Scattered pieces

The one consistency during my childhood were the inconsistencies. People around me were unpredictable in their attitudes and behaviour towards me and each other; one moment they were positive, the next there would be abuse of some sort. I never had any sense of solid ground beneath my feet; and no cushion of unconditional acceptance to fall back on when I stumbled.

Instead, I created consistency through the dissociative system.

When the dissociative system went beyond it’s ability to cope, and instead showed disordered behaviours and thinking, I needed to seek consistency outside of the system again. I had to start looking to those around me. I looked to partners, therapists, and people at work to act as that anchor. As with many people from dysfunctional and abusive backgrounds, I continued to select partners and friends who were dysfunctional and repeated the negative patterns I was familiar with (e.g. husband, my American friend Matthew). I slowly moved away from these old patterns and found new people who seemed healthy (e.g. cynical workplace friend, Allison).

Because these new people have shown consistency over time, it confuses me when they become inconsistent.

Earlier this year, my cynical workplace friend started having an affair with a married man. The one person in the office that I could talk to, and laugh with, was now showing the dysfunctional behaviours from my past. This triggered so many old and new emotions. It made no sense.  She admitted that it was fun, and therefore didn’t see a problem with it.  Any issues within the marriage, were for him to sort out with his wife.  It had nothing to do with her.  Suddenly she wasn’t consistent anymore. She was seen by the system as being selfish, short-sighted, and not thinking of the family she was becoming involved with.  What about the man’s nine year old daughter?

While she had shown the usual mistakes involved with being a human in the past, this was a deliberate decision that she made.  Parts of the system found it incompatible with the person we knew and laughed with.  I know it’s about old emotions – the mother was convinced that the father was having an affair.  I know it’s about feeling let down by someone we trusted and respected.  But probably one of the biggest blows, was to our sense of trust.  Our poor lack of judgment in people, was again shown to be true.  I still can’t trust myself.

So one of my anchors was cut loose.   Yes, we still laugh and talk.  But it’s different now.  I’m not sure if she feels it or not, but it is.

What’s interesting about this concept of consistency and anchoring, is that within the survivor community, I see it as much more fluid.  At one point I will be an anchor for someone; at another, they will be mine.  I think this is mainly because of different expectations we have for each group.  I understand when fellow survivors are struggling with behaviours and thought patterns.  I can empathise and offer acceptance and validation.  We’re on the same journey of learning who to trust, what the boundaries are and what our place is within the world.  These similarities make the survivor friendships so vital.  Although they may serve a different purpose than the consistent anchor, they offer an insight and validation that the anchor may never understand or comprehend.

Consistent anchors don’t have to be therapists or people who know anything about our past.  They are people who you rely on to be there.  It can be something as simple as the person in the coffee shop smiling to you each day, to a friend you can laugh with about everyday life that seemingly has nothing to do with the past; but has everything to do with healing.

It’s the combination of these types of connections and consistency that I think will help us through.

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Now playing: The Verve Pipe – The Freshman
via FoxyTunes

The activity for this months Expressive Arts Carnival is to:

Draw or paint your breath.

On one sheet of paper, draw or paint your breath in the moment. Then, immediately after, listen to some soothing music (if you want), close your eyes (if it is okay) and focus on your breathing. Do this for a couple minutes and try to relax.

When you are done with the breathing exercise, come back to the drawing and draw your breath again on the other paper.

When I thought of this activity, I had a very preconceived idea of what I was going to draw.  I had the patterns and colours planned.  I was “set”.  In my minds eye, the two images looked similar to these photos that I took awhile ago.

This is typical of what happens when I do conscious breathing.  I become calm and return to a central place of being where everything flows.  So when I sat down to do this exercise, I went with these images in my head.

What I drew, was nothing like I intended.

The first drawing was very easy, and very symbolic.  My breathing can become very shallow, choppy and quick.  It feels like I have a huge blockage in my throat that prevents my breath from going down into my lungs.  While the exhalations are short and sharp.  There’s very little fluidity about my breathing, and I can be like this for hours or days if my stress levels are high.

After doing the conscious breathing and relaxing, I came back to the paper ready to draw my nice flowing swirls to indicate how centered and aware I was.  I used finger paints, because I thought it would help me to blend the colours and feel as if I was more in touch with the whole experience.  I had six colours to chose from, and was going to cut this down to five by removing the black punnet – black didn’t fit into my view of the flowing picture I was about to draw.  But there was a strong internal message about being a censor if I didn’t allow for the possibility of black to be used; so it remained in front of me.

I’m aware that I started off with a central core of yellow, then moved outwards to the other colours.  The next thing I was aware of, was sitting back and looking at the image below.

Not quite the flowing picture I had in mind.

But in that moment, this is what was happening.  When I relaxed, the emotions came forward and were expressed through the drawing.

I think the only reason that some colour remained, was because there was an internal conflict, or backlash, about erasing another ones work.  I know I took a risk in using finger paints, I could tell there was curiosity about them.  The last time I used finger paints was probably in kindergarten.  I was aware of smiling as I dipped my finger in the yellow punnet of paint.

What’s interesting, was that there was a need to eliminate the yellow colour first.

Inability to concentrate is listed as one of the outcomes of being a survivor of abuse. What they don’t tell you, is what the impact that can have. Six years ago I was a high achiever. I worked full-time, was married and studying part-time at the post-graduate level. Today, it has taken me 5 hours (on and off) to write these four sentences.

Today, that is all I am capable of.  At times I hate that fact.  At times I accept it for what it is… a stage in my healing.

When words fail me, I often turn to images to try to explain what’s happening.  The image below reminds me of how so many survivors function in this world… if you look quickly, the tree looks “normal”.  It has branches which reach to the sky, a trunk for support and roots that appear to go deep into the ground.  But, if you look more closely, you see that the branches don’t flow smoothly.  Some pieces seem to be swapped around or turned upside down.  Some pieces are missing.  You’re not even sure whether this is one tree, or lots of different trees stitched together.

Yet, look quickly… and the tree looks intact and strong, doesn’t it?

Image: The tree at Abbotsford Convent by thescatteredimage (Rob Birze)

Last week I posted about Felicity Goodyear-Smith’s involvement in ACC Sensitive Claims research.  The articles which prompted that post (ACC advisor silent on links to sex abusers (Sunday Star Times, 29 August, 2010), and here), have created debate amongst interested parties about whether Goodyear-Smith should have been involved in the research. There are two clear camps – those who believe she is the best person to carry out the research, and those who think she has potential conflicts of interest which should have excluded her from any involvement in ACC SCU.  There have been numerous blogs and websites advocating both sides of the issue, but rarely have the two camps directly conversed – mainly because it is obvious that two such opposing viewpoints will never come to any sort of agreement.

I got a hint of the emotions the topic stirred when I entered a Google Groups thread over the weekend.  I thought that as all participants were adults, it would be a reasoned debate.  Unfortunately, that proved not to be the case.  Insults were thrown and behaviour which could, at best, be described as creepy, at worst threatening, ensued.

As I had joined the discussion under my usual Google username, the people involved had the name “castorgirl”; and they used it.  They found this blog and used information about my suicide attempts to question my character and credibility.  I understand that all information on the Internet is fair game, but the use of this information scared the younger ones in the system.  All they saw, were aggressive men finding, and potentially hurting them.

This may seem like it caused havoc, and it did for awhile.  But from this event, some major shifts have occurred.

Firstly, I was able to maintain a sense of adult self, and was rarely reactionary on the forum.  I could see the behaviour of the people involved for what it was – diversionary and bullying.

Despite getting scared about the blog being found, I realised that by hiding the blog (I re-directed traffic to Google for a day), I was acting as if I was ashamed of what is contained here.  If I was ashamed of what is contained here, then I was ashamed of me.  This proved to be a tipping point in my thinking.  I began to question whether the shame belonged to me, or those who hurt me.  While I sometimes cringe at what is written here, it’s my place of safety.  By hiding it, I was questioning my healing and learning… not a good message to send to the rest of the system.  So, I removed the re-direct.

In addition to the drama on the forum, yesterday was both Father’s Day and the mothers birthday.  I managed to make it through the day by distracting.  But, as midnight rolled around, I became more fragmented and derealised.  By 1am a young one was actively keeping us awake through their hypervigilence.  There was enough awareness, that I was able to soothe this young one - repeating over and over that we’d stayed safe during the day and that the father was no longer going to hurt us.  That he lived far away and it was a different time and place to the one they remembered.

We eventually calmed, but this internal communication continued.  An unknown young one came forward and shared some of her experiences.  At first she gave distractions, but then revealed part of what had happened to her.  In what is a first for me, I identified this young one as part of me, and as needing empathy, love and caring.  I again realised that the shame was not hers/mine, but that of the father who hurt her/us/me.  We tried to see if she would go with Sophie to be cared for, but instead, she melted back into the shadows to be taken care of by One.

The pain of this young one, was what we took into therapy today.

Allison, to put it bluntly, was brilliant.  She encouraged us to pause in our telling of what happened, and to check the emotional response.  This allowing and acceptance, meant that another young one came forward to tell of her experiences with the father.

I was left shaking, yet in a place of acceptance.  There was still denial to try and counter what had been said, but it was not the overwhelming denial that there has been in the past.  It felt as if the denial belonged to the different parts of the system, rather than to me as a whole.

Oddly as it seems, I have the bullying behaviour of a group of men to thank for this shift.  Young ones realised that I was willing and able to protect them.  They didn’t see me as weak and unable to handle what they held.  They equated these men with the image of the father, and they saw the adult me standing up to them.  This is what many of them had been waiting for, some sign that I was strong and capable of protecting them.

So, I have Goodyear-Smith supporters to thank for helping me gain huge ground in my healing.  There’s an irony in that, which I find amusing.

The forum discussion reached an uneasy conclusion yesterday, with the publication of the latest article by Tim Hume (Sex abuse cuts ‘all about cost-cutting’) which indicates that ACC did know of the potential conflicts of interest regarding Goodyear-Smith, but commissioned her for the research anyway.

All in all, a very odd weekend.

—————-
Now playing: Louis Lortie – Piano Sonata No. 14 in C-Sharp Minor, Op. 27, No. 2, “Moonlight”: I. Adagio Sostenuto
via FoxyTunes

My head is a swirling mass of thoughts and memories…

I should clarify, that the word cancer is there because our old neighbour is dying of cancer and doesn’t have much longer to live.

Note: Yes, there was an major Earthquake in New Zealand, but we’re well away from it.  My heart goes out to all of those affected…