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Thank you all, NK, san and Hope

Unfortunately that didn't last too long. Slept most of yesterday. I was tired, having finally thoroughly tidied and cleaned my bedroom the day before   (except for the tops of 2 smaller bits of furniture and the window.) Still, it's a massive difference!

Today's difficult too. It's noon and I haven't made it permanently out of bed yet, just keep going back. Have back ache too, lying in bed is not helping!

  

Just on briefly because it's good for me to note when things are going well too!

I'm simply able to get far more done at the moment (by my standards) and I'm also simply able to get up in the morning w/o needing to muster something or other up.

Tuesday I got a lot of laundry done and hung out to dry, knowing that from today onwards rain was coming. Tuesday I also went picking mirabelle plums in an elderly friend's garden. He has far more fruit now than he can manage to eat day-to-day and preserve for the winter. He actually likes people to come and pick his fruit. I invited another friend of mine to come and pick too. Her pension is small, so she was happy, and it's a nice way for me to socialise a little w/o things becoming intense.

Today I was cutting out the bad bits of the fruit and stewing them. Also made myself a vegetable soup with veg that needed to be used up. This is all stuff that has been close to impossible for weeks, maybe even months. Then I washed a pile of dishes, pots, tubs etc. It wasn't an effort to wash dishes today, though it has been since I moved over 2 years ago. Ditto putting a CD on and singing along with it while working in kitchen.   

   for a few hours in afternoon because I was actually tired, but got back up again in the early evening, refreshed and eager to get back to household jobs.

This morning I also did a bit of gardening, communal stuff, but not too hard or physically demanding.

But the retreat will be good and I'll come home with clarity in certain areas of my life and with renewed direction and oomph to keep going.

This is exactly what happened
I'm getting on quite well with practical stuff, tho still needing breaks and rest.
I'll be taking a break from the forum and most other internet stuff in the next days.

Thank you DesertFlower
 Yes, I'm very stressed, so have come on here briefly. That helps me regulate a bit. Tho there are slightly more difficult self-regulation methods which would work better. I'm so tired... Have got lots done today, but there's more to do.

The retreat is likely to be very helpful, but also very intense. I do know both therapists, but the venue is new. I may discover I've been with 1 or 2 participants in previous retreats years ago or I may know none of them.

But the retreat will be good and I'll come home with clarity in certain areas of my life and with renewed direction and oomph to keep going.
 

Signed up for another freebie conference, Rewiring Your Brain (I put the link here: https://www.cptsd.org/forum/index.php?topic=16880.msg154856#new in case anybody is interested). Anyway I've watched 2 sessions today. They both helped me perk up a little. Maybe I'll watch some tomorrow too, idk yet.

The day after tomorrow (Thurs) I'm going on a healing retreat for 4 days and won't be on the forum. I might not be on the forum tomorrow either, because I tend to get a bit stressed before I go away and also stressed about packing the necessary stuff, and then stay up till 2am with train departure at 6am - not the best.

I know I owe a few replies on the forum, mostly on my Parts Therapy thread and my Therapy on Primal Wound thread. In fact, I even want to respond, but I think I'm likely to put them off till next week.

1) I tidied a shelf that runs the length of my bed  (it was very full)
2) Having tidied that shelf, I found one of my living-with-cptsd books that is specially helpful when it's hard to keep going
3) Some of those things on the shelf went straight in the garbage
4) I collected a bunch of stuff off the floor and a chest in my bedroom and put it all away
5) I did a load of laundry quite early and hung that outside to dry in the sun.

https://www.rewiringyourbrainworldsummit.com/


As always: These types of conferences and summits are always free during the conference. Once you sign up, you'll get a fair number of emails suggesting you pay for permanent access. That's really not necessary. The material gets recycled - it'll come up in another conference/summit in a few months!

+ see my post here for additional general info: https://www.cptsd.org/forum/index.php?topic=16458.0

Welcome to the forum, Flutterby

It's a very supportive place here, I hope you find that too.

A good place to write your story is on Journals https://www.cptsd.org/forum/index.php?board=61.0 You can write as much or as little as you want. Also, just put in trigger warnings to let other mbrs know when you're going to write something potentially triggering, maybe that can help you not worry too much about others? Just thinking of your empathy sensitivity. 
 
It could be that there are fewer forum mbrs to have experienced online bullying than bullying by their families or back in childhood at school or at work all face-to-face, but bullying is bullying and relentlessly for 6 months sounds awful. I'm sorry you've been going through that. I've found that even with my most outlandish seeming symptoms or experiences or feelings that there's usually at least one mbr on the forum who can relate.

I second Armee.

I guess some of my own reticence comes from not knowing if I feel 'ready' to watch it - but at the same time, I am wondering if I would be missing out on some learning perspectives if I didn't watch it.

In my experience, I will come across the learning perspectives in a different context when I'm ready. I hope the same goes for you to Hope.

 

I think maybe partially at least because well for me it seems that each "part" also has its own parts. 

tbh I don't think I've noticed anything like my Parts having Parts of their own. Maybe that's a difference between DID and OSDD?

It's just more about getting parts to share with me and for me to form connections with trauma parts.

Yes, I think that's the most important thing with Parts work - well at least mine too and obviously yours. Might be different for other people. So maybe also less about the exact method of getting there? IFS is one theory, but there are others that might work better for other people? Just musing.

I had intensive contact with Inner Child Parts who contained strong 'positive' characteristics. They didn't seem to be holding trauma. Earlier attempts of mine (or therapists' attempts with me) to 'contact' Inner Children had brought up far too much - like inner children out of control. It was just too early. Later after intensive work with these ICs - often just letting them be, allowing myself to observe them in my mind, but also following their actions with my own adult body, like dancing around in a circle and then lying down to rest (because physically so exhausted) while my two partners in this small group work sat there watching me, holding a safe space.

And if anybody asks: What? Where? How do I find this type of therapy? I don't think it exists anymore. It developed through the work of 2 and then 3 private therapists who ran retreats in my country. They never wrote a book about it or taught it to other practitioners (though I think their work and experience did 'rub off' on fellow therapists who were loosely connected to them professionally). I remember one of the 3 was invited to speak at a trauma therapy conference and she asked various of her clients like me if we could write about various impressions of her work so she could let us speak from practice at the conference. I can't remember her exact questions but I was delighted to be able to help in this way. And then her participation in the conference was cut out at short notice, so we weren't actually ever heard. It was a shame, but also maybe 'good' to know good methods and good works in any field go under the radar if somebody doesn't have the time, energy, money and/or connections to promote them. The other speaker at the conference was (is still) well-known here for her trauma work and for her methods. But for whatever reason her work is only just being translated for the English-speaking world but whether anything will come out of it, whether practitioners will want to use it and develop it further - there I have no idea.

People with IFS background might say that those out of control seeming ICs were firefighters or whatever and their role was xyz but I suppose my point is: I don't need to learn another classification system and differing theories since I've experienced a different one multiple times in intensive group therapy and moreover one that makes sense to me. Possibly also  one that went far, far deeper since body work came into too. Body work in a re-parenting nurturing kind of way. Plus other.

Those 2 original private therapists emphasised how much children learn with and through their bodies, they meant in a positive way for the reparenting, nurturing work, but they knew quite well how many of us had learnt a lot of bad stuff through our bodies too, and even if that meant 'only' spending years in Freeze in addition to ... That connection just occured to me while writing. During the actual retreats on inner child work they wouldn't have spelled out that duality because they were providing a safe space for us to heal. For anybody reading, the message might be - be open to spaces and places of healing that you might come across even if they're not the ones everybody 'knows' or the accredited ones - so long as you can feel and sense that it's a good place. Reminder just as much to myself atm for continuing what I know to be helpful even if psych doc doesn't understand.

1) Took my meds
2) Went into town centre shopping etc and bumped into various friends and acquaintances for a chat
3) Sorted out a difficult problem with my discount railcard by asking at the train station for them to do it on their computer, which they did quickly and easily. So now I can use it again!
4) Finally contacted some people giving away a small raised bed for the garden to see if they'd be willing to bring it to me by car for some money
5) I mowed my part of the lawn with my slightly defective push-mower, but I prefer it to LL's battery-powered thing

[san]

These are all interesting responses to my post, san, NK and asdis. Lots to think about. I'm not even going to attempt a discussion response yet, need to let things sift a bit further thru my brain. 

One thing of kindness to myself today - rn I'm wearing a wet cloth around my neck to help me cool off

Ditto today

1) Took my meds
2) Went food shopping
3) Ate more than yesterday, which was a good idea
4) Did a load of laundry in the morning
5) Finally hung the laundry out in the evening