Recovering Gently

[Gently]

I like the reflection that was prompted in my mind as I wrote the title of this recovery journal. It can mean so many different things. At first, as the words toppled out into the little text box, it felt like a description of the way I am recovering, I am recovering in a gentle manner. Immediately the honest part of me said "Um, not always gently though, right?" No, not always gently. Often it looks quite the opposite of gentle on the outside, the way things come out through expressions of pain and frustration with what's happened, what's still happening. The next thought was that those two words describe what is happening to Gently, Gently is recovering. That felt very true. I can fully agree with that statement. The last reflection feels more like a mission, should you choose to accept it: We are on a mission to recover Gently. Here is all of your fancy tech and a super fast sports car. Duh duh duh!

There is a gentle part of my recovery. It happens very deep inside of me, amongst parts of me that are very timid to show themselves to the outside world, even the most trusted of my people, whom are very few. The tenderest, gentlest parts of me are also the ones who have been most hurt, and hurt because they have allowed themselves to be seen and touched by other people.

It's people! I hear the revelatory cry of Charlton Heston's character in the movie "Soylent Green" as he discovers the horrible truth. Our horrible truth is that the source of our trauma is people, closeness with people, trusting people, needing people.

I've been taking photos out of frames today, decluttering. We had to take all of the photos off of our narrow stairwell walls when a new wash tower had to be taken up to the second floor laundry room, and they've been sitting on the landing for several months. We have so many family photos from our wedding eleven years ago. His family, my adoptive family, my birth family, my late abuser husband's family. Looking at all of them sends a pang of panic through me. Very few of them stir up fond and comforting feelings. The ones with my own kids do, the ones with my, now, husband, my true husband, do.

I ripped up the one with my late abuser husband's family and threw it in the trash. That felt like a dissenting act. A liberating act. They all appear to be so pleasant. That's part of the problem.

Choosing not to put up photos of all of these people feels radical, risky somehow.

My attachment to people is so tenuous. All of these people. It feels so arbitrary.

I found myself feeling a sense of acceptance of that in me today. I have been so afraid of that feeling, like I have to fix it. Today, I thought: What if that's just how I feel with people in general. What if that's an okay way to be in the world. What if that's me, and okay. What if nothing bad will happen to me if I just allow that to be true.

I don't know what we will end up putting on our walls.

Maybe wallpaper!

[HannahOne]

Welcome, Gently! So glad you are journaling here.

Welcome to all parts of you.

What to put on your walls is your choice now. 

[Gently]

Thank you, HannahOne 

[SenseOrgan]

Welcome here Gently! 

[NarcKiddo]

Gently is recovering.

I am happy to read this. Your whole journal entry feels gentle, kind and thoughtful.

[Gently]

Thank you, SenseOrgan and NarcKiddo 

Time with "the kids". No other way to refer to them, although they are both above thirty years old and one has his own child, now. More time with the kids and the grandchild lately. A family hang-out once a week. It calms me, regulates me, having that anchor, that reassuring regular contact. Makes me feel that everything is okay. And, I guess it is if we are all willing to spend time together.

"I guess" is the tricky part of this life, this cptsd life. The not knowing, not for sure. The knowing that connections are tenuous or can be exploited or discarded.

Ruminations this morning after time together yesterday. Starting to feel "under it". Feeling myself begin to fall, things going grey, shame creeping in.

"No, don't do that to yourself." A cry, a lament rises towards the soft self, the afraid self, the worried self. Care, compassion, affection, support. An internal response of openness to it, allowing it to lift me back up, bring me back into the land of the living. Tender Loving Kindness. Tears of release.

"Be kind to yourself today, you need some extra care today."

Yes, I do. The tide is turned. This newly discovered posture of compassion towards my tender self is becoming familiar, responding to it more natural, believing it more possible.

I turn my face away from ephemeral anxieties and distress, rumination and fear. I turn my heart towards loving kindness, care-taking. I will practice this day through a posture of loving kindness, self-care and recovery towards myself.

On the outside, my activities will likely look the same as if this shift had not happened.

On the inside, a universe, a galaxy of difference. From darkness to light, from oppression to freedom, from death to life.

I turn my face away from all of the demons "out there" and instead turn my loving gaze onto myself, this moment, this place, feel my own self, my own needs, my own body, my own tender heart, and actively offer care and support. I stay.


Stay here, stay with me, I need you.

I'm here. I see you. You're safe here. Breathe with me.

[HannahOne]

being able to choose your own direction is a gift of freedom that you have access to now!

It's good to see you being kind to yourself and letting yourself know you're safe now.

[Gently]

Thanks, HannahOne 

I noticed this morning that I had been feeling anxious since the evening before, after spending a really nice time with long term friends we haven't seen in a while. The visit was great, and I felt grounded the whole time, centred and calm within myself.

When we got home, I found myself feeling anxious about the family plan this Friday. All of a sudden I felt the insecurity and stress of that family time coming up. What if it doesn't happen, how long until Friday?, that seems too long to wait, it's really important that they come, what if they don't come, what will I do for the two days waiting until they come, it feels stressful that they're coming or not coming, maybe I've had too much people time, craving, slight feeling of scattered desperation about it happening or not or or or...

I realized this morning that what I was feeling was similar to addiction. I recalled a video that I studied early in my recovery by Paul Sunderland about adoptees and addiction. He stated that adoptees are over-represented in treatment, and that the struggles we endure are like a love addiction. As I explored the feelings I was having through a recovery from addiction lens, it made a lot of sense, and allowed me to separate those feelings from my true feelings towards the people involved in the scenarios of the anxious thoughts and feelings.

The other day, I found myself able to navigate some stressful interpersonal dynamics in our strata management structure, trying to solve some conflicts that had arisen over the arrangements of some work on our patio. Normally, those kinds of situations would throw me into an emotional spiral. That day, I was able to detach and think clearly, make good decisions, and engage calmly and assertively. My therapist had recently told me that, as I moved through recovery, I would find myself just more easily able to manage different kinds of situations that in the past were very triggering and unmanageable. I was delighted to find that she was right!

Following that calm day of engagement, there was another subsequent day of very successful interpersonal exchanges which resulted in a very positive outcome in our strata situation. I felt so great. I felt so competent. I felt such a high. Maybe it was dopamine? It felt amazing! The day following that one was the day with friends. The evening of the friends was when the anxiety started.

My guess is that the "hit" of dopamine from positive engagement with people triggered a loop of stress not knowing when I might get the next "hit". It became all about getting the feeling again, or maintaining it, or not loosing it, and the fear that it may not happen. That sounded and felt like an addiction cycle to me.

Once I used that as a way of understanding the thoughts and feelings I was struggling with, I was able to use self care, self understanding and comfort, a reminder that I know how to find deeply satisfying feelings of love and connection within myself, remind myself of the true feelings of affection I have for my kids, my own family, and that they are not for "hits", but they are people who have needs of their own and I want good things for them, I don't actually want to use them as my supply.

It was remarkable to have the ability to distinguish the stress and anxiety feelings about not loosing the good feelings, from my own actual true feelings about people I care about and who care about me. It's like a super-power. I would never have been able to do it without all of the recovery of Self I've been doing for the last three plus years, without all of the good therapy, self-love and self-compassion and building an affectionate intimacy within myself, cultivating a feeling of safety and love within myself, feeling it for the first time, seemingly, and then being able to recognize that out in the world, slowly.

That feeling of safety, care, compassion, and love that I began to cultivate within myself was the first time I remember ever feeling that in such a true and pure embodied way. Being relinquished at birth and adopted into a family without emotional attachment instincts, I was shut down from the beginning. I "knew" what love was supposed to be only as a cognitive construct, as information, not as a body memory. Often in my abuse recovery women's group, someone would say that we would slowly be able to recover our Selves that we knew before the abuser go to us. I didn't have a "before". My before was in utero, and even then I was unwanted. My birth mother said she remembered trying to forget she was pregnant.

No, I have been working on creating and cultivating a sense of love from and to my own Self, the parts of myself, almost from scratch. It helped that I raised my own kids, and had a sense of protection and love for them. But even that love towards them was limited by my own lack of personal experience of feeling love. I think I love my kids much better now than I was able to do when I was raising them. It's a hard thing, but I think it's true.

I am a better parent to my inner child than the parent I was born from or the parents I was given to. That's pretty cool, to know that I know how to take care of myself better than anyone else can. I am a reliable resource for my own well-being.

It sounds like I'm really starting to believe that. Wow. That feels really good.

[Gently]

I'm copying a post from another stream of mine because I think this is a good description of decisions I've made that show me that I'm recovering, and I want to be able to see it's content here, too.

________________________________________________________________________________


A few days after the visit, I realized that I had been in a bit of a fog since. I was functioning okay, but I was definitely affected. There is a part of me that has an expectation that I "should" be able to get to a place where I will be able to see her and not be affected at all. A strange expectation to have inside of me. Good, I think, to realize that it's there. Of course I would be affected. Why else would I need to stay away from her for seven months?

There was a family event today with the extended family. My brother's grandson's birthday. M would likely be there, and she was. Within five minutes of walking through the door, my sister in law is telling me how my brother is close to having a nervous breakdown from having to deal with M. I'm saying: I know, yup, I get that, I know, yes. Because that's what happened to me, and that's why I am keeping my distance. I sat down briefly to say hello to M, but it was so loud in the house that I only managed to wave and mouth hello to her. I had to get outside into the back yard.

There were allergins in the house that required me to need to go outside the house. The house was absolutely packed with people, extended family of my nieces in laws, and friends. After about fifteen minutes, I knew I needed to leave. My nervous system was not tolerating the intensity of stimulation.

I felt so much better once I left their property and walked up the street. I felt very good about making that decision. I texted my niece and my brother and SIL later saying that I was sorry I had to leave, and that there was too much stimulation for my nervous system today. I felt good about that, too. I wonder if being honest about that might encourage them to consider their own threshold for tolerating stimulation, too. In the past I would have felt ashamed of not being "strong enough" to just power through those feelings in a situation like that. Or, I would be worried that they would judge me for not pushing through. Now, I'm proud of myself for being kind to myself, and for being honest about what I was experiencing.

I guess that's what is happening, now. I am building resilience to be able to do what is right for me without being tortured by fear and worry about what others will think of me. I no longer think it's a virtue to kill myself for the sake of other people's preferences, nor is it my responsibility to intervene when others make different decisions than I do and then suffer because of it. We are all free to choose.

I think I am beginning to feel and act more detached, emotionally. There is sadness with that, because I have to give up the fantasy that I could be close the way I have always longed to be with M. I feel bad for her. She is so old and small, now. I wish it could be different than it is.

It's still really hard. The pain is still there. I don't want to be callous, but I can't afford to be soft hearted. It's lonely, needing to keep an emotional distance. But at least I'm not getting hurt repeatedly.

I'm glad I made the efforts this week. I'm glad for what I discovered.

Nothing is fixed, nothing is perfect or even that good. It's really hard to deal with. But, it's getting better. I'm getting better, stronger. I'm better able to do what's right for me without crushing shame. That's good. That feels good.

[Gently]

The day after the family event, I was emotionally disregulated; angry, bitter, resentful, snippy, taking lots of things very personally, critical, bored, and blaming everyone around me for how I was feeling. Most of that stayed inside me and I didn't harm anyone. My husband definitely had a front row seat, but even when I apologized for being "snippy" yesterday morning, he apparently hadn't noticed. That became grist for the mill, and my mind was making up catastrophic marriage-ending crises about that, too.

I wanted someone, anyone, to make me feel better, it felt like it was other people's fault that I was feeling bad, if only they would... if only they didn't.... he never.... they always....

Like an infant or small child, who needs her parents to be able to notice what she needs, who should be able to rely on her parents to notice and see and care and come close and try and try and succeed and even if it's not a perfect match to the child's needs, at least they draw near and stay, and care.

And the outrage of an infant who is not getting her needs met, the cry of rage, insistence, and even betrayal when it doesn't happen.

I could see the similarity of my own feelings and those.

I could also see the similarity of my own feelings and my experience of my M's behaviour from those feelings.

A part of me could see the needs of the child. It helped me not to act out on them, or at least to modulate my behaviour, use self control.

It did not change how I felt completely, the feeling in my body, I did not shame the feeling or push it away by bullying or force. I allowed myself to feel the feelings and carry on, with some sense of acceptance and compassion, while trying not to foist them onto someone else.

My husband had a half day off, and we had plans to do an errand. We haven't had any holidays this year, and I told him I wanted to add a "staycation" day to our errand. Go around like tourists in our own city and enjoy the beautiful late summer day and evening, walk along the seawall, eat and drink at our leisure, and take pleasure, have fun.

The way it came out of my mouth as I suggested it to him felt like an accusation in my body, in my ears. "I want to have fun!" like I was accusing him of not being fun, or not providing fun. It felt pretty aggressive to me. I have no idea how it felt to him.

But, we did it! And it was fun. It was a breath of fresh air to my weary body and soul, a carefree moment on a Monday night of all things. The weather was perfect, the scenes were lively with so many people out and about, also enjoying themselves.

We came across some people who had stacked a log onto other logs and crafted a see-saw. We went to watch them, and they offered us a try. We did. It was a fun, spontaneous thing to do. So unexpected. While we ate at an ocean front spot, we watched the sun go down into a beautiful sunset over the water. We also watched some young men bury a large rubber ball into the sand and use it as a spring board for doing amazing flips into the air. Impressive and entertaining!

We had taken a water taxi from where we'd parked our car to walk the sea wall to the restaurant where we ate. On the way back, in the gathering dark, the bright, just waning moon was hanging low before us in the sky, and the sunset of blazing orange was behind. Beauty on our doorstep, ours for the enjoying. So much life all around us.

When we got home, I said "That outing was just what the doctor ordered."

And it was true. It was good medicine for me.

The thing about this whole experience is that I have never been able to be cured of my feelings by changing my activities. I have always felt trapped and held hostage by how I was feeling. The only thing I wanted or could do was to hide and/or complain until the thing that was "wrong" could be changed so that I could finally stop being tortured by the thing that was wrong.

Now, I am learning to change my behaviour and make choices for myself (like distance from abusive people, and self care, and self compassion, and emotional regulation through self care and compassion), saying "no" and making sure my "yes" is a true "yes, and taking the risks that when I take care of myself I will still have the people who truly also care for me, therapy, growth, all of the things.

This day, this experience of wanting something (a fun outing, a fun day) even while I felt all of those yucky feelings swirling inside of me, is revolutionary. This experience of asking for what I want, choosing what will be good for me and going for it, even though those feelings are still sitting inside of my nervous system, in my brain, then doing the good thing, even though the feelings are still there, going, doing, finding enjoyment, even though it's not Nirvana, it's not perfect, even though nothing has been fixed.

And letting it be good alongside the hard, alongside the low. And it was good.

It didn't fix or change my situation, but it was good itself, and it was good for me, and it was good for us who were doing it. And I felt other feelings by doing it. And those feelings mingled with those other feelings, and reframed them, reorganized them, gave them a different context.

I guess what I did for those feelings of that infant in me who needed someone to notice and take care of her needs, was to notice and offer something that met her need, her need for light and life and delight and love.

I was a good parent to myself. I'm learning to be the good parent I've always needed. It feels good.

[Gently]

I felt a level of freedom within my day yesterday that felt luxurious. Ease of movement from one activity or task to another, the absence of distress over what I might choose to do once my current activity was coming to a close. There was a feeling of lightness, space, expansiveness, possibility, opportunity.

There was a task that needed to be addressed with M regarding her personal business. That is the area I am taking care of, and so far it's been a manageable part because it can mostly happen from a distance.

She had left three voice mail messages the day before, when we were having our fun staycation day, about something that was not comprehensible due to her speech difficulties and her emotional dysregulation. I did not engage with those voice mail messages until later in the day when our outing was over, and decided to talk to her the next day about it.

I had the thought, because I was feeling so good yesterday morning, that I could just call her myself. (I have not been calling her myself for a few years now, my husband taking on various levels of acting as my proxy depending on how sensitive I have been at different times. Many times I am triggered just by hearing her voice, and he will actually listen to her messages to see if there is anything I need to know.) I caught myself, and decided that would not be a good idea for me to make the phone call on my own. Good catch.

I asked my husband to give her a quick call in the morning and tell her that we would both talk with her about her concerns in the evening. I told him not to let her get into it with him, and repeat that we would talk with her in the evening.

I felt better knowing that there was a plan, and that she had been informed of the plan. That gave me peace of mind for my own day, not worrying that she would be wondering if her concern would be addressed or not.

There have been, and are, many times when we do not respond to messages from her because what she has communicated does not require a response, or is something we cannot do anything about, or is just her venting her emotions. This has been really, really hard to become strong enough to be able to do, to not respond.

After our conversation with her last night, she did this. She called and left a message about a long standing issue that has no solution that she has been fixating on. I am getting used to this new normal of not responding. It used to feel mean, rude, insensitive. Now I see it more as a very good strategy for keeping myself able to engage at a level that works for me, rather than getting burnt out with her emotional dysregulation (emotional vampirism) and then needing to disengage for months at a time. This new way is becoming more familiar and tolerable for me.

There is still this little part of me that feels bad for her, this tender part that doesn't want her to feel alone and ignored. That is a good part, a compassionate part. She is so empathetic. She doesn't want anyone to suffer the way she did, being ignored, unnoticed. We're learning, though, that M doesn't do well when we give her too much attention. It seems to backfire and make her behaviour unbearable for us. She can't reciprocate the sensitive empathy and consider our needs, so we have to be strong and take care of our needs for Ourself. It hurts, and there are tears, and the need for comfort, and the "but why?!?!". But, we're getting used to it. It seems to be working, this new way.

The other thing we're noticing is that when we end a conversation with M quickly and state clearly what we want to say, do a little bit of listening but not too much, and say good bye, it works! When we get in and get out as needed, it works. It's over. We aren't trapped. We can control our level of engagement. We aren't a victim. Not anymore. It's not enjoyable at all, but at least it can be not-victimizing.

After talking with her last night, and disengaging so effectively, and staying detached during the phone call, I felt elated. I felt so successful. I could also feel this little part of me wondering if this good feeling meant that it could be good with her now. That is my vulnerability, that little One who still wants her Mommy, who believes so deeply in the Goodness of M, who wants so much for it to be true. I try to comfort her, to hold on to her, give her what M can't.

Another vulnerability is another part that wants to run with the success feeling and take it as "there are no problems here, nothing to see, everything will be fine, now" because I was able to "do it" this time. When that part is driving, it wants to ignore the fact that I was nervous before the call, that it took a toll to make the call, that it will affect me over the next few days to some degree, and I can't just go on as if nothing ever happened as if I can "do all things".

After my H and I high-fived the success of the phone call, I admitted to him that I felt nervous before calling, and that my stomach felt anxious after, even though I did well to keep myself safe in the call. It's not "fine" now. I am not invincible. All of the gross stuff still happened and all of the stuff is still true.

It's not all light and rainbows and happy endings. It's hard, and it hurts, and it isn't easy to manage, and I don't know from one day to the next what I'll be able to do, and I have to be flexible and patient with myself, and I need help, and it will never be perfect. It will never be fixed.

It's also not all black and evil. I am able to see and accept more nuance and grey areas, the not perfect but manageable space. The "good enough". I can accept my own "good enough". I can see better that the things I am able to do, the ways I can care from a distance, matter. Taking care of myself matters, and taking care of myself allows me to care about M even if she can't see it or feel it. I know it. I know myself, I know my heart, that I am not vengeful or hateful, that I am doing my best and my best is good, really good, it counts. I can actually feel that today.

There is something about being able to accept the mess of it all, the mess that is understandable because of what we now know about relational trauma, to see that and have compassion on all of us, that we all have been hurt, my M by her M, and her my her M, and the other harms that have come through other abuses, the societal and systemic abuses... To see all of that and grieve it for all of ourselves, to feel the pain of the ways we are hurting, and hurting each other.

I used to believe that if you had compassion on those who have hurt you because you understand they had also been hurt, that you also had to forgive, and to forgive you had to allow them to still have access to you as if they hadn't hurt you and still hurt you. That you had to pretend that since we all are hurting it's okay to just carry on in tolerance.

Now, I know that compassion means I want something better for myself and for them, and that means no longer allowing them to harm me. Being angry enough about the harm to take action that makes it stop, being angry enough to want to create something loving and living and beautiful instead, and disallowing the harms to be perpetuated. That is love, to interrupt the patterns of harm by refusing to participate. That is not vengeance or malice.

Brenee Brown said "Love is the distance at which I can love both myself and you at the same time."

If it's not also loving towards Self, then it isn't love. It's something else.

Creating that distance is painful and terrifying. It's harder than sacrificing Self, we're used to that, it's a well worn pattern. Creating distance stirs up all kinds of fear and panic and resistance. It feels world ending. It kind of is world ending, really. It ends the world as we've known it so far. And we don't know yet what kind of world we will get when we do it, if we'll be utterly alone, if we'll just cease to exist.

It's a huge leap of faith into an abyss holding on only to our own Selves as we jump.

And hopefully we have one or two trusted people to meet us when we land.

[HannahOne]

Forgiveness is definitely not required. Cannot be required.

I resonated with this from an earlier post. "getting the feeling again, or maintaining it, or not loosing it, and the fear that it may not happen. That sounded and felt like an addiction cycle to me." It sounds like addiction to me, and it also sounds like disorganized attachment that I experience. Adoption is an attachment trauma. I'm so sorry you experienced that trauma.

And so glad you are creating so much secure internal attachment now. Your awareness of your inner experience is a strength, as is your ability to see the gray as well as the black and white. That's all part of the secure attachment we're free to create as adults! 

[TheBigBlue]

Hi Gently,

I've been catching up a little, and I'm really struck by how much self-trust seems to be growing through your journal. 💛

The part that keeps standing out to me is that you're not waiting for the difficult feelings to disappear before choosing what is kind, protective, or even joyful for yourself.

That feels like such meaningful progress. 

I'm glad you're becoming someone you can rely on from the inside.

[NarcKiddo]

I am so glad you plucked up the courage to ask to have fun. And then had fun. I get why you felt it might have sounded a bit demanding. In my case asking for something fun is really, really hard because I got so terribly punished for doing so as a kid. And the outcome for me was that, having lost her rag, my M would then sometimes take me to do the 'fun' thing, by which time it was no fun at all. This leads to my being very reticent to ask for anything fun these days unless I know my H has been thinking about whatever it is already. Plucking up the courage is hard and then when it comes out the emotional stress probably does make it sound a bit petulant or demanding, or whatever. But my H is really happy whenever I do actually ask for something and he bends over backwards to make it happen. It sounds like your H was very happy to go along with your request.

The feelings over not responding to messages are familiar to me, too. I have to actively tell myself to step away from the WhatsApp sometimes. Well done for holding your boundaries.

I agree with all that TBB said.

 

[Gently]

disorganized attachment that I experience. Adoption is an attachment trauma. 

Disorganized attachment is a helpful way of understanding those feelings. Thank you. It describes the experience of wanting contact, feeling desperate for it, and then also dreading it, feeling harassed by it, confused, distressed, and fearful of both being utterly alone (often while being with people) and being with people. At the same time as all of this is some sense of normal feeling relational sensibility, but it's so obscured by the DA.

HannahOne, do you ever feel calmly attached? Is that something to look forward to? Or, do we need to learn to live with and accept disorganized attachment and all of its pain and distress? I keep looking for that time when I won't feel those ways anymore.

There is so much pain, such deep pain from adoption/relinquishment trauma, it's so primal. There is no answer to an infant's cry for her mother except her mother's body. It's pre-verbal, carnal. The triggering events bring up a foundational terror and anger, like that of an infant, urgent, binary.