To be Candid...

Started by Candid, April 08, 2017, 11:17:45 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

Candid

... I've balked at starting a recovery journal because I've known about CPTSD for about five years now, I'm an intelligent woman and I don't believe I personally can recover. Younger people, and those who've established a FOC, yes. But not me.

I remember a photo of my elder sister and myself sitting among other children at Dad's work Christmas party. We were watching some kind of show, and our faces were lit up. Okay, Sis looked a bit anxious, but I was sparkling with unalloyed pleasure. I wish I had that picture now, but from many moves and being NC with FOO, I have no pictures of myself before I was about 20.

Most members will probably be aware of Maslow's hierarchy, but for those who haven't heard of it or need a refresher, here it is: https://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html

I've mostly been okay with the basic needs, and I am now, but I'm stuck on Belonging. I got by for a long time, believing I belonged in my FOO. As scapegoat :roll:, but I had a role and I knew how to play it. I belonged at primary school and at the first high school I attended, liked by teachers, some close friends (all now long gone from my life), getting good marks. Self-esteem was okay then.

Then my family migrated. In one hit I lost my friends, the extended family, my pets, my school, my familiar town. My childhood. I started a new school where I was teased and mimicked by others for my 'annoying' accent. The scapegoat role became the only one I had. I cried. I kept a journal, which unknown to me my mother read while I was at school.

I went to work, got fired a few times, then found a career and mostly stuck to it. A couple of workplaces -- the best of them -- I actually felt I belonged. Where I didn't, getting up and dressed five days a week kept me going even when I hated it.

I married a violent man and five months later I ran for my life. Mother had already told me she didn't want me in FOO, so I moved a long way away. Soon settled in a job, made some friends, felt like I'd been reborn. Went to university and got a diploma. Kept working. Bought a house. When it was paid for, I bought block of six apartments, then went back to my birth country intending to stay until the mortgage on the apartment block came down sufficiently for me to sell both properties and buy my ideal home.

A few months later a monster flood hit the town I'd left. I had no family, and no friends who cared enough that I could ask them to sort things out for me. With my house and the three downstairs apartments uninhabitable, the mortgage went out of control. I sold the apartments; the bank sold my former home and I got a $10,000 bill for the shortfall.

I kept going. I remarried.  H has never held a job for long. I was the breadwinner while 'we' were paying off a house. We lost that when my industry all but collapsed and I could no longer find work. I left H for five years, went back to that town where I'd once owned property, and got two-thirds of the way through a degree with the usual high grades. There was once again a sense of belonging at university. I liked the lecturers and students and they liked me.

Then the bike accident and the head injury. TBH I think it was the death blow.  In and out of hospital for six months, misdiagnosed and mismedicated for schizoaffective disorder. Medication enforced after I left the nuthouse. I dropped out of university. I could barely get out of bed, I was so depressed. I could no longer ride my bike (developed a phobia), shopping became an issue and therefore feeding myself was a problem. Relationship has been a major issue for me since the initial migration, and apart from two or three exceptions my friendships have all been circumstantial. When I leave, there's no follow-up. There's never anyone to help me through the worst times.

Finally I sent H an email. He makes a good foul-weather friend. A few months later he flew to that other country and brought me here to live with him and his mother. But I don't belong here and I see no way out.

To end on a brighter note, the woman who's been my bestie for the past 20 years suggested we meet for lunch this week. She lives a long way from me so we get together only rarely; the rest of the time it's email. Also, she distances herself when I'm sad. But she's upbeat and inspiring and, just for now, I have something to look forward to. A reason to shower and present myself as well as I can.

TIA for telling me I belong here, and the virtual hugs.


Three Roses

:cheer:  :cheer:  :cheer: :hug: :hug: :hug:

You DO belong here! Can we be your FOC? ;)

You are a vital, valuable component here, with deep insight and a compassionate, caring nature. I'm glad to know you. ♡

Blueberry

Candid, thanks for sharing more of your story.

I'm sorry you've lost so much on your journey through life. You sound as if at certain periods of your life you were really strong. Same here. I try to find some of that strength. I hope you manage too.

I don't have a FOC either, not even a partner. I've never had one. I do have my little pets, and I now have a lot of friends and people I know about town. For me it's been really important as well to find groups that I feel I belong to. I've done a lot of work on that in the last 2-3 years. I moved around quite a bit with FOO, from one country to another. But live in a totally different country now.

I'm sorry about your bike accident and head injury and all the misdiagnoses. At least I don't have that kind of thing on top of it all. That must make everything more difficult.  :hug:

Anyway I agree with 3Roses, you belong here!  :bighug:

Blueberry

Hey, Candid, I've just been re-reading my Journal and seeing so many very helpful, compassionate posts from you. I know you're in a low place right now. But just want to let you know that 3Roses has got it spot on with this: "You are a vital, valuable component here, with deep insight and a compassionate, caring nature. I'm glad to know you. ♡ "

Glad to know you too, and I believe in you!  :cheer:  :cheer:  :bighug:

Candid

Thank you both. I like coming here, to my virtual FOC, and I get so wrapped up in being here that it's a shock to get up from my laptop and see where I actually am.

That makes me think of entrainment http://www.meditationiseasy.com/binaural-beats/entrainment-the-universal-law-of-harmony/. Researchers have found that when two sympatico people are in conversation, their brainwaves, heart rate, blinking and other autonomic functions quickly become synchronised. We can't have entrainment when we're reading and writing in different time zones. This isn't to diminish my feelings for this virtual FOC, but I've become very aware of entrainment and how important it is. People die without it.

Before H came to fetch me 'home', I was alone virtually all the time. What a downward spiral that was. I contacted him because he was the only person I could think of who cared whether I lived or died. Thing is, he and MIL both so often feel alien to me. Much of their conversation is about money: how to hang on to it being the main theme. I've never thought that way... but then, before I came here I had enough money coming in. Money but no company. Now I've got company but no money. MIL and H are both kind to me and I feel ungrateful for writing this, but they're simply not on my wavelength. I often cringe hearing them speak. MIL gives the impression of being in a perpetual bad mood and usually shouts when she speaks. There's openness and honesty there; contrast it with my mother, so calm and controlled and insidious in her verbal abuse. But that's what I grew up with. That's what feels like home.

I don't want to be entrained with (or by) these people. I wouldn't be 'me' any more. And if they're like two clocks ticking in sync, being the third clock marching to a different autonomic nervous system beat might explain why I'm constantly exhausted. Also irritable and judgmental, outer critic doing its best to outshout the inner.

Each Wednesday morning I go to my Acquired Brain Injury group. I can tell I entrain there easily, because I walk home on a high (it's all relative) and I call into my local pub for a pint to delay returning to base camp.

It's even better when I see my bestie. She's one of the funniest, most positive people I know. Tuesday will be the third time we've sat together since I returned to this country, and she only gets 45 minutes at lunch time but she packs a lot in. I always go there thinking I'll be more directive and find out what's going on in her day-to-day life, but I get bowled over immediately and just keep answering her many questions. She's been the same whenever I've introduced her to anyone. She's genuinely curious about people.

Well, last time I saw her I had a cold and was feeling rotten. Her questions brought me to tears. When she left she said: "I hate to leave you like this." But she went, and she didn't contact me for a long time. I got the message; I've had it before. H calls her my fair-weather friend, but that isn't true. She's been there for me through very dark times, including when I left H in 2011; she just hasn't got time for perpetual misery.

Yesterday I referred to H as my foul-weather friend. Most of the time he does his thing and I do mine, in separate rooms. When he notices I'm really in a bad way, that's when I see the best of him. Yesterday he wandered in while I was writing my first journal post and asked when I could be ready to go out for lunch. He hates going anywhere on a Saturday because of the traffic on the roads, but he said: "You've had a rough few days and I want to cheer you up."

So we went for lunch, and then we went to look round a National Trust property, and I was dragging my tail the whole time. I didn't want to walk. At all. I didn't care about the spring flowers he was pointing out. I could barely acknowledge that it was indeed a fine day. All this revved up my inner critic. What a misery-guts. Why should he be bothered with you? You might as well have saved him some money, stayed home and gone back to bed. Egad, that wing mirror -- you look a hundred and ninety! Smile, for pity's sake!

So I told him he had three choices: find a way to get rid of me that won't implicate him, send me back to where he got me from, or locate some help. Urgently.

After dinner we watched Derren Brown's Apocalypse, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apocalypse_(Derren_Brown_special). Whew, Derren put that young man through some heavy stuff! He was still in a compound when he received a message from his family to say they were alive and well, and where to find them. His face lit up and he was the happiest viewers had seen him since the program began. H said: "He's still got a long way to go." I said, choking up: "He knows his family are safe and that they're looking for him. That's everything." H missed that completely; he was too caught up in  the action.

I was a mess by the time the show was over. H was very good. I tried to explain it wasn't the family stuff that triggered me; it was the fact that he missed it completely. Like the young protagonist, he takes family for granted. He has no idea what it's like not to have one, not ever to have had one.

I told him the guy in the film was 'home' as soon as he knew his family were okay; that family provides an internal home, a place of safety and love. And that that being so, I've never had a home, and I desperately want one, which was why I wore second-hand clothes and saved madly for my first property while my young co-workers were buying the latest fashion and going nightclubbing. I've spent my life in Maslow's lower levels, constantly looking for home like Harold with his purple crayon. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVaOOgWyvJM

Yeah, H was lovely last night. He always is when I'm really in a bad way.

When I finally emerged this morning he asked me how I was. I said okay. So he's back in his small corner and I'm in mine, nothing being done about finding help, much less getting us out of MIL's home...

Roll on Tuesday, I say.

sanmagic7

candid, thank you for starting your journal, for allowing us in a bit. 

i can relate to the entrainment thing, and your situation on several levels.  i had to spend a bit of time living at my mil's and it was horrible.  it was so bad that i even once called my mom, crying.  as usual, she didn't know what to do with my emotion, so remained silent.  feeling very alone after that call.  i just wanted to get out of there. 

i've been pretty good at being a chameleon personality, but i'm totally with you on the idea that there are some people i can't, won't, and don't want to be on the same wavelength.  i don't like where they are, how they think, their perspective on the world.  not that they're bad people, just so different from me on too many levels.

when i think back on some of my relationships, i can't tell if there has been any actual entrainment in the past or if it was just me faking myself through it.  if i think about it, there is really only one person with whom i can feel that, and it's my daughter, and it's only been in the last year or so.  like we're vibing on the same cylinders.  i have flashes of it with my hub, but not normally and not for very long.  it's actually a weird feeling for me, but it is a feeling, and i'm grateful just to be able to feel it.

so, poor subjects as we might be here to attain retrainment with each other, i do consider people here as virtual foc, and can feel closer to them in some ways than people in real life.   keep hangin' tough, candid - hangin' right beside you.  we'll virtually get through this together!     :hug:

sanmagic7

oh candid, i so feel for you, i really do.  i can relate to that feeling of loss, having had a home, family, pets, career, doing what i loved, being good at what i did, and now my possessions would fit in my car, can't work, have retired so i could get my soc. security money every month and that's it.  whittled away, every bit of it.

i also write, can relate to that dream of yours - and it sounds beautiful.  it's so so so very frustrating to have those dreams snatched away from us.  i continue to write but doubt that it's going anywhere.  still, it's something i love and i haven't given that up yet, altho i can only concentrate on it for about a half hour at a time now before i'm exhausted. 

you know, methinks that it didn't all end with your accident for a reason, that there's a reason why you're still here.  maybe you don't know why yet, maybe you won't, but you are here, you are reaching out to others on this forum, and you're giving to others as well.  that giving that you're doing, candid, the support, the validation, the compassion that you've given me and others - that's something very special that you're doing.   you are making a positive difference in this world and in peoples' lives personally.  we've benifitted from you still being here, and i thank the stars for that. 

i found out that sometimes we touch peoples' lives in a profound way just be being ourselves and that we might never know about it.  it happened to me and i found out about it by accident.  i was shocked as all get out when i heard - i was just doing what i do but it made a big impact on another person's life when i wasn't even trying.    you are alive and here, you are actively impacting others' lives in a most positive way.  you may have lost a lot, but you haven't given up, haven't thrown in the towel, and i'm grateful you're still here.  i don't doubt others feel the same way.

standing right beside you, candid.   we've all made those mistakes in our choices, in our relationships, in the paths we've taken.  i've made too many to count.  please, don't ever let that strip you of the wonderfully kind, caring, intelligent person you still are.  that inner critic can go take a flying leap!  you are still valid and valuable, no matter what.  never forget that.     :hug:

Candid

You brought tears to my eyes, San.  :hug:

Quote from: sanmagic7 on April 10, 2017, 11:45:00 AM
methinks that it didn't all end with your accident for a reason, that there's a reason why you're still here. 

The only thing I can think of is to learn to love, to learn to accept the love offered right here, from MIL who hunts out my favourite chocolates from the tin, from half-crazed H who knows all of my history (and I mean all of it, because he has more than a touch of aspergers and remembers everything) ... and who has told me many times that he'll always be on my side. He's offered to email my sister to ask for some of our childhood photos. I dunno, not sure if I want to have even indirect contact with any FOO member. I can still 'see' some of those photos in my mind, but I can't show them to him.
 
Quoteyou may have lost a lot, but you haven't given up, haven't thrown in the towel...

I think I have, or I would if I knew how. What would giving up look like, if not this? In Viktor Frankl's book Man's Search For Meaning I read that people in concentration camps got to know when death was imminent, because people would remain in their bunks, urinating and defecating where they lay. I have to say I couldn't do that unless I literally couldn't move. Ugh, what a ghastly thing to recall.

Quotewe've all made those mistakes in our choices, in our relationships, in the paths we've taken.  i've made too many to count.

I've written a lot about accepting myself, but nothing about accepting my life as it is. How can I possibly compare my present circumstances to a Nazi death camp? Um... family gone. Everything I worked for gone. Very slender hope of surviving this and doing better some day.

Quotestanding right beside you, candid.   

Thank you for all your kind words, San. Where would I be and what would I be doing without my FOC here?

Okay, a volte-face. I accept my circumstances for the time being, and I don't accept myself. Stop moaning and do something, Candid. Stop saying it's over and hoping for an early release via cigarettes. Fitness first, then we'll see about pulling in some £££, and finding good company. Then we'll see about renting somewhere. Then we'll see about writing again. And then...

sanmagic7

one step at a time.  if you'd given up, you wouldn't be posting here.   i think i just saw something lovely happen to you.  you go, girl!!!   :hug:

Candid

Quote from: sanmagic7 on April 10, 2017, 12:56:15 PMi think i just saw something lovely happen to you.  you go, girl!!!   :hug:

Thank you, my darling. It's been a good day today, but then it usually is when I see my bestie. We last met in January, when I was in a dark space, and she left me alone for a while. So today there was a bit of performance anxiety going on beforehand, but once we got together I didn't even think about it. She remarked: "You're more cheerful today than you were last time" and I reminded her I'd had a bad cold then.

After she went back to work I had a stroll around town, nice sunny day, feeling a wee bit better about life. I asked at the job centre about training for people who've had a long lay-off. The couldn't help me because I'm not in receipt of any government money (don't I know it!) but they sent me to the library where a friendly chap put me on the phone to a place where they do career counselling. I have an appointment for that on the 25th. Fingers crossed.

So I got the bus 'home' feeling properly entrained again, and walked into this place. Never mind. Chin up and all that.

Now then, I have a question. I've seen a lot here and in PW's book about sitting with the bad feelings, and I don't know how to do it. A woman at the Findhorn Community told me I was not quite in my body, and I know I'm spaced-out much of the time. It's like my feelings will kill me if I don't dissociate.

H was not home and MIL was just heading out when I got back. Oh goody, I thought as I let myself in, but no. Horrible gnawing anxiety about being alone here and have nothing to do or that I wanted to do. Okay, I'm supposed to 'sit with' this. What does that mean? I don't know. Aaaargh. I had a cup of coffee and a cigarette. I know, both anxiety-producing even though the coffee was decaf. Didn't even enjoy all that bitterness, but it was something to do.

The feeling didn't go away, obviously, so I booted up the laptop and have been here ever since. MIL is home, watching television. H will be home soon. That doesn't make the feeling go away, either. So I feel a compulsion to be busy busy busy to avoid having my bad feelings kill me.

:aaauuugh:, now I've got the rainbow flashes that herald a migraine. Haven't had one of those for ages. Better go smoke another cigarette.

Candid

Yesterday I wrote some goals on my Need a job thread, and thought it might be a good idea to post them in my journal.

1) Do something about my fitness. The weight gain and shortness of breath are NOT helping
2) Get involved with the mental health organisation. in whatever capacity so long as it gets me out of the house
3) Keep looking for work, paid or unpaid
4) Be as prepared as I can be for the local council interview late July

I may be on point 1 for some time. Two years ago I was still cycling around on the other side of the world, still feeling competent, still healthy despite having been a smoker for more than four decades. Then on June 4 2015 I found my father's death notice on line. There was no one to call. It was 2am, but that wasn't the reason there was no one to call. There just wasn't.

It wasn't unexpected -- that's why I'd been googling his name every so often -- and I had known for years that I would never again see him or hear his voice on the phone. Because he had alzheimers, the only way to get to him was via my mother, and that was too high a price. I had already mourned the loss, or so I believed.

He'd been dead six weeks when I saw his death and funeral notices. Obviously no one had told me. Not one of my three siblings, none of my relatives. No one thought I had a right to know. They no doubt told themselves and each other that I didn't care.

Not long afterwards I got on my bike with a bellyful of wine, and you know the rest.

I shouldn't have come here. I need territory. Okay, my heart had gone, my will to live, and I was unable to take care of myself over there. After a long separation, H made plans to fly over as soon as I contacted him... and brought me back to his mother's place. I am fed. I have a mattress in the roof space to sleep on, climbing up and down a loft ladder. Apart from that I do nothing, have nothing.

Most nights I go to bed so addled that I vow tomorrow will be different, I'll get up early and have a walk, not start the day with coffee and fags. I'll get some heart and energy back, some enthusiasm for life such as I had just two years ago, when I was still at university. But it isn't a case of simply going back. Galling as it is to have got so far into my degree, been asked to take Honours... and then given up, I just don't have it in me to go back into the classroom with a new bunch of people. For the sake of completion, I'll state here that up until November this year the university will allow me to go back and pick up where I left off. After that, I would have to start again -- which obviously is out of the question.

I feel racked with guilt about H, and to a lesser extent MIL. It was very wrong of me to get back to him after more than four years apart.

So last month I had an exit plan. It was so clear to me that I told H I needed to go to the nuthouse. I've seen people there on an outpatient basis since then, but have now been discharged with a prescription for anti-Ds. :roll: Psychiatrists always think pills can fix anything. This latest one told me I'd been very stupid, and not for the first time, and was now in an impossible situation. As if I didn't know all that!

To sum up today, my four-point list looks like a mountain to climb, and I see no real good at the end of it. So there has to be a point A1: recover the will to live and thereby have the motivation to save myself.

Blueberry

 :hug:   I'll try and actually write something later. I really ought to be getting on with various other things for myself right now. All online, so that's why my computer is up and running. Otherwise turning it off and fleeing would be good.

Blackbird

 :bighug: You'll manage to save yourself, the worst part of your story is in the past.

Three Roses

You're not stupid!!! I would call that charlatan some very colorful and creative names were it not for the forum guidelines. He is without insight.

There is recovery! You are strong, intelligent, compassionate. You are worth the effort.


Blueberry

#14
 :yeahthat:

So, I'm finally getting back to you on this post, Candid. When I first read your goals, I was hoping you weren't setting yourself up for disappointment. I used to always set my goals too high and then fail at them and feel even worse. Especially with your first goal, I'd be worried, since you write it's like a mountain to climb. You know like the way you expressed concern about me when I was considering writing that FOO letter. So if you'd like to know more on my experience of goal-setting and how I now cope with it, tell me, and I'll write more. Otherwise I'll keep my mouth shut.

It sounds as if you're in a hard place, or were when you wrote this, with a lot of realisations coming up, but also questions on how to continue and where...  :hug:          Keep us posted please, as you are able.

As for that psychiatrist, our decisions aren't stupid. They are the best we can make in the circumstances and at the time we make them possibly the only way to go. If there'd been a different viable option at the time you contacted H, you would've looked at that and chosen it, but for whatever reason, there wasn't one, or it had even more drawbacks.