Help A Freak To Survive The Clinic

[freakofnurture]

Today I felt like a 3rd grader most of the time.

I try to see the positive aspect of this: More validation.

 

[freakofnurture]

Wow, it's been quite a while since I've written anything here. But there's just too much going on and it's all too blurred and out of reach to put it into words.

I'm still struggling with my Inner Child. The new group (just two people - me included - are left from the one that existed when I came here) apparently is totally unique and totally great and totally supportive, too. I am not surprised. My frustration about the social bullshit here and about the fact that I feel like a post doc sitting in a 101 course has gone down a bit, though; I made a list of everything I have already achieved here, and it contains enough items to stop the feeling that I'm wasting my time while sitting in group therapy.

Tomorrow my husband will come here for a talk with my T. We'll also do some diagnostic stuff (I asked that my husband will be included in the process) because my T put Borderline on the table. I have a love/hate relationship with that disorder. Depending on how the diagnostic criteria are worded I either feel like that's totally me or like it doesn't fit me at all. So, I'm really unsure.

It does have some advantages to own a piece of paper that says 'This girl is a Borderliner'; your access to disability benefits and temporary pensions is a lot better, plus they treat you more gently when kicking your butt back onto the human resources market. On the other hand, Borderliner is a highly stigmatised label still and having it makes people prone to treating you like some histrionic psycho b*tch who's basically a lost case and will threaten suicide over a harmless misunderstanding.

 

[freakofnurture]

One year later, our cheeky, charming heroine finds herself back at the gates of Trauma Group Castle to face her arch enemy: Dr. Group! Armed with only her sharp mind and one chainsaw of a tounge, will she be able to defeat the old, paranoid schizophrenic Doctor bevor he can assimilate her into his army of drooling cave women?

Or something along those lines.

I've already made a bad impression here, in my welcome talk. Apparently I am really unable to verbalise my problem with groups in a way that sounds neither unreasonable nor arrogant. I know, I know, maybe that's because my problem just is unreasonable and reeks of arrogance. Then the world still has to manage to make me understand that. (I'd like to question the negative judgement of behaviours and attitudes that most people perceive as 'arrogant' in me.)

I should pledge to go and spend at least one hour of every day with the others in group room. I have to give a chance to those correcting experiences; how can I make them if I don't seek opportunities to make them?

Still, my self-help group project went horrible. Already the third meeting was cut short by me no longer being able to stand those people.

Also, I'm so tired of blaming myself. I know that I am the source of my social problems, but me being so far off-center of the bell curve wouldn't matter if the people around me weren't so damn immature and self-centered. I also know that I can't change others, but only myself. But what if that which I have to change is not faulty behaviour in and of itself? What if it's part of who I am? But I've already ranted about this more than enough.

So... I'll just wait and see. Tomorrow I have Interactive Therapy. That'll be fun...

... Some time later...

I just spent an hour in the art room and made a little something detailing what social horrors I envision when I hear words that are commonly used to describe a 'healthy' group climate. Since my camera phone went missing, I can't show it, but maybe I'll copy it in the next days and translate it into English.

And that's all for now.

 

[KP the nut]

(((FON))), I've missed you.

 

[freakofnurture]

Long day, a lot happened, surprisingly it was exclusively pleasant stuff.

I made notes in my therapy book; give you a blurb tomorrow. Not it's sleepy time.

 

[freakofnurture]

My current therapy group is a lot more relaxed than the last one. It consists of people who actually, genuinely like each other and fit together well. So there are no big rituals to help group cohesion along ('We're such an extraordinarily good group, and my, how we like eacht other so much! Let's shout this until we start to believe it ourselves!') and it's all just... more relaxed, open and freestyle.

I'm curious how the next new members will effect the group climate, and how many harmony dependent people the group can stomach before it turns and ritual takes over.

See, I have this theory that there are people whose social survival strategy and/or personality make it very necessary for them to have a harmonic, cohesive group in which people follow the rules. They have certain weaknesses that they need to compensate for, and they generally use aggressive tactics like emotional blackmail as their main tools. If those people dominate a group, the atmosphere turns ugly and all the negative things that 'group' means to me, start to happen.

What else... I made a little bird out of wire and papier maché in Gestaltungstherapy today. A blackbird. It's the Inner helper I gave my inner 3rd grader and my inner teen. My inner infant and toddler got a cat. Maybe I'll make one of felt when the blackbird is done.

Although a lot happened yesterday, there isn't much to talk about. It's all a bit blurry. I realised that I don't feel threatened in the group as it is right now. That was quite overwhelming. I felt dizzy, I was shaking the whole evening and I had trouble breathing. It's a bit pathetic -.- But I am not used to this and I'm still not sure how I should behave now. I spent some time in the TV room, sewing and watching an (awful) two episodes of Criminal Minds with commercial breaks with one woman from my group and two from one of the other groups. It was nice. I taught one woman how to knit, that was fun.

I don't feel exhausted, although I spent quite a lot of time with other people today. It's really strange, but comfortable for a change. And it's good to know that there are group constellations that I can stand.

We'll see how things develop over the next few days and with the change of people within the group.

 

[fish out of water]

Play doh to keep hand busy! Might help. Good luck

 

[freakofnurture]

Okay, it's just too much for me to do clinic stuffs and report here at the same time. I'm totally exhausted in the evenings.

But I just remembered/pulled out of my memory three things that I need to get out of my system.

First is that my f*ther used to like the music by Reinhard Mey, who is a singer/songwriter type with all that lame wit and frumpy stories that make you perform multiple retrospective facepalms once you encounter real wit and cool stories. My f*ther also learned how to play the guitar and he played a lot of songs by R. Mey. One of the songs he particularly liked was one about two teenage girls who always have trouble at home and finally get so desperate that they throw themselves off a parking house roof.

He knew the lyrics by heart because he sang it so often!

I hated the song because I always felt like crying inconsolably when I heard it. I think, deep down, I was already suicidal back then, and all my desperation welled up when suicide was shown as a way out.

Second is an episode when my f*mily and I watched the German movie 'Bandits', which is about a group of women in jail who form a band. During the story one of them dies of cancer and shortly after the remaining women flee from jail; they're stopped by the police, there's a short moment of consideration after which all the women simultaneously run towards the police men who then can't help but shoot them (or do they jump off somewhere? I might be mixing it up with Devil's Rejects... However:) The last scene shows only the newly dead women's hands against the sky, reaching out for the hand of their friend who died of cancer.

I cried so terribly hard seeing this, not because I found it sad, but because it was so beautiful, so painfully, horribly wonderful the thought of 'dying into safety'. My eyes are welling up just writing this.

So, I cried and cried and cried, and because I didn't have any tissues and was so out of it, I blew my nose on my pullover. My m*ther scolded me, full of reproach: "Don't do that, that's autoaggressive. Don't be so autoaggressive!"

Can you believe that??

Third is the fact that I had a lot of so-called 'disciplinary problems'. I was loud and obnoxious during class, especially towards male teachers, but authoritarian females were also on my blacklist. Nobody seemed to notice that I didn't have any friends at all in class, that I was always reading during recess, often hiding in the school's library. And nobody seemed to get the idea that a child showing so much aggression and need to be seen is a child which is hurting incredibly.

They invited my p*rents to a talk about how I was to be disciplined. Nothing changed at home. I wasn't taken out of class as a punishment (because my m*ther said: "You'd actually reward her by doing that.") but threatened with a so-called class conference, which encompasses all of my teachers and classmates discussing how I was an asshole while I sat by, dying inside some more.

No one ever gave a flying shit about me.

 

[Philippa]

What the hell is "autoaggressive"?:laugh:

 

[freakofnurture]

@Philippa: Yeah, I was wondering about that, too >.< Shit's f*cked up.

I'm in talking mood.

So, the day before yesterday I was condemned to try taking walks again - even more so, I was condemned to go jogging, every. single. day. Because me saying "Tried that, didn't work; also I'm doing 1.5 to 2h of workout on 4 days each week." isn't enough to convince people that 1. jogging doesn't work and 2. I'm already getting all the sports I could wish for. Jogging *has* to work in improving my drive and motivation, and if it doesn't, it must be because I didn't try it hard enough.

Is that so.

The other thing that I feel was constantly pushed at me was the idea that I *have* to learn to get along with other people, that I *have* to overcome my fear or them, that I *have* to learn to like them etc. and that I was defective, wrong and insufficient as a human being as long as I hadn't achieved that.

I spent so much energy trying, just to crash into the same wall over and over again, while the onlookers cheered "Try another time! You didn't bleed as much as last time, I believe you can do it! Practice some more! You have to be able to do this in order to live a good, happy, fulfilled life!"

And I was like "But I keep crashing! And I don't even really want to do this! Stop shouting at me!"

And they were like: "But you have to want this! You are a human being, you have to want to do all this, you *need* it to be happy!"

And I was like: "But it doesn't make me happy, it just hurts like hell."

And they were like: "Stop whining and try it again."

Well, finally I exploded and got so pissed off at the fact that I have to prove over and over again that shit doesn't do anything for me, and people still don't believe me, that I spit it out during ward round. Everybody's congratulating me now like "So great you finally had this breakthrough, so brave, blahblahblah." And I'm like "WTF, you people? If you all were so certain that my 'getting along with people better'-direction in therapy was a stupid, useless idea, why the holy flying monsterf*ck didn't you just TELL ME???"

But maybe they did and I just didn't hear it -.- I hate myself right now. So badly.

I feel pretty disoriented without this pressure. Or not disoriented, but like I am losing shape. All that I am is like weak pudding, blobbering out of shape.

What do I want. That's what they want me to find out now. New pressure? Who knows.

Really I just want to go home and sleep.

What do I want to do with my time? I want to write my books. I want to build things. I want to teach useful stuff to people who want to learn it. That's what I want to do.

I have resigned to my self-hatred, I think. Or I still hate myself too much to want to stop doing it. It's not as bad as it was once. I'm sitting here without any razor blades and it's not stressing me out. I forgot to bring them three times now. That's big. I'm also not talking badly about myself. I'm still minimising my achievements, but I'm not calling myself names. I'm just silently hating myself. Broodingly from below the brim of my hoodie or something like that. I don't like myself. I'm disgusted by the thought of myself.

There's a long way ahead. Oh well. Nothing better to do right now, anyways.

 

[Philippa]

You're funny.:laugh:

 

[freakofnurture]

Happy to keep you entertained ;)