Things, Things, Things...

[Red Feather]

Okay I want to address this issue. I want to know what is wrong, if there is something that is wrong. I think something is wrong because I am just not normal.

I have such a hard time with things, with materiality. I do not feel physical. I do not feel like I am in my body. I do not recognize myself in the mirror. I do not have needs that are associated with things. Maybe my computer and my musical instruments, but all other things are like a burden to me and I don't know what to do with them. I have a hard time throwing things away, because I always think about the environment and climate change. How many plastic things are filling up our oceans. How useless and extremely superfluous things are. Things clutter me. They clutter my mind. They are everywhere and useless.

I have a hard time sorting things out. I have a hard time making categories for things and labels. I am scattered.

My ex and abuser was a German and always organized and wanted everything to be spotless. He hated the way I had such a hard time with things. I have a hard time being practical. I have such a hard time with REALITY. He would throw things and break glasses to try to get me to be more orderly. He said one day I will learn how to hold a household. I took care of so much. After he kicked me out, he realized how much I was doing, how little he was helping me. I was his housewife. His mother never understood why I couldn't be like her. She would trigger me so often.

I have a home now. After being homeless several times already, I feel blessed with my home. It is mine and nobody elses. I am 32 years old and on my own for the first time in my life. I was very very lucky to get a home. The person who lived here before left so many things for me. I have a mixer and a grill, all these interesting cooking utensils. A coffee machine and a cutlery set. I didn't have to take care of getting all these things because they were already here. The guy was nice and left me all the furnitrue and stuff for a very low price.

I am always taken care of somehow.

I have been living here for 6 months already. I still have boxes that are unpacked. There was box of books in the storage from the guy who lived here before. Full of books on enterprising and making money. There is a whole world out their of productivity and efficiency that is so foreign to me. I finally pulled them out after living here for almost 6 months. I don't know where I should put them. I start getting dizzy. Sometimes I even start crying because all the things are so overwhelming. Paperwork triggers me. I've always had such a hard time keeping a job. I am so useless.

I get so frozen and don't know what to do. I don't think it's a depression, or is it? I think it is something to do with my dissociations. Do other people have the same problem? What's wrong with me?

 

[The Albatross]

(((Nadia))) The thing about procrastination, is that old adage... nothing ventured nothing gained. I experienced some of what you shared in my own home after my last traumatic break. I am still uncomfortable and at times it is difficult to do the things that would help our home. I too have a problem with letting things go because I feel that I might not have the ability to replace them. In my mind, I may need it later.

For me it's a combination of my ADD/ADHD and difficulty tolerating the stress of doing the activity. I do, also get uncomfortable making decisions at times (like you shared, where to put things) because at a fundamental level I had become incapable of making those decisions for a time.

Friends on another forum recommended that I practice, and start small. That I set an egg timer for 10 minutes and push through a decision and do the activity (whatever it was) on the contingency that when the egg timer goes off, I could reevaluate it and decide to reset it for another 10 minutes, or stop for a break. It works. Maybe you can give it a try?

Clearly you are uncomfortable with "nothing ventured".

If decluttering is upsetting because you think of the environment. There are many ways to recycle items. Donating for a good cause, donating books to a local library, recycling paper, bottles, cans.... You share about how much you were doing in your former home and that your husband didn't appreciate the things you did. But honey, that is past, and you are here now. You need to push past the memory, and invest some time and energy into manifesting the home that you want. For you. For your own peace and calm. I hope this helps you.

 

[The Albatross]

Doubling back... procrastination is also, avoiding the perceived emotional feelings attached to the action. There is an emotional aspect. You are experiencing this and are able to recognize it now because you are, like you said on your own. You're place is yours and nobody elses. Try to attach more significance that you are able to recognize that this is a problem, than attaching to the frustration and anxiety of the inaction or inability. What you focus on you give energy to.

There's lots of books on procrastination and mental health disorders (on a search I found what looked to be a very good and thorough one though I haven't read it so can't recommend it).

Every trauma has some take away emotional baggage... you've found yours and your realization and awareness is an opportunity for change and personal improvement. Your rational mind knows, that by staying in this pattern, you are sabotaging yourself because your anxiety is keeping you in a very real home environment that you clearly do not want. Break out of the pattern, be gentle with yourself, maybe even enlist the aid of a compassionate and "safe" helper, if you can find one. Practice, patience, persistence, perserverance. 28 days makes a new habit, 6 months makes a new behavior. That's a fact.

 

[Red Feather]

Dear Albatross, thank you kindly for your responses. There is a lot of wisdom in it. I like the idea with an egg timer. Yesterday, I put a movie on and just let it run and somehow that helped me too. I have a guest tonight so I was feeling a lot of pressure. I know being around people grounds me and I feel more alive that way. So I know the pattern of cleaning up just before the guests arrive, but I never was happy about being like that. My parents were like this too. So I have always been this way. My mom would sit in one place and throw things around instead of getting up and putting them where they belonged. I remember when I was a kid, just wishing I could grow up with normal parents that had a clean kitchen. I remember cleaning the entire kitchen with 7-8 years all by myself for hours and hourse because I just wanted it to look like the my friend's kitchen. But after my marriage, things caught up on me.

Now, I keep things clean but I am scattered in my thinking. If I am alone it is very easy for me to drift away and stay frozen for hours. I don't feel connected often to the world, and being alone most of the time makes me drift even more. But I am really glad because I have a nice home and that it is only mine. I probably need to confront being alone and relying only on myself. It's scary....and being alone has triggered me going into crisis and getting PTSD full on. I am planning on getting a social worker to help me with all my paper work. My home is not too cluttered because I don't have so many things, the paperwork is the worst part. It is more an inability to find a value for things and acertain an appropriate place for them. It is a certain inability I know I have and have been this way for years. I wouldn't really call it procastination, maybe because it's not like I don't want to do it. I often just get overwhelmed with so many feelings and blank out.

Last time I went to the crisis center just to ask the social worker if she could fill out a form for me. She sat there doing the calculations and I couldn't even understand what she was saying to me at one point, and was totally slipping away. I just see how other people are so much more different then I am... and I do feel rather worthless about it. Thank you for your kindness. It came as a shock for me when I suddenly found myself here in Germany and my ex's family did things so differently then I was used to. I always wanted to be like other people. Thanks again, I will look into it.

 

[The Albatross]

There are other possible terms, they really don't matter very much. What matters, is that you are incapacitating yourself and undermining your ability to function and perform tasks in your home as you would like to do. It doesn't really have anything to do with your worth as a person... It's coming up to be overcome.

If movies help, great... as your comfort levels settle down, and anxiety decreases, you can do some small challenges and get some progress.