middle of the night!  men in mex. have more rights than women, too, especially when it comes to cleaning up after themselves.  it totally sucks!

but, messing up the seat?  doesn't he at least put the seat up when he pees?  that's just gross to me.  with shared bathrooms in a public place, such as offices, cleaning up after oneself should be automatic.  he may need training and teaching, unfortunately.  i absolutely agree w/ everyone that your rights as a lady are every bit as important as his as a gentleman.  we need to be on our best behavior, showing our best manners, when we share space with others.  when i lived in the same house as the mister, he and i shared a bathroom, and he was very clean about it.  it was a relief.

of course, i know that women can be gross in the bathroom as well, and i think it's cuz they're not taught differently, either.  it sounds like that teacher task is falling on you, which is extremely unfortunate.  i'm proud of you for taking it to him the first time, but it sounds like repetition is the only thing that is going to get thru to him.  maybe he'll get sick of hearing you complain about it and start cleaning up after himself just to get you off his back.  or, maybe you can ask him if things are different where he comes from, and explain that that's not how it's done where you live now.

i don't know.  it's unsanitary and yucky no matter what.  sorry you have to be dealing with this.  honestly, blueberry, you've gone thru so much living in that building.  i give you so much credit for tackling one battle after another.  i hope you get some satisfaction, and soon!  love and hugs!   

[Blueberry]

I'm interrupting the above topic to mention a recurring topic where I had a bit of a breakthrough today in that my ICr was pretty quiet and I was accepting of myself.

I needed to run a couple of errands, the most urgent of which was to do a bank transfer for my business rent. Normally, it's automatic but I temporarily stopped the automatic part of it so that I can transfer the reduced rate (till my ll does the work he's meant to be doing). I wanted to collect something else from the bank and I had to take my passport elsewhere, and then come directly into my office to continue working. Put my office stuff and my passport in my bag, then walked over to the place who needs a copy of my passport, then I walked into the bank and realised  I'd left my bank transfer information in my office. I collected the other thing and came back home.

Why didn't I take the bank transfer information with me? Because getting out everything I needed for the one errand was simply too much! Doesn't sound like much if you're not dealing with my particular brand of cptsd of course, but what else had I dealt with today? Got up with that dread of bathroom hygiene in shared bathroom, taught for 90 minutes, I did a load of laundry and hung it out, did various smallish cleaning and tidying jobs including cleaning the inside of my apartment's toilet bowl. And now I'm really pretty tired. NTS: this is real. That is what it's like for me - I can do a little cleaning if I split jobs up into small steps. Things that are particularly overwhelming and triggering e.g.  cleaning the toilet have to be split up into the smallest bits.

I'm really accepting it  On the way back from the bank I thought to myself that this way I'll have another little walk in the fresh air and maybe even in the sunshine   

I'm never able to clean all my apartment in one go, I can't even do that to one room. It's just impossible. Now I'm really tired but I want to phone a new client.

[Three Roses]

I'm really accepting it 

Celebrating your successes with you!

[Blueberry]

Thanks 3R! 

I didn't get out of bed for a long time today, except to open my curtains and go back to bed. I tried feeling into why I didn't want to, but I couldn't. Well, I did get up eventually after reminding myself I could just go into the garden for a little bit and look around, enjoy the sunshine etc.

*** Toilet issues ***

I also checked the office toilet to see if it was in any better condition than last night. It wasn't, it was worse. Not flushed last night, more added this morning without flushing. Luckily my business neighbour came out of his shop and asked me how I was doing. After replying to that, I took the bull by the horns: "the toilet's in a really bad state though, come and look". The Guidebook to Dealing with Conflict in This Building apparently says 'Deny Everything!' so at 1 pm this guy says "I haven't used the toilet yet today!!" It was like that yesterday evening and I said so. Of course he didn't use the toilet all yesterday either. But I wasn't letting him off so easily. I persuaded him to take a look and showed him spots on the seat. He said "That's normal!" So here I am Remedial Teacher for Appropriate Toilet Behaviour and Sanitation... I much prefer teaching language.