arpy1's journal

[arpy1]

today i saw the GP.  i asked for his opinion about the ptsd referral, having told him all the reservations i have about the NHS psych dept (not  the least of which is that the referral would have to pass the desk of the first T i had, who is the boss of that division  ). he basically agreed that it might not be such a good idea to try to go through her. he then said that doing nothing was not an option in his opinion, as tablets are obviously not the answer. which i agree with, reluctantly.  so what he advised, when i pressed him, was that i should consider writing to my Dad and asking him to fund some more therapy privately for me.  in any case he doesn't think that what i need would be available on the NHS. and it's true that the only way i could fund it is if my Dad subbed me for it.

this involves asking my Dad for money. which i know, despite the fact that he's not much in the way of father/daughter relationship (or any relationship in truth) he would never have a problem with. but which i also know my brother would be furious about and have no hesitation about accusing me of being a sponger again in no uncertain terms.  he was so vile the last time that i broke of contact with him altogether and also swore to myself that i would never approach Dad for help again, despite the fact that Dad said when i told him 'it's my bloody money, i can do what i like with it'...  and made it clear he doesn't mind.

so basically, i know Dad would help me, if i could just manage to muster up the courage (and bear the humiliation) to ask him, and weather the storm my brother would probably stir up over it.  oh god, i hate this.  but it's the least frightening of the few options i have.

i just wish i wasn't so afraid of everything and everyone all the time. i even had an EF on the way to the surgery this morning, that's how wobbly i am.  i have tried to start writing this letter about four times this afternoon and each time it got screwed up and thrown in the bin. i just don't know how to say it, i feel so  humiliated. it's properly killing me.

[Dutch Uncle]

  arpy1.

I feel so often lost for words. But I do so know how you feel, and I do find it so awesome all that you do.

Family connections, family enmeshment, family jalousy, family feud... I know the tale all to well, so I'm not particularly equipped to put any effort into swaying you one way or another. I myself am still in the thick of it.
Having said that: Go to dad, from what I have gathered from your posts he's good for his statement "It's my bloody money!", and will do as he sees fit, regardless of your bro. And it IS your dad's money. Not bro's.
Yeah, the humiliation of it all... 

for telling your GP all you wanted to say, and double for pressing him to answer: "What options are left?"

Well done, all together! 

[tired]

humiliation is a big problem and maybe the root of a lot of things. the way i get around it is by imagining i'm addressing a child.  how would i treat a child in this same situation? would i shame them?  when i feel bad about myself i am a child and i should be a little nicer.  when i was 7 i went to my mom to report something bad that happened and i didn't feel bad about it. i didn't feel guilty. but she reacted in a very odd way and after that i did feel ashamed. she never talked to me about it again except to occasionally blame me without really addressing the whole situation.   she treated me like that but i don't have to be like her.

[arpy1]

going to try and write my journal today for the first time in a while.  it has been such a difficult ten days or so. i have felt so deeply depressed, but at the same time, lived in constant EF, with nightly dreams and even the simplest day to day stuff triggering such a lot of terror in me.  i feel exhausted from it all, from the tension that i have carried in my body, even tho i have tried so hard to do the relaxation and breathing and things.  i feel like i am trying so hard, and getting not very far at all. 

went to see the GP this a.m.  he is always very kind, but i still have a flashback every time i have to go down to the surgery. just sitting in the waiting room is an ordeal. and i haven't the courage to tell the receptionist that i am going to sit in the corridor, as GP suggested might be easier.  so i just suffer the waiting room each time, kicking myself for being such a coward. 

the doc said i am doing well, doing all the right things. he listed off all the things i am doing right and i realised that i do work hard to get better. but it is hard to remember when everything seems such a slog. i am tired of the fight.  i want it to stop. but it isn't going to, so i have to get on with it.

we talked about flashbacks a bit, and about how the feeling of being trapped in unbearable situations, of having to be under the control of other people is one of the biggest triggers. i traced the whole meltdown about asking dad for help to that. and also realise that my dad was a totally controlling person too, so it wasn't just the JP that made me like this.  and then i married a controller too... the pattern has run thro my whole life.  and it elicits such terror in me now. and i am still in a trapped situation in many ways. 

i think the flashbacks and nightmares etc are worse becos i am off mirtazipine and back on citalopram.  they don't blank out the feelings in the same way. which shows me just how bad they would be if i wasn't on any meds at all.  i don't think i realise often, just how bad i am.  it still shocks me when i get triggered, at just how overwhelming the terror is.  it is very weird.  i think i should be able to control this, even though i know intellectually that no one could.  i feel guilty that i can't get myself out of it. 

humiliation, yes. i spose i spent so many years in the JP, being very forcefully shamed for all the normal feelings humans have, and especially for being a woman who was so 'subject to her feelings'.. and especially for needing help or support (bad, selfish, sinful). also i  learnt from infancy to keep my needs to myself, becos if i let them out it will be bad, people will be angry.  and i was taught from teenage on, that i must not feel like i matter, everyone else does but i must not. my needs must come last, and they are so selfish anyway that i have no right to expect or want that anyone might help or meet them. 

what an unspeakable and destructive thing! i can't even describe how most of it was in those years.  i just know that it still comes as a revelation to me that i matter. i don't really believe it, but i am coming to understand that i need to learn it. i matter. i matter.  i matter.  i matter just as much as anyone else on the planet. it is a weird thing to say. it feels weird in my mind. but i have to get my head round it.

this has been very rambly but it has helped a bit to get stuff down again.  ho hum.  on we go. 

[tired]

i feel like you have the answers (as do i) but your other self forgets them.  i wish i lived alone and never had anyone come into the house because then i could post little notes to myself . like, you're fine, you're worth it. i can be an adult caring for my child-self  .   i try to put up things in the house that might serve that purpose without being obvious.  as if there is a grown up elf that sneaks in and leaves little mysterious cryptic messages for me. like, i might buy myself flowers or put up a to do list.  if i lived alone i would probably put up something more direct.  i would probaby devote a wall of the house to photos of people i'm angry at and throw darts at it.

[arpy1]

   that's an appealing idea....

[Dutch Uncle]

i would probaby devote a wall of the house to photos of people i'm angry at and throw darts at it.

That made me too.

I did something similar at some point. The FOO had had a family-gathering (that I had initiated and largely arranged in a way that it was a communal effort, by everyone, no matter how tiny the contribution was (which I found totally OK)), which turned out quite OK, but the effects where short-lived.
A family-picture was taken (this had been the first time in ten years or so we had been 'complete'), that hang on my wall as a memento of how things could be 'livable'.
So when it turned out it was 'horrible business' as usual I hang the picture upside down (a year later or so), with the message for me personally: "You really have to start to take a look at your FOO from an other perspective, Dutch. You have it all upside down, you have to turn your head around to get this straight."
This has all resulted in me and my FOO 'falling out', which has not been my intention, but I am seeing the forest for the trees now. (Is I think the right expression).

And arpy1: great entry to your journal. 

[arpy1]

i just want to write something out to get it out of my head and hopefully lose a bit of the sadness of it.  i was watching the most beautiful documentary about a couple of korean twin girls separated at birth, who found each other through the internet. it describes the journey they took together and it was so lovely. despite being given up at birth, each of these girls had got family. proper family ties, links to people who cared about them, adoptive parents, one had siblings, both had foster mums, loads of friends who cared and supported them as they made contact and then made a film. it was so uplifting to watch the film, but it gave me a huge pain in my heart.

becos i realise that now i have no family except for my two kids. they are wonderful, don't get me wrong. but i feel all their lives i have had to invent 'family' as i went along, in order to give them the best possible experience i could of what i really didn't have much idea about. unconditional love. love for them just becos they are, not becos of what they did, felt, said, the way they behaved at times.  i realised watching the film that that has largely been missing in my own life.  and that it was a question of making it up, imagining how it should be and then doing my best to make it so for them. and to make up for what their dad, like my own dad, was unable to give to them. the love and the friendship i have with them both now makes me think maybe i did a half decent job for them, but no-one ever did that for me, not really, except maybe my mum, who i can see now was in a really similar situation as i was in my marriage. she was just a whole lot angrier than i was, i think.

but i never felt i had anyone really who just loved me for myself, just becos i am, not becos of what i did, thought, believed, felt, behaved like, what use i was to them.  just loved me becos i am me.  i thought i had found it in the JP but i was ultimately rejected for speaking out about the 'elephant in the room'.  i never had it with my dad. i think i had it with mum, but now she is gone. certainly not with my siblings.

so no wonder i find it impossible to feel deeply connected to anyone any more.  the deepest connections i ever made were in the JP and the loss of them has broken something in me that i don't know if i can ever fix.  trust, maybe, a sense of connectedness shattered by the realisation that i could only stay connected if i kept pressing the 'make it fit' button, if i compromised my integrity, became someone else.  and i couldn't. so i was rejected.

and now here i am at the latter end of my life and i am disconnected.  my major relationships have all been damaging ones and i have withdrawn from all of them becos i couldn't sustain any more damage.  i don't have trust or the security in myself, or really any idea how, to do healthy relationships. and i guess i really don't think i am loveable anyway. not unless i perform to expectation. that is very sad.

i know this sounds very self-pitying. we here are all in pretty much the same boat after all. but  it makes me so sad for myself. hopefully it's good to say it how it is.

[tired]

same here on all that.  when i see shows about family i feel warm and fuzzy for them because i can sense how good that would be but at the same time it's  not a great feeling. 

[arpy1]

poss triggers...



those pictures of Mount St Helens blowing her top years ago. and the images of the pyroclastic flow rolling down the side of the mountain at 70mph overwhelming everything in its path in a cloud of grey ash.

yesterday pm that's kind of what happened. i got overtaken by a wall of despair and depression. i saw it coming. i couldn't get out of the way. i couldn't outrun it. and altho with the kids, on the outside i am pretending to be ok as usual, inside i am screaming. i don't know how to even say how i am feeling. utter despair, pain i don't have words for, so bad i feel sick with it. overwhelming and inescapable.

i know what the problem probably is; i haven't heard back from dad about the letter i wrote him begging for help to pay for some more therapy.  i feel so helpless. and so completely trapped in a life i hate and haven't the resources to change. 

if i had money i could get treatment. becos i don't, becos i left my husband with absolutely nothing, i am stymied. i am too ill to work. even if i do work, i can't earn enough to more than cover my living costs, so therapy is still out of reach. NHS here doesn't do the kind of treatment i need. so no options, except to put myself at the mercy of someone else and hope they're feeling charitable. and that my brother doesn't kick up.

also i am so worried about this health assessment by the benefit people. my GP wrote a letter to say i was too ill to attend, but i haven't heard back. so there's a risk if i don't go, my money will get stopped.  and i just can't go. the idea is unbelievably terrifying.  i just can't.  once again, i am powerless and in the power of others who are not noted for their sympathetic outlook to people with mental health problems.

i am scared. i am feeling powerless. and it's a fact that there is absolutely nothing i can do to change these things or empower myself.  i will have to ring dad, and see if he has the letter and if he has just forgotten about it (if he has it means that his dementia has overtaken him and i can't ask him for money anyway becos it wouldn't be right). i will have to ring the benefits people and ask what they want me to do. and both those things feel simply impossible to do.

i am scared. i hate this feeling of having no options. i feel like i have spent my life trapped in unbearable situations that i have to bear regardless. and here i am in the same situation. different script, same play.

i guess this is the reason for the overwhelming despair. i just can't see a way out other than do the hardest, most terrifying thing. just like i always do. and i just can't.

i sit and cry and cry for hours at the moment. i am sorry to dump this here but i don't actually have anywhere else to say it how it is.  my GP always says call or email him. but how can you put all this crap in an email to a doctor? he's not my therapist, lovely tho he is.  so i'm afraid it ended up here.

[Dutch Uncle]

  dear arpy1,

This is so hard, and I relate. I've been where you are now. More than once. 
You pointed out two options you have, both involving calling somebody: dad, and the health services. These are really viable options, arpy1.
And you can e-mail your GP, you may take him upon his word. He has been trustworthy. Perhaps you could mail/phone him if HE has heard anything in reply to his letter to the health services?
And if you phone the health services, and your fears come true (they might well not come true...) you could contact your GP then.

Great of you to have contacted (by mail) your dad, part of your support network. And your GP regarding the health services.
And us.

Here for you,
Dutch Uncle.

[arpy1]

you're right, of course, i know that, and i am grateful for your saying it, even though it's the last thing i want to hear. 

my two options:  to do the things i am so terrified of that i feel sick at the thought.  i guess i just want an option that doesn't involve ripping my guts out of my body.  my whole life has been spent doing the things that are the hardest, the things that terrify me. and i am so, so exhausted from being terrified and forcing myself to do stuff anyway.  so tired. that's what makes me sit here and cry. that i have to do the things i am most scared of.   again.   becos i have no choice. doing nothing is never a viable option.

i know, i am totally self pitying here and i am sorry. i want to scream 'not fair, not fair' but the universe isn't listening, is it? 

i just don't want to be scared anymore. sometimes my courage just fails me.

[arpy1]

i emailed my GP. that was something, at least.  and told him how i have been feeling.  that's as much as i can do right now.

[Dutch Uncle]

Well done. 

that's as much as i can do right now.

Then it is enough you have done.
Hang in there,

[Dutch Uncle]

I'm just curious, but have you heard anything of either three today?