Forging New Paths

[Moondance]

You say you're a fine one to say it - I also really get that feeling, it resonates big time. I want to counter that with the thought that if you or I are saying that kind of thing to each other, even if we can't always yet do it for ourselves, we're still strengthening the neural pathways a little bit in pointing it out to each other. So long as we're genuinely working on our own stuff which afaic we both are, then no harm done.


Hi Blueberry - I find it encouraging when someone resonates with something I've shared.  And yes I agree that our pathways are strengthened by pointing it out to each other.

If I'm understanding what you are saying I'm afraid I fall short though on working on my own stuff - I easily get overwhelmed, shut down
Get triggered, etc etc.  Depression and anxiety doesn't help.  I'm not sure if that means I should not have said what I said - "I'm I fine one to say, etc ".  I do not wish any harm with my words.

Sending warm and positive thoughts and hugs.

 

[Blueberry]

It's all good, Moondance. You did no harm with your words!  imo 'working on self' means a whole range of things e.g. writing on here about self as opposed to just dishing out advice to others! There's no 'falling short' of anyone's expectations, except it seems a lot of us fall short of our own expectations, me included. I too get easily overwhelmed and then I shut down. Go back to bed, read, sleep, doze, don't get on with what needs to be done. Like for the past 48 hours. Just part and parcel of cptsd.

Thank you for warm and positive thoughts and hugs. I came on here to get some healing OOTS energy  - and here a gift from you right in my Journal      

[Moondance]

  

[Blueberry]

Thank you Moondance

I keep logging in to write and then logging out again, having not written. But now I'm finally writing. Deadlines combined with computer stuff makes for stress and I have the feeling I've been doing zero for days now. That isn't completely true.

I also feel ashamed, as in what would people think if they saw the mess in my apt, what would current LL say if he saw my unwashed kitchen floor since I'm just renting it, it really is his floor.

I came on hoping to rally some of my own resilience but now I think I'm just going to go to bed where it's warm since both outside and inside there's been a huge drop in temperature.

[Armee]

Hi.

 

When I lived in my first home...there was a giant hole in the vinyl flooring in the kitchen. I decided we would be replacing the floor eventually so I wouldn't waste my time mopping it. I gave in about once a year. We didn't replace the floor till we moved out 10 yrs later. I bet your floor is not very shameful to any objective party.

[Blueberry]

It's warming up again, the sun has come out, thank goodness for that. I hope for no more 35°C, which is not typical of this climate at all, but it will be nice to have some autumn sun and some warmth in the late teens-early twenties.

I suppose I feel ashamed not just of my unwashed floor but the general unkemptness of my place and I ought to be mowing the lawn - it's my turn but I don't feel the wherwithal. Machines aren't my thing at the best of times. I'm not even washed myself which makes going downstairs to ask the neighbours difficult.

There's been some FOO stuff recently, which hasn't helped. In fact I have been very down, hiding under the bedclothes.

However I did make it to my psych doc's today and that helped somewhat. As I write on here I am also remembering things to do to come out of these phases e.g. what is the next easiest step I can take to help me stay up? The next easiest step I can take to get on with deadline things I need to do (by which I don't mean mowing the lawn)? Sitting at the computer is actually the step required in both of these and that is what I'm doing.

[Moondance]

I can relate to remembering the next step to get out of whatever I'm in.

Good for you Blueberry

 

[Blueberry]

Thank you Moondance

Things are still hard. I'm often teetering between what's actually helpful for staying upright and what might be beneficial but too much and what feels soothing but not quite a healthy way of going about it.

My occup. T helped me see how difficult things really are for me atm due to an event which shows that my elderly abuser/neglecter/enabler parents are going downhill and the conflicting emotions this brings for me. It showed me once again that my psych doc doesn't really get it with Parts. How wonderful that my occup. T does though! Idk how it is in other countries, but here a lot of an occup. T's work might be with children with developmental delays of various types so occup Ts will learn child development and child psychology and hopefully keep up to date with research and that is then helpful for understanding what's going on in somebody like me where there are Inner Parts thinking, doing, being. He said some more useful things today too but I don't seem to be able to write them down yet.

My occup. T also helped me see that "Considering what's all going on atm, I'm doing extremely well!"  I think before I went inpatient I decided to work on other stuff and not directly on FOO stuff, having already spent way too much of my therapy time (over years) and energy on them or on me trying somehow to fit in with them or set boundaries and be accepted etc. I think I recognised pre-inpatient that when FOO stuff comes back up again due to some event, then I'll go through it, but not try to deal in advance with very competent inpatient T. Makes sense to me. I couldn't have known that one parent would go downhill physically not long after I got back home from inpatient stay. My occup. T says considering how it's not really that long since I've been setting boundaries in FOO, it's not surprising that this has thrown me for a little bit of a loop. And especially I might add since FOO doesn't accept my boundaries. Asserting myself in FOO, setting a boundary and that kind of thing results in exclusion, in being thrown out of the group. And although in my intellect I can almost say 'good riddance to bad rubbish', that's not what my emotions are doing. And it's not what my Littles are doing.

Let's see if I can get down in words and in English words no less what other thing my occup. T said this morning. Children don't think in words, they think in images and emotions and all sorts, and it's often totally overwhelming. Like, words and right-wrong intellectual stuff is too small, it can't contain all what children experience. This is partly why adults cry at funerals or at some part of the grief phase - all these deep seated memories which often don't fit into words because they go back to a time when you didn't have an innate ability to understand and express in words - these memories come back when your parents are close to death and dying. They may be memories of felt unconditional love on the part of the child (child loves parent) and in cases like mine (and many on OOTS no doubt) also child NOT feeling reciprocal unconditional love cuz it wasn't available. 

To do with what my o.T was saying and how I was experiencing it in the moment, I understood better why the terrible heart-wrenching pain I experienced last time I was in FOO's company was a total overwhelm. I didn't just feel sad for a bit and shed a few tears, tears poured silently down my face in the daytime while FOO was around and at night I wept gut-wrenching pain all night more or less, because at night I didn't have to hide it. This heart-wrenching pain of: FOO doesn't give a hoot; FOO hasn't changed after all - they were just pretending and I fell for it; + undoubtedly heart-wrenching pain from younger BBs - this all tore at my soul and my heart. iirc some of what came up were these childhood thoughts in images and emotions and more-than-images. For me, that amount of crying is overwhelm. Or I suppose the amount of crying, tears, grief shows me that the emotions that came up were overwhelm. Yes, physically I come out the other side, but emotionally - not so much but this heart-wrenching: I can't contain it really. Others might find it healing, but for me it's too much. Needs to be let out slowly. Needs me NOT to have to go back through the pain. A little tears and grieving OK, but not that overwhelm.

[Blueberry]

I have made some progress today in setting new and healthier pathways in my brain to mark my relief at successful conclusion of a task I realise how much here also it's one step forwards, one step on the spot or even backwards. Some healthy steps today after task completion, some not so healthy.

Before task completion too. Showering is always difficult, but I did it and then felt more in my professional Adult of Today.

Same yesterday too actually when I was preparing for my professional appointment today, e.g. I printed out some papers and read them while walking around outside on the lawn and under the trees instead of remaining at the computer. The right-left movement helped unfreeze my thoughts and get a bit of creativity going. But I also took some habituated steps that are not that helpful, both yesterday and today.

[Blueberry]

Finally written and sent it. Turned out longer than I originally envisaged. I know my parents will find it abominably rude though really it's just very to-the-point.

They find anything I say or write 'rude' when I'm not bowing and scraping metaphorically-speaking.

... I spent ages on writing it and although it's not perfect and I had to semi-dissociate in order to do it and I still feel foggy after sending it, it's the best I could do. I know that FOO does not spend ages thinking what to say and write to me. On the contrary, they don't have any worries or concerns. They don't even have any concept of it being possible for them to be rude to me.

I'm just sick of it hanging over me, 'it' being writing and sending the missive.

I was reading back in a previous Journal of mine and found this from about a year ago. In a way, it seems very long ago that I finally wrote a very to-the-point missive to FOO and even though I had these realisations about 'rude' to FOO, the missive still resulted in a very positive change. Not of how FOO communicates with me per se but at least in action on the big topic this was all about. They stopped dragging their heels and are actually helping me out the way they had been promising but prevaricating on.

In a way it seems as if a lot has happened since then e.g. with my move, which also means I no longer have to struggle with old LL or neighbours who encroached on my boundaries with regularity.

Some of reading back in my journal from last year reminded me that when I am NOT getting on with things, there usually is a reason. I'm having to psych myself up for something and often I don't even know what.

[Blueberry]

I'm continuing to mostly not get on with things. It feels as if I have no goals. Also there's nothing to fight against any more and 'fighting against' kept me going. Of course logically you could say that I should then 'fight for' myself or for something good. But 'should' doesn't work for me. I lie in bed reading books I know more or less off by heart (because ones I don't know lead to too much anxiety) and doze off. I eat things that don't need to be cooked. Sometimes I make tea but mostly I can't even be bothered to do that, so I sometimes drink tap water.

I could have gone to the farm today, but stayed home to do some things which I in the end didn't do.

I used sometimes to wonder if I might end up in this kind of state - of just not caring any more.

[Blueberry]

I'm doing better now. We've just had Zoom Group 2 and connecting with fellow human beings by voice and sometimes video was helpful. Surprise, surprise. It's no surprise, but at the same time it seems harder for me than ever to connect with people in the outside world and also do the things you need to like even getting dressed half way decent.

The past couple of days I've been talking to imaginary furbabies in my head because I know having them kept me going. But I also know atm that looking after them would be too much.

I've known before that symptoms circle around like onion skins. I think I've worked through something, that I'm over it, and then it comes again. I'm not really using my whole apartment. I remember working with my old trauma T on expanding my body to take up space, first in his office but then imaginary in other places too like the garden and even on the street, where I lived before. And now it feels like I could be doing that in my apt. As a child, hiding away and creeping around the house, not speaking when I entered a room (which drove other people up the wall when I lived with others later) - all these things showed in my body language and they're not so easy for me to get rid of. Actually, I will speak to furbabies (mine or other people's) when I enter a room, but people - it's hit and miss. Not sure what it depends on - anxiety level maybe? But anyway, there are no furbabies in my apt atm but I hide away and creep about. So it's good I've finally made some sort of connection about it.

[Bermuda]

Blueberry, it's great that you seem to know what you are comfortable with at the moment. You sound a lot like me, and I know that acknowledging my own struggles can be difficult.

[Blueberry]

Thank you Bermuda

_________________

       Today I have so much wherewithal for doing certain things: cooked and ate carrots that definitely needed to be used up, washed my windows    (which look much better), more tidying and putting things away, listened to music while doing all of the above and sometimes stopped to move a little to the music, sang along with it too; did gardening and not just weeding but clearing more ground and actually planting stuff I brought over from my old garden. I haven't had an exhausted spell all day, no naps necessary

I'm not even finished my day in fact. I'm about to pack up my stuff to head to the farm in about an hour. Some work to do there this evening.

I was thinking about how I would explain "wherewithal" to somebody around here. I don't know that there's an expression for it in the local language. Maybe for me (and others on here) it's having some hours or a day without any EF or EF-iness? I believe there are degrees of EF: full-blown one, medium EF, 30% leftover, a little smidge leftover making things a little difficult, my sort of normal day-to-day. And then there are the odd days when things just flow. WOW                    

[Armee]

Enjoy the productivity! And the downtime you'll DESERVE after.