Blueberry's Journal

[Blueberry]

I am spitting with rage about something in the not too distant past. It's not even about FOO but obviously a situation which reminds me of FOO otherwise it wouldn't go this deep or affect me this badly. I thought about writing a letter to not send but once I came on here, I discovered it's too early for that.

We touched on it in therapy this week so it's also not surprising that I've had so much difficulty doing anything constructive since. In fact my T suggested a topic for Screen Processing which I could do involving B1, but I haven't so far done that either.

I am beginning to realise that I will do that when I'm ready, but apparently I'm not ready yet.

I desperately need to have a shower, and I know that will make me feel better. And then this evening there is Open House at the local church with lots of singing after the church service. I would like to go, I think it will do me good. Showering first would be good though.

[sanmagic7]

you go, blueberry!  sounds like some good plans for today, some self-care and self-enjoyment.  a great combo.

yep, you'll do what you need to do when you're ready.  look at you - you're figuring this out so quickly now.  a huge step of progress.   it makes me smile for you.

thanks for posting about this.  it's inspirational.  big hug filled with good feelings and readiness.

[Blueberry]

Thank you san. It's inspirational? Really? Well, glad my post is of some use to somebody else.

~ ~ ~ ~

If I'm honest with myself, what I feel would do me best in the next few days is go back up to the farm to do my few hours on Monday morning. However, the weather forecast is pretty bad, or at least not too conducive to cycling at the time of the morning I need to to get there. Getting back home again in time for other morning appointment OK because by then it'll be daylight. If I'm also honest with myself, I don't specially like the selection of hymns we're meant to sing tomorrow evening at choir, so why not head to the farm tomorrow evening instead? Even though I 'should' go to choir. Except that Should is never good, for me. And the Monday morning farm work is good for me, so long as I have an impulse to do it! A bit like washing dishes. Fairly simple job with my hands, which helps me get regrounded. I also work with somebody else, which helps me too.

Atm I feel as if there are too many projects I'm meant to be involved in. "meant to be" is like "should" - not good for me. As usual there are people who will criticise me for not turning up to sing in the choir, though not our choir director. She told me a while back not to worry about it. But there are others in choir. They are just busybodies, they don't actually know what it's like to have CPTSD and be in healing. They seem to think it's a simple case of depression where it's best to go and join other people and get out of the house. Idk even if that's always the case when you have depression, but it is sure not the case with my healing from CPTSD, and I have said this! Do they listen? No. Big surprise there.

[sanmagic7]

yes, really, it's inspirational.  with all that you've had to deal with, blueberry, all that you're still being very honest about dealing with, to share this kind of progress shows hope that we can make it thru if we just keep moving.  we all need to see such progress, as well as the fight to make it.  you're doing so great.  thank you.

i like that - should is not good for me.  ain't that the truth!  'must', 'ought', 'meant to', 'it's your responsibility' and anything else in that line is linked to guilt and shame, in my mind.  blueberry, you're shining.  big warm loving hug to you.

[DecimalRocket]

It can be tough when people don't take your pain seriously. I get that. CPTSD makes people pretty weary. But your pain is real, and even if they don't listen to you, at least we will.

Take care, Blueberry. 

[Blueberry]

Thanks DR and san 

~~~

No farm, weather's too bad for me to get there. Decided against choir too. Just went to my expat Xmas party. I noted it was quite strenuous getting out of the house to go there. So it was good I left it at that and didn't force myself to go on from there to choir. When I was getting ready to go, I was jittery. It's good for me to notice my feelings sometimes.

After the expat party, I noticed a feeling of depression in the pit of my stomach. I used to always get that feeling whenever I was visiting a family, any family. Sometimes it felt more like sadness than like depression. Anyway I don't have that much any more, so that's a relief.

[sanmagic7]

do you look on them as a surrogate family of sorts?  sounds like it. 

keep taking care of you.  i give you so much credit for picking and choosing, being good to yourself.  big hug, sweetie.

[Blueberry]

do you look on them as a surrogate family of sorts?  sounds like it. 

No actually, not really. For other members, especially those who never learned the local language that well, it's a surrogate extended family. But that's not my case. I'm pretty well integrated locally.

I think it was more having contact with a bunch of 'normal' people my age and older who have 'normal' lives and especially careers that was triggering. Nobody even talked about jobs or careers! It's just me who immediately has these weird ideas.

Added later: I think also connected to mixing with ex-pats from FOO's homeland, and Christmas connects you to traditions from childhood anyway. Shows me once again how important it is that I live in a totally different country from the whole of FOO. Often just the thought of living in and/or trying to work in either of the countries I grew up in is massively triggering.

[DecimalRocket]

I relate to feeling different sometimes. Seeing people live normal lives is oddly surreal to me sometimes. Even outside the CPTSD, I can be pretty different in many ways.

Well, I guess the different can always hang out with other different people like this forum. Heh.

[Blueberry]

"The different hang out with the different.." DR, that's undoubtedly why I come to this forum (almost) daily. I was doing that long before I became a Mod. From day one really. 

Now I've finished all my reading as Mod. There are more posts I'd like to respond to, but I just can't. So I'm choosing myself and my health and I'm not responding.

I even got sent a little freelance work today of the type I don't do anymore but since it really is super easy, I agreed to do it. I need my concentration for that. It's not super easy emotionally-speaking of course but I could do with the money and it's the easiest version of the freelance work I "don't do anymore".

[Blueberry]

My T also said that things that need to be worked on and to be healed will keep coming back up to the surface in some form or other (tiredness, colds and flu, addictions, nightmares) so long as I don't work on them actively. You can't keep pushing them away, postponing them till whenever. No, I have to promise myself that I will look at a particular 'topic' by a specific date that is not too far away (like the weekend or next T session). I wasn't doing that. I have to be reliable  to myself about this kind of thing! The 'have to' in that sentence doesn't even bother me. 

NTS again! Because my eating addiction is way up AND I'm pushing topics I should work on away.

I copied this out of one of my Employment posts. Unfortunately the 'have to' is bothering me right now. My throat feels all choked up. So the other NTS is: yeeees, but take it slowly.

I feel very contradictory today, I mean as if I'm contradicting myself internally.

[Blueberry]

I'm going to post a bit more about my reactions to this thread of my own: http://outofthefog.net/C-PTSD/forum/index.php?topic=8398.0

So apart from having enough energy to go off and do some cleaning, which really equals channelling the anger into something constructive to me, I also went to choir practice and sang unashamedly full of gusto though I missed lots of practices since September and think I can't sing at all anymore. I intended to go and whisper-sing. I really actually do have problems singing, even that seems to be CPTSD-related. So it's really good when I don't feel self-conscious and just sing, whether or not I hit the correct notes. As I posted over on the other thread the channel (my stove-pipe) from my guts up to my mouth got freed with this expression of my anger.

I have got an email response to my anger, but I haven't read it. I just decided to leave it as is, and go with allowing this anger. Just a few days ago, I thought that there's no way I can express anger in LETS because I'd be making myself vulnerable and so on, but in a certain way I already felt vulnerable. It's one of the reasons I refused to go to any more meetings and have hardly taken advantage of help despite the fact that I have credit in points. That's all pretty EF-y.

So now that I've expressed anger, I feel as if I don't have to hide all my feelings away. I don't want to blow a fuse in quite that way in my own FOO (yet) because I don't want to quite burn all those bridges (e.g. the inheritance bridge). I have less hesistancy in LETS. They deserve a whole pile of anger.

The head honcho at the time I was in the Steering Committee, well, she was actually self-appointed Head Honcho and everybody went along with that though according to the Statutes, we didn't have a Head Honcho. Anyway it occurred to me today after my angry email, that she's waify. She used her waify-ness to avoid taking responsibility. She was always making excuses. This was pretty triggering for me because enF made excuses for M, and M made excuses for B1 and B1 used these same excuses for himself (throughout my childhood and teenage years) and the last time I had contact with the whole of FOO, B1 made excuses for SIL2 (ie. not even his own wife but our joint SIL!!). And somehow, I'm just meant to stick it all. B1 even said that my problems with SIL2 were just a projection. But they weren't and aren't.

It's the same with my problems in LETS - these problems (denial and waify-ness and refusal to follow own rules...) they really did exist and still do to some degree. There were people who left LETS because of these problems and other people who didn't use it as much as they could have, which is not good for the overall running of the system. So I mean I didn't invent these problems but because they trigger me in about 3 different ways, it's been harder for me to get over it. I think I stepped down from my post 1 1/2 years ago, but it might have been 2 1/2 years ago. Yikes. But it is the way it is. It often takes a long time for the wheels to turn internally, for me to figure out exactly what's wrong cognitively and emotionally and then be able to work on it.

My T suggested I do some Screen Processing on B1 finding fault with my argumentation in the past (childhood / teenage years). It was a bit like the donkey and the carrot (you have to argue better / present your arguments better and then we might believe you) but actually it was more like moving goal posts because however I presented my arguments, there was always something, some logical argument I'd missed or somewhere where they could prove I was wrong because they were better at debating etc and so they didn't believe me. Actually my brain used to blank and still does, so EFs, when arguments get difficult. Anyway, I could be putting this issue with B1 on my imaginary Screen but have so far not.

OTOH when I feel other people are arguing illogically or are ignoring and/or distorting facts, I get enraged, which is also probably an EF based on FOO stuff. Maybe I'm then also behaving a bit like FOO in shooting other people's arguments down. Idk and it's probably too early for me to deal with that emotionally, if it's the case. Though actually in FOO's case, it was more a kind of sport,  rather than needing to argue a point in order to then move forwards with decision-making (or follow statutes etc.) so maybe I've just been maligning myself needlessly. It was also often more or less the only subject of conversation, e.g. at the dinner table, and as I was still trying to engage with FOO 25 - 30 years ago, I joined in. Though I do remember once on my birthday, I objected to them having that as conversation and when I was asked what I wanted to talk about instead, I replied that I would prefer to have no conversation at all. They were pretty surprised, possibly even shocked, but they did comply that one meal.

[sanmagic7]

blueberry, it sounds like you are doing a lot of processing on a lot of levels. whew!  that anger stuff is a doozy all on its own for nearly all of us - either it's not there, or it's right there all the time, or it has to be coaxed out of hiding, but usually the overriding theme is fear of it.

sounds like you're getting a handle on yours, and kudos to you for that. 

maybe there's still a lot tied up with your b1 stuff, and that's what's keeping you from doing what you had set a goal to do.  just a thought.

i am really glad for you about singing out.  you've talked about singing before, and how it hits different parts of our brains than when we talk.  now that i think of it, wow, you just triggered something for me (not a bad thing) that i hadn't really consciously processed before.

i used to love to sing, enjoyed it, always sang along with the radio in the car, etc.  i've stopped singing many years ago, and i see now that i was shamed into stopping by my narc daughter.  wow - does this stir up a bunch of feelings inside my body.  thank you for this, blueberry.  ugly stuff for me, but something i can put a finger on now and process.  possibly someday i shall sing again - even tho i'm not hitting all the right notes, like you said.  that's not what's of the utmost importance, is it.

thanks, sweetie.  sending a hug filled with that beautiful music we can make all by ourselves, and lots of love.

[Blueberry]

I was so angry last night I couldn't fall asleep and then I started sweating too.

I read one of the email replies to my angry email from yesterday, and actually it seems to have done some good. Because that which was 'not possible' has suddenly been done, which lessens some of the work I have to do because a third pary messed up, as usual in LETS.

Thanks for your validation, san. It really means alot. And yeah Idk always what to do with anger. Apparently it's not good for us to dwell on it, at least that's what I read last night in bed when I couldn't fall asleep anyway. OTOH just swallowing it down isn't the best either. Nor is self-harm, obviously. Though I don't recall doing any yesterday, certainly not when I was in bed too angry to fall asleep. I totally feel the emotion and there's no impulse in my fingers to do anything form of physical harm to myself. Interesting.

I sang alot as a smallish child but I was shut down. We moved and M couldn't deal with the move and I turned into SG. Not that moving had anything in the least to do with me. NOthing that rational. But I went into hiding so to speak. Apart from crying and being frightened and getting physical pain through tension, as children do, I didn't express much any more. Singing is a form of expression. When I sing out, I hit the notes better BTW. More relaxed probably, don't care if they're wrong. I hope you have the time and energy to process and then maybe go back to singing too. You're doing a lot of processing atm too.

[DecimalRocket]

Hmm. . . sometimes it's a good idea to dwell in anger, and sometimes it's a bad idea. When people feel angry, sometimes they really need to to grieve until it hits a certain point where they have to find some way to cope other than grieving. I somehow have an instinct for this as I examine how my own feelings stick around or lighten with different ways of coping. Just giving some ideas here, Blue. Glad you're not self harming.

I used to go to singing classes for a year as a distraction from my problems — as someone told me my voice had a lot of potential. It's a strange comfort somehow — especially when I do it less because I find it "fun" than I find it "healing". Still sing a little at times and can still hit certain notes. The greatest comfort I found isn't being able to express myself, it's being able to relate to someone else's situation in a song.

I hope you can find a way to heal with music, Blue. Take care.