Catching you up (11)

(Selections from March, 2009)

I've tried writing, several times. It just hasn't worked.

Nothing has changed. Except, therapy is ending now, my grandparents are dead, and I like myself a lot less than I did this time last year.

---

It's still a struggle to write.

6 And I say, ‘O that I had wings like a dove!
   I would fly away and be at rest;
7 truly, I would flee far away;
   I would lodge in the wilderness;
Psalm 55:6-7

Is there a name for someone who can't stay?
This is more than wanderlust. This is desperation.
It does not matter how good things are; I always need to go.

---

Well, a finale. First round of therapy over. First year over. What have I done?

A necessary and controlled deconstruction:

I am not withdrawn, numb, cold, and emotionless. I only develop the emptiness to hide and protect myself. Rather, I am acutely sensitive and empathetic. Yesterday, I walked in the grounds of an abandoned church amidst the freshly attended graves of strangers, and I cried for them. I know when the wind changes. I can tell all the subtle ingredients in a dish. I can smell the perfume of a woman who used the office earlier that day. I notice that half-second pause before you answer and the flick of your eyes down, left, up.

I need time to process my day. I am overwhelmed. I am aching, I am lonely, I am filled. I no longer blame, but I am still scared. I cannot unlearn a lifetime in a year. I tense when teased. I fight when I fail. I doubt you. I question you. I challenge you.

I forget myself. I am suggestible.

But I am not yet lost.


Read on the NHS Choices blog.

Catching you up (10)

(Selections from January, 2009)

It's natural that as therapy progresses, breakthroughs are slower.

---

Before I forget again, the key:

I was bullied. Many are bullied. But the connection between Moving, Bullied, and me is the years of not-exactly-depression. Rejection didn't wound me (a marvel that convinced me I was careless and cold-hearted). No. Rather, I wholeheartedly reject(ed) everyone.

Again, common knowledge.

The key is why. Recognising why. Saying why. Believing why. Why one person can be simultaneously so cold and yet so kind. The path from accepting I am different has led me here. My greatest fear: I have always been able to see, feel you. The good and the bad.

I am not empty. I am too, too full.

---

I am not at home right now. I'm walking, quite literally, in my past. And rather than shutting down at the first threat of emotion, I'm breathing slowing in.

I am the source of my trauma. I made the choice to push everyone out. I only ever wanted to be alone. Not because of anger or fear but because I could not handle the overwhelming reality of being human -- which, in my case, meant being empathically and intuitively gifted. So, I couldn't be angry at anyone. They were only being themselves, with varying levels of ignorance and cruelty and kindness. My trouble is that I find it too remarkably easy to remember how all of that feels.

At some point, growing up, this was a novelty to me. Books became bespoke dreams, filled with vivid emotions. So I started writing my own aching fairy tales at the age most children move out of picture books. Not all emotions were so structured though, and before I could write, I felt it all in song and dance. And then life become its own opera: it's own frightening, endless novel.

I suffered from intense grief at moving. I did not understand what I was feeling. I was not reassured. But I easily mastered how to manipulate others, because I already understood how to know them. So with time, I grew more quiet, and there were fewer opportunities to connect and to care. Rather, I watched and I felt it all.

When I was ridiculed by my peers, any shame was outweighed by a speculative confusion. They did not care how I felt; they were not capable of caring. And my silence, my patience, my disregard for social acceptance -- that, in turn, ridiculed them. I rejected them.

What a different life it would have been, if someone had recognised then what I barely grasp now: my real nature. Someone with power, I mean, someone in charge. For there were people who knew me better than I knew myself, even if I was never capable of being their friend, and I never accepted their judgment of me. You see, they knew my intolerance had a limit. Beyond that, I was reliably, openly, unavoidably... kind.

So, I'm not a monster. I'm not uncaring. I've just never learned how to manage the multitude of emotions and perceptions that rush through me with every breath. There doesn't seem to be a halfway point. When I let people in, I let them in entirely.

I am capable of deep empathy and uncanny intuition. I feel what others feel. I see what others see. It empowers and disables me -- enabling a series of manipulative successes while simultaneously drowning out my own thoughts and desires. No wonder I am so lost.

There are many paths from here. I can continue searching for 'true feelings of achievement' to guide my choices, focusing on my career and education. I can return home and readdress my relationship issues in therapy with this new understanding. Mostly, though, I want to find a way to moderate the empathy and sensitivities. I want to be able to step into my past without such clarity and passion.

Then, perhaps, I can fully forgive live.

---

Steps back.

I've been taking my vitamins. Better ones, even. So if it's related to diet it must be entirely due to the fact that we have been stuffing sugar and fats down nonstop for several months now (Christmas! New Years!). I concede I need to eat healthier.

But it's been about a year since I last felt like this. So is it coincidence? Was my grandmother's death a trigger? What is happening now that happened then, for me to lay in bed at night and feel like I am dying?

Last time I felt like this, I determined that the best description of it was as a mixed episode: a sweet blend of agitation and depression, a growing wash of fear and loneliness, or just plain: feeling like you are mentally ill. I don't mean crazy; I mean a general flu of the psychological variety.

But I know I am not bipolar. So I must be experiencing bonafide panic attacks. Cue my own false assumptions, as I always thought panic attacks required hyperventilation. But, apparently not. So let's just accept this diagnosis and go with it for a while, as the only real need is not to name these awful experiences but figure out how to stop them.

This level of honesty was inconceivable a year ago.

Read on the NHS Choices blog.

Catching you up (9)

(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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

----

…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.