Moving Forwards

[Blueberry]

Thank you notalone! I really needed the hug and care the day you sent it

[Blueberry]

so, lockdown.  i can't send enough support for the care you take with all this.  you are a wonderful inspiration, even tho it's been hard and harder to do so as the months of this have dragged on.  well done.   

Thank you! It's doing me really good to read this today! I suppose it's my ICr who goes flailing about sometimes/often about me being gullible enough to stick to rules etc. Yes, as soon as the word "gullible" crops up, it's clear. That's what M said to me once or in fact to the whole family at dinner "With a child as gullible as Blueberry..." I could stay on a logical, rational, intellectual level (like FOO) and refute that as I've been doing for years in my head or I could feel a little bit into the pain and grieve for my 11 / 12 yo self who had to endure such hateful words and emotions from M with zero support for me from F.

[Blueberry]

Rant at myself: What are you doing to get back on track?? Nothing.
What would T ask now?: What emotion do you feel? Sadness. Hurt.

What to do with that? I don't know. Though I 'should'. I've been dealing with cptsd long enough. (Is that you again, ICr.? Certainly not my T who says things like that.)

I could allow the sadness and hurt just to be. I'm frightened of allowing them to speak.  That's how I feel about everything atm. Then the less you do about the piles, the worse they get. Well, I'm going for a little walk with friends before evening curfew. Not good enough friends to say all this too though. I know they'd try and help but it wouldn't help. 

[Blueberry]

Just noting for myself that I have done a few concrete activities today e.g. wrote a few long-overdue personal emails. Better than nothing. I also cleared one stack of paper off the floor.

[Bluegem]

Sending you a hug Blueberry 
Sometimes you just have to accept you are where you are ..& that IS OK

...but tomorrow is a new moment ..see you then 

[Sceal]

I know how hard writing those e-mails can be. I hope you can allow yourself to say "F&#% Yeah! I did it!" in regards to those e-mails, and be content that you got that off your plate.

[Blueberry]

Thank you Bluegem     Trying to accept it. Feel like I'm stagnating rather than moving forwards. Remind myself that this too will pass. I think I should be putting more active steps into making it pass. There's that should again that's never helpful for me.

[Blueberry]

I hope you can allow yourself to say "F&#% Yeah! I did it!" in regards to those e-mails, and be content that you got that off your plate.

Not really. I'm not feeling so it's hard to muster up any degree of energy. But thanks anyway since there's no way you could know

_________________________________

I'm not sure that major depression is a comorbidity in my case. I think it's a huge symptom. A way I learnt to use very early on to not feel and then used later to not act, to not do. I feel like saying: yeah, I know all that trauma stuff, all that past stuff but it's time I got my act together, picked myself up and got on with the basics e.g. looking after my pets adequately, took my own meds (that is very basic), drank water or tea, showered and/or washed my hair. But I just go and lie down on my bed again and do zero or doze and fall asleep again.

I've done so much therapy on battling depression. And atm I just don't care!!
M drops by saying "Well obviously you do care." Atm I can't even muster the energy to put FOO behind a black screen of bulletproof glass. So that means I can't muster the energy to protect myself. I think back to an old T who told me my energy shows in those words "I don't care!" Now when I think about that, back to that old T of about 20 years ago, I feel moved and touched and kind of sad. I suppose normally when someone says "I don't care" you would expect an energy-less voice. You'll probably hear that from me too but you can draw the energy out of me, as that T did in the past.

Another few things that T said to me which are probably true and mostly help me are that a) I'll most likely have to take care of my psyche for life (similarily my current T has said things will get easier but not easy) and b) she stressed the importance of habit-changing decisions as of NOW not as of tomorrow. But as soon as I leave the computer I tend to throw all that overboard and go back to my sofa. Well it's good that I at least took the time to write on here because that way I'm doing a little self-care. My thoughts are going a beneficial way briefly at least.

I also wondered while writing further back about what energy there might be in the "I don't care" that manifests itself in my leaving things lying around, like all those books lying around on the floor next to my sofa (bed atm) not to mention hairs after I've pulled them out etc. If they were somebody else's I'd feel absolutely disgusted. It's just as well I live alone.

[Bluegem]

It sounds like you are having a hard few days right now and I hope in a day or two you will find the energy to move forward a little even if that's just clearing the books up 

I hate the word 'should' it is so full of judgement  - usually about ourselves.
I prefer to 'could' (or can or choose) but I am not always successful.

sending you a hug Blueberry 

[Blueberry]

Thank you Bluegem for your caring response   You're right, "should" is full of judgement mostly of myself, which is why it isn't good for me but I lapse into it when not careful.

I did do some  beneficial things today e.g. I gave my little pet her meds finally and cleaned the worst out of her massive living quarters. Now at this moment I can remind myself that when cleaning it out seems like a massive chore, then I'm in an EF.

I read some in both my Pete Walker books and filled in information in Tool Boxes at the back of one of these books. That's writing things like Achievements, Friends, Childhood Friends, Teachers and a whole lot more. It wasn't really easy, but got easier the more I concentrated on it, the more I wrote, the more I tried. On some I drew a blank, but if I go back to them again, it'll probably be easier. The exercises are to help you realise that not everybody around you is as toxic as FOO (or whoever traumatised you) and I think also to help with resilience. Helped me with that anyway.

I watched a movie with a friend at her place. We kept our distance. It was a Walt Disney one so good for my ICs as well. We also had tea to drink, so at least I have drunk some today, and sweet and savoury nibbles. Eating some in company is better than eating too many or nothing at all at home alone.

I skyped with another friend and her son (my godson). They both played some musical instruments for me and then they sang together. The latter felt healing for me because I could hear that my godson wasn't always on tune, or more that he wasn't going up or down much in range. The healing part for me was that nobody told him that the way that happened to me when I was a child. No mockery, no pointing out in a thoroughly unuseful way. They just sang together and I think he can follow his M's tune and voice a bit and maybe dare to move off these basic notes later. Later I dared to sing with my friend too though I'm seldom on the correct notes. It felt good to not feel I had to care. So that means my friend was being supportive and not judgemental.

I don't feel as if I'm out of the woods yet, but I am doing better. 

[Not Alone]

Blueberry, I hear the hard time you've been going through lately. I want you to know that I care about you. Watching the Disney movie with a friend sounds lovely. Seeing your godson NOT being criticized and then singing with a friend and allowing yourself to not be perfect is awesome.

[Blueberry]

Thank you notalone! Feeling heard feels really good atm.    Feeling heard means feeling accepted atm which is helping me accept myself again.

[Sceal]

Sorry to read that you've been having such a hard time. I apologize for my earlier comment, I didn't quite understand how difficult of a time you were having.

Being around people and feeling like one is accepted and not judged is so important, vital! I am happy to read you got that while singing with your friend. I wish you many, many more of those moments.


(Edit due to hitting send too early and it cut off mid-word)

[Blueberry]

I am moving forwards again, on a project I've been wanting to for a while. otoh I'm also coming up against a lot of ICr obstacles in the form of M, F, B1 which is quite a lot all at once.

Where I'm moving forwards is once again research into literary translation as well as the concrete step of applying for a spot in Summer School. I have started writing the application and got further than my name but as usual when applying for things there's a massive backlash from internalised FOO with their voices and sometimes even my own voice pouring scorn on the very idea of me applying. Not so much a "Who do you think you are?!?" that some people write about, but more a long litany of why it'll never work in my case.

Often the 'Why it won't work' is based on cup half-empty. The idea I gathered at home growing up that I was born with substandard intelligence and things like that and that no improvement was possible. So to me it seemed trying anything would bring me no benefit. Well, often it brought ridicule. I remember saying to F once that I couldn't draw. He said "I don't see you trying much". It's true I didn't try much, although for a while I did work on water colours. But what I really needed instead of "I don't see you trying much" is somebody to more or less lead me by the hand and say "Let's do some together" and then praise some form of what I did. Not even necessarily the result but that I started at all, that I tried at all.

OK, well, now I get it, it's me that needs to do that with my Inner Children or even Inner Younger Adults on starting to apply for the summer school.

By the time I told F I couldn't draw, I would have been somewhere between 9 and 12yo and had already given up believing in any ability of my own to make things better for myself or learn to do much, especially things somebody else in FOO could already do better e.g. B1 in drawing.
Even when I eventually became interested in writing and in modern languages, the wider FOO would comment on that but then follow up with a monologue of someone else like great uncle or cousin twice removed interested in that field and it turned into all about them or all about the monologuer, though I didn't understand that then. To me it just felt like competition, that somebody else was better, more worthy of being mentioned than I was.

In the past couple of days I've been reading Pete Walker again and how he describes verbal and emotional abuse versus nurturance. My parents thought they were nurturing because they did discuss things with us and they did read to us BUT often it was in order to push their beliefs onto us rather than encouraging us to speak, encouraging us to develop our own thoughts e.g. about the character in a novel. I think I was ridiculed most often, told most often that I was stupid and shouldn't join in family discussions. That wasn't mostly during read-aloud sessions but I know that there I didn't dare voice an opinion.

Instead of being encouraged a little to try things out, I got the opposite from someone else in FOO e.g. B1 but also M - mostly blanket statements on why I wouldn't be able to do x, y, z. Mostly it was forms of "you don't have the skills or knowledge" with the message that I was somehow incapable of learning it added on. Like if you haven't made it by the time you're 16 or 18 or 20, forget it. I know that's blatantly untrue, but I often get blindsided by those kinds of thoughts anyway. Knowing in some part of me that those FOO messages are blatantly untrue still doesn't give me tons of energy to take on those ICr sayings and do what I need and want to do anyway.

T would be reminding me now to concentrate on our family friend who died in the summer, concentrating on her encouraging maternal energy toward little Child me. She didn't exude this air of "You'll never manage." not to me, not to her own children. Whereas my M didn't just exude that kind of air, she openly said at home that the eldest child in that family would never achieve her goal and she couldn't understand why her parents were encouraging her in it. She achieved her goal, she's been working in her chosen field for years. This sort of thing is behind my comment here https://cptsd.org/forum/index.php?topic=13701.msg104440#msg104440 that FOO are simply not very nice people.

Actually I wanted to add more to that thread but then I couldn't, too blocked. And I wanted to write again to the daughter, eldest child of our family friend who died and I haven't been able to. I'm too blocked. Realising how blocked I still am and also once again how much the emotional, verbal, intellectual abuse devastated my intellectual and language-skills growth, I can now be more forgiving to myself about the all the stalling I feel I'm doing atm and forgiving about how difficult it feels to simply fill in an application form.

There are more realisations coming up and churning around but that's all I'm writing for the moment.

[Blueberry]

I apologize for my earlier comment, I didn't quite understand how difficult of a time you were having.

No apology needed!   What your comment did do was help galvanise me into writing a response which in turn enabled me to go off on a big rant abut what was going on in me that day. That was very useful. Because when things are really bad I question the futility of writing anything, even though I know that I often come to some sort of helpful conclusion while writing.

Even I wasn't really aware of how difficult things were. I didn't realise I was in a full-blown EF. So I'm really sorry if you got a blast of aggressive energy that ought to have been heading to my anti-FOO defences instead.

Also I know that we have some shared topics, shared difficulties like selling yourself the way we both need to in marketing, and part of yourself feeling on display in the work we do, so now I'll add difficulty sending off emails to that shared list   It's really helpful to have somebody who gets a part of what I'm often going through and up against.