Accepting Myself

[rainydiary]

Blueberry, I appreciate what you are noticing.  I hope that you have the space to explore and heal and identify what will be supportive.

[CactusFlower]

Blueberry, thank you for sharing your journey with us. You are doing a lot of work, but I do see positive things in your posts. I hope you share about the books if they end up working well for you.

I had a thought as I read your post. I've done choral singing in the past as well. Perhaps the singing in a group helps because your mind is being given a great example of parts that work together to create a working whole? (now I can't believe I haven't thought of this before, lol) That it's teaching you parts can be good when they work right?  Just a little thought.

[Hope67]

Hi Blueberry,
I am also very grateful to you for sharing your experiences, as I feel like I've been able to learn a lot from coming alongside you and listening to you.  I am intrigued about the book titles you've been recommended - and especially the one about parts, as I am using parts related information and finding it helpful so far.  If you feel ok to share the book titles, I'd love to know what they are.  But only if you feel ok to do so of course.

I hope they are helpful to you.

Hope 

[Blueberry]

Good Things today:
I finally got up
I got on with more clear-out of books and papers
I went to a bake sale in support of something good (in my eyes of course), had a delicious slice of cake and a cold drink. Did find a spot to sit at and make small talk with other people instead sitting by myself or 'needing' somebody to hook me up with other people. That helped me come back into functioning adult of today.
In the evening coolness I did some work in my garden - cutting things back, rooting things up, enjoying what's flowering. Enjoying my garden before I lose all or most of it.


I put my Little Furries out while gardening. I'm glad I did that because they enjoy it. Then it helps me to feel the joy at doing something nice for somebody else, even if that 'somebody else' is a pet not a person. It shows me there's love in my heart buried under all the aggression and fighting with myself and fighting with others.

It's no surprise but I discovered today how useful it is to cut out the rumination by doing concrete things e.g. tearing up papers and throwing them out, working in the garden, sitting watching my Little Furries running around, especially the youngest with his boundless energy.

I also remembered that dwelling on my realisations about my own behaviour, feeling shame, wanting to cut myself off from society (because of feeling so bad about how I'm treating others and how I'm reacting etc etc) are NOT useful. Nobody close to me thinks that badly of me. Realisations are good. Then take steps to alter things. I also have a choice about whether to lambast myself about what were possibly bad choices or just move on and try to make better choices for myself (and possibly for others) in future.

[sanmagic7]

i think being able to see choices is very good, blueberry.  helpful.  well done for getting up and accomplishing all you did.  i see real progress in this, even if only for one day.  you looked at choices and made decisions, concrete decisions.  love and hugs, my dear.

[CactusFlower]

congrats on being able to do things and more getting out in nature! That's cool that the little furries were with you. I really think pets can help a lot, as their affection is an honest one. There are definitely times when my cats sense I'm not at my best and they hang around more, rub against me more, help distract me, etc.

And even when gardens are done for the year and everything looks dormant, it's resting and repairing, enjoying a lull before springing up again.

Gentle hugs if you want them!

[Blueberry]

Thank you CF, hugs are helpful atm.

And even when gardens are done for the year and everything looks dormant, it's resting and repairing, enjoying a lull before springing up again.

Unfortunately LL wants my garden to look like his ideal so that the property is more marketable. Not that he has even started building additional apartments in the attic space, nor got one tenant in the building to clear said space (2 whole storeys - the building is a couple of centuries old) which is full to the brim with her stuff. He or his builders can't start before the other tenant clears the space, but never mind that, my beds have to conform to his ideas  Even if I am triggered into past FOO stuff, it feels to me as if he wants to break my will-power, he wants to break the limits I've set to others in the bldg although there has mostly been a reason for me to set those limits. My limits may be unorthodox or some people e.g. business neighbour think WTA$%§? But when he asks me why I don't want something to occur, he runs away swearing as soon as he hears the first syllable. It's like I'm not supposed to have a reason. But I do.

So anyway, expecting LL to come in and cut back and/or completely remove plants in my beds some time or other. Or more likely he'll send some company in and tell them to raze my beds completely. Whereas I'd like to know: why can't I enjoy the flowers and produce before half the garden/yard turns into a building site sometime this summer or fall anyway?? LL refuses to be specific with dates, saying that he won't find out himself till the building company turns up with the scaffolding. That is not true - because how is the building company going to enter the back yard/garden w/o a key to the building?? But I know once I've written that that I'm slipping back into FOO argumentation. Finding loopholes in the logic is what FOO likes to do and did to me. But my finding loopholes in their logic never helped anything. My recent inpatient therapy would tell me that a Part is going ballistic because of being reminded of how FOO operates. So it's up to my Adult of today to calm and soothe that Part (those Parts) and tell them that time has moved on - really! LL does have the power to hinder my enjoyment of things like my garden but he is not all-powerful. He can't take away my life, he can't barge in in the night, in fact he can't barge in at all because my apt door is locked, he can't attack me physically. He doesn't govern what I think of myself or what other people do. So good to go back to soothing my Part(s) - there may be different ages involved here - instead of holding a one-sided debate with LL in my head.

It really helps me to write about what I'm telling my Parts because addressing them 'head-on' so to speak tends to be 'too much' for them and me. So I have to go in at an oblique angle.

[Blueberry]

Anyway, I actually intended to write someting quite different before I side-tracked myself.

I am so glad and so proud of myself that I went ahead with a training course in translation today. I've been registered for a few months now, sure that I'd be well enough again by now. Last week I thought of backing out at the last minute though I wouldn't have got any money out of it. Last night I considered backing out again but this morning I eventually dragged myself out of bed and was a mere 10 minutes late (computer froze). And wow! I could keep up with the others, did make some valuable contributions, felt full of energy and am no longer thinking that I hate and dread translation. None of this means that I'm taking up a career in literary translation - it's early days as yet - but it shows me more that I've been pursuing the wrong type of translation all this time and how frustrating that has been for me. And although I realise that the EFs I pretty constantly land in which tend to have me either fighting about seemingly nothing or cringeing in fear to the point of paralysis are a pretty big hindrance to most progress - whether career or friendships or volunteer work or self-care or pet care - alongside them I still have talent and creativity waiting to be released and grow. Sorry for run-on sentences and lack of paras, but this stuff is just flowing out of me tonight!

I also believe that it's paramount for me to continue the trauma therapy I started inpatient and move everything else onto the back-burner - especially making money because it stresses me no end! Now how to put that to FOO who pretend to care and don't want me to go short but then come up with all sorts of 'buts' they hadn't thought of before, and are full of contradictions despite their oh so high intellectual intelligence (versus what they think of my intelligence)

It's hard for me to write that I think trauma therapy has to move to top priority, above earning money. But I've tried the other so long and it just has not worked.

[sanmagic7]

 

[CactusFlower]

 

Sorry your LL is like that. He sounds like a whiny control freak, honestly. I used to work with someone relatively similar and I don't miss them, that's for sure.

Congrats on enjoying the translation course! Hugs for defining your boundaries and prioritizing. It's definitely not easy, but it sounds like you're getting better at it.

[Blueberry]

Thanks CF. I have some of the control freak in me, it's part of the hypervigilance. So it seems that maybe LL is getting back at me for that / giving me a drop of my own medicine? Not that his behaviour makes anything any better in this building - on the contrary.

It's good I came back here to read this morning though because I see my words of yesterday: soothe Part(s), don't engage with LL in my head. I woke up engaging with LL in my head. 

____

I do feel better at accepting myself though. Some of that comes from the healthy emotional state at the lit. translation workshop, which is going on all week. I do much better in a situation where there are healthy boundaries already and/or a common focus.
Yesterday I mentioned that I'm a slow worker but I was corrected on that: "No, you're meticulous." Which is true.  And that automatically feels better

[Blueberry]

Ha! On and off today I have felt hopping mad about LL and about FOO. The anger is good because it is giving me energy to do useful things e.g. washing huge pile of dishes, walking much more quickly than usual, tidying things away in bits of spare time around my lit. translation workshops. Yesterday I was sleeping an utterly exhausted sleep in those bits of spare time.

Realisations too about how absolutely galling both LL and FOO's behaviour towards me is. Even worse than I thought just yesterday.

I like Sherman Alexie's novel "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian", where Junior's basketball coach tells him to take his tendency to throw up before games and just get mad and take that into the game. That's how I feel today - I'm really mad, just raging, and I'm taking that energy for me and turning it into something positive!

[Blueberry]

Metaphorically-speaking, I am continuing to spit with rage  about FOO / LL / business neighbour's treatment of me. Sometimes there's a glint of some Inn.Cr. saying "You shouldn't have told LL this, or reacted that way to bus.neighbour...". However basically my T of the past 5 years was correct - all of these people have an awful lot to answer for. Even if I had cowed down in my bldg or in FOO and said zero, that wouldn't have stopped their appalling behaviour towards me (e.g. see bus.neighbour and toilet issues - or FOO and gaslighting for decades) and it wouldn't have made me healthy. On the contrary. I spoke up at the last FOO event (Horrendous Event no. 2) because I knew I couldn't be there safely. Either speak up or go back home. Or as turned out: speak up, be gaslighted etc, go home. Oops there I go defending myself again. What do they say on OOTF? Don't JADE: Justify, Argue, Defend, Explain!

Decades of keeping my anger in has caused untold amounts of psychosomatic pain and physical weakness - in my whole body from childhood onwards. The pain has been mostly gone for a few years now. Just in the past couple of days something like the weakness (though not quite) seems to have been lifting I notice this through my ability and even need to walk fast to complete small errands around town. So maybe just 3-4 mins. of zooming along. Idk where this is coming from but for 20+ years, my pace has been slow. Learning pace, walking pace, thinking pace - everything. With some aspects I've been slow for ever - well since childhood, pre-teens. And now suddenly I'm typing far faster than normal, thinking faster, walking faster, making decisions faster. Maybe it's not the physical weakness primarily that has lifted? Maybe it's the physical and mental paralysis? I have a lot of Freeze response, also since pre-teens.

And to go back to Inn.Cr. - somebody else with a different past and/or pace of healing probably could've reacted (somewhat?) differently toward LL, FOO etc. but I'm not that person! I'm me, with all that entails. Quite probably with strengths and talents that this fictional person has never even heard of. I'm not by nature defective. I'm ME! Growing, developing and turning into somebody far 'more' than FOO could ever imagine and far more than I ever envisaged either. I'm interested to see how far I can develop and in what direction(s) - emotionally, intellectually, psychologically.

I feel flabbergasted at what all has just flowed partially from my subconscious. But I am leaving it up. And not adding the spooked icon, b/c just a tiny bit of me wants to put that in, not most of me.

[Blueberry]

  I am intrigued about the book titles you've been recommended - and especially the one about parts, as I am using parts related information and finding it helpful so far.  If you feel ok to share the book titles, I'd love to know what they are.  But only if you feel ok to do so of course.

The books are: The Mindful Self-Compassion Workbook by Kristin NEff and Christopher Germer which I even have in English!

The one about the Parts: Coping with Trauma-related Dissociation by Suzette Boon et.al. which I have in translation, so not English. Wish I'd taken the English now but it was slightly more expensive. However...

[Blueberry]

Still channelling my anger and disgust with FOO, LL etc into energy I can tap and use!