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I don't have the time or energy to word a letter so lobbing a couple of hand grenades at FOO  one each to the major parties.

Was so angry last night at all the injustice done to me by FOO I could n't sleep properly and now I need to prepare for a client.

for anybody for whom financial dependence on FOO is a topic, or for people who - yikes - even still have to live with FOO, or have had to go back to doing so, some of what I wrote / vented here http://outofthefog.net/C-PTSD/forum/index.php?topic=8150.0 might be relevant.

I don't know how long I'll leave it up because not the best if FOO read it and recognised me .... Having said that, I usually end up leaving my posts up anyway. 

[no fit state]

Blank. I can't face it. But I need to. It's about money.

F,
You asked last time you wrote how my pets are. I don't have them any more. Before you finally got round to letting me know how much money I might inherit, I gave them away. Although money wasn't the most important issue, it was part of it. The other issue was not having enough energy.

Not having enough energy for them doesn't bode well for me ever having enough energy to work enough to support myself. I appreciate that you were willing to tell me how much money, since M apparently isn't, at least that's what you wrote. Please note that it is important for me to know amounts! Otherwise I might make other decisions, like move to a much worse but cheaper place or give up freelance work all for the sake of saving what is little money in the grand scheme of things but particularly little money seen in context of our FOO and what's available. Giving up eg. freelance work before I am ready is akin to pulling the rug out from under my own feet, which done too early will be destabilising.

You say you care about me. Good, this is a test. If I let you know how angry I am at your treatment of me, at M's, at the Bs', will you cut me off or continue to support me? I can hear you saying "Don't be so ridiculous! Of course we'll still support you." But I'm not being ridiculous. I genuinely don't know. You said ten years ago that money is no-strings-attached. But I honestly don't know. So I don't dare to say what I think. I don't dare to go NC.

BTW if you and M had thought to put me in my own place last time instead of squashed in with B2 and family, possibly none of this would ever have happened! Possibly we would have had an OK family holiday without SIL2 dumping her vitriol on me that she can't dump on M, though that's certainly partially where it belongs, because the powers-that-be in FOO don't allow that. But dumping it on me? No problem. Even though M admitted herself that I was in no fit state to have that dumped on me. But she doesn't see the connect that it gets dumped on me because YOU, F, are preventing it getting dumped on her.

Not having enough energy also doesn't bode well for me ever being healthy, which I told you and M last time I was over. Possibly you didn't take that seriously, since you seem to tend not to, thinking I'm exaggerating. I wasn't. I am deadly serious.


__________________________________

I realise while I write this that some of the info needs to go to my parents, or maybe just F - he will pass the salient points on to M after all and I'll just "get in trouble" as usual if I allow her to be aware of things he doesn't want her to be aware of e.g. he gave me an estimate of the amount i'll inherit.

But some of the info I'm just venting and ranting and it shouldn't go to F at all.

I also know that some people on here and probably even more on OOTF would recommend I do without the inheritance and go on welfare. While I'm also looking into that and what exactly that might all entail, there are definitely downsides to that. Along the lines of pulling the rug out from under my own feet too early. Letting go of non-financial supports like having access to a nearby garden. It needs to be nearby or I won't go out of the house and weed it and sow seeds and pick flowers and edible weeds. It's hard enough to 'keep going' or to want to do so not having my Little Furry Creatures.

Antoher non-financial support I'd have to let go of with less money is: my local environs, e.g. by moving to a different town or even a different part of town where rents are lower. Would mean keeping contact with local people and local institutions that much harder. Going out of the house and communicating with people is hard enough as is without making it a bus ride away. Even getting up the energy and courage to go into a different church, rather than the one round the corner, might be too much... And the point is: FOO has money coming out of its ears. My sibs certainly don't need what would be my share.

[this is a manipulation used to get us to do what they want rather than what we want]

Rather than hijack PeTe's thread, I copied sanmagic's response over here because some of it really speaks to me:

unfortunately, to my mind, this is a manipulation used to get us to do what they want rather than what we want. 

i'm very sorry you've experienced this from such a young age, had it ingrained in you for most all your life.  you absolutely have a right to your boundaries, no matter what anyone says.  using suicide as a damocles' sword is terrible. 

B2 forbade me from ever mentioning to M that I see various of her actions towards me as a child as CSA. (I told the Bs before the advent of grandchildren so that the Bs could protect their children from it.) B2 forbade it in case M committed suicide! I think the idea of her doing that is laughable, it just so doesn't fit any other of her behaviour. She'd just say I was being crazy, making things up etc etc. But to B I just said I thought it was unlikely, and he countered with "but it's possible".

So lightbulb on now with san's post: B2 was getting me to do what he wanted: not talk about it otherwise in FOO. And he was also implying that M's well-being is more important than mine.  Did anybody in FOO never think that I might have problems with suicidal thoughts?? No. B1 opined once that suicide is a selfish act while I sat there thinking that what your FOO says and does to drive you there is maybe actually the selfish act. Don't anybody get me wrong please! I'm not saying anybody should commit suicide but B2 here was just doing a blatant perpetrator / victim switch, which I didn't really notice much at the time, just accepted it as the way things had to be if I wanted contact with my Bs. I was probably still NC with my M and F (for the first time around) at that point. I do have suicide ideation, though now much reduced. Not that FOO knows that because I don't talk about it. Once again I'm speechless versus FOO.   

these are just my thoughts, my opinions.  i don't mean to be harsh - i just know how much suffering goes on when someone believes they have to deny what feels right for themselves because someone else has issues that they're not resolving. 

It doesn't sound harsh to me, san. I'm realising bit by bit how much I've suffered over the years due to denying myself what feels right to me, or worse even denying myself the opportunity to try and feel what's right for me, because the rest of FOO has issues they're not resolving. So not even someone, but M, F, B1, B2 and SIL2. Five people. And while they were still alive, the three grandparents I knew, even the one who tried to support me, she had issues too. It's hard to say that, I feel disloyal. But to become a fully-functioning independent adult I would have needed to Idk exactly feel able to say what I felt or set boundaries without being fearful of what she might say. Though come to think of it, I could do that far better with her than with M or F.
And also another relative of same generation as my grandparents. She and GrM helped me, but also believed that their ways of seeing relationships within my FOO and 'my blame' within it all were correct (they didn't discuss with each other obviously because they didn't see the issue the same way). There wasn't any idea that I would be allowed to set boundaries myself. Somebody would do it for me. I was in my early 20s at the time. What were they thinking??  but also 

Another situation (other than friendships) in which I'm speaking my mind is the farm. Strictly speaking, I'm working there for friends. I certainly don't have a contract of any sort. Which is good since I didn't turn up at all last Friday. No show when you're officially employed is bad. I didn't realise till a few days later why I hadn't gone: one of the people on the farm ( we'll call her 'B')  tried to take one of my tasks away from me last week. Not so she could do it herself but so that 'C' could do it instead because it is C's job.

I broached that topic to C but in front of B on Monday.  Yay for me, big step.
C, it turns out, actually loves it when I come and do that particular job. B hastily re-explained making it out that I'd misunderstood something, but actually I hadn't. I've been remembering that B has habit of stirring the pot in this way. What got triggered for me was: "you're not wanted" and "you're in the way", some popular sayings from M and B1 to me. No wonder I remained in bed on Friday and didn't go to the farm!

In a 'real' job with a contract I'd have to turn up willy-nilly. Right now I'm remembering that my T says undealt with problems will keep returning in some form or other (addictions, pain, nightmares, illness - and I'll add huge impulse to remain hiding in bed -) until I deal with them, i.e. approach them and start healing process.

I've always been a sitting duck for thoses bosses and co-workers prone to bullying and/or prone to finding someone to blame for this or that. I was at school too. Well, I was at home so no wonder it continued in all other aspects of life. At the farm I've proved B wrong! C's more than happy for me to do this particular job. And I've shown B that I can stand up to her and will.

I'm feeling atm that I would like to try and find some pretty part time job that I'd like and that wouldn't stress me out too much, but for pay obviously, which the farm isn't. My freelance work isn't enough to support me at all, though as an additional job it would be fine. Somebody gave me an idea the other day, which I intend to pursue. But then I tend to draw back, thinking "what if I get ill again? Maybe I should wait a few months?" 

Aside from the difficulty of explaining to prospective employers what I've been doing career-wise for the past 16 years, just knowing that I tend to fall apart when bosses and/or co-workers decide to pick on somebody does rather put me off looking for a job. Last time I looked for and even got a job, the problem was that the boss and co-workers ignored me almost completely instead of showing me the job and then once they did show me seemed annoyed that I didn't get the hang of various machines quickly enough to work up to pace. If they'd showed me when things were still running slowly and I'd been able to practise without stress, I probably would have managed to work up to pace. And yes, I did keep asking: "Can you please show me?"

I have quite a lot of friends and acquaintances. I'm beginning to speak my mind instead of staying silent.

There is the friend I sent an email to recently (that's under Recovery Letters), who has decided that she'd prefer not to be friends with me if that involves "always" having to be on the lookout for triggers in her speech. She doesn't actually 'always' need to be on the lookout, she just needs to actively listen to what I say on one point, but I guess she can't.

There is another friend who I spoke to tonight, who said that the problem with hiding under the covers is you feel worse afterwards. I don't agree and said so. I don't always feel worse. Sometimes it's good for me to lie there till I feel an impulse to get up and do xy rather than forcing myself to get up and not doing anything particular, certainly not xy. We won't break our friendship over this.

My T has said before that it's important for me to do this. So I'm doing.

At the end of last week I did one more piece of contract work of the type I'm giving up for the next months. It was a particularly easy type but I still second-guessed myself all the way and had anxiety about mistakes after I'd sent it off even though I'd rechecked it several times. Today the contractor emailed me about the good work and asking what other subcategories of this type of work I do. This is the sad part: people want me to work for them but they have no idea of the amount of effort it takes me to produce this work, they have no idea that I work myself, well if not to death quite, at least into a state of complete and utter exhaustion and that I can't do this work without self-harm.

Atm it's non-negotiable, I'll be emailing that I won't be doing any more of this type of work for several months (but I'm thinking 'forever'). Thanks FOO.

I've just copied this from a post of ThreeRoses (thx 3R!) "something kept my parents in a completely enmeshed and exclusive relationship. There wasn't any room for anyone else" because it reminded me of one SIL.

Of course B is permitted to have a relationship with and marry who he likes but her behaviour towards me is strange. I don't know enough about their relationship to know if they're enmeshed and quite frankly atm don't really care, but when still in contact and in face-to-face contact if B suggested we go for a short walk together - pretty harmless activity right? - the boundary she set towards me was palpable (to me). I could feel it in the air and I'm not exaggerating. There quite obviously wasn't room for me, despite being invited along by B. I was worried what would happen if they had kids, but the boundary has been put right round them, rather than excluding them. Which is good obviously. But what's with putting up a palpable boundary to me, SIL, when invited to join briefly by B?

But I got my answer of course at the FOO blow-out. She's joined the rest of FOO in seeing me as SG and B has joined her after (pretending??) to see my side for years. I suppose they had their Last Straw moments too, but I don't see them being as quite as viable as my Last Straw moments because B is not working on FOO problems. He enables M, can't set her a boundary because that's not allowed in FOO, so sets me it instead, which has always been permitted in FOO. Before he set boundaries, SIL was doing it to me, because I guess they weren't on the same page about me. But at FOO blow-out it became apparent that they are. Which maybe sounds admirable but it would be better if they got on the same page about M and gave her her just desserts instead of SIL scapegoating me. Sometimes I did feel like saying "You know, I'm not M!" but I never did in order to "keep the peace". She used to lecture me about not doing things that she had no way of knowing whether I do them or not, just as a precaution, instead of waiting to see if I actually did them. Just because M did them.

A friend with C-PTSD phoned today. She's not a really close friend. She wanted to let me know that she'd put a letter in my letter box. Public holiday here today and tomorrow, so I wouldn't be looking in my letter box. So in her eyes it's urgent, otherwise the letter could wait till Thursday. And also it's probably something along the lines of "You hurt me then with what you said there". It is better for me when I get a letter with that type of information than a phone call. I am not averse to communicating on this type of thing i.e. on trying to clear up problems in a friendship, but now would be a bad time.

Then she proceeded to ask where we can send refugees, since she bumped into a couple outside my door when delivering the letter. So I said "Whatever Street but look I'm just back from 4 days of intensive therapy and my brain isn't functioning that well" to which she answered something like "I see, but can't you tell me where to send the refugees?" So I answered "Whatever Street and Whichever Road; Whichever Road must be quite near where you live. Whatever Street - I can't tell you where that is right now. As I said I'm just back from intensive therapy and I can't deal with this right now. I can't think. My brain and my feelings are dealing with quite other things."

So she did actually drop the subject. 

Also I felt her request inappropriate - there's a letter waiting to be read probably telling me I was hurting her or something, but then she tries to use me to get some information about something totally different. Go find somebody else to give you this information! Or check a town map, the Internet whatever!!

But then I asked her if she's sure her letter can't wait a few days! Repeated the "intensive therapy" and came back from it realising that I'd just been about to collapse, because I often don't realise that I'm on the verge of collapse in my day-to-day life. So she actually agreed that I shouldn't read her letter till I feel more stable.

I realise with that last paragraph that I'm still JADEing when I set a limit. This friend (or more likely just acquaintance really) can set limits much better towards me than I can towards her. But even while JADEing I did set a limit to protect myself, and I did find out information (the letter can wait) to give myself more time.

to myself.

Will be off-line till Monday sometime. So a long time off OOTF considering I'm here almost daily. I'll be participating in a few days of intensive group therapy, which will do me good.

I stayed in the moment a few hours ago! Some pain came up, triggered a bit by my posting on hugs. I stayed with the sadness, the pain and it passed very quickly. I had no impulse to resort to any of my unhealthy coping mechanisms.

This is the first time that I've consciously stayed in the moment outside therapy since I've consciously known about staying in the moment. I may well have done it in the past anyway, but when I consciously do some healthy coping skill, then it's much easier for me to resort to it later and begin to implement it more often.

Dear S.,

You wondered why I haven't contacted you recently, you even wondered if you'd done or said something unknowingly. Yes. That is it. I'm going to write it here in this letter that I won't send you and that you won't ever see. The anger that will be evident here is not all due to you, but you're triggering it with your behaviour. I value our friendship to some degree. I do have better friends, longer-term friends who also don't trigger me so much, but I don't want to throw everybody overboard who trigger(s) me sometimes either.

So what did you say? When I told you what that therapist you like so much did to me in the clinic, you took his part and you explained to me what you would have done in my situation. I hadn't actually asked you what you would have done. I was explaining what he did to me, which was massively triggering. You weren't even there!! But he's one of your favourite therapists, so 'obviously' I was at fault. This makes me so angry! But no, you said, you didn't tell me how I should have acted, you merely told me how you would have acted. I didn't ask you! Maybe you could just listen and say nothing! Even W., who's a fan of your fave therapist too, told you in my hearing that she didn't know what had got into this therapist that day and why he went for me in that manner. She was there, you weren't, but still you knew better. Do I go around telling you how to defend yourself in the presence of men? Or wonder out loud why you didn't manage? Or tell you when I did manage? NO. Because I know that that's your major trauma. Well, my major trauma is emotional, makes defending myself in a verbal dispute exceedingly difficult. If you can't be validating at all, then please just say nothing. 

____________--_________________________________

More of a vent than anything else, but I need a place for that too.  While I was out on my bike today, pounding the pedals up and down what I wanted to say was so clear and going on in my head. Not ruminating, just finally coming out, but it seems too early to write.
[Having written this here, I was able to continue writing the 'letter', see below.]
____________--_________________________________

I actually used to like and respect this therapist too, but I can't after what he did to me. FYI my GP helped me recover some stability by suggesting I make a symbol for each topic that was triggered by this T during that ordeal and then shut these symbols in a box. It worked too. Guess how many symbols? 15. You still want to defend a trauma-informed therapist who triggered fifteen different topics in a patient with C-PTSD (and in the trauma group) within the space of 10 minutes?? ?? "I'm not defending him, I'm just saying what I would've done in the situation." What you would have done is irrelevant. He decided to have a go at me, not anybody else. He wouldn't let go, and he wouldn't stop. So he had some purpose in mind, but God knows what it was. Recently I had an inkling of what it might have been, through something that came up in outpatient therapy. Three years later. The inkling disappeared again quickly though, meaning it was too early to remain up front. Which means it was definitely too early 3 years ago.

You mean well, I guess, but you're trying to act like a therapist towards me, and not a good one either. My present therapist waits till I signal that I'm ready for new 'topics'. He doesn't drop 5 different ones on me like a ton of bricks, or ask stupid questions, like "Why can't you act differently??"  You remind me of so many people in the past, including members of FOO, who always 'knew' better than I did about how I should be acting, and when and why. You even asked about a year ago how on earth I managed to stay in contact with FOO - rather ironic, considering you act like them in this respect.

["You are working! You are doing a full-time job, you're just not being paid for it!!"]

I remembered this morning what my Inner Child therapists told me a long time ago when I was having trouble with my I'm not really working status:
"You are working! You are doing a full-time job, you're just not being paid for it!!" Nods around the room from fellow participants. Even though most of them were probably working more or less full-time. I don't remember in detail, but there aren't usually many in these IC retreats who aren't working at least part-time.

With the added suggestion from the therapists that working with the about 10 ICs I had at that point - wow! What a load of work juggling their needs and mine (as an adult) and learning how to deal with children better than my FOO ever did. No wonder no space or energy in my life for work-for-pay. That idea then backed up by a participant, who was in Special Ed: yes, these aren't 10 'average' children, these are 10 with special needs, takes way more out of you than non-special needs children.
Even though I do realise that Inner Children aren't quite the work of external children, obviously. But still the analogy helped me.

So it is atm too and for the past couple of weeks and probably continuing into the next few weeks: my energy is going into another round of intensive healing, and that's my work. I'm not getting paid for it financially, but I need to do it and in the long run doing it will pay off, if not financially.

And although I realise there are some people on here who are managing therapy, working on themselves outside therapy and working for pay - kudos to all of you - some of us aren't. Which will have its reasons and does in my case. So thought I'd share for those in a similar position.

Since a couple of people have asked, I'll finally attempt to describe what my therapist does with me instead of EMDR. Maybe somebody'll jump up and say 'I know that too!! In English it's called...'

This is imagination work. In my imagination I place a big empty screen on the wall, then I add a picture frame on top of the screen. I describe the picture frame in detail and then I reduce it in size, in my case it's usually to about the size of a postage stamp. Then I describe what I see in the picture frame or mention who I see. If there's a problem e.g. the picture frame is not staying on the screen or it keeps enlargening or the person in it is climbing out, then I imagine barriers and helpers. Barriers can be e.g. bullet-proof glass and my helpers just turned up in my imagination. When they first come, it's important to describe them out loud. I mean, it's not so crazy, my therapist was asking me all this as I went along. 

The next step is to describe whatever it is that is connecting me to the picture in the picture frame. It can be an iron pipe or a concrete cylinder or an incredibly long blade of grass or .... And then the important step destroy the connection. This can be a magical solution, occasionally the connection has simply fallen apart when my therapist has mentioned. More often than not it's difficult. Cut it, it springs back together etc etc Sometimes I do it, sometimes one or more of the helpers do it. Sometimes I start out, and then the helpers come with extra tools or new ideas.

Once my therapist agreed with my helpers (so with my intuition) that we should leave the connection there just with reduced diameter because retaining caution around my M is good for me. The panic can go, that's fine, but caution - that's good to have around certain people.

The final step is to see if there's anything I need to heal my physical body. I mean I'll have just finished cutting or burning or shattering a huge tube or pipe connecting my chest to the picture frame. Sometimes it's good to rub some burn ointment on, or for a particular one of my helpers to come and place her angel wings around me.

Once we even had a small Inner Child in the room with us. She stayed as far away as possible from the Screen, but she wanted to be there not sent away, and my T said she should be allowed to stay. This was new for me! And so after the work itself I spent time with her.

Screen work is also used to help people describe just what happened and distance themselves from it. Before my therapist started it with me, I'd read about it - imagining a TV and a remote control so you learn control over the films in your head. You can stop it when you like, make it black and white, change channels etc etc. I'd never read that you could use single shots the way my T does with me or that you can use it to process emotions.

Recently my therapist even said that we're only processing a bit with Screen Processing. The real objective is to de-fuse the emotions so that I'm not so overcome with them that I can hardly speak, breathe, move, act.
There is more to write here, partly it's a realisation that has just come up, which I don't feel capable of expressing in any form right now.

However a note of caution: it may sound easy when you read my explanation, but it isn't. Don't try this at home on your own! Tons of emotions came up, and even now when I occasionally do it at home, as I'm meant to be doing, to learn how for when I don't have therapy any more, I come up against things that I don't know what to do with.

Things are beginning to come up. They're not new because I never actually forgot. But now they seem disjointed. I see my elder brother's face vaguely but I know it's contorted with anger, in fact I can see the anger too. And that's enough to make me stop breathing briefly as I write this. So I won't allow myself to go any further into the memory.

A few hours ago I started feeling resentment towards various people in my present life and then almost rage. Then I knew that this rage was misplaced. I tried to reduce the rage by doing some Screen Processing, and actually when I think about it, it did actually work, even though I had trouble with the Processing itself. I'm not raging inside any more, which is good, because I turn that against myself in some form or other.

The other thing that's coming up is more cognitive and I know it's familiar to others on here. The self-blame or just wondering: why on earth did I remain so long in contact with FOO when they did all that to me?? How could I do that to my Inner Children?? I thought that on my Adult level I had forgiven my elder brother though I realised that my Inner Children hadn't. How could I not take them seriously? I overrode their feelings to remain in contact with FOO, to have support as an adult that I didn't have as a child. And to feel I had a family. To have contact with younger brother, who had said it was difficult when he was the only one I was in contact with. And to share the good that is in my family. There is and was some good mixed in with the bad. Only to realise last time I had contact with the whole lot of them how exceedingly dysfunctional the whole family system is, that they'll never change, that I left there in a terrible state emotionally. I've written about that elsewhere I think.

The thing about my elder brother is: he is the only person in the whole of FOO who has ever apologised for anything. He did apologise for his treatment of me. So I suppose that's why I overrode the anger of my Inner Children in order to go back to more normal contact. And up until last year at the family blow-up I still looked up to him in some way and looked to him for protection from other members of FOO. He did say when I re-started contact to M and F about 10 or 11 years ago that if 'anybody' had a go at me again, they'd have him to deal with. That sounded good! But he wasn't willing to do that for me last summer. I know because I asked. He was willing instead for me to leave early, go home. He knew that was the end result - either somebody sticks up for Blueberry or she heads home on a much earlier flight than planned. He was willing to let me go. Though he and most other members of FOO hadn't seen me for four years. We live on different continents. I guess he thought and the rest of FOO thought things would continue as usual. I'd have some time to myself, I'd recover and we'd go back to 'normal' contact of occasional phone calls, emails etc.

To steal an idea from Three Roses:  Page Break                        (Enough on this topic for the evening for me)

[do]

Sometimes it's good to express what's going on. Today I feel like throwing in the towel work-wise. Nothing particular has happened, except that I read a book written by 3 people who started up an online company 10 years ago and turned it into something really big. The book was a good read, well-written, easy to follow. One of their modes of working was just to do, to get going and not listen to the nay-sayers. They openly and honestly explain the mistakes they made too.

At first it inspired me because I tend to pull back from ideas I have in my freelance work and say to myself that that will never work, or ask myself what happens if it does work and then I can't keep up or stick to deadlines or get ill again or or or. These three scenarios are unfortunately all still pretty realistic. So I ask myself these things and then I don't just act. So now I'm feeling more like, I can't be like these young entrepreneurs so I might as well throw in the towel.

Well, it's good I started writing that all down because now I know where 'wanting to throw the towel in' is coming from, roughly. I wouldn't have thrown in the towel anyway, but having expressed it, I now feel lighter. It doesn't feel like such a burden on me.

[Books]

Under Books thread, I posted about how The Body Keeps the Score is helping me understand some of myself and my problems on a deeper level. Other than the example I gave there, suicide ideation / SI comes particularly to mind, especially when as in a case like mine, I don't actually really want to end everything. It's just this voice that used constantly to say "the best plan would be to end it all". Interestingly enough, not even in English, so not in the language of my childhood and of FOO and of the abuse but in my daily 'working language' so to speak.

I can't even say now what it was in the book, or where, which suddenly made sense to me! I know enough about myself and my memory and the workings of my mind in healing to be confident that it's working away in my subconscious and will appear again when the time is appropriate.

which is a lot for me considering I post daily, sometimes even twice a day.

My godson who's 7 is coming to visit for a few days so I won't have tons of time for writing on here. I might if something gets triggered, but I also might be very well advised to do some EFT or Screen Processing instead. Certainly don't intend to be answering other people's posts. 

[I felt this wave of gratitude towards you all and towards OOTS as a website]

I'm not sure where to post this. I even thought about the Welcome board.

Anyway just a few minutes ago as I was writing in my Journal and discovered how much progress I'm making, and then making even more by replying to san's reply to my previous post, and then reviewing in my head how many changes I've been making IRL since discovering OOTS, I felt this wave of gratitude towards you all and towards OOTS as a website. I want to let you all know that! This beast is hard enough to live with, it's good for me to hear when somebody appreciates my post (which people do signal on here, thank you) and so I imagine it might be good for some of you to hear how much I appreciate OOTS as a whole now.  for all of us who can handle it atm and individual    for those who can't.

Also it's good for me to have somewhere to write about gratitude when I feel it, and it's good to be able to express it without somebody coming along and saying "that's not important" / "you must have misunderstood".  to those sorts of people.

When I was at the yoga retreat, they talked about karma yoga, which is doing good things for other people, or volunteer work, basically. For me, it's easier to help people 'for free' or as an exchange system than to do it for pay. But since I don't earn enough money myself, that way of thinking is a bit warped. I spoke to one of the people at the yoga retreat about that and she said karma yoga can include just smiling nicely at somebody or opening the door for them and that if I have been spending years doing things for other people, I should stop that and focus on me.

But I'm discovering it's not that easy. I have all this time on my hands at the moment and I'm not using it much for anything. Like today it was sunny and warmish and originally I'd intended going into the garden with my pets in the afternoon and just reading a book, but in the end I didn't.  This is depression, in my books.

I don't do the precise work I do for pay free for anybody. I'm not that bad towards myself about these things, but today I offered to help my new neighbours with something similar, because I have time in August and they need the help and I know that with their circumstances they won't have much money. And immediately I feel more energised, less depressed, as if there is more reason now to 'keep going', even get out of bed and clean my apartment (in severe need of being done).

I haven't mentioned this topic yet in T, maybe next week. Interested if any of you experience anything similar.

I also realised at the yoga retreat that I have been doing work for years for my FOO, in being the family scapegoat. This is a new idea.