Tag: #cptsd

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The Only Reliable Narrator is Life Itself

That thing is happening again… the one where I have blog posts streaming beautifully through my brain until I sit down to try and capture it onto the page. Like a skittish rare animal that can only be seen at a particular time of day under certain conditions. Sigh. That’s only because you’re out of practice Christina. Just get back up that’s all you have to do. It doesn’t have to be perfect just get up and try, and keep getting up and trying. That’s it, that’s the secret.

Today is the eve of a day that marks a change, a before and an after. You never know on the day itself that your life will suddenly never be the same, and in this case you can’t go back and you can’t go forward, you must go through, until …. until when I don’t know, just until. Until and all the unknown that comes with it is very frustrating for me right now. I suppose that is what I am in need of mastering.

I was going through my camera roll this morning, through 44,000 some odd photos. They are filled with captured moments, including many screen shots of conversations (my particular brand of insanity), songs on the radio at the time, scenery, and my emotions. It’s like viewing a documentary of my life and as I scroll I am in awe of what an adventure I have created. Most days I wouldn’t describe it like this, but when I look from the outside I have a big life. Isn’t that what I wanted? Am I not in the midst of creating everything I ever wanted? How I will weave all of that together, maybe it already is, and it’s more about being able to step back and view it as the story that is already visible, and not a chaotic jumbled mess.

What came before me was a chaotic jumbled mess, but perhaps I have turned that into something beautiful and I just can’t see it because I’m too close. I’m on the inside. What does it look like on the outside? I try desperately to find this. I guess that’s what I am looking for in the pictures. I am looking for the whole story, but I am inside this one so I can’t properly see it. The only reliable narrator is life itself.

Recently I’ve been examining my relationships to movies, why I like what I do, and my habits. If a movie makes me feel something I will watch it repeatedly, and I will most assuredly want you to watch it, so we can have a shared experience. Will you feel the things I do, see them? Of course you won’t because you will see from your experiences, just like I see from mine. My particular brand of longing has always been shared experience, and maybe watching the art of others as portrayed in the movies feels as close as I can get.

This morning what I discovered is that is a comfort thing. This sounds simple, but my life, and my mind is anything but. This made me think of trauma survivors and how much of their life they abandon in exchange for comfort. It’s tragic and also beautiful. I have spent my entire life primarily in search of comfort. Something I was never naturally afforded, privileged with, in a stable and consistent way. Wow that is sad. Sometimes I let that sink in. Sometimes I am still enough to let that sink in, and I hear myself saying to my therapist things like “I am surprised when someone likes me, needs me, considers me”, I am still surprised by that.

How sad is that? How profound is that… everything isn’t profound Christina, the harpy critic chirps. Maybe it is, and maybe we just don’t know in the moment when something profound is happening, and maybe I do… and maybe that makes me weird and awkward and belonging even less than I already did. And maybe that’s just a story. The only reliable narrator is life itself after all, because it’s constantly in motion, we are just not constantly aware. Except for those of us that are, because that became a tool of survival. It became necessary and a part of us outside of our control, something that cannot be turned on and off at will, and that changes our entire existence.

My writer’s mind is on fire lately and my art is bubbling always just beneath the surface, but I am so heavy, like a lead block. I look at my piano and I want to sit there and compose and make art, but my tank is empty. There isn’t any fuel. Frozen and lost, awake and alive, just trying to figure it out. I am in between and upside down, and I keep going inside to recover pieces of me. The work is arduous and I have no idea about until. Until when….

I don’t know…. right now I just need to survive the holidays. Curl up and watch other people’s lives as written by someone else and portrayed on a screen. Comfort. Survival…..

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Decluttering my Mind

The ultimate task.

The disorganization of thoughts, the rapid fire scrambling to find a safe narrative to land on is one of the most harrowing journeys.

Lately I am working on holding space for myself, so I may at some future point be able to do so for others in the correct capacity of the roles we hold.

Role confusion may be the most monumental task of my life. Not assuming a helper role, but rather showing up as my full authentic self and believing I’ll still be loved, and more importantly safe.

The lines between creativity and chaos are so often blurred for me. It reminds me of a favorite sentence by Sylvia Plath. “Oh how my mind ricochets between certainty and doubt.” I think I have taken for granted how exhausting it is to learn when to be slow and when to be fast, and what role to assume in what situation.

This is one of the reasons counseling has been such a healthy and productive career for me. The clearly defined boundaries, and learning how to model that also holds me accountable.

Too rigid and it’s unhealthy, too loose and also unhealthy. A spectrum of varying degrees. A constant pursuit to balance, to be the fulcrum.

We are meant to learn from each other. And to have healthy periods of “going under/within/inside” to recover the lost parts of ourselves.

Thinking about all of the tasks I am facing personally as well as practically (namely taming this home), is daunting if all I do is run all the scenarios. So what I am trying is to choose one task, and make one step, and make sure I’m present to feel the satisfaction of a days hard work, and acknowledge the small victories, rather than being in flight mode and already onto the next disaster etc.

I’m trying to read a whole book cover to cover and give it the time it deserves. Surrounding myself with the things does not in fact osmotically imbue me with what is needed right now.

I needed permission to know what I needed, and then the stillness to allow it.

Who knew I couldn’t achieve everything with the frenzied escape pace I adopted early on. It’s hard to teach an old dog new tricks and on the brink of 40 I have earned that title.

This was my word of the day:

From anxious to dauntless, to establishing some kind of a baseline. Decluttering my burning brain and soothing it is quite the process. It’s even more difficult without external comforts that I’ve come to rely on so much. Over-reliance, under reliance again finding/being the fulcrum.

Some resources for decluttering your mind.

https://zenhabits.net/15-cant-miss-ways-to-declutter-your-mind/

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/nomanazish/2017/11/19/how-to-declutter-your-mind-10-practical-tips-youll-actually-want-to-try/amp/

https://www.google.com/amp/s/ideas.ted.com/how-to-declutter-your-mind/amp/

Avoid multi-tasking! I think I may have already fried my mother board from this. I have maintained the frenzied pace from how I earned my worth (and my financial freedom), and my self-esteem. I find I’m still holding desperately to the then, and it doesn’t allow as much room for the now.

I can sit and read a book calmly now, but my nervous system is not up with that program. It’s out of date and so much of my operating systems are habitual. That’s where the mindfulness I preach but rarely practice come in.

So I’m going to be working on it….

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Rules for Loving a Trauma Survivor

This post needs some editing, but I wanted to get it out into the world for now while it is under construction.

To Really Love a Woman (Person)

It’s hard to admit for someone that they need “special instructions”. Especially when society ingrains in us the idea that there is a right and a wrong way. From the time we are socialized in grade and middle school we are separated into factions of varying degrees of cool (worthiness). So this way of categorizing ourselves and the rules of engagement are laid down early on. It is difficult later in life to deviate from our various functioning and upgrade our systems taking into account what wounds our lives have bestowed upon us.

I often joke about being a gremlin, lol. I have special rules. I am privileged to be able to joke about this now. The work I have been able to do is a privilege that not everyone is able to obtain the means for, whether that be financially, intellectually, or circumstantially.

Trauma survivors are a different breed. As a member of this tribe I will try to speak for us in this regard. We love differently and in turn need to be loved differently. So here are some of the things I have learned about myself through my experiences with others.

A trauma survivor learns to be invisible, especially to ourselves. We have become so accustomed to not having our needs met naturally, that we get really good at meeting them ourselves. This also creates a special kind of tired, a soul tired, that can hardly be put into words. Sometimes it can be seen in the eyes. I have a theory that rarely do two survivors get together and join because perhaps they are both so depleted, or maybe the nurturing that would take place could be easily rejected in favor of something that feels more like home. And that if and when they do sometimes they can fall into over indulgences of such comforts. Who knew there ever was such a thing. I believe now that there is.

You have to emerge from that solace and return to yourself and the gift you’re meant to be to the world. We have a mission. We were chosen to have the childhoods and the paths we did for a reason. This is what I’m thinking lately anyway. The theories are works in progress.

Survivors become carefully attuned instruments in anticipating the needs of others and trying to give to them what we didn’t receive. We will usually know what you need before you do. This can make great partners out of us in the right circumstances, and a really difficult situation in the wrong ones. Because we also have a lot of hurt buried deeply within us that can flare up at the slightest hairpin trigger. The less secure our world is in terms of consistency and love the less emotionally regulated. Then the survivor is shamed for their behaviors, when the rest of the world wonders why or how they could act like that.

What you must understand about a survivor is that there have been times in their life when things have felt like life or death. Particularly in childhood when they had no agency or control over the terror that was occurring. This is different for everyone. What is terrifying for one may not be for another. So it’s not only difficult but also unfair to try and assess the worthiness of the claim on someone’s trauma. If it impacted the person significantly, particularly if it causes them to struggle throughout their lives, and feels more like a reflex than a logical decision it can justifiably be claimed as trauma.

Which brings me to my next important point. Survivors almost always minimize not only their own needs, but their own reality. They spin their wheels trying to make sense of what’s happening and to know whether they can trust or not. If very little to no trust was ever had, how are we expected to just behave that way now. This makes survivors much more likely to accept and adapt to unhealthy relationships. We are used to subsisting off very little if nothing, and very happy to be grateful for very little. Which can give you a positive attitude about life and a nice presence to be around, but lacks in the areas of self-development and ability to advocate for our own needs. We weren’t allowed to have them, or there was no room for them. So making them obsolete ourselves was necessary at one point.

No one will love you like a trauma survivor. If you want to be loved by one you must not take us for granted. The way we have learned to love and the things we have needed to overcome to be able to were not easily gained. It is typically through suffering that such a generous heart is formed.

We will pour our very soul into you. However, resentment can bubble up from all our unmet needs, as well as chronic anxiety and health issues that are stored within our body.

Survivors typically need more rest, reassurance, comfort, and stability than your average bear. This does not make us weak, in fact quite the opposite. Above all we need understanding, and someone to be willing to learn what our lives were like for us, and see past the over-functioning we are so used to.

Never take a survivor for granted, we can see you in ways, and bring things out in you that you were never aware existed.

Understand that when a survivor is choked up or cannot get the words out, we are most likely stuck inside a trauma reaction. The same applies for many other areas of functioning. Maybe it appears that we aren’t paying attention or present, try and ask gently, and you’re more likely to get a response. Study and learn about the Four F Trauma responses. Resource: Pete Walker Complex PTSD Information

Understand that attachment is different for the survivor and take the time to educate yourself on this if you want greater success in your relationship. Neither party should have blatant continued bad behavior excused, rather both should be responsible to educate themselves and know their own wants and needs, and have healthy boundaries. This isn’t easy for anyone. For the trauma wired person it can seem almost impossible, but with understanding, psycho education, therapy, and self-awareness and reflection we too can have healthy relationships. The expectations need adjusting though.

And above all things when you see our child, that little person who is still in here, pure and deserving of love; if we let our guard down enough to show you, never forget the cost to us, and the beauty involved in that. It is sacred for a survivor to allow themselves to be seen, and held. It can be a nearly impossible journey to accept.

When we advocate for what we need please listen to us, it’s likely we spent a long time without.

💪🏼💜

 

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Fault Lines

“Sweet dreams are made of these and who am I to disagree. I travel the world and the seven seas, everyone is looking for something.”

It’s funny all these years later this song lyric is on my mind this morning. I have always loved it. I wrote it as my tagline for my original live journal, the birth place of blogging. Foxfire_1 I was ahead of the times and didn’t even know it. I always felt behind. Story of my life.

I am visiting Virginia and a home of a family which contains one of the key players in my life. Now they have all become key players, they are stitched into the fabric of my being. My mind is swimming with thoughts as usual and as usual I am trying to untangle some of them.

It’s an interesting mixture to be both a deeply feeling person and also a scientist who studies the humans. The only way to study me as thoroughly as I would like is to see myself through the eyes of others, as well as by learning from watching the many ways people do life. There are so many ways to live a life. I look around my environment in their home and marvel. I take things I want to emulate and I notice things I might do differently.

One thing I’m learning about this visit is it is one of the Hallmarks of great friendship that you help the other see themselves with a balance of generosity and also clarity. When done properly you have a powerhouse of a friendship that can make you both better. Both my friend and I tiptoe on eggshells in certain ways, but not the bad kind.

The bad kind is fear someone will blow up at you because you’ve hurt them in a way you didn’t even realize you were doing. This kind of eggshells comes from two people who have turned sensitive from the many ways they were harmed in life. This is the good kind of eggshells, and the remedy is trust that is built from being allowed to share with the other what is seen, and that the other translates this through a filter of love, rather than judgment or criticism. Not an easy task when the topics are on raw hot nerves.

For as long as I can remember this woman has been teaching me about being a mother, and a friend. She’s much better at it than she realizes, and I’m sure the same could be said about me. “We never know just how we look through other peoples eyes”, a lyric from a strange song on the Dumb and Dumber Soundtrack, because movie soundtracks were always a thing for me. So of course I had to look up the song, and it was as bizarre as I recalled. Pepper by the Butthole Surfers. LOL.

The lyrics so appropriate though in so many ways. I listened to this song in a cabin at outdoor school. It was the olden days when you actually had to carry a pile of cd’s and a discman anywhere you went. Our generations equivalent of walking to school six miles uphill barefoot in the snow. Kids these days cannot imagine the horrors we were subject to.

“They were all in love with dyin’, they were drinking from a fountain
That was pourin’ like an avalanche comin’ down the mountain

I don’t mind the sun sometimes, the images it shows
I can taste you on my lips and smell you in my clothes
Cinnamon and sugary and softly spoken lies
You never know just how you look through other people’s eyes”

We always have adventured together. Why do we adventure with other people, but then fall into depressive ruts when left to our own devices. Or is that just me?

We fall into deadly routines and forget to be alive while living. This friend of mine and I always wake one another up, but then we tend to drift apart and go right back. When you look from the outside it appears she adventures on with or without me, but then don’t I also? I don’t know since I can’t see myself from the inside. My adventures might just be different. Typically inside the minds and lives with others rather than feet on the trail. Maybe I need more of the latter. Or maybe I don’t. I don’t know.

By adventuring I suppose I mean having the motivation to do something out of the ordinary and then having the means and resources to follow through on that. I get daunted so easily it often takes another human being and a large leap outside my comfort zone to make any of this happen.

But the ingredients to have an adventure are quite simple. It’s the process that’s complicated, because it takes so much more energy to do something different. Paradoxically it also breathes life back into you. I am at a place in my life where I could use all the life breathed back into me I could get.

I was standing by my coffee maker this morning, impatiently waiting, as it dripped the steaming juices of life into my new favorite mug. And I closed my eyes and imagined what it would feel like to have someone I loved come up behind me and put their arms around me and rest their chin on my shoulder and just stand there. Holding me. It’s been so long since I’ve been held emotionally or physically. This is something I’ve fashioned my whole life around making sure I had an ample supply.

I never imagined myself being in this pandemic lacking human touch the way that I am now, and perhaps only slightly more important than touch, communication.

Anyway if you want a clue to knowing your unmet needs, notice where your mind goes when it wanders. The benefit of all of this is I realized it doesn’t kill you, and you can adjust to anything, but why would you want to.

Then I think about those that have been together for years who take those touches for granted, shy away from them even, or are so depleted that they feel like more work, an obligation. I think about the seen and the unseen. How much of the inside of people’s lives we know nothing about. We only see the surface unless you get up close. I am fortunate enough to be up close anywhere I am because people allow me that privilege and I earn it by being a safe space.

To see things with new eyes we have to get outside our comfort zones in healthy ways.

It isn’t always easy to find ways to do this, especially with the put your nose to the grindstone mentality, and all of the stresses life can throw at you. Like many a crisp new white baseball with its brilliant red stitching, launched at 60mph repeatedly from a ball thrower. That’s likely not the technical term 😉

Most people don’t even know the power they have to just switch the machine off at any time. Some cover themselves in padding and continue to stand there, some leave the stadium, the self assured believe they can just duck and weave armor less, the wise ones know how to find a delicate balance of all of it adjusted to timing and life circumstance and keep improving their technique.

Visits between our families include warmth, food, shared responsibilities, adventuring, pitfalls, moments of overwhelm and irritation for any given member, laughter (so much laughter), light treading, hard treading, growth, learning, and so many things I could not contain them in a single post.

One of the most special things about all of this is that it’s the product of the meeting of myself and one woman, when we were both such different versions of ourselves. Everything between us now has taken on such a new life of its own and there are so many new players since the beginning. In the beginning it was just two very lost young women each with a little boy and a husband that was not meant for her in one way or another.

Between then and now we both have acquired and lost, succeeded and failed, in a variety of ways. And yet we can still come together all these years later and know this is a special friendship that is meant to withstand the test of time, no matter how far we each travel on our own in the interim.

I am so blessed to have so many friendships like this. People who enrich my life and who I can connect with. People to share in the joys and the sorrows. People who are willing to pick me up when lately I fall repeatedly.

It is so shame filled right now. It’s not something noble or uncontrollable like cancer. This is suffering at my own hand because of my personal landscape and humanity. They are showing me patience and grace. They are loving me for free, and while probably being very frustrated at seeing someone function at such a small portion of their capacity. That’s the harsh version, the soft one is, it’s hard to watch the ones we love hurt. But eventually if you do the same thing over and over that grace turns to frustration.

They love me anyway…. they love me anyway…. and isn’t that the best kind of love.

Except when it isn’t, and that is the very difficult part right now. Sometimes loving someone anyway with faith and hope for someone they are not yet is an act of courage and worthiness, and sometimes it’s an act of self betrayal.

Sometimes faith is an act of betrayal.

When given blindly without evidence or reason, it can lead us to places we never want to find ourselves. I never imagined myself looking around thinking how did I get here. Not with all the self awareness I possess. It isn’t enough apparently. You do have to use logic to choose what is healthy and what isn’t no matter how you feel. This being one of the hardest lessons of all.

I like to learn my lessons the hard way that is for sure.

Oh the fault lines that are within me.

The Weakness in Me

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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We Bounce Forward

So today I’m at the Honda dealership waiting for a new AC condenser to be installed. I am reflecting on my very first blog post ever, written in Ansonia at a small coffee shop waiting for my Jeep to be serviced. I’m at another full circle beginning of a new life so it’s appropriate and poetic.

I need to find my way back to me, my writing self, my heart. Also though you can’t go back to something you never started with. So perhaps I don’t have quite the right calibration on the wording.

Because we don’t bounce back we bounce forward (after a hard hit) according to the great Martha Beck. So this is completely uncharted territory and that brings with it absolute terror. I’m trying to find enough excitement to balance it out to become unfrozen so I can budge.

A whole new world and a whole new me. I didn’t want either of those things my toddler whines. I wanted the comfort of the known, to be held softly at night while I sleep, to have the routines I am used to, to see the smiling faces of my children feeling secure and loved in as far as I’ve gotten towards those things.

Which was not as far as I believed. That’s a stunning realization.

I’ve been traveling the dark wood of my own soul for around seven months now. My life and my self is unrecognizable now. I have soared to the highest heights and crashed through the earths crust and straight to the center of hell. I’ve been bathing in flames lately, not the soothing water I had found.

Another death and rebirth. I am finding there are hundreds of those across a lifetime, not just one or two.

I am breaking another generational curse right now. This work is not for the faint of heart. I do it so I can be a beacon of light for others. For my family, my friends, my clients. I lose myself so I can find myself again so I can know.

So I can I know what’s on the other side, the inside, the depths. So I can be the tour guide on inner journeys.

But lately I’ve become stuck when the work involves needing to play and rest. I don’t know how to do those things by myself apparently. I know how to show other people. I can do this work when my nervous system is calmed by the steady heartbeat of a lover. I become my full self.

But left to my own devices I freeze. It’s a shame filled thing these traumas. You don’t end up working like you’re “supposed to”, and finding compassion when compassion isn’t what saved you, is nearly impossible: truly.

Could I really have been running all this time in one way or another …. is that really possible? Half dissociated and half frenzied running. Love is the only force powerful enough to slow me down or wake me up, but sustaining it like this became another matter. Add another layer of shame.

I have been running and when my feelings catch me, it is a storm. The degree to which I feel things is unreal. A product of the battle to keep my feeling parts, when it was unbearable so long. I was fierce to keep them, even though they end up burning me alive.

I long to put this way of living down. It’s too heavy. I am in this process. Putting down an entire way of living is like not have any skin to protect the nerves, the air hits them and the pain is excruciating. Every day for me is like this right now.

Eventually the battle breaks you open into your heart, and the space where it’s soft. Where you’re your full light in the world and love doesn’t feel so hard anymore. It’s something that flows naturally.

I cannot run anymore. I cannot default. None of my tools or tricks work anymore.

Naked and still….

Ps. Today is a very special day in a place of my heart that isn’t allowed to exist right now. So keep me in your warmth please. My heart is raw there.

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Where is Virgil When you Need Him…

I can say with great confidence that becoming a mother has been my greatest privilege…..

“I make no apologies for how I try to fix what you broke” – with regard to my path all these years with love.

I barely stood a chance with this hand and I have played the hell out of it. Hurt people do hurt people and I am no exception.

Holidays are tough for me. No secret there. Those closest to me know my battle intimately and I’m so grateful for the ones who do. I’m invited and wrapped warmly in a variety of ways with other family’s and have had the privilege to know and learn so much from so many.

This Mother’s Day is particularly difficult for me. I have a broken heart and as a result of being consumed am being hard on myself on who I’ve been lately as a Mom. Guilt about disappointing them again.

Feeling lost does not really go very well with owning the place you deserve in the world. I know there is a discrepancy here, but right now I don’t have the energy to sort it.

This morning I have waded through the options on what to write about. As thoughts of my own experience with a mother bring a fresh bout of tears I think of writing that, perhaps it will come later.

My beautiful friend is visiting. She’s sharing some of her wounds with me. It eases my own. Her particular survival has involved her accepting love way less than worthy of her efforts, her self and needs not even in the equation, as she shares with me about how she hasn’t been held in twelve years, and that she needs that.

Twelve years. My God twelve days is excruciating for me. I know how healing the power of touch and connection can be, and how devastating as well.

People who do the best they can are a thing of beauty. Be careful with people you never know when someone is doing the best they can. That often looks like things that could easily be judged. When wounds are invisible healing is so much more challenging. When there is no story for what’s happening that makes sense.

People need their story to make sense and to be tailored and fair to the wounds they carry. Unfortunately that’s uncommon. It’s one of the things I have the privilege to do for others, and am finding I need to include myself. It’s no longer enough to heal others, I need to feel worthy of healing too.

My mind goes to not having anyone to help the kids do something special for me for Mother’s Day, and I get sad before I think about people I know whose Mothers still demand unreasonable things of them or punish them for their own wounds. I am grateful I’ve healed enough to not do that.

Those feelings pass and I return to gratitude hanging onto all the nice things people do for me, or even a text of those I’ve helped on their journey through life. Appreciation for me, and I warm back up. It’s not really grand gestures on a single day that makes the difference it’s the showing up. And this past few weeks so many people have shown up for me, random flowers, help with my lawn, texts, encouraging that I am seen. And that always has to be bigger than the pain and loss. But since love is very different for me this isn’t always the case.

Lately I haven’t shown up very well for my kids, and I’ll be careful to be kind to myself about this. I’ve had a lot of loss recently, and so have they. I have an idea of the mother I want to be, but lately I feel as if all the air has been taken right out of me. And it’s all I can take it to get out of bed.

My priories are all out of whack and originally that was in the name of love, but now as I watch everyone else make sure their priorities are in tact, I simply will learn from them. I need to do that too. And I’m all my kids have their everything. And this my own doing. It’s unfortunate all too often I feel too guilty and unworthy of that space so I stay isolated. I want closeness with them but I don’t know how with that other safe adult buffer to make sure nothing happens.

In my life something bad could happen at any moment. And another safe adult around makes that feeling less. It’s just always been my truth. I wish I could be one of those moms that isn’t like that. It’s how I learned to survive, finding a space that felt safe, which was never inside of me, because outside of me was never safe. My whole childhood.

Not only was it physically dangerous but it was a mental game of manipulation and terror.

Like I’ll hurt or damage them somehow just by breathing. If you knew what it had been like with my mother, if you knew is all I can say here.

But excuses are unacceptable when it comes to finding the worthiness to accept their love enough to show up near them. It is non-negotiable.

I have always kept another adult present as much as possible just in case I somehow morphed into my mother, in case too many bad things still lingered on me. To breathe enough life back into me by holding me at night, so I could face the next day. And this last time I chose one of the best humans I’ve ever met.

And then my own emptiness inside led me to destroy that. Trying to fill empty holes when there is no end to the holes, so nothing can collect. Nuclear sized craters all around. I am amidst the sheer devastation of myself and I don’t want them down with me.

So I hide at the bottom of the hole curled up hoping for some light. And then I dig and I build and a rush for relief and it’s momentary, never stable. Leave the healthy people alone my dark thoughts scathe. Leave well enough alone.

Momentary fixes to long standing issues only create craters. This post apocalyptic hell is inside and all around me right now.

When you’re in survival mode you don’t see anything clearly until later. I’m permanently wired in survival mode, doing the best I can. That will always be the truth of the matter.

I’m an adult in survival mode that can be so incredibly healing to others, but for herself, she is lost.

I am lost, and I need to find myself….

I don’t need to be seen or found or loved anymore. I’ve been loved well and I rush right around life looking for a chaos that feels like home. If I wanted to be loved well I would have stayed right where I was.

I’ve had plenty of brave batters step up to that plate. I’ve never felt worthy enough to be still enough to see what happens outside of the scary, or boring period that inevitably comes. I bail one way or another before I can lose anything. You can’t lose anything you never let sink in.

I need to be able to see the person in the mirror that other people see. My long standing people who stay in my life, seek my wisdom, provide warmth and love…. they see me. So I am not unseen.

Most of my life I spend afraid everything I love will be taken, or worse damaged by me….. and then I create exactly that.

So when you’ve found yourself in a self fulfilling prophecy that’s come full circle, and you’re all alone with yourself, the only thing to do is slowly form a relationship with her. And hope that you’ve traveled far enough that this time it’s a healthy one.

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The Arena

So lately I’m sitting in my stuff. It’s been a long time since I’ve been intimate on here because of shame. Isn’t that always why we withdraw?

I have been battling shame. A lifetime of it. For how I’ve needed to live to survive. I’ll shame myself. Because how I’ve lived to survive has impacted others along the way, in sometimes very painful ways.

I am trying to tow the line of taking accountability for that and also realizing that we don’t grow and change without pain, and have that be a universal truth and not a justification.

I will say in my battle of shame that I have never in my life purposely misled anyone. I have primarily not even known myself, and I look like someone who knows a lot. Sound like someone who knows a lot. I have a lot of information.

However having integrated that information into creating a whole person. I’m not even close. I’m as scattered as my adhd and c-ptsd ridden mind. That is true.

It is deeply painful for me. That is also true. And becoming involved with me on an idea of who I am without knowing the depths of what is in here can be very painful for others. And for me!

Only took me until (almost) 40 years old

To figure that out.

But what each person does with their pain is their own responsibility.

My pain is no one else’s responsibility as it’s filled with my interpretation of the world and what is just and what isn’t. I’m the only one who can save me.

So many Bruce Almighty moments. “Smite me mighty smiter.”

I’m the girl who tried to figure out human connection from 80’s movies. That’s probably why I’m so good at cheesy romance 😉 and then like the ending of a 90 minute movie there’s another broken heart.

But my heart breaks too. I experience another loss I never wanted too. And when I lose someone I lose everything. My family. My identity. My safety. My pain reliever. My grounding force. Because that’s what another human being always had to be: everything.

That’s what happens when you begin with nothing. Forced co-dependence. You never stood a chance against it, without an entire RE-wiring.

An idea of who I am as a human being. Trying on lives trying to find something that fits. It’s the most exhausting clothing room try on. The lights are fluorescent and they burn.

They burn.

So I am going to burn for awhile into ashes. I think rising as a Phoenix at this point is a tall aspiration. I think I need to stay ashes for a bit.

Like an addict recovering I think I’ll try to keep a house plant alive for awhile. You have to walk before you can run. I flew before I could breathe. I was an adult before I was a child.

I’m all out of order.

The chronology of me is a painful thing.

It’s created one hell of a ride.

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Courage Under Fire

Every person in a relationship experiences a different version of the person they are with. Two people together are an alchemy.

They create an energy.

I remember being around twenty four years old, in a house provided by the military, in Connecticut. I had three young children and a husband. I remember feeling very dissatisfied with my life and I couldn’t figure out why.

Later I would find there were so many facets to this untangling it is unimaginable. I am still doing that work to this day.

The first facet was being gay, and having not even realized it or having any indication and then finding myself with a husband and three young children. I did that to survive. Created that family to have one. Having no idea how to be a mother or a wife. Just that I needed a family.

I needed a family. Expansion: I needed a safe family.

As I well know now this is not why you create a family. I wouldn’t have known any better then, and I’m aware that many people begin in this way. And that who they become from the experience is the most important part.

I remember looking for my answers on the Internet. It ran much slower back then. Not quite the days of dial-up and you’ve got mail, but not very far out of that time either.

My seeking made me feel selfish at the time. I was supposed to be a mom and a wife forsaking all others. But I wasn’t even anyone to myself yet. I was an outer design with a burning inner emptiness and suffering.

I was absorbed inside myself. While I watched my husband play with our young children with complete envy. I envied the children for being played with. And I envied the husband for being able and knowing how to play.

I envied anyone who looked like they knew how to live, I merely knew how to survive. But I didn’t know that then.

I sat there lost inside myself having no idea what was wrong with me, because that was always the question of the first… Well actually it’s still the question, only with a little bit further along on the self-love journey.

So I focused more on my selfishness that I could notice, then the things that had happened to me to make me so lost. So I ordered about seven different books on narcissism. I became a narcissist scholar if you will. Malignant Self Love. The Narcissistic Family…. and so on…

Here’s the rub. I had to become so self-focused to figure out how to even be, that it was a self fulfilling prophecy. And I’m startled to find myself back at square one with myself again in this place. That is the most humbling recognition I could ever have.

I thought it was just figuring out my sexuality, the reality is this pattern would continue over and over until my untended self and my created self could reunite.

I’m about to be forty years old folks. A well respected clinician, a like-able gal, a mostly good mom most of the time. And my wounds, they still haunt me. And they still effect anyone who dares love me.

Back to my story.

Narcissism (24 years old)

The first recognition of this tumbled me into complete and utter acceptance of my fatal diagnosis. I was a monster. There was no hope for me.

And I became very depressed.

This depression led me into the office of my very first therapist. Who said a few words to me that have changed my life forever. He was the first person to ever recognize or say something to me like “I’m surprised that you’re alive.” I looked around for who he might be talking to, because it couldn’t possibly be me. I was fine just look at me. Strong friendly outgoing energetic attractive.

Sidenote; this therapist having only seen me about one year in total, upon me calling him and telling him I was graduating with my masters degree, attended my graduation ceremony. He was the only parent type figure that was there. My therapist. He had asked me at one point during a session what I thought I might like to do for a career. At this time I hadn’t finished through the 10th grade of high school and I had my GED. I had looked right at him and said I think I’d like to do what you do. And here I am.

So now I know where to begin my memoir and what I am going to write about. I will continue to figure out how to keep my thinking not frenzied and chaotic, and how to stay grounded within myself.

What I will say for now is that even with all of that work studying and knowing these dynamics, when you are wired with intense terror Over a significant period of your life and abuse and manipulation, your life will look entirely different in One way or another because of it.

People deal with this in a variety of ways. Each of their ways is never a thing that should be judged. For nobody, not even them sometimes, is able to see or realize what they had to do to survive emotionally.

Where do the emotions go when they are unwelcome by our safest sources?

They become internalized in one way or the other. Either a frighteningly low self-esteem, being incredibly hard on oneself, A variety of addictions, assorted masks, I could go on for a very long time.

The person is left to deal with their emotions by themselves, and when we are little we have absolutely no idea how to do that. So we develop coping mechanisms subconsciously that will play out our entire lives. In who we are attracted to, how we handle that. Our ability to delay gratification for being responsible. Etc.

Is it any wonder that these survivors on top of already living through hell in their childhood, end up having very short fuses, lots of irritability, a sense of dissatisfaction that can’t even put their finger on, and they need to go in wild cycles of hating themselves, and then doing impulsive things just to try to make themselves feel better in an immediate moment.

This is the land I live in. No matter how far I’ve traveled it takes constant awareness and effort just to exist in the world in a loving way.

Being able to connect to someone else’s emotions and to be kind to them, and to listen, and to take accountability for my actions. Instead of being so fragile that I become an entirely different person. One who doesn’t fight fair. Unrecognizable to myself and no one that I would want to be around.

I read this vampire series by Linda Leal Miller when I was a tween, in the final of the series the vampire and a human who had fell in love make a baby. I wonder if twilight stole from this. Haha

She’s a half breed. And so am I.. ….half narcissist by absorption, half empath by effort. Finding knowledge and cultivating awareness to sew up my wounds so I don’t cut others with my sharp tongue, with every ounce of pain I’ve been carrying.

A brilliant tortured sad lonely beautiful mind.

Capable of warm connection when all the right conditions are present, and also capable of cutting off from emotion like a switch. And then terribly aware of what that feels like for the other person and the damage that has been caused, but unable to correct it until later.

Frozen. Seemingly unfeeling, but very much the opposite.

The child the adult the child the adult the child the adult. Is it any wonder how confusing it all is?

Until she can connect to herself with the written word. A survival tactic. At least this one is a favorable one to balance out the others.

Until she can fully reconnect with herself ….

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Trauma and my Heroes

What no one tells you is that trauma is a lifelong sentence, you didn’t commit the crime for. An invisible dark passenger that makes living and loving an entirely different thing. No matter how hard you try love will never feel like it does for those wired with it.

They just seem to be able to manage better. They don’t need to live going over and over every detail of something looking for threat for a crumb of safety. To add insult to injury the sufferer worries they are crazy, less than, and can be hijacked at any time.

And with trauma comes the many addictions and vulnerabilities the person will blame themselves for: unhealthy love, food, sex, substance, work, busy, isolation, television, scrolling, and on and on.

More evidence to prove their fatal flaw.

Jail is peaceful compared to the bars and cell of your own mind. Your own worst enemy is your constant companion. And everyone expects that you’re a free man.

To all my survivors right now during the Covoid-19 Pandemic. We will be ok. You are not alone. I am right here with you. Never has there been a more triggered time for us my loves. In the words of Glennon Doyle, “We can do hard things”, and we don’t have to do them alone.

So in this 39th year of my life I’ve found myself with something in common with my heroes. The survivors. I’ve found myself at rock bottom. They tell me this is what happens before the ascent. If I could feel anything right now I might believe that. I can’t even feel the water on my skin.

I’m on the bathroom floor with Liz (praying….. like to God), on the Trail with Cheryl, Expecting Adam with Martha, in the Arena with Brené, underneath with Glennon, lost with Abby, and in my late father’s house lonely and facing myself each day.

Last March I attended the International Women’s Summit, a life changing experience. Elizabeth Gilbert spoke, and sometimes I wonder if our exchange, the hug she gave me, changed the talk she gave that night. If my bravery and tears inspired her. She had made a comment she decided to talk about something else.

She told the story of her late love Rayya. One of the themes of the conference was Mercy. And she described Rayya, since she had been an addict, as having mercy, but also radical boundaries.

Liz spoke of how during her cancer she vowed to take the best care of her, and then how when her stomach lining ripped and she was given pain patches that Liz was putting them on her and she wasn’t getting any relief. She sat and watched her love writhing for several days not understanding and aching herself. She was failing caring for her.

Then she realized days later she hadn’t taken off the thin film of the pain patch to adhere it. So her love had suffered because her own incompetence after vowing to do the best by her. When they realized what had happened Rayya looked at her like she wanted to rescue Liz from her own self hatred that she had done that. She gave her compassion even in all her suffering. The way she describes the look in Rayya’s eyes…. there wasn’t a dry eye in the venue. You could hear a pin drop. Everyone’s breath and their tears.

She was trying to protect Liz from her own pain and herself. Mercy. This is how Liz describes her love with Rayya.

She said she went into the bathroom and got on the floor and she cried like a baby, wracked with sobs. Then she said she thought of her friend who had not been attentive to her toddler and the child ended up injuring themselves and dying. And she thought if her friend could live through that she could forgive herself.

So she said, “I kissed my tiny hand and forgave myself.”

Mercy

She then described the rest of Rayya’s journey which included relapse after all that time clean and how Liz tried to give her what she needed and the money spent, and the drug dealers and how her beloved became lost to her to addiction again in those final days.

And how could she set boundaries, how could she abandon the monster she had created, but her life was a dumpster fire.

So she had to ask for help from Rayya’s drug dealer ex. She had to concede she couldn’t be her angel and hero. So she turned the stash and the monster over to people who had loved her previously.

Left with a crater in her home and her life. She had to move and she was decimated.

Rayya got clean again. One last time. During pancreatic cancer.

She returned to Liz and she said, love if we had time I know this would take years to heal, the pain I’ve caused you. I know who I am as an addict. I will listen to every hurt I’ve caused you. But then could you forgive me?

And they returned to love for her final days…..

And Liz had another bathroom floor moment in her life after Eat Pray Love.

She said that Rayya’s return to and from drugs again during their time together and the pain patch and lessons in mercy was how she downloaded Rayya into her forever.

This is how we keep people, by the most valuable lessons they teach us.

So Mercy on Me right now…..

I am on the bathroom floor and I need to kiss my tiny hand.

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Capital T trauma

I am going to be talking more about my trauma in the coming weeks. How very much it has impacted every corner of my life. My decision making. The way that I live and love. The choices and the way that I make them.

People my whole life have told me how strong I am. They admire what I do and how I do it. But the thing so often missed in all of that is who I am at my core and what I carry around each day.

How can someone be nearing 40 and only doing this work now? How can they not? Most people never do it. It’s almost impossible. I’m still determined to crack the code.

Right now I am researching the freeze aspect of trauma. How when I am overwhelmed I literally can’t move. I have to have a smelling salts wake up, and then I can mechanically make that call or open that piece of mail, but when I’m consumed it’s almost impossible.

I freeze all the time. I freeze when emotions are too overwhelming. And then I berate myself when I don’t reach out warmly and hug my children.

And adult is not supposed to be so scared. But when you carry a hurting child with you….. you can be either at any given time depending on the circumstances.

I present well.

On the inside I’m a tangle of coping mechanisms.

Please love me anyway. When I can’t love myself.

My way of handling my trauma was to give to everyone I’ve ever loved all the love I never was. I thought I had done journey after journey with self love. But truly I’ve done journey after journey of loving someone else so I can even feel the reflection.

Because that’s as close as I’ve ever gotten to love.

And I want to love my kids will all I didn’t have, and I have in so many ways, but connection. I still struggle with that. Because I get overwhelmed so easily.

Because I’m still a scared little girl.

I’m still a scared little girl…..