Strange Star

[Hope4Now]

@Eleanor and @Pietro, you're probably right about my uncle. I remember begging him as a kid to let me go and live with him...and telling him some of the stuff going on, but his response was always the same as everyone else's..."you must honor your mother and your father." Sigh. It felt like betrayal and abandonment over and over again. But, in fairness to him, (and everyone else from whom I tried to get help over the years), I was never really able to explain what the problem was. Still am not, actually.

And on the pass-it-down-lane family stuff...my mother and her mother had a "fraught" relationship (but she had a good one with her father), and my father had a messed up family life. My mother's mother was not a narcissist, I think, but was nastily critical of my mother and of me. When the two of them got going on me, it wasn't pretty. Double trouble. So bad that even on occasion my grandfather would rouse himself and tell them to leave me alone. He was a good man. A judge. Very stern, but good and kind.

I really hope I haven't messed up my own kids with all this stuff. I think my husband and I have been really good parents, actually, but you never know. I'm sure there will be some hideous thing we've done to them unwittingly. At the moment, though, our kids seem to love us and they certainly like to hang out with us, even at 12 and 17. And we really like them (as well as loving them of course) and are proud of their eccentric independence.

It made my heart melt a bit tonight when my daughter held my hand and said, "You know, Mom, everyone says you're always connected through the heart. I like that. But you and I are connected in our cells...in our DNA...and that makes it even better." I'm working on taking in and lolling about in nice things like this which I usually undermine in my own head. It was also fun that she was my fashion consultant tonight, and convinced me to wear a rather stylish dress I bought (not sure which part was behind that as I own very few dresses and none of them "stylish") a month or so ago instead of the long Indian skirt and t-shirt I was going to wear. I went to a really cool event this evening...called Diner en Blanc...like a flash art/social event. A man sitting at my table told me I looked like Helen Hunt. I know he was totally full of it, but I decided to accept the compliment any way :) Maybe if I practice all this accepting nice things people say to me, I will begin to undo the years of damage. Hmmm. Wouldn't that be a nice simple answer.

I've pushed myself a bit too hard today, and have a big day tomorrow. I am hoping for a decent night's sleep. I would like, just once in a while, to wake up without the weight on my chest and the shadows in my brain that just seem to make every day an exhausting slog even though I am doing fun things often.

 

[Valentino]

Your uncle's story about your mother's hair appointment priority reminded me of a story I read recently about Mao Ze-Dong's childhood history. Mao was the founding leader of Communist China, and is estimated to have contributed to the deaths of 40-70 million people during his rule.

These excerpts are from "Mao, The Unknown Story" by Jung Chang:

In Mao's relationship with his mother, while she seems to have shown unconditional love and indulgence for him, his treatment of her combined strong feelings with selfishness. In later life, he told one of his closest staff a revealing story. "When my mother was dying. I told her I could not bear to see her looking in agony. I wanted to keep a beautiful image of her, and told her I wanted to stay away for a while. My mother was a very understanding person, and she agreed. So the image of my mother in my mind has always been and still is today a healthy and beautiful one." On her deathbed, the person who took priority in Mao's consideration was himself, not his mother, nor did he hesitate to say so.

This is excerpt shares some of his views when he was younger:

(written as a student age 24)
Mao's attitude to morality consisted of one core, the self, "I," above everything else. "I do not agree with the view that to be moral, the motive of one's action has to be benefiting others. Morality does not have to be defined in relation to others. People like me want to satisfy our hearts to the full, and in doing so we automatically have the most valuable moral codes. Of course there are people and objects in the world, but they are all there only for me."
Mao shunned all constraints of responsibility and duty. "People like me only have a duty to ourselves, we have no duty to other people." "I am responsible only for the reality that I know," he wrote, "and absolutely not responsible for anything else. I don't know about the past. I don't know about the future. They have nothing to do with the reality of my own self." He explicitly rejected any responsibility towards future generations. "Some say one has a responsibility for history. I don't believe it, I am only concerned about developing myself. I have my desire and act on it. I am responsible to no one."
Mao did not believe in anything unless he could benefit from it personally. A good name after death, he said, "cannot bring me any joy, because it belongs to the future and not to my own reality." People like me are not building achievements to leave for future generations." Mao did not care what he left behind.

I think you're somewhat familiar with the enneagram, right? Mao seems to be a very typical type 8, very assertive externally, and emotionally reactive internally. Type 8's seem to have potential to have anti-social personality disorder with a constant need to dominate and avoid vulnerability. While Type 3's which are assertive externally and logically controlled internally; have potential to have narcissistic personality disorder with a constant need to be seen and protect their image.

Not sure if these stories would be interesting or helpful to you. But thought I'd share, just in case.

 

[Pietro]

I really hope I haven't messed up my own kids with all this stuff.

No matter what our kids think about us, there's one thing that completely sets us apart from our parents -- the fact that, if our kids ever came to us with a grievance, even a request to seek family counseling, we wouldn't invalidate or criticize them for it. We wouldn't try to convince them that any problems they believe exist are just in their own heads. We would honor their request and meet their needs, even if personally painful. In short, we treat our children as "people", not as "things" or as "dolls" or as "robots". We know that they have minds and feelings of their own, and, in fact, have worked to emphasize this with them.

This fact, alone, places us magnitudes beyond how we were raised, because our children will never fear shame or abandonment from their families, which is the foundation for living a full and happy life. :)

You know, Mom, everyone says you're always connected through the heart. I like that. But you and I are connected in our cells...in our DNA...and that makes it even better.

This is one amazing kid. I'd say this is your answer. :D

 

[Hope4Now]

Even though everything seems to be getting more intense in the past few weeks, it somehow feels like I am moving in the right direction. I have no idea where it's taking me, and I still feel like a scared and overwhelmed child most of the time...but something is changing. The biggest challenge besides "being with" emotions, is remembering to try to stay aware of my body, and to sleep and rest, and to eat good food consistently even when I am by myself. And to try to stop beating myself up about who I am. This is my goal for today.

 

[Eleanor]

@Pietro : Amen to all that, my brother!

The biggest challenge besides "being with" emotions, is remembering to try to stay aware of my body, and to sleep and rest, and to eat good food consistently even when I am by myself. And to try to stop beating myself up about who I am. This is my goal for today.

These are good goals. Ironically they are generally my daily goals as well. My adopted daughter just sent me her mom's therapist's notes. (Her mom died about ten years ago.) Her mom was abused as a kid, and struggled with it her whole adult life. Anyway, what jumped out at me was that the notes covered almost a decade and the struggle with this kind of self care (food, sleep, rest, not beating yourself up for who and what you are, wearing nice clothes even) are consistent themes, in almost every session. I wonder if these aren't mainly the consequences, not of the abuse per se, but of the emotional neglect that always accompanies abuse? I don't know quite what difference it makes, but the distinction seems important to me...

 

[Hope4Now]

I haven't written here for a while. Lots of stuff going on in my life. As of today, I am pretty much alone for two weeks. I opted out of our family's planned road trip because I decided it would be just too much for me to have to be "on" all the time, and I wasn't sure I could keep up the pace of walking and even traveling in the car with my pain issues. I'm feeling guilty about not going because I know my family is disappointed, but I'm also looking forward to having two weeks to myself.

Unfortunately, a lot of memory stuff has been stirring up in the past week or two especially, and more flashbacks that are making me feel pretty unstable. Yesterday, I had a flashback/memory (I still don't actually get the difference between these) that was actually multisensory. Very deeply disturbing and had ramifications that complicated the time I had planned to spend with my husband before he left for the trip. So he ended up leaving and we were both feeling kind of alienated from each other. Sigh.

My therapist is also going on vacation for two weeks. We have one more appointment on Monday. Why I am so nervous about this kind of mystifies me as I have lived so long without any therapy. But I am nervous. Nervous that I will get sucked into one of my self-destructive vortexes and have nobody to go to for support. My therapist gave me the number of someone to call, but it's hard for me to imagine calling her as I can barely bring myself to call him when I'm feeling desperate.

This whole thing has made me realize how much my having to be "on" for my family keeps me from completely drowning in emotional muck, and how few people I actually have to call on for support in my life. I have one friend who happens to be a psychologist. He knows about as much as my husband does about what's going on with me. I'm having dinner with him tonight, and my therapist suggested that I ask him if I could connect with him every few days over the next couple of weeks. I have no doubt that my friend would be perfectly happy to be my on-call person, but I don't know if I could actually reach out to him. My other friend who knows what's happening with me to a lesser extent has evaporated into her own stressful life with her partner. I have continued to reach out to them, knowing they're going through a tough time, but neither of them have responded so I'm giving up for a while.

I need to work on developing some closer friendships. I have gobs of people in my life who are "friends" but not really people who know me deeply or whom I know deeply. There are a couple of them that I'd like to get to this level with, but it is very hard.

I'm grateful for this forum. It does make me feel less alone. I will probably be on it more in the coming weeks, especially if what's been going on recently continues to ramp up.

 

[Hope4Now]

I'm in an okay place right now. Am going to try to go to bed soon. Trying to make myself stick to at least a bedtime schedule. Spent a good chunk of the day kind of half-dissociated, and other parts of it going back and forth with a few people on a thread in this forum that was so validating of all the weird stuff going on with me that it left me kind of spinning and in awe. I'm very sad that other people are dealing with the same kinds of doubt and pain and fragmented memories. I'm also very glad to not feel so alone with all this stuff.

I had a few bad moments this morning when the self-destructive forces threatened to overtake me, but I managed to get them to settle down. That was good. Third time in three days.

I'm still trying to process the flashback I had last week. This morning, I decided that maybe if I wrote about it in the third person, like a once-upon-a-time story, maybe it would help. I started writing and then, suddenly it was like my little 3-4 year old was telling me a lot of stuff. I wrote and wrote. This happened once before a few months ago. Same inner child. She sure has a lot to say. It's getting harder to deny that I was abused in multiple ways by both my parents. Mostly emotionally. A lot of it was confusing because some of the really cruel stuff from my father was couched in a sick sort of joking so I was never really sure how to feel about it. There's other stuff too. Some of it subtly cruel and some of it just sick. It's the latter that I just cannot accept yet. My doubter part torments me on that. I'm still feeling pretty disconnected from all of it. Like it's real, but not really real for me. This is the doubter part too. I've not been too successful in working with that part as I am supposed to be doing, but I'll keep trying.

I watched the film Her tonight (Spike Jonez). It was really good. Much better than the summary suggested. I'll be curious to read the review about it. It was a fascinating take on relationships. It was also a really interesting film to watch with all the thinking about dissociation I've done because the protagonist is in love with a woman who has no body because she is a computer operating system. I think I might have to watch it again with some other people so we can talk about it. I'm dying to talk about it. It raises all sorts of interesting questions about the old body mind dualities etc. Even references Alan Watts.

On Monday I went to my re-established writing group and shared some of my poems. It was actually really helpful. The ones I shared I feel okay about so was open to hearing whatever people had to say. What was interesting is that the poem I thought might need more to it to make sense, they loved as it was. The poem I thought was totally impenetrable, they liked best of all. The poem that I felt most proud of in a literary sort of sense, they thought was too forced and heady. It probably is. I got carried away playing with references to other poems. Anyway, it was good to get feedback from this very honest group...especially feedback that they understood the poems. Not sure what I'll do with them yet.

This Friday I have an interview appointment with a therapist who is starting up a trauma recovery group. My therapist thinks a group might be good for me. I have kind of mixed feelings. I tried a chronic pain support group a while back and was extremely uncomfortable, but I was new to it and it was a really big group. This group will be only 6-8 people. I talked to the therapist on the phone on Sunday and he sounded okay. There are very few groups like this anywhere in the area...this one will take me an hour each way to drive to, so I'm not sure I really want to commit to that. But I'll go meet the person and see if I even like him. Some of the stuff they do sounds intriguing to me and I think might be good for me. I wish it weren't so far away though.

Tomorrow I have to go into work for a meeting. I still haven't sorted out my contract. My boss is now saying that I can come back full time if I want to. He says I can do whatever I want. Sometimes I hate that. I'm glad I seem to have the option (although I don't believe it yet...won't until he says it again). We really need my FT salary to make ends meet. Yet working fewer hours would be much healthier for me. I know he's going to ask me about it tomorrow. I'm going to tell him I haven't decided yet. I'm kind of leaning toward taking the full-time contract. If I crash and burn, at least I'll be a FT employee with the benefits. And maybe I won't crash and burn. I still have until the end of August to rest and heal. I'm trying to eat better, and sleep more consistently, and meditate every day, and take naps. The sleep stuff is weird still...I kind of vascillate between sleep and dissociation and flashbacks but I've had some okay stretches of sleep. I don't feel quite as exhausted as I did a month ago. It's a hard decision, but I need to make it. My family thinks I should go to half-time, but I'm the one that does the finances. My husband has no idea what would have to change for that to happen. Like selling our house and downsizing even further than we already have. Wish we'd win the lottery...but then so does everybody else. It's all relative. Sigh.

Enough grumbling from me to me. Time for bed. 11:59 PM. Right on time.

 

[Hope4Now]

I am a mess inside today. A lot of stuff from my early childhood has woven together since my odd day yesterday. Part of me knew this was going to happen at some point because it started last week with THE flashback. For the first time, my intellectual part is acknowledging that all this happened to me as crazy as it seems. I'm writing here because writing makes me feel less terrified. I keep trying to tune in to my therapists voice..."Memories aren't going to kill you." "You're safe here, in this room, right now." I keep trying to feel my body, now. I keep trying to calm my inner 3 year old...tell her she is safe with me. But I keep getting flooded by her utter confusion and fear and abandonment. I wish my therapist were not on vacation. I wish I could call him. I mean, I know what he would say, so I keep saying it to myself. But I want to hear somebody else say it. Sometimes I don't believe myself. This is so hard to go through by myself. I have so much I have to do today and I'm just not functioning as an adult person. I am scared. I don't even know what I'm scared of. How can I be scared of feelings? I don't think I am. I think I'm scared that I'm going to just disappear into all the child parts of me and get stuck and lost there.

I keep trying to do things to feel better but it actually is making it worse. One of the things that wove together is how my parents made me feel worse when I was upset. And even worse, I was shamed for anything I did to soothe myself as a child. I was a thumb-sucker for a long, long time and attached to my stuffed animals. My mother did everything in her power to make me stop sucking my thumb until I finally did after she dragged me to some orthodontic specialist who showed me horrifying pictures of what my mouth would look like if I kept sucking my thumb and it scared me so much I stopped. And she used to throw away my stuffed animals...the ones that were grimy and battered because I loved them so much. Ugh. Maybe this is partly why I have such trouble with soothing myself. I feel scared and ashamed to do even that. Or to seek out other people who can make me feel better. It is a rotten vicious cycle.

I just keep reminding myself that I will be okay. I mean, I've survived for 50 years. I'm pretty independent from any external point of view even if I usually feel like a lost and needy little kid on the inside. I have the skills to get through this. I need to call on those functional parts of myself and just take one step at a time. First, do the paperwork I must finish today. Next, go to work and meet with my boss to plan how to implement this crazy state contract I proposed and was awarded (which I regret now because it's totally stressing me out, even though part of my job is to secure stuff like this). Then, go to my mother's condo and get the last bits of stuff out of it. Then have dinner with my neighbors. I can do all of this. I just need to go one step at a time. Stay focused on my breath. Keep reminding myself I am safe now and nobody is going to hurt me like when I was little. Keep telling those parts of me that are verbally abusing other parts of me to just stop stop stop. I am so jumbled up and confused.

I wish somebody could come and save me from myself. I know they can't. I know I have to do it myself. I just wish it were not such a lonely process.

 

[Hope4Now]

It is Saturday. I have been struggling mightily over the past few days to stay present, to believe that I am a REAL person, to believe that I am safe. My deeply wounded child parts are in massive crisis, and I am having a lot of dissociative episodes. As much as I desperately wish I were not alone fighting this battle, the dominant part of me is very glad that I am because I am horrified by my own decompensation. For better or worse (it feels like worse, but I know it's better), I am fully observant and aware of what is happening to me. It's like watching a really, really upsetting and melodramatic movie.

I did try hard last night and today to reach out. I called my friends up north who I miss a lot. They'd said they wanted to get together. But it has been more than 24 hours and they haven't called me back. Two days ago, I called my friend M who lives here but he hasn't called back either. I tried again twice today. And he's the one who agreed he would "be here" for me while I'm alone here for two weeks. Then, in a desperate bid, I tried a couple of other more peripheral friends. But it's August, and everyone seems to be on vacation somewhere. I'm glad for them, but sorry for me.

Maybe all this is meant to be. Maybe I'm intended to have to face my own "demons" of horror and pain and loneliness and learn that I can, indeed, get through it by myself. I'm a pain wimp. I'm really struggling with the fear of being overwhelmed and annihilated by the emotional armageddon that is threatening to explode. I know I can't open up to it all right now and that's why I keep dissociating. But bits and pieces of it keep steaming out of these little cracks in my psyche and I panic.

So...I'm reading and writing in between. It's all I know how to do. I know it won't kill me, but it feels like it will. Does this mean I'm in crisis? I never really know what that means, to be in "crisis." Part of me thinks being in crisis means you're standing on top a bridge or a building about to jump, or something equivalent. I'm not doing that. I'm not going to kill myself. But parts of me are terrified that I'm going to die anyway and it is a horrible place to be...this place in the middle...this place where I am aware that I want to live, but at the same time feel like I am going to die. I guess it's the awful child experience that has me in this stranglehold and won't let go.

I will get through it. I always seem to. I am trying to remind myself of this. Sigh.

 

[Hope4Now]

So...I contemplated calling emergency services last night, but I didn't. I decided I was not in enough of a crisis to warrant the call to them. If it had not been the weekend, I might have called the therapist whose name my therapist gave me. But I forgot to ask my therapist if it was okay to call on the weekend. I have created this rule for myself of never call on the weekend or after 7 PM. I have no idea why I created this boundary because my therapist certainly didn't. At one point, he was encouraging me to call him--especially to be proactive and NOT wait until I was in a desperate place. That's the other boundary I have created. I have only ever given myself permission to ask for help when I'm really quite desperate. Hmm.

Anyway, in a completely uncharacteristic impulsive move, I invited over to my house a person I kind of know from church. He is interesting and happened to be on facebook, so we chatted a little there. I was surprised he came over, actually. Anyway, it was all okay...mostly was a monologue on his end of things, but he told some really good stories about the place where he works...a really interesting/intriguing local place that is filled with eccentric and odd people I've always wanted to know more about. I got an earful last night!

I've been reading compulsively about trauma again. There are so many different aspects of childhood trauma, and so many different approaches to treating it, and so many symptoms. I told my therapist...and I've probably said it here too...that reading about all this stuff gives me at least the illusion that I can control my own issues. And I do find things that are helpful along the way. And much of what I read actually helps me trust more deeply the work I am doing with my therapist.

I'm delving a bit more into figuring out all the complicatedness of what actually happened to me, and what kinds of approaches might best help me heal. I guess parts of me want to be my own psychotherapist (those "I can do all this myself/I don't need help" parts) even though I know I can't do this healing work alone. I guess I'm also trying to convince parts of myself that what happened to me is real. That it all falls on a continuum of severity (both trauma and symptoms), and that just because the trauma didn't leave me physically marred or the symptoms lead me to actively attempt suicide, it doesn't mean that I'm making up either the trauma or the symptoms.

In the past week, I read Alice Miller's The Drama of the Gifted Child, a book called Stalking the Soul (about narcissistic relationships), chunks of an oldish book written for psychotherapists called The Ethical Use of Touch in Psychotherapy, and pieces of two other books that are aimed at psychotherapists too: Wallin's Attachment in Psychotherapy, and Kluft's Shelter from the Storm (I actually ordered these two and am waiting for them to arrive). Today at the library, I'll pick up a book called Homecoming that the potential group therapist I met on Friday recommended. It's about inner child work.

I am hoping to do something creative this afternoon. I know I just need to jump in and do it. I think I'm procrastinating because I have this profound urge to paint and to make a sculpture, but I am terrified of it at the same time. I have an image in my head of what I want to put on the canvas...but the actual doing of it is very frightening to me. I'm hoping I can be brave...or convince those scared parts that this would be good for me. We'll see what happens.

 

[Hope4Now]

Today was an okay day. No flashbacks, no major dissociation. Went to visit my old friends who'd kind of checked out on me for a long while. I knew they were up to their necks in issues, but wow. Had an intense night of listening and trying to just be there and supportive for them. I love them both and am so sorry they are going through so much right now. So many people have so much pain in their lives.

Today is the kind of day that makes me so confused about PTSD stuff. I was kind of my old normal self. I'm happy about this. But I don't understand why I can have days like this when I have such hideous days too. The good days make me think I'm just deluded and making up all the other stuff. The bad days make me think I'm deluded on the good days. I don't know if it's just different parts, or what. Makes me feel even crazier than usual. Makes me wonder whether all this s*&t is just part of being human.

 

[Hope4Now]

I haven't written much that's substantial here for a while. I'm not really sure why I have avoided this diary. I have been writing in my paper journal. I had a really good therapy session today. The first time in a while that I've felt really connected with my therapist on a deep level. It's odd, because I was very, very blended up with one of my dark parts. But there was also a self-awareness that allowed the connection to happen. We did, for the first time in months, some physical movement. I was very self-conscious about it at first, but it really helped. I felt a bit lighter, a bit more energy. The intention was for the part to be able to shake off some of the energy that doesn't belong to it...all the pain of other people in my life, and of what's going on in the world, etc.. It really helped. I find it all so strange.

I am beginning to understand myself a little better. My therapist is not into labeling, but sometimes having the vocabulary that goes along with labels helps. It helps me find things to read about what I'm going through, because parts of me aren't willing to trust only what my therapist says to me. So in the past month or two, I've learned a lot more about dissociative disorders and attachment issues. This knowledge helps the analytical part of me. Helps a little with me not feeling so crazy. So discouraged.

That's all for now. My family is waiting for me to watch a movie. I am trying to stay balanced. To "feel" the wholeness of myself even though I am so fragmented. Maybe I will write more here this weekend.