Survival Vs Growth

[Chava]

I get stuck in survival mode over and over. It's my default setting. Tonight I told a few friends at an AA meeting that I have gone so far as to put a couple nice affirmations in my pocket. I want to internalize them, I want to connect to a spiritual life. But I don't believe I deserve anything beyond basic survival. Here's how it went:

Near death baby: NICU. Near death toddler: PICU Come out not sure I should even survive. No love, bits of abuse. I became insanely self-destructive. It took a long time to wonder if I should just survive (30 years of feeling half dead). I found music, and so that helped me survive, it nurtured me and helped me feel worthy and real and right where I belonged. Then I started drinking. Music was my motivation to get sober. Now I can no longer play in the orchestra (injuries). I'm taking good care of myself...eating well, exercising. But I'm just surviving...and grieving stuff I lost. I can't get beyond this right now. Sometimes I still feel bad about taking good care of myself.

I don't feel like I deserve anything more than basic survival...hard to believe i'm worthy of dreams, goals, growth, inspiration, nurturance, feeling spiritually connected. I was supposed to die a few times. Why wouldn't just surviving seem like enough work? How to I make myself believe I can live a full, loving, creative life? I'm trying to keep a couple affirmations in my pocket so I can have the close but not try to make myself internalize them all the time. I'm creative but too tied to surviving again, which makes me feel really uninspired. No growth, just isolation and backsteps.

So here's my list, If you can locate where you are (maybe a couple of these):

1Near death. Just surviving in the hospital or just home, barely surviving....how to you survive next:
2 Self destruction or numbness
3 Surviving (eat, sleep, pay some bills, let the dog out)
4 Nurturing: meditations, prayers, self care beyond just survival
5. Growing: taking on new challenges, allowing yourself to be creative
6. Connect with others, or your higher power, or something...free your recovered or brighter nature.

(I'm a little messed up on ambien):sleep:

 

[Hope4Now]

Surviving is good. Affirmations are curiously helpful even if they seem ridiculous to some of your parts. I find that if I say them over and over again as sort of public service announcements to my system, some little bit enters in. Same thing with the part of lovingkindness meditation that focuses on the self. I definitely have at least one part that believes I should suffer and die. My psychiatrist told me I have a part that does not want to get better.

I use almost all my energy for survival. It probably doesn't look like that on the outside, but that's what it feels like on the inside. I have had to stop working because I don't have enough energy to survive and work.

As for your list...I cycle through 2-6 multiple times a day in random ways. It is utterly confusing and exhausting. Mostly, I'm stuck at #3.

 

[sun seeker]

I'm sorry you are having such a hard time @Chava, and about the injuries getting in the way of the music that is so important to you.

It's a good list you posted, food for thought. Like @Hope4Now I cycle through several of the levels, though not always sequentially. I can yo-yo between 2 and 5 or 6 at alarming speed: when my attempts at a higher level fail, I don't just retreat a little, but all the way. I don't know moderation. :(

I also see where I can appear on the outside to be engaged in 5 while on the inside I am at 2 or 3. Right now I am attending a program that helps unemployed/underemployed people find work, and it focuses a lot on identifying personality (which I'm having some trouble with, but that's another story) and what is best suited to each person's innate abilities. So on the one hand I'm focusing on creativity and self awareness and having all these great revelations, while on the other, I'm there in the first place because of a deeply ingrained survival fear that makes me feel all the time like I don't have solid ground to stand on and makes it hard for me to believe things can get better.

I also struggle with the belief that I don't deserve to live, and go between that and not being sure whether I want to live anyway. It does help me to realize it isn't all of me believing those things.

 

[Hope4Now]

It does help me to realize it isn't all of me believing those things.

Yes. The construct of parts is enormously helpful when I can remember it. That whatever is happening at the moment isn't all me. Just a part I can learn to work with.

I think it is why I am still here after this 18 months of hell I've been living inside.

@Chava, how are you doing with recognizing the parts of you?

 

[Chava]

Affirmations are curiously helpful even if they seem ridiculous to some of your parts. I find that if I say them over and over again as sort of public service announcements to my system, some little bit enters in

:happy:

I use almost all my energy for survival. It probably doesn't look like that on the outside, but that's what it feels like on the inside.

Relate to this. Sometimes sad, feeling like I've been wasting so much of my life being ambiguously alive.

So on the one hand I'm focusing on creativity and self awareness and having all these great revelations, while on the other, I'm there in the first place because of a deeply ingrained survival fear that makes me feel all the time like I don't have solid ground to stand on and makes it hard for me to believe things can get better.

It is hard to believe things can get better. But this sounds like a positive step. Sometimes positive steps freak me out though, like I'm trying to sneak into the land of the living and I'm really going to get it...

how are you doing with recognizing the parts of you?

I don't know. Or I can't answer this right now. :blackeye: It does help that I've acquired better basic self-care habits (eat meals and stuff). So when overwhelmed, not know who/where I am or exactly what to do, I at least eat dinner when people eat dinner. Sometimes I even notice that I'm hungry.

Feels disorienting without all the music. That was also my main thing for connecting with others. Not that I didn't go in and out of some rehearsals without talking to a single person sometimes. But I always felt like I belonged and deserved to have all those good feelings that music created. I can't find that now. :( So I'm just back to feeling really bad about myself a lot.

 

[Chava]

Wait, reality check. 2.5 (numb survival or something). I thought yesterday was pretty good because I made it through work and didn't have a meltdown at home. But counted I took a cocktail of 25 pain pills through the day. In my f*cked up head that still meant taking "good care" of myself....because I ate dinner and didn't burn my arms. I wasn't in pain, but truth is I will tolerate feeling any pain (or anything really) so was just pleased I found the right med cocktail to get through the day without feeling my body at all. Not the sort of thing I even want to tell my therapist because I sound like such a waste of time.

 

[Chava]

Sound healing helping tonight...low. slow vibrations...I miss feeling music in my body, it's so organizing and cleansing. so 2.5, trying to draw on the creativity of the more alive versions of my self.

 

[Hope4Now]

I have an app on my iphone for chakra cleansing that is sound-based. I think it cost 3.99 or something. A yogi friend recommended it and I really like it. The sounds and vibrations are very healing. It's called Chakra Pro. Someone else who does sound healing mentioned listening to a CD of a didgeridoo as being helpful. Supposedly chanting helps as well (but this takes too much energy for me). Recently, I've been listening to CDs of chanting from Ram Dass. They are wonderful. Sometimes, though, I want just the sound. The non-verbal. In headphones. It helps to drown out my verbal noise in my head and let me relax a little.

@Chava, are you willing to take the risk and talk with your doctor and/or therapist about the amount of pain medication you need to take to get through the day. Something about it does not seem right to me, and it seems that you are aware of this too.

People like us (PTSD and chronic pain) are at high risk for addiction. It is why I have avoided meds for pain. I am terrified of being an addict (yet another way of losing control). But I am self-medicating and I drink far more alcohol than I used to. This scares me. I don't ever get drunk, but I'm concerned about my drinking.

All these substances can really mess with our trauma processing.

I hope today will be a good and healing one for you. Stay safe and be gentle with yourself.

 

[Hope4Now]

I sound like such a waste of time.

This is a part of you talking. You are not a waste of time, @Chava. Anything but. Please talk with your therapist...
All the little bits of healing I've been managing (and they are little bits) have come when I can tolerate being present in my body for a little bit. That's my main goal right now. Breathing, and tolerating what it feels like to be in my body...without spinning off into nowhereland.

 

[Chava]

I can't avoid pain meds because uncontrolled pain = major meltdown and self injury. It's okay because half of it is Advil, then a few of everything else. But total, yes, gross, and I am so sorry to my liver. Sometimes I can kindly tolerate a bit of it and respond in helpful ways (rest, etc). I don't know what is wrong with me lately. I'm trying to numb out to a degree just to feel balanced. But it's not working. Today I had some asthmatic reaction and had to go to hospital for breathing tests and more drugs. I feel very f*cked up. Want to either be numb or start myself on fire. Sorry for that image. I'm not a positive person lately and I regret that (isolation helps)

Thanks @Hope4Now

 

[Chava]

sitting in the bathroom with my knife watching the doorway. and it's my house so I can do this for the next twenty hours if I want to

 

[sun seeker]

@Chava? Are you okay?