Meursault's Journal

[sanmagic7]

i'm glad you're able to let some of this crapola out, meursault, i really am.  like puking out poison.

and, that's how i see what was done to your mind - it was poisoned against yourself.  all those neg. thoughts you have about yourself came from someone else, which means they just are not true.  our own true selves only speak words of self-care, self-love, self-protectiveness, self-esteem, etc.  our baby selves only knew to take care of ourselves because that's what we believed we deserved.  unfortunately, those other voices were bigger and louder and more more more than our own voice.

your strength and determination shine out of the page on all of us.  you have kept going, and you will keep going.  that's what is truly inside you, not made up monsters and other uglies.   step by step, meursault. 

[meursault]

Three Roses:  My Dad was kinda like that too.  Most people saw him as a constant jokester, but with family there was always a barb in his "humour".  I recently ran across a real estate guy from my home town and he was telling me about how he was so proud of his first real estate sale when he started out, but then my Dad was getting lots of laughs making jokes about it with a bunch of the guys in the coffee shop, and he said he almost gave up real estate right then.  Really, a cowardly bully.  Not willing to pick on someone directly, but always hiding behind humour.

Sanmagic:  I try to believe that, but then day after day and year after year, that message is pounded so hard into me that they were right because no women seem to be attracted to me or want me.  I know it's not true, because I've had countless one night stands, been in a few relationships, and have several female frinds, but every day alone just reinforces that sense of worthlessness and wrongness, and it just grows and grows.  Not being able to go to that party last weekend really knocked my feet out from me.  IT's like the whole world is actively saying: "All women hate you and we are going to actively do everything to segregate you from them."  Just like the legal system is doing with years of curfew etc.  And then everything like Trump happening just fits all that and makes it worse.  I get the illogicality of it, but emotionally I am hit with the realization:  "women want him, women love him, so there is something so hideous about me that makes me so much worse."

I hate to bewail this issue, because most of the time, I just sort of suffer with that sens that the world is telling me I'm disgusting and worthless, and hope it's wrong.  But I get worn down and lose faith that there is any hope.

Arg.  Anyhow.  Being desired and found attractive by women is really what keeps that badly maimed attachment stuff from when I was a kid from just turning me into a fractured, mammal-brained, trauma and anxiety wound.  I can keep the faith for a while, sometimes it's been years, but then it all flattens my defences and the rational thoughts and I'm just like those neglected Romanian orphanage babies, thrashing and wailing inside, needing love and affection.  I think it could be called "Attachment Trauma" actually.  It's ugly.  Maybe I'm the only person that gets that, I don't know...  I think that self-annihilation stuff they talk about in Object Relation Theory and Attachment Theory is pretty major in these sensations.

I would give my left leg to be able to just sit quietly holding hands with some lovely lady right now, and having her look at me like I matter.  This stuff is weird, it's almost like the archetypal fairy tale stuff, where the feminine is needed to calm and soothe a wild animal...

Meursault

[radical]

Just my perspective.
It hit you hard being rejected by your mother and feeling wanted, and especially sexually desired by other women (temporarily?) soothes that wound?

In relation to looking at swaggering I try to remember that if I had resources like great wealth, social status etc., sure life would be easier and being treated as someone worthy of respect and kindness by most people would make me feel better, but self-esteem built on a house of cards related to superficial external sources would be brittle.  I'm trying to develop unconditional self-compassion as a solid foundation, but it's really hard with the attachment trauma.  I didn't have a mother who loved me and I never will.  I can never undo that harm, but having a therapist who cares deeply and who 'sees' me does help, though it can never be the same, but it gives me some of that attuned attachment to reinforce my own work on building self-compassion.

I understand being rejected by your mother.  My mother couldn't really stand the sight of me and I learned to be invisible.  I spent a lifetime trying to figure out what was wrong with me.  Now i don't believe it was about me, but still I find myself noticing things and wondering 'was that why'?  I don't know how far i can go in healing such a primary wound but I have found that making conscious efforts to speak to myself lovingly and to care well for myself does make a difference over time.  Listening to the voice of my mother in my head takes me to a very dark place, but sometimes I can't resist listening, still.

My mother is still alive.  Now I am uninvolved in dramas related to my siblings (who do matter to her) she phones me once a month - I think she puts it on a calendar to remind her I exist, and I can hear how painful it is for her to carry out this duty.  She usually calls with a pre-existing excuse to get off the phone quickly, even though I never say anything about myself, and just respond to her, and if I call her it has to relate to someone else in the family who does matter, or she is overtly rejecting.

I can understand how for you this might have translated into feelings about sexual attractiveness to women.  I know for me that experience of 'core' rejection affects my behaviour and interpretations of others' behaviour towards me.  I tend to be too aloof, or too desperate, and both approaches seem to trigger unease or rejection in others.  I recognise the causal assumption of belonging and being okay and acceptable in others, and how that assumption affects how people respond to those who are lucky enough to have experienced attuned bonding.  It's like they can be so much less sensitive to others' feelings about them and just get on with life according to their internal values and how they feel about others.  It is an attractive quality.  The unhealthy extreme of this is narcissism, and feeling supremely wonderful and not even seeing others as being real humans can be supremely attractive because of an unnatural certitude, that especially those most insecure (or even, temporarily secure people when facing uncertain circumstances) can be drawn to like catnip.

What I'm suggesting is that you try to not buy into your beliefs about your supposed attractiveness or acceptability as a person, that you actively not seek to confirm or disconfirm hypotheses that mainly arise out of wounding and the resulting faulty programming.  The problem I find is that neither response from the world leads to the healthy assumption of okayness that securely bonded people have and allows them the luxury of getting on with life without being overly concerned about how other people feel about them.  The highs and lows of reward and punishment, both in different ways reinforce the lies in my head and cause compulsive reward-seeking or compulsive withdrawing.  For me they both lead away from true security in my self and confidence in  tackling challenges.

I admire the fact that you have managed to hold on to your authenticity despite everything.  And somewhere inside I feel there is an inkling of knowing in you that waxes and wanes.  It is a bright light.

[meursault]

Rationally, that's kind of how I see it.  When the trauma switches are flipped --- and ESPECIALLY when that fundamental core attachment need is screaming at me --- all that goes out the window.  I just disintegrate.

I didn't realize it was this attachment stuff until this current therapist.  It took me months, but I started to get warm fuzzy feelings for her.  She's incredibly attractive, but mostly that's neither here nor there.  Occasionally I want that kind of intimacy with her, but not usually.  I just wrote in my email last week to her how lucky I am I met her.  How for the first time ever, I have glimpses of how I'm MEANT to feel, how people normally feel.  How there is nothing disgusting and subhuman about me, and I'm allowed to exist and be an equal to those around me.  After I started bonding with her, I really noticed how those attachment needs overwhelm me around women.  Just this acute, desperate existential pain, like "self" is fracturing and scattering into chaos with this unfulfilled need.  It's literally as desperate and acutely painful as one feels when drowning.  In a way, I've been having a much worse time since starting with her.  Before that, I drank all the time, and had sort of "Cauterized" that part of me away.  Now those core needs are pretty much shouting at me constantly, and I'm not always dealing with it well.  It's like those systems were re-activated with her, and are now thrashing around wildly to "breathe" again.

Really, it's no wonder I don't do all that well around women without alcohol.  Internally, at that core level, I'm battling desperately for survival, and their interest and attention is the only thing that can help.  I suspect that between apparent aloofness (I'm busy being overwhelmed internally, and therefore focused inward), and all the shaking and anxiety from trauma around women, I'm not exactly putting my best foot forward!  Hopefully with my therapist I am able to internalize enough of that sense that the core ME isn't in such pain.  My best friend, that woman I had coffee with a couple of days ago, mentioned a couple of years ago that she can instantly tell, just at a glance, if there is a woman I'm attracted to in a room, by how I appear distant and quiet.

This is a total chicken and egg situation, though.  I get worse and worse with that agony (and that's a good word for it) and disintegration, and fundamental psychological and emotional need.

Just walking down the street, I'll see some woman's cute ponytail or whatever, and because there was never a proper "me" formed, there's just this absolute explosion and breaking apart of "me", just the overwhelming attachment needs overwhelming me and spinning into terror.  Sometimes, just seeing some attractive woman will send me into a many day panicked hiding full of crying, self-hate, and frantic garsping at keeping "me" coherent.  I don't even know what this stuff would be called.  Attachment Trauma fits well though, I think.  Unfortunately, it's even worse if I'm not able to be around women. 

This was what I mostly struggled with for 35+ years before my Dad's death.  That has made things much worse.  My therapist and I had a laugh last winter, when we were going pretty deeply into this attachment stuff, and I was finally able to tell someone about growing up, I mentioned my Dad and my legal stuff.  She said "God, I completely forgot about your Dad!  That's so far down on your list!"  I guess I should feel bad about that fact, but I finally found a therapist who respects and understands how this all has hurt me so badly, so I'm glad she said that.

This stuff is stupidly personal, and I hope I'm not disgusting or annoying anyone here...

Meursault

[sanmagic7]

i think radical had some wonderful words of wisdom, especially about being mindful of how you speak to and/or about yourself.  an example would be how you just wrote 'stupidly personal' and used the words 'disgusting' and 'annoying' at the end of your post.  would you think that of anyone else who had written the same thing?  i doubt it. 

i get that when we're in the throes of all that has been rotten in our lives it's hard to keep the negatives out of our minds.  i know that feeling.  writing has helped me by allowing some of those thought processes to slow down a bit so they're not just completely overwhelming me, and letting me see exactly what it is i'm saying to and about myself.

there is a saying in 12-step groups called KISS - keep it simple, stupid.  when i was first attending meetings, i heard it and just accepted it.  but, one day, someone brought up the idea that we've been called 'stupid' all our lives, so why would we want to add to that and call ourselves that as well?  she proposed that it be changed to 'keep it simple, sweetie.'  when i heard that, i loved that change.  it was breaking a cycle of negativity.

i hope that you can begin breaking that cycle of negativity for yourself.   a little at a time, bit by bit.   you deserve it.

[meursault]

Sorry for the negativity!  It's definitely one aspect of things, but it seems more like a canary in the coal mine when I get into this EF thinking than a cause of it.  It definitely doesn't help, and probably keeps feeding the mental breakdown. 

I mentioned to my therapist this week that when I lose it and my inner child goes on a rampaging frenzy of agonizing neediness., I should try to do a "time out" for him.  She said she doesn't agree with time outs, and does "time ins" with her kid.  She pointed out that there is more soothing and healing in connection and love than in neglecting the child.  What I'm doing is basically abusing that inner child with the way I talk (as you and radical pointed out).  It's hard to remember that when that neediness is overwhelming me, but I have to keep at it. 

Instead of all the negative comments and self-perceptions (emotionally abusing the inner child), or distracting or ignoring this stuff (neglecting the inner child), I somehow have to find a way to address him and love and soothe him.  I wish I knew how...  I think I could really benefit from spending a lot more time nurturing myself during this terrible time.

It's taken me a while to scrape back into some sort of normal thinking and see this stuff.  I don't even want to re-read what I wrote above.  It was pretty chaotic and self-pitying.

I called my uncle last night.  He's my Mom's brother, and I always got along well with him.  After my Mom's Mother died, there was a big war in her family and she never talked to her Dad or brothers again, and now doesn't talk to her sister either.  The rest of the family was basically "forced' to do the same.  She would have disowned anyone who didn't. 

That uncle tried to help me a bit growing up.  Not in confronting my Mom -- that wouldn't have ended well -- but my Dad.   I remember him arguing with my Dad several times to stand up for me, and not make me responsible for looking after my Dad and protecting him from my Mom.  It once almost went to blows, and there was a lot of yelling, when I was about sixteen.

Anyhow, I feel pretty sad talking to him.  He was super glad I called, and so was I.  I haven't spoken to him in 14 years.  We talked for about an hour and a half.  He was talking about how much my Mom hated men, which was good to hear.  SOMEBODY else knows this.  And he was talking about how much my Mom was a totalitarian controller, and knocked the feet out from under us, mostly me and my oldest sister, so we were always emotionally damaged and she could control us.  He immediately saw that the only reason I would have driven that night was to try to protect my Dad, which I've done my whole life.  And he said "I can't imagine the * you must be going through, but you have no choice but to keep going."

I feel pretty sad about how I kept making that same decision, to go back and help my Dad and look after him, again and again after I left, (again and again) swearing to never talk with my family again.  What a mistake that was.  I sort of hhave the outline of something my therapist said (and the last one said too) about how I kept letting myself be mistreated in the hope that doing so would finally make me lovable, at least to my Dad.  I wasted so much time, and there has been so much damage done.  Wow.  Well, as you say, Sanmagic, one foot in front of the other!

Meursault

[sanmagic7]

i've heard it said that we continue to repeat things until we learn the lesson we're meant to learn.  sometimes i agree with that, other times i don't know.  i do know that it takes some of us longer to realize what is actually going on, what our part is in it, and what else we need to do.  but i don't know that such a thing is a waste of time.  it's a learning process, and sometimes we just don't know what it is we don't know.  in that case, it may even take more time than we have, and we never learn what we need to know.

but, the bottom line to me is that we keep going as best we can.  some of us don't make it.  some of us make more mistakes than others.   some of us are so scared that we stay frozen in one place, maybe for the rest of our lives.  what i see on this forum are fighters, still hanging in there, still looking for what we don't know, and i would never consider any part of our lives a waste of time. 

i do hope you can be kinder, more nurturing to your inner child, meursault.  but look out !!!  it might start feeling good!!!  (small joke there)  seriously, the more i've been mindful of taking care of me, the better at it i've gotten (not without bumps and bruises along the way, spits and spurts of yays and nays).  your post this time was very different.  it sounded like self-care.

[meursault]

I'm really seeing why a couple of months ago my therapist told me our only goal until the trial is stabilization.  This stuff has just been cannibalizing any healthy coping mechanisms and leaving me vulnerable to all that unresolved pain and trauma.  All that stuff is so huge right now.

I just sat on my couch for about an hour last night, shaking like a leaf, sweat literally running off of me, feeling like I just got a concussion.  My brain was just this "electric stupor".  My vision was cycling through this fading out and in thing.  My system is in absolute crisis.  I'm riding the waves of it I suppose!  I'm never really calming down now.  I would say my baseline is similar to when I had social phobia and agoraphobia pretty badly in my late teens and early twenties.  Then things start ROARING at times.  I guess this shows some progress.  That stuff drove me to my knees then.  I wouldn't have been able to handle how much worse the bad parts have gotten.

I was thinking about this stuff last night.  I think the main resistance to stopping that internal abusiveness is that it is SAFE.  It may not be good, but it's predictable, and as long as I'm doing it to myself, no-one else is doing it to me (of course that's not really true).  I'm safe because no one would see the need to attack me when I'm already doing it to myself.  But I think that is such a forcefully learned lesson, a matter of life and death, from early years, it's ingrained and everything starts yelling "Threat!!!" when change is attempted.

I hope this ends, and ends well, after this trial for me.  I need a chance to try to get better.  This constant sword over my head, which could have dropped at any time over the last six and a half years, has been terrible to live under.

Meursault

[Three Roses]

  I think you're in the home stretch now! Hang in there my friend.

[sanmagic7]

i can't even imagine what it must be like.  we're with you and hoping for only the best out of all of this, including an outcome that will allow you to breathe easily again. 

i get what you mean about attacking yourself first as a precautionary measure.  i'm glad to see that maybe you're allowing a little of that to dribble off, at least on this forum, that you're feeling a little safer in not having to do it here with us.  i'm happy for you with that.  and, yeah, change is usually scary, but here you go, showing your courage again.  you are one of the bravest people i've never met.  to go through what you're going thru, and continuing forward against these layers of whirlwinds that sweep your feet out from under you at any given moment without warning, that shows a brave soul.  stabilization sounds like a great goal for now.  onward.

[radical]

Ditto the the above.

I just wanted to quickly say something about the 'preemptive (self) strike' of self-cannabilisation (great descriptor).

I once believed there was some benefit in doing that, I don't now, I see it as destructive and I don't believe it achieves what I've told myself it will; that getting in first will somehow soften the blows from the outside.  It's a bit like when someone you love is dying.  You try to prepare yourself by terrorising yourself in advance about their dying as if getting some of the pain out of the way in advance will soften the blow.  It doesn't.  When it happens the shock and pain is not diminished by inflicting advance pain.

This isn't blaming or criticising, Meursault.  I know too well that when your system is overwhelmed that self-cannabilisation is so often what happens, I know I often can't stop myself when my body and mind are careering and out of control.  Somehow it feels like it is soothing, or maybe taking control to be the attacker rather than just powerlessly under attack.  What I find is helpful when I can't stop it, is to also take the role of protector, to tell myself kind, soothing words.  The words nobody said when I needed to hear them. "you are okay, you don't deserve this, you will get through, you are strong, you are a good person, I care, I'll always care no matter what, It's going to be okay, you will get through this, this isn't forever"  etc.

i still feel ridiculous admitting I say these things to myself.  I think many people have internalised loving messages from caregivers when they were children, so they don't need to.  They experience compassion for themselves automatically.  I know that for me, consciously and repeatedly expressing compassion, over time, does start to penetrate.

You so deserve compassion, Meursault, from others, but also from yourself.

[meursault]

Feeling really defeated today.  I wrote a poem earlier.  It's kind of dark humour.  I think there should be trigger warnings, maybe.  Suicide is mentioned, at any rate.   It cheered me up a bit, for some reason, so I thought I'd share it.

It Could Be Worse

Mandy had a phobia
So bad that she could burst.
She shook when she was looked at
But said it could be worse.

She scarfed back lots of Ativan
She kept within her purse
But often hid in terror
And said it could be worse.

She really was so lonesome
She tried hard to converse
Overwhelmed with panicking
She said it could be worse.

Brian was all broke inside
In childhood was coerced
He thought he was unlovable
But knew it could be worse.

He walked among the normal folk
And hoped he could reverse
A life of no affection
And feared it could be worse.

He tried to meet some lady
And daily he rehearsed
All the gentle things he'd say
And thought it could be worse.

Kimmy was a young girl
Who swore that she's accursed.
Lived trauma after trauma
But said it could be worse.

All her living memories
From recent back to first
Taught her she was worthless
But still it could be worse.

She drank so much that every day
She drown that inner thirst
And as the world would beat her down
She cried it could be worse.

Trevor had a family
Whose treatment was perverse
He often tried to hang himself
But said it could be worse.

He talked with many therapists
Their responses all were terse
At least he had his health they said
And know it could be worse.

The pain it finally led him
To ride within a hearse
And as he dropped into the grave
He laughed "It Could Be Worse."

Meursault

[Three Roses]

A little dark, but I like it!

[sanmagic7]

you do have quite the poetic streak within you, meursault.  i'm glad it made you feel better.  that's what counts.

i agree that self-talk, no matter what form it takes, will penetrate and feel true if it's done often enough.  it's up to us to choose what that self-talk is going to tell us, even during the hardest of times.  those may be the most important times.  and i love radical's 'self-cannibalism' phrase.  wow!  quite the impact, and what a visual it makes.  i totally agree that it really doesn't help in the end.  the pain is still painful, the hurt is still hurtful - we've just added another layer of pain and hurt on ourselves.

i don't think it's silly at all to be telling yourself that stuff, radical.  i think, rather, it's wise and powerfully positive.  we can learn from you about that.  good one!

[meursault]

Self-talk IS an important piece of the puzzle, but it has its limitations, too.  I was talking to my therapist a while ago about that.  She said something about how it may help you not get hit by the artillery shells as often, but it doesn't do a lot when you have.  I think she thinks it's more important to find that body connection, and to connect with others.  I spent many years daily working on self-talk stuff, and still found I was constantly triggered by women, and still socially panicky all the time.  It was some deeper healing, with my relationships, that lessened that inner self-hate.

Like when I was at the doctors a few weeks ago, I was in a pretty good mood.  All my thinking was pretty optimistic and self-supportive.  It was happening without my awareness initially, but the aggressive noises and movements a girl there was making had me in complete breakdown mode before my thoughts were even aware of it...

Still, the boys hiding inside of me need more positive communication to feel safe enough to come out, so I need to start paying more attention to that.

Thanks for the comments about the poem, too!

Meursault