Lurching From Crisis To Crisis

[Deleted member 1860]

I ask because it is indeed relevant in terms of how I was possibly going to respond to your question. You are dealing with external stressors. Most (if not all) of those things have components (if not the entire thing) that are completely and totally out of your control. I ask because there are many people who are their own drama factories. They LITERALLY manufacture crisis after crisis and drag everyone around them into it. They seem to be unable to function in a peaceful sort of way, so they invite.....CREATE.....drama. However, I'm not seeing that in you. I asked because I couldn't comment further without knowing if you were dealing with self-made crisis' or not. You don't seem to be, and as such I don't have much advice for you as I don't have much experience in this realm. (A former friend of mine was a sufferer and she went through crisis after crisis but on further examination, she was drumming it all up herself.) I wish you the best.

 

[desiderata310]

Shit.
That's being in the thick of the trauma inducing hell.
I read like 6 or 7 things that rate as traumas. All of which sounds my last two years save the military court stuff.

yeah, it can always be worse but shit, it sounds like you are fairing as well as you possibly can with what you're being bombarded with.

I get it, in the light of other shit, it seems not as major and you think you should be able to deal with it better. The thing is, you're probably fairing better than normal people.
None of which are things that you fabricated. (yes, I felt the same way) None of which are things that you invented for the sake of Drama. Not a one.

Seriously, Nothing there is something that you cooked up to make life hard.
There is one part of you that's still kicking: your sense of humor.
My therapist likes to call it resilience. One of these days I'm going to remember to bring a rubber band with me and aim it at his forehead. Sometimes it irks me to hear him say that. I feel like I spent years lurching from crisis to crisis as well:
In one 24 month peroid I: had a hysterecomy, almost lost my kids because my ex was abusing them (I was in the hospital when I was served with papers), had my kids taken away temporarily, lost my brother, MY abuse worsened, finally left, lost my house and was stalked ... Actually the list and the shit just kept coming for another two years.

You're doing as well as you can at the moment. What you NEED at this point is backup. These are not all issues to try to take on alone. I don't know what your social network is like.
Mine used to be extensive and I finally broke down and asked for help and got it, usually just because people liked me.

Are there people you can turn to for assistance? Friends? Family? Hell, just an ear to listen for a bit. It's not like you're weak. This is real, hard, exhausting shit.

 

[Friday]

My thought was balancing bricks of that tower so it falls later and not in a giant boom, more like how you want it, and where you want it; controling other factors of the crises if you can't control their very presence.

For true.

There's something I've been working on since this fall that's halfway between doing a runner & starting over ...and my life at present ...also without nuking my life first. I've just walked away from my life I don't know how many times, but never leaving kids behind. Only reason I'm still in this country, much less this state. Spent 3 years trying and failing to be normal again, this one just says f*ck normal, and works with what I've got. Could be a helluva good time, actually. And it cuts the sharp edges off of all the StalkerEx & employment & living sitch problems. But I can't get it up off the ground. Every time I start to get some traction on it some new crisis comes and pushes it a few more months out. Or makes it impossible until something else is dealt with. 1 step forward, 20 steps back. Still sorta generally working toward it, but I'm not holding my breath.

 

[desiderata310]

"this one just says f*ck normal"
pretty much.

Shit.. I don't know if I believe in this shit or not but serendipity...

That DOES happen but when it does I tend to examine it very closely and with great care. My therapist gets frustrated with me because I never trust that everything with just magically work out right, even if signs point to it. I ASSUME the worst. If I'm wrong, great! Usually I can tell if it's about to go to shit.

Damn glass is not half full or empty. It's just twice as big as it needs to be. Stop pouring a half a glass of water when you wanted the smaller damn glass. I have to clean that shit.

Not much help but the shit does eventually stop. It Doesn't go on forever.

 

[Ronin]

That's tough to make external sense in (but, well, at least that answers your question if it's you or darned what, Friday; it's life being momentary shit and other people, nothing about you ;)). What can you do to cope better with all of that, getting in sense from the inside? (aka support networks, changes in habits so you get tiny bit more rest even if tiny is one more hour / one nightmare less / etc, a night, or whatever time you sleep in, nutrition/exercise/self care, all of that shit health care right now screws you over).

TLDR version, hedonism & self compassion, while being hit by a shit storm, or - sparing all the reserves you've got and multiplying them if possible.

 

[shimmerz]

Life. I'm doing it wrong.

Me too. I know that doesn't help.....

it's life being momentary shit and other people, nothing about you ;)

It's my experience that this almost makes it harder. Like a puppet master, who is shit at his job, yanking my strings and I am screaming 'NOOOOO' as he continues to screw with me.

halfway between doing a runner & starting over

This sounds super interesting....

I've just walked away from my life I don't know how many times, but never leaving kids behind.

So you are being forced to break your normal pattern when S*** hits the fan because of your love for your son.... it is hard to break patterns.

Spent 3 years trying and failing to be normal again

Highly over rated.

But I can't get it up off the ground. Every time I start to get some traction on it some new crisis comes and pushes it a few more months out. Or makes it impossible until something else is dealt with.

I totally 'get' this. For me it was no lab to work at, no desk to work at, no home base where all my tools were, they were scattered everywhere making it chaos, frustrating the shit out of me so that when I finally got my stuff all together I was so ramped up I couldn't focus.

Don't want to pry but I am just wondering if you can say more about what you would need to cut the chaos with this project? What form of stability are you missing for the project itself (forget all the other stuff for now)?

 

[scout86]

Tell me again how you do that "relatively safe one arm hug" ok? So I can give you one.

From your list there, a lot sounds like it probably relates to the ex. OK, you could have not married him, I guess. It would be nice to think that all this was somehow "your fault" because then you'd have someone convenient to blame and then "if you get it right" stuff like that could maybe be avoided in the future. It's harder when it's NOT your fault. Sorry Friday, I think this is mostly just bad stuff that crossed your path.

Do you have help with all this? Besides us, I mean. 'cause I'd be willing to load up the dogs and the guns and come help deal with the bad guys, but I don't know where you live........

When it feels like the world is caving in around me, I guess I try, once the big chunks seem to have quit falling, to find something I can move, and move it, and look for something else, and do that, and close out everything else, because it's too much...... I remember the words of one of my old drinking buddies who often said, "You just concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other and sooner or later you're there." Granted we both thought he was talking about how to get to the door of the bar and then, with luck to the CAR.......

I want to help. What can I do?

 

[Friday]

That's tough to make external sense in

Sorry, Kaia. My head was all super foggy yesterday. I'm not sure I can make sense of it myself! :wtf:

Extremist thinking gives me 2 options: stay here and keep doing what I've been doing (which isn't working), or do a runner & completely start my life over. Again. I want to run. That's what I'm good at. But there are other options, not just those 2. The best of those options would cut out about 1/3 of my ongoing stress, maybe more. But hey, 1/3 would be orgasmically good.

And it's a simple solution: move. But instead of cutting all ties and leaving the country, or moving halfway across the country, it's about an hour away by train. Close enough to keep tabs on my kid, far enough away to be a pain for my ex & his mates to keep f*cking with me. Old factory, industrial district... Peace of wide open spaces with hardly any people... But still in the city for burner jobs while I work on getting back into "real" work, public transport, disappearing in crowds as needed, education, all that. Plus the space has room for setting up my training gear (trapeze, climbing gear, weapons handling, gymnastics & sparring).... It's a little cirque du soleil meets batcave... And I'd rather be 500km from civilization with horses & a place to swim or surf (and beautiful beaux to get lost in & love on, since we're dreaming ;) )... but it meets my needs for the time being.

I've moved scores of times. Never had it be so difficult.

 

[Friday]

I totally 'get' this. For me it was no lab to work at, no desk to work at, no home base where all my tools were, they were scattered everywhere making it chaos, frustrating the shit out of me so that when I finally got my stuff all together I was so ramped up I couldn't focus.

Don't want to pry but I am just wondering if you can say more about what you would need to cut the chaos with this project? What form of stability are you missing for the project itself (forget all the other stuff for now)?

Yep. So the above, most basically. A home base to operate out of. Place to get back on my feet or lick wounds as needed.

At this point it's just cash & ID. Not even necessarily the ID, although 90% of the stalkeryEx is tech, so changing my name and social would stop him from having the info necessary to spend 30 seconds typing to f*ck up 3 months of my life (dropping me from classes at school, shutting off my utilities, filing bizarre taxes, changing my account info, accessing medical records, redirecting my mail... A crazy amount of our lives are online these days... And with name, mothers maiden, and social security number? It takes very little effort to tangle someone's life up but good. Just enter the relevant info, and reset passwords. Voila.).

Just been fiendishly difficult to get things up and running. Get everything together? Get notice I have to go appear in court across the country. Get everything together again? Well, now you're looking at being recalled to active duty or jail, more cross country legal stuff, an no worries about finding a place to live cause we'll probably be sorting that one out for you. But come to find, not. Get everything together again? Major medical issue. Start getting everything together again? Total loss of income. Freaking fantastic. And round and round we go :banghead: Each time I start to get traction, whoops! Gah. 1st world problems. They just put my brain in a blender and hit frappé. Draaaaaaaama.

 

[Friday]

Jumping out of the fog / details of everything that can go wrong, does...

The more I think on this & process what everyone's saying... Careening from crisis to crisis... The more something an old housemate said to me once keeps popping up:

I don't even get out of bed for less than 25k.

Just makes me wonder how much of the crisis hopping is stress cup being busted. So the every day, gradually working towards goals thing, just doesn't happen... Because the fallout from the last crisis hasn't been sorted before the new one begins. The "I don't even get out of bed" unless the problem is this big. (You must be at least this tall to ride this ride ;) ). Means that all the little problems pile up, and everything is an emergency, cause without the emergency? The list of shit to get done is 80 items behind. That would be the PTSD side, I think. The need to moderate stress, and the recovery time when it's not.

 

[desiderata310]

Finally realized you had a diary and read it.

Stress cup is busted. You need a bigger one or you need to tip this one over. No, I don't mean running necessarily but some real tangible way to say f*ck it.

 

[Friday]

Do you have help with all this? Besides us, I mean. 'cause I'd be willing to load up the dogs and the guns and come help deal with the bad guys, but I don't know where you live........

I want to help. What can I do?

LMAO :D Oh.... You have no idea how much time I waste not using simple solutions (shoot my ex, go to prison, done. So many problems just cease to exist).

He's not the problem, unfortunately, no matter how much better the world would be with one less asshole in it. I am. I need to learn how to handle this shit better. How to work my life so I'm not knocked over by passing feathers, so I'm not already laying down for the steam roller to have a grade A target to smoosh flat. Or worse, sitting there all stubborn refusing to budge. Girl. That's a steam roller. Rule of gross tonnage: move your ass.

As far as help goes? IRL? Not really. But these sites have given me more help than I've ever had before... So it's kind of mind blowingly awesome to have this much help.

You do help. Everyone. Very, very much.