(Selections from November 2008)
Even without the vitamin supplements, which worked wonders in making me more agreeable and calm, I'm certain I've reached another plateau. Acknowledging my giftedness brought with it an introspection into my intellectual confidence and creative potential. It's hard to accept how I hold myself back, how I've resisted taking charge of my decisions: making real choices that pay real respect to my real feelings and beliefs.
I attribute this to withdrawing from my parents and withholding my thoughts and ideas (and life) from them, as well as the many years of being bullied. I'm comfortable with submission. That cold, numb place is more familiar than anyone's arms. But I've said this already. What I really want to know is how being gifted yet not being gifted impacted my mental health.
I think a lot about graduate school. More specifically, I think about the circumstances surrounding me leaving it. It's a recognisable turning point in helping me to finally seek treatment today, and I know it deserves more consideration. Despite the massive lows, studying that subject under that professor was something that really inspired and challenged me. I understand now why he selected me to work with him and pulled so many strings to make it happen. He saw in me exactly what I now see in him: another passionately gifted person struggling to resolve the same life experiences. I knew that, but I felt like my failure to stick with graduate school meant I didn't have the same thirst for understanding anymore, that I wasn't meant to be a professor.
I do not regret leaving school. The breakdown was inevitable. I needed to consolidate my life experiences and be in a more stable, loving environment. As I fill those needs and the world becomes a safer place, it becomes easier to recognise the more complex aspects of me. I can point a finger at myself, ask myself candidly again… Why am I afraid of going back to graduate school? …knowing full well the answer is blinking in neon lights in every memory I have. School has only ever held me back, bullied me into submission, or provided a platform for my exclusion.
When have I ever truly been welcomed, accepted, and understood by someone? I don't just mean pieces of me. I mean the whole, unrestrained me.
I am not blaming others for rejecting me; most of the opportunity has been lost by my own self-willed reclusion. I have undeniably been playing it safe: playing up to what I know people prefer, fitting my own needs into what is blatantly possible. Could it really be that I underachieve when others still marvel at my talents? I can feel myself holding back from asserting that belief. But it's me I'm talking about, and I know what it feels to really try, to push yourself, to concentrate and perform. I haven't performed at that level in a long time.
And I need to.
Read on the NHS Choices blog.
Saturday, 1 November 2008
Wednesday, 1 October 2008
Catching you up (8)
(Selections from October, 2008)
I don't like having a therapist. It feels like a betrayal -- to enter in this relationship now when I've spent so many years having talk therapy with myself. At least with myself there's no inner critic noting every small yawn, every sweep of the hand, every pursed lip and gently raised eyebrow.
How is it that I can pay such acute attention to the thoughts and emotions of other people but so effectively shut out myself?
----
I have no friends again.
I actually started caring about others. More fool me, because my new goal of paying attention to how I feel is at odds with how horrible I feel when someone who was so chatty and friendly and eager to share things with me hasn't said a word to me in two weeks … coinciding with, I might add (for everyone else with paranoid tendencies out there) the exact few days when I realised how much I liked her as a friend. An extraordinary self-admission for someone usually so empty.
What does a normal person do when they feel this gutted?
I've not had friends for a very long time. It's getting ridiculously hard to trust other people when at the very point I feel most fragile, I'm dropped. Literally.
And so the hypersensitivity is back. Constant itching, swollen glands, stuffed nose, faint headaches. People become suddenly oh-so-annoying. Noticing the slightest exclusion. Judging everything I say (unfortunately, not before I actually say it). I already feel beaten; but for my own pride I could stop beating myself, as well.
----
Quickly, before I lose it:
Sometimes the things we need (And need to learn) are far simpler than the things we were searching for.
"Recognise me."
----
Although the actual sessions aren't nearly as productive as the provocation they serve, I have not lost hope that therapy can help me. Yesterday we were meant to talk about giftedness, and I thought we wasted the entire time looking at my art and talking about people, creativity, and career.
I've been 'very, very smart' all of my life, shuffled into special classes, participating in enrichment activities, etc. It didn't occurred to me until yesterday to give that label a second thought until my therapist asked me to.
I'm ashamed to admit that I'm also party to the stereotypes one adopts as they grow up, being gifted. That is -- Giftedness all about IQ and percentiles on the tests they make you take every year to validate: Yes, YOU are still gifted! … as though it were something that might go away any year.
As it turns out, though, being gifted doesn't mean being in the 99th percentile at all. It means:
Early childhood intellectual milestones and behaviours
General personality
Degree of intrinsic motivation
Inner drive for continued independent learning
So, the restlessness and inadequacy and frustration I feel constantly has nothing to do with being mentally ill and everything to do with the fact that I really, truly am made… differently. The latter two definitions on that list were shocking for me to read, as I, like many people, have fallen under the spell that to be gifted means to be highly specialised like a master composer or a fact-spewing calculator on a gameshow.
But ironically, bringing in my artwork as a defiance to a talk in 'giftedness' really had more to do with being gifted than I expected.
That no one ever considered telling me I was special because of the four things on that list, rather than my test scores, is not surprising. I have always known I was "smart", always depended on my ability to learn whatever I wanted quickly and consistently, but never really considered myself to be "gifted". I don't get perfect grades; I can't be bothered to do work if it doesn't motivate me. Apparently, these things are hallmarks of giftedness.
I suppose to a stranger reading this it must sound a bit boastful and exploitive. How could someone so "gifted" have so little idea about her own abilities? But that's the point, really. I've been called "stupid" much more often than "smart" by brutal and uncaring people, including my father. When I do explore my potential, when I do share what I can achieve, people respond and retaliate in fear and loathing, not delight. No wonder I find it so hard to hand my artwork over to the gallery. No wonder I lack such confidence in asserting my intuitions at work.
It is hard to feel gifted rather than shameful and guilty when you cannot even manage to keep the kitchen clean. But if acknowledging and celebrating this part of me is the lift I need out of this mess, what right does anyone have to judge, least of all me, my biggest judge of all?
Read on the NHS Choices blog.
I don't like having a therapist. It feels like a betrayal -- to enter in this relationship now when I've spent so many years having talk therapy with myself. At least with myself there's no inner critic noting every small yawn, every sweep of the hand, every pursed lip and gently raised eyebrow.
How is it that I can pay such acute attention to the thoughts and emotions of other people but so effectively shut out myself?
----
I have no friends again.
I actually started caring about others. More fool me, because my new goal of paying attention to how I feel is at odds with how horrible I feel when someone who was so chatty and friendly and eager to share things with me hasn't said a word to me in two weeks … coinciding with, I might add (for everyone else with paranoid tendencies out there) the exact few days when I realised how much I liked her as a friend. An extraordinary self-admission for someone usually so empty.
What does a normal person do when they feel this gutted?
I've not had friends for a very long time. It's getting ridiculously hard to trust other people when at the very point I feel most fragile, I'm dropped. Literally.
And so the hypersensitivity is back. Constant itching, swollen glands, stuffed nose, faint headaches. People become suddenly oh-so-annoying. Noticing the slightest exclusion. Judging everything I say (unfortunately, not before I actually say it). I already feel beaten; but for my own pride I could stop beating myself, as well.
----
Quickly, before I lose it:
Sometimes the things we need (And need to learn) are far simpler than the things we were searching for.
"Recognise me."
----
Although the actual sessions aren't nearly as productive as the provocation they serve, I have not lost hope that therapy can help me. Yesterday we were meant to talk about giftedness, and I thought we wasted the entire time looking at my art and talking about people, creativity, and career.
I've been 'very, very smart' all of my life, shuffled into special classes, participating in enrichment activities, etc. It didn't occurred to me until yesterday to give that label a second thought until my therapist asked me to.
I'm ashamed to admit that I'm also party to the stereotypes one adopts as they grow up, being gifted. That is -- Giftedness all about IQ and percentiles on the tests they make you take every year to validate: Yes, YOU are still gifted! … as though it were something that might go away any year.
As it turns out, though, being gifted doesn't mean being in the 99th percentile at all. It means:
Early childhood intellectual milestones and behaviours
General personality
Degree of intrinsic motivation
Inner drive for continued independent learning
So, the restlessness and inadequacy and frustration I feel constantly has nothing to do with being mentally ill and everything to do with the fact that I really, truly am made… differently. The latter two definitions on that list were shocking for me to read, as I, like many people, have fallen under the spell that to be gifted means to be highly specialised like a master composer or a fact-spewing calculator on a gameshow.
But ironically, bringing in my artwork as a defiance to a talk in 'giftedness' really had more to do with being gifted than I expected.
That no one ever considered telling me I was special because of the four things on that list, rather than my test scores, is not surprising. I have always known I was "smart", always depended on my ability to learn whatever I wanted quickly and consistently, but never really considered myself to be "gifted". I don't get perfect grades; I can't be bothered to do work if it doesn't motivate me. Apparently, these things are hallmarks of giftedness.
I suppose to a stranger reading this it must sound a bit boastful and exploitive. How could someone so "gifted" have so little idea about her own abilities? But that's the point, really. I've been called "stupid" much more often than "smart" by brutal and uncaring people, including my father. When I do explore my potential, when I do share what I can achieve, people respond and retaliate in fear and loathing, not delight. No wonder I find it so hard to hand my artwork over to the gallery. No wonder I lack such confidence in asserting my intuitions at work.
It is hard to feel gifted rather than shameful and guilty when you cannot even manage to keep the kitchen clean. But if acknowledging and celebrating this part of me is the lift I need out of this mess, what right does anyone have to judge, least of all me, my biggest judge of all?
Read on the NHS Choices blog.
Monday, 1 September 2008
Catching you up (7)
(Selections from September, 2008)
I returned from holiday to find out that I live in one of the happiest parts of the UK, according to an official study by the universities of Manchester and Sheffield. They also say that spending more than 5 years in one community is the biggest indicator of happiness. Surely even I can manage 5 years living amongst the happiest people in the country?
More things I'm learning:
Holidays are hard for me. I can only tolerate so much of the same person before I start auto-rejecting them. Where does this habit come from?
I find myself answering 'What should make me happy' instead of 'What makes me happy' which has a discreet but important difference: the former involves guilt, constant analysis, and unfulfillment. The latter just makes me happy. Why is it so hard to pursue the latter?
Therapy begins in a week (again). My washing machine is broken (again). I cannot hear out of my left ear (again). My peppermint tea is cold (again). I've gained my weight in boxes of pralines (again). But even tense, dirty, half-deaf, thirsty, and heavy, I become ever clearer. So, onto the good.
The good: ...
I just realised I'm very possibly afraid of sharing the good.
----
Sitting in the waiting room before my first appointment with the counsellor, I controlled my stress and anxiety by writing two lists of goals. When the counsellor asked what my goals were in therapy, I took out the sheet of paper and was instantly calmed in reading them, knowing I was prepared. Taking note of my thoroughness was second-nature for her, but what she didn't realise was that I wrote all of them in the 5 minutes before meeting her.
Self:
1. To stop/reverse progression of the ptsd symptoms, including numbness + flashbacks
2. To improve handling of emotions + intimacy
3. To repair relationship with parents
4. To keep friends / to be a better friend
Life:
1. To be able to work from home + stay productive
2. To maintain healthy choices
3. To write
4. To lead life with less dependence on stress
5. To have a family of my own with confidence
Today I begin talking about it.
----
Another "wasted" appointment, being so long since the first one, has not done much to improve my fragile optimism. If it contributed to me being able to trust the counsellor more, then okay, but all the things I learned today had more to do with how convincing and avoidant I am and less to do with getting well. I do enough self-analysis to make such appointments immediately redundant, with the added bonus of being uncomfortably face-to-face with a stranger who can't stop yawning.
That fragile optimism has turned instead to guarded pessimism.
---
Yesterday was my second therapy appointment, and this time I see more of the point. Accessing emotions I've worked so long to bury and avoid will be a painful, confusing experience. But as the counsellor said, in order to prevent the PTSD symptoms, I need to go back and uncover the events that are causing them until they are benign.
It is strangely reassuring to hear a medical professional agree that you are not depressed. Humiliating to be forced to tears in front of a stranger, but we all have to accept that sort of shame in order to experience any sort of help.
The biggest leap forward I made yesterday, however, didn't come from therapy but from the first day of the two week study on achievements. I am incapacitated when it comes to recalling positive experiences. It is the key I hoped to eventually find (a way to cope that doesn't require me to be a workaholic). It's also a key I've been searching desperately for: the answer to why all of my successes have left me empty. Simply put, I had no sense of achievement.
All of this came as I wrote my 6 achievements and only felt a true rush of positive confidence, hope, and pride after I wrote my fifth: I am talented at creating art.
I've always secreted my artistic creations for my own personal review and cared little of other people's appreciation. When relationships and other activities failed me, I was always able to find relief in photoshop. As stresses during university mounted, I took courses in Art to cope.
I am not going to suddenly switch careers or pursue yet another degree, but I do at least recognise what makes me feel happy, worthwhile, and, moreover, truly successful. The sense of achievement I have when I complete a work of art is genuine and completely mine.
My sixth achievement was finally understanding what achievement actually meant. And that one felt the sweetest.
---
Writing 6 achievements everyday would be easy were it not the requirement that I spend at least 5 minutes feeling that sense of achievement. It's humbling and clarifying to not be able to access those positive emotions immediately and easily. For many potential achievements the emotion is simply not there at all, and that is where the differentiation between success and achievement lies.
I'm astounded by how much I rationalise rather than emote. All this time, the motivation to make real changes in my life comes not from knowing I can do it, but from the self-esteem and self-worth that comes on achieving it. That feeling isn't out of reach for any of us, even in the darkest moments. But it may not come easily.
Since I've started this task:
I've helped to clean the house.
I've made some really nice baked goods and desserts.
I've met up with friends more than once.
I've started reorganising and redesigning the rooms in my house.
I've dressed & presented myself nicer.
I've been closer to my husband.
I've been keeping up with my food diary.
I've felt more than momentarily happy.
I know they say that therapy makes things harder before they get better, and much of what therapy is asking me to do is indeed very difficult for me. But that isn't stopping me from progressing on my own time, and I feel we've reached another rung of the ladder at last.
It is a relief.
Read on the NHS Choices blog.
I returned from holiday to find out that I live in one of the happiest parts of the UK, according to an official study by the universities of Manchester and Sheffield. They also say that spending more than 5 years in one community is the biggest indicator of happiness. Surely even I can manage 5 years living amongst the happiest people in the country?
More things I'm learning:
Holidays are hard for me. I can only tolerate so much of the same person before I start auto-rejecting them. Where does this habit come from?
I find myself answering 'What should make me happy' instead of 'What makes me happy' which has a discreet but important difference: the former involves guilt, constant analysis, and unfulfillment. The latter just makes me happy. Why is it so hard to pursue the latter?
Therapy begins in a week (again). My washing machine is broken (again). I cannot hear out of my left ear (again). My peppermint tea is cold (again). I've gained my weight in boxes of pralines (again). But even tense, dirty, half-deaf, thirsty, and heavy, I become ever clearer. So, onto the good.
The good: ...
I just realised I'm very possibly afraid of sharing the good.
----
Sitting in the waiting room before my first appointment with the counsellor, I controlled my stress and anxiety by writing two lists of goals. When the counsellor asked what my goals were in therapy, I took out the sheet of paper and was instantly calmed in reading them, knowing I was prepared. Taking note of my thoroughness was second-nature for her, but what she didn't realise was that I wrote all of them in the 5 minutes before meeting her.
Self:
1. To stop/reverse progression of the ptsd symptoms, including numbness + flashbacks
2. To improve handling of emotions + intimacy
3. To repair relationship with parents
4. To keep friends / to be a better friend
Life:
1. To be able to work from home + stay productive
2. To maintain healthy choices
3. To write
4. To lead life with less dependence on stress
5. To have a family of my own with confidence
Today I begin talking about it.
----
Another "wasted" appointment, being so long since the first one, has not done much to improve my fragile optimism. If it contributed to me being able to trust the counsellor more, then okay, but all the things I learned today had more to do with how convincing and avoidant I am and less to do with getting well. I do enough self-analysis to make such appointments immediately redundant, with the added bonus of being uncomfortably face-to-face with a stranger who can't stop yawning.
That fragile optimism has turned instead to guarded pessimism.
---
Yesterday was my second therapy appointment, and this time I see more of the point. Accessing emotions I've worked so long to bury and avoid will be a painful, confusing experience. But as the counsellor said, in order to prevent the PTSD symptoms, I need to go back and uncover the events that are causing them until they are benign.
It is strangely reassuring to hear a medical professional agree that you are not depressed. Humiliating to be forced to tears in front of a stranger, but we all have to accept that sort of shame in order to experience any sort of help.
The biggest leap forward I made yesterday, however, didn't come from therapy but from the first day of the two week study on achievements. I am incapacitated when it comes to recalling positive experiences. It is the key I hoped to eventually find (a way to cope that doesn't require me to be a workaholic). It's also a key I've been searching desperately for: the answer to why all of my successes have left me empty. Simply put, I had no sense of achievement.
All of this came as I wrote my 6 achievements and only felt a true rush of positive confidence, hope, and pride after I wrote my fifth: I am talented at creating art.
I've always secreted my artistic creations for my own personal review and cared little of other people's appreciation. When relationships and other activities failed me, I was always able to find relief in photoshop. As stresses during university mounted, I took courses in Art to cope.
I am not going to suddenly switch careers or pursue yet another degree, but I do at least recognise what makes me feel happy, worthwhile, and, moreover, truly successful. The sense of achievement I have when I complete a work of art is genuine and completely mine.
My sixth achievement was finally understanding what achievement actually meant. And that one felt the sweetest.
---
Writing 6 achievements everyday would be easy were it not the requirement that I spend at least 5 minutes feeling that sense of achievement. It's humbling and clarifying to not be able to access those positive emotions immediately and easily. For many potential achievements the emotion is simply not there at all, and that is where the differentiation between success and achievement lies.
I'm astounded by how much I rationalise rather than emote. All this time, the motivation to make real changes in my life comes not from knowing I can do it, but from the self-esteem and self-worth that comes on achieving it. That feeling isn't out of reach for any of us, even in the darkest moments. But it may not come easily.
Since I've started this task:
I've helped to clean the house.
I've made some really nice baked goods and desserts.
I've met up with friends more than once.
I've started reorganising and redesigning the rooms in my house.
I've dressed & presented myself nicer.
I've been closer to my husband.
I've been keeping up with my food diary.
I've felt more than momentarily happy.
I know they say that therapy makes things harder before they get better, and much of what therapy is asking me to do is indeed very difficult for me. But that isn't stopping me from progressing on my own time, and I feel we've reached another rung of the ladder at last.
It is a relief.
Read on the NHS Choices blog.
Friday, 1 August 2008
Catching you up (6)
(Selections from August, 2008)
I hate being the one solving all the problems, and yet who would I be if I didn't? Even when coworkers ask things of others, I bite my tongue not to answer, not to contribute, not to help. On one hand, it's admirable: such a volunteering spirit! On the other, it's invasive and annoying: can't I leave well enough alone?
----
Reading a discussion on 'guilt' has provoked yet another examination of my moods and behaviours: a clue into a major question that has been rattling in my head for months now. I'm no longer sad; so why do I still not feel right?
...
I have no idea how to tell my husband how I feel when I feel like I'd rather be alone again, on my own again, somewhere new again.
----
It may look like success to you, with every promotion and another problem solved. But it's just another year passed, to me. The small satisfactions in helping others may make the food on my table that much more palatable, but they are still only small and still only satisfactions. Don't ask me what I did today -- ask me what thing, however small, gave my day meaning.
I never remember.
Read on the NHS Choices Blog.
I hate being the one solving all the problems, and yet who would I be if I didn't? Even when coworkers ask things of others, I bite my tongue not to answer, not to contribute, not to help. On one hand, it's admirable: such a volunteering spirit! On the other, it's invasive and annoying: can't I leave well enough alone?
----
Reading a discussion on 'guilt' has provoked yet another examination of my moods and behaviours: a clue into a major question that has been rattling in my head for months now. I'm no longer sad; so why do I still not feel right?
...
I have no idea how to tell my husband how I feel when I feel like I'd rather be alone again, on my own again, somewhere new again.
----
It may look like success to you, with every promotion and another problem solved. But it's just another year passed, to me. The small satisfactions in helping others may make the food on my table that much more palatable, but they are still only small and still only satisfactions. Don't ask me what I did today -- ask me what thing, however small, gave my day meaning.
I never remember.
Read on the NHS Choices Blog.
Tuesday, 1 July 2008
Catching you up (5)
(Selections from July, 2008)
17 weeks exactly since my referral.
>2 times longer than the original specified waiting period.
7 days until my first appointment.
I finally got the letter from the counsellor.
---
Things I have learned since my referral:
I am not well.
This is important, because the thing most keeping me from my goals is the assumption that I am well and that I am capable of doing anything, as I am. I am not well and there are many things I am not capable of achieving without a huge impact on my health and life.
I don't like or love my parents.
This isn't anger speaking; this is numbness. This is the best my body and brain can do in the circumstances. They hurt me and did not care for me as a parent should. I am a worse person when they are around. Every new painful episode is a result of me trying to be a daughter to them, and I can't be that daughter right now. I can't be that daughter yet.
I can't get over it.
Cliched, but I need to stop convincing myself that just because I'm successful doesn't mean I'm not haunted. It's because of my drive for success that I've managed to get this far, but it's not enough to get me all the way. I don't need to maintain this baggage.
I'm terrified of being different.
I am content being plump and unkempt because I'd rather be likeable and matronly and respected than attractive, hot, and wanted. Similarly, I am content being numb and uncaring, because.. why? Will I ever be able to sit quietly and still? Will I ever be able to cope with a holiday, with a break, with a rest?
I have to admit, I'm not happy about starting therapy. Most of me has been trying to convince the rest of me that none of my past ever happened, and now I am purposefully meeting with someone to declare the opposite. It's difficult -- much harder than a pill, but moreso because I never talk to people like that.
I'm afraid to be weak and I'm afraid to be strong.
So strong, I get rejected from adequate therapy and continue on as I am, running and running away.
So weak, I get rejected for being unable to cope with what has surely been an inconsequential lifetime of events.
I'm desperate to know why I can't keep friends. I'm even more desperate to know why I can't keep caring. Will fighting the numbness be a battle for me forever? When I'm 'healed' will I still want to be where I am, who I am? Will I want my husband the same, more, or less?
I know there isn't a magic cure. I know it's better to have more realistic goals than just an opaque 'make everything go away already' ... but I don't yet have the clarity or, moreover, the hope to really believe I will eventually be capable of having the same drive, the same success, without all the stress.
----
I've been more frantic (manic?) lately than numb. I do prefer being numb, because although the euphoria does pump me up and make things move quickly, nothing quite sucks as much as the horrified downer that occurs afterwards.
I recognise this pattern occurring a lot in my past, actually. Traditionally, I would extend myself in social situations, becoming extraordinarily witty and on-target, and then as soon as we all go home, I'd have flashbacks of fear and an intense self-doubt. Moreover, though, I'd feel patently awful about what had, at the time, seemed like quite a decent time.
I do tend to avoid social situations, and not because I don't feel capable of being social, but because I'm learning to hate how I feel afterwards. I can't predict it, and I am tired of all of my memories becoming weapons.
The simplest answer is often the best. I haven't continued reviewing my trauma but I've researched enough into my early life to piece together a proper diagnosis. I wonder if the counsellor will agree.
The simple answer is that I have had attachment problems since I was born. This definitely explains why I was prime for victimisation as a child, and it seems the PTSD and attachment disorder go hand in hand. It explains why, so far away from my triggers, I still struggle with the basics that I've always struggled with: coping with others.
This also gears me to set real goals for the therapy (which I definitely needed). It also enables me to identify choices and behaviours that are healthy and that do help.
----
Before today, the shame would've prevented me from admitting I've only ever wanted that, but I'm adult enough now to say, a shy 4 days before my first day of therapy, that all I've ever truly needed and wanted was to be someone's cherished child. No amount of paycheck will ever replace that desire, so don't mistake my determination for my passion. I've never been empty by choice, though I've tried to convince myself otherwise.
To some degree, we've all felt the imperfections of our caregivers, our parents. I don't belittle your experience or belabour my own. But in avoiding blame, I've also avoided the cure. I don't have to suffer them as triggers for my PTSD; why do I have to keep forcing myself to be something I never was? It's a tragedy I still can't fully comprehend: how I can have been with them for so long and yet have so little to show?
This evidence is key: before the first moment I was bullied, I was already grieving. I was already suffering. I was already alone. The biggest betrayal was not the years of abuse, it was the lack of support. I've spent my entire life grieving for something I never knew I deserved. What a miracle that I've even had the opportunity to be in a trusting, positive relationship now. What a miracle that I'm even loved at all.
Someday, it won't just be the motions I'm going through.
----
I didn't write after my first meeting with the therapist, because I wasn't sure what to write. I'd almost prefer not to think about it at all, and that is certainly what got me there in the first place. In some respects, I don't like her, but that's the nature of it all. If I wasn't crippled with shame over sharing these piecemeal parts of me with a stranger, I wouldn't be needing to. So, in many respects, recognising that I don't like her, she who exists to challenge me, is a perfectly normal part of the process.
She kept stressing that it gets worse before it gets better, and she made me cry several times, but only out of stress.
I know it gets worse before it gets better. I think I'm afraid that once I start walking, I'll just keep going.
As the therapist said... 'Running away.'
I do run away. But when there are always things to run away to, how can that be helped? I feel so much better not thinking about my parents. I feel so much happier ignoring they exist.
Read on the NHS Choices blog.
17 weeks exactly since my referral.
>2 times longer than the original specified waiting period.
7 days until my first appointment.
I finally got the letter from the counsellor.
---
Things I have learned since my referral:
I am not well.
This is important, because the thing most keeping me from my goals is the assumption that I am well and that I am capable of doing anything, as I am. I am not well and there are many things I am not capable of achieving without a huge impact on my health and life.
I don't like or love my parents.
This isn't anger speaking; this is numbness. This is the best my body and brain can do in the circumstances. They hurt me and did not care for me as a parent should. I am a worse person when they are around. Every new painful episode is a result of me trying to be a daughter to them, and I can't be that daughter right now. I can't be that daughter yet.
I can't get over it.
Cliched, but I need to stop convincing myself that just because I'm successful doesn't mean I'm not haunted. It's because of my drive for success that I've managed to get this far, but it's not enough to get me all the way. I don't need to maintain this baggage.
I'm terrified of being different.
I am content being plump and unkempt because I'd rather be likeable and matronly and respected than attractive, hot, and wanted. Similarly, I am content being numb and uncaring, because.. why? Will I ever be able to sit quietly and still? Will I ever be able to cope with a holiday, with a break, with a rest?
I have to admit, I'm not happy about starting therapy. Most of me has been trying to convince the rest of me that none of my past ever happened, and now I am purposefully meeting with someone to declare the opposite. It's difficult -- much harder than a pill, but moreso because I never talk to people like that.
I'm afraid to be weak and I'm afraid to be strong.
So strong, I get rejected from adequate therapy and continue on as I am, running and running away.
So weak, I get rejected for being unable to cope with what has surely been an inconsequential lifetime of events.
I'm desperate to know why I can't keep friends. I'm even more desperate to know why I can't keep caring. Will fighting the numbness be a battle for me forever? When I'm 'healed' will I still want to be where I am, who I am? Will I want my husband the same, more, or less?
I know there isn't a magic cure. I know it's better to have more realistic goals than just an opaque 'make everything go away already' ... but I don't yet have the clarity or, moreover, the hope to really believe I will eventually be capable of having the same drive, the same success, without all the stress.
----
I've been more frantic (manic?) lately than numb. I do prefer being numb, because although the euphoria does pump me up and make things move quickly, nothing quite sucks as much as the horrified downer that occurs afterwards.
I recognise this pattern occurring a lot in my past, actually. Traditionally, I would extend myself in social situations, becoming extraordinarily witty and on-target, and then as soon as we all go home, I'd have flashbacks of fear and an intense self-doubt. Moreover, though, I'd feel patently awful about what had, at the time, seemed like quite a decent time.
I do tend to avoid social situations, and not because I don't feel capable of being social, but because I'm learning to hate how I feel afterwards. I can't predict it, and I am tired of all of my memories becoming weapons.
The simplest answer is often the best. I haven't continued reviewing my trauma but I've researched enough into my early life to piece together a proper diagnosis. I wonder if the counsellor will agree.
The simple answer is that I have had attachment problems since I was born. This definitely explains why I was prime for victimisation as a child, and it seems the PTSD and attachment disorder go hand in hand. It explains why, so far away from my triggers, I still struggle with the basics that I've always struggled with: coping with others.
This also gears me to set real goals for the therapy (which I definitely needed). It also enables me to identify choices and behaviours that are healthy and that do help.
----
…it's amusing to think if only my parents were criminals or addicts .. then maybe someone might have noticed and rescued me. Then maybe I would've been loved and protected by somebody in a way only children can be.
Before today, the shame would've prevented me from admitting I've only ever wanted that, but I'm adult enough now to say, a shy 4 days before my first day of therapy, that all I've ever truly needed and wanted was to be someone's cherished child. No amount of paycheck will ever replace that desire, so don't mistake my determination for my passion. I've never been empty by choice, though I've tried to convince myself otherwise.
To some degree, we've all felt the imperfections of our caregivers, our parents. I don't belittle your experience or belabour my own. But in avoiding blame, I've also avoided the cure. I don't have to suffer them as triggers for my PTSD; why do I have to keep forcing myself to be something I never was? It's a tragedy I still can't fully comprehend: how I can have been with them for so long and yet have so little to show?
This evidence is key: before the first moment I was bullied, I was already grieving. I was already suffering. I was already alone. The biggest betrayal was not the years of abuse, it was the lack of support. I've spent my entire life grieving for something I never knew I deserved. What a miracle that I've even had the opportunity to be in a trusting, positive relationship now. What a miracle that I'm even loved at all.
Someday, it won't just be the motions I'm going through.
----
I didn't write after my first meeting with the therapist, because I wasn't sure what to write. I'd almost prefer not to think about it at all, and that is certainly what got me there in the first place. In some respects, I don't like her, but that's the nature of it all. If I wasn't crippled with shame over sharing these piecemeal parts of me with a stranger, I wouldn't be needing to. So, in many respects, recognising that I don't like her, she who exists to challenge me, is a perfectly normal part of the process.
She kept stressing that it gets worse before it gets better, and she made me cry several times, but only out of stress.
I know it gets worse before it gets better. I think I'm afraid that once I start walking, I'll just keep going.
As the therapist said... 'Running away.'
I do run away. But when there are always things to run away to, how can that be helped? I feel so much better not thinking about my parents. I feel so much happier ignoring they exist.
Read on the NHS Choices blog.
Sunday, 1 June 2008
Catching you up (4)
(Selections from June, 2008)
I'm beginning to see what finely sharpened swords 'normalcy' and 'sanity' are. As the weights of depression lift, there's nothing to slow my mind down, and I can't tell what I like less -- questioning what I have done and am doing, or questioning why I am here at all...
The best part of my parents' visit was when they were with someone else.
I wish I could be more ashamed about that, but what I'm really ashamed is how I have to lie when I tell people how my holiday was. I hate gritting my teeth and stomaching another 'oh bless, I'm sure they loved it and had fun' ...knowing full well that I'm damned if I do tell the truth (people can't handle the truth) and I'm damned if I don't (I can't handle lying). What's ironic is that I'm only in this situation now because I've never been able to tell people the truth about my experiences, though no one has actually ever asked.
As awful as the trip was for me, it was a superb learning experience. Now having tools to recognise what's going on with me emotionally, I can see my triggers more clearly. When my parents started fighting, I started shutting down. Once in lockdown mode (utterly numb), it was painfully hard to pay attention to them (anyone really) and respond to them positively. My body just wanted Fight or Flight, and this isn't said for poetics.
It was incredibly difficult to get through it. I did everything I could, waiting for the adrenaline and cortisol to wear off, but, as expected, the effects still haven't fully gone. And I'm left battling the physical illness that comes as a wave of intense stress passes and left fighting the realisation that it will be a long road to see my parents as parents. Worse yet, because I have taken the lead sheet of ignorance off my own mother's eyes, she's falling into depression. Is depression better than ignorance? Will she stop trying to be a token mother now that she's realised she never was a real one?
Moreover, why is it still my responsibility to keep everything and everyone together? Why do I feel culpable for my parents' decisions?
I had my first 'wakening' years ago near the equator. At the time I thought it had everything to do with the equator, but really it had more to do with the distance between me and everything I've learned to fear. There is nothing in a rainforest I feared as much as home, truly. So for the first time in a long time, I calmed down.
Depression or Mania, none of it is ever 'just in the mind' and I defy anyone who says so. My body transformed this past week; my whole body reacts to my triggers. My whole body fights and shuts down, in a myriad of ways.
So, I have post-traumatic stress disorder. I have had PTSD for almost a decade now, untreated. I have no memories of my parents as parents. I have no memories of intimacy and trust. I have no memories of being anything but a rational, sometimes ignorant, but mostly capable adult, who is only now recognising and respecting what are clear disabilities. Moreover, I have memories laced with fear and loss and anger. I have my trauma and I have me.
In documenting this discovery, it's clear I need one thing before I start treatment.
I need to grieve.
----
My 'lifespan' in a certain place with certain people is about 1-2 years, give or take some stressful episodes. It's easy to say I just have wanderlust, but in examining my emotions it's clear that the way my body stores memories is dysfunctional. I have the growing need to stop something because the accumulated memories become washed in fear, and no one likes flashbacks that involve their current manager.
The anxiety builds, and surely there is a threshold. How much can I tolerate? I am starting to walk on my toes again, wondering how long it will be before I hit another stressful episode and want to run again...
This is why I am seeking treatment. I am tired of running. There is something wrong inside me that I want to fix. I want to be able to store my memories without pain. I want to be able to face conflicts and stressful situations without worrying that these relationships and roles will be scarred forever with flashbacks and anxiety.
----
The lady who promised to find out where I was on the waiting list and to confirm that the therapist had received my referral? She must not exist anymore, because I haven't heard a word. It's been two weeks since then, at least, so I called the team again and spoke to a very tired woman who had no recollection of my situation and couldn't see a referral anywhere. She explained to me, patient but tired, that the waiting list was Very Long, as though it were reason enough for them not to assure me I even was on it at all.
Which is all, in the end, I really want confirmation of, since every time I call to check I don't seem to be.
So I'm waiting, again, for someone to confirm with me. This lesson in patience and trust is almost therapy in itself.
----
Still playing the complacent waiting game.
My moods and sleep have been the most stable since I started, but I'm emotionally-aware enough to recognise the signs of a stressed body. The effects of adrenaline can take days to go away, allowing the body to be hyperreactive and sensitive well beyond what is cognitively required.
It's all well and good to be stable when everything is going well, but I'd like to be stable when the bottom drops out. I'd like to be stable as I can during PMS, and I'd like to get in a single conflict without feeling like everything in my life is ripped out from under me. I still haven't written my goals on the board. Still haven't listed the things that bring me out of melancholy and give me purpose and drive. Still haven't figured out what brings the stress down.
But I have been taking my vitamins and supplements. I've been more or less active. I've kept up a reasonably healthy pace at work. And I'm much more intimate/open with key other people. Truthfully, without a test, you would have no idea how much maintenance goes into being me.
I expect to be triaged at the end of July by the mental health team, making it a full four and a half months since I first was referred. I'm not even sure I'll even believe in my diagnosis by the time I see a professional, as I have been so successfully managing it. I'm worried that by the time I actually do meet someone, we won't connect, I won't open up, and/or I'll be so convincing that I can manage just fine on my own.
Sometimes, charisma is damaging.
My problem is that I exist on the extremes. The PTSD is derived from disregulation in the brain. While it may not be possible to change my immediate physical and emotional reactions without specialised therapy (CBT, etc), it is possible to rely on my own cognition to control the effect these emotions have on me. Similarly, it is great to have such a keen empathy, but I need to learn how not to feel responsible for everyone's feelings.
There is a state beyond numbness that doesn't leave me paralysed with emotions, and we'll find it.
How I reacted to some of my traumas is a black box to me still. Why did I internalise everything? Why didn't I point fingers when I had the chance? Is it really just 'pride' or is there something more complex at work? Some clue to my strengths and weaknesses? Some idea of my natural level of emotional intelligence?
It's hard to piece out what might be 'me' when those years are so well intermingled with grief. I have to think in terms of what a grieving child would do. Who a grieving child might be.
And I have to be diligent, not complacent.
Read on the NHS Choices Blog.
I'm beginning to see what finely sharpened swords 'normalcy' and 'sanity' are. As the weights of depression lift, there's nothing to slow my mind down, and I can't tell what I like less -- questioning what I have done and am doing, or questioning why I am here at all...
The best part of my parents' visit was when they were with someone else.
I wish I could be more ashamed about that, but what I'm really ashamed is how I have to lie when I tell people how my holiday was. I hate gritting my teeth and stomaching another 'oh bless, I'm sure they loved it and had fun' ...knowing full well that I'm damned if I do tell the truth (people can't handle the truth) and I'm damned if I don't (I can't handle lying). What's ironic is that I'm only in this situation now because I've never been able to tell people the truth about my experiences, though no one has actually ever asked.
As awful as the trip was for me, it was a superb learning experience. Now having tools to recognise what's going on with me emotionally, I can see my triggers more clearly. When my parents started fighting, I started shutting down. Once in lockdown mode (utterly numb), it was painfully hard to pay attention to them (anyone really) and respond to them positively. My body just wanted Fight or Flight, and this isn't said for poetics.
It was incredibly difficult to get through it. I did everything I could, waiting for the adrenaline and cortisol to wear off, but, as expected, the effects still haven't fully gone. And I'm left battling the physical illness that comes as a wave of intense stress passes and left fighting the realisation that it will be a long road to see my parents as parents. Worse yet, because I have taken the lead sheet of ignorance off my own mother's eyes, she's falling into depression. Is depression better than ignorance? Will she stop trying to be a token mother now that she's realised she never was a real one?
Moreover, why is it still my responsibility to keep everything and everyone together? Why do I feel culpable for my parents' decisions?
I had my first 'wakening' years ago near the equator. At the time I thought it had everything to do with the equator, but really it had more to do with the distance between me and everything I've learned to fear. There is nothing in a rainforest I feared as much as home, truly. So for the first time in a long time, I calmed down.
Depression or Mania, none of it is ever 'just in the mind' and I defy anyone who says so. My body transformed this past week; my whole body reacts to my triggers. My whole body fights and shuts down, in a myriad of ways.
So, I have post-traumatic stress disorder. I have had PTSD for almost a decade now, untreated. I have no memories of my parents as parents. I have no memories of intimacy and trust. I have no memories of being anything but a rational, sometimes ignorant, but mostly capable adult, who is only now recognising and respecting what are clear disabilities. Moreover, I have memories laced with fear and loss and anger. I have my trauma and I have me.
In documenting this discovery, it's clear I need one thing before I start treatment.
I need to grieve.
----
My 'lifespan' in a certain place with certain people is about 1-2 years, give or take some stressful episodes. It's easy to say I just have wanderlust, but in examining my emotions it's clear that the way my body stores memories is dysfunctional. I have the growing need to stop something because the accumulated memories become washed in fear, and no one likes flashbacks that involve their current manager.
The anxiety builds, and surely there is a threshold. How much can I tolerate? I am starting to walk on my toes again, wondering how long it will be before I hit another stressful episode and want to run again...
This is why I am seeking treatment. I am tired of running. There is something wrong inside me that I want to fix. I want to be able to store my memories without pain. I want to be able to face conflicts and stressful situations without worrying that these relationships and roles will be scarred forever with flashbacks and anxiety.
----
The lady who promised to find out where I was on the waiting list and to confirm that the therapist had received my referral? She must not exist anymore, because I haven't heard a word. It's been two weeks since then, at least, so I called the team again and spoke to a very tired woman who had no recollection of my situation and couldn't see a referral anywhere. She explained to me, patient but tired, that the waiting list was Very Long, as though it were reason enough for them not to assure me I even was on it at all.
Which is all, in the end, I really want confirmation of, since every time I call to check I don't seem to be.
So I'm waiting, again, for someone to confirm with me. This lesson in patience and trust is almost therapy in itself.
----
Still playing the complacent waiting game.
My moods and sleep have been the most stable since I started, but I'm emotionally-aware enough to recognise the signs of a stressed body. The effects of adrenaline can take days to go away, allowing the body to be hyperreactive and sensitive well beyond what is cognitively required.
It's all well and good to be stable when everything is going well, but I'd like to be stable when the bottom drops out. I'd like to be stable as I can during PMS, and I'd like to get in a single conflict without feeling like everything in my life is ripped out from under me. I still haven't written my goals on the board. Still haven't listed the things that bring me out of melancholy and give me purpose and drive. Still haven't figured out what brings the stress down.
But I have been taking my vitamins and supplements. I've been more or less active. I've kept up a reasonably healthy pace at work. And I'm much more intimate/open with key other people. Truthfully, without a test, you would have no idea how much maintenance goes into being me.
I expect to be triaged at the end of July by the mental health team, making it a full four and a half months since I first was referred. I'm not even sure I'll even believe in my diagnosis by the time I see a professional, as I have been so successfully managing it. I'm worried that by the time I actually do meet someone, we won't connect, I won't open up, and/or I'll be so convincing that I can manage just fine on my own.
Sometimes, charisma is damaging.
My problem is that I exist on the extremes. The PTSD is derived from disregulation in the brain. While it may not be possible to change my immediate physical and emotional reactions without specialised therapy (CBT, etc), it is possible to rely on my own cognition to control the effect these emotions have on me. Similarly, it is great to have such a keen empathy, but I need to learn how not to feel responsible for everyone's feelings.
There is a state beyond numbness that doesn't leave me paralysed with emotions, and we'll find it.
How I reacted to some of my traumas is a black box to me still. Why did I internalise everything? Why didn't I point fingers when I had the chance? Is it really just 'pride' or is there something more complex at work? Some clue to my strengths and weaknesses? Some idea of my natural level of emotional intelligence?
It's hard to piece out what might be 'me' when those years are so well intermingled with grief. I have to think in terms of what a grieving child would do. Who a grieving child might be.
And I have to be diligent, not complacent.
Read on the NHS Choices Blog.
Thursday, 1 May 2008
Catching you up (3)
(Selections from May, 2008)
Despite reassuring me excessively that she would definitely send my referral letter before she left the office (for another job) that week, my GP didn't send it.
The disappointment leaks in me like a heavy treacle syrup.
It was hard for me to seek diagnosis and treatment for my PTSD / mental health. Now it's my responsibility to make sure I don't get lost in the system? I've been lost in the system for decades; it's a sore subject for me. It's hard accepting that the one person you tried trusting with this part of you ended up failing you, too. I don't know where the strength to keep pushing for help despite these disappointments is coming from, but I'm characteristically numb.
--
I don't understand what I'm going through.
I just left a place with major triggers for my PTSD, but in returning home I feel more empty. It seems that as my life becomes more stable, my own mind is letting go. Two serious emotional and visual hallucinations (delirium) in the past few months plus constant dreams (nightmares?) filled with anxiety … plus feeling like I'm dying, literally dying, every time I wake up now? I never felt like I was dying before, when I was more sick, when I was constantly stressed, and when I was fighting everything.
I can see how people who feel like this all the time become suicidal; it's an awful thing to feel. But I know it will go away, no matter my increasing fear that someday it won't (and what would I do then?).
--
The administrator for the mental health team called me today to let me know she's still chasing up the counsellor for my referral letter, does not know my place on the waiting list but has not forgotten me. She's been extraordinarily kind and thoughtful, and I was happy to express gratitude to her for it. It has helped to quell some of my anxiety and fears and distrust towards the team.
I've been reading up on PTSD and listening to Naked Scientist. Explained the details of the delirium to my husband and remain constantly amazed at his steadfastedness. The stress must be loosening its reigns, because steadily my cycle continues.
No, addendum. I amaze myself. I continuously push for a better life, inside and out. I seek help. I achieve wellness, no matter the setback. I have hope. Any doctor or therapist should be lucky to work with someone like me, because I'm trying and because I care.
--
This is the best I've felt in weeks. My moods have been rapidly oscillating between agitated depression and melancholic depression, but I haven't felt remotely manic in a while. This is, all things considered, a very good thing. I've been self-managing depression for a very long time now; when my mood approaches mania, I feel less prepared for the consequences.
It's times like these that I realise quite seriously how much I 'settle' for day-to-day with my moods. It's so easy to feel something and attribute it to whatever has happened that day. But my mood is rarely, if ever, reactive. I need to be even more aware of my feelings and what they mean in context of my choices.
Learning more about PTSD, step by step, brings its own grief, but that is how therapy works, uncovering small patches of a larger picture, until we can see more clearly who we are.
I still don't know where I am on the waiting list, and I still don't have my referral letter. But I am taking my vitamins and supplements regularly, my house is reasonably tidy, I've managed my workload with extraordinary efficiency, and this is the first holiday I've had in years that hasn't begun with a headache and a tense knot in my stomach. That must be huge, because this holiday is spent entertaining my parents, and they are my biggest trigger.
But these are challenges I can handle; I've not gotten here without handling them, and each time gets easier.
Read on the NHS Choices blog.
Despite reassuring me excessively that she would definitely send my referral letter before she left the office (for another job) that week, my GP didn't send it.
The disappointment leaks in me like a heavy treacle syrup.
It was hard for me to seek diagnosis and treatment for my PTSD / mental health. Now it's my responsibility to make sure I don't get lost in the system? I've been lost in the system for decades; it's a sore subject for me. It's hard accepting that the one person you tried trusting with this part of you ended up failing you, too. I don't know where the strength to keep pushing for help despite these disappointments is coming from, but I'm characteristically numb.
--
I don't understand what I'm going through.
I just left a place with major triggers for my PTSD, but in returning home I feel more empty. It seems that as my life becomes more stable, my own mind is letting go. Two serious emotional and visual hallucinations (delirium) in the past few months plus constant dreams (nightmares?) filled with anxiety … plus feeling like I'm dying, literally dying, every time I wake up now? I never felt like I was dying before, when I was more sick, when I was constantly stressed, and when I was fighting everything.
I can see how people who feel like this all the time become suicidal; it's an awful thing to feel. But I know it will go away, no matter my increasing fear that someday it won't (and what would I do then?).
--
The administrator for the mental health team called me today to let me know she's still chasing up the counsellor for my referral letter, does not know my place on the waiting list but has not forgotten me. She's been extraordinarily kind and thoughtful, and I was happy to express gratitude to her for it. It has helped to quell some of my anxiety and fears and distrust towards the team.
I've been reading up on PTSD and listening to Naked Scientist. Explained the details of the delirium to my husband and remain constantly amazed at his steadfastedness. The stress must be loosening its reigns, because steadily my cycle continues.
No, addendum. I amaze myself. I continuously push for a better life, inside and out. I seek help. I achieve wellness, no matter the setback. I have hope. Any doctor or therapist should be lucky to work with someone like me, because I'm trying and because I care.
--
This is the best I've felt in weeks. My moods have been rapidly oscillating between agitated depression and melancholic depression, but I haven't felt remotely manic in a while. This is, all things considered, a very good thing. I've been self-managing depression for a very long time now; when my mood approaches mania, I feel less prepared for the consequences.
It's times like these that I realise quite seriously how much I 'settle' for day-to-day with my moods. It's so easy to feel something and attribute it to whatever has happened that day. But my mood is rarely, if ever, reactive. I need to be even more aware of my feelings and what they mean in context of my choices.
Learning more about PTSD, step by step, brings its own grief, but that is how therapy works, uncovering small patches of a larger picture, until we can see more clearly who we are.
I still don't know where I am on the waiting list, and I still don't have my referral letter. But I am taking my vitamins and supplements regularly, my house is reasonably tidy, I've managed my workload with extraordinary efficiency, and this is the first holiday I've had in years that hasn't begun with a headache and a tense knot in my stomach. That must be huge, because this holiday is spent entertaining my parents, and they are my biggest trigger.
But these are challenges I can handle; I've not gotten here without handling them, and each time gets easier.
Read on the NHS Choices blog.
Tuesday, 1 April 2008
Catching you up (2)
(Selections from April, 2008)
I'm a baby at all of this, so please don't be offended at anything I say. I don't know the right words and everyday I learn something about myself or the world that makes me question what 'normal' is.
Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) took years for me to really accept it enough to get help for it, and even then it took me breaking down in tears when the doctor questioned my stress levels for it to come out in the open. I spent weeks deliberating how to approach a doctor about it; how to start a conversation about my trauma that barely even fit the DSM... to the point of writing out a whole document, weeks to fill a piece of paper, finally realizing the extent that it has been affecting my life, my whole entire life.
But I didn't have that paper with me, in that doctor's appt. And I still couldn't say a word about my trauma. I didn't need to say a word; just the mere possibility I might have to talk about it with someone, some stranger, sent me into tears, made me look away, gave me piercing headaches, and increasing stomach pains. I remember that day. Though we said very little, I must've made quite the spectacle. Something wasn't right. Something more than PTSD. She didn't say it out loud, but the implication was clear. I disagreed.
It's utterly terrifying to me to think i honestly could be bipolar. I really am not sure I'm ready to acknowledge anything more serious than PTSD (esp. something that requires medications). But now that I'm away from so many triggers, and all of these new and scary aspects of me come to light...
Reading those personal stories on the Black Dog site hit it home. Some of the accounts were just so similar to how I feel and think and live. All of these aspects of my life that I've accepted as part of me and coped with and learned from ...all of these thoughts and emotions I've managed... it's really hard to believe it isn't normal. That this isn't what everyone feels, all of the time. That everyone else isn't storm-chasing for most of their lives. It's a shock, pure and simple. I had an idea of what mental illness was, and it wasn't me. I'm thoughtful and sad and lazy, not depressed. I'm energetic and determined, not manic. I'm good at anticipating people's opinions and empathic, not paranoid and hypersensitive. I'm creative, not delusioned. I was strong. I am strong. But people come in all varieties of strong, even people with bipolar.
----
It's twenty years since I first moved home: the easiest trigger to name. I could build the scene from scratch, looking at the white board with red smelly marks. Pros and Cons. My brother, our little Action Man, sat on the edge of the bed looking at my father for cues of what to feel. He didn't understand; he couldn't possibly know. I folded my arms, slender and pale. The list meant nothing to me. My eyes welled; my heart beat so fast. NO. I shouted, filling with anger. My mind raced: NO NO NO. My father became a stranger, stealing me away.
I ran into the bathroom and locked the door, buried in the yellow lights I would learn to hate so much.
Nearly 10 years old, and that is one of my first real memories of my father. Life became much more complicated after that day, and it is easy to ignore what came before it. But those years also hold the key to why leaving home was so hard in the first place. I wish I could remember more of my parents then. It's not my memory; I've always had an impeccably detailed, visually rich account of events, and the first decade of my life is no different. In fact, owing to the idealization of that childhood that trailed my 10 year old self through puberty, I remember more than I should.
I remember my grandmother, my aunts, and their houses. I remember the woods, every inch of the streets. I flew there again and again, every night, chasing happiness. I remember each and every name of all the friends I ever had; my cousins and my neighbors. I remember their faces, frozen as they were, at the end of the decade. I remember schoolwork, learning mathematics, and my advanced reading tutor. I, most of all, don't remember them. My parents.
It's a notable absence.
My father was young when I was born, barely finished with college. There are rumours he had a problem with alcohol in our early years. He was a stranger to me, always off on business. My mother, perhaps she was depressed or bewildered with her first child, having been a unplanned, later pregnancy herself. She was always quick to tell us she never liked children. Of course not us, though, of course she loved us, she was less quick to add. I don't remember her either. She worked, possibly harder than my dad, and so we were left with other people to make memories with.
And then the stomach aches came. I remember sitting at the table staring at my plate in silence, my insides knotted and head pounding. "Maybe if you ate your dinner, your stomach wouldn't hurt." Tinged with frustration, my parents left the table. I spent a lot of dinners sitting in silence. I stopped drinking milk, blaming the stomach aches on lactose intolerance. I still don't drink milk. The stomach aches stopped 8 years later, at the approximate time I stopped eating with my parents. Why does 9 years old seem impossibly young to be researching reasons for stomach aches? I'm still that 9 year old. I'm still researching the reasons for stomach aches.
I'm a solution person.
My father, he's a problem person. As in, he had a real knack for finding problems with everything. His problem: I didn't respect him. He points clearly at the tree diagram illustrating the theoretical principles of a parent-child relationship. My solution: Earn it. Smack. His solutions, albeit rare, tended to shut me up faster, so eventually I just shut up entirely. And so my clearest memory of my young father was watching him switch, in the matter of seconds, from treating his 10 year old daughter like a business colleague to pushing her across the room.
In the peripheral vision of my memories, I can see the pain and frustration in their eyes. They knew full well what a strange creature I was, the heart and needs of a child carrying the weight of an adult mind. I was a brilliant, acutely aware little girl, and it would have been difficult for any adult to know how to talk to me. But the very last thing a child ever needs is words. My own poor parents were children themselves when it came to knowing and loving me. And so I've become the self-made dam in this inherited waterfall of frail attachment, virtually neglected and then stolen away by strangers called Mum and Dad.
----
Apparently, my childhood self got a teacher fired.
I don't even remember what she said that angered everyone. I certainly didn't complain about anything. But a classmate told their mum, who was shocked enough to ask my mum how I was doing, who of course said fine, why do you ask, and then she heard. And that's the story of the only time my parents acted on someone abusing me, and I didn't even know, since they never talked to me about what I experienced or how I felt.
I can guess why I didn't remember. By that point I'd already experienced loads of abuse. What was one single attack from a teacher? Normal, I suppose. Nothing out of ordinary, anyway. But it was enough to make my classmates blink, even the ones that were happy to abuse me themselves, and enough to make one of them tell their mother. Enough to make that mother think about me -- probably the most anyone ever did.
Maybe my memory of what the teacher said will make its debut someday.
My mum reminded me that my parents went to a parenting class a year or so after that, to give them some skills in motivating me to do my homework or the dishes on command. They met with my guidance counselor. She screened me as well. The verdict? I had sufficient coping mechanisms and nobody needed to worry. My mom doesn't remember what the coping mechanisms were. None of them discussed it with me. I do remember my meetings in the counselor's small, windowless room. She leafed through papers and glanced at me intently. I was terrified of what I'd be blamed for, and steeled myself for the interrogation. I suppose I can add 'consummate actress' to my ever-growing list of talents. I'm starting to believe that list is my coping mechanism.
I'd like to tear it up and start over.
I got confirmation on what I was like as a baby. It's worse that I thought. I was perfectly independent. Never cared who was around and never needed anyone. Never complained. It all rolled off my mum's tongue with a happy grin. I blinked my shock away. She really, even now, has no idea. Not a single clue that none of that was normal, just a contentment that she had such an easy, brilliant baby who never needed a thing. I've not had a single positive attachment in my entire childhood. Might as well etch a personality disorder on my face.
Did you know that one of the clues of an attachment disorder is a charming child?
I've heard these disorders described as a disability. Have I been disabled my entire life? I witness my small cousins becoming embroiled in the same abuse and misguided neglect, all of that creativity, sensitivity wasting away, and I can't help but feel useless again. They are one in millions growing more 'disabled' everyday.
I've told the third person about my probable diagnosis of PTSD. First my husband, second my manager, and third my mother. It came out the only way it could: while I was driving. Completely distracted and blessedly protected from looking her in the eye, we casually discussed the obvious lineage of PTSD in our family and broached, for the first time in our lives, the fact that we are strangers. I didn't discuss my trauma, though she asked.
I'm not sure I ever will, with her.
Read on the NHS Choices blog.
I'm a baby at all of this, so please don't be offended at anything I say. I don't know the right words and everyday I learn something about myself or the world that makes me question what 'normal' is.
Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) took years for me to really accept it enough to get help for it, and even then it took me breaking down in tears when the doctor questioned my stress levels for it to come out in the open. I spent weeks deliberating how to approach a doctor about it; how to start a conversation about my trauma that barely even fit the DSM... to the point of writing out a whole document, weeks to fill a piece of paper, finally realizing the extent that it has been affecting my life, my whole entire life.
But I didn't have that paper with me, in that doctor's appt. And I still couldn't say a word about my trauma. I didn't need to say a word; just the mere possibility I might have to talk about it with someone, some stranger, sent me into tears, made me look away, gave me piercing headaches, and increasing stomach pains. I remember that day. Though we said very little, I must've made quite the spectacle. Something wasn't right. Something more than PTSD. She didn't say it out loud, but the implication was clear. I disagreed.
It's utterly terrifying to me to think i honestly could be bipolar. I really am not sure I'm ready to acknowledge anything more serious than PTSD (esp. something that requires medications). But now that I'm away from so many triggers, and all of these new and scary aspects of me come to light...
Reading those personal stories on the Black Dog site hit it home. Some of the accounts were just so similar to how I feel and think and live. All of these aspects of my life that I've accepted as part of me and coped with and learned from ...all of these thoughts and emotions I've managed... it's really hard to believe it isn't normal. That this isn't what everyone feels, all of the time. That everyone else isn't storm-chasing for most of their lives. It's a shock, pure and simple. I had an idea of what mental illness was, and it wasn't me. I'm thoughtful and sad and lazy, not depressed. I'm energetic and determined, not manic. I'm good at anticipating people's opinions and empathic, not paranoid and hypersensitive. I'm creative, not delusioned. I was strong. I am strong. But people come in all varieties of strong, even people with bipolar.
----
It's twenty years since I first moved home: the easiest trigger to name. I could build the scene from scratch, looking at the white board with red smelly marks. Pros and Cons. My brother, our little Action Man, sat on the edge of the bed looking at my father for cues of what to feel. He didn't understand; he couldn't possibly know. I folded my arms, slender and pale. The list meant nothing to me. My eyes welled; my heart beat so fast. NO. I shouted, filling with anger. My mind raced: NO NO NO. My father became a stranger, stealing me away.
I ran into the bathroom and locked the door, buried in the yellow lights I would learn to hate so much.
Nearly 10 years old, and that is one of my first real memories of my father. Life became much more complicated after that day, and it is easy to ignore what came before it. But those years also hold the key to why leaving home was so hard in the first place. I wish I could remember more of my parents then. It's not my memory; I've always had an impeccably detailed, visually rich account of events, and the first decade of my life is no different. In fact, owing to the idealization of that childhood that trailed my 10 year old self through puberty, I remember more than I should.
I remember my grandmother, my aunts, and their houses. I remember the woods, every inch of the streets. I flew there again and again, every night, chasing happiness. I remember each and every name of all the friends I ever had; my cousins and my neighbors. I remember their faces, frozen as they were, at the end of the decade. I remember schoolwork, learning mathematics, and my advanced reading tutor. I, most of all, don't remember them. My parents.
It's a notable absence.
My father was young when I was born, barely finished with college. There are rumours he had a problem with alcohol in our early years. He was a stranger to me, always off on business. My mother, perhaps she was depressed or bewildered with her first child, having been a unplanned, later pregnancy herself. She was always quick to tell us she never liked children. Of course not us, though, of course she loved us, she was less quick to add. I don't remember her either. She worked, possibly harder than my dad, and so we were left with other people to make memories with.
And then the stomach aches came. I remember sitting at the table staring at my plate in silence, my insides knotted and head pounding. "Maybe if you ate your dinner, your stomach wouldn't hurt." Tinged with frustration, my parents left the table. I spent a lot of dinners sitting in silence. I stopped drinking milk, blaming the stomach aches on lactose intolerance. I still don't drink milk. The stomach aches stopped 8 years later, at the approximate time I stopped eating with my parents. Why does 9 years old seem impossibly young to be researching reasons for stomach aches? I'm still that 9 year old. I'm still researching the reasons for stomach aches.
I'm a solution person.
My father, he's a problem person. As in, he had a real knack for finding problems with everything. His problem: I didn't respect him. He points clearly at the tree diagram illustrating the theoretical principles of a parent-child relationship. My solution: Earn it. Smack. His solutions, albeit rare, tended to shut me up faster, so eventually I just shut up entirely. And so my clearest memory of my young father was watching him switch, in the matter of seconds, from treating his 10 year old daughter like a business colleague to pushing her across the room.
In the peripheral vision of my memories, I can see the pain and frustration in their eyes. They knew full well what a strange creature I was, the heart and needs of a child carrying the weight of an adult mind. I was a brilliant, acutely aware little girl, and it would have been difficult for any adult to know how to talk to me. But the very last thing a child ever needs is words. My own poor parents were children themselves when it came to knowing and loving me. And so I've become the self-made dam in this inherited waterfall of frail attachment, virtually neglected and then stolen away by strangers called Mum and Dad.
----
Apparently, my childhood self got a teacher fired.
I don't even remember what she said that angered everyone. I certainly didn't complain about anything. But a classmate told their mum, who was shocked enough to ask my mum how I was doing, who of course said fine, why do you ask, and then she heard. And that's the story of the only time my parents acted on someone abusing me, and I didn't even know, since they never talked to me about what I experienced or how I felt.
I can guess why I didn't remember. By that point I'd already experienced loads of abuse. What was one single attack from a teacher? Normal, I suppose. Nothing out of ordinary, anyway. But it was enough to make my classmates blink, even the ones that were happy to abuse me themselves, and enough to make one of them tell their mother. Enough to make that mother think about me -- probably the most anyone ever did.
Maybe my memory of what the teacher said will make its debut someday.
My mum reminded me that my parents went to a parenting class a year or so after that, to give them some skills in motivating me to do my homework or the dishes on command. They met with my guidance counselor. She screened me as well. The verdict? I had sufficient coping mechanisms and nobody needed to worry. My mom doesn't remember what the coping mechanisms were. None of them discussed it with me. I do remember my meetings in the counselor's small, windowless room. She leafed through papers and glanced at me intently. I was terrified of what I'd be blamed for, and steeled myself for the interrogation. I suppose I can add 'consummate actress' to my ever-growing list of talents. I'm starting to believe that list is my coping mechanism.
I'd like to tear it up and start over.
I got confirmation on what I was like as a baby. It's worse that I thought. I was perfectly independent. Never cared who was around and never needed anyone. Never complained. It all rolled off my mum's tongue with a happy grin. I blinked my shock away. She really, even now, has no idea. Not a single clue that none of that was normal, just a contentment that she had such an easy, brilliant baby who never needed a thing. I've not had a single positive attachment in my entire childhood. Might as well etch a personality disorder on my face.
Did you know that one of the clues of an attachment disorder is a charming child?
I've heard these disorders described as a disability. Have I been disabled my entire life? I witness my small cousins becoming embroiled in the same abuse and misguided neglect, all of that creativity, sensitivity wasting away, and I can't help but feel useless again. They are one in millions growing more 'disabled' everyday.
I've told the third person about my probable diagnosis of PTSD. First my husband, second my manager, and third my mother. It came out the only way it could: while I was driving. Completely distracted and blessedly protected from looking her in the eye, we casually discussed the obvious lineage of PTSD in our family and broached, for the first time in our lives, the fact that we are strangers. I didn't discuss my trauma, though she asked.
I'm not sure I ever will, with her.
Read on the NHS Choices blog.
Saturday, 1 March 2008
Catching you up (1)
(Written March 2008)
I've spent most of my life trying to piece together the puzzle that is me -- everything from introspection to formal education to academic research. I’ve never been sick enough to warrant hospitalization. Never been depressed enough to consider suicide. Never been paranoid to the point where I couldn’t leave the house. Never been anxious enough that I couldn’t breathe. Never been angry enough to hurt others. Never been shy or awkward enough to be antisocial. If mental well-being were simply a game of hide and seek, I would be world champion, training since I was 10 years old.
So I must have been simply.. unlucky.
It’s a terrifying project, to look back, and refrain from thinking that it could have gone differently. My life has been a series of unfortunate events, and I feel as though I slipped through the cracks of human reality as a 10 year old girl. I want to shake every adult that passed through my life and ask them why they didn’t help me. I want to tell them, each one, “that girl needs your help” .. her vocabulary is better than yours, but no 10 year old should have to rationalize long-term abuse on her own. She is a good, smart girl, reading and discussing modern cancer research with you, but she hasn’t learned a single thing about love. And her trust in you is slipping, slipping away.
I want to yell back at my father. No, scratch that, my father’s father. Or maybe his father, whichever father started the tradition, whichever family couldn’t cope and passed on the violence and stress to their children. I want them to seek therapy, so I wouldn’t have to, now.
It would have been okay. I could have been okay, if it were just my dad. If my mom were more confident, if I hadn’t been forced to move and start the grieving process anew in several schools. I would’ve been fine, maybe just unlucky, except my peers passed their own anger on me, too, and suddenly the only safe place was the library.
Would so many years be anything but empty, if I had just broken down, once? If I had been crazy enough, violent enough, angry enough, depressed enough, once? How is it possible that I made it to my late twenties, married with a successful career, and I still feel the same 10 year old girl, torn between innocence and disbelief?
This is me breaking the ice, and in my case it’s pretty thick. I never said a word about any of my trauma. Not a single thing, not to anyone, and it gets harder everyday, especially the good days, because all of us know, we just want to move on. But I can’t move on, while I’m still terrified of passing IT on, like my father passed IT on, my teachers and my peers.
Read on the NHS Choices blog.
I've spent most of my life trying to piece together the puzzle that is me -- everything from introspection to formal education to academic research. I’ve never been sick enough to warrant hospitalization. Never been depressed enough to consider suicide. Never been paranoid to the point where I couldn’t leave the house. Never been anxious enough that I couldn’t breathe. Never been angry enough to hurt others. Never been shy or awkward enough to be antisocial. If mental well-being were simply a game of hide and seek, I would be world champion, training since I was 10 years old.
So I must have been simply.. unlucky.
It’s a terrifying project, to look back, and refrain from thinking that it could have gone differently. My life has been a series of unfortunate events, and I feel as though I slipped through the cracks of human reality as a 10 year old girl. I want to shake every adult that passed through my life and ask them why they didn’t help me. I want to tell them, each one, “that girl needs your help” .. her vocabulary is better than yours, but no 10 year old should have to rationalize long-term abuse on her own. She is a good, smart girl, reading and discussing modern cancer research with you, but she hasn’t learned a single thing about love. And her trust in you is slipping, slipping away.
I want to yell back at my father. No, scratch that, my father’s father. Or maybe his father, whichever father started the tradition, whichever family couldn’t cope and passed on the violence and stress to their children. I want them to seek therapy, so I wouldn’t have to, now.
It would have been okay. I could have been okay, if it were just my dad. If my mom were more confident, if I hadn’t been forced to move and start the grieving process anew in several schools. I would’ve been fine, maybe just unlucky, except my peers passed their own anger on me, too, and suddenly the only safe place was the library.
Would so many years be anything but empty, if I had just broken down, once? If I had been crazy enough, violent enough, angry enough, depressed enough, once? How is it possible that I made it to my late twenties, married with a successful career, and I still feel the same 10 year old girl, torn between innocence and disbelief?
This is me breaking the ice, and in my case it’s pretty thick. I never said a word about any of my trauma. Not a single thing, not to anyone, and it gets harder everyday, especially the good days, because all of us know, we just want to move on. But I can’t move on, while I’m still terrified of passing IT on, like my father passed IT on, my teachers and my peers.
Read on the NHS Choices blog.
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