Eerie Anne's Journal

[Armee]

It didn't come across as attention seeking not one little bit. Just a sad little example as you say in a long line of sad examples that add up to cause the damage that's been caused.

I really like the excerpt you shared at the end of your post. That seems super helpful for me.

[Eireanne]

Hold out your hand, by Julia Fehrenbacher

Let's forget the world for a while
fall back and back
into the hush and holy
of now

are you listening ? This breath
invites you
to write the first word
of your new story
your new story begin with this :
You matter

You are needed - empty
and naked
willing to say yes
and yes and yes

Do you see
the sun shines, day after day

whether you have faith
or not
the sparrows continue
to sing their song
even when you forget to sing
yours

stop asking. Am I good enough ?
Ask only. Am I showing up with love ?

Life is not a straight line
it's a downpour of gifts, please -
hold out your hand.

[sanmagic7]

hey, EA, interesting bit about stress.  will have to think on that.

yeah, i've cleaned almost all those people from my life as well.  i'm definitely better off w/o them. in the end, they didn't treat me w/ respect, and as you said, no interest in finding out about me.

lovely words.  wish that i could take them in.  i hope you can.  love and hugs

[Eireanne]

@San - still working on taking things in.  Thank you for the love and hugs - much needed 

[Eireanne]

From the old journal


I did the best thing that I could for myself - I saved MYSELF from that environment.  Many people can't understand how I could just not speak to my parents again, they are MY PARENTS, I owe them everything, they clothed me, fed me, gave me shelter.  But they didn't meet my basic needs.  To know my own worth - in fact, the last time I spoke to my father, he called me worthless.  I even asked him to clarify, to give him the opportunity to realize what it was he just said to me.  I asked, "Did you just call me worthless?" and he said, yes, but it's ok because you're mother thinks I'm worthless too, so we can both be worthless together.  My mother? She reminded me constantly that she thought I was, "just like my father" So she thought I was worthless too. 

The way their actions made me feel as if they truly believed I was worthless.  Using my college tuition to pay for their house.  Moving to NJ in the middle of my senior year. Not helping me with college applications to the point it hindered my options. Not giving me the resources I needed to learn how to navigate adulthood.  Allowing me to live in unsafe neighborhoods and not intervening when I let them know after rent/utilities I didn't have enough money for food. 

This taught me independence, I learned how to survive - but not thrive. 

I didn't have any self worth, so I ended up not seeing the warning signs when I once again found myself in an abusive relationship, it's not that I didn't think I deserved any better, it's that I didn't KNOW any better, I'd mention a thing that D did and people would say, Oh my husband does that to, it's a guy thing. So I thought it was a guy thing that I'd constantly ask for my basic needs to be met and not have them acknowledged - or told that what I want doesn't matter, I just have to be grateful for what is.  I have the same thing at work - I've literally never experienced having someone ask what it is that I'd like to do and then actually do that.  The things I've asked for I just never got.  And it HURTS, because I want it so bad, I just want to be seen, I want to be heard, I want to belong, and I want to know what that feels like.   

[Eireanne]

Trigger warnings - The blog post I wrote about the abuse I endured during the pandemic...just need to leave it here for a bit to better process it.  Thanks for understanding.


There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you - Maya Angelou

The psychological abuse https://safelives.org.uk/psychological-abuse started so gradually, I wasn't aware of it.  I didn't notice at first he was intentionally creating situations that would trigger me. 

They say hindsight is 20/20 and looking back, I see every vulnerability I confided to him he twisted and used against me to keep me off-balance.   There were no fiery, passionate fights and bouts of him convincing me to forgive him...there was just him constantly changing the narrative of what was happening between us to make me doubt myself, and doubt reality.   I started to second guess myself, misremember things, be incredibly insecure if what I was feeling/experiencing was acceptable when he was consistently telling me (and everyone we knew) that I was behaving irrationally. 

When I started working from home full-time, he told me I needed to move from the space we shared to the other end of the house where I was physically and mentally uncomfortable.  It took me a while to realize that he did this not just to keep me isolated - we were already isolated because we were on lockdown because of the pandemic - but this gave him the freedom to do what he pleased in our former shared work space.

He spent his days drinking, getting high, playing video games and chatting with a variety of people online, mostly women.  I tried to connect with our friends, and confide to them what was going on, but it seems everyone was going through some kind of crisis at the time.  I felt shame in not knowing how to get the help I needed.

After months of continued psychological and emotional abuse, his family invited us to visit. I used that opportunity to tell them what was going on, framing it in a way that I was concerned for him - his increased use of drugs and alcohol, his erratic behavior, his cheating on me.  It backfired, and he forced me into the car in a rage, driving at speeds where I was terrified, forbidding me to ever speak to anyone in his family again. 

He told me I wasn't allowed in our shared bedroom any longer, he couldn't trust me and didn't want me sleeping next to him. I had to take advantage of opportunities when he was distracted just to shower, or eat. My closet was in the master bedroom, so I'd need permission to go in to get a change of clothes.  If I went in without asking he'd pick me up by my neck and drag me through the house.  He started buying knives - switchblade, hunting, utility - new knives arrived from Amazon almost daily and he would sharpen them and flick them open in my general direction.  Then he bought a gun.  The abuse intensified.  By this point, I had moved what stuff of mine I could fit into a small room at the far end of the house, pushing a bookcase in front of the door so I could try to sleep at night. 

I felt separated from everything and everyone, no one checked in on me and nothing felt safe.  Whenever I would try to bring it up with someone, it was too much for them, most people don't want that responsibility.  They'd pass it on to someone else...you should talk to someone, you should see a therapist, don't you have any family to talk to...it was the most isolating time of my life. Ha, little did I know then It was near impossible for me to get the distance I needed from the situation to see it clearly, and he was constantly convincing me I was behaving irrationally and would explain away his behavior in a way that made it seem I was controlling, jealous, insecure and crazy.  I truly felt like I was losing my mind. 

He'd wear away at me until I broke down, then he'd threaten to call and have me put on a psych hold.  Taken away.  I had nightmares of being put in restraints and medicated – missing work and losing my job while he assured everyone that it was for my own good - telling them I was a danger to myself...I still have trouble sleeping through the night. 

I tried again and again to confide to people what was happening, but I discovered he had already been planting the seeds in everyone's mind how unstable I was, how embarrassing it was that he had to deal with my "crazy" and how he was actually the victim. I kept hearing the same thing...it didn't seem like him, every couple experiences strain in their relationship, it was just a 'rough patch', I just needed to be more supportive of what he was going through. 

One time he hit me in a rage and I called the police...it took them 45 minutes to arrive.  By that time, he had calmed down, even made himself tea (and offered some to the police when they arrived) .  Played the "sorry she's bothering you, see what I have to endure?" card, while I was shaking and crying and begging them for help.  I didn't know what I needed to do.  They seemed annoyed I was wasting their time.  I had no bruises.  I had no history of calling them before. They repeatedly asked me if I felt unsafe, why didn't I find somewhere else to live? Why didn't I go stay with a friend? Don't I have family? He just stood there among them, smiling at me, sipping his tea.  I couldn't think what to do or say to get them to take me seriously, I felt dismissed, unseen and unheard.  I asked them how could I communicate effectively with him standing right there? They told him to go for a walk so I could "cool off".  They didn't take any official statement or offer to give me any protection, resources or help. 

Next, I went to the landlord and asked to remove him from the lease so he'd be free to move out.  It took months of him procrastinating and making excuses, and when he finally moved out, once again re-writing the narrative, he took most of my belongings.  It was then I learned that he took the opportunity to tell the landlord "his side" and the landlord wouldn't change the locks - he only moved a half a block away.  I feared him coming back, showing up because he "forgot something", I'd wake up at the slightest noise wondering if he was coming back in to kill me.  When my lease was up, I moved out of desperation, and I made a list of everything I lost when I was with him, both material possessions and the parts of myself I felt he "broke". 

Over time, I have slowly been able to replace the things that he took...but it's been hard.  I lost most of the people I considered to be friends and family at the time, either lost through the pandemic, or lost through his gaslighting.  I still feel shame for what I endured, how much I demeaned myself to survive.  I still haven't been able to fully grieve the multiple losses from the past 3 years.  There are days when I'm just "surviving" but slowly, as I heal the parts of myself, I am learning how to speak my truth and be my own advocate, as well as an advocate for those who may be going through similar things, but haven't been given the opportunity to have a voice. 

When the storyteller tells the truth, she reminds us that human beings are more alike than unalike... A story is what it's like to be a human being-to be knocked down and to miraculously arise. Each one of us has arisen, awakened. We do rise. ~Maya Angelou

 

Some people know my relationship ended sometime during the pandemic.  A few others knew I moved, but didn't understand why I needed to move again. And again.  How I've had to remain one step ahead of him, because all it takes is one well meaning mutual acquaintance to casually mention where I live now.  I've had to consider if it's ok to send Christmas cards.  Or ask for help moving.  Or letting new acquaintances and colleagues know that I'm still living this.  This is the first time I've shared the full and complete story...my version of it anyway.  And now I just feel embarrassed that it's so long, and I come across like a poor little snowflake who couldn't handle her boyfriend breaking up with her and talking to a few people on the internet.  I still feel so much shame at the way he made me feel inside my skin, inside my head.  I didn't know intimacy, I didn't know love, I knew to anticipate the mind frame of everyone I've ever been intimate with to try to say or do the right thing to mold myself into what they expected me to be. 

[Armee]

 

I'm so sorry

[Eireanne]

You're not your mistakes or your failures.

You are not the experiences you had growing up, the difficult relationships you were in or the struggles you've faced.

Know that the ups and downs of your life have made you into who you are today.

No need to deny your pain and feel ashamed about it.

Fully accepting and embracing everything you've confronted and dealt with in life allows you to live from a powerful center.

You are stronger today because of the mistakes and failures of your past.

Your mistakes are your experience. Your failure is your wisdom.

[Moondance]

 

[Eireanne]

Thank you Armee and Moondance 

[Eireanne]

Dr. Harry Barry: Overcoming Panic Attacks

The biggest fear for a person with a panic attack is when they're going to have to become absolutely totally anxious all of the time - when is it going to happen next? They never get any warning - that's the problem. You might have a break for three weeks, four weeks, six weeks, eight weeks, maybe three months and think, "they've gone away" and then bang back it comes again. We call this the fear of fears.

All these things, whilst they might seem at first glance to be helping the situation are actually making it worse because the more your emotional brain senses a danger by you trying to do these things the more you unfortunately perpetuate it.

If you imagine your feet were stuck to the ground (unpleasant) and let the symptoms flood, by experiencing the symptoms - it's these symptoms and letting them happen... what actually happens is the brain, the emotional brain, begins to see there's no more danger and it then looks around, sees there's no danger and begins to turn off.

He then said it again, a slightly different way:

The amygdala senses you that you picked up a danger, so it automatically fires (because that's it's job) and once it fires, it leads to this form of flooding. Letting these symptoms come, letting them swamp all of you, and the great thing is we know that when you expose the amygdala to the danger by accepting these symptoms as uncomfortable, the brain begins to realize it isn't really in danger so it begins to switch off the flood.

[Moondance]

I will think about this some more but my initial thought is this is very applicable to me.

Thanks for sharing Eireanne.

 

[sanmagic7]

Fully accepting and embracing everything you've confronted and dealt with in life allows you to live from a powerful center.

hey, EA, i've found the above, 'fully accepting' to be a tremendous trial for me, let alone embracing it. am not even close to the second part yet, but realizing and accepting have proven to be great challenges to me. just reading this made me tighten up as if protecting myself from some new pain/hurt.  it's amazing/weird how such statements can exact very different responses from individuals.

you have certainly put in a lot of time and effort researching all this.  wow!  i can't take in half of what you write - it gets overwhelming for me.  and, i'm not suggesting you stop - these are my own issues - but it helps me see just where i am and what kinds of things bother me.  such as 'fully accepting'. it struck a chord w/ me.  thanks for all the info.  love and hugs

[Eireanne]

@San - it's incredibly triggering for me as well.  And a lot of what I leave here are things I read that I need to process to understand why it's triggering.  In my other journal, I let my "parts" rip things I'm listening to to shreds, to figure out why I have such reactions to things I read.  Exactly what you said - it's amazing/weird how such statements are interpreted so differently by individuals. I have been exploring so much of this...messiness of language, how so many people in my life got my relationships WRONG, kept telling me I was co-dependent (A HUGE trigger word for me) and depressed and anxious and having panic attacks, so I'm listening to all these saved videos and articles that I was being inundated with, and couldn't process any of it then, because I was reacting...the part of my brain that KNEW on some level people weren't listening.  The voice that screams BS...and so I leave it here because if I'm confused/angry about something - I know a lot of us in here are.  And I keep meaning to respond to your journal...but I think I might do it here, so if what I say ends up being upsetting, you don't have it sitting in your own journal...if that makes sense.  I just sometimes have really strong opinions about something and I don't often take the time to confirm whether I'm actually understanding what a person is saying, and not just how I'm reading it (and I realize that when I let my different "parts" read things, they all have different answers...and when I stop to listen to them, I get past why I'm being triggered and can sometimes get down to the root cause.  It's that place I need to keep myself for therapy in a few hours...

[Eireanne]

Radical acceptance is *not* approval or liking something, rather it is the active choice to recognize when we do not have control over a situation and practicing acceptance of a situation that is our reality.

We can practice radical acceptance through asking ourselves "what would I be doing if I accepted this situation?", coping ahead (see creating routine or coping strategies for your specific situation), and recognizing there a series of causal factors that lead up to any event as to why it had to occur just this way that you may never know why or have been able to control in the first place.

Radical acceptance is to understand that acceptance is not about getting rid of emotions or pain but rather recognizing "pain is inevitable and suffering is optional". We suffer when we are trying to change a situation that cannot be changed. We can all learn to live with pain and still live a meaningful life.