Starting my journal

[holidayay]

Its 5am and I am awake, feeling quite scared.

Things have been better, and in a way, still frightening. My mind still goes to eerie, abandoned feelings whilst I sleep. And I wake up feeling extremely alone, vulnerable and unhappy. Its very hard to comfort myself. I feel like I have no comfort to give myself anymore. My mind feels quite tired and my nerves shot. Its not even that the dreams are particularly jarring anymore. Its more just this feeling that...there's no-one there, no-one is coming, no-one cares. It feels like I am a young child scared in bed, who is very used to being left alone. That's probably the part of me that is triggered. My head hurts from this and my heart aches for this lack of care and love. It feels so difficult and scary and I don't feel rooted or secure in anything or anyone.

[Hope67]

Hi Holidayay,
I hope that when you read this reply that you're feeling a bit better, and that the horrible experiences you had last night are in the past again.  I relate to that feeling of terror and abandonment - and really hope that you are feeling something better now - and I wanted to send you a hug of support, if that feels ok to receive 
Hope 

[Papa Coco]

Oh how I hate those kinds of mornings. I agree with Hope, it's a feeling of terror and abandonment. I don't always know why it comes over me.

I also hope that you are feeling better by now. I hope the feeling didn't last too long.

[holidayay]

Thank you  I do feel better thankfully 

I had therapy on Thursday after a 2-week hiatus, which really helped too. I discussed that morning feeling and explored it a bit.
Work has been interesting. I've been there 2 and a half weeks now. In a psychiatric in-patient ward. We have a mixed bag of patients and the job is definitely rewarding and at times challenging. There is one patient in particular who triggers all of us...he can be very cruel and scathing in his remarks to staff, always honing in on people's vulnerabilities and attacking. Needless to say, he does remind me of my upbringing. The cruel jibes at home, at school, the lack of empathy and getting his kicks out of getting a reaction. Its been interesting to come face to face with this again, it made me realise how far I've come. The first 2 days were tough, I felt quite helpless at times and quick to feel the sting of his comments, and back to feeling shame and worthless. But then I spoke about it with my mentor, and he suggested the whole ward have a meeting to discuss his impact on us and that was SO helpful. It made it difficult to personalise after that, we all had basically a group therapy session where we discussed what he had said to us, and how it made us feel, and how to best approach him. It felt so good to be able to put words to things and to have another reality in which others lived where being a recipient of cruel jibes wasn't 'just what I deserved' or how life just IS. In a way, it felt like a part of the helpless child in me healed a little bit from feeling so helpless against such a narcissistic character.
We also discussed what might be causing him to be so unkind and that helped too. I don't believe in excusing cruel behaviour, and we also said strict boundaries are necessary, so none of us how to tolerate it, but i also approached him with some kindness - until the cruel comments would start up - and there was some shifts with him. He has been less cruel the past few days and even made a few nice comments of support when another patient became aggressive and scared all the staff.

Yesterday, we had a 'Galentine's' dinner with the bridal hen party of my friend, and though i had finished late from a very chaotic shift, I pushed myself to go and it was really good fun! It was in a beautiful restaurant where the food was divine and the my friend had got each of us personalised cards and gifts with sweet messages to each of us. She amazes me at how much capacity for love she has, and how she approaches life with such intentions for goodness. I feel quite lucky to have her in my life.

And now its finally the weekend so I will be relaxing a lot! And hope to do some household chores and maybe go out for a nice walk and treat myself to a coffee and a pastry. I have lots of cute independent cafes around my area, so I might have a stroll and just have a day of good self care.

I hope everyone else is having a lovely weekend 

[holidayay]

I wok up early this morning with very emotional, sad dreams. And I was able to comfort myself, which I haven't been able to for a long time. That feels like a win 

[holidayay]

I'm having a full day of self care today.
I caught a bug at work yesterday and became really unwell during my shift. I'm not sure exactly why it triggered some kind of deep emotional flashback, but I ended up running to hide in the office to cry. Maybe it got me panicked because when I was younger, if I was ill, my mum would get angry and put out and never look after me and I felt so alone with my illness and no-one there to look after me. I felt really scared and didn't know what to do yesterday. My colleagues were really nice and looked after me, took my temperature and insisted I go home.
When I got home, that awful abandonment feeling came on so strongly, I rang my friend and just cried. It was such an intense terror, I felt like the loneliest person in the world. I rang my friend's dad after, who stayed on the phone with me for ages until I felt sleepy. And this morning, I tried to look after myself, and do for myself what i guess my mum neglected from doing for me when i was young and sick...I had a hot bath, drank lots of water and made a healthy breakfast. I chopped garlic and mixed it with yoghurt, my mum used to say garlic has anti-inflammatory effects. Then I just put on some comfort tv, filled a hot water bottle and slept on the sofa, and my cat came to join me.

I'm a bit shaken up by it all. I don't know why something as ordinary as being ill with a virus sent me spiralling so much. So many of my friends have been ill recently and when they tell me they're stuck at home with a bug, it just sounds ordinary yet my nervous system goes into such overdrive when it happens to me. I can't believe how scared, alone and anxious I felt yesterday. I felt like I was the only person left on the planet, and there was only horror and despair everywhere. Maybe it was an emotional flashback to being chronically ignored and neglected or otherwise yelled at for being a burden and an inconvenience and somehow so inherently shameful. Its so scary.

[Armee]

 

I'm sorry you are sick and feeling so very alone.  Everything you said makes sense, that this would be quite a trigger for you, given how you were treated and were not cared for as a child. Poor little holidayyay. 

I'm so glad you were able to be kind and take care of  yourself and reach out for help. 

[holidayay]

Thank you Armee, your kind words really help and are soothing for me 

Day 2 of being unwell was a bit better...I made sure to drink fluids often, and stayed cosy on the couch watching a show on Netflix called Next in Fashion, which got me hooked. Its really interesting to see the designs at the end of each episode and something light-hearted was much needed!

It did bring back some weird flashbacks. Feeling guilty and deserving of wantig/buying clothes for myself. My mum, for some reason, would never really bother to do that. Or sometimes, she would. She never bothered to buy us correct uniform or had clothes we wanted to wear day to day. We often looked unkempt, if I'm being honest. When I grew up and wanted to buy my own clothes, that made it a huge deal and to this day, my stomach swirls thinking about clothes. I felt guilty for wanting to spend money on them and for wanting to feel and look good and presentable. Like it made her feel bad and uncomfortable, and somehow...poor her. Whereas she was more comfortable seeing me dressed in clothes that weren't even the right size or shape or sometimes not even womenswear at all! My sisters and I suspected that she always hated seeing females looking good, for various reasons. She was oppressed herself and didn't bother with her appearance and had put on quite a lot of weight and it perhaps made he insecure to see women being confident and unapologetic about their neat presentation. It mad her lash out and call me horrible names if i wore what i wanted. I used to have to go shopping in secret and dreaded her finding them. I feel anxious and thinking about this...my heart would pound so hard when i did buy and bring home my own clothes. I'd feel a mix of panic and terror and GUILT. The guilt was awful, like i was the cause of her sadness and unhappiness with my own needs and wants and desires and sometimes i would even focus on NOT wanting anything and also try to be unhappy and miserable so maybe she could at least be happy too and then we could bond and it would make sense...
And it never did.

Because it is all nonsense. That's what children of these parents are dealing with and trying to make sense of - non-sense. This labouring under a completely fruitless and illogical parental dictatorship...just to win basic love and acceptance and safety and emotional nurturance. It makes me both angry and scared and lost, to be honest.

Its so hard to process yet more of this stuff. It still feels so raw. Or maybe it feels raw right now because I am vulnerable with my illness...but either way, it makes me so angry at what i toiled under, and for no meaningful cause. I'm angry at how much i miss out on: not the material things, but the emotional freedom to be myself, to feel worthy and deserving, including of normal everyday things like the other girls my age LIKE CLOTHES, and to have a parent who doesn't want to ruin my experience and enjoyment of life with constant guilt-trips, threats, degrading and belittling comments, and zero emotional safety.

I

[holidayay]

I just slept  total of 5 hours with no dreams or scary feelings waking me up. It has been a while since I have rested like this! I feel cosy and warm instead of dysregulated and alone and depressed.

It has been a busy few weeks. I've had quite a lot of life admin to do - things like renewing my passport, sorting out household bills, booking in for a doctor's appointment and finally today after much procrastination, I crossed the last of my to-do list.

Other than that, I have been working quite a lot to try to save. Mostly to make sure I can give myself a real break from the risk of what i can financial flight-or-fight mode. Where expenses can suddenly shoot up for whatever reason, or I want to do something that may cost quite a bit of money - and then I end up going back living pay check to pay
check, which is incredibly stressful and anxiety-inducing, never mind if you add CPTSD on top of it. Especially with Spring coming and then the summertime where it will be really nice to be able to do lots of fun things with friends and not be too limited by money. That's my aim for this year, really. To have a bit more fun and new experiences. I love the summertime, I always feel able to be a bit happier during it.

I have also been mindful to keep up with friends more, even when I didn't necessarily feel like it and just wanted to self isolate...I saw my friend last weekend and though i did feel numb and dissociated some of the time, I tried to remember it is OK to still feel at odds, and not to panic. We did a little bike ride home and that was really fun, really freeing...it actually inspired me to buy a new bike! It will be delivered tomorrow afternoon, so I'm quite excited to add that to my life. I'll now be able to cycle to and from work as well, which will be much nicer than getting the bus and hopefully the exercise will be good, too. I'm still trying to lose the extra weight I put on whilst I was incredibly depressed and stressed. I've been good at walking to work which takes about 40 minutes, but I'm still eating quite a lot of bad food, which I'm in the process of slowly adopting to a better diet.
Baby steps. Sometimes I get so harsh with myself though and feel bad about the dinner I ate, or not making much more of an effort to eat less, or healthier...but I should be kind to myself. I'm trying, everyday, and I think its okay to say I'm doing pretty well in other areas of life, all things considered, and maybe its time to be gentle and kind and compassionate to myself instead of the years of harsh judgement and criticism I've lived under.
(That feels nice to even just type out for myself  )

I hope everyone else is doing well out there 

[holidayay]

Why is life so unforgiving?
Everything feels so meaningless to me these days. Everyone is settled, and married, with roots and friendships and long term connections and whilst they were building all those things, all i remember doing is just trying to survive. It feels like a sick joke. Now that I have survived and want to join the pack, everyone else has already been there, done that. Long since settled and moved on beyond this stage of life. Their doors are closed and their journeys now different.
I feel like I've been left behind.
I'm struggling to understand the point of anything. Just a continuous hamster wheel ride with no destination.

[holidayay]

Feels like it's been a while since I've written in here.

Things have been going well, I think.
Its strange; sometimes the better and calmer things are going, the more chaotic my mind gets. I've been having extensive, detailed, vivid dreams consistently. Not recurring. Just very detailed plot-lines that are fast paced and intricate.
I'm not sure why. My gut is telling me its because I am processing a lot. My old life becomes further and further away, the longer I stick with healing. And in some ways, it is still perplexing.
How I used to have fun, how I used to experience 'reward system' in my brain, how I used to live constantly in cognitive dissonance and automatically feeling the other person is more important in any given situation...all of that is no longer my default psyche. Its freeing yet terrifying. To have to re-learn and get used to the new ways....
Actually, the more I heal, the more shocked I am at my old reality. How I was raised by a mum who essentially, a petulant, disturbed child. Who failed me in every way. Who knew about abuse happening to me, and never protected me. And was a staunch denier and gas-lighter when I broke free and spoke up. I don't feel anything towards her; no attachment at all now.
Weirdly, a patient at work who have a habit of sitting and observing approached me last week and said 'the girl who is attached to no-one. You know what I am talking about.'
I have no idea why he came to this conclusion. Or how. But its true. I don't. I don't feel anything towards my original assigned care-givers. I used to feel anxiety, guilt, shame and duty. Now I feel nothing.
I don't even know if I feel towards the people in my present life who are wonderful and who show me a true love and nurturance. I have moments where I do. And then, I don't know. Maybe I am still learning and adjusting. Maybe I'll never get there - that's what terrifies me. If I am too far gone. Too 'damaged'? I hate that word.  A patient used it to describe himself last week and I could see how wrong he was; how no-one is 'damaged goods' as he described himself. And yet, its harder to see for ourselves.

[Papa Coco]

Good to hear from you again Holidayay.

That's a powerful statement you make about how the calmer your life gets the more chaotic your mind becomes. I can relate. This might be one of those phenomena that makes so many people undermine or sabotage their own happiness.

In my own narcissistic family and religious upbringing, the most dangerous thing I could do was become successful or happy. My family and church would tear me down and "put me in my place" if I ever expressed any positive self-esteem. Therefore, my life has had many instances where I could have really succeeded at joy, but I "somehow" neurotically sabotaged my own happiness before it could flourish. I didn't understand the chaos, so I did what I had to do to calm it down.

The truth was the chaos was good. Happiness had "shaken my inner snow globe".  But whenever I'd make some negative move to calm the chaos by giving up the happiness, I'd call it "being comfortably uncomfortable" in the way things have always been. I assume it's partly why people who win lotteries or receive cash windfalls explode with joy, and then proceed to destroy their own lives with the money. It's too uncomfortable to finally be happy.

I wonder if your inner chaos, as uncomfortable as it feels, is a sign that some things are going your way now. I like what you say that your old life is fading further and further away. That's a positive forward motion. In my own world, that would cause some inner chaos for me. It's a bad feeling but maybe a good sign.

Someone once told me about the "tall poppy syndrome" where a farmer might have a field of poppies. Every poppy is the exact same height. But if one poppy grows taller than the rest, that farmer cuts it off so all the poppies remain at the same height. My family was like that with me. My siblings were allowed to be happy. But if I became happy, they cut me down. Today, I still have a lot of inner chaos if life gets too easy.

Cars were a big deal to us boys in the 1970s. When I got my first high paying job, the first thing I bought was an expensive car. I was 18 years old and finally scored my brand new Trans Am. I absolutely loved that car, but only 8 months into owning it I was so mentally screwed up by feeling like I didn't deserve it, that I traded it in for a tiny little economy car. Driving a car that felt I didn't deserve had me ashamed of myself and chaotically nervous. So I "cut myself back down to size" and traded it in for an underpowered, boring car instead. I didn't like the smaller car, but it calmed my nerves to not be the tall poppy anymore. I became comfortably uncomfortable in my boring car. No more inner chaos.

Today I see that inner chaos as a sign that things are going my way right now. My therapist has taught me to accept the chaos and let it be uncomfortable until the neuro pathways rewire so I don't have to cut myself back down to size. He refers to my Trans Am story often. He says "let's deal properly with the inner chaos so you don't have to 'sell the Trans Am' this time." He tells me to call him if it gets too uncomfortable so he can help me get through the chaos without having to resort to self-sabotage.

[holidayay]

Good to hear from you again Holidayay.

That's a powerful statement you make about how the calmer your life gets the more chaotic your mind becomes. I can relate. This might be one of those phenomena that makes so many people undermine or sabotage their own happiness.

In my own narcissistic family and religious upbringing, the most dangerous thing I could do was become successful or happy. My family and church would tear me down and "put me in my place" if I ever expressed any positive self-esteem. Therefore, my life has had many instances where I could have really succeeded at joy, but I "somehow" neurotically sabotaged my own happiness before it could flourish. I didn't understand the chaos, so I did what I had to do to calm it down.

The truth was the chaos was good. Happiness had "shaken my inner snow globe".  But whenever I'd make some negative move to calm the chaos by giving up the happiness, I'd call it "being comfortably uncomfortable" in the way things have always been. I assume it's partly why people who win lotteries or receive cash windfalls explode with joy, and then proceed to destroy their own lives with the money. It's too uncomfortable to finally be happy.

I wonder if your inner chaos, as uncomfortable as it feels, is a sign that some things are going your way now. I like what you say that your old life is fading further and further away. That's a positive forward motion. In my own world, that would cause some inner chaos for me. It's a bad feeling but maybe a good sign.

Someone once told me about the "tall poppy syndrome" where a farmer might have a field of poppies. Every poppy is the exact same height. But if one poppy grows taller than the rest, that farmer cuts it off so all the poppies remain at the same height. My family was like that with me. My siblings were allowed to be happy. But if I became happy, they cut me down. Today, I still have a lot of inner chaos if life gets too easy.

Cars were a big deal to us boys in the 1970s. When I got my first high paying job, the first thing I bought was an expensive car. I was 18 years old and finally scored my brand new Trans Am. I absolutely loved that car, but only 8 months into owning it I was so mentally screwed up by feeling like I didn't deserve it, that I traded it in for a tiny little economy car. Driving a car that felt I didn't deserve had me ashamed of myself and chaotically nervous. So I "cut myself back down to size" and traded it in for an underpowered, boring car instead. I didn't like the smaller car, but it calmed my nerves to not be the tall poppy anymore. I became comfortably uncomfortable in my boring car. No more inner chaos.

Today I see that inner chaos as a sign that things are going my way right now. My therapist has taught me to accept the chaos and let it be uncomfortable until the neuro pathways rewire so I don't have to cut myself back down to size. He refers to my Trans Am story often. He says "let's deal properly with the inner chaos so you don't have to 'sell the Trans Am' this time." He tells me to call him if it gets too uncomfortable so he can help me get through the chaos without having to resort to self-sabotage.

I can relate to this so much. Really moved by your message, and metaphors. Thank you. And reading it, I really felt for you, and your story of the Trans Am. You deserve to enjoy life and successes in a way that isn't dictated by the 'tall poppy syndrome'. Your therapist sounds great, I so hope that the discomfort transforms for you, and for all of us.
It resonated so much when you described feeling ashamed and chaotically uncomfortable when moving beyond the requirement to make ourselves small. I have felt this too. I remember buying a coat I really wanted, that I thought looked very sophisticated. It was a bit more expensive that what I was used to feeling deserving of, and i felt ashamed wearing it every time. And like everyone was thinking: 'who does she think she is?' and then this urge to take it off and appear scruffy, with less nice clothing. I still wore it a few times and then ended up selling it. There was almost a sigh of relief when I didn't have it anymore, so I didn't have to deal with the cognitive dissonance the chaos made me feel.
I'm learning to deal with this too. And I loved your analogy of the snow globe being shaken up and waiting for it to settle again - i think that describes the process perfectly!
I also find myself yearning to go to places I was when I was still living in uncomfortable transitions - not my childhood home, but places I lived in when i hadn't eve started healing yet and i didn't really have much insight. Though it was painful, there was some kind of simplicity to life as I knew it that I miss so much. I want to visit those places so bad, to re-capture some of those old feelings. My rational mind is telling me it won't feel like that anymore. But the nostalgia is so strong.

[Papa Coco]

I resonate with your sentiments about revisiting places from your past. They say "You can't go back home" because, even in healthier situations, time changes things. Home is more a place in our hearts than a place on a map.

I was two years old when my parents built their house. They died in it 50 years later. I lived in that town for 30 years. Now, I need GPS just to find it. Once small streets with 4-way stop signs are now freeways surrounded by big box stores and high rise mega-apartment complexes.

Emotionally, things change too. I was so used to being the family's embarrassment, that to me, "going back home" means going back to believing that their conditional, narcissistic love was all I deserved.  While I often feel the nostalgic need to be that abused boy again, what I've learned after 40 years of therapy, a hundred self-help books, and this forum have rendered me unable to fully embrace that old feeling again. Even in my own mind and heart, it's becoming difficult to return home, even when I feel like I want to.

Estranging in 2010 was the right thing to do. My life depended on it. I was so suicidal by the end that estranging was the ONLY thing to do. But still. Every now and then I remember some laughs. And for a few moments here and there I believe that I want it all back. Hense my term: Comfortably uncomfortable. 

But it passes more quickly now than it used to. As mentioned above, I know too much now.  I can't unlearn the therapy. I can't forget anymore that they were narcissistic monsters merely disguised as a loving family. Wolves in sheep's clothing. I can't be tricked by sociopaths anymore. Home is gone. And at 62 years of age, I'm finally accepting that.

In many ways, it's an Identity Crisis:

It's difficult to move past long term childhood abuse. Part of me is begging to forget it all while other parts fear that forgetting will delete me off the face of the earth. If I forget it, then perhaps my own identity will die with the memories. Who will I be if I'm not who I once was? Just imagining forgetting it brings a vision of all my molecules losing their bond and scattering irreversibly into outer space like a billion droplets of mist dispersing from a popped balloon. My therapist calls it "Fear of Annihilation" Annihilation is far more terrifying than just dying. It's a sense of having never existed at all.

Maybe that's part of why we are comfortably uncomfortable in the memories of our nasty pasts. Because if we forget what happened, does that mean we're erasing our own inner child?

Today, I sometimes allow myself to indulge in feeling like I'm still the abused little guy again. It was horrible, but it was who I was. The pain that I endured made me more compassionate to others who suffer similar fates. I don't ever want to stop being compassionate to other victims. Fortunately, my neural pathways seem to finally be finding new routes from there to here. These days I'm trapped in being the abused boy again for shorter bursts with longer spaces between. Often, by allowing myself to be the abused boy for a few minutes at a time sort of lets me keep him alive. I haven't erased my inner child, but I'm letting him rest for longer periods of time.

Perhaps he and I are beginning to forget (or possibly even forgive?) the bulk of what he went through.

More safe, virtual hugs from me to you. I hope you can feel them.

[holidayay]

We had  a patient with borderline personality disorder who we have just been able to discharge, yesterday, though there was no clinical indication for him to be admitted under our specialty in the first place.
He has spent the past 4 weeks terrorising staff, other patients, and then became fixated on me. The Splitting was horrifying. He would go from demanding lots of attention, and trying to push it as far as possible with inappropriate, lewd comments, to despising me if I didn't respond to him and screaming obscenities at me. He had more daily chaotic episodes and outbursts requiring us to call the response team/police than any other patient. People I am working with who have done this job for 16 years said they have never been as affected by a patient as they have with him. He declared yesterday HE was in charge, not the senior doctor, and then started his outburst again.

My nervous system has been in overdrive over the last week. As soon as I see him, my heart starts pounding, my hands shaking, and my thoughts racing. When I sleep, I dream of the ward and all the shouting. The poor older ladies have been terrified and one said it has worsened her blood pressure and she is now thinking of quitting.

We all breathed a huge sigh of relief when he was discharged and left. Reports are that he is making threats to return, and I am dreading returning this morning and seeing him back there, the ward up in arms. Our consultant put in strict notes that this patient is not to be re-admitted, under any circumstances.

This has been such a huge eye-opener for how much more empowering it is as an adult when faced with dysfunctional people: you can choose not to engage in their taunting, you can walk away, you can request help. My whole team and I have supported each other through the process and last week, a few of us just had joined therapy with our on-site therapist and man, it makes me even more compassinate to what a lot of us on here had to go through. To witness this...a few weeks of constant stress and anxiety over a harmful person's behaviour to affect everyone else was challenging enough - and doing so with support and having agency....compared to surviving a childhood of constant nervous system activation ALONE. And here we all, trying our best. Writing about it, going to therapy, working on building new better patterns.....it makes me feel proud of us on this website. Its really not easy, at all.