Through the Looking Glass to Trigger Town: mftb's Recovery Journal V.1.0

[woodsgnome]

 !!!!               !!!!!

[sanmagic7]

kudos, mftb.  so very happy for you!!!   

[movementforthebetter]

Thank you, everyone. I don't think I could have done it without the outlet and support I've found here. I worked reasonably hard, but not *too* hard this time. The time was right and I was ready.

[movementforthebetter]

Had a rough day yesterday. Woke up in a panic in the middle of the night. Managed to calm myself enough to get a little more sleep but my mood was a bit off all day. My panic was work related. As it stands I am a day, maybe two behind on an important deadline. This isn't really my fault. As always, it seems to be a terrible time for my partner and so I have trouble connecting with them and getting the information I need out of them. These delays snowball into the rest of my workload. I have another project with another partner and it's the same thing, too. So my panic is how I can ever meet my deadlines when people are like this. I try to channel "not my circus, not my monkeys" but it is my circus and for better or worse the ringleaders are acting like monkeys. Me, in terms of seniority, I'm the guy sweeping up the peanuts and elephant poop at the end of the night.

I'm heading out for some long weekend camping with my boyfriend. Part of me wants to work in my idea  a little over the weekend. The other part of me just wants to relax. Can I give myself permission to do that?

Woke up in the middle of the night last night, too. My Inner Critic got on a tear about my appearance and my body. I had been letting myself go lately. Will try to make more of an effort.

Anyway, a break from the city will be wonderful. A last blast of summer. I will enjoy it.

[sanmagic7]

enjoy your time off.  you can absolutely give yourself permission to do exactly what you want. 

that's the worst thing about working with a team, is when others don't pull their own weight and throw you off the track.  so very sorry to hear that's going on with you.  i do hope everything works out all right.  big hug.

[movementforthebetter]

Awake in the middle of the night, again. Tired but unable to sleep. Tossing and turning for over an hour. Trying to keep work thoughts at bay. Was exhausted by 8pm, so I went to bed like usual. And now I'm awake like usual and hoping to get a couple more hours in. The pursuit of quality sleep is probably the dominant health issue in my life but people constantly glorify sleeping less and working more. I think those are people who don't actually struggle with fatigue, nightmares or bad dreams, or sleep disturbances. I loathe that, sadly. The second I wake I start battling unwanted work or family thoughts.

I think I can try to sleep again. I am one month out from a week off. I need it so badly. Basically just going g day by day, trying to do just a little bit more than I feel capable of so a tiny bit of progress is made. It's the best I can do. If oy my best yielded satisfaction. And a good night's sleep.

[Three Roses]

but people constantly glorify sleeping less and working more

Seems to me sometimes when I run across people like this, they're oblivious of their own rushing about to be a 4F flight response. Just a thought...hope you get to your week off before you know it!

[movementforthebetter]

The question of the day is: how did I get to be so afraid of the things I love?

[movementforthebetter]

I've slept better this week. Last night was a bona fide good sleep. The night before was a long sleep. Long is good but good is better.

I waffle about wanting to break up with my boyfriend. I love him, and after some difficult growing pains I have a much better idea of what a healthy relationship is like. He's good to me and he's respectful. But in the long term, I know I want a life partner. He's not in that position, and might be keeping himself there because that's where he wants to be. And it's fine for now. I think about the fact that I generally sleep "better" alone, and need alone time to process things sometimes, or go for a walk, or a much needed nap. I think about how codependent I can be. And all of that makes me realize that what I share with him is pretty good for me. I decided to just enjoy the present. There's still a corner of me worrying about the future and how I'm not "available" for my future partner. But for now I have as much as I want to keep me busy and through careful communication and I am mostly content, which I think is a realistic and relatively sustainable state of being.

As far as how I became afraid of the things I love, it comes down to me being gullible. My inner child looks so desperately for approval from others to replace what she was lacking in the first place. When I am ruled by my inner child, I take things more literally and seriously than I ought to. I believe things others say that are subjective. Adult me sees how this causes me to be hurt.

For a long time I think I believed my inner child was "me". Now I think that the real "me" is this adult me, and that my inner child is a part of me who sometimes comes to prominence.

... Unless this is all rational dissociation... Hahaha, it's thinking that will drive me mad. At least I feel pretty relaxed today. Will let this all marinate my brain for a while and see what the results are.

[sanmagic7]

personally, mftb, it doesn't sound like a rationalization to me.  it made perfect sense, unless we're rationalizing on the same wave length - hahaha!!!   

as far as your boyfriend goes, if it's working for you right now, so be it.  i think we need to be very personal and individual about these kinds of things.  i've heard others speak quite similarly about a relationship that wasn't 'together', so to speak, but it was what they were needing at the time.  no shame, no blame, no judgment.  we do what we can when we can.

i'm just so very glad you've gotten some sleep lately.  yahoo!!!   being someone who has sleep problems, i understand completely.  not being able to sleep is the worst.

progress is progress.  it all counts.  big hug to you.

[movementforthebetter]

Thank you, San! Oh boy, have I ever been thinking of you, with the hurricanes and the earthquake in Mexico. I hope you and everyone close to you is ok.

[movementforthebetter]

A year ago today, I wrote this about the man I cheated with. A year later, it feels applicable to the man I call my boyfriend.

"It's too complicated and I am ashamed I was vulnerable, thinking our openness with each other meant some kind of emotional bond was developing. I like his attention, but I am learning it is not real desire and I deserve better. Eventually I will get it. I know cognitively that I am the gatekeeper of acceptable relationships and behaviours, but emotionally I am still learning."

It's unfortunate that a year later I still have these kinds of thoughts about the men I date. I suppose I forget or turn away from life's lessons easily. I "know" a lot of "right" things but living according to these things is so difficult.

I've been feeling that the man I date primarily is seeing me as a charity case, rather than actually wanting to be with me, as he did at the beginning of the relationship. But this could also be my ICr grabbing onto any perceived changes in the relationship and using them to belittle me. And at the beginning of the relationship, both his attention and mistakes would send me into an EF. Not so, now. So there has been some progress and learning. I might wish I was further along, but if I take a step back, I can see myself with kinder eyes and remember that I am worthy of care, compassion and attention, and I do get these things now, just not as often as I would like in my life going forward.

[radical]

Oh MFTB,
This is hard.  I'm so glad you are looking at yourself kindly and acting from the knowledge that you are wothy of genuine compassion and of attention.  It's a bitter pill knowing that being with those who don't treat as as we are worth being treated is harmful.  I think it is a therapeutic pill in the long run, but it hurts.

[movementforthebetter]

TRIGGERS in this post for gender violence.


I'm working on setting boundaries. I think the (recurrent)  fear of (violent)  pushback usually stops me from having effective boundaries. I EF into anticipating an explosion that rarely comes. And that fear, anticipation and unpredictability terrorize me enough that I would usually rather let people take advantage of me than face possible wrath. I even offer to put myself at disadvantage rather than face what my imagination conjures.

I can't even say this is based on just my inner child. I have experienced violent reprocussions to my actions as an adult, too. And it's left me with the false notion that if I could just say or do the right thing, nothing bad can happen.

I did emdr on an act of gender violence perpetrated against me. The conclusion was that I had actually protected myself in the best way I could at the time, especially as the male bystanders did nothing. Interestingly, in my bigger picture now, I see how that one incident doesn't rule me, but fits a bigger pattern in my life.

What really happened was that I froze as I was explicitly threatened and attacked verbally. I wasn't hit but was trapped and threatened so angrily that it was like being hit. I was inches from his face. So I froze,and let him terrorize me. If I had said anything or resisted at all I would probably have been beaten. I let him invade my space, trample my boundaries, and harm me, because to do otherwise was likely life-threatening.

These are the kinds of choices women have to make. And this is why for me having boundaries is so hard - because me defending myself, many times in my life, has resulted in violence against me, from childhood right into adulthood.

It's not just me reassuring my inner child that it's healthy and safe to set and enforce boundaries. I have to reassure my adult self as well. Aside from dissociating, I can't think of a way to protect myself from harm with regards to boundaries. I know that violence is one of the least likely results of stating a boundary, but the memory is imprinted in my lizard brain, and I think I understand now that I will have to confront it again and again until I become numb to it, of I gain enough positive experiences to overwhelm it.

And so it goes with so many aspects of life for me. It's not logical and it's not visible, but I fight probably hundreds of internal battles of different intensities every day. I'm grateful that at least here, people can empathize.

[movementforthebetter]

I learned that my childhood pet finally had to be put down after well over two decades of life. I feel "sad" about it but not really, if that makes sense. He outlived the normal lifespan by probably 7 years at least, so it wasn't exactly a surprise. And I know he had a good life.

But last night I had a dream that I was cuddling him and crying. And just now some tears have snuck up on me. So there is some grief there. I find my original detachment, the dream, and my sadness 24 hours later, all odd. Am I sad about him, or about a final tie to my childhood that has been severed? Both, I suppose. I haven't lived with that pet in over 15 years, though I saw him when visiting my family.

Time slides on and familiar things slip away. That is sad, but it also makes room for new familiarities. So I tell myself.