Strange Star

[Echo]

@Pietro - thanks for the Easter wishes. Happy Easter to you all, too.

 

[Wyakin]

(Other than the fact that I spaced out a bit and drove around 15 minutes in the wrong direction before I realized where we were...it was kind of humorous actually that I am the only one who noticed this).

This made me smile, makes me wonder how aware of what is going on around them other people are!

Hope you have coped with everything going on this weekend, it sounds like a busy one.

 

[Pencil]

@Pietro, I can't quote. Anyway, Happy Easter to you too, thank you.

The Bunny was here, wrote J a note, the eggs are hidden. So we're having chocolate for breakfast!

And, Happy Easter to you, @Hope4Now and @Echo.

 

[Hope4Now]

Hi friends! Happy Easter (or whatever spring celebrations that you do!)

I'm still thinking about yesterday's church sermon...all about getting over the physical resurrection thing and focusing on creating resurrection...in the world and in ourselves. Transformation to new life. I liked it.

I survived Easter family dinner and my therapy appointment with my husband today. Last night got locked into my mothers assisted living place (I forgot my post-7pm escape key). Starter to panic then got sidetracked by trying to help a lady who was flipping out. Feel sorry for HER kids!

Right now at a pub waiting for my friend Mike. Then reiki clinic tonight.

Maybe I can manage a day without freaking out!

 

[Pietro]

I could use a pub myself, right about now. Unfortunately, I get the alternative of listening to my son shoot-up the house with his nerf gun. I think I'm going to invent a new drinking game -- every time he cocks the rifle, I get to drink a shot.

 

[Hope4Now]

Ah, nerf guns. I'm sure they will reappear in my life in June when our friends with 4 kids arrive in town to spend the summer. Yes, 6 children shooting up the house with nerf uzis etc. really sets me on edge. My daughter has a nerfish bow and arrow of which she is very fond. Scares the bejesus out of me when she appears out of nowhere, taking aim at my knees, or the dog.

@Pietro I like the game idea. But our bodies wouldn't. Reminds me of the Grinch game in college. Everytime you heard the word "who" you had to take a shot. (Of Grinch Punch...mountain dew and vodka mixed in a big cooler if you can imagine). Very scary. I have never drunk vodka since.

I'm posting here while my husband is snoring through old episodes of Mary Tyler Moore (LOL). I had a nice time with my friend...good hard cider and fried calamari...not a great combo, but I liked it. My friend was very patient with me, asking lots of questions. He is a psychologist actually (not clinical...a professor) and is one of the few people generally clued in to what is happening in my life. And he, too, is a trauma survivor. It felt good to talk with him. The last few times we've been together, we've talked about things other than emotional stuff. I hated to talk his ear off, but it's actually nice to have someone to listen besides my T.

The reiki clinic was also good tonight. Very relaxing. But I had that weird experience again where I am certain that the people are feeling some energy from me that is powerful. Tonight, one of the people stifled a gasp when she put her hands on my calf. I wish I knew what they were feeling. This is like the 10th time something has happened like this. I did reiki on my husband once, after he had his terrible ski accident. It was totally cool--all he could feel was warmth, but under my hands felt like a nest of thousands of buzzing bees. THAT did not make me gasp, or shake, or any of the other things reiki practitioners have done when they work on me.

Therapy appointment with my husband was okay today. I don't actually remember a whole lot of what we talked about...we talked about not much of anything really...what I do remember is that both he and my T agreed that I am "fragile." I guess I am actually. Somehow hearing them say that made it real. So much for my identity of the strong, independent one who needs nothing from anyone else. I guess I knew it was gone, but today kind of affirmed it.

Generally, it was a pretty decent day. The pain still sucks, but wasn't bad enough to prevent me from pruning shrubs and roses for around 3 hours today. I hate pruning roses. You have to untangle them from all the other shrubs first without knocking off the delicate buds, then seek out where to snip to get to the healthy part of the shoot, all while desperately trying not to get tangled and scraped to hell in their thorny grasps. I said to my husband (who was shoveling mulch) it is a bit like the psychological work I'm doing. Oh, but I wish the spiny, thorny stuff were as clear to me as the damned roses. I managed to survive it with fewer than a dozen blood-draws. AND I went and bought seeds for the garden...lettuce, beans, squash, carrots, snap peas, snow peas, etc. Next step is to build the raised beds...I've sworn I will not do the community garden again this year unless I have raised beds. That will be a satisfying project, I hope.

So...this is what happens. I go from being a self-destructive disaster one night, to being excited to plant vegetables. Oh, how I long for a bit more balance.

 

[Hope4Now]

I am at work. Holding down the fort, as it were. My boss is away for a week, so I get to be the go-to person as well as the productive person. And the pressure's on for me to put in my work time in-person. Hoping I can manage to stay balanced enough to do what needs to be done.

I am working really, really hard to try to be present in the "now" and also in my body today. At this point, doing this more consistently seems to be the most important thing I can do. I think if I keep zoning out/depersonalizing, etc. my poor little inner people will just get more and more upset with me and I will never get anywhere in my healing process.

I used to think dissociation was like complete amnesia for who you are. Since I began to actually feel and understand what dissociation is in me...and there are levels of it--, I realize how much of it I do and how often. Not complete fragmentation like separate personalities...part of me is always more or less conscious of what is going on...but it is quite disturbing now that I recognize it, and particularly disturbing when I can't seem to drag myself out of it. Often is layered in with sort of flashbacky kinds of feelings/memories/visuals etc. that are very disorganized. Anyway...am trying to stay present and trying to get my self back into my body. It is exhausting.

I slept better last night...got around 3 hours at one stretch and then another three later. I remembered having a dream too. The details of it were very vague, and it was not a pleasant dream. About our next door neighbor from when I was around 7. Not sure if this has any relation to real memory or not. I had really powerfully negative feelings about the family in real life, and this dream about the father stirred up some ugly *&^%. I have no idea why he appeared in the dream! Although I've thought about the kid (who was about my age and who is the first person I remember feeling active hate for), I haven't thought about the parents since probably the mid-1970s when they moved away.

I've been doing a lot of writing in the past week about "protector" parts of myself. Like the dissociation bit. That's the super-power one. There are so many of them, and I think they are what are getting in between me and my feelings, memories, and work with my inner children. It's hard to write about them because there are so many that once I start to "get to know" one of them, several others pop up to distract me. As I've been identifying some of them, and trying to pay attention to the process by which they appear, I'm realizing how many layers I have manufactured. It takes an extraordinary amount of time and energy and focus for me to make my way through. What amazes me is how easily my inner children can come blasting through them to flood me.

I am still feeling a bit stronger today. Am hoping I can keep the self-destructive energy confined to a safe place until I can figure out what that's all about. Well, actually, I KNOW what it is about, I just don't quite know what to do to heal it. I suppose I am going to have to talk to my T about it. Yup, that will pretty much solidify the label "fragile" I guess. Ugh. I don't want to be fragile. I hate the idea.

Okay...my nice little break for myself is over now. Back to work.

 

[Hope4Now]

It has been a very strange night, but I'm managing pretty decently. I am so (cautiously) relieved that if the paperwork I just submitted via email is accepted, then my mom will be able to stay at her assisted living place because she qualifies for low-income housing. This is a monumental relief as we have no resources to support the gaspingly expensive monthly fees. And there is no way we could live with her in our house. So a cautious hooray....

Now, if we could just manage to cover our own bills, that would be nice. I've blown it again and everything is late. Just can't seem to keep this all together, and can't seem to admit to anyone other than myself that I can't keep it together.

And, I'm obsessing a bit knowing that my birth mother and half sister have by now received my letter via the social worker. In it I gave my name and contact information. So, now I wait. I don't really have any expectations at all. But I'm nervous anyway. I ran away from the anonymous correspondence we had 17 years ago. Maybe they'll run away from me now. Maybe not. The social worker said they seemed very excited that I was making contact, so we'll see what comes of it. I hope this has been the right thing to do. It feels right.

I had a very disturbing experience with my inner 3 yo tonight...too long and involved to write out. She does not trust me. Desperate with need, but doesn't trust me to meet it...even though I maneuvered my way through all sorts of layers of defenses to find her for the first time in a while tonight. My inner critic is having a ball with this one. "Ha! You loser! You're ineffective even in your own imagination!" Sigh. It goes on and on and on and on.

I ate way too many jelly beans today. Truly jelly beans are disgusting. Especially when they are deposited out of the back end of a wind-up hen and is far too reminiscent of...well, not eggs. Who comes up with this stuff? Who buys it (whatever was I thinking)?

Hoping to sleep tonight. Double-dose of chammomile maybe. I am thoroughly exhausted.

 

[Hope4Now]

I have been thinking a lot about "safe" places, internally, because of a post on a friend's thread. I can visualize really well, but I NEVER feel safe. Actually, even though I am an introvert, I feel much "safer" being out and about in the world, and "on," than I do when I am sitting with my own self. When I am "on" and busy and interacting, I'm not really paying any attention to myself or my feelings--all the focus is outside myself. Of course, I often get "triggered" and that sends my focus inward...sometimes I go into a spiral down when that happens, and sometimes I'm able to just push through it and distract myself from it.

When I know I'm going to be in situations that make me uncomfortable, I have had a lot of success using my magic "bat cape" that I wrote about earlier in this diary. It's not foolproof, but the visualization helps me feel more protected from triggers in the external world. What it doesn't help with is my own internal chaos. What is really hard for me is feeling safe inside my own psyche.

I have powerful visualization skills. That's not such an issue. I have lots of places I have constructed for myself. I'm well practiced with this from early childhood. I would just disengage from whatever was going on around me and imagine myself into my safe place. I remember doing it all the time. What I don't remember is having a sense of my physical or emotional self with me...I don't know what part of me was there, but it wasn't all of me in an integrated way. I think I was dissociating. Sometimes I did it intentionally; often, I'd just find myself in whatever my safe place of the moment was.

This still happens to me. Now, however, I am aware that I'm pretty disconnected from my body and my emotions. I guess all those decades of fragmentation has taken its toll. But I'm working really, really hard to reconnect body, emotion, cognition, and spirit. I'm great on the spirit part...though I need to keep nurturing it. I'm working on the cognition part--trying to recognize and balance my extreme thinking that often leads me to extreme behaviors. I'm trying to be open to emotions--to recognize what they feel like, to name them, to avoid judging them, rejecting them, or reacting to them. This part is hard as I often have no idea what I'm feeling. And, I'm working really hard to stay connected to my present body in present time...to actually physically SEE myself in real space (not just some idea of myself)...to develop a sense of how I move in space, what feels good, what doesn't, etc. Basically to develop physical self-awareness and connect it to the bizarre notion that I do have quite a bit of control over my physical self. The very slow, basic yoga stuff from The Trauma Center has been helping with this.

When it comes to finding a safe place within myself, I struggle. I am hypervigilant, and have a lot of toxic self-critical energy (tsunamis of it) that make it pretty much impossible for me to fully rest when there is ANY outside interference, ANY obligation or task that I think I ought to be doing, and ANY difficult feelings or memories. I cannot seem to fully rest within my own self in a safe/trusting way. The closest I've ever been able to come to it has been when getting an energy treatment (reiki, polarity) or cranial sacral therapy from a person I feel comfortable with. I do know that gentle/safe touch calms me profoundly. I've talked about this is lots of places on the forum. I'm sure that it comes from touch deprivation and attachment issues from way early on in my life.

So, I need to find a safe/secure place in myself where I can rest and be peaceful. Especially when I'm dealing with massive tidal waves of emotional overwhelm. But the body thing really throws me off.

On the one hand, I'm highly aware of my body...the pain and other odd energetic sensations that I feel physically. It's just that I process them differently...Like "this is not me." It's hard to explain. I guess it's like depersonalization as a way to push through the chronic pain and not just give up. On the other hand, I am aware of and struggling to shift my felt sense of immateriality. A couple of people on the thread "what are you feeling today" talked about feeling like a real person. I don't feel like I am real...ever...except spiritually. I have a solid awareness of my spiritual self, my true self I guess you'd call it. It exists outside of my body (even though I know my consciousness of it is generated from my brain).

So, when I try to connect with my inner children, it's like my spirit is looking through my transparent body at my inner children who seem far more embodied than my current self. And when I try to go to a safe resting place in my imagination--just to calm myself or bring some sort of balance, it's like my spirit sees it but my physical and emotional self can't manage to inhabit it...Ugh. It is so hard to explain.

I guess its really that with all the work I have done over the past 7 or 8 months, I have this profound awareness of feeling untethered...as if all my physical and emotional selves over time exist simultaneously (as opposed to sequentially) and are like a huge bunch of helium balloons, eternally replicating, and my spirit (which exists outside of time) is hanging onto the strings of those balloons...barely. There is this sense of dread, a felt threat, that at any moment the balloons will fly apart and go sailing off in a thousand directions through the sky and there will be nothing left of "me" except my spirit with no body, no emotion, no memory, no vehicle with which to connect to others, with which to be human.

As I write this, I have just realized that I suppose I am afraid of dying. Because that's what I've just described. Ha. How mundane is that? Sigh... I guess this is why writing in a diary is helpful. But this insight doesn't particularly help me with the need to find a way to escape from my frozen mode and relax so my system can heal.

 

[Hope4Now]

I had a surprisingly difficult night tonight. It had been a decent enough day. Out to breakfast at a new local diner with my husband and daughter, happy that my son's endless rehearsals and CD recording are finished as of today, spent some time writing and rearranging furniture to accommodate some things I will bring from my mother's condo. I spent a few hours at her condo cleaning out stuff...managed 3 giant bags of trash and 7 boxes to be donated. It was good progress. Had a nice dinner my husband made (looked revolting but tasted fabulous...never knew you could do that to black beans!) Then when I took the dishes downstairs (we were upstairs family watching a favorite show, Once Upon A Time), I had this weird energy sort of wash over me. It wasn't bad, really, just powerful...a lot of vitality in it. I went back upstairs to watch the show, and the next thing I knew, I realized I was digging my fingernails into my arms. I stopped. No blood drawn, but my arms look rather worse for wear.

The "energy" I had felt when I was in the kitchen morphed into a really self-destructive energy. It scared me, actually. It was not the more familiar tired/hate this/want to give up/why can't I manage to heal energy...that I'm mostly used to and can recognize and manage. This was something different. I'd had a bit of it around a week ago, but was able to calm it down and go to bed. Tonight, it went on and on. I did let my husband know I was experiencing it. He tried to give me a hug (which I usually welcome) but I told him I needed to just keep moving to try to burn it off. I folded two loads of laundry in record time, cleaned the kitchen, let the dog out, etc...trying to do regular things, and all the time asking whatever part this was to give me a little space.

The funny thing about it is that while this whole episode was going on, I had almost no pain. Got up and down the stairs fine, carried stuff fine, etc. I will have to investigate this connection when I have more time.

When it finally started to abate, and I was in bed with my husband, he started asking me questions. I told him what happened and showed him my arms. I also told him about the similar moment around a week ago. He did not freak out. He was very kind and very calm. After more questions from him, I told him that the last time this had happened was when I was in high school and did some very minor cutting...maybe 5 or 6 times, just superficial stuff. Then I came to my senses and never did it again (although I have punched walls etc. off and on over the years, this is different).

Along with all of this went some pretty intense body movements (nothing new but never connected with this energy before) and some shaking. It finally settled down and I slept for about 2 hours, but awakened at 1 AM and have been sort of wired ever since (it is now 4 AM). The self-destructive energy has gone, but there's a lot of gunk roiling around in my psyche and I can't make head nor tail of it.

...the only things I can think of are that some of my inner children are getting rather impatient to be heard. I had a dream on Friday night that I was stuck in a basement but escaped to find myself on the property of this enormous house surrounded by a wall. Pencil had some interesting points about dreams about houses and basements as subconsciousness. I guess I intuitively knew that's what the dream was about...I don't know who the "I" was--whether my current self, or one of my inners. And, over the past week or so, one of my inners has continued to nudge my consciousness. This is one that appeared to me in a sort of whacked vision that I had while meditating way early on when I was just beginning therapy. It freaked me out so much, I had an emergency appointment with my therapist. We haven't talked about it, "the thing" as I called it, since then as it is probably more than my system can handle at the moment. However, we may have to address it somehow. Something tells me this energy is related to that.

I see my therapist today. I will have to tell him about a week ago, and tonight, with this destructive energy. I don't know why this makes me nervous, but it does.

 

[Echo]

@Hope4Now - just wanted to pop in and say I'm thinking about you and sorry things are so hard. That energy sounds vile. I hope you are able to get some kind of explanation in talking to your therapist. I've had similar terrifying external energies around me and they are generally a form of flashback and represent the energy of the attacker. For one vile week I had the sense of my rapist suddenly swooping in on me during the daytime and in dreams, so that I was too scared to go to bed and sleep at all. It did pass, though, and I have no idea why it passed - I had no therapy at that point. Anyway, it may be very different for you. I hope it is a sign that you've reached the worst, and once through it, you can start the upwards journey to better days.

 

[Hope4Now]

Here I am with a tad of time before I go off to pick up my daughter from her friend's house. All hell will likely break loose tonight as a big project is due tomorrow. Not much left to do on it, and it looks fabulous (a super-hero that is a scale model of a 2nd grader! Cool project to learn proportions!), but she is a perfectionist and I know tonight will be ugly. Last night was. I am trying to figure out how to deal with that and still hang onto the decent energy I have today.

Sunday was a horrible night, and my poor arms are still hurting but healing. My poor husband has been calling me like 3 times a day to check on me. I guess maybe that made my problem less abstract to him. I told my therapist about it. I was surprised at his lack of surprise. And calmed, too, in that he didn't see it as a major crisis, but an energy to work with. And work we did. It was hard but interesting, and I learned a lot about this energy that sometimes comes out as self-abuse like Sunday, but also comes out as hyperactive-get-it-all-done now energy. I have a tendency to push myself until I collapse. It is the same energy...just directed into slightly different behaviors, all of which come down to my own self-loathing. Apparently we will explore that sometime soon. Oh, goody, I have that to look forward to. Therapy is such fun. Not. With his help on visualization, I did manage to lock that extremely toxic self-hate energy into an inescapable, triple-paned glass enclosure (a bit like a zoo pen). It's there and looming, but secure for the moment. Perhaps long enough that I can understand it a bit better. We'll see.

The other thing I learned is that I really need to do something with my hands to engage this energy in positive ways. Somehow, intuitively, I've always known this. I really like doing pottery, but I can't afford the classes. I've tried knitting and needlepoint, but find it rather uninspiring. I took up hooking this summer, and I like that better, but it is still boring. I need to do something creative. I love pottery, but I can't afford the classes which are gaspingly expensive (I did one 8 week class for my birthday last year). Soon I will put in my vegetable garden (if I can manage it physically, I hope), but I'm a haphazard gardener who takes more pleasure in the actual planting than anything else. I need to find something I can turn to, something creative, when this energy gets going in me, because if I don't have an outlet for it, it'll turn me against myself. Of course painting is the obvious answer, but that is so fraught with emotion and I am so blocked that it might backfire in bad ways. I have been trying to draw again. Just a little.

I'm in a decent place today. I got a UTI on Sunday and was terribly miserable yesterday, but the antibiotics seem to have kicked in and I feel much better. The UTI gave me a lovely excuse to beg off taking my mother to some chi-chi social event she wanted to attend and to which I had been invited but did not want to go. What a relief to stay home even if I was miserable. The hyper energy and a lot of others are pretty fired up today, but somehow I have been able to quell the overwhelm. I truly wish I understood why I can do this at some times and not at others. What is the secret? I'm not doing anything different than usual, I'm not thinking much differently than usual.

I finished my book for work, finally. I'm free of the albatross that has weighed me down for so long. I'm having to hunt up some university connections to see if I can get some endorsements from people (eew...I hate this part). The proofs will be ready on Monday. I am hugely relieved, but feel no sense of pride or accomplishment. All I can see is where the book falls short, and how late it has been in coming. Now there is an astronomical amount of other work awaiting me...has been piling up for months. Most of it is very dull, but one project will be fun. I do the layout for all our books, and this one is a 2nd edition of an older book of mine. It's all written and edited, so it's just the book design that awaits. I'm actually looking forward to that, so long as I don't fall in and start re-writing, which is a clear danger and which my boss has warned me not to do.

I've reconnected with my birth mother. She actually friended me on facebook on Saturday night. I didn't know who she was when I looked at the friend request because I didn't know her last name. When I clicked on her page, I almost deleted the request because I didn't recognize her. Then a factoid about her jumped out at me and I made the connection. She sent me a letter via email as well, and I've responded. I haven't quite sorted out how I feel about this, or why I am pursuing this, other than it seems like the right thing to do. I have found I have a half-sister and a half-brother as well who would like to be in touch with me too. It's a bit overwhelming, and I'm focusing on S. my birth mother. She seems very, very glad that we are in touch.

Sigh. Time to go and fetch the girl. Calm perfectionist craziness. Make dinner. Do laundry. Iron. Make sure the boy has not fallen into Netflix never to return. My husband is off to the city AGAIN and will not return until late. Sometimes this is a relief as I enjoy spending time by myself, but sometimes I wish he weren't out so much of the time. Tonight is one of those nights.