Attachment Issues

[Eleanor]

Pencil, "reality check" (using myself as "normal":roflmao: and remembering that I am NOT THE ONE with the PTSD.) Routine is something I struggle with as well. I used to joke that I could never be a good drug addict because one day I would just forget to take the drugs. Seriously.

Anyway, this year L started kindergarten. Great for her - OMG what a struggle for me. Getting there on time (7:35 AM!!!!) homework! Monday folders! Permission slips! Volunteering! Forms and more forms! Decisions (are we going to get Both sets of school photos? some? All? A yearbook, in KINDERGARTEN? AARGH.) So the upshot is that we started in late August. I have managed to get her to school on time, perhaps ten times. We have been seriously late about four times. I know the attendance maven (Kimberly!) I have talked to the school nurse about sleep difficulties. I've got L going to bed around 7:30 (thank God for Melatonin). I am a bad mommy, we watch tv to go to sleep. Out of the three times I've been responsible for "snack" I've blown one totally. The last time, L made me buy the stuff a month early and put it in the car three days before.:rolleyes: She's missed school - maybe four times - because of me. I got a letter about truancy (!) once, got the absences excused retroactively. (Thank you Miss Kimberly!) Her teacher "covers" for me, doesn't send attendance in until late.. Dad takes L to ELF days (make up Sat. school - but it is fun otherwise I wouldn't have her do it...) She doesn't brush her teeth regularly unless Dad is around. Dirt is our friend. :( It is just mostly too much for me, as a mostly single mom with a sick H, full time job, multiple houses, 7 animals and grown up children and an H who lives (mostly) in a different house. I make choices about what will get attention. (emotional health, followed by sleep mostly, food, and friends.)

I think boundaries ARE harder for girls than boys with moms. We've been through the "Mommy has needs too" talk a few times. OK, a LOT of times. I expect to repeat it regularly for the next 20 years or so. Learning about Non-Violent Communication really helped me. In NVC it is all about getting everyone's needs met from a place of "giving freely." Too much to explain right here, but really really good stuff.

And the hardest part about boundaries/expectations/chores is setting them to begin with. L is a "high order" child, so she plugs right into routine. (Changing, however is a bear.) I've been putting off chores for about a year and a half (she can do them... I just can't keep track or manage to generate a chart...:() I think she will do great once I get myself together.

We've had the "I don't want to argue with you" discussion too. She doesn't like it either. In fact, we talk regularly about how we want to be spoken to and speak to others. This is a generally hard topic/practice. I'm guessing, Pencil, that your girl will have some ideas on this, and be very supportive, particularly as she sees it helps you.

I tend to have rather elaborate fantasies about how smoothly other people's lives go. When I bother to look for evidence of these beliefs I, in general, find that there is none. They are pure projection. Which doesn't make MY life any easier, except that it helps me not beat myself up so much (which I obviously do, and in great detail given that I could reel off the "Failure Stats" without even half trying...)

You've got the foundation solidly in place- you love her and understand that you and she both need to manage to be emotionally and physically healthy. Now it is just a matter of laying one stone after the other in building the edifice of a good life.

Linking Arms!

 

[Pencil]

I really, really don't want to go yes, but, BUT, I'm going to go yes, but :D. I've really given up even with small things, such as going to bed at a specific time. I think the solution is not to be behavioural about it. Those last two years at school were marked by my major depression that lasted between 11 - 16 that started lifting. So I think I need to look at the underlying depression - which is worse than it may appear to be in my posts on here. There is this depression, despair and panic just underneath the surface, and I am terrified of it.

Thank you for having noticed that things are not that easy. I have my self-pitying moments when I read on here that people have the luxury of taking time off work, or going for therapy, or doing things with family, or having friends over, or .... many other normal things, and I feel panicky. Those things are luxuries in my life. I am essentially unemployed, but do freelance work to keep us going - and it's a constant battle. I live in a country where there are zero structures - if you don't work, you don't eat, simple. I have my insane sister who would love nothing more than to see my on my knees. After a major operation two years ago I had to sell my car to stay alive, and have not been able to buy one again. Blah blah - I don't usually get into such detail on here. And with zero support, and zero chances of therapy again, I have to get myself (and us) through this, and I don't always know how to do it.

Sorry, you tell me about boundaries and you get an earful :(. But thank you for realizing that things are not simple for me. I don't have a single problem - I have a whole constellation, and they all interact and make things extremely difficult. There is honestly not one area of my life that is not part of this major battle, starting with the battle to pay the rent every month. (We have moved 12 times in 5 years!!)

Enough :D

 

[Pencil]

Eleanor, our posts crossed, so when I went YES, BUT, it was in response to super-mom, Rumors :D

You have NO idea how much I LOVE reading about your chaos!! Give me a minute, I'm going back to read it AGAIN

 

[Rumors]

Let me say that this forum is a safe place to talk about all of that. You haven't crossed any boundary by speaking about those things. Sometimes just saying them out loud gives you the ability to face them further.

I think you are incredibly brave for trying to hash through all of this. I have the advantage of a partner to help...Hang in there!

 

[Eleanor]

You can only do what you can do, Pencil. Seriously. You can only do what you can do. And you are doing ALOT. And you have the priorities in order (or so it seems to me.) You know, human beings successfully raised children in stick houses, with dirt floors, no internal walls and no indoor plumbing for millenia. We can do without a lot of modern stuff. What we CAN'T very well do without is a parent who genuinely cares about and for our well being. And that your daughter HAS.

Everybody makes choices about priorities. Lots of people make them badly. You do not seem to me to be among them.

Depression is a frightening pit - and plays holy hell with sleep. How do you do on exercise? That and good food (which seems to require some experimenting to get right - for myself dairy is a problem...RATS.) seem to be the most practical fixes/remedies.

Wishing I could send you an endowment...:inlove:

 

[Eleanor]

I had a friend ask me a couple of years ago how I manage to "do it all" I said, " Oh, that's easy, you just do a crap job on most of it, and you don't do the "invisible" things at all!":eek::D

Having a partner - even one in a different house who is sick a fair amount of the time - is a GREAT help too... Don't want to minimize that. And we have OODLES of advantages.... And some really really good help (T's, docs, friends, etc.)

EEK. Gotta go to said job...

 

[Pencil]

How do you do on exercise?

:roflmao: This is the one area that goes well: We get a lift to school in the morning - J doesn't want to go alone. So we drive to school, I take her to her classroom and then walk back - it's an hour's walk. Then walking to shops ....

Thank you Rumors and Eleanor. Perhaps I should keep a time-table on here and report daily. I can start to solve my attachment problems by attaching to a shedule :D

Diet and exercise for depression: I seem to have some other depression thing going. As I said - I had a major depressive something between 11 and 16 - but perhaps it is the fact that I make sure J has a fairly healthy diet and I get at least the 1 hour daily walk that is saving my ass.

And yes, she is my first priority - the fixed and focal point in terms of which every decision gets made.

 

[Pencil]

You haven't crossed any boundary

What I meant was that you respond to one thing I mention, and then I react by complaining about something 'worse'. We started talking about boundaries and I end up complaining about depression. It makes me weak when people do that, and here I was doing it :rolleyes:

 

[Rumors]

I am happy you felt comfortable enough in the conversation to let it out. Pretty brave, definitely not weak!!!

 

[Pencil]

Rumors, thank you for being willing to listen to this.

 

[Rumors]

Believe it or not, we have similar things going on so I hope you don't mind but I am listening to your words and finding similarities and then am able to communicate them better to my T. So, in reality, you are helping me quite a bit face some things that have been tough.

 

[Eleanor]

Pencil, I don't think you are doing what you thought we were doing at all. (If that makes any sense, which, it might not?)

Anyway, The thing is that we don't (hopefully) experience our lives in fragmentary ways - "Today, I am only attending to financial issues." We live the whole thing, all the time. So it all counts. Particularly with something like PTSD where stress is a major factor. All the things you mention are Stressors of the first order. And so simply MUST be attended to and managed (regardless of actual urgency of the issue.)

And yes, just work on one thing at a time. Otherwise it is too much. And if your girl is even remotely like mine she will whip you into shape once she get's the idea. ("MOM! Willa is on. Come sit! We are winding down now!")

Attaching to schedule... hmmmm:geek: