Re: Blueberry's Next Steps: beneficial, constructive and mindful

[Blueberry]

Thank you so much for your validation, notalone, and for pointing out that N.W. was VERY SKILLED in manipulation. I did see through her far before anybody else did in the first yoga place and I was the only one to really stand up to her. Some people did sort of see through her but they didn't see the extent of the problems she was causing.

Sort of like FOO during/after Horrendous Event no. 2*, they didn't realise or even take into consideration that they would lose my custom and my work because of their treatment of me. These yoga centres need people to come and do volunteer work for board and lodging or half board and lodging. They're often short of people. But there's no way I'd go to the first place ever again. So yeah, they threw that opportunity away. Even though I'm a slow worker, if I were to have gone again, I wouldn't have needed to be shown and taught certain things again. That would have been advantageous to them.

*FOO during/after Horrendous Event no. 2 didn't realise or even take into consideration that they would lose ME due to their callous behaviour and their support of SIL2 over me.

Thank you too, Anjulie, for your validation and reminding me to be kind to myself.

It is technically the next day and I have managed a bunch of email missives. 8-10 or so. In order to do so, I played Patience over and over again. Seems like kind of a waste of time. otoh if it gets me into a state where I can communicate again, that's obviously a good thing. So not such a waste.

[Blueberry]

I'm not being very accountable to myself atm. I have lots of things to be getting on with and I'm not doing them. My bad. Some are urgent too.

[Anjulie]

I hear you 

[Three Roses]

  I'm in the same boat at the moment. Can't find the energy to get out of bed. I'm sorry you're experiencing this.

[Blueberry]

I'm sorry you're experiencing the same rn 3R

Thank you for listening and being there Anjulie 

I'm meant to be getting on with a translation for an acquaintance. So that'll certainly be part of the problem - agreeing to do a translation in the first place.

Also yesterday I did some volunteer work and felt depressed afterward, idk why exactly. Though probably partly to do with the number of people there. So that's not helping.

[Blueberry]

FOO's been in my dreams recently. Not as nightmares exactly. FOO's also in my thoughts, even grandparents  - all long since deceased. I miss having a FOO which is more than a family in name only. I never could have gone VLC when my grandparents were still alive. The weight of FOO wouldn't have allowed it. It would have been too much to rebel against. Too many 'powers that be' supporting my parents and telling me I caused problems too and was to blame as well. 

I've also been having dreams again for a number of days of people coming by and digging up and destroying my garden. So I seem to have relapsed in various ways Just goes to show me that I need to keep plugging away at healing and or simply at staying where I am, otherwise I do drift back.

I'm even missing a friend, B., who I've written quite a bit about here, who was leaning way too much on me, expecting way too much and didn't grasp any of that after I told her. In situations like my present one, I would've phoned her. Years ago I would've even phoned somebody in FOO. No wonder I'm thinking of all of them atm. Yeah, well, I know it takes a while to acquire new friends again irl that you can really rely on as well as figure out how to rely on yourself and not think you need friends so much. Mostly I've been doing pretty well since reducing contact to various friends with cptsd or other similar issues or without, but with habits like too much talking which drive up my anxiety. So this is a slump phase. Most likely in part exacerbated by having agreed to do that translation, as well as having had contact to Narc Woman as well as not doing my therapy homework. On top of that I had some contact with FOO for 2 different reasons. Then some political upheaval which is getting to me a little.

[Blueberry]

I feel as if I'm on here permanently atm writing about some thing or other and I feel as if I'm not moving forwards.

I'm  Just had an argument with a neighbour about locking the main door of the building at night. He sees no point since there's no war going on here. He is from a war-torn country. How about I as your neighbour feel safer when not just anybody can wander off the streets into the building at night? Well, that's my problem. Nobody else in this country locks the outer door at night. That's hogwash actually. Almost everybody here locks an outer door, in fact most doors lock automatically as soon as you shut them.

So it's left to me to inform the new landlords, which I've just done. I suggested to my neighbour that he does it but he said I'm the one with the problem so I've got to do it. I know though that landlords like things to run smoothly and not have tenants coming with problems every five minutes. It always seems that it's me coming with problems, if not to the landlord then to other neighbours like when I was trying to figure out who was causing the mice. It turned out they were running rampant in the apartment of the neighbour who moved out but for a long time he refused to do anything about them and refused to see that they might actually be his problem.

So I'm always coming with problems. But I don't think it's unreasonable to want to reduce the number of mice running around or to have a door locked at night.    Even if some people want to insinuate that it is. Actually they're haven't been mice for a while. Once the problem was dealt with at the source, they were gone.

[Not Alone]

You definitely have a right to have no mice (hate them) and to have the door locked so that you feel safe. Not sure how many people are in your building, but I bet others are grateful that someone is bold enough to address these issues. It is the landlord's job to deal with these issues. Real issues. Good for you.

[Blueberry]

Thanks for validating, notalone. There aren't many people at all in my building. Actually there's always somebody who's not happy about some such issue being addressed. Other times they're maybe OK with it but not grateful or anything, like when we had a slow drip-drip leak in part of the basement, it was me who got onto the landlords about it. Everybody else just ignored it.

It's always been really hard to get together with anybody in the building to solve some problem or other.  They either say that if I have a problem with it, I should deal with it (e.g. mice), pretend it's never been a problem before (though I know that's not true) or everybody finds a different solution and works against each other   No wonder I get a little bit triggered.

However on the plus side atm somebody regularly makes sure that the communal compost and paper bins get put out the evening before pick-up. It would be good to thank the person I think is doing that. It's a relief when that's not all hanging on me.

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This evening I was at a street theatre production with a friend. There were historical scenes, singing, impressive juggling, lots of puns and jokes. It was really good. I'm feeling better grounded than I have been for a few days. I should try and remember that.   I realise now too that I've been in a kind of EF-y state for a good number of days. At the latest I notice when I start moving out of it. I think the EF was partly brought on by the simple act of doing a translation.  to that, to getting an EF doing my work.

[Hope67]

Hi Blueberry - the street theatre production sounds good - glad you enjoyed it with your friend.  Glad to hear you're out of the EF-y state, and feeling more grounded to enjoy the street theatre.   
Hope 

[Blueberry]

Thanks Hope

Actually my enjoyment of the street theatre production helped move me further out of my EF. If I hadn't been on the way out already, it wouldn't have helped though. It would have been too much. Always a fine line.

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Thanks to woodsgnome for this "You should never ask a victim a question that starts with the words, 'Why didn't you?'" [escape; fight back; resist, etc.] she said. "Because they hear, 'You should have.' And honestly, the victim survived. They already won. They did whatever it took. And to the outsider it may not always be clear, they may not understand, but I can tell you that whatever they did, they survived."

So that's why those questions from therapists (it always used to be Ts) trigger me so badly. Sometimes they asked "Why did you...?" instead, but it was the same thing. Brings up M and F's "How could you be so stupid...?" refrain. My current T doesn't ask anything like that.

[Blueberry]

Progress in mindfulness: A client brought me a box of chocolates as a thank-you present. I did open the box up and eat most of them. The progress is that I ate them mindfully. I really savoured each one and only put the next one in after thoroughly chewing, swallowing and clearing my mouth of all taste . So I didn't just throw them down the hatch.

[Three Roses]

 

[Not Alone]

  Understand. Glad you could savor the chocolates.

[Blueberry]

Thanks notalone 

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I'm posting on here less often, at least for myself. That's good. Today I felt the need though.

First some good stuff: I finally washed my hair after not getting round to that for days on end. I feel much better now, also for the long overdue cleansing shower I had along with it 
I also 'delivered' some things here and there, which is good since they're now no longer cluttering up my apartment 

Another minor realisation:
As people who follow some of my threads know, I tend to have problems with neighbours especially about things like 'my' space and communal space. I even end up having nightmares about the landlord or neighbours paving over the garden or removing my part and replacing with their own constructions, or else being evicted and having nowhere to move myself or my business to.

There is one neighbour who generally tends to encroach on my or other people's areas. She seems to view any communal space as an area to be filled with her stuff. There are actually communal areas in the garden, just bits of lawn anybody can sit out on in the sun or put their laundry rack on. Her kind of creeping encroachment seems to be triggering me. This was a vague realisation a while ago and now stronger today. Today I finally got round to  vacuuming up millions of small plastic grains which ended up at the base of the exterior house wall next to my little nettle bed and my compost. In order to get my vacuum cleaner round there, i had to move trays of bedding plants laid out by my neighbour on what is basically communal garden although my compost is there too from a time when the garden rules were different from now and you could only put permanent stuff around the periphery. I would only move my compost if a different neighbour were to say s/he wants to take over that bit of garden.

My own reaction interested me. Partially I definitely felt nervous. "Yikes, moving somebody else's stuff". Also both B1 and M are in my head. B1 partially because he was often critical of my (and M's) views on property and 'my' space, which were different to his, and partially because he wasn't accepting of my boundaries, e.g. fiddling with stuff of mine and yelling at me if I asked him to stop before he broke it. Even if he didn't think he was going to break it, my stuff was my stuff. If he didn't want me touching his stuff, he certainly let me know! He could enforce it too and did with his fists.

M is in my head as an ICr. to tell me to stop making a 'fuss about nothing' though this is actually the sort of thing she'd make a fuss about too. (Do as I say, not as I do.) If I feel back into my situation as a child and teenager, I feel encroached on from all sides. Other people in FOO just took up too much room - physically, emotionally, verbally. I could probably do with doing a round of EFT on this as well as possibly Screen Processing. Writing all this out helped me realise more than EFT might be beneficial.