dollyvee's recovery journal

[Armee]

Sending support. Saying things can be really hard but ultimately helpful to heal.

[Papa Coco]

HI Dolly,

I've responded to a few posts this morning, and the topic of Russian Dolls and Peeling the Onion has been a recurring theme. Reading that you disclosed some never-before-seen things about your gf, makes me envision you peeling into the next layer, and starting the healing process on that layer.

Therapists often use that analogy to help us not be surprised that once we start to feel better about what we've been working through, we then start over again with the next layer. Each layer gets its own initial shock, trauma response, therapy, learning, and finally accepting.

It feels to me like you've just opened up the next layer. For me, whenever I feel good about my healing, the next, uglier layer exposes itself and I start to feel like I did at the start of the last layer. The encouraging part of this paradigm is that I now know that I was able to get through the last one, so I am more confident now that I'll get through this one too.  And then...of course, the next layer is still awaiting it's exposure. C-PTSD is the gift that keeps on giving.

I have lived my life on the 80/20 rule. to me, it means that 80% of the healing happens in the first 20% of the time. Then the last 20% takes 80% of the time. (Another analogy is "Picking the low hanging fruit first"). I think of building a house. One day, a tractor pulls down all the trees and digs a square pit. The next day a cement truck pours a foundation. The next day framers put up walls. Within a week, even the roof is on. By the end of the second week, the shingles and siding are on the house. Window and doors are installed. 80% of the house is done. Then it takes MONTHS to do the details. 80% of the house was done in 20% of the time. Then 20% of the house takes 80% of the time.  When losing weight, I found that for me, as long as I maintained my 1800 calorie limit and did my walking, the first 80% of my weight loss happened in the first 20% of the diet. That last 20% took 80% longer.

I was a manager in aerospace engineering. I saw that 20% of my employees used up 80% of my time. 

The 80/20 rule is pretty universal. My healing with PTSD made vast, noticeable improvements in the first 4 years when I finally found a good DBT therapist. But that was 20 years ago, and I've spent the next 16 years working on the details. Harder work for deeper, slower healing.

I sincerely hope that you and your t, and your presence on the forum, and your own stamina and intelligence will rally together again to get you through this layer.  I had a very distant grandfather. He liked his grand daughters and daughters a LOT more than he cared for his son or any of his grandsons. Just that, alone, hurt me pretty badly. I know how important a gf is to a grandchild. My two grandsons think the sun rises and sets in my wife and I. THEY are the ones who named me Papa Coco. The name stuck because I love them so much. I used it on this forum so that THEY would be my reminder that my healing is important to them too. For me to think of being abused in any way by a grandparent, just makes me believe that the trauma from any gp abuse would be worth its own layer with a good therapist.

My heart is with yours right now. Good therapy is going to help a lot. Thanks for sharing this instance with us. We all heal together, and the more we share and support each other, the more each of us heals.

BIG HUG!

[dollyvee]

Thank you Armee and PC for what you said 

There's a lot of soup right now. I think the emotions that I've done so well on protecting are bubbling up. In Chinese Medicine the gallbladder and liver hold the anger and resentment. I guess it makes sense that if I've been having issues with these, that these are the feelings coming up.

My chiropractor also brought up water and the kidneys yesterday. The emotions associated with the kidneys are fearful, anxiety, aloof, weak willpower and isolated. It's crazy how I can also see these relating to myself and my gm after going through those papers. While I was on my walk last night, I made an effort to become unblended. Right away, it was like there was anxiety/fear (?) and I tripped and fell. Not as bad this time but it's interesting that I was feeling fear the last time I fell as well. I feel like those feelings have also always been there but I've managed to keep them at bay/fight them.  I guess this is the time to bring them out and examine them. It's funny as well because I was looking at going back and doing some element meditations on shame, and was trying to think of the element that would represent it, and came up with water. It's how comfortable we feel in our body as well as dealing with attachments (a poison where I think of my gm's attachment to me and her inability to let me grow up and be my own person) and accomplishments (a wisdom that maybe explains why I feel so lethargic about doing things, I don't want to accomplish them and feel thr satisfaction because I don't think I'm worthy).

My gf and gm were a huge part of my life. My m was gone a lot and in my gm's words to her psychologist, neglecting her daughter while she was off with her boyfriend.  So, my gm and gf babysat me and were my safety net. It makes sense that I've masked over their relationship and some inappropriateness because I needed them to be safe and love me. Well, I accepted the love they gave me but it doesn't mean it was healthy.

I wonder how much of me is making excuses for my gf about men from that generation behaving differently towards women, that there was a leniency about certain behaviours. Maybe that's why I react so strongly to it now too. In my family there was a sense of, it's family so you just have to get over it, you have to forgive them. Like my gm accepted the behaviour from my gf, I had to accept the things my m did (and she would probably grumble about my gf but never really make him accountable like my m). Even with my brothers behaviour more recently, and my m, they overlooked how it impacted me and I'm the one that had to "get over it, " and not be angry. We had to forgive them just so they could be near. I stopped wanting to do that and it was something my gm never understood.

[Papa Coco]

Hi Dolly

It definitely tugs on my heartstrings to read about the complexities of your relationships with your gps, and your m. At the same time, I'm also aware of how the kidneys and liver hold anger and resentment, so I find myself feeling good about how well engaged you are in the available information we have today. Your walks and meditations are also a great thing. Until arthritis consumed my knees I practiced the same things. I can't walk for exercise anymore, but for almost my entire life, those walks and meditations kept me strong. Good for you for doing them.  And that's pretty interesting that you tripped while feeling anxiety and fear both times.  I suppose it could be a message from your brain to your body to make you aware of the trauma, or it could be that the anxiety and fear dissociated you enough to take your attention away from your feet? These are just a couple of amateur thoughts I have. It could be something totally different.

Even though I'm the straight-white-male, (swm) I've always been appalled by the way that society has treated girls, or any other non-swm person. In many ways, maybe because of my gentle nature, I was raised as if I were gay and not privy to the right to be angry at the abuse I was forced to take in public and at home. When you say that your anger may be triggering your tripping, it kind of reminds me of the fact that I, even to this day, feel like I'm simply not allowed to feel anger. I'm supposed to sit back and let my narcissistic family mess with me. It's their job to enjoy themselves, and my job to let them abuse me for their own pleasures. Or, They don't have to respect the trauma they gave me, but I have to respect the traumas they endured during their crappy childhoods.

I only shared that because I'm curious if that's what makes you trip. Maybe your anxiety and fear, which made you stumble, was around feeling like you aren't allowed to be angry? Some part of your body or brain is still trying to help you stay safe by not allowing anger to surface? I've always hated how, being abused and disrespected by our caregivers puts us in that nasty position of having to love people who are hurting us because we're so afraid of being exiled and left behind. Being abused in a home with food and family is better than being thrown out onto the street to fend for ourselves, especially when we've been trained to let others treat us badly without being allowed to stand up for ourselves.

In my own experience, a great deal of my anxiety and fear would be squashed if I could allow myself to be cleanly angry at the person/people who deserve my anger. One therapist I saw for religious abuse, homed in on that. He helped me to see that my anxieties and chronic fears are the result of me not feeling free to be angry at those who really, truly deserve my anger. If I can't feel the anger, the anger stays in my liver and the result is anxiety, depression, defeat... I'm still not good at feeling anger. I still have some of that same sense that, well, my family was mean and unsupportive, but "they did the best they could with their own traumas....blah, blah, blah." I'm sorry that my parents were raised in the John Wayne era of being tough instead of kind. But in reality, that doesn't mean I have to be happy about it.

[dollyvee]

Thank you for what you wrote PC 

My health and what's going on in my body has had an impact on how I've felt emotionally. I'm sorry that you can't go out for walks any more, I don't know what I would do without them. I'm going to sound like more of a crazy hippy (welcome to the PNW) but there was a time when I had issues walking about 10 years ago when I started getting sick. Long story but mycotoxins lead to underlying GI disturbances which lead to newly acquired food allergies, including gluten. When I'd never had a problem before, all of a sudden I could only move very stiffly if I'd been sitting for long. I cut out all the gluten and started healing the inflammation (of which there's a lot on both sides) and it went away. It also completely changed my mood but that's another thing.

So, I do listen to the chiropractor and my body when stuff is coming up. I think our minds can influence our bodies and our bodies how we feel. I have to laugh because if there is a water imbalance and the posion is attachment, how funny that my body "holds on" to these mycotoxins and can't excrete them?

Thank you PC. With the stuff that's coming up around my gf and family right now, and how there's a part of me that kept this idea of family intact, I can see that maybe there's a part that thinks it can't express anger. Although, I know I did express anger to my family in the past for things maybe not enough when I thought it would threaten my survival. But there is an idea in my family (who are immigrants, refugees, and lived through a war - well multiple if you go back far enough), that something bad will happen. For example, my gm who was also a hoarder, could never throw anything away in case they needed it, and I heard often about how if I used the remote too much (for example), I was going to break it. Men were just going to leave you in her words, I couldn't cook the way I wanted to because the world doesn't work like that - you can't make healthy meals like that all the time. This is why I'm very interested in the generational aspect of trauma because I think ideas like this, and the feelings of fear and anxiety, come along with it from generation to generation. This is something from birth (I think) that was always there outside myself, ready to get me.

I also had an IFS where a mom part showed up as my inner critic (this also took me some time to work out what I saw and what it meant which happens sometimes in IFS). This part wouldn't leave me alone and was incessantly "attacking" me as I tried to get space and speak with it. So, I sealed it up. I imagine that when I try to unblend that part could be there as well, waiting to start attacking me again. Someone else that has legacy burdens mentioned that when these parts come up that belong to their family, they do something similar and cut them off, that they don't have to listen and have no space in their head/life as they don't belong to them. Perhaps there is a part of me that is still attached to my family and giving space to these ideas in my life (not to blame myself, just an observation). I know that I had/have a lot of guilt for saying no to my family and doing things my way.

It also reminds me of how I feel like I have to fight and protect my space (my self I guess) which has maybe been coming up more recently. I feel less inclined to give people room in case they walk on me, or deal with their ideas of how what they want to impose on my. I guess I want to take up space in my own way.

[dollyvee]

Speaking with t and it's interesting that I have been feeling more anger but yet I also find myself going through the motions of people pleasing. Although, I think, as I mentioned before, that it's almost as if I'm angry at allowing people that space even though I'm still doing it. As the realizations about gf (and gf and gm's relationship) are coming out, I'm seeing my people pleasing/allowing people space in a new way and is tied to something else that I hadn't considered before.

It's interesting after reading the reports that my gm's idea of security (safety?) was tied to my gf. Perhaps on some level that's why I protected it for so long because it then became my idea of safety/security.

Also, seperately, I mentioned to t that my gm had a pattern of thinking the men in her life were going to be abusive towards her. Her father was strict and critical as well. Although, I don't know if he was ever abusive. It's a pattern that came up with all the men in her life even my sgf, who I remember her saying to me once, that she was really scared of him, but seemed out of character for him to behave in that way. Something that's been coming up in the back of my mind recently is my gm saying how women (relatives?) would go into the woodshed at night and make themselves dirty and ugly so that when the Russian soldiers came they wouldn't rape them. I wonder if this is the "unknown fear" that is out there for me.

[dollyvee]

I've been busy with work and had some things come up that I need to address. I'm making a decision about not moving forward having my sgf involved in my m's estate and dropping the petition and essentially pursuing a fair verdict in court with my sf. I don't have a lot of trust in my sgf after what happened last Christmas and am tired of fighting to have boundaries (which they will inevitably turn around and say oh, I didn't mean it like that, or my brother will turn it into something about me just being after money). I know conniving, duplicitous, selfish people exist in the world and it's something I have to deal with. I guess I'm tired of dealing with it from the people who are supposed to love me and have my back, people who when you point it out, won't understand. I guess I've always been the scapegoat and it's a lot - what is standing up for yourself in an environment when no one hears you?

I came on to write something else, well there's a few things right now. I bought a pair of shorts for the gym. I thought they would be comfortable when worn with something big overtop. Maybe I gave into the marketing and influencer hype haha. I didn't think they were that bad but when I wore them at the gym for the first time, I was so self conscious. I think it brought up how offputting it feels to put myself "out there." It's like I can be confident, but only in a certain scope. To have confidence in my image is really foreign. There was a lot of body shame in my family towards me, and it still has it's place in me, but I'm glad I wore them. Owning it and not feeling like I'm going to be attacked for it is another thing. It feels frivilous, but there's something there underneath it.

[Armee]

Thats really empowering that you fought those voices of shame from your family and wore the shorts. It sends a different message to the brain and I truly bet you looked fantastic even though that's not the point one way or the other. You get to wear what you want and no one has the right to shame you for it no matter what. I like that this part of our society is starting to change and that you don't have to look perfectly chiseled to wear crop tops, spandex, or whatever else. Everyone looks awesome, real bodies.

Be proud for what you did, it's huge!

I'm sorry about the estate stuff. It really sucks that the people who are supposed to love you will treat you like that.

[dollyvee]

Thank you Armee. I think that society does have an impact and reenforces a lot of the shame around bodies, not to mention many other things. It is nice that there's a good impact from a lot of younger trainers showing instagram vs reality I think, and how many actual calories you are supposed to consume (ie what is actually healthy), strong vs skinny etc. Although, I think it goes much deeper for me at least. When the idea of being a certain way (and being made to run kms when you are 7 because someone thinks you're "fat") is strong at even 20% body fat (a couple years before mold reared it's head again), I feel like it's a certain kind of programming about putting myself out there, and coming down through the generations that nothing will ever be good enough. I think for a lot of people coming from chaotic households, the body is the only thing we can control.

Yesterday I woke up and had the image of a festering sore, or an open wound which was really strong. When I tried to connect to it, I felt blocked and that there was an organizer (?) part there. Underneath it I could feel like what it would be to just experience things and maybe not have to evaluate. Starting dissociating when I wrote in my paper journal about the part. So there's definitely something there but is hard to connect to it. I guess I have to muster up Self to talk to that part.

[Armee]

Thanks for clarifying that it runs much deeper - even intergenerationally. I agree it does run deeper, and I'm sorry you were pushed so hard.

[Papa Coco]

Dolly

It's encouraging to watch as you gather courage to do what you have decided you want to do, which is go to the gym wearing shorts that you can exercise in. Body shaming is horrible. Men get it too. I'm so ashamed of my body that I won't go to a gym at all. I won't do it. Even if I go in wearing a parka and three pairs of long pants, I won't go into a gym. I will NEVER take off my shirt where anyone can see me. I have serious heat stroke issues, but when I work in the yard, I cover up anyway. I don't swim because I won't take off my shirt for the pool.

What you're doing is called courage. In the absence of fear, courage isn't needed. Courage is doing the right thing, no matter how afraid you feel. And it's no secret that weight is a problem for about 60% of all people, so I know in my logical thought that I look perfectly normal in public because more than half of all 62-year-old men look like me now--or are even bigger! But that doesn't appease my inner critics. Knowing it and feeling it are two very different things.

When I see other overweight men walking around shirtless, not appearing to be ashamed of it at all, I ENVY THEM. I'm not impressed with beautiful bodies, I'm impressed with people who aren't ashamed of their bodies. I want to be like them, but so far, the courage to do so is eluding me.

So, I'm kind of proud of you for putting on those shorts, and going to the gym, even though your insides are afraid.  That's courage. And what you're doing is for you. That's self-love.  Two points in your favor.

I'm feeling inspired by what you're doing.

[Hope67]

Hi Dollyvee,
Wishing you success in mustering up Self to communicate with that part that has the open sore.  I hope that it goes well, and you are able to communicate.  I also wanted to send you a hug, if that's ok 
Hope 

[dollyvee]

Thank you Armee

Thank you PC - I'm sorry that you're feeling shamed too. I can't believe how big of a thing it is to "put myself out there" even after all these years and the work I have done. I guess it is because I know there are malicious people out there (reading this morning someone's opinion that people seem to hate Harry and Meghan so much because they are in love and I have to think why are people like that? ) and sometimes it's hard to keep facing them but I''m still here. I guess any kind of reaction just takes me back to what was said about me growing up, so that's why I don't do it. Ie other people are saying it too, so it must be true what they said etc.

Thank you Hope - it's nice to see you back  I will try talking to that part but I feel like it takes over and just "being in the moment and feeling things" can be too much sometimes but I'm working on it.

I think perhaps the holiday gremlins are creeping up on me. I haven't made any plans this year and I think that's ok. I notice I could be reaching out to people but I don't find myself doing that. The soup is continuing and I'm continuing to stir it. I have certain things in mind which I think will be helpful but I haven't got around to doing them yet. I've felt more motivated to start things and get things done but had a bit of a set back this past week. I think my CPTSD flared up around someone I thought there was a mild flirtation with and it seemed to go awry and I'm processing that.

I read something funny today which made me laugh. "I survived my parents, you ******* are amateurs." I do feel like that at times.

Someone also said something that resonated too which was, "nothing can happen to us which is actually worse than what goes on inside our heads."

[dollyvee]

I've read a couple things the past week again which resonate with me. One is around dating and the realization that I guess I feel like someone I'm attracted to wouldn't be attracted to me back (and so I go for the safer option and settle). It's kind of like what came up when I was wearing shorts, that there's just something that stops me from putting myself out there, or I say to myself I'm not "x" enough. It's not that I'm wanting the most attractive man out there etc etc, or dating up etc, I think it's that way with anyone I'm attracted to. I feel like when I'm working out what I want, I'm just expecting not to get it. Or I swing between expecting not to get it and all bets are off, let's have the illusion. So, I'm trying to work on just being friends and realizing that I do have my own back which is a scary thing given my family and how they continue to show up in my life.

I also read about trauma bonding (a buzzword I guess) and how (with a narcissist for example) you are conditioned to accept the negative because every so often you will be thrown a positive. But what really stood out for me was that "sometimes a person may fully be aware that they are with a toxic person, but they are so conditioned to forgiving them that it can be nearly impossible to finally leave and they get stuck." In my family it was told over and over that they are family and you have to forgive them and my own reality/feeling about how it was negative and toxic was denied. I guess I was basically conditioned into a trauma bond and even though I have separated (and can see that it wasn't good, mostly I think), it's like I'm still picking out these bits. I think it did do a number on my relationships with people to have to continually forgive people who didn't treat you that great and accept it as normal, and I can understand why it is so hard to get close to people. I think I'm starting to find that place where no, I don't have to let these people in; it's not up to me to accept their behaviour. Maybe if I focus on this, I don't have to feel like I have to be so defensive or prejudge people/think about what their actions might be like etc. Essentially be hypervigilant.

[milkandhoney11]

What you said about trauma bonding really resonated with me, dollyvee. I feel like I was trauma bonded to my parents for a very long time and didn't fully realise that this completely hollowed me out. I think I knew that being around them was harmful to me but somehow they always managed to convince me that I was the one to blame, not them. Every time I was hit, insulted, etc. it was always because I was a bad person who deserved to be treated that way, so I was the one who felt guilty whilst my abusers just went on unscathed.
And you're right, this kind of experience really takes away our chances to ever find happiness with another. I have never been in a relationship because I always felt like I didn't deserve it. I was always not enough in some way and felt that I needed to protect others from myself. If there was someone I was attracted to I convinced myself that I had to stay away from them because being around me wasn't good for them and I would just drag them down.
So I stayed alone and isolated for all my life and I don't really know how to get out of this situation. I want to connect to someone and get into a relationship but at this point I am too scared and don't really know how to go about these things.

It's really hard to be stuck in this kind of "loop of loneliness" so I am really feeling for you and hope you can find a way to make relationships and dating work somehow. You really do deserve to be with a kind, loving someone even though sometimes you may feel like you are not quite good enough. To me it is very clear that you are, it's just what you were conditioned to believe as a child