Sage's Journal

[Jazzy]

Sorry to hear you got some bad news. Of course it is disappointing, and it's okay for you to feel like that. I get not wanting to be depressed though, so I hope you can process this in a good way. Hopefully the followup from your email will give you some more information that you can use to move forward, too.

Enjoy your talk, and stay strong!

[CactusFlower]

Worked things out about the grad school depression and some intrusive thoughts with my therapist. I'll be doing some research on tapping. I had a therapist try it some decades ago, but from everything I've seen and read, she didn't really know what she was doing. Which would explain why it didn't work back then. I found a few excellent reports on clinical trials of it and was pretty impressed with the study and the positive results found. Someone recommended Nick Ortner on youtube as he's apparently some expert in it? I watched a video. I really had to force myself to listen, because he comes across as a real Tony Robbins-like smarmy "this will fix everything" dude. I just focused on the basics. He did a quick sample with his audience (of about 2000 people, bet that was a financially good weekend for him). Oh yeah, that old therapist didn't do it right. So I chose to work with the grad school depression to see if it really worked.

huh. The pre-tapping rating I gave the depression was around a 6 according to his 1-10 scale. He did three rounds, and after, I looked at my own feelings very closely and was very surprised that I could honestly rate it around a 2 at most. I was more like.... "Well, it happened and it sucked, but I'm not that sad or upset or wanting to just go sleep for a while anymore." That was impressive. I don't know if it would really work on everything that dude says it does, but I still plan to research more. The next time something upsets or triggers me, I'll try to remember to attempt this again. I'm not sure I could do it if anything happened in public, though, just for self-consciousness. We'll see.

[Alter-eg0]

Cool!

I went to a seminar with Bessel van de Kolk (from The Body Keeps the Score) and he also did a tapping demo with us.

In public would be a bit more difficult indeed, but there's always the option to "come back to something later". I mean, if something triggers you, it will probably trigger you just as much when you "set it aside" for a moment, come home, and think about it again

[CactusFlower]

Good point, Alter-Eg0.

I'm really finding a lot of positive research on it, and if you say Bessel was doing it too, well... Science for the win! LOL I think I'll put it in my arsenal. one thing I've decided, and will try to work on, is not allowing the external world to make me feel ashamed for any of this. Not that it happened, not that I couldn't remember it until now, not that it was triggered, and not that I have CPTSD and am working on healing. one of my mantras is going to be, "I'm working on my own shame issues, I refuse to take on anymore or anyone else's." I know that won't be easy, but I'm determined and I'm definitely stubborn, ha ha.

There are so many more tools than there were even 20 years ago, or 30, to help us heal. I refuse to feel ashamed for using whatever the * works.

[Alter-eg0]

Absolutely! You go! 

[CactusFlower]

I saw an interesting thing, can't remember where now, about diminishing your inner critic by giving them a name, a personality, even a description. Then you can use this to envision when you tell them no on stuff. I really like that idea. I'm a gamer and always loved role playing games. (I played FIRST edition D&D back in high school) I always give my characters a deep backstory. So I tried to envision my inner critic and these things came to mind: (possibly triggering)















(NSFW) the idiot Carl from one of my favorite sketches from the show, Robot Chicken. They're yelling at Carl because he's ruined something important with his selfish needs. Very adult humor, but it makes me associate that name with someone who ruins things.  youtube.com/watch?v=-Gka7jyraM (triggers: Cabbage Patch dolls, masturbating, adults yelling, unclean produce)

A Saturday Night Live skit from 1998 with Kelsey Grammer as the guest on the skit where they always make fun of NPR, he totally goes off the rails. But the point is, he discusses a character named Carl who ends up influencing everything in his life, clearly not for the better. (transcript only, couldn't find a video) https://snltranscripts.jt.org/98/98bdish.phtml (triggers: anxiety, guilt, cannibalism, survival, drug humor)

As for how "Carl" looks and sounds, I totally see him as "Marty Glouberman", one of the dads in the adult cartoon "Big Mouth" on Netflix, voiced by Richard Kind.  The character is this slightly older father who finds fault with everything and everyone, always complains, is a jerk to most people, can't be pleased, and talks a lot of BS. (triggers: everything.)

So my Inner Critic is now Carl, an entitled, self-centered, judgmental loser. And Carl, you are totally a loser, you're wrong, I'm awesome, and I will tell you to shove it when you start being negative towards me.

[CactusFlower]

Got my second vaccine shot yesterday! Very happy about that. However, my arm is really sore today and I am exhausted. They did say if it gets sore, flap like a chicken for about 3 minutes and it will help.  BFF confirmed his sister did that and it worked. Looks silly, but I can laugh. And the Chicken Dance is going through my head.  Just taking it easy today, though.

[CactusFlower]

Well, the side effects from the second shot were all perfectly normal and most of my friends mentioned having the same things, but they wiped me out for a couple of days. Super achy all over, nauseated, cough, and so incredibly exhausted that I basically slept on and off most of the time. Still, I was fine by the 3rd day and I'm glad to be done with that.

On my BFF's recommendation, I'm reading a book about Adult Children of Alcoholics. I didn't have a stereotypical "drunk" parent. Mom and I didn't even KNOW the male parental unit was an alcoholic until he told us years later. Never acted out of control, never saw him with more than the occasional beer at a cookout. It explains a lot in that book that still applies, though.

After gathering a bunch of other recommendations here and from the folks on CPTSD Foundation, I've gotten Arielle Schwarz's CPTSD workbook. I'm just reading through it first before doing any of the exercises. It looks very interesting and useful.

I had another brief body memory come up the other night. More gaslighting, more "petting" at bedtime... it's almost weird how a split-second memory of such a short amount of time can cause such a lasting reaction.Sometimes, I feel like I kinda wish I could confront him about what he did. But the practical part of me says, oh, wherever he is, he's 70 now. He'll be dead soon. And he probably hasn't changed, wouldn't care, blah blah so what's the point? It's really just a wish for this to be over already, I know, so it's not realistic. Not to mention, I avoid confrontation at all costs, normally. But there's still that part of me that wants a tangible target for all the bile I want to spew at him.

[CactusFlower]

I was posting my normal M/W/F post on my business Twitter just now and as usual, I find it fascinating to read through all the creatives on there. Mainly authors and graphic artists, but it's varied. Someone who's a mom brought up a very very good point. She noted that her daughter's school is giving chocolate Easter eggs to the students with 100% attendance. Not anyone else. She said that since her daughter will NEVER have 100% attendance due to chronic illness, she's making up for that poop by going and buying her a big one. I saw 2 main types of comments.

Other people who agreed and also mentioned that some kids cannot help but have a day here or there due to other reasons, like an unstable home, or abuse, etc, and that this is a cruel and ableist cruddy thing to do to kids.  And I agree. What if a kid was in a car accident? There is so much out there that is beyond their control. Attendance awards really are unfair. But of course, the "Life's not fair" crown had to comment as well.

They were in the tone of "Not everyone can win awards, don't punish everyone for your problems, don't dumb * down,"etc.  One even tried to debate (ha!) and even when he AGREED that awards should be for something with competition and/or excellence FAR beyond the norm, he still argued that it was devaluing to those kids who workedhardtrieddidtheirbestblahblahblah and made it there every day. He refused to see that attendance is not the same thing as a skilled athletic competition. I ended up muting him so I didn't have to read anything he wrote anymore. And then, I noticed every single one of those types of comments was said by a male. They didn't care about the kids with the problems. They just didn't want the "I'm special for no particularly special reason" award taken away. So rather than waste half an hour muting a ton of people, I just closed the app and reminded myself this is why I try not to read comments.  But Gods, it is so disheartening to see such blatant selfishness and hate. I may have to give a hard consider to forcing myself to just post and close, not read anything but on my own stuff. At least there, the only negativity I get is the rare spammy type of message.

[CactusFlower]

Finished that Adult Children of Alcoholics book. It was interesting in that the traits do cross over a lot with CPTSD symptoms. My BFF and I teased each other cause the ACA's meetings are structured on the AA (of course) and I simply cannot deal with a lot of their "God/High Power" things. Also, it doesn't apply for making/amends/atoning because WE aren't the ones who did something wrong, it was our abusers.  I then discussed it with my therapist. She mentioned that a group she runs has something called the 16 Steps of Empowerment. I looked it up after therapy and while it's still for substance abuse, I find the tenets much nicer and more realistic. (It was basically developed as a response to how the patriarchal Judeo-Christian viewpoint of 12 steps didn't work for some women and marginalized communities.) It's much more self-affirming and really is empowering. https://charlottekasl.com/16-step-program/

While I don't have a substance addiction, I might write these down as they're applicable to other kinds of healing and are positive in nature. I appreciate something that addresses diversity more, too.

[CactusFlower]

Posted over in employment, but also here as a record, cause I was dysregulating-ly mad. Applying to various online jobs with all their stupid application systems. One wanted me to create and account and had "security questions" and  severely tweaked me off. Sure, I know and can remember my mom's maiden name, I've used that for years in security questions. But their other options were "Name of the 1st school you attended", "The 1st car you ever owned", "The city your first school was in", The street you lived on when you were 5 years old", "your 1st pet's name".....

I DON'T KNOW! I don't know any of that information! I've never owned a car, we were military and moved a LOT, I couldn't even tell you what state my first school was in. And who the heck remembers their street's name from 5 years old? I was just so torqued off. If they hadn't had  a couple other options, I wouldn't have finished the blanking application. >

I never realized before just how ableist and neurotypical those questions are. I used to think people who COULD remember anything before the age of 5 or 6 were either weird or liars. But I just spent  at least 20 minutes severely angry because it's not fair that I couldn't have applied if those had been the only options, and they have NOTHING AT ALL to do with the job. it's just IT BS.

[CactusFlower]

Holy cow, we did it. The governor's special session actually passed legalizing recreational marijuana here. She called the session so they'd do it, so all she has to do is sign it. They expect the industry to be up and running by April next year. Our medical process was pretty restrictive as to what you could get it for, so this is going to help a lot of people. Not to mention all the jobs and money it's going to pump into the economy.  (I used to live in another state that legalized it, and it was just fine and provided millions to the local economy.)  So excited.

[CactusFlower]

My inner child (of which there seem to be two of different ages) wanted a stuffed bunny toy. I got her one and she is thrilled to pieces. I found a moment of amusement that my teddy bear is named Cocoa and the bunny is apparently named Strawberry.  My inner child has good taste.

[CactusFlower]

I've been indulging my inner child quite a bit lately. It's helped me to realize a little bit more of the child creativity within me as well as learning to accept that it's actually okay to like certain things. I'd forgotten how much I like some stuff.

I was a military dependent, F was in the Air Force. I spent some of my youth in Asian Countries. In the late 70's I lived in Japan. The thing about being a military dependent back then, your family was only allowed so much weight for personal items when going from place to place. So I always had to choose what toys to keep to be shipped. Certain ones followed with me and I even still have some of the stuffed animals. But in general, there wasn't much point in buying a lot of random toys that would just have to be donated/given away in a year or so. The things I got were either small and disposable, like plastic teacups for a tea party with said stuffed animals, or used/sellable, like a bicycle. One thing South Korea and Japan do extremely well is "cute" office supplies. And when I was there, Hello Kitty was still only a few years old and super popular. I utterly LOVED things like Hello Kitty (and other cartoons) pens, pencils, tape, pencil cases, erasers, notepads, etc. and small things like keychains.

We have a wonderful Asian grocery store in town with tons of stuff from various countries. I went yesterday and my inner child was gleeful. I got mochi, teacakes, pocky sticks, cookies, cute erasers, and pretty stickers. I've cute the Hello Kitty off the labels and will glue them to cards like a collection. And I've been allowing myself to like the color pink again. I thought I hated it most of my teen and adult life. I went decades without owning a single item with pink on it. I thought it was infantilizing, insulting, "girly", and stupid.  I realized that's what I absorbed as an impression, not the truth.

And frankly? if someone has an issue with a (almost) 51- year old person liking Hello Kitty and owning cute pink things, to heck with them. I'll go write in my little diary with a pink pen.

[CactusFlower]

Wow. I lived through more trauma than I previously thought. (TW large natural disaster)
...

So I was a military dependent kid in my formative years and we were stationed in Okinawa, Japan, when I was 9. I remember living through a typhoon (a hurricane, but in the Pacific instead). Out of curiosity because learning helps me distance from being overwhelmed, I looked it up to see if it was big enough to be recorded for history.

OMG.

Typhoon Tip in 1979 was a Category 5, classified as a super typhoon, and was actually the 3rd most intense typhoon ever recorded. At it's largest, the storm measured across was about half the size of the Continental USA. It only came within 40 miles of Okinawa, and I remember how bad it was. it apparently caused millions in damage on land and sea in Japan with casualties, temporarily shutting down all wind and sea transport completely. 

I had no idea. No one ever told me how bad or dangerous it was, and that's probably a good thing considering it still messed me up. Male parental unit was dismissive, snappy, mean, and his typical self as we all hid in an interior hallway after boarding up windows. Mom tried to comfort me, but he was... Yeah, I wasn't really comforted, I was belittled and spent all night terrified the windows would implode.

Wow. Some part of me at least is quieted by the confirmation that what I remember was real, though. As an only child (I'm almost 51) whose parents are gone, it feels weird to know there is literally no one left who can corroborate my experiences.