Moving Forwards

[Hope67]

   Blueberry, thinking of you. 
Hope 

[Blueberry]

Anyway, I actually came on to write that I'm sort of gearing up to ask my LL for new, better windows in my office ...

I feel fairly strong today and anchored in my present-day Adult but still note how much I dread approaching LL about it. ... I realised summoning up the courage and dealing with the aftermath in my emotions would rule out any other kind of project for about a week. I'd be back to absolute minimal work and tasks, business and private.

I'm back to pretty minimal w/o even having asked him so that would be a reason to move forward on it. For me, often the fear of doing something is worse than actually doing it. It feels like I've been waiting a loooooong time but it isn't really. Just 3 days according to my Journal here, or maybe a little more b/c I didn't write it here immediately.

It's been helpful for me the past couple of days to think that I'm going to demand new windows, I'm not going to ask for them. Demanding them may not bring them but it feels stronger, more adult-like, less obsequious. I need new and better windows that cut out more sound and that is the end of it.

[Blueberry]

I spent even longer in bed today. Did get up briefly in the morning to attend to some things but went back to bed. I feel sad and a bit overwhelmed.

Today - this evening - was the day my case was meant to be talked about in an anonymous form at the women's network on an online conference. For some reason, my case wasn't mentioned so I actually brought it up myself and was basically told I wouldn't get anywhere with making changes to get myself heard if I didn't network with other women in this group at a local level. To me, it feels like the old "you're doing something wrong, you have to change". Also I have mentioned it to other women locally but they're more willing to put up with the behaviour and just not have a say, for whatever reason.

This feels especially difficult because various men in our local group are not following the rules, e.g. the person who is elected is mostly not the one who makes decisions but there's no clear structure to show in what situations somebody else decides what. I can feel why that would be triggering to me. In fact, that kind of thing is always triggering to me.

One good thing anyway: when I spoke up in the online women's network this evening, I was fairly clear in what I said. Before I spoke I kind of felt like crying which I don't think would have been helpful, but when I spoke it was from my head and clear. Before the women's network part of the evening, I was pretty foggy, I couldn't even have said what the problem in our local group is. Half-dissociated? But then going back into my head, I could. So I managed that quite well.

In an earlier conference session, I felt all the reasons why I'm in this particular association which lobbies for improvements in something that has always been very important to me. But I also realised at the end of that session that those ideas and helpful suggestions which would be good for our group to hear are very unlikely to be heard and certainly not acted upon before the problems with power etc are cleared up in our group.

[Armee]

Blueberry...

It is a huge huge huge accomplishment to be able to speak up for yourself and stay clear and present and in your head. This is something I really struggle with. So while I am ticked off for you that they pushed your case off the agenda without even telling you...I'm just so dang proud of you.

[Blueberry]

Thank you, Armee 

I spoke up at other times during the course of the weekend too.

But now I feel emotionally exhausted. And also sort of friendless. I am sort of burning bridges all over the place. But otoh why continue to hang around with people who are so toxic in their behaviour towards me? I don't mean the conference per se. Just the one ex-friend who said I'm always fighting with everybody. She's sort of right. But is there anything wrong with fighting back when I feel I'm being mis-treated? The association I'm in wants to represent a cross-section of society, not just males of a certain age. I don't just represent females but also females with chronic illness, with disability you can't really see. But it does have an affect on how much energy I have to keep fighting back.  I don't want to be perceived as a victim or even be one in the grand context. Now my mind has gone blank. But mostly I was not blanked-out during the conference.

T did encourage me to fight back in this association I'm in (at the local level) but Idk it seems I have too many places where and people with whom I'm struggling and fighting atm. At the conference there were younger people (20-30 y.o.) especially who understood where I was coming from and saying it sounded similar to what they'd been going through, to be heard among the older mbrs. I do belong to the older mbrs now but at the time I would've been forging my way through, I was all caught up in cptsd and sheer exhaustion and constantly ill etc.

Now I do need to reground after the weekend and I was going to go to the farm today and tomorrow but someone there is corona positive so I changed my mind. At least I went for a little cycle and immediately felt better in the fresh air.

[rainydiary]

Blueberry, I appreciate you sharing about your experiences with others here.  I am baffled by myself in relationship to others and it is helpful to have you and others share here to help me too.  I hope that you find the balance with asserting and stepping back that feels right to you. 

[Armee]

I'm sorry you feel friendless right now. Hopefully moving out the toxic relationships will make mental space for new fulfilling relationships. I now know so much better who to let in. Not perfect I still make a lot of mistakes. But I get less invested in uneven relationships.

[Blueberry]

Well I'm not totally friendless, I've got all of you anyway!

I was just feeling a bit EF-y the past few days. I 'shouldn't' feel this way but I did: wanting to feel support of FOO, especially F, around me.  I mean I think I should be over that. I should have other people to lean on, not my aging parents. However, 'should' is never helpful. But nor are my parents helpful to me. On the contrary.

At least I took my most important medication this morning and finally had a shower. It's a start back into the world of the living and thriving. Yesterday I did have this voice suggesting ending it all, but I don't take that super-seriously anymore. I don't get worried about what it means. But still, hid in bed most of the day. However, I need to do some prep for a difficult job tomorrow.

[dollyvee]

Hi Blueberry,

I just wanted to say that I totally relate to feeling that i'm stuck in situations where I seem to be "fighting" with people. I've said things with certain friends over the past few years about how they've treated me in the past, and they're no longer friends. Part of me does wonder too, if it's me setting boundaries now, or if maybe I'm just repeating a pattern of having to "fight to survive" in my family growing up.

Sending support as you're not alone with that stuff.

dolly

[rainydiary]

Blueberry, I will be thinking of you as you prep for the difficult job as a well as navigate the feelings coming up. 

[Blueberry]

Thank you rainydiary for your support

Thank you for dropping by and commenting, dolly, and letting me know I'm not alone.

Mostly I think I'm setting boundaries. The accusations that I'm fighting 'everybody' are coming from my ICr chiefly. It's something FOO used to say, especially F I think. Then in early days in therapy, especially in group therapy. That's years ago now when Ts didn't work trauma-informed. They'd provoke me for a reaction and then complain about me blowing a fuse and being verbally aggressive. They didn't realise I was protecting my boundaries and especially protecting my inner world from landing back in trauma. They didn't really understand emotional traumatisations either. I had to 'fight to survive' in therapy too. Ts would even comment on that but didn't seem to understand their role in pushing me into those situations to begin with.

I may be fighting against myself a little bit too atm. I've been looking at myself out of a position of shame and weakness or at least feeling weak which all lead to me being self-critical about not managing to behave like a responsible adult - working, cleaning and tidying my apartment and generally getting on with things. Also taking those beneficial forward steps or just beneficial treading-water steps instead of 'being lazy'.

Looking at myself from a position of shame and weakness isn't helpful however. It would be much more helpful to do some EFT and/or just get on with tasks. Do the easiest, just start. But I prefer roaming around the Internet reading useless news etc. Undoubtedly there are feelings and realisations coming up, which I am 'successfully' ignoring instead of dipping my toe into as my T teaches me.

[Blueberry]

I'm sorry I'm not reading or writing much on other people's threads atm.

I have signed up for the Trauma Super Conference that's running from Dec. 3rd to Dec. 9th or so. Need to remind myself just to attempt a few of the sessions, e.g. there's one on recognising and overcoming resilience to healing. That's always a biggie with me. I read around and I write e.g. on here but I avoid the actual work, those concrete steps. I do do some of them, but I avoid lots of others. I know some of you kind people on here will comment that I do take steps. Yes, I do, but I think I could take more. But I don't. Then it feels like I'm buried under  and I don't even know where to start. So I don't.

Recently I ended up tapping that I accept myself "even though I'm making progress" / "even though I've been successful at one thing" or something to that effect and FOO mbrs - M and F I think - turned up in my mind. Oh, wow. They don't want me to be successful or make progress. So giving up, not allowing myself to progress is part of my trauma response, part of what I did for years as a child and later and am still doing. Hm. So what I actually need to do is start tapping on 'accepting myself' for 'not getting on with things atm'. Or for developing this response as a child and continuing with it.

This is how I tend to work or tend to broach things I need to be doing: 1) I don't do them   2) I put them off and put them off and put them off    3) I do a bit of them and take long breaks   4) I do a bit of them and pull my hair out while I'm about it   5) I do a bit of them and take breaks and wander round the Internet reading about bad things happening to other people, things that could potentially be traumatising to the people themselves, the people around them or even me from reading (though I don't think I allow my emotions contact to the stuff   6) I eat instead of starting to do them    7) I go back to bed and read and/or do crossword puzzles and/or sleep      8 ) I put the things off so long there's no way I have time to finish them or do them well.

Equals self-sabotage. Self-sabotage to make the parents of my childhood feel better. M feel better that I'm in no danger of having a better or easier childhood than her. F feel better that M won't feel surpassed by me in some way. M feel better that I'm in no danger of surpassing B1 in some way. F feel better that the family boat is not going to be rocked e.g. by B1 blowing any more fuses than he normally does or by B1 not having me as a scapegoat on which to project the anger he feels towards M for abuse and F for allowing that abuse.
Self-sabotage to make my present-day parents feel better too? It's not as if they have changed. Aha. It's self-sabotage not actually laziness and lack of perseverance at the core of my being. In fact, I'm quite perseverant in self-sabotage. Just need to switch that to being perseverant in self-care including taking those concrete steps. 'Just' need to. 'Just'. If it was that easy, I bet I would have done it before.

These past few days I've felt in limbo. Maybe it has something to do with the state of the pandemic though I'm vaccinated and am not especially exposed to it. No, I think it's more to do with not getting on with concrete steps whether recovery steps in emotions etc. or just plain old getting on with things, starting with the easiest and working on from there. Partly I'd like to put a dumpster outside the window and throw everything in there, but that's not actually viable for a whole bunch of practical reasons. But also for emotional reasons. I'm not good at getting rid of things.

There is also correspondence waiting to go various places e.g. ex-friend no. 2. Ex-friend no. 1 turned up yesterday with some chocolate for Advent, saying she didn't have time to respond to my email but she would. I accepted the chocolate, but her not responding to the email makes me feel in limbo. Although partly it makes me feel better than with ex-friend no. 2 (mother of my godson) who seems to have decided she can just move on after dumping all that garbage on me. i.e. in any emails from her on fairly neutral topics, she starts and ends the email as if we're still great friends.  Oh now I remember, B1 used to do that too in my childhood, in my teenage years and even pretty recently after FOO Horrendous Event no. 2. It feels as if people like that are not taking me seriously.

NTS: I often don't take those concrete healing steps forward when realisations are bubbling up from my subconscious. Recent realisations about self-sabotage and other people I trusted not taking me or my feelings or my words seriously, hence going back to bed and not doing.

[rainydiary]

Blueberry, I appreciate your share and the reminder that what we see may not reflect your internal experience.  I hope that you find a balance in attending the conference.   

[Blueberry]

I've been reading back in here as I sometimes do. It is helpful for me to read how much has been going on in me in the past 6 weeks or so.  These sentences below caught my eye particularly.

my T is encouraging me to do it however I can best do it, but DO IT. Not that he shouts or yells. He says once I have been doing it with a fair amount of ease for a while then it will get easier and I will be able to do it 'normally' bit by bit, but so long as I need to gear myself up for it and then write it, then that's what I can do.

This caught my eye because that same thing happened with showering and hair-washing. I can now do both with "a fair amount of ease". They're not totally easy but when I finally do do them, it goes a lot faster than it used to. I also no longer have to really gear myself up for it, 'grit my teeth' and go through with it half-dissociated. I don't shower or wash my hair as often as I ought but I think the not-doing is connected to some remembrance in me that it's really exhausting and time-consuming rather than it still being so.

So I think now that what he is getting at is: in friendships, in 'work relationships' with clients or whoever, in any other dealings with people I end up in a relationally abusive situation, as a scapegoat, again and again and again, and the only way out of that is to stand my ground and speak up for myself, speak my truth, never minding what anybody else says or thinks. Very New Thoughts from rn. A bit scary. I wish I could just do some trauma therapy, though I could of course do some EFT or Screen Processing, but I haven't been doing that...

I also note that less than 2 months ago I was hearing and realising that speaking my truth never mind what anybody else says or thinks would be a step forward, but the idea of it was Very New. And a bit Scary. For me, in my process, 2 months ago is not a long time at all. So no wonder things feel pretty difficult atm. No wonder I feel as if I'm caught up in avoidance. I still wish I could just go and do some EMDR (like 'everybody else' - ha ha) and everything would improve. But apparently that's not how it works or how it's going to in my case. I do trust my T. Undoubtedly the steps I'm taking are those I need to take and just doing some EMDR or attempting to would either plunge me down somewhere I can't possibly go and then maybe backfire or... who knows what exactly. Or maybe it would have no effect whatsoever. Once when I asked my T about EMDR again a couple of years ago for dealing with my eating disorder, he intimated we needed to attempt to find some of the emotions that my eating disorder is covering up. But I block at feeling emotions or even considering what they could possibly be. So it seems that's why we have to go a different route. The route of Doing, Practising, Doing again even if not perfect, but Keeping On doing. Little by little the old trauma wears away. Little by little I do feel some emotions. Little by little different paths are engrained in my brain. Different paths that are healthier and that eventually turn into main roads and then maybe super-highways, which I then turn onto semi-automatically instead of going down the well-worn paths of self-sabotage, self-destruction, self-doubt etc.

[Blueberry]

Spent almost all weekend in bed. I could have joined in singing with the choir Sat. eve, Sun. morning and Sun. eve as in rn but... Idk I couldn't be bothered or something. I started listening to one of the Trauma Super Conference talks a few minutes ago but I turned it off. I know that what I most need to do now is ACT. MOVE forwards. Take those STEPS. Not listen to how others took theirs. Acting was my homework from T. My next T appointment is coming up this week. My other homework from T was to take those steps of not accepting the things people are trying to shove down my throat and more importantly taking those steps of standing up to those people and while I'm about it FEEL the emotions coming up. I haven't been doing that though, I've mostly been hiding, eating, pulling my hair out which all help me not feel.

What I have felt though is despair, depression and fear. With FOO moving in and out of my dreams.
I note that the thought of moving house is making me feel unstable. Not that that's the next step I'll be taking or anything.

I feel bad about not going to choir, not phoning my godson, not writing homework for one of my students (tho I said I would), not getting a bunch of important documents handed in here, there and everywhere and not getting up a modicum of energy to do basics: take my own meds, give my pet hers, tidy, clean. Or just do anything constructive.