Accepting Myself

[Armee]

 

[Hope67]

they discovered I have more of a dissociative disorder than I thought - not the kind where you suddenly end up somewhere and you don't know how you got there but more like a semi-permanent thing of not being in my present-day adult and needing to get back in so that I can and even want to function in today's world.

I relate very much to what you wrote here Blueberry.  I feel like I am like that as well - depending on how I blend with different parts.  I very much relate to what you said. 

I missed you, and I'm glad you're back safely from the inpatient place.  Sending you a hug, if that's ok   

Hope 

[Blueberry]

***I wanted to edit what I wrote as I thought maybe you felt a bit ashamed (?) to bring up how you were you feeling about not wanting to take care of the furbabies.

Yes, dollyvee, I often feel ashamed of all the things I either can't seem to do or really don't want to. I think there was a point inpatient where I managed to remove myself from feeling ashamed. It wasn't that I banned the ashamed feeling. No, it was more like I replaced feeling ashamed with self-acceptance. I guess I need to do that a good few more times before it turns into a habit.
Thank you for your support and comments.

Thank you Hope for your hugs and saying you relate. It helps

Today was a public holiday and I went up to the farm, early. Working there turns out kind of difficult for me atm too, but at least I had two meals, which is more than can be said for the moment at home. But actually when I was weeding by hand, I was accepting of my feeling that I was going fairly slowly. Every little bit helps. And then I can accept myself for needing outside motivation to get going. My own apt is chaos, my office as well. It's easier, though not easy, to go somewhere else and do some clearing there (weeding is a type of clearing). I came back home in the afternoon, utterly exhausted, tho I didn't actually notice the exhaustion till I got here. That's another thing to accept - physically tired atm, probably psychologically too and they worsen each other.

At least I enjoyed being outside, cycling to and from farm and weeding and eating lunch.

I admit, I do feel lonely, rather friendless atm, but I also feel as if I'm creating a necessary barrier between myself and others irl. Necessary because I need the protection the barrier gives me. I feel vulnerable.

[Blueberry]

I didn't sleep much last night and had to teach an hour in the morning, after which I did some food-shopping, had breakfast and then slept for hours, really deeply. The really deep sleep shows me how much I need it. Near the end of that sleep I had a FOO dream in which I was being treated way younger than I actually was. I did confront M on it, but as usual confronting wasn't particularly useful. Little edit for myself for when I'm re-reading at a later date: I confronted M in my dream, not irl.

Checked my emails a little later and saw one from M - what a coincidence. I mean, she hardly ever writes.
Inviting me to a FOO celebration overseas. There is a part in me that leaps at the idea, would love to go. In inpatient I learned to talk to these kinds of parts, just simple "I see you, I hear you, I sense your excitement" but then also "maybe you weren't there last time with FOO, but you know FOO wasn't very nice to me/ us/ other parts". Then to discover that this excited part is a part who believes that just a little bit more work from me on explaining better or setting better limits or just ignoring the FOO adults or or or would make my participation at FOO celebration possible. This is the first time since I got home from inpatient that I'm activating and using what I learned there in dealing with parts

I also noticed my tendency to drift off and roam around the Internet after a couple of sentences with the particular Part whereas healing comes from staying with the Part (tho not in the Part) and explaining things from the pov of present day Adult with all those experiences including trying with FOO in the past. However. I did start to explain and certainly got part way with the Part, then I did notice that I was drifting off. 

As I write more about it, more and more of the dream is coming clearer. In fact, it wasn't just a FOO dream, I was back in the past at high school too, which is decades ago. 

I guess I really do need patience with myself atm. Really, really need it.

[Armee]

Hi Blueberry! I'm so impressed and inspired by all you learned inpatient about parts and staying with them to explain the present. And wow what a coincidence about dream and communication from M!

Feeling lonely is...well...lonely. and yet this is probably a necessary blank slate,  friendship-wise, while you clear out old toxic friendships to make room for healthy supportive ones. It'll happen....you are a good worthwhile person.

[Blueberry]

Thanks Armee, for content of both paras. And for saying I'm a good and worthwhile person.     I know you mean it btw, otherwise you wouldn't say so.

______________________

Last night, and I do mean 'night' as opposed to 'evening', I read on here for a long, long time. Mostly back in this Journal and a previous one of mine. Enough to see I made progress while inpatient and enough to see how insanely difficult and triggering last year was. I don't even remember if I mentioned it on here at all, but in about my final 2-3 weeks inpatient we had a change of LL. Maybe it's not just a coincidence that it wasn't till my final 2 weeks inpatient that I was even able to begin to look forward to coming home again or even really to consider the idea of coming home again w/o total dread??

It's just a fact of life in my particular brand of cptsd that I get pretty constantly triggered. And possibly the amount and type of triggering that went on with LL was re-traumatising? Now after inpatient I do get a little less triggered e.g. with business neighbour. My inpatient T worked with me on that. Instead of doing emdr on it, we did emd. The 'r' part - reprocessing - would have brought up a whole lot of past stuff from FOO and I think the emd session was pretty much at the end of my inpatient stay so I couldn't afford to be destabilised again but it was very good to desensitise me to business neighbour's past shenanigans.

_ _ _ _ _
Good Things Today
1) I got up nice and early, had breakfast, drank tea and took my meds
2) Did 2 loads of laundry and hung them up in the garden / (yard for the N.Ams on here)
3) I washed a huge pile of dishes
4) Washing those dishes helped me then take a shower and wash my hair, which was very overdue
5) I did a little bit of vacuuming
6) Went to farmer's market and treated myself to some tasty tomatoes (grocery store ones have zero taste/smell this week) and a punnet of strawbs as well as getting some stuff from 'my' farm, and I also got some throw-away items for my little furry 4-legged creatures
7) I feel much better for having had a shower and washed my hair
8 ) Quite a few Realisations:
Realistion A) Round about hanging up laundry outside, I did a little squashing of pest beetles on a particular flowering plant and realised that it's not a waste of a time! And realised that the rule I came up with last week or the week before: tidying my apt and office as well as cleaning both is more important than doing garden work so for every hour in the garden I would do at least 2 hours in apt and/or office was making a rule for myself that quite frankly doesn't function, doesn't help. In fact it just means I end up going on strike and feeling as if I'm doing zero. Or probably some Part of me goes on strike, so it could be useful to try and speak to this Part and get more of a sense of what's going on, if I have the wherewithal.

B) Straight out of inpatient stay and I decided it would be wise to move my business back up into my apt and end the lease on my office. Because it doesn't make too much financial sense to be paying this additional rent. But now I realise - not for the first time - that my office space is useful for me in more ways than purely business and that doing the necessary large scale clear-out of my apt and office in order to be able to prepare and teach in my apt is asking way too much of myself atm and in the next couple of months as well. Also realising once again that the dissociative diagnosis I've been given really does mean that I have Idk how many Parts (OK, in double digits not triple digits) who all have different opinions and needs and require different handling and different compromises about probably more or less everything since more or less everything triggers me, so atm it would be way too much psychologically/emotionally to attempt moving office back into apt.

C) When I'm not capable of looking after my Little Furries adequately, which I'm not atm, then there is NO way that I could be attempting a clear-out or a move. In fact, just to clarify for myself reading at a later date: it took me over a week to even start cleaning out massive accommodation and I haven't managed to finish yet either. I threw some chunks of shavings in but didn't have the wherewithal to take the chunks apart and spread the shavings around. Yes, it's that bad atm.

D) NTS: I really need to take things slowly and my job atm is working on things I learned/practised during inpatient stay and slowly introducing those steps into daily life. Baby steps count here. Big steps during inpatient stay (even if it didn't feel like it), mini steps at home.

_ _ _
Another Good Thing and Realisation:
After having a second breakfast mid-morning, I realised right afterward why I had felt hungry and had eaten: I had been trying to force myself to do too much! I was thinking 'Come on, you can manage a third laundry! It's good drying weather and you're on a roll' tho I was already feeling physically tired. Right after I'd eaten I noticed how stuffed full I was, tho my second breakfast was really small. For me, it's really good progress that I noticed these things    I'll be less likely to try and push myself through an additional task in the future, and a little bit more likely to try and sense what Part is objecting and what this Part needs instead. e.g. a rest or an activity that shows in no uncertain terms that I'm not trying to sneak the additional task in after all. Today that was putting the third pile of laundry back in the hamper

[CactusFlower]

Wow, Blueberry, that was a lot! You got quite a lot done and had some big realizations there. it also sounds like those realizations might help you in some boundary-setting and knowing when you near a limit for yourself. Hope things continue well for you.

[Blueberry]

Thank you CactusFlower for your validation!

More has been evolving over the course of the day too, tho I'm not sure I'm going to manage to write it here or at least not today. So things continue to go well   And even when things dip again I know (and hope to be able to access the information during the dip) that things are still progressing but that I need a rest so in that way things are still going well, under the surface e.g.

[Armee]

I see all the progress you've made Blueberry, too. 

[Blueberry]

Thank you, Armee 
____________________

Success: I sent an email to a FOO mbr today and have not been noticeably triggered or destabilised so far.

Good Things today: Sang in the choir, saw and greeted quite a number of people I know during the course of the day (sometimes I see/speak to absolutely no people), got quite a bit of food from Neighbourhood Pantry incl. fruit, it was sunny today and I made use of that to get stuff done, e.g. 2 loads of laundry drying in garden, harvested my stinging nettles and hung them up to dry, picked garden greens for Furbabies, enjoyed the scent of my roses and the elder flowers, went for a walk with a friend through a nice park, prepared myself 2 proper, tasty, balanced meals. 

Being Kind: I was kind and helpful to a neighbour today, of my own accord. She's a Ukrainian refugee newly moved into our building. She speaks not a word of English and spoke zero of my country's language before she moved here (she can now manage 'I', 'you' 'thank you' and 'goodbye'). Since there was such a load of food on the Neighbourhood Pantry shelves today, I showed her that and then I was helping her with the ins and outs of refuse and recycling, which is pretty complicated in this country. LL needs to register her so she can get her own bin for one type of refuse and when I offered to do it for her - how on earth is she meant to be able to phone or email when she can't even use the Roman alphabet? - so when I offered to contact LL for her she was so happy! She also was totally happy earlier on when I said "I'm just trying to help you!" to make sure she didn't feel I was criticising her for putting the wrong refuse in the wrong bin.
I guess the specially good thing for me with helping today was the feeling of giving something back to society - in a society where I get a lot that in my dysfunctional FOO would be seen as not mine to get or that I don't deserve it because I don't give enough (in FOO's opinion), e.g. long inpatient stays, which are very expensive for the state. Not monetary help to a charity working with refugees, but just directly giving to one individual to help her settle in better.

Another Good Thing today: I'm noticing a real-life use for the little bit of Russian I learned about 30 years ago! It's the only other language my Ukrainian neighbour speaks. I no longer have enough knowledge to make conversation or even string a sentence together apart from "I don't understand" and we're mostly conversing via a translation app for Ukrainian into my country's language and vice versa, but sometimes my Russian knowledge does come in handy! This makes me happy.
And another Good Thing connected to that: A tiny little bit of my Russian knowledge is returning, which is kind of cool. I do know that if I have to speak or read French - a language I used to speak and write fluently - more and more will come back to me the more I speak/read/listen though nothing like the fluency I used to have. But Russian I learnt for only a year and I only ever spoke it in the classroom which is a whole different ball game. I hadn't been expecting to remember more and more words. A pleasant surprise rather than all that other nasty stuff that comes up from the depths in my traumatised brain.

[Blueberry]

First the good stuff: I had my first appointment with a new occupational therapist today. I'm really impressed and relieved at the way he listened to me, let me speak without interrupting to ask what I call 'dumb' questions e.g. "Yeah but why can't you do xy?" I don't want to write any other examples, I notice it's kind of triggering.

He listened attentively to what I said about my particular 'brand' of cptsd (I mean, how it makes functioning so difficult for me) and also my dissociative disorder and in what way occupational and/or art therapy help me. They even help me process trauma a little bit - I yawn a lot - and when I feel safe and secure, Inner Parts will come up to the surface and 'let' me know what's so difficult. Then I can usually sense a bit of what they need to hear from me e.g. one time it was explaining that putting pressure on an object in order to fix it is quite different from breaking an object in a fit of rage (something that M did in my childhood) or even worse from placing physical pressure on a person to force them to do something. I doubt that the traumas behind that topic are properly dealt with but as time has passed since that particular appointment, I've been more able to apply a bit of pressure to an object or to animal in order to fix something or to give my pets their medication for instance. I have to be able to hold my little fur babies still while I administer medication. Fur Babies don't like it but it has to be done. It used to take aaaaaaaages which was stressful for them and me. There are all sorts of examples like that, waiting to be eased at least, so I can function better day-to-day.

Instead of asking me what my goal is, occ. T asked if I can think of any project I'd like to bring to work on in the following weeks. I mentioned one I was working on during inpatient stay, he OK'd it and I'll start on it again next week.

To summarise: he accepted me, my 'diagnosis' of myself and of my problems, but also my strengths and resiliences that I've built up over the years.
He also complimented me a few times on e.g. the amount of healing work I've obviously done in order to get where I am now and how clearly and succinctly I was able to explain to him what I need. Not even in my inpatient stay did anybody say anything that complimentary right at the beginning! I have a very good feeling and am looking forward to starting T with him next week

Less pleasant: my new LL came by yesterday to speak to me about the garden/yard. Let's just say his priorities are quite different from mine. It's now his property, so I suppose he has a right to tell me what I need to clear up and clean up. It seems he'd like all my flowers and berry bushes in orderly rows and that's not quite how mine grow. Wild flowers seem more or less repugnant to him. Also apparently the grass has to be mown once a week, which is not what I do either. Among other things, not cutting so often helps to stop the lawn from drying out and needing to be watered. But I've just digressed into explaining. So let's just say my gardening is insect-friendly, bee-friendly, bird-friendly, and those 'weeds' - in spring and early summer I actually eat them and so do my fur babies. I also enjoy all the different sounds and scents and colour in the garden. Not so LL.
So he was saying - look at this bed here, it's chaos. Me: those are my raspberry plants. Him: Yes, but my wife would have a word or two to say if I left the garden in that state. Me: Excuse me, but I have just been in an inpatient stay for 3 months and so of course I wasn't looking after my beds during that time! Him: You're back now. You must have some 'recreation' time in which to clear up these beds.

Part of that latter bit is cluelessness on his part. He probably doesn't know that I will never be discharged in a particularly healthy state and that in the first few weeks of being home, clearing up the garden isn't even possible, never mind a priority. Pretty galling for me though is the state of the house in general inside in various corners where nobody ever cleaned and where some tenants stack who knows what and previous LL (who's friends / business partner with the new one) knew that and would say things like 'I've told the tenant to remove that' in my hearing but actually never did bother enforcing it. Not to mention all that stuff with my business neighbour and the shared toilet and then that I was meant to share my power meter  with business neighbour to his benefit with LL 'informing' me via business neighbour or not at all. Previous LL acted abominably towards me through all that, and it went on for months. The toilet problem lasted more than a year, in fact it's not really over with, I had to speak to business neighbour about the state of the toilet again today. No help towards me through all of that, more like harassment through neighbour and LL just ignoring me, lying to me - the whole run around. And now all of a sudden: the way I garden is the big issue.

On top of that, new LL put a letter in all our letter boxes today, informing us that he's designated one person in the building as caretaker, a paid caretaker that is, and we tenants are going to pay the costs of that. About €2000 per year divided round everybody in the building - 6 units if the caretaker-tenant has to pay a share or 5 units if he doesn't. Two of those units are mine, so I'm presuming I'll have to pay for each, so over €600 a year for things I've been doing in the building for years as an unpaid cleaning lady and caretaker. Sure, I never mowed the lawn weekly, but I did lots of cleaning that nobody else did - floors etc., the outside steps and then less 'obvious' things a couple of times a year like doors where somebody dribbled something or dripped their coffee over etc. and through all the early Corona time when it was said that door handles, stair rails, light switches etc. should be disinfected daily, I was doing that and I was the only one in the building doing it.
I do intend to speak to new LL again, but it's pretty galling to me that somebody is actually already being paid and certainly does not clean the stairwell once a week, which he's meant to. In fact I had to speak to him several times in December and January and even February - I was back home for a few hours from inpatient stay - just to get him to do the floor we both live on. Where there is no caretaker, it's just normal in this country that you do it turn-about - and he had all these excuses, and it was soooo dirty. And I was about to collapse during that whole time and nobody cared enough to even do their own cleaning far less help me! And now somebody is to be paid for this and I have to fund a good part of it.

I didn't intend to write so much but it just all came out. Thanks for reading if you managed.
Nobody should feel they 'ought' to read this! Way too long for most people.

[Armee]

It wasn't too long, BB, and I enjoyed reading about what's going well and what isn't. 

I'm really surprised that the new LL is harassing you about the garden? That's so strange that he would do that, to me at least it feels so out of line! Especially since it is a garden that you keep and tend!

The occupational therapist sounds amazing though. I'm so happy you are working with someone so complimentary and positive, and I'm impressed how much understanding you have about the dissociation now too. That seems very helpful for eventual healing.

[Larry]

hi blueberry,   i hope tomorrow is a great day for you.

[Blueberry]

Thanks Larry

Today, 16th June is being a lovely day, lots on account of work I've done in the past to find and build on different forms of resiliency. For example, I spent a lot of work, effort and even money learning how to sing at all rather than keeping my mouth firmly closed although wanting to sing with others in groups where people sing for pleasure, around the campfire kind-of-thing. Luckily for me, no religious or spiritual abuse in my past and I've got as far as singing in a church choir. Today is a religious holiday with a few hours singing in the morning. A number of hours later and I'm still singing in my head. 

According to Pete Walker, I suffered from religious/spiritual neglect though. If anybody is interested in what that is, check his "Thriving" book. I can't explain it in words w/o ruining my lovely day.

[Armee]

Enjoy that singing on your head and the buoyancy. Great job investing in that self care and leaning on it.