The walk
Got to run… Got to get away… Got to escape…
This is how my need to runaway always starts… those words, repeated over and over. Sometimes they creep up on me slowly; but sometimes, they hit like the freight train. On Sunday, they hit suddenly; although I should have been expecting them… Last week, an inundation of triggers, meant that by Friday, I was a dissociated mess. Through my own actions, and decisions, I set myself up on the road to self-destruction, and despite some last-minute reality checks, things became very messy…
On Sunday, I got that last little push that tipped me over the edge into a flip-book of flashbacks… So, the chant began… Got to run… Got to get away… Got to escape…
This has often been the beginnings of an incident of self-injury, which I know just causes pain to be piled on top of existing pain. I know the pull of self-injury well… it can be hypnotic and alluring… there’s a cold comfort in its familiarity. But, instead of following that path, I took the words literally and escaped by going for a walk.
Considering my social anxieties, I’m not quite sure why I decided to do this… and initially, it seemed a huge mistake. I walked past families preparing BBQ’s, causing flashbacks to summers of watching my father cooking at the family BBQ… past the barking dogs, which brought up images of the scars on my friends back from an attack by a stray Alsatian… It went on, with each new sight, smell and noise triggering a new flashback.
I walked faster, and faster… trying to outpace the thoughts and images in my head. But the chanting in my head got louder and louder… Got to run… Got to get away… Got to escape…
Negative talk started to drown out the chant… I shouldn’t have eaten so much over the past week… I didn’t do enough at work… I’m just an attention seeking nightmare…
It went on and on… until, the words of WPT cut through all the noise. He told me the story of a woman who heard some rattling behind her as she walked; so she walked faster, scared of the noise… She walked faster and faster, until she was running… all the while, the rattling noise became louder and louder. As she scrambled up a hill, she met someone who told her to turn around… The noise was that of the skeleton of her past, tied to her ankle. Until she turned, faced it, and cut it free; it would always be with her. **
This rather butchered part of a story, brought me back to reality… I realised that this is what I was so desperately trying to do… I was trying to outrun the skeletons in my closet. But, they were making their presence felt through flashbacks and anxiety. Because they exist within me, I’m never going to outrun them… or inflict enough damage through self-injury to drown them out for long. Until I turn to face them, and work through what happens in the present as a consequence of those skeletons; I’m never going to ease their hold over me…
The kicker is, that I know this. I know that my self-injury is just another way to try to run… but turning around to face those skeletons is terrifying. I’ve been able to do it at times, but never for long. I get scared, confused and overwhelmed. I can never seem to do it they way they say in the books, or even in the other blogs I read… It seems such an unobtainable goal. How can something summarised in one chapter of a book, be so difficult, and take so long to do?
Of course, my annoyance with not being able to achieve this thing called “healing” is yet another sign of my need to distract and have control…
So, the skeletons of my past keep rattling…
** As a note: I know my recounting of the story isn’t accurate, and I’m not sure of its title; but I think it might be one of the short stories in the book Women who run with Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés.
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Now playing: Missy Higgins – Ten Days
via FoxyTunes
PDF Expressive Arts Carnival: Obstacles
The theme for this months Expressive Arts Carnival is:
Through drawing, painting, or any other visual means, create an image that represents a major obstacle facing you now.
My first reaction when reading the directive for this month’s carnival, was to write the letters “ME” on a page, and send it in. It feels more and more as if I am my own worst enemy; or probably more accurately, my thinking is.
My disordered thinking is evident in all areas of my life, but is particularly problematic at work – where I’m doing the job of about two people, but reluctant to make waves by saying that I’m swamped; within therapy – where I hold up any negative interaction as a reason to further beat myself up mentally, and use as a gateway to more self-injury; and finally with my relationship with food – where small things like being told that I must have three meals a day in order to have the antibiotics I was prescribed last week, caused a major panic.
I know that all of these factors are inter-related symptoms of an underlying cause… the problem is, that the symptoms are screaming so loudly, that it’s difficult to see, or hear the motivations behind it all. It is for this reason, that I’ve chosen this abstract photo of a red canna lily to represent both the scream of the symptoms, and the underlying motivations.
This scream is my obstacle… and my path to healing.
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Now playing: Counting Crows – Rain King
via FoxyTunes
My relationship with food
Of all the relationships in my life, my one with food is probably one of the most dysfunctional. It started from when I was a baby, when I was defined as a “fussy eater”. This warped over time into odd eating behaviours… when my mother used to get us ready for school, I remember we would have breakfast and a prepared lunch; but that only happened for the first couple of years of my schooling, and I was soon going to school without breakfast or lunch. I don’t remember ever feeling hungry during these times, but I do remember the embarrassment when it was raining and we had to eat our lunch in the classroom… I always pretended that I’d forgotten my lunch. It wasn’t that we were poor, and couldn’t afford food; I just didn’t know how to make lunch, and I wasn’t really interested. The couple of times that I did make my lunch, I recall looking at it as an oddity, and as if it was some sort of foreign thing that had arrived out of the blue. I never felt jealous of my friends who had lunches, only boredom as I waited for them to finish eating.
During my childhood, there were a couple of significant events involving food and my weight that strongly effected me:
- My father commented that “at least she’s not fat like her mother and sister”.
- My mother would compare myself and her friends daughters regarding our weight. One time she pushed in my loose t-shirt, to show that I didn’t have a “fat stomach”.
These events dehumanised me, and made me think that if I was overweight, then no one would want to touch me. That weight would act like a protective barrier against the world. This thinking became strong during my teens, and I gained weight… I no longer wanted people to touch me. But what I didn’t expect, was the teasing and self-hatred that my weight caused. This is what started the roller-coaster that my weight became – I would lose weight, and feel vulnerable to abuse; so gain weight, and feel disgusting and gross.
When I attended university, my weight issues came to a head. I couldn’t afford food, and there were stressors which meant that some of my other self-injurious behaviours became out of control. My weight dropped drastically. It was the first time that the doctors started weighing me as a way of monitoring what was going on. As I’d never owned any scales, this was the first time I’d been weighed since I was in school. I remember being horrified at my weight… it was much too high. I’ve never had an ideal weight in my mind, but what was being shown on the scale was way above what I thought it should be. I remember the doctor talking about nutrition, and how I was showing signs of deficiencies. I remember him talking about having to monitor my weight unless I got it back up to a healthy level. All I wanted, was to run and hide.
When I finished university, by weight went back to the roller-coaster, mainly dipping when I was going out with someone. In many ways, I considered eating to be an inconvenience. People seemed obsessed with it, and I couldn’t understand the obsession. At other times, I would be eating, and part way through a mouthful of food, become so disgusted with what was in my mouth that I didn’t know what to do with it. Sometimes I would have to go and get rid of it, sometimes I was frozen in disgust.
During my marriage, food was a control issue… everything else in my life was so out of control, that I had to have some control somewhere. The ex-husband was a big man, and a big eater. He liked to think that he was a chef, but in reality, he was a glorified kitchen hand. He preferred fatty, unhealthy foods. That, in combination with the memories surrounding the times when my father was a butcher, were the final straw for my brain, and I could no long touch uncooked food. It became difficult to touch any food, but uncooked meat, was especially difficult. The feel of it on my skin was stomach churning. This, combined with feeling that I didn’t deserve good nutrition, again led to more signs of malnutrition… oddly enough I was overweight at this time, but not eating food that had any nutritional value.
During the process of my divorce, the food issues ramped up again. I soon couldn’t eat at all. I was surviving on nutritional drinks, and trying to show a smiling face to the world.
Other forms of self-injury have co-existed with my food issues, and often if one of the other forms increases, then the food issues ease off. It’s seemed like some sort of warped trade-off. But now, it’s revolving solely around food.
Over the last few months, I’ve lost a fairly significant amount of weight. But oddly enough, even though I weigh myself every day, with the hope of losing weight, a part of me doesn’t connect the dots between losing weight, and losing dress sizes. So when I had to go and buy new clothing, there was a panic about going down in size… fears of the abuse starting again resurfaced, and ironically, drove a need for more food control.
I’ve never been diagnosed as having an eating disorder, so I feel a bit of a fake talking about this… but as someone recently told me, you don’t have to be diagnosed with something, in order to have a problem with it. I have a problem, I’m just not sure how bad it is.
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Now playing: Fauré: Cantique De Jean Racine, Op. 11
via FoxyTunes
Expressive Arts Carnival: Walls
The activity for this months Expressive Arts Carnival is to:
Draw a wall using any medium, and show what is on one or both sides. Please also write a couple of sentences saying what the process was like for you.
When I was seeing Liz (about a year ago), I created a Polyvore set which I titled Barriers, and showed what my defense mechanisms and walls were…
This shows my walls as being the razor wire fence, behind which hurt and angry ones can be seen. What’s interesting, is that an abusive event can be seen fairly clearly, almost as if the memory is the defense against looking closer at the hurt ones and their emotions. A hidden, and shameful part of the wall is sex; while the more obvious things that make up the wall are my education, work, food, perfectionism, alcohol, cutting and the idea/memories of the perfect family. The protector with the knives, is one of our more heavy handed protectors, and indicates how out of control we were at the time…
Today, I drew another wall with oil pastels. I love oil pastels because of their tactile nature. But I also hate them, because they’re not “precise” enough for me… they have this annoying habit of not having straight lines and bleeding into each other. Ok, so may be I don’t know how to manipulate them correctly to get the blending done precisely… or, may be that’s the point of them, to be imperfect.
This is what I drew…
The green and purple are the colours in front of the wall. These are the colours that protect the rest of the system, and the outside world, from the wall and what is behind it. The purple acts as a warning, and the green as a grounding colour. Then there is the black wall. This wall must be strong and impervious. The bright red, or anger, is the first thing bashing against the wall, then the shame of blue; before the black emptiness of the unknown. Each of the colours is separated by mini black walls, to try and keep layers upon layers of protection occurring.
I’m struck by the contrasts between the images. The first is controlled, yet descriptive; while the second is controlled and abstract. I often describe my internal world behind the wall as either a gaping chasm of nothingness, or a swirling mess of emotions… neither quite fit the image that I’ve drawn. I’m not particularly grounded today, so that could be the reason for the disparity.
To add to the oddity, I deliberately chose Missy Higgins’ version of Stuff and Nonsense to go with this entry – a song about knowing/loving in the present, but not being able to guarantee anything in the future.
I sometimes wonder if I’m looking for meaning when there is none, or whether I’m missing the point. One day, I may find out, but not today.
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Now playing: Missy Higgins – Stuff and Nonsense
via FoxyTunes
Open fire
A song about eating disorders; pain; societal expectations; seeing and feeling the dirt no one else can see…
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Now playing: Silverchair – Ana’s Song (Open Fire)
via FoxyTunes
Confusion
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…
What does dissociation feel like?
Over at Polyvore the group Adult Survivors of Abuse are running a friendly competition to come up with the sets which represent to you “How does it feel” to dissociate. This isn’t an easy question to answer, as it can depend on the trigger, type of dissociation and the severity of the dissociation. As an example, I can sometimes tell I’m about to dissociate as I get a tingling at the back of my head and neck, or the world tilts and it feels like I’m falling into a black hole… other times, the dissociation is so quick that I don’t notice anything until I come back an hour (or more) later. When I discussed my dissociation with the first therapist that I saw, we talked about it being like a train that is speeding out of control… it’s hard to know how to slow the train down, or whether you’re trying to get on or off it. This was before I knew many of the grounding and distraction techniques I now know, but the dissociation still feels like an out of control train… Hence the reason for my entry into the competition -
But the feeling of dissociation is more than that… it’s also about contradictions existing at once. Over the past month or so, we’ve noticed our food issues coming back. We’ve never been diagnosed with an eating disorder, and most of our food issues are generally hidden. One therapist described our food issues as being tied to a sense of entitlement regarding our health. I’m not sure if she’s right or not, but our dissociation means that we can perceive our body as being different ages, shapes and sex. With the return of the food issues, there is an internal battle raging between those who see themselves at either end of the weight spectrum…
One day I know I’m going to have to work on the food issues. I have raised it with several therapists, but they never seem to consider it a problem worthy of attention. I think this time the food issues are going to be a rough trip, the battle lines are firmly entrenched and there is serious retribution for any action which is perceived as going over those boundaries.
But probably the most consistent issue I have experiencing dissociation is the noise. There seems to rarely be a lull in the constant level of background chatter… I’m not sure how different this is from the usual level of internal noise that non-dissociatives experience, but it can at times be overwhelming, scary and confusing.
This is what happened to me last week with the “rupture” in the therapeutic relationship with Liz. It’s also the reason why I’m often left incapable of speech while in therapy. The conflicting messages and noise are so intense that it’s impossible to work through what the real message is that needs to be discussed. This had become more of a problem during my sessions with Liz… it could be seen as progress, but so much of the noise was negative that I’m not really sure what it meant. The noise has died down over the last day or so – except the noise related to the body’s weight, and I think this is tied to everything going back on “lock-down”…
Last week we saw the Mental Health Team psychiatrist and she asked that we write a letter to Liz outlining our concerns and reasoning behind our departure. We did that, but haven’t heard a response… The psychiatrist said that they will offer support for a one month period, and by the end of that time we have to have found another therapist… or gone back to Liz. This has given us a deadline for either having ourselves sorted out to the point of everything being behind the dissociative walls again, or with a therapist. We’re preparing ourselves for being without a therapist for quite some time…
