Reflections
Note: I have removed commenting from this post, as it was written from one perspective only. While I need to honour that perspective by leaving it up here; it doesn’t fully indicate where I am, or how the year has gone. I’ll have another go at writing something after the medication has kicked in :)
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A few of my fellow bloggers are doing reflections on the past year. I initially balked at doing something similar; because, well, I didn’t think that I had all that much to reflect on, or to be positive about. But then I got to thinking, and actually came up with a few… here they are, my random reflections, in all their crazy gloriousness…
I ended some extremely negative relationships:
- Kriss – who was psychologically abusive through his manipulation and inconsistency.
- Matthew – who the day before I attempted suicide, told me that we were all worthless in the big scheme of things, and that I would not be missed. This was not the reason for the suicide, but I think it acted as a final straw.
- My divorce became final. I am no longer tied in any way to that man.
- The last relationship was possibly the most important, as it was with someone who knew how to use my dissociation for his own gain. He shall remain nameless and faceless, but I’m glad I stood up to him and took steps to ensure my safety.
I meet some incredible people through the blogosphere, and even made some friends – despite reverting to “pompous mode” (otherwise known as insecure mode), on occasion. I’ve learned, laughed, got angry on your behalf and even occasionally shed a tear because of you all – thank you!
I attempted suicide, and survived. I meant to die. I wanted to die. But I didn’t. Some wizardry of the medical kind, protected my liver; while in the aftermath, the nurses treated me with professionalism. The suicidal ideation and intent hasn’t vanished, but it’s back to a level that is manageable in my daily life.
I said No to physical touch for the first time in my life EVER. Allison was saying that when she feels upset for her clients, she often wants to put her arm around them and give comfort through physical touch. As soon as she said this, I stamped both feet on the ground, like I was getting ready to sprint out the door, and firmly said No. Ok, so I said the word in a therapists office, where I have established that she will never touch me without consent, but still… I said the word. Loudly.
I started working with Allison. It’s been rough, and I still don’t understand her. But there’s a consistency in staring at her coffee table, feet, bookshelves or her rather sad pot plant. We talk. She forces me to slow down, to notice when I have reactions, to accept that I do react, and that it’s ok to do so.
I had brief contact with some of the ones within my system that I didn’t previously know about, but feared. All I knew was that there was something “bad” in The Basement of my internal house; but that “bad” turned out to be ones which are very hurt. I know my work with what they hold is by no means complete, but it was started.
I was reminded that I can’t work on one part of the system, to the exclusion of other parts; instead, I must think of my being in it’s totality. I still struggle with this, but if I wandered too far into a particular coping mechanism, or way of being; there would be a reaction or incident that would remind me that I’m not dealing with one aspect of my life at a time anymore.
At work, I received mixed messages about my performance. I was given an excellent performance review, asked to act as team leader and manager during absences; but was not given a pay rise. The high performer within me wants to know how to be perfect, and therefore be worthy of a pay rise; while the realist in me knows that the pay issue is tied to the economic and political times, more than my performance. It’s a good reminder, that I still need to work on gaining satisfaction from my job that is independent of others. I still rely on others to prove my worth and validate my existence. I need to shift that, so that I can gain job satisfaction without needing others approval.
I did my little bit to fight the changes brought about by the new ACC clinical pathway. I wrote a couple of posts, got into some verbal exchanges on some forums, and even ventured into other peoples blogs to discuss the issues. Sometimes, I didn’t cope well… but sometimes, I was proud of what I was doing. I may not have made any impact on the policies, but there were big changes in my healing as a result. I stood up for myself, and that caused a positive flow-on effect. On a personal level, my struggles with obtaining ongoing ACC coverage aren’t over, but that’s another story.
I worked on creative expression. I found that although I can rarely “look inside” and get a direct answer, I can do a Polyvore set or write a poem, and find an answer. I often get scared of what is communicated, or don’t understand it. But, I’m a work in progress, and I can learn. There is more trust from the system because of my willingness to work in this way.
I’ve learned an awful lot this past year. I think that’s possibly why I fear 2011 so much… the stakes are so much higher.
I wish you all the best for the coming year. Take care out there…
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Now playing: Pink – Trouble
via FoxyTunes
PDF Whose driving?
The last two days have been kind of rough.
Heading into Thursday, I was feeling good and had managed to pull myself onto some sort of steady ground. That all fell apart late Thursday afternoon, when I got an email from the other team leader, calling into question the quality of my work. That email sent me plunging back into self-doubt, self-hatred and all the other associated negative thinking. My cynical friend told me to forget it; but it was such a back-stabbing insult that I couldn’t brush it off. To make it worse, my own team leader wasn’t around to reality check the content of the email, and I didn’t want to run to the manager about it. This spun me out to the point where I knew I wasn’t safe to drive home. I stayed on at work for a couple of hours, before driving home and losing most of the evening to the dissociation.
Then, on Friday morning during my drive to work, we went past a “hurt” cat in the middle of the road. I always dread this sort of thing; not only does it stir up the system because an innocent animal has been hurt, but it’s a trigger for some of the younger ones. Like a deer caught in headlights, we can never look away… we started reciting “it’s just a jumper that fell out of a car”, hoping that this will change how we see the cat… it doesn’t. This means we now have adult parts smarting from the insult to our work, and young ones upset that an innocent cat has been hurt.
So we’re now driving down the road reciting out loud “it’s just hurt, it’s ok, it’ll get up soon and the people who love it will come get it and take care of it”. There was also a promise that we wouldn’t drive home that way, just in case it hadn’t been moved.
Work on Friday is mostly a blank… I know we had a morning tea for the two new people, and that the manager made a triple layer banana and pineapple cake (which did a rather spectacular topple over during the cutting process). I also know I played around with the iPhone app kooaba, as we’re looking at new ways to try to deliver information through technology such as QR codes and visual recognition apps. This was fun because we were going around the library, taking random photos of books, CDs and DVDs to see what information kooaba would return.
Then it came to the drive home… all the way up the street where we should have turned off to avoid going by the stretch of road where the cat had been hurt, we were consciously thinking of turning. Then there was this little mind fit, and we were suddenly past the turn off. I could hear the panic, but there was also this firm voice telling me to stop being so silly, that there will be nothing there, and it will all be fine.
Thankfully the cat was no longer there, but that didn’t matter, the panic had set in. We were switching all over the place and I could feel our throat closing up. Little Michelle came forward full force, meaning that we couldn’t really drive, talk and only barely functioned enough to get home in one piece. Because we live in a high fenced section, no one saw us getting out of the car shaking like a leaf and stuttering about it hurting.
We got inside, fed Winnie, turned on all the lights, curled up in the corner of the lounge and tried to ease the shaking. I had no real sense of what was happening, but there were obviously body memories. The throat was closed off, and no matter how hard I tried, I could barely stutter. I managed to take some anxiety medication and send the following email to Allison…
turn all the lights on an hide
turn all the lights on an hide
turn all the lights on an hide
turn all the lights on an hide
turn all the lights on an hide
turn all the lights on an hide
turn all the lights on an hidehide got to hide
he’ll find us
I think we finally went to bed at about 8am (it was naturally light by then) and slept for a couple of hours.
Saturday had been good… we’d talked to a friend and took some pictures of the stuffed toy we got for the young ones as their reward for going through the divorce proceedings…
This made me think that tonight was going to be easier… the fear seemed to have eased. But it’s now 1am Sunday and all the lights are on again. Little Michelle is ok as long as all the lights are on. We’re also ok as long as we don’t even think about going to bed.
One of the big problems with this scenario, is that it opens us up to further dissociation and self injury. We’re so switchy and shaky…
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Now playing: Missy Higgins – Where I Stood
via FoxyTunes
We’re free of him…
This came in the mail today…
WE ARE FREE OF HIM!
Some don’t trust this piece of paper, they still expect him to come around the corner at any moment… But legally, we are no longer associated with him in any way (except for the Protection Order).
The big stuff
Ok… so, the big stuff… the stuff I’ve been studiously avoiding for the last probably two to three weeks… maybe even that last couple of months. I can’t analyse or reflect on them yet, but I need to write them down so that they lessen their hold over me.
Probably the most obvious, is the therapeutic rupture with Liz. It destabilised me. It re-enforced all the old messages about me being too difficult to cope with, and made me feel as if I would never heal. I still don’t think that the new therapist will cope… She says she’s one of the top therapists in the small city where we live; but then, Bob was one of the top clinical psychologists, and that didn’t turn out well. We’re still not sure if ACC will fund us to see her; so until funding is established, we’re seeing her fortnightly. I know that isn’t often enough, but we can’t afford weekly therapy.
Once you get past the obvious of therapy, there’s the other given… work. We recently had a change to our union negotiated employment agreement. The new agreement meant that we ended up with a negative sick leave balance. We’d used up so much sick leave in the short time we’ve been there, that we’d used the equivalent of an extra years allowance. This basically meant that we were going to have to go for over a year, with any sick leave being unpaid. There’s no way we could afford that. Our union is incredibly weak and unable to fight for the rights of the worker – if you wonder why I’m in such a weak union, librarians are traditionally left wing, socialists who believe in unions, and so there’s a great deal of pressure to join.
So, ignoring the union, we researched the law and questioned work on the validity of the negative balance, when according the the Holidays Act, each employee must have five days paid sick leave per year. We sent through an email outlining the law, and asking what that meant in regards to our negative balance. This resulted in a meeting with HR (hence the entry about the panic attack). The meeting was mercifully quick and resulted in HR apologising to me for any distress caused. They also gave me five sick days immediately, and another five in six months time.
We had been expecting a written warning about our excessive sick leave. During the negotiations, our employer had been talking about “sick leave abusers”. When we saw that negative balance, we immediately knew that we were one of the people being targeted. We doubted all of the work we’ve been doing. We don’t feel as if we’ve been performing to an even half descent standard lately. So again, all our fears and inadequacies were thrown into the spot light.
The other obvious stress has been the divorce. We got the papers served on the ex-husband, and immediately started to get hang up phone calls. They were at odds times of the day and lasted for a week, ending only when we picked up the phone once and asked who was there. This led to all sorts of flashbacks and activation of parts who used to deal with the ex-husband.
Which probably leads into the other issue I’ve been facing… increasing amounts and severity of self injury. It’s been a really tough few weeks, lots of lost time and negative coping mechanisms being used. I know I’m going to have to tell the new therapist about this, but it’s so shame inducing that I don’t know how. I keep thinking that I should be “strong enough” or “healed enough” not to do those old coping mechanisms… but yet fall back into them when the going gets really bad.
Then there’s the last big thing which feels so awful and… just yuck. I’m friends with the younger of my two brothers on FaceBook. A few months ago, a photo was added to his profile. It’s not an awful photo, it’s actually a really good one, which shows his body language as I remember it. The thing that sends the system into chaos however, is that the lower half of his face is almost exactly the same as the fathers. The mouth is the same… as is the chin. It drives some in the system crazy. My brother is now the age that the father would have been when we were in our early teens. As I write this, I feel the dissociation coming. I know this is a huge trigger. I know that sometimes one of us looks at this photo of our brother as a punishment.
Far out… that’s all I can write… sorry, I know this doesn’t make much sense. But I needed to get it out in some way.
In all the craziness, I’m reminded of the lines from Hymn to Her…
She will always carry on
Something is lost
But something is found
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Now playing: The Pretenders – Hymn To Her
via FoxyTunes
The week that was…
To put the last week into context, it would help if I explained a little about the past month… Probably 3 or 4 weeks ago, one of the young ones became convinced that she was an abuser. We were part of peer sexual abuse from the ages of 3-10 or 12; and some of that included, what she considered to be, causing abuse towards other innocent children. This was mentioned in session with Liz, but she dismissed it as learned behaviour from adults that was usual for a child with my history. Our intellectual response to Liz was to agree, it made sense… but not to the young one, as she has no memory of being hurt by adults, only her peers and some teenagers. This meant that the young one decided that we needed to die for hurting others – people often say that child abusers should be killed, so what made her any different?
Her belief that she was an abuser, was re-enforced by a recent newspaper article that stated children as young as 5 were being picked up by the police as sexual offenders… Add on top of this, the on-going anxiety about having to go for an ACC assessment; the memories stirred up by the dissolution of the marriage; and hating our current job. It all added up to a overwhelming mass of conflicting messages and emotions. The end result was a suicide plan which was to take place yesterday. On the way to this date, we ended up in the Police Station last weekend… Sophie called the crisis line and said we were suicidal, which resulted in the Police being called out, and us ending up in a Police holding cell/interview room being assessed by a Police psychiatrist. He was a very nice psychiatrist, and again tried to convince the young one that she wasn’t abusive, but she had the newspaper article as proof that she was evil… To make it worse, she now had further proof of her evilness – she had been picked up by the Police…
Last Monday, we went into therapy with Liz needing to work through this belief about us being abusers and the suicide plans for the coming weekend. Instead, Liz introduced DBT skills. This isn’t anything against DBT, but it was like throwing a bucket of water on a forest fire… too little, too late. Liz tried art therapy to try and get us to see that life was worth living, but she kept on hitting a brick wall because she was skirting around the issue and we needed to hit it face on. Liz’ attempts were frustrating us both, to the point where she said “Do you want to stop therapy”. She has said this to us on several occasions before, and each time we got the feeling that she was testing us, but this time it was the last straw… we said “Yes” and left the office.
I know this could be seen as us lashing out with an emotional reaction, and it was in many ways. But, there was also a feeling that Liz didn’t know what to do to help us. This was confirmed on Wednesday when we went back for a meeting to see if the relationship could be salvaged. Our position was that those words and actions made us feel rejected and as if we were too difficult to deal with. Liz tried to assure us that this wasn’t the case and that she had been there for us. But her actions and our expectations didn’t meet… that’s not to say that we were expecting 24/7 assistance from her; but many of our reasonable calls for assistance, were met with Liz passing us off onto the Crisis Team or ACC.
So, we’re no longer seeing Liz…
Due to the visit to the Police Station, the Mental Health Crisis Team have again become involved in our care. This resulted in us having an emergency psychiatric appointment on Friday, where a very intense psychiatrist upped one of our meds and introduced another. We’re very sensitive to medication – something I forgot to warn the psychiatrist about; so when we had the first night time dose of the new medication, we got about three hours of quite intense akathisia in the legs. The next day we tried the daytime strength of the med and got about 3 hours of needing to rip our arms up, increased dissociation and anxiety. The Crisis Team nurse tried to convince us that this was not tied to the medication in any way, and that we just needed to go for a walk…
So this brings us to today… the day after the young one had vowed to take an overdose. Why are we still here? Well, it turns out that the reason the suicide plans weren’t followed through was because of needing to fix our car. I know it sounds silly, but all the motions were set in place for the suicide – house was cleaned, papers put into order and the final thing was to get a warrant of fitness for the car, but it failed. Because we had to get it fixed, we ate into our savings which the young one had decided was enough for our funeral. So now the suicide plans are put off until we can save more money for the funeral – she doesn’t want to leave any debt for others to be inconvenienced by. I know that this is a tenuous reason to stay alive, but I’m hoping it will last us long enough to find some avenue for assistance.
So where to from here? Well, I’m not really sure. I see the Crisis Team psychiatrist again on Tuesday. I was told by Liz that my ACC funding has run out, so the chances of finding a therapist who will accept a dissociative client through ACC is pretty slim. I’m still waiting for the ACC assessment to determine what assistance I should be getting, and I just got the papers that I have to serve on the ex-husband’s parents to end the marriage. So I’m in a fairly precarious situation and can’t really see a way out at the moment. I’m not in any immediate danger – the fear of debt will keep the young one from acting on her plans for probably another few paydays… That gives me about a month to come up with something that will convince her that she’s not the most evil, disgusting thing on this Earth…
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Now playing: Green Day – Wake Me Up When September Ends
via FoxyTunes
Court, shopping and withdrawing
It’s become obvious that I’ve been withdrawing from everything lately. It always starts slowly… I’ll sit at my desk, rather than go out with the others for breaks at work; I’ll leave the car out with the intention of going to take photos, but end up putting it away a few hours later because I’m “too tired” or it’s now “too dark” to take photos. I wasn’t really sure why I’ve been withdrawing, or rather, which particular stressor was causing the withdrawal. I only knew that is was happening. Yesterday, I moved one step closer to eliminating one stressor – the dissolution of my marriage. The laws in New Zealand require you to have been separated from your partner for two years before you can dissolve the marriage (get a divorce). That milestone was up on 14 February of this year. So we took the papers to the Family Court to start the official process… it was an interesting trip which caused the activation of ones that hadn’t been present for quite some time.
We took two hours off work to take the papers to court, thinking that would be plenty of time for the fairly simple matter of handing over some papers and paying a fee… how wrong was I!
It started off well… we went into the Family Court reception and were served by the nice lady who took our Protection Order application nearly two years ago. She checked the forms, notarized them where it was appropriate and double checked that none of our personal details appeared on the forms to protect us from any contact from the husband. Then we asked some seemingly innocent questions about what would happen next… in particular asking about how he was to be notified of the dissolution when we didn’t know where he lived… This is where the smooth operation came to a screaming halt.
“What do you mean you don’t know where he lives?” The slightly stunned clerk asked…
“Well, we actively try to avoid knowing anything about him because of the Protection Order.”
“So, what’s this address here…” as she points to the address we’ve listed.
“That’s his lawyers address.” We reply, thinking it makes perfect sense to serve the papers to his lawyer.
“You can’t serve the papers to his lawyer, it has to be him in person.”
“But… I have no idea where he is.”
“You need to try and find him.”
At this point, the clerk confers with another worker about the situation and asks what my options are… Meanwhile we’re dissociating, spinning and trying to keep it together despite the internal chaos… we can’t find him… don’t make us have to find him… don’t make us talk to him or his family again…
After a rather convoluted discussion, the clerk comes back to tell us that we have to try and find him through any means necessary; but if we can’t, we can fill in another form to say that the papers can be served on his parents… But we still need someone to serve them… Someone over 18 to serve the papers to them in person… Someone would have to go to his parents house, knock on the door and give the papers to them…
This news brought another round of dissociation and internal noise… we can’t go to the witch’s house… she hates us… she’ll yell at us… please don’t make us!
Thankfully another woman yelled out that we could pay someone from the court where they live to serve the papers on our behalf…
This just left the problem of trying to find him! So off to the public library we went, looking for electoral roles… We walked there thinking it would be quicker than taking the car, but on the way there was all sorts of activation by different parts… Can we buy a toy? Oh look, a sale! Can we go see that movie? That’s a pretty dress. The desire to get sidetracked was immense… there was so much panic about trying to find the husband. With each comment, suggestion or pull, M tried to assure each one that we would go back later, but that we really needed to find the husband to make us all safe.
We found that the husband hadn’t changed his details official details from when he lived with us. We tried telephone directories and the Internet, but couldn’t find him.
There was another round of attempted distractions on the way back to court, but M deflected each one. When we returned to court, we filled in even more paperwork to say that we’d tried to find the husband. All the while, the internal noise was getting louder and louder.
It was only when we were driving away that the noise quietened. So much so, that by the time we got to a toy store, to keep the promise of buying something later, all the young ones had gone quiet.
On the surface, I can see the noise and chaos was an indication of our stress about the situation. But, I think it goes deeper than that. It was about our fear of having to do anything to do with him, fearing possibly having to see him again, fear that he will react when he gets the papers… It’s also about dissolving the marriage, and therefore admitting we made a mistake in getting married… it’s an indication of our failure.
I still feel the anxiety, disconnection and withdrawal from life… I don’t quite know how to ease that. I’ve tried making an appointment with my psychiatrist to get a review of my medication, but need ACC approval and funding before I can go – which means it could be several months before I get in to see him. This week, I’m wanting to quit therapy… I cancelled Jo and have come close to cancelling Liz several times. Everything about therapy annoys me at the moment – trying to talk, all of Liz’s responses, her making us draw when we retreat and can’t talk…
We found this photo called Just Red by Burning Image… it’s a good representation of how we’re feeling…
A dance to the edge
A good friend recently mentioned that she felt like she was going to fall, and fall deeply. Part of her was expecting, and almost wanting the fall to happen. Thankfully, her fall hasn’t happened, and I hope it doesn’t; but what she describes is a feeling I know all to well. It’s like standing on an edge, waiting for that last push to send you over into a mental health free-fall. The scary bit about standing there, is that you have an awareness about where you are. You know that one more negative thing is going to push you over, and part of you wishes that it would come so that it’s over with; but another part of you hopes that you can still claw your way back to safer ground. It becomes a tug of war between different parts of you… This alone is so tiring that it can be enough to tip you over…
I know I’m also moving closer to the edge. The stressors in my life have kicked into high gear and I can feel the pressure building. At the moment, I’m far enough away to know that I’m in danger without being too close to it. A part of me niggles that I’m thinking myself into moving towards the edge – why do I think of my ex-husband, why worry about the ACC assessments etc. But the rational part of my brain knows that I’m experiencing PTSD flashbacks and my worry is justified based on past assessments. This is the beginning of the tug of war that intensifies over time. Soon other issues will come in to muddy the waters – denial, and a need for validation have already started to appear. All of this increases my anxiety levels. I’ve experienced this often enough in the last few years to notice the pattern… It becomes like a dance, to and fro… ever closer to the edge…
The problem becomes, how do you stop the dance? If I called a crisis line, they would take me through the individual stressors I am facing and encourage me to break them down into solvable chunks. This would work for some of the issues I’m facing, but they can’t help with the PTSD symptoms. I saw Jo today, and she was recommending trying to ground in the present, and while I agree with her reasoning, I also know that I can be very grounded in 2010 and still keep on dancing towards the edge. Some of the grounding work can make the situation worse – repeating “it’s the 26th of January, 2010 and they are just memories” can morph into a denial statement about the memories all being made up. The most effective way of keeping the anxiety at bay is to consciously breathe deeply – this also tends to by one of the first things I forget to do. Like many survivors who experience anxiety, I have a form of hyperventilation syndrome, with my breathing being short and shallow. It takes a conscious effort to alter my breathing pattern to a healthier depth and pace. Changing my breathing will temporarily ease the anxiety, but often this isn’t enough to stop the dance towards the edge. I’m not always sure what moves me away from the edge, I think this time it will be the formal dissolution of my marriage and completing the ACC assessment. If this is the case, I’ve got about another three weeks of doing the dance around the edge. I don’t think I’ll fall, but a part of me thinks I will… A part of me wants to fall, because they think that this is what I deserve…
And so the dance continues…
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Now playing: The Feelers – Stand Up
via FoxyTunes
Struggling
I’m struggling… struggling to maintain the feeling of being alive and being an adult.
Tomorrow I go to the funeral of my cynical work friends husband. He died on Sunday after a year of battling cancer. I unsuccessfully researched the guilt associated with someone who is suicidal continuing to live, while someone who was in love and loved life dies a horrible death. There seems a great injustice in that scenario. When I mentioned it to Liz on Monday, she came very close to talking about religion again, but squeaked by with the “there must be a reason” line. I’m at a loss as to what that reason is.
We’ve been asking M to do a majority of the work and I think this might be part of the reason why we’re struggling. M is incredibly functional, focused and driven; but she comes with the baggage of addiction issues which can harm the rest of us. I’m not sure how to break through this barrier that we seem to have up. I’m not sure if it is the time of year causing the problem (Wedding Anniversary, ex-husbands birthday and Christmas are approaching). It could also be the work environment which is still negative and emotionally draining.
I suppose the big problem is that I was hoping the time off work would help to ease these issues, but it hasn’t. Maybe I was hoping for another quick fix… I’m realising that quick fixes don’t seem to exist within mental health.
Dichotomous thinking
I have come to a point in my healing where the sometimes dichotomous thinking and advice that I have been given has become confusing and counter-productive. I said in a previous post that I have become so good at distraction techniques, that they have become another form of dissociating the pain and problems away. I understand why they were shown to me, during the last two years of the marriage, I was consistently suicidal. I thought death was the only way out of the marriage, as I knew he would never let me leave. One of the first strategies they tell you when you are suicidal is to distract. This makes sense when you’re so overwhelmed that suicide is the only option you can see. So for years, I was told to distract my problems away. This was the equivalent of telling me to put the problem in a box and put it in the archives of The Basement – which is exactly how I dissociate bad experiences, memories etc. I’m pretty good at dissociating, and I am pretty good at using the distraction techniques to the point where they are also a dissociated and sometimes self-harmful experience.
Recently, I’ve heard more and more about looking at the pain. The exact opposite to what I’ve been told to do for years. It started off with practising some modified Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) – modified so that the names of the points have non-violent connotations and the taps to the head are not utilised. EFT uses tapping pressure points on the body in combination with phrases to help ease emotional pain. The phrases used are what I would consider ones which encourages you to think of the pain e.g. “even though I want to self-injure I fully and completely accept myself”. So it was encouraging me to accept that this painful fact is part of me and that I’m not a bad or negative person for feeling that pain. What was interesting doing this, is that it depended on who held the pain as to whether it was helpful or not. If the pain was buried within the dissociative system, then the EFT often makes the dissociation worse. Remember – this is just my experience and not necessarily one that others will encounter, or even one that I will continue to experience as time goes on.
Then today I read what was probably the most obvious and moving reason why I need to look at the pain. It was Shen’s (Reunited Selves) entry in the Blog Carnival Against Child Abuse (September 2009) called The Hole in the Soul. This post shows why we need to heal, the consequences of not healing, the positives that come from healing and acknowledgement of the pain and fear that the process creates. It doesn’t encourage any particular method of healing, but rather advocates for an attitude, a willingness to do the work and a strength to keep on that journey. I’m not sure if I have any of these qualities to the point of being able to look at, what Shen describes as, the hole in my soul. Some of us balk at the use of the term “soul”, but I understand that we have a lightness and a blackness within. Our internal Basement is in total darkness, while our internal Attic is bathed in light. The Basement is where the most painful memories and emotions are kept, so I see the correlation.
As an aside, when M draws within therapy, she often does a black swirling circle, I wonder if she is drawing our “hole” and a representation of our feelings about all of this. She’s our worst artist, so it could just be that’s all she can draw. But it’s always black and it’s always circular, like a spiral or a tunnel. This again could correlate to The Basement which is perceived as being bottomless.
So this need to face my pain is what I’m taking to Liz next week. Liz has asked if we can put aside issues before to try and cope, but this isn’t possible with our current levels of functioning and being in the world. We must either dissociate or distract it away from existence… If nothing else, this new possibility for healing has helped to ease the place we have been in for the last week.
Thank you Shen for that amazing story and to those friends who have helped over the last few weeks, it is appreciated.
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Now playing: Dixie Chicks – Wide Open Spaces
via FoxyTunes
And so it begins…
Today we thought we’d go do some shopping… just pick-up some silly things to send to friends and some groceries… nothing big or exciting.
One of the big problems with going shopping is that the ex-husband was a security guard. This meant that he worked at one time or another in most of the larger shopping malls in the city. Those that he didn’t work in personally, he knew the people who worked there doing security. So every shopping place has reminders of him, and every guard in a uniform looks like him when seen out of the corner of the eye – classic PTSD stuff.
Today we went shopping at Westfield. He did security there, but it is also one of the places where we know well, so are less likely to have a panic attack. We were fine at the book and toy shops – hey we’re librarians and many of the littles love looking toys… But for some reason Sophie was really upset about being there, despite her choosing to go there. It definitely had something to do with the ex-husband as she was trying to do the same nervous wedding ring twisting that she used to do to try and calm and soothe… But we no longer have the wedding ring or any ring… Because it wasn’t there, she panicked. So unlike Sophie…
Whenever he did anything to her, she’d just throw the blocks up to the rest of us and take it until it got too much… She always felt so guilty as she agreed to the marriage, even though Management said it wasn’t a good idea… Management is great at passive aggressive stuff, so just didn’t organise the wedding. She didn’t stop it on purpose, but just refused to organise it – which would usually be her role. But finally gave in two nights before the wedding and got the vows and other details sorted, but it was very much against her will.
No one blames Sophie for agreeing to the marriage, but she blames herself… She’s getting really bad flashbacks of things that he used to do. We don’t know how to stop it or help her… She’s our most emotional part, and she’s hurting…
What’s unfair is that she is the one who comforts everyone else, but we don’t have the skills to comfort her.
