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dearsubconscious · 3 years

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Warning: the following is a story of psychological/emotional/narcissistic abuse that may be hard for some readers.

Finding the right emotions to say

Some context is needed before you continue reading. This is an introduction to my new Tumblr account and an overview of how my story started. I originally wrote this in May of 2019. When I wrote this, I was trying to get out all of my thoughts during a very dark time. I wrote this over the course of weeks of sleepless nights when my mind wouldn’t stop running. It may read a bit disorganized, but I wrote it as a way to explain to the people that matter to me what I had come to realize about myself. Only two people have read it prior to me posting this, neither of which are my family members. I am still not comfortable with any of my family knowing about this and I have never really talked about many of the details of what happened out loud, even to the two people that have read this. Many of my specific memories are not included in this story...some were just too brutal for me to even write out without completely mentally breaking down at the time. I have decided to start telling my story as a way of mental therapy. Even if nobody on here reads this all of the way through, it will help me mentally just to organize my memories and thoughts. I hope that I can also open a discussion on a sensitive and (I believe) very overlooked topic, hard as it may be to talk about. If you have found yourself in a similar situation, I truly hope that have a better present and/or future. I wouldn’t wish this mental torture on anyone. As you will see in posts that follow this one, I will explain how the long term effects of the mental damage have caused persistent problems with my relationships with all people that matter to me, my working life, my financial stability and my overall health. This is a long read, but here it goes:

Please read all of this carefully and in its entirety. Its long and it will be uncomfortable to read, but it’s very important to me. I would prefer that it be read all at once, which may take a little while, so if you don’t have time to soak it all in, please save it for another time.

My mind goes around and around in very vicious circles of emotions. I feel...well...a lot...is all I can describe in simple terms. That just doesn’t cut it, though. I keep telling myself that I’m probably insane. I don’t know if I just don’t want to believe it, if I’m just hurting that bad, if I’m in shock or if there is something deeper than that that I just don’t understand. I’m not sure if I know what to feel or believe anymore because my own mind has been keeping an enormous secret for years...

I know who I used to be and who I want to be and for years I have been upsetting myself on a nearly hourly basis because I can’t figure out why I behave the way that I do in many normal situations. I know what the right thing to do is in almost every case, but I can’t seem to be able to do the right thing most of the time anymore. The most logical explanation, until very recently, was just to blame it on regular stress. It seemed too obvious, yet it has a very empty and incomplete generalization of what I would actually be feeling. I have continued with my habits and behaviors very frustrated with myself every time, which is usually many times daily. I spend a lot of time contemplating why I don’t feel okay even though so many things are going well in my life. It’s like I’ve been living very much in a haze and I don’t believe or understand who I am.

The impulsive eating, nagging need to always be doing something special or interesting, yet always coming up short or simply doing nothing at all (and knowing the whole time that there was always something else that I needed to be doing to be more “responsible”), impulsive buying, and, above all else, the incredibly infuriating mental “freeze” that has seemed to be ever present in everything that I do. Most prominent were the “freezes” in my passions, in tasks that are incredibly important and almost anytime I have to make a decision. Not following through on so many things and seeming apathetic about the task of finishing. I would, again, just tell myself that it’s from stress, but I always knew that this was simply not true. Most people use stress as a motivator to get things done, but not me. I, for some reason, find myself doing the exact opposite. This leaves me very frustrated, empty, and numb.

I stress eat a lot and this, coupled with other bad habits feel impossible to break even though I very much mentally want to. I “freeze” at the moment that I should make a better choice and feel great anxiety when faced with the decision. I usually end up doing nothing at all, or doing the wrong or bad thing, thinking that it’s just easier and thoughtless. I hate myself for it. I really do believe that I can and will get better someday; that I will be much healthier; that I will work out regularly; that I will be productive every day, but instead I fall victim to my own mind almost every time...

Years ago, small physical/mental changes started happening to me that I couldn’t explain; long before the seemingly learned or self-induced behaviors that I just explained.

I was always a night owl, but through most of my childhood and early teenage years I would do it on purpose to do things like watch movies, play video games, etc. As I grew older, however, it started happening without a desire to. I was very alarmed by this at first. I couldn’t sleep even though I tried hard to; even though I was tired and exhausted; and I would fight very hard to change my poor sleep habits. I started to believe that maybe I had caused my own insomnia from staying up late as a kid, but there was a very different...anxious...feeling underneath it.

Through most of my school years I had been an eloquent speaker and writer. I would get compliments on it from teachers, family, family friends and strangers frequently. However, during high school I began to trip on my words at times and I would have to find simpler words to use when speaking and writing. I thought for years that this was attributed to my lack of sleep. Maybe it was. But this started to feel like a chain that didn’t make sense, as it couldn’t be attributed to simple stress, but was undoubtedly connected.

I’ve always been a very...very...patient person. I remember my step mother said years ago that I have an “old soul.” She described me this way as a compliment to my patient, calm, wise and passive demeanor in everything that I do. So when I began experiencing deep anxiety that would violently wake me up in the middle of the night during my few hours of sleep, I was very alarmed. I noticed that my attention span began getting shorter. In more recent years, I began lashing out, breaking my calm and passive personality. I get uncharacteristically angry or upset with little things that never bothered me before and do it visibly for those around me with immediate and harsh behaviors. I despise this more than almost any other behavior that I have. I feel that I’ve lost control when it happens and I immediately regret it. It isn’t who I am...

As time has progressed into full adulthood, I have found even the simplest of tasks incredibly hard to be motivated about. The “freeze” began spreading to things such as picking up something that I dropped on the floor. I would feel very anxious about the task of picking it up but truly frozen from simply picking it up for long periods of time because my brain would just go around in vicious circles of stress. I became a messy person. I was no longer able to prioritize tasks in my mind in a proper manner. It’s incredibly embarrassing when I get caught in a mental freeze as it is, generally, pretty visibly obvious on my face. And, as recent as the last few months I have been struggling much more deeply with words when speaking. I will start to say something and know exactly what I want to say, but it seems as though my brain is working much faster and cluttered than my mouth. I won’t be able to get out a full word or phrase. The words will very literally slur together in my mouth and no matter how hard I try I am unable to say it properly. Even if I try to slow my words way down I can’t get it out. It’s like a mental block between my brain and mouth. It’s mentally very frustrating and painful.

I feel that I have lost the ability to fight most of my impulses, leading me to eat poorly and a lot, spend a lot, laze around in a fog a lot, etc. I know that this deeply frustrates those around me and I hate it when it does. I want to change my habits and impulses, but it mentally just isn’t that easy for me...I’ve needed help with this for years and I just don’t know how to admit it or face it. I also don’t know how anyone would actually help and asking for help feels very weak and stupid...

Under pressure from difficult situations or pressure-driven decisions, I freeze in a way that infuriates those around me and it infuriates even my self very deeply. Sometimes my freeze causes me to make a wrong or bad decision almost unconsciously. This leads me to a dark, swirling set of emotions about my self, especially when I’m called out for my wrongdoing.

I’ve also had a very low self esteem for quite some time that has been ever present in all aspects of my life and overcoming it at times is incredibly difficult. I have become a very shy, easily embarrassed, easily uncomfortable person for things that should excite me or bring joy and I just can’t seem to get passed my self-made walls. And I hide these insecurities as best as I can so that nobody knows that I’m actually in very bad mental distress at any given moment...which has been more often than not for a while...

I’ve had a deep and growing feeling of confusion and despair. I used to be very depressed in middle school and high school that I was sure I had gotten past, but I’m not sure anymore. I knew that I had been through the worst feelings of my life, but it seems to all be coming back to haunt me in a very different way that I never could have imagined. And I’ve been very lost and numb from my confusion over what has been happening to me.

I have spent years trying to justify my actions and behaviors to myself as “stress” or something similar simply because I have had no idea what has been happening to me...

Then something occurred that sparked something sleeping much deeper in my subconscious than any of that...

A little over two months ago a random video came rolling through my Facebook feed about physical abuse in a specific relationship in England. This happened recently and I believe that it said that this was the first case where a female was charged with physical assault for abuse in a relationship against a man in the UK. I haven’t seen or read much about true abuse in relationships, so I watched the whole short video to understand the specifics. It told the story of what happened to the boyfriend and how it went almost unnoticed by everyone even with glaring signs and such seeming-apathy from both the man and the woman about his constant injuries. He would make up stories to everyone including the police and hospitals about his injuries because he feared for his life. One day recently, the police were called to their residence for a yelling-noise complaint made by the neighbors. Upon arriving they found the man bloody on the stairs, and he told them that he tripped and fell and hit his head (because his girlfriend was in the room). They agreed, aided him, but immediately noticed the many other injuries that weren’t as new and they recognized the signs right away from experience. Through some coercing, they managed to pull him outside, away from his girlfriend, and got the real story from him. She had been manipulating, threatening, hitting and cutting him on a daily basis for years since nearly the beginning of their relationship to control him and trap him. The police officer that spotted the signs and made it a point to bring out the truth and knew that he would be more likely to talk about it away from the girlfriend because he was afraid for his life.

I couldn’t comprehend going through such obvious physical trauma and nearly being overlooked. I am thankful that I have never been physically abused. I immediately scrolled on and distracted myself with some video of planes, I’m sure.

But for the next several days I kept thinking about that video and story and I couldn’t get this weird feeling out of my head about it. I couldn’t place it at first but it began to remind me of the overarching confusion and despair that I have been feeling for a long time about my self. It felt very...not at all nostalgic...but familiar... It started to become far more clear from there...

I immediately began researching and reading. Perhaps too much at times...

My mom has been going through abuse for years with my step father in multiple forms and though I have subconsciously, and even quite consciously known that it was occurring, I think I was too afraid to research the specifics of the abuse. The subconscious side of my brain must have been telling me not to because I was too afraid of what I would find for a very different reason...

For over four years I was very brutally psychologically/emotionally abused every minute of every day.

Sxxx (blocked for anonymity) (a name I rarely use, because I have subconsciously wanted to block it out for the rest of my life) did far more than a little bit of manipulation to control me and everything about my life. I know this was probably somewhat apparent to most people around me but the abuse was much deeper and more prevalent than anyone could have ever known or imagined...and more than I noticed or wanted to admit to myself... She did so many things, big and small, blatant and subtle, in public and in private (mostly), that completely destroyed me mentally. I think that I blocked out each incident as best as I could and I became very visibly numb but subconsciously extremely damaged with every passing day.

As this realization began to sink in, after the Facebook story, I went into a state of emotional shock that has had me trapped in a very vicious circle of negative emotions. I began researching deeper into it and reading a lot of articles, news and health journals, Wikipedia pages, news stories, blogs, etc. that drove home the realization. But I wanted to have some sort of immediate validation of this, so I searched for quizzes by mental health organizations that help individuals determine if they are in an abusive relationship. The first quiz had a long series of “yes” or “no” questions. I read every one very carefully and took the quiz as honestly as I could, treating it as though I was still in a relationship with her and reliving the way I was treated, digging up memories that I didn’t even know that I have...and I definitely don’t want to have. When I finally reached the end, it gave a percentage score of the likelihood that I was abused... 98.8%...

The only reason that it wasn’t 100% was because the only question that I answered “no” to was a question pertaining to children and houses, which we obviously never shared.

I took another, shorter test and scored a 92% for very similar circumstances. It’s true that what I experienced wasn’t physical abuse like the story that I read, but it is, basically, absolute that I was psychologically/mentally abused for years and, while it generally doesn’t come with standard PTSD, as the world knows it, like physical abuse does, it can be seen as more serious and have much worse long term effects that tend to go mostly unnoticed, but are extremely detrimental over time...according to the research that I’ve done anyway...and which I am finding that I believe from experience... I found in the research that I have most of the long term symptoms and a lot of my behaviors and tendencies are tied to mental changes that happened during those years...

The emotions and shock came rushing in like nothing I’ve ever felt. It began with a deep upsetness, followed by a deep anger. How could I have let that happen? Why didn’t I realize this years ago? Who am I actually because of this?

The research didn’t help. I started to tell myself that it can’t be true out of pure denial, reinforced by the research. Many articles and pages seemed to have a consensus that males arent typically affected by abuse in a deep way like females and are so overwhelmingly usually the perpetrators of abuse that psychological/mental abuse against males is seen as essentially non-existent. Only four pages that I read of the dozens agreed that abuse can happen equally to any gender, in any relationship and have equal effects. But, in order to read more about symptoms, long term effects and how/why abusers abuse, I had to read articles/stories about male abusers.

I started to feel like I was crazy. Like I wasn’t supposed to feel any feelings about what happened to me. Like I was supposed to pretend that it didn’t happen at all. It feels oddly sexist of me to believe that this happened to me, and also weak of me to believe that I was so brutally abused and mentally scarred because of how so many pages and people made it a male-against-female-only situation. Maybe it is very sexist and weak of me and I need to just bottle it all up as if I never knew what happened (I essentially have been for years anyway)...maybe I am just crazy and remembering things wrong or imagining things... I know that there are many people out there that are abused and are/were in far worse situations than I am...including my own mom. I don’t know... it all just feels so...confusing and intimidating...and too much for me to understand or handle... This feeling is very reinforced by the way I was and always have been treated as a “pushover” by many people for what happened during those years... I know that I wants, but it’s far more complicated than just being a “pushover”...

Maybe not all of the issues that I listed early on in

this...whatever-you-want-to-call-it are related to what happened to me, but the more I am piecing things together, the more I am finding that it was likely the brutal subconscious driving factor in all of it. I’m far too embarrassed by it all to bring it up in person or face it and I feel very foolish and selfish to blame all of my problems on something that happened years ago, but it actually makes a lot of sense...

It’s very frustrating, as well, that every medical page that I read was about actively being in an abusive relationship and their solution to every problem was always to change the way the abuser behaved in the relationship or end the relationship entirely and that should just fix everything... yet they also all agree that there are long term effects, water the relationship has ended, that can last for years or even the rest of a persons lifetime that they just don’t discuss solutions for...

The biggest problem of all is, now knowing all of this about my likely-abuse, I still don’t know how to move forward and progress past all of these issues that I have now. I almost regret knowing more than not because it has made my emotions much stronger and more confusing. I don’t want this to define me or keep ahold of me and everything that I do, but it’s a constant battle against my own brain that I just can’t seem to win...especially as the bad memories start flooding in uncontrollably...

She used to make me believe that all problems were my fault, that I was never good enough, never would be good enough, and that I should give up on everything because I was wasting everyone’s time, energy and life including mine with my “stupid and ridiculous” ideas, hobbies, activities, etc. and I “wasn’t good at any of them anyway.” I was treated as though any decision that I made was a bad one, a wrong one, a stupid one... she would manipulate me into joining things or going to things so that she would look better than me to everyone there and try to make it look as though I didn’t care or that she was the victim...

For the entire four years I had to be in constant contact (usually by text) within every 5 minutes at most to prove that I wasn’t ignoring or “cheating” on her. If I didn’t answer within five minutes I usually received a text that read “bye” to make me feel abandoned, worthless and guilty. It would make me feel as though I had been ruining her life. I would be constantly (usually a dozen times a day or more) having to apologize and explain myself. She would usually continue to ignore my long pleading messages for several hours or even until the next day, then either pretend like nothing ever happened, or say that I owe her. She would always claim that because I didn’t text back that I missed out on something big or important to her and that I must be cheating on her or simply didn’t care about her. No matter how much I would say or very visibly show that I cared she would treat me as though I was still very wrong. I was never once put first in her life. I could handle not ever being first, but to be not only far from first, I was, instead, constantly put down as though I was the bane of her existence. I went very out of my comfort zone and disobeyed rules, teachers, family, etc. to “make it up to her.” This was incredibly beyond my character but she would put me in a very dark and anxious place nearly hourly. She used my extreme patience and sympathy against me by keeping me trapped in a destructive cycle. I would have to leave home when I wasn’t supposed to or miss so many important events with my own friends or family without permission to walk to her house and apologize in person, only to be shunned initially at the door.

She made me join the speech and debate team. I probably could have been good at it too... she made sure that I was part of her group, but that I wouldn’t actually participate in the group. Any part that I had was to be done away from the group with no understanding or explanation of what I was tasked with. I was isolated from everyone and everything happening. When I would have to rejoin the group the day before a debate I would be barated and torn down by her followed by the rest of the group because I did everything wrong. We went to several debates and at one of the very first ones I made a small and simple mistake in the debate against a team from another school that I didn’t know I had made because I was never taught. She got visibly mad immediately, even with the judges and opponents in the room. As soon as that debate was over, she stormed out of the room with no explanation and walked back to the waiting area without saying a word to me. As soon as I arrived (shortly after her), I immediately found her ranting to her friends and our classmates in front of everybody else about how stupid I was and how I ruined the debate for her and our whole school. She cast me in a very bad light and made it sound as though the mistake was so simple that I must be a “complete idiot” to make it. She went on about this for about an hour, even stretching the conversation to neighboring opponent schools seated nearby. And any time I would try to step into the conversation to defend my self she would angrily cast me off to a secluded table away from them and everyone for the rest of the day. She took away my phone and anything else that I had claiming that I didn’t deserve it because of my screw up (something that she did often with phones and other meaningful objects). I tried to hold hands with her and plead with her on the two hour car ride home in the back of her dads car but she would angrily refuse with the silent treatment all the way until I was dropped off. It didn’t matter how many times that I would agree with her that I was “stupid” and “worthless”, she would still treat me as though I was even lower than that.

At every school dance that I attended with her, she would immediately leave my side to go find friends. Every time I would catch up with her she would leave me again to find a different friend for no other reason than just to find them. She would do this to control me, make me feel abandoned and make sure that I was always paying attention to her and nobody else, isolating me from everyone, even in a large crowd of people that I know. And as the night would go on she would begin to tell people that I was ignoring her because I wouldn’t stay right with her (because I couldn’t keep up or I wouldn’t immediately notice that she silently left again) and I must not care about her, even though I would spend the entire time in a mad dash back and forth trying to find her, never having time to stop and talk to anyone that I knew that was trying to talk to me. She or someone would spill something on me by accident but she would just laugh and usually make it worse somehow (spilling more on me, finding people to embarrass me for being a klutz to, etc). If I accidentally spilled something on her or even near her it was a guarantee that she wouldn’t talk to me or pay attention to me for the rest of the night. I was always expected to pay for everything and drop off jackets and pick them up and carry her stuff everywhere, but never received any kind words or gestures, as was true for everything and everywhere we went for the whole four years. I was young and very naive about relationships at first, so while I thought it was strange, I just thought that I was being polite and gentlemanly and showing that I cared, but I was very much told and shown the opposite, which became far more obvious over time. It was simply expected and if I didn’t then she would use it as a reason to prove to others (and to me in our many daily arguments[consisting mostly of her yelling and saying incredibly rude things to me while I would spend a lot of time apologizing]) that I am a rude person who doesn’t show that I care.

One day, we had gone to a movie with her little sister at the movie tavern and, after the movie, we had lots of time to kill before the bus came to take us home so they decided that they wanted to go to kohl’s. We wandered around for a while and eventually ended up in the jewelry department. As usual she was trying to lose me in the store as a “game” much like she would do at dances or...well...anywhere public that we would go, really. The aisles were very small in the jewelry department and I turned a corner too quickly, very seriously trying to keep up with her to avoid the claim that I “left her because I didn’t care” and, in doing so, I accidentally stepped on the back of her heel and “flat-tired” her shoe, so-to-speak. It was minor and I almost didn’t even noticed that I had done it but she immediately yelled “ow” and screamed at me and threw something at me. It left a small red mark on her heel that she showed everyone. She claimed that I abused her and she claimed that to everyone, including her family and mine for years after that. She made me pay for everything that her and her sister had picked out at kohl’s and made me change my plan (to just go home) and instead walk them all the way back to their house (about 2.5 miles) carrying everything. They walked ahead of me about 15 feet the whole way to their house and spent the whole time making fun of me and barating me.

Her and her family tried very hard to make me change religions. They made me watch many documentaries and shows about their religion against my will and they even brought several holy figures and very religious friends to their house for special occasions just to try to convince me that their way was the only right way. They would ask me a lot of derogatory questions to make me feel stupid for not believing or participating. They would make me participate in things that I knew nothing about and didn’t want to do. I respect their religion, as I do everyone’s, and politely tried to abstain but she would get very mad, again claiming that I must not cares out her, then, and make me participate. I attended every special occasion that I could for her and her family. I even spent an entire Christmas Day away from my family and the traditions/plans that we had made so that she could make me watch her and her family open their gifts and partake in their traditions. This would have been okay if I had been seen as welcome, but instead, since I wasn’t part of their religion, I was intentionally isolated the entire day, especially by her. And the gifts that I had bought for her she wasn’t very fond of, so she would trash talk about them and how I could have done better and how I must not care about her at all because the gifts proved that I “didn’t know her at all” even though she would keep them and wear them (jewelry) or display them (souvenirs, stuffed animals, etc). She would pry at my insecurities to make them worse and make me feel like her life was miserable because of me.

Marching band meant the world to me, as did flying and filmmaking. She hated all of these things about me because they were things that she didn’t participate in, didn’t enjoy and were things that would take my attention away from her for a bit. She would constantly say things like “well why don’t you just quit school and break up with me to go be in the marching band, then.” That’s a very light attack compared to many that she had said to me on a daily basis and she meant them in a very serious and derogatory way to make me feel bad for participating in the things that I love. She only attended one marching band event throughout the entirety of high school but she wasn’t actually there to cheer me on. She managed to pull that facade off for my family and friends while she was there, but she slowly started isolating me from the band and all other people as the night went on so that she could keep control of me and my life. At any other time (all other performances and rehearsals throughout high school [including band concerts]) she would get mad immediately if I brought them up in conversation and when I was actively at them because she saw them as optional things that I was participating in because “I cared about them more than her”. She never attended any other event because, even though I would invite her and her family well in advance, I would remind her the week of or week before and she would claim that I never invited her and that it was way too late, she had something else to do during those times or simply wouldn’t attend out of spite. She would make me believe that I hadn’t invited her sooner and that I was crazy and stupid for thinking that I did. She argued with me on a daily basis about how I cared about band and filmmaking more than her even though I began giving up those parts of my life for her and I would break the rules and secretly pull my phone out all of the time to message her to keep “checking in” and keep her relatively calm while in class, at rehearsal, during concerts, etc...though she was always mad anyway. I attended every choir concert and IB event; church and family event that she had and cheered her on whole heartedly...hoping that she would be happy that I was there. Instead I would get ignored, not introduced to people I didn’t know, and constantly made fun of whenever possible...

Her strangle hold on my life may sound like something I could just walk away from at any time, but it was far more complicated than it seemed. Her and her family found ways to subliminally, and very forwardly, threaten me into staying in the relationship on a daily basis, again using my patience, sympathy and insecurities against me and degrading me like I was too naive and stupid too understand how to be in a proper relationship so they needed to teach me. I was, in fact, very naive because I believed them (specifically her) and believed that giving in to their lives, lies and treatment was for the better.

I hated myself and believed that I was a truly bad person in every way. I believed that I owed her and her family the world and my life. When I would tell her that I was in distress, she would just tell me that I should “go kill myself, then.” I subconsciously knew that a lot was wrong but I saw no way out but to try even harder every day, actually making my mental state/scar significantly worse every day...nearly leading me to a very different way out...

She always tried to make me plan dates that I couldn’t afford or wasn’t capable of doing at that age because I always “owed her one” for everything that I do wrong. I planned three dates in a row one time and she didn’t like a single one of them. Quite in the contrary. She told me flat out that she hated them and hated my ideas because they were childish, stupid and she didn’t like participating in the types of things that I had planned. These included a picnic, a nice dinner and movie with frozen yogurt at her favorite place, and an active date to jumpoline. She made me feel like I didn’t care; like a failure; like I didn’t know her at all; like I was stupid. She, of course, told everyone that we knew or met for weeks about how horrible I was at planning.

We had several classes together throughout high school, mainly French. She always made sure that I was aware that she knew French better than me and that my experience didn’t matter. If I tried to correct her when she said or wrote something incorrectly, she would get very angry; tell me, very seriously, to “shut up” and usually ignore me for a while. She would always try to be in a group with me in activities in that class but, just like speech and debate, she would isolate me from the group right away and insult me every time that I got something wrong. This morale destruction happened so frequently, slyly and subliminally that I believed that I was bad at everything and so I began shutting down in every class and activity that I took in high school, participating in activities less and less. I stopped doing homework for fear that I was always wrong and had no understanding, which was constantly reinforced by my poor testing and grades. At the time I truly believed that I was just stupid and couldn’t understand anything in school, not knowing that it was all in my head and I just wasn’t ever fully engaged ever again. I felt very left behind in school. Something that has always pained me very much...

This, of course, all came to a head on homecoming night of senior year. The night started at her house for photos where the attention was, no doubt, completely on her and how she looked. I wore one of my dads nice shirts, and, though it wasn’t the nicest shirt, it was what I had and what we could afford. For years, she had been buying dresses and sending me samples of the colors to force me to match her. She would refuse to help me pick anything out and I couldn’t afford to keep getting new outfits to match every special occasion. This time I had chosen my dads shirt because, even though it wasn’t a perfect match for color, it was a complimentary color. It was a nice shirt but it wasn’t the perfect shirt, which was made clear to me right away. She was immediately mad as soon as she saw me. She was quick to insult my outfit and so was her family. They felt that I looked like trash, that I have no class or style and that I didn’t care about her especially on special occasions. I was constantly reminded about that every time we encountered another person throughout the night, as she insisted to everyone that I didn’t care, which was obvious because I “didn’t try at all to match her and my shirt was awful”... This put me in a bad place from the get go.

We went to my dads house for a nice home cooked meal that I picked out and she, of course, hated. She didn’t eat much of it and very blatantly didn’t finish or clean up or have any gratitude for.

After dinner, my dad had offered to take us to the school for the dance. She didn’t like this idea because she hated my family very blatantly and picked out a few key things that my dad had said in the car on the way to the dance to immediately throw in my face as soon as we got out. My dad can definitely be abrasive, but that night he had actually been incredibly pleasant and kind to her all the way until we dropped her back off at home that night, so there was extremely little for her to be angry about, but she latched onto something and threw it in my face in front of everybody standing in line to get into the dance. She stormed off without me with her ticket to find one of her friends in line. I couldn’t find her so I had to enter the dance alone. As soon as I found her inside, she threw it in my face that I left her alone... the dark place grew so much stronger. She dragged me to do photos with one set of friends, then immediately abandoned me on the dark dance floor to go find different friends for no reason other than to make me chase her. I looked for her for almost a half an hour, but couldn’t find her, so I found some friends at a table in the cafeteria to sit with and calm down. Not even five minutes after that, she shows up and yells at me in front of the friends about not caring, abandoning her, how terrible I look and how I am an all around terrible boyfriend and person. She then found a way to quickly convince our friends to scramble away with her again to go find other friends, leaving me alone at the table...

I didn’t get up and chase her that time...

I sat and stared at my phone for the rest of the night as though I was doing something important as best as I could to cover up the fact that I was in an extremely dire mental state. I was just staring at a blank phone in all actuality. But the plan worked. Nobody talked to me or noticed me for the rest of the night. When she finally came back a long while later, alone, she only came to request that I call my dad to come get us and take us home. I did so, then made one final plea for help to her without being too obvious about my distress so that I wouldn’t leave myself open for an attack for being “stupid” or “weak” about my emotions, but she ignored me, as usual, and sat in silence. We left in silence and dropped her off in silence.

That night, I got home and immediately got into PJs...barely...said goodnight to my dad and step mother, thanking them for all that they did that night and went to bed. I lay my head down and wanted nothing more than for the mental torture of myself (believing that I was a horrible person and I ruined her life and her important night again) to stop and stop for good, so I buried my face in the pillow and pinched my nose as hard as I could, thinking that I could smother myself and it would at least look like somewhat of an accident. Only moments later I passed out...

Fortunately, I had rolled away from the pillow and had managed to breathe again. I didn’t wake up until the next morning, however. I woke up very dazed and confused. I wasn’t sure that what I had done the night before was actually real but it very slowly sank in as I lay in bed for hours, slowly thinking. I was lucky to be alive and, though that was a very stupid and ineffective way of thinking of killing myself, I realized that my thoughts were so clouded that night that I didn’t have time to contemplate a better way. I knew that if this continued that I eventually would, which actually scared me literally almost to death because it’s not who I am. I didn’t understand then why I had decided that I had decided that this was the best course of action that I could possibly take. I thought that I was just generally depressed and that I was overall terrible at life. I didn’t understand what was actually happening at all but I knew that something had to change. I immediately began planning a long, difficult, but desperate plan to leave her. Subconsciously I knew that it was the right thing to do, but I never full understood why I knew it would make things better...maybe that makes me very naive...but that’s just the truth...

When I finally did leave her, it was a very messy situation, but I felt very liberated. I was very foolish and rash in everything I did for a while because I was so mentally damaged from such a long period of abuse. I had no idea that was what was going on, though. I felt better, but not right. I thought that I would feel like I was always supposed to. Like I would be healthy and smarter again. However, I actually felt very hollow and damaged. I didn’t know why and I definitely didn’t realize that the scar was so deeply created... It never went away...and perhaps got much worse over time, in fact, as it’s had time to brew subconsciously without me knowing.

These are only very few of the incidents and daily torments that I was put through. I didn’t realize how much pain it had actually put me in or how much pain it would continue to cause me for years. I never really knew why I wanted to kill myself over something so seemingly small. I guess, in a way, I knew subconsciously all along, but never wanted to pick at the details because it hurt too much as it was...

One of the things that has picked at me the most in recent years is how my mom views me. She believes that my high school struggles and my messiness and my lack of motivation are all learned behaviors from her because of the way she behaved and that my step father had put us both down to, which she believed was her fault for keeping him around. I always knew that this wasn’t true, it wasn’t her fault. The situation with my step father definitely didn��t help, however, I couldn’t help but feel that it wasn’t her fault or even his fault. I never could tell her that I disagreed, though, because I didn’t have an answer for why I am who I am and I have behaved the way that I have or why my high school years went so poorly. But, in these last couple of months I have realized that I actually had all of the negative behaviors and thoughts that I have described before she did and that it isn’t learned from one another at all. I realized that my years of brutal abuse started before hers and she has been going through it too now with my step father, and we just both react to our abuse in a similar way. I feel really guilty for not realizing this sooner and helping her understand and feel better about who I am and how I have turned out; that it’s definitely not her fault. She has taken so much out on herself about my life and it makes me very depressed. But I don’t know how to confront her about this now, because I don’t think that she will believe me or understand; at least not for many years after her relationship with my step father is over.

I am very broken and depressed and angry with myself and upset and...so many other feelings from this shock of realization of my abuse that I can’t help but feel the same put-down feeling that I had while it was happening. It’s like living in a nightmare, but it’s already happened before and it’s just as scary this time around. I am finding that I’m very sensitive to certain words, phrases, actions, etc. that I never know are coming, but they trigger little moments of panic or depression out of nowhere that I try very hard to hide. I never expect them and I know that none of them are intentional or with the same destructive motive at all, so I just usually have to mentally talk my way down, which typically doesn’t take very long if I have something to distract me, thankfully. But hiding it can be tough and I am sorry for all of the times that it does show (which is hopefully never) because it isn’t a baggage that I want anyone to ever see in person or have to put up with. These little triggers have been around for many years now, but I never really understood why. Sometimes they trigger little unpleasant memories, make my heart race, give me a little panic attack, make me suddenly defensive, etc. I like to think that I am pretty good at hiding the moment and just keeping them internal these days, because they are generally small enough moments and easy to hide, but the long term effect of each trigger is usually a depression that may last hours. I’ve been blowing these off as nothing more than unpleasantries that nobody needed to know about. I guess, for years, I just assumed that everybody has similar feelings and moments, which many probably do. It never really occurred to me, though, that having them daily...and multiple times daily...wasn’t a normal thing. I found out in my research that these are actually symptoms of a specific post traumatic illness that is very similar to PTSD and generally called, classified and treated the same way...

This is not who I am, but I know that this is part of my life now and forever and I have to find a way to push on...especially as other parts of life get a bit rough...

I have so many good parts of my life right now that I know I will never get back to my darkest state. With all of the little stresses piling up recently, it can be easy to give in to the depression that has always been there and likely always will be and it isn’t an opportune time to have had this realization...but then again...when would be... I just keep telling myself that I am very fortunate for the here-and-now and that everything is ok and will always be ok. I know it’s true and I just have to let that feeling fight it’s way through the rough...

All of this is a realization and also a confession that I hide a lot of things. I hide that I suffer from constant small headaches from muscle tension and grinding my teeth from stress, the constant aches and pains in my muscles from stress; I hide my constant anxiety and the real depth of my insomnia; I hide my nearly constant dark feeling; I hide my trigger moments; I hide my many health problems that concern me; I hide my very low self esteem. I don’t like hiding these things at all, but I am extremely embarrassed and nervous to ever let them show or discuss them. That’s why I usually shy away from the topics when they are brought up and start reverting to short answers with a dull look on my face... When asked if I’m ok, the answer will always be “yes”, but the reality is almost always “not really” and I actually hate that very much but I’m too afraid to say so because I’m embarrassed, so I hide it. I know that everything is and will be ok anyways, but it’s still very tough...

One of my least favorite parts of this is that every time I have a very good, happy, laughing, excited or enjoyable moment, it is almost always followed by an immediate, deep crash into negative emotions and depression that I have to try extremely hard to hide for the betterment of those around me (so that I don’t ruin the good moments) and out of embarrassment. Sometimes, I will try so hard to hide it and I will become too seemingly positive or excited about stuff that I may go overboard with it and almost seem like I’m awkwardly trying to cover up something which brings out my biggest fear that I will be caught in my insecurity. I try really hard to come across very positive for those around me all of the time, or as often as possible. I always have as I like helping others. I like helping others see a different perspective; I like making others feel like their life matters, I like being seen as a positive, uplifting person when people need it most. I don’t mind being the mediator in tense situations if I know that I can bring the conversation or mood back to a calm and happy one. The horrible truth is that, usually, when I am being positive for others I am actually in one of my mentally darkest moments. I am hiding my pain with my positivity. I don’t like having to hide things this way, but my desire to be positive for others is real at the same time. It’s very complicated to understand this mix of feelings as I don’t understand it myself. I feel that my positivity leads people as far away from my dark insecurity as possible and theirs at the same time. It makes me feel safe from giving into negativity for the world to see and keeps me from being the center of attention in a very negative and embarrassing way. It sounds very selfish when I put it all out this way, but I do actually want those around me to be in a good place and I’m glad that I can help them.

Letting out all of these thoughts is maybe what I need but to also relive what happened to me when I thought that I had blocked most of it out makes it hurt all over again, almost as much as it did in the moment. However, I know that I already learned a lot from that period of my life and I’m still learning a lot, I guess, but it is still hard to get passed it anyway. I know that good things are always coming and this deep pain will hopefully pass. I do fear that I won’t be able to hide what is happening to me forever and showing it is the last thing that I want. I don’t ever want this to interfere with anything good in my life or any time that I get with the people that I love and care about in my life. I truly hate that she still has a strangle hold on every aspect of my life because of the way that she damaged my mind and I hate that it is so difficult to break out of the habits, emotions and behaviors that have such current and long-lasting negative impacts.

I don’t want to feel the deep negative emotions from my trauma all over again, but they are here to stay for a while, and I know that they won’t ever quite go away, but it will lessen with more time...I hope. And this rough patch will be short lived because of all of the real love I receive from everyone around me... and for that I am always grateful...

If you are reading this, then I have decided that sharing this was important to our relationship. I am by no means looking for attention or sympathy. In fact, quite the opposite. I have been very undecided about sharing this at all because l am very embarrassed by it and it makes me feel weak and I have had a deep and unfounded fear that I won’t be understood...it has nothing to do with wanting to keep secrets or worrying specifically about how anyone will take it because I know that, in reality, everyone will be accepting and caring. Those that I am closest to truly love me very much and I know that. I don’t want you to think that it has anything to do with you or our relationship (whatever that may be) that I didn’t share this sooner or haven’t been open with you. I care about you and our relationship and my relationship with everyone close more than anything else in my life, which is why I know I need to share this. It’s just really hard to put all of your insecurities out in the open to anyone...I hope that you understand that... As I’ve been writing this for about two months now (mostly written in two nights with constant editing and adding since) and reading over and over, I’ve been so dazed on it all. Maybe I’m just being very over dramatic about the whole thing, but the emotions from this are very real and very strong. I sit in my car at lunch eating alone, trying to figure out how to be okay with myself so that I can keep going. I’ve spent a lot of my sleepless time working on this, making sure that I say everything that I want to and mentally building up the courage to share it and trying to decide the right time to let this be read... I don’t think that I’m ready to talk about this in person yet, but thank you for taking the time to read it and soak it in with me...it means enough right now...

#abuse #emotions #story #memories #memory #hurt #pain #writing #aesthetic #my story #emotional abuse #psychological abuse #narcissistic abuse #thoughts #long reads #reading

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peace-coast-island · 3 years

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Diary of a Junebug

A lesson in knowing your limits

Gyroid hunting, magic spells, mountain climbing, hanging with friends - all the makings of a fun campsite event! But as with all events, there's also the stress of getting things done in time.

Let's say that what happened earlier today served as a reminder to us that sometimes life gets too stressful and that there will be times where we don't have everything under control. That's not to say that this gyroid adventure hasn't been fun, but on top of all the other stuff that's been going on, it's hard to enjoy yourself when your mind is elsewhere.

Since opening the camp, I have developed a love/hate relationship with the holidays. And with this being a holiday event, we're in a bigger time crunch if we want to get everything set for Toy Day. There's also the fact that Daisy Jane and I are going back home to Rosevine for Emmaline and Minnie's wedding right after the festivities so that puts even more pressure on ourselves to finish things fast.

Joining us for our toy gyroid escapades are Almie, Pippa, and a new friend - Mariposa Silva! Her name means butterfly - isn't that pretty! Almie and Pippa talked about her a lot last time and I'm glad to finally meet her! The three are staying with us until Toy Day, which is in a couple days, so Daisy Jane and I will be leaving with them for home.

I can see why Pippa's all starry eyed over Mariposa and after what happened today, I think the two of them being friends is the best thing to ever happen to her in light of everything she's been through this year. Almie's been a good big brother to her but Pippa really needs someone who can understand her and Mariposa's the kind of friend who fits right in.

So Mariposa is a newcomer who's been living with Rosevine's notorious troublemaker witch Luna as her apprentice. Luna may act all tough but we all know she has a soft spot for us kids like Almie and Emmaline. Pippa's been training with Luna too as witchcraft and wizardry kinda overlap in some areas. I don't know what surprises me more - Luna taking in a teenage girl she randomly bumped into (literally) with no questions and teaching her magic or Luna agreeing to help Pippa (a wizard of all beings - in short, bad association with wizards) with her magic as well as teaching some witchcraft as well. Then again, for the latter, Luna and Almie are partners in crime so it makes sense that she has a soft spot for Pippa as well.

What makes Mariposa unique is that she's able to conjure magic despite not being magical herself, which takes a lot of work. It's not an easy feat for us ordinary people - believe me, I've tried (and tried)! Maybe there's hope for me but at this point I shouldn't get my hopes up too high. Because of life circumstances she has to bear since birth (she really has a way with words), Mariposa has mastered the art of improvisation.

Since she can't summon magic naturally like Luna and Pippa, Mariposa developed her own way of conjuring glyphs and such. So she has to do a little bit of extra work to cast a spell, which can complicate things a bit. There's a lot of things that can slow Mariposa down, however there's two that can't. First is the conjuring of spells - she's resourceful, creative, and super imaginative - when you can't make magic the traditional way, you gotta get crafty. Second is her right arm - or lack of.

In short, Mariposa was born with a bunch of health problems, a nonexistent right arm is one of them. At this point it's all just "blah, blah, blah" to her. She's spent sixteen years with one arm - her entire life - so whatever pitying thing someone wants to say to her, she's heard it all. Sure it might complicate conjuring magic in some situations but she just rolls with it. That's why she's so good at improvising, problem solving, and thinking way outside the box - something she believes is the universe's way of compensating for what she's been given.

For the past few days we've been hiking around the camp looking for gyroids. Mariposa and Pippa showed off some cool spells they learned from Luna while Almie told us about their latest shenanigans. Highlights include Pippa one-upping a frenemy of Luna's with a scalding hot burn, Almie offering to fix up Luna's car with some "embellishments" which may or may not have caused a wingbat uprising, and Mariposa accidentally awakening an ancient spirit while trying to impress Willow and Angie. And of course, we've been talking about the upcoming wedding.

Since I last saw Pippa, she's been getting her strength back. From being diagnosed with leukemia to suffering from complications as well as a near relapse, the past several months have been hard on her. Almie said that outside of family, Mariposa and Angie, and later Willow, were a great deal of help - especially Mariposa. It's so good to see Pippa out and about, almost like how she was before she got sick.

I guess sometimes we're so focused on trying to get things back to normal after getting thrown off that we don't always realize that in many cases, there's no going back. With Pippa keeping up with her studies, practicing her magic, and helping out with the wedding, it seems like everything's back to normal. Aside from having to keep up with meds and appointments and such, Pippa's well on her way to recovery.

Of course, looks can be deceiving. While Pippa is doing well, she still has to be careful not to wear herself out too much. The wedding's been a bit of an incentive for her to stay healthy, especially since she's a bridesmaid - so she's been keeping busy helping Soph with planning the reception and everything. Pippa's a hard worker but she has a bad habit of putting herself last.

The main reason why Almie wanted to come back to the camp was to give Pippa a chance to relax. He's been protective of Pippa since her hospitalization due to other people's carelessness regarding her health. So he wasn't too happy when Pippa admitted to him a couple days ago that she slipped up by missing her meds a couple times over the past few weeks. He said she'd tell him if something was wrong but seeing that she's been trying to keep on schedule for the most part, she should be okay.

While the past couple days were fun, it was clear that the cracks were starting to show. A combined mess of stress from personal life stuff, holidays, the gyroid event, and the upcoming wedding hit us all at once. My mind was elsewhere, worrying about getting stuff done - it can be draining.

Mariposa was the one who helped us refocus by sitting Pippa down and setting some hard truths for her. Almie was right to be concerned about Pippa overworking herself. I get that she's been feeling stuck in a rut so anything to break her out of that monotony is a welcome change. It's good to try to get back on track but you can't force it. From the way she was jumping up and down and climbing all over the place, you'd think we were being timed on finding gyroids.

Exhaustion has a way of wearing you down, physical and mental. If we had health bars hanging over our heads, Pippa's would be almost depleted. And if I'm being honest, mine's probably in the red zone too. Almie and Daisy Jane are likely in red too while Mariposa's probably in yellow. To be honest, I think everyone in the camp's either a red or yellow - it's just one of these days.

So Pippa overestimated herself and eventually reached a point where she couldn't just get back up and act like everything's fine. As in, she fell off a tree, landing hard on her back and was unable to move for a few seconds, scaring the hell out of everyone. Thankfully she doesn't have a concussion or broken bones but she'll be really sore and bruised tomorrow. By then I figured that we collected enough gyroids for the day so we headed back to the camp despite Pippa's protests.

Almie's usually a pretty chill guy so seeing him go off on Pippa was... let's just say I'm glad we all cleared out when they both started raising their voices. When things started getting out of hand, Mariposa decided to step in for a bit. What she said to Pippa had me thinking about accepting your limits.

Basically what Mariposa's saying is that we can't measure our worth by our productivity. If anyone knows how Pippa feels about stagnating due to circumstances out of control, it's Mariposa.

She got it through to Pippa that it's okay to fall short of expectations. I get that it's frustrating when you try to set goals for yourself, only to fail - but you just gotta accept that sometimes things don't work out and it's not your fault. I know that Pippa can be hard on herself, especially since this year has been turned upside down for her.

Mariposa also brought up a good point about the whole don't let your disabilities and illnesses stop you from being accomplished. It's one of those things that's supposed to be encouraging but does more harm than good. Because there will be days when your disabilities will stop you from achieving what you want. There will be times when you're forced to put your life on hold while the world is unsympathetic to your battles. You have to learn how to accept that it's okay to step back and accept that there are things beyond your capability - and that you shouldn't be shamed for that.

In other words, it's important to know your limits. Wise words from the witch in training, something we all need to be reminded of.

Once it seemed like Mariposa's words got through to Pippa, we stepped aside so the siblings can have a moment alone. To keep ourselves busy, I took Mariposa to the Marketplace to craft Toy Day stuff with Reese, Cyrus, and Jingle, which she had a blast doing. After making a bunch of toys we headed to the cabin and put together gift boxes.

It was nice getting to know Mariposa on a one on one basis during that time. Almie and Pippa weren't exaggerating with her wild, creative, and daring imagination. Who knew that there could be so many ways to wrap gift boxes? We got to talking about a lot of stuff, like how she's enjoying staying with Luna, Skully, and Owly, her magic training, Willow and Angie - she's only been in town for a short time and it feels like she's been part of the Rosevine gang since forever!

Also, she has met Emmaline and Minnie so she's definitely on the guest list. Actually she's coming as Luna's plus one since she met the couple after the list was finalized. Though knowing how Emmaline makes friends like bees to honey, Soph made extra sure to accommodate for a growing guest list - which I'm pretty sure has doubled since the invitations went out!

Once we finished with the gift boxes, we headed back to the campsite. Pippa and Almie finally worked things out and were back to their old, playful, bickering ways. They surprised us with desserts - Toy Day themed cookies and mochi! After having a busy couple days hunting gyroids, we decided to take it easy with a cozy bonfire dinner.

Nothing like freshly baked cookies and mulled cider to unwind after a stressful week!

#animal crossing #animal crossing pocket camp #Diary of a Junebug #headcanon ramble

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mental-health-advice · 4 years

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Submissions from 🦚🌺

So took me a while to scroll through to my last tagged ask (for some reason searching didn’t work). So much about staying consistent and actually tagging my stuff from now on. Gosh uff. The one where sibling found possible drugs and the one about mom being xenophobic almost causing shut down as in passing out were me too. I usually either tend to forget to tag or I guess am kinda scared since I feel I send in A LOT? I really don’t know. It’s just a lot going on and I feel bad always (1🦚🌺)

I feel bad always throwing all my stuff at my friends. Especially as one friend a few years ago was diagnosed with depression. Idk what her current situation is tho except that she seems to do better. I won’t ask her since I feel weird about that stuff. Plus really unless she wants to tell me it’s none if my business. But yeah that’s that I guess. Now… I’ve been rejected from the art college/highschool unfortunately so that’s out the window. My therapist suggests volunteer year 2🦚🌺

Whivh we have a social and economic one of I think? Idk. I know social won’t work because of my likelyhood of social anxiety which kinda self explanatory I guess. Economic I’m just scared I wont be able to pull the whole tear through, scared to do stuff wrong etc. Hell I spent 2 low sleep nights crying after the rejection and mom forced the answer out of me when I clearly didn’t want to talk about it. Turned into an argument about how I got forced into abitur/regular highschool 3🦚🌺

And OBVIOUSLY she blames dad for it. Which like… great whatever he told her. My point is HE was more supportive in front of ME than she was. She just tore me down 2 years ago. Next week I dont have a therapist appointment since she will be moving. So I’m praying this week will go by smoothly. Well as smooth as it can go with all the arguments around here I guess. I’m still trying to process everything since March 4🦚🌺

1? 2? I’ve lost track of time … weeks ago she and her bf fought very badly and she essentially ran away for an hour, he claimed he is leaving but then stayed. My younger sisters were all crying, my brothers were just not surprised and I had to try call family members (which calling others is a physical challenge for me) trying to find a way to deal with what happened. My therapist knows about this incident. She now also knows moms bf smokes weed but not about what 5🦚🌺

else we found. I’ll see if I can bring it up soonish since it still worries me… my brother also later confirmed again he caught them snorting it so yeah most likely we are right about it being cocaine. I feel uncomfortable looking up the effects of it but my cousin said that could explain a lot of moms behavior. Shes always been this way I think.I right now dont even remember where I was going with this ask chain hhhh frick.I’m loosing track of myself once again please send help 6🦚🌺

(Have to switch to browser because app again refuses to let me send stuff wtf) My mom also is back onto “oh you just have split personality!” … I have informed myself on DID and OSDD, I have symptoms yes. But I doubt it’s that. In fact my therapist even talks about that stuff with me! I have different parts but mom doesn’t know they exist so idk. I tried to literally tell her how DID is made and she didn’t want to listen. She claims she did almost everything right and I’m making up 7🦚🌺

My trauma. So you would think that she would stay away from assuming such a trauma heavy diagnosis. Welp she actually doesn’t know anything about mental health either way and legit took my brother off his adhd meds years ago because “they changed him too much” and then refused to take him to appointments when we noticed signs of tourette in him because she felt like she fucked up as parent?? Wat?? I can’t make sense of this woman anymore tbh 8🦚🌺

Sorry that this is all over the place, it’s 1am for me rn, I cant sleep really, still am trying to process I won’t see my friend who I was looking forward to seeing this year for 2-3 years and who would have been a temporary escape from this hellhole until at least another year or 2 depending on the situation, being in the top 10 corona countries and in fact second most infected state in germany and really just switching between sliding down to a kid and /or almost passing out 9(?)🦚🌺

almost passing out when trauma responses shut me down and I just can not describe my emotions of the past months other than I just want someone to hug me and to feel safe and to feel like this mess at home and the world isn’t happening. My mind is all over the place and I feel like at this point I’m going insane and I’m not making any sense anymore. Again sorry for the probably stupid rant/,vent that probably made no damn sense idek anymore - final🦚🌺

So much about what I sent in yesterday hoping for the best. 3 hours ago I woke up to a message chain about how we (me and my siblings. We are 6 in total) apparently abuse her and use her. And basically just complaining about the tiniest things regarding chores. For example yesterday I completely cleaned the kitchen and she complained because some dishes stood around since people still ate AFTER I did the chores. Like tf. My friends say it seemed like from the screenshots that she is 1🦚🌺

using us as tools? Idek anymore. She also completely ignored me sending her and asking her stuff about the valounteer year last night since the school rejected me and I need that alternative. Apparently a clean flat is more important than my literal future. On the other hand I for once had a normal conversation with my almost 15yo brother (I’m almost 19, however not mentally and also not in the position to move still especially with the virus and all) and it turned out that he shares 2🦚🌺

Moms views on therapy whivh I’ve mentioned in the past aren’t really the best views on it. So yeah that’s just great. He basically just thinks it’s stupid. Either way. Currently my only way of possibly getting away would be a psychiatric /mental hospital stay. THING IS while I’m bety aware it isnt like in the movies I am deadly afraid of the thought. Not having my freedom to come and go when I please, not being able to meet up with friends or something etc. I would not feel safe and 3🦚🌺

it would just expose me to a lot of stress and anxiety which wouldn’t be any better than being yelled at constantly at home and having mom shit talk my friends. Everything is just kinda a mess with her rn and my siblings don’t see it from my perspective. Like YES we mess up and don’t do things right. She has a reason to be mad. But NO she doesn’t have the tight to essentially abuse us and no her behavior isnt parenting this is manipulation. 4🦚🌺

They only see the first half and think she’s in the right… I myself struggle to differentiate right and wrong and am unable to read situations well, which is why it took me 17-18 years and my friends calling it out to realise this is wrong. But I at least listen… they don’t. I sometimes just wish I grew up in a stable functioning family. Or honestly that she never even had me since she was VERY young when she had me so that’s probably why she never learned how to 5(?)🦚🌺

Act properly towards us. As she had me when she was just my age (18) and then the following 8 years had 4 more of my 5 siblings. I feel she never had time to grow up and learn herself especially considering she was abused herself…. final🦚🌺

Hi 🦚🌺,

It's good to hear from you again! There's absolutely nothing wrong with messaging us often, so feel free to tag all of your asks that you send in! I think that will actually make it easier on both of us, as you'll be able to find responses easier and I can look back on your previous asks easier to make sure I'm not missing anything or repeating myself :) Also, the search function on tumblr is quite picky, so unfortunately it can be hard to find posts. I've run into the same issue with locating old asks on the blog as well!

It's understandable that you don't want to bug your friends with your problems, especially if they have some mental health struggles of their own. However, it might help to think of it this way: mental illness is so common that chances are most people you meet will have some sort of struggle with their mental health, which means you wouldn't be able to talk to anyone about your struggles if you don't want to bother someone who struggles with their mental health. That doesn't seem fair to you! While everyone needs to have boundaries, especially to protect their health, I think it's reasonable to share things with your friends when you're struggling. You deserve that support, especially with everything else you have going on in your life!

It must have been devastating to not get into art school and I'm so sorry that happened! It does sound like volunteering could be a potential route for you to go down, even if it's just until you figure out what you want to do in the future. It makes sense that certain volunteer options can be rolled out based on the nature of the work and the things you struggle with. Perhaps there is something you could do from home that wouldn't trigger your anxiety. For instance, I volunteer for a text-based suicide hotline, which I do from home. I'm not saying you have to do something exactly like this, but it might spark an idea that you or your therapist maybe haven't thought of yet. It's just something to think about.

What's going on with the drugs in your house is definitely concerning and I think it would be a good idea to bring that up with your therapist. It's really dangerous to have these kinds of drugs around with younger kids being there. Not only is it possible for kids to accidentally get into it and harm themselves, but it's also dangerous for them to be around adults that are high because of their erratic behaviors. This is why I think it would be wise to talk to your therapist about this to see what input she has.

It's great that your therapist has talked to you about your diagnoses as well as what you don't have that your mom has tried to say you have. I'm sure it's frustrating to have your mom make those accusations, but I think it's good that you at least have your therapist there to reassure you that you don't in fact have those diagnoses.

It's so disappointing that your friend won't be able to visit as you guys had planned because I know you were really looking forward to that! Unfortunately, coronavirus seems to ne ruining plans for most people all over the world. Hopefully you guys will be able to come up with another plan for meeting up, though it likely won't be able to happen until the pandemic is more under control. Still, at least making tentative plans for meeting in the future may give you both something to look forward to once travel is finally safe again.

I'm so sorry that your mom treats you and your siblings this way. It does sound like she may use you guys as tools, as your friends put it. This is sometimes another sign of abuse/neglect, which honestly isn't surprising considering all of your mom's other behaviors.

What you mentioned about getting out of the house makes sense and I agree that an inpatient stay might not be the best way to go about it. Not only will that be more restrictive, as you mentioned, but most hospitals won't allow inpatient stays unless the person is incapable of keeping themselves or others safe while receiving outpatient care (though I obviously don't know whether this is the case for you). I still think it's a good idea to keep thinking about potential ways of getting out of your mom's house once you're ready for that. One option I'm wondering about is a group home (I think these may be called something else in other countries but it's basically a house where several adults with varying physical and/or mental illnesses live together and there are usually various types of staff who also stay there). These can sometimes be a bit restrictive, but much less so than a hospital would be. I believe they typically have a curfew, otherwise you're allowed to leave during the day. Although I'm not sure if this would be a viable option for you (and it probably wouldn't be anyway until after the pandemic is more controlled), it's just something that popped into my head when thinking about other ways of eventually getting you away from your mom's abuse.

What you said about your mom's parenting vs. manipulation is 100% accurate. It's very common for someone who was abused by parents to go on to abuse their own children unless they put in the effort to change, but know that you still don't deserve to be abused and manipulated. It's not your fault that your mom was abused and never unlearned the negative behaviors she saw experienced as a child. You and your siblings all deserve so much better than this!

-Samantha

#abuse #abusive parent #drugs #drug use #family #🦚🌺#advice #advice blog #mental health advice #mhasamantha

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pisati · 4 years

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I mean, I’m over it.

I don’t even think it was a trigger. I was on the way here if not here already. sometimes it takes me a little bit to pick it apart.

I did have a good day. I felt godawful when I woke up but it helped to get out of my head. charlotte and I went to the mall, bought too many things neither of us needed. cinnabon included. I’m never really a fan of trying on clothes or looking in mirrors but it wasn’t terrible today. I found a sweater I really like, and a nice knit cardigan. and a blue jacket at old navy that was at least $50 full-price but was on sale for $15; it actually looked pretty okay on me. it’s nice to go shopping and not completely hate how I look in things. I do wish I could get over my hair being so thin. I honestly feel like I’d feel better about my body if my hair were just thicker. I’m tired of caring so much about my physical appearance; of feeling so gross and self-conscious all the time that I need to adjust my hair every few seconds. wish it were just as easy as “stop caring”.

we went to bath & body works and I tried another sample of the rose/vanilla lotion in their aromatherapy line; I hadn’t smelled it since I went to get that other rose stuff. I almost wish I’d splurged a little on that one instead though. it was just as nice as I remembered. I kept smelling the back of my hand while we went around the mall. talk about aromatherapy.

I even felt pretty okay after charlotte dropped me off at home. I do think I’ll get myself out of this. but it’s not okay that it’s still happening.

I still want to make music. I feel like I have so much to get out but I just don’t know how. I keep falling back into chords and songs I already know. last time I thought I came up with something cool, I realized two days later that it was echoing Hozier’s In The Woods Somewhere. not the same notes, but the same pattern for sure. I don’t even know all that many chords, just the basic ones. I don’t know how to do much more than that. lessons didn’t help me either. it makes me real sad. it’s discouraging. I have the space for a setup now and I got a table all laid out with my midi keyboard and interface, put my amp and looper pedal next to it, and I have my guitars sitting in their stands. but for now I’m just looking at all of it, like it belongs to someone else.

don’t know why I feel like I have so much more to say. like there’s something I need to get out. I don’t even know what it is. maybe I trained myself this way. feel anything, bad especially, write. I don’t even expect it to resolve; it almost never does. I don’t always have something to say. sometimes I just write to write. there’s always words floating around in my head, and sometimes I just need to get them out, not get a message across.

I prefer living alone. I do. every time I’ve had roommates, even good ones, it’s been stressful for me. some days I just want to be alone and I relish having a space solely of my own to come home to. but other times it’s just too quiet. I feel like I did when I was at school-- this is nothing new to me. I used to sometimes wish my mom would stay at her boyfriend’s so I could have the house to myself, but other times I wanted her to be home. I knew she’d inevitably snap at me for something or another, but I’d still go downstairs to talk to her. I’d still hole myself up in my room, but somehow it was a small comfort to know there was someone else home. now it’s just me.

I thought about it earlier; I wish my mom and I were closer. there’s so much I wish I could talk to her about. if she’d ever been better about mental health and emotions. when I get really anxious she’s the first one I think to call, even though I know in the past she’s gotten mad at me for being unable to stop panicking. I still have that hope that she’s someone I can go to for comfort. this isn’t the first time I’ve wanted this badly to call her over feeling bad. your mother is your first comfort in the world, you should be able to go to her for that at any age. I feel like I’m mothering my own shitty brain and sometimes I just want to be able to go to my own mother and cry on her shoulder and have her hold me and maybe even offer some advice. but she’s got her own issues. I take care of mine.

yesterday would’ve been my dad’s 74th birthday. it hit me probably a bit late, but it hit me nonetheless. looked at that picture at just the wrong time and I was done for. I wish I could call him too. I’m afraid I’m going to forget his voice; I already forgot so many of his stories. he got on every last nerve of mine before he passed but I miss him so much. he’d asked me, one of the last times I saw him, did we deserve this? and I hope he knows he didn’t.

whatever trajectory I thought I had, I feel like I’m losing it again. maybe it’s the seasonal affective. maybe it’s whatever the fuck this is. I’m so tired of being me. I’m only 25 and I’m fucking exhausted. I want so badly to be hopeful. I want to be able to experience the future I think I want, one that I’ll be happy with. but I have so much fear I’ll never get there. and it’s not for lack of trying. I can do everything right, and things can still go wrong. it’s happened before, it’s not unlikely it’ll happen again. I’ve accepted that fact. but if that’s facts... how can I let myself be hopeful?

the rational part of my brain has been tapping its foot for a week at least. are we done with this shit yet? can we maybe stop? when the bad feelings stop, I stop reacting to them. I can make myself stop crying. I can make myself get up and do things. I’ve been picking myself up off the floor, calming myself down, keeping myself distracted, and trying everything I know how to do to feel just numb if not better for years. I can’t make this feeling stop. it stops when it stops.

I’m going to send a message to my psych’s office and ask about therapy. they do have telepsych options as well, and if they want me to do weekly sessions that would be the best option for me. I’ve needed a good therapist for longer than I’m probably aware of. I’ve tried a good number of them and none of them seem to know what to tell me. I swear to god if this one calls me “wise beyond my years” like the last two... while I appreciate the compliment, it’s not helpful. I’m hyperaware of how hyperaware I can be. once I learned to train my critical thinking skills it just made the spiraling worse. I’d like to learn how to stop doing that. how to shut my brain the fuck up. how to not hate being myself in a world I don’t feel like I’m made for. how to take steps forward instead of being too scared of every possible outcome that isn’t good. you know, easy stuff.

---

I don’t know. I’m just tired. don’t know and frankly don’t much care if you even read these dumb posts anymore, gavin, but I’m sorry if you’ve bothered to and sorry if you’re tired of my shit too. I told you I didn’t want to put this all on you; you’ve got your own shit to deal with and I didn’t want you to think it was your fault in any way. don’t quite know what you’re going through, but you don’t need to be pulling me out of this nonsense on top of it. this sure would be one hell of an overreaction to “us being in a relationship is an unrealistic scenario”, especially when I kind of already knew that. sucked to know for real for real, but not that much, lmao. that’s not what started this spiral-- this started well before you and I ever met. more than anything you’ve been helping me reach a point where I’m hopeful I can get out of it and I’m so grateful to have you as a friend. I’m not really sure you feel like you can say the same about me, and I’m sorry for that too. you being so distant lately just feeds the nasty part of my brain that convinces me I drive everyone away. you’re well within your rights to take your space, but I just really hope it’s not because of anything I did. this time of year is reminding me of last winter, when you had a break from work and we’d stayed up all night for a few nights talking about anything and everything. I miss that. and please don’t worry about leading me on; I’m glad to know more definitively where you stand and I respect that. I really do just miss your company, whether you’re feeling good or bad or whatever. that’s, you know, the whole thing with friends. I know you isolate, and I guess there’s not much I can do about that. just know I’m still here. I’ve still got a hand out, if you’d like to take it. and that’s okay if not; it’s there anyway.

#meh

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whatifididsomethingnew · 5 years

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Take Your Medication

I’m a college freshman in my second semester. I’ve been struggling with depression and ADHD for who knows how long, but I was diagnosed(i think? idk if it was official) in my freshman year of high school and given medication for it sometime in my senior year.

I didn’t take the medication very often. I started off strong, taking the ADHD medication especially to get me through classes and make sure the dosage lasted me to sixth period, my worst class at the time. But over the summer I stopped because I decided that the positive effects didn’t make up for the side effects: a lack of appetite and dry mouth.

Below the keep reading is my experience with mental illnesses and medication. It’s long. tl;dr If you have access to medication, take it. It helps. And make sure the dosage is right for you

I’ve never been a bad student. Aside from failing algebra 2 in freshman year (ive never been good at “advanced” math, it was an IB class so even worse, and even better students agreed that the teacher was awful), I’ve gotten at worst 1-2 C’s per year. But since middle school I’ve found myself unable to pay attention, preferring to think about the book I want to read or the game I want to play or even just something else I started learning about. I figured out how to get by with finished homework and average tests. But I took about 6 AP tests in high school and only passed one, because I couldn’t study well enough to retain all the information I learned and forgot over the course, or pay attention to the exam to finish the multiple choice, or have enough foundation in the subject to write an essay that mattered at all.

This point in my life has almost certainly been my worst, depression-wise. I only live about twenty minutes away from my parents’ house, and I go home every weekend so I’m not just alone in my apartment for three days straight, but I’m still isolated during the week. My friends that are still in high school are busy with classes and extracurriculars and meeting with friends they still see everyday and very few of them have their own cars to drive up to visit me, and my friends in college are all busier than ever, all going to school anywhere from 15 minutes to like four hours away. My bad days are worse and happen more often and can span into bad weeks. I tend to write at best 1 page of notes after about 2 1/2 hours of classes a week, and drain my phone battery down to the sixties because I don't pay attention in lectures on subjects I’m not interested in.

In high school I couldn’t wait for college, because I could choose my classes and the times and had the opportunity to make friends! But I realized I’m bad at making friends; I made one friend in kindergarten, when times were simpler, and all my lasting relationships (aside from my online friends, whom I treasure dearly) can be attributed to that one friendship. (I actually made a flowchart during class when another student was presenting, and I had the energy and motivation because I actually took my meds today!)

All this personal information about my Bad Times™ is to make you understand how much I needed to take my medication. But I don’t have classes everyday, so I didn’t think that taking ADHD meds everyday was worth it, and I (incorrectly) recalled that taking the depression meds didn’t help me enough to validate taking it everyday, instead only when it got really bad, but that plan didn’t work because when my depression is bad I don’t even have enough energy to text back or walk like four steps total to get my laptop, let alone walk to the bathroom and get the pills.

So I didn’t take it, besides from when I worked my first 8-hour shifts at my first job. And those side-effects were extreme, because my body wasn’t used to these meds that were incredibly high in dosage because that’s what I need. I felt nauseous and dizzy enough to faint and went to the back room like four times an hour for a drink of water and it was still way less than I wanted. And I still didn’t learn my lesson about how the side-effects would get easier to handle if I took them more, but worse if I only took them on worst-case bases. I was thinking more in the moment about how bad I felt then, rather than about how I could feel better in the future if I pushed through.

I had a series of awful days, just last week. I cried several tears with no clear cause, only my own thoughts and boredom and depression, which means a lot in relation to me because I don’t cry. I watched Dear Evan Hansen and The Prom live, both with the original cast, and only cried a total of five tears at most, despite how these musicals and their subject matters are very dear to me. It was a bad week that came out of nowhere, nothing extraordinarily bad happened. I did the same thing as always, if not more. But still, it was a very bad week, because I was experiencing the heavy depression and it didn’t go away after I fell asleep. I don’t have classes on Wednesdays this semester; I have a lab on Mondays, and three lectures in a row on Tuesdays and Thursdays because I learned last semester that having enough leisure time to chill in my apartment for several hours between classes only makes going to the later class way more tedious. I usually get picked up by one of my parents on Thursdays while whichever of them it is drives home from work that day. That week I was lucky to have my Thursday classes cancelled, so I got picked up a day early.

Being home is good for my health, adding it all up. It makes me a bit insecure about being independent, but fuck that I’m only 18 and I love my parents, I don’t need to be completely independent yet. Being home only improved when @pointlessoressential moved in with me; having someone so similar to me in regards of being content sitting and doing our own thing without the expectation to have something to Do™ all the time. It’s good for me, to have someone around me so I don’t get too isolated, but also not too overwhelmed. I’m usually pretty open with my mom, too, so being with her during the weekend and being able to talk with her or watch some easy TV together is good. I’ve never been very good at opening up to people; my main characterization with friends I’m not as close with is sarcasm and puns and whatever other humor to distract both of us from personal issues. I’ve been trying to get better, with help and reminders from the aforementioned bee and mom, as well as my best friend (who yes my meeting of and bonding with can indirectly be connected to that kindergarten friend, if you were wondering) who is much more skilled at telling me about her feelings than I am. But I’m trying. So I told my mom about how I had been having a bad week, once I got home.

My mom has dealt with depression her whole life, too. Most of her life she thought she also had anxiety, but when I was diagnosed with ADHD, the psychiatrist who had prescribed me the medications I take explained to both of us that ADHD in afab people (I'd say women bc my mom is cis but I'm nonbinary, so afab people) can be misdiagnosed as anxiety bc it’s different from what TV shows it to be, and the reactive anxiety (as opposed to constant, causeless anxiety from an anxiety disorder) is a symptom of ADHD. She’s dealt with the same issues all her life, so I go to her often when I hit the wall.

She told me to take the medication. I said I didn’t like the side-effects. She bought me mouthwash that helps dry mouth and a box of Rice Krispies Treats so I can eat something small but filling when I lose my appetite. She reminded me that the side-effects would improve if I took the medication more often. I am privileged in that I had the opportunity to see a doctor for my issues and be able to afford (even if barely) my medication, and I should take advantage of that instead of taking it for granted.

This is a long post, sharing my personal story about having mental illnesses, and how medication helps. It may not feel like it took effect, but then it’ll wear off and you’ll realize the difference. It’s better to feel stable, to feel “normal” for most of the day, than to get used to feeling awful. I took my medication this morning before class; I’ve taken about five hours to write this whole thing, due to having begun it before one lecture started, then continuing it during another while also listening to my professor review the first five chapters of Return of the King and discuss it with us. And now I’m in my apartment, on my laptop, switching between ending this PSA and checking on due dates and reviewing my calendar and just being 10 times more productive than I ever am.

I don’t know if anyone will need this advice. I don’t know how many will even click the read more. But this is a blog site, and this is something I’m trying to learn and have it remembered. It’s something I needed to put into words, and now it is.

#mental health #medication #depression #adhd #american education #this has been a psa #mental health advice

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dhominis · 5 years

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Update on my meatspace existence! CW for parents and disordered eating and general neuroticism. Things are pretty great.

I’m happy.

Social-wise, I am not where I’d like to be but I am slowly getting more and more social contact. (It’s... not enough, not by a long shot, but fairly okay for someone who’s been in a new city for like three months. Especially at my general level of social competence. The ideal setup involves more or less constant interaction with people, far more physical contact -- I need to live in a house with like five or six friends who are smart and excited about things and also really like physical contact.) I have a friend with whom I can hike and talk about cool pathogens. I’m probably LARPing with an cool epidemiologist and her LARP group pretty soon, which is nerd shit and also increased social competence and also running around in the woods -- perfect. I have been doing various social things. (Went to a kink social thing and a cute girl hit on me. It was great -- I don’t think she meant it as a serious expression of interest but I’m generally really ecstatic about people flirting with me. Also got great hugs.) Life is getting better.

Plans for the future seem more and more clear -- flexible, but there are viable paths to outcomes I want. Current most viable path: being an ICU nurse. I think I am going to be a really good ICU nurse; people who are familiar with my general personality concur. I am smart and competent and compassionate but not high-automatic-empathy enough that it’ll interfere with my functioning, I automatically think of things in terms of feedback within systems, I need to be active and under stress, I’m pretty high-conscientiousness with adequate caffeine intake and expect further improvement once I get either real ADHD meds or modafinil, I’ll be so good at this.

(I can handle stress, I can handle pressure. I cannot handle not being under pressure. A high-pressure job that occupies a lot of my time is more or less necessary; I am like a neurotic border collie that can’t self-motivate, I will always find things to do, if they’re not imposed from outside those things will be e.g. having pointless anxiety about things that really don’t merit anxiety.)

Be an ICU nurse for a few years. Donate ten percent. It’s worth figuring out whether “reducing medical error via checklists” is a viably high-impact thing; more likely I’ll end up working in the ICU until I stop being a high-stress traumatized adolescent, then go to CRNA school and make ridiculous CRNA salary and donate like $100k/year or something absolutely ridiculous like that.

Also when I moved out here I was very much thinking “yeah I’m gonna just work as much as I need to pay my bills and not think about school and just relax so much” and three months later I’m pulling stupid overtime and figuring out the best way to fast-track my nursing degree. (Depends on how much transfer credit Shitty Online College is willing to give me, but likely the best way to do it will be to finish my BS online while working full-time and then go to an accelerated RN program; that’d be only one full year of in-person school. And then just be a nurse.)

I applied to Shitty Online College today; in a few weeks they’ll tell me how much transfer credit they’ll give me. It might be a viable option, and if that’s the case I’ll work full-time and finish my BS and apply for the one-year RN for 2021. Even if it’s not a viable option I’ll need anat/phys to get into nursing school and it’ll be a lot cheaper to do the self-study CLEP-adjacent test-out thing the shitty online college offers.

...I don’t know how to self-motivate. I don’t know how to self-study. This is a thing I have to learn but also I don’t know how to learn. Offers of peer-pressure coworking are so welcome, guys.

I have been in overtime every week since the first week. I am comfortably middle-class, have been living on about $1200 a month, am saving over half my income. I am in a really good position to do everything I want to! Like, within a few years I’d be able to buy a house were I not instead funneling all my income into education.

It has occurred to me that being non-disabled in certain important ways is a large part of why I’m okay. It’s... not intuitive to think of myself like that; I couldn’t handwrite enough for any reasonable goal until 2017 (a few legible sentences and that’s it for the day!), couldn’t make decisions based on my long-term ability to walk. There is less pain now. I am able to walk the mile and a half to and from work; I don’t need an apartment that’s right next to my workplace, I don’t need a car. I can hang out in a room full of loud alarms going off constantly and also make phone calls constantly and have people’s lives dependent on my ability to cope with this (this is my current job, I fucking love it).

Eating still has not been good (see post, CW for various ~food issues~). I’d hoped that the change of environment and commitment to exposing myself to unpleasant things e.g. eating would be useful, and there have been really substantial improvements (haven’t vomited since I left $homestate, I think I’ve at least maintained my weight, there’s only been one day I didn’t eat at all) but it’s... still requiring sustained effort. (You may notice that I am not yet great at sustained self-directed effort.) I’ll figure it out. Getting adequate therapy is a priority.

I could afford full-time Soylent. This is not an option I’m seriously considering in the near term but it is very comforting to know that there is another option. It’s likely that after e.g. a year of effort and therapy food will become intrinsically motivating again -- it’s been less than a year since my food issues became seriously harmful, after all, and recovery is likely. But even if that doesn’t happen, even if solid food is horrible forever, I have an option besides “do a thing that is seriously aversive every day several times a day for the rest of my life” and “don’t eat and subsequently be unable to function because I don’t eat.”

What else --

I had planned to maintain contact with my parents after leaving, since it’s important to them; this is no longer a viable plan. Every seriously unpleasant mental state since I left has either been “eating is unpleasant” or “I talked to my parents and this is Not Good.” It’s... relevant that every time this has happened, it’s been substantially less bad than literally every day I’d lived with my parents. Possibly I do not have a good understanding of what is a reasonable amount of distress to put myself in. I am still learning this and it’s okay.

So. Not talking to them. It feels good and free and safe. I almost think I should miss them -- it feels disrespectful for my reactions to be universally positive. Mostly this is not distressing because oh my god this is awesome I don’t have to interact with them unless I specifically choose to.

Also, now I am responsible for adult things like meal prep and cleaning and health insurance and finding a therapist and getting my in-state driver’s license and, uh, getting an ADHD eval. I have been putting off going to the DMV and I just... I have to go to the DMV. This will suck a bunch for a very short period of time and then I will have an in-state driver’s license and also will laugh at myself for not having done this two months ago.

(figuring things out and becoming more competent -- intrinsically motivating, for me. it’s a good trait to have.)

#happyblogging #original post #news from meatspace #personal #disordered eating cw

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starsailorstories · 5 years

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I have no idea if any of it is accurate to what would be done/could be done irl but working on vol. 2 I’m realizing Bolt has some really specific methods as to how things ought to be done in “her” clinic/hospital/mobile units...I’d be interested if any followers with actual jobs in healthcare have opinions about any of these because they’re things I think she’d want based on her character, not based on like personal life experience or knowledge of the science/logistics:

Bolt herself tends to do this kind of thing naturally, but it’s clear she’s also THINKING about the fact that emotional support/psychological first aid is a part of medical care, and she teaches the medics who actually go into battle, especially, very specific things to say WHILE they’re not only responding to casualties, but also screening brand new rescues for contagion. Things like “You’re at ___________. If you feel able, tell me something you see right now” and “Why don’t you tell me when you’re ready for me/my assistant to hold your hand. You can wait as long as you want, or tell us if you don’t want to be touched.” This is shown in the book and it’s inspired by trauma first aid info like this that I’ve been linked to through activist stuff and by the methods developed by groups like Chicago ACT UP’s Committee for Sustainable Activity & Care (partly described in this pamphlet by Jane Addams Collective), but I also tweaked a lot of what’s said because the Bell Town medics would be adapting their guidelines to suit survivors of a very specific method of institutional abuse, with whom it’s essential to obtain consent for all touch and conversation but for whom it can be very stressful to be put on the spot to make decisions.

There’s both specific scripts and overall guidelines for treating units fresh out of a bad situation, which are something along the lines of:

Give a direct instruction, but phrase it conversationally--you want a tone and word choice where it’s clear you’re not giving an order that must be followed or else, BUT there’s no ambiguity

Always either emphasize that nothing bad will happen if she’s unable to follow the instruction, or clearly explain the medical consequences, if those exist, of not following the instruction and offer help/further explanation

Obviously there will be emergencies and times when the above two guidelines can’t be followed PERFECTLY, but that’s why you need to practice a lot and internalize them so that you can think on your feet about the fastest, most effective way to work together with your patient

Read signals, check up, talk about feelings in downtime whenever she’s comfortable with that. Get the best understanding you can of where each sister you work with is in her own healing process and allot your energy wisely

Bolt was PAYING ATTENTION when Shade, Rosie and the other theory/strategy makers talked about how all imbalanced power dynamics risk triggering all of their indoctrination. She’s incredibly aware of the physical power her medics possess over those incapacitated by illness or injury and how important it is to enforce a sense of responsibility on the medics’ end. She teaches them that if a patient’s being difficult they should ask themselves if there’s anything they can do to put them in a calmer mood--sometimes the answer is no, and that’s okay, and she doesn’t want them to feel guilty about it; but she wants them holding in mind that the people who come to them are already suffering, and aggression is an understandable response to feeling helpless. Even if the solution is trading shifts with someone who has a different approach, or tag teaming, or whatever, her goal is to never let anyone feel like the medics are trying to shut her up basically although once they go topside and are treating random Basilean citizens alongside rebels she does have Words with people who patronize her girls just because they’re lux. That’s another power dynamic to account for entirely, sweetheart!

She also has this thing about how the patients’ room/bed is THEIR space, not the medics’. Unless it’s an emergency, they’re taught to behave like guests. And they’re not the authority on what the patient can allow into and do with their space, the patient is in charge of that and it’s the medics’ responsibility to mitigate whatever risks there might be to that, sort of like how in a city people generally do what they want in their own yards but if it’s potentially dangerous/harmful the city might send them a notice, etc.

There’s no Method for this but Boltie has everybody working under her direction at any given time mentally ranked on a scale from most soft and gushy to most no-nonsense and professional and has the uncanny ability to immediately clock everyone who comes into the clinic in terms of which end of the scale they’ll respond best to

On the other hand, this is certainly a privilege of having MUCH more time and sheer people power to work with than a human in her position would, but in general everything is organized for maximum flexibility and maximum time spent with every patient. That’s still going to mean minutes and not hours on regular rounds, but they aim for enough to have a bit of a conversation if one is wanted and check on things that are contributing to the person’s condition even if they aren’t the main priority.

Also, Bolt prioritizes the mental and emotional health of her team as highly as she does that of her patients. She invites Literally Everyone--in rotating small groups organized by shifts--from the most senior battlefield surgeons to the newest trainees into her actual home several times a week to talk about what’s been going on and everything they’ve been processing about it and show each other support. She’s been known to arrange for medics stationed away from the town to bring their loved ones with them regardless of practicality level, just because she believes that people with support systems make better medics.

Bolt’s not just a team mom, she’s a team Mother in the Andromedan sense--the beating heart of a community hundreds strong, a group therapist with an open-door policy, and a logistical organizer who refuses to compromise the wellbeing of a single one of the people she’s adopted. And just having the level of emotional skill and stamina to navigate all that and do a reasonable job of delegating and taking care of herself after everything she’s been through is probably one of the most heroic feats in the trilogy

#sweet chariot #long post

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momtemplative · 4 years

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The Long Game

A conversation about schools reopening: Part one (uno, un) of presumably many.

There was one year I celebrated the First Day Of School with such vigor and rebelliousness that the moment I got home from the double-drop-off, I stripped down to my undies and ate pesto from the jar, on the couch, like a crazy woman.

Last year, the first day of school was delayed for four days because of construction and I had a full-on meltdown. Get these kids out of the house!!

Now, here we sit, atop an entirely different perspective. That Holiest of Days means nothing.

Finish lines and dates-to-look-forward-to-with-certainty during this pandemic are as arbitrary as the outcome of a toddler game of pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey. I’ve been applying a lowered-gaze to these long, long days, a here-and-now approach to get us through to the finish line of school starting. Not thinking about the Long Game has been a survival tactic to avoid an onslaught of overwhelm and to allow more room for joy and sanity. (There are plenty of tough days that happen organically, without the pressure of trying to figure it all out.)

Back in March, I thought, (many of us thought), ok this is crazy, but they’ll surely get back to school in the fall. And what an epic celebration THAT First Day will be!

Especially after this four+ month stint of no school, no sitters, no public places open (safely), no playdates or kid swaps, no summer camps or extracurriculars, and no travel! I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t holding up the First Day as a beacon of hope, grabbing at it like fruit for a starving soul that hangs way beyond my reach.

Up until last Wednesday, we could still speculate about school as some far-off agenda. Of course there was no way school could start up again as per usual, but I pushed that slippery little thought out of my mind every time it landed.

Now, heavy with reluctance, I am beginning to mourn the loss of the reality I was hoping for—to have Opal back in school and Ruth in preschool three full-days a week! (That was new, for the two years prior, she attended preschool for three half-days, which just barely covered my part-time work load.) The generous portions of un-scheduled time (that far surpass the needs of my job, which I will not be doing for the foreseeable future anyhow, since giving massage to elders with dementia and Alzheimers is such a dangerous gig right now) were joyfully staggering to think about.

Once the facts came to light, hard and fast on the computer screen, it no longer worked to play dumb about what the fall might look like. They announced this week that BVSD (Boulder Valley School District) would be opening schools for two days a week, a “hybrid model,” starting one week late, end of August. Half the class will attend Tuesday and Wednesday, half will attend Thursday and Friday. On the not-in-person days, kids will do online schooling. (Kids can also opt out of this for fully online, at-home schooling.)

The kids will be required to wear masks and keep their distance. There will be partitions and well-spaced desks and lots of outside time. The precautions will be thorough and lengthy, but necessary.

Joseph G. Allens, assistant professor of exposure assessment science at Harvard says, “On prevention, we are seeing that in many hospitals, the number of infections of front-line doctors and nurses has dropped way down. Why? Strict controls are in place focusing on just three things: mask-wearing, hand-washing and air-cleaning.”

This is positive news for the kids who are old enough to be mindful and take precautions. Luckily, Opal is old enough to be developmentally capable of following all the rules, not only because that is who she is, but because she understands this is what needs to happen for the public’s health. Five years ago, she may have had good intentions, but would’ve been developmentally unable of doing what needed to be done. Five years from now, she may be nursing a rebellious phase—who knows. So, we rejoice at the fact that she is eddying in the safest spot—age and development-wise—that she possibly could. (Not to mention her motivator-of-wise-choices is far more ubiquitous and scary than simply aiming to be a ‘good girl.’)

Ruth, who is four and still taste things from the ground, is another story altogether. And to intensify that reality is that she’d be in a classroom of 11 other small-children-examples. When I imagine a birds-eye-view of her classroom, I see piles of children, not individual bodies, all heaped onto a particular play area like puppies on a teat. The personified opposite of social distancing.

And because we have grandparents to think about, we have chosen to keep Ruth from the fray of preschool for the time being. (I acknowledge we are fortunate to have this choice.) This is devastating and confusing for her, she is longing for her friends and teachers, the world she cultivated for the prior two years, half her life. She still doesn’t understand why school stopped so abruptly, why she never got to say goodbye to her class, why she can’t see any of them now, except for on a screen.

(Ruth sometimes refers to The Virus as almost a villain-character. She’ll be lying in bed and suddenly, disgustedly, shout, “THAT VIRUS IS SO RUDE!”)

For the last few days, I’ve been saturating myself in news articles about how schools plan to re-open next month and the safety of it all—for grandparents, for teachers, for us. I vacillate between, this will be weird but fine and yikes and wait, is this the best approach?

There is a staggering amount to consider, and yet a minuscule amount of certain information out there. Almost every article I read about young kids and COVID—can they spread it??—is filed under the opinion section of the paper. Info feels sparse and mostly speculative. I don’t trust it. At least not on her grandparents’ lives. Schools in Europe reopened months ago, where is the research from that?

Brian P. Gill, senior fellow at Mathematica, (a nonpartisan public-policy research and analysis firm), had some optimistic things to say. He said, “When reopening schools, he’d most recommend a staggered start and to reduce the number of students in schools and classrooms. “We believe this can dramatically slow the spread of COVID-19—even if children are not especially good at wearing masks or maintaining physical distance.”

I really don’t know who or what to believe at this point. I find myself glomming on to the positive bits, sharing a hopeful thought or article with friends, accompanied by a prayer-hands emoji. Then I will read something that troubles me and I turn leaden and sink to the bottom of my mental well. I usually don’t share those articles. It cycles back and forth like this.

But returning to the bricks-and-mortar plans for Opal’s upcoming school year:

I try to imagine what this will all look like. The rooms will be half-full of socially distanced little bodies, all looking like mini-surgeons in their masks and ranging in age and size and from approximately 5 to 10 years old. Opal is on the older end, and I imagine her classroom to look like theater—where everyone has an excessive personal bubble and the plastic partition creates a glare from every angle and warps the images on either side. Connections will have to be made in code, sideways, or way too loud to overcome the cloth curtains that cover mouths. I imagine the resurgence of note-passing, like when I was a kid and we’d fold them into little origami packages and pass them along to the desired recipient, hopefully out of the teacher’s gaze. But in this case, they’d need to be tossed rather than passed—the closest desk will be six feet away.

Will they be able to see the preposterousness in all of it? Will they be able to share a good laugh about it or will it all seem like dreadful torture? I’m sure perspectives will vacillate from one end of the spectrum to the other, the way they do now.

I do solemnly wish that everyone enter the first day of school expecting nothing less than chaos and confusion, and because of that, they will offer each other more slack and kindness. This sucks equally for everyone, the whole dang village. There’s got to be some solace in that?

(And can I get a moment of silent mercy for all these teachers, even the grumpiest ones? I cannot fathom the ninja-brainwork required to hold all these pieces together. The effort is heroic.)

We would probably consider kiboshing the whole operation if it were to last any longer than two days. That’s plenty manageable. And Opal wants it so bad. The sense of purpose, of community, of life-beyond-the-walls-of-our-home. She told me she’s dying to see the eyes of all her friends, even above a mask, as long as it’s not on a screen! Preach.

I am well aware that this equation doesn’t help parents who are trying to get back to work, but, again, I appreciate what Brian P. Gill has to say about it:

“As parents ourselves, we would much prefer that our child’s school be open for a predictable two days a week than a highly unpredictable cycle of opening and closing. But more important than our own preferences are these facts: Unpredictably difficult experiences create more stress and more downstream health problems than predictably difficult experiences, even if the experience itself is equivalent in all other respects. And for children, more predictability yields better emotional health, a key predictor of life outcomes.”

SO here we are, bouncing around the map of this pandemic with, what often feels like, no real direction. At the entrance of yet another entirely foreign trail to blaze—with kids, with grandparents, woven into the threads of our decision making more than ever before in our previous lives.

We want to give our kids the moon, but for right now, maybe the best thing we can give them is predictability.

Joseph Allen said it well, “I wish it was different. We can continue to push for things to get better — and maybe our government will course-correct. Until then, we must forge a path forward with the reality we have, not the one we want.”

#momtemplative #LongGame #COVIDwords #mindfulparenting

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emilyyhill · 5 years

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Doing the health thing.

As many of you know, the past four to six months has been an absolute roller coaster for me health wise. I have had more diagnoses than I can count on one hand but nothing was drastic enough for to elicit a dramatic response. So I kind of just wandered through this ridiculous season until everything clicked and we worked something out.

Now I’ve only felt good for three weeks, so I’m still taking this very slow. I am not getting too excited just yet. But:

I went super MIA for a good while there. As I’ve reemerged and shared what’s been happening with friends, I hear so many people saying “I feel like that too!” or asking “How on Earth did you get better?” So here we are. The list of things I’m doing to help get/keep me healthy.

Now I’m not a doctor or health professional by any stretch – this is purely what I’ve done and what MY TEST RESULTS informed MY DOCTORS and HEALTH PEOPLE. So please don’t take this as gospel truth.

But I feel like I have some advice for those feeling a bit stuck in a cycle of health that definitely isn’t what it should be.

First things first, it’s not normal to be exhausted. Full stop. We live in a society where we are busy all the time, and a lot of us are unknowingly addicted to a substance (*cough* coffee *cough*) to try and alleviate underlying sleep deprivation. This is not sustainable – you should never be that busy that you are always feeling like you need a weeks worth of sleep.

It’s also not normal to feel tired after 8-10 hours of sleep. Fatigue and daytime sleepiness is a HUGE indicator that your body is not functioning at its peak. It means that something is lacking: whether it be sleep, nutrients, water, positivity – all of things contribute to our energy levels.

For example, fatigue and daytime sleepiness can be a symptom of: • Low iron or excess iron – iron’s can be annoying like that; • Mental health conditions like depression or anxiety; • Food intolerance and IBS; • Sleep apnea or poor sleep routines; • Low blood pressure; • Glandular fever or cytomegalovirus (or a bunch of other viruses); • Super simple things, like dehydration, jetlag or overeating (that post Christmas nap is definitely supported by s c i e n c e); • About a million other things.

So if you are feeling tired even after a regular night’s sleep, first consider your schedule and then consider a further investigation into the inner workings of that hot lil bod of yours 😏

I hear you: “That’s great Em. But who can help me? My doctor doesn’t care because I don’t have blood gushing out of a limb that’s falling off!” I feel you: My doctor ignored me for YEARS until I crashed real bad, and even then, he didn’t really care. *sigh* Not a fun time. Obviously I don’t go to that doctor anymore.

Go see a naturopath. But a good one. Not a hippie one.

Not that I’m against hippie naturopaths, I’m sure they are helpful too. But if a naturopath is going to be your main port of call for recovery, make sure you are seeing an experienced, degree qualified natural health specialist. Looking into your eyes with a shiny light is not enough on it’s own. Make sure they know their stuff.

Make sure they are using reputable brands of supplements (Metagenics, BioCeuticals, MediHerb etc.) that require practitioner prescriptions – in other words, you can’t just buy the supplements “over the counter”. And, they should recommend more than just essential oils.

Naturopathics can be a slow process, and it might take a while for you to see some changes. They look for the cause of the problem and try to resolve that, rather than putting band aids on things (an approach typically taken by mainstream medical doctors). But, for me, once we worked out what was causing my issues, it was a BINGO moment and I hit the health jackpot within DAYS.

Heads up: naturopaths by definition are a bit alternative. They’ll definitely ask about your poo, want to poke you and their machines make weird sounds but hey, it’s usually pretty non-intrusive.

It can also be expensive, especially when you start taking supplements and vitamins. It’s also not recognised by Medicare or most private health insurance, so it’s usually an out of pocket expense. I totally understand that may not be feasible for everyone. But – if you can, I totally recommend.

I go to Don Graham at Vitage Naturopathics (Springwood). He and his wife Sandy are AMAZING, drop them a line here.

Don’t abandon your general practitioner or specialist.

Look, when things hurt or are causing significant disruptions – GO TO THE DOCTOR. When I’m covered in a heinous rash and I can’t sleep because of it, I can’t wait another three weeks to see the naturopath and then go on an elimination diet and try this, that, and the other. I NEED TO SLEEP DAMMIT. Get me onto those steroids, stat. But not before I take photos to show the naturopath later. It’s teamwork, look it up.

Keep a symptom diary.

We all like to think that we have a pretty good memory. You don’t. Your memory is shit. Write stuff down. Track your period, track your headaches, track the days you have explosive diarrhoea and the days you are constipated. TRACK ALL YOUR SYMPTOMS.

Whether you go to a naturopath or a doctor, having it all on paper with dates will help you figure out if there are any patterns or if you’re just a loose cannon (still sad about Luke from Survivor, so here’s a meme in his honor).

Find yourself some good friends.

Heck, chronic illness can be lonely as hell. You miss out on parties, on coffee catch ups. you have to drop activities that you did with friends (like going to gym classes or walking your puppies together).

Research has shown that people who report high levels on loneliness are also more likely to develop both short and long term illnesses, ranging from colds to dementia. Loneliness will make it so much harder for you to get better, both physically and mentally.

So what happens when you might drop off the radar for days, weeks, or months at a time?

Rely on incredible friends who understand that every plan is tentative pending health. Find those people who will check in with you when you’ve been a bit MIA, and are willing to ditch the cute café for a cup of tea in your lounge room when can’t get yourself out of the house.

In saying that, reach out to people. Don’t expect everyone to know what’s going on, and still try to take the small steps you can to show people you still care (and just need a little extra love right now).

Be gracious with yourself and the state of your home – you don’t have to have everything perfectly together to invite someone over. Maybe you sit on the couch in your pyjamas and chat for a grand total of half an hour because that is all you can manage. If so, that’s okay! You made an effort, and when you have such little capacity, that will scream volumes to your friends.

Embrace the discomfort of making changes.

I cringe a little bit every time I, a girl wearing a dress with cons, order a soy flat white in my pink Pottery for the Planet keep cup, but hey, we’re embracing the discomfort.

I had to give up God’s most precious gift to humanity: the humble smoked almond. Don’t even get me started on hummus. Yet here we are, feeling a million times better for it. Thank God for a sneaky cheat moment here and there (not a whole day or I’d look like a 22 week pregnant lady…).

Problem was – unbeknownst to me, I relied on food for comfort. It was always familiar; I KNEW I’d feel emotionally better after some cheese and a choccy milk. I had to realise that I needed healthier coping strategies now other than food – like meditation and exercise and… actually dealing with my problems. Ugh.

I also had to embrace the fact that people loved me even when I couldn’t do anything for them. I was still a part of my church when I couldn’t serve on team. My family still loved me when I didn’t contribute to the dishes for a while.

My worth to people isn’t attached to what I can do for them and that was a huge thing for me to learn. I probably would not have fully understood that lesson had I not been so absolutely unable to do anything for anyone but myself.

Embrace the discomfort – you’ll grow from it. I promise.

Find things that you like!

Let’s talk about healthy juices. With this list of food intolerances rounding up at SEVENTEEN, a lot of my faves got the cut (see ya honey, pineapple, mango etc. etc.). You know what didn’t get the cut? BLOODY SPINACH. What is full of iron and good for your belly? SPINACH. What am I eating a lot of right now? SPINACH.

I don’t love spinach, but when combined with other things and blended to a pulp, it can be good. The only way you are going to stick to a new lifestyle is by finding things you like. Plus, life is way to short to drink gross smoothies every day.

It could be that you try to find new forms of exercise that are better for your condition - I recently discovered yoga and climbing, both of which are heaps less taxing on my adrenal glands and therefore better for my fatigue.

It may be new routines – I have to go to bed earlier than before which means I often can’t spend time with friends on “school nights”. I had to shift my hours at work from 8 to 4 to 10 to 6 so that I could do what I need to do in the morning before work.

It might be swapping to new products - I changed my skin care products because I was allergic to one of the chemicals in the one I had been using for years.

It’s trial and error – you have to be open to trying new things, and deal with the fall out of some changes doing more damage than before. But when you work out what works, it’s like a whole new person. Trust me on this, yeah? It pays off in the long run.

Be diligent.

It can be frustrating and it can be so hard not to see the pay off until the long run. Taking your pills twice a day, drinking your veggie smoothie thing twice a day, consistently putting your health first when you just want to go out and eat freaking cheese pizza. I get it, it’s tedious. But consistency is key. It’ll happen and you’ll build a new routine and relish in all your new found health and wellness. YAY.

Pay attention to your mind, not just your body.

The way we think about our body has HUGE implications on our physical health. I touched on this earlier with the loneliness thing. The same principle expands to positivity, to courage, to telling ourselves that our body is strong and rebuilding, not a piece of shit that’s not doing its job. Spend time meditating, reading, reflecting, feeding your mind good thoughts while we feed our bodies with good food!

Wow this got pretty long. If you’re still here, congrats. I really do hope you got something good out of it – even if it’s that you should definitely go buy some smoked almonds because they are something wonderful that this Earth does not deserve.

Hit me up if you ever want to chat! Always open, always keen, available sometimes (because recovering and still kinda tired…).

All my love, E x

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the-bounce-back · 5 years

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REALISTIC RESOLUTIONS - 5 TIPS TO ACHIEVE YOUR GOALS

So, we’re officially a week into the New Year™. How’s that working out for you so far?

Since I’m currently just chilling, packing and waiting to move to London and start my new job, I’ve been left with a lot of time on my hands to reflect on how terrible 2018 was for me - and I refuse to have a year that bad again. I’ve decided that 2019 is going to be dedicated to rebuilding my happiness, confidence and mental health again, and I’ve set my resolutions with this in mind.

Besides giving me a ton of blog ideas, all this time reflecting and planning has challenged me to ensure that my resolutions don’t end up being unrealistic and empty promises to myself, that I end up abandoning halfway through the year. After much umming and ahing, I’ve finally come up with 5 tips to keep in mind that should (hopefully) keep me on track, and I believe that they can be applied to other people’s resolutions, too.

I know what you’re thinking.

“But Liv, I swear you said that New Year Resolutions are a scam? Is your head alright?”

First of all, revelling in hypocrisy is my favourite pastime. One of my biggest flaws is that I give stellar advice to everyone around me, but I rarely apply it to myself - which is probably why my life is a bit (a lot) of a mess right now. Taking my own advice is actually one of my goals for this year, because I’m really very wise (on paper). Also, read my disclaimer.

Secondly, this advice can be applied to any type of goal setting at any time - not just New Year Resolutions. My “New Moment, New Me” mantra from my previous post is still very much applicable, thank you very much.

And finally… the title slaps. Sue me.

With that out of the way, let’s get to the good stuff.

The way I see it, you basically need four traits/skills to achieve your goals:

1, Patience. 2. Discipline. 3. Motivation. 4. Organisational skills.

Patience helps you trust the process of slowly but steadily getting closer to your goal. Discipline helps you stay on track, even on bad days. Staying motivated makes you remember why you started and helps you envision how proud you’ll be of yourself when you achieve the goal, and organisational skills help you plan, track and reflect on your progress. Combining all four should make you a goal-smashing machine, a force to be reckoned with.

Unfortunately, I barely possess the first four at all. I can fake being patient for a limited period of time, but deep down I want to see results almost as quickly as I have started. When I don’t see any progress, I start hating myself and finding comfort in an extremely unhealthy coping mechanism, thus killing the little discipline I had. And after indulging in said coping mechanism, I feel guilty and fall even deeper into a spiral of self-loathing, ask myself what the point of even trying was and give up - losing every single ounce of motivation.

All healthy and not at all self-destructive ways to deal with failure. Love it.

Luckily enough, I have been blessed with exceptional organisational skills. Seriously. There is little I enjoy more than buying a new notebook or calendar, writing endless to-do lists, writing down future plans and brainstorming. I even have 3 different notebooks for this year to maximise my ~*oRgAnIsInG*~.

This ain’t no game, homie.

The amount of time I spend on devising workout schedules, meal plans, budgets and habit trackers is actually bordering on insane - but I love it. If I could apply this same energy to the other 3 traits, I’d probably have reached my goal weight, have my driving license, have £100k in my savings account and be 100% sober by now. Let’s all laugh together please.

With these incredibly triggering self-attacks in mind, I will now present my 5 tips on how I plan to achieve my goals to bounce back this year, and from now on.

1. Be kind to yourself.

If you’re anything like me, you’ll know that this is the hardest and most important one. Being self-critical isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but when it gets to a certain point it stops being helpful and starts being damaging to your mental health. I am probably the queen of beating myself up over minor slip-ups, mostly because they feel like such a big deal at the time. Honestly, the amount of times I’ve literally cried myself to sleep because I skipped a day at the gym, cheated on my diet or messed up at work is really heartbreaking to think about, because it never was that deep in the first place.

We are humans. We f*ck up. It’s okay.

The most important thing here is to acknowledge the mistake, accept it, figure out what needs to be done to prevent it from happening again and get right back on track towards your goal. Try to see the mistakes objectively as minor problems that you need to find a solution to, instead of applying emotion to it and seeing it as a negative reflection on your character. You are not a bad person for messing up. I cannot stress this enough.

2. Understand that certain goals will take time to achieve.

Sweetie, no one in the history of the world has achieved their dream body 2 weeks before their girls trip to Magaluf, no one has ever magically woken up with billions in their bank account, and no one has ever instantly gotten a million subscribers on their recently started YouTube channel.

Things. Take. Time.

As much as we all wish that we could snap our fingers and get everything we wish for, life doesn’t work that way. It takes consistency, hard work, endless motivation and self-discipline to achieve certain things, and it’s important to be realistic. Besides, you know what they say - nothing worth having comes easy.

Instead of seeing time passing as an enemy of progress, try utilising it as a tool to determine the logistics of achieving your goals. Devising a realistic timescale detailing the what, where and when of the different stages of my goals has worked wonders for me in the past for smaller projects, especially when I was in uni. Why I haven’t applied this to my adult life yet is a mystery that will remain unsolved, but I am definitely going to apply this to my larger goals from now on.

3. Set milestones or miniature goals to keep you motivated while working towards your “big” goal.

I think this is especially helpful for goals that are focused on something numerical, for example losing a specific amount of weight, going a specific amount of days without drinking/smoking or saving a specific amount of money. Being able to celebrate how far you’ve come since the beginning is equally as important as focusing on how much further you have to go - if not more. It provides boosts of motivation along the way.

In theory, that is. I think this is going to be challenging for me because when I’ve tried it in the past, I’ve ended up putting even more pressure on myself for not reaching the milestones in a timely manner - leading me to throw all my toys out of the pram like a spoilt brat, and ultimately giving up on the goal altogether. However, this time around I intend on applying Tip 1 to my miniature goals as well, so you know...hopefully it works out. We’ll see.

4. On your off days, remember why you started.

Trust me, I know this is easier said than done. Everyone has bad days where everything just feels pointless and like nothing is even worth putting energy into. Maybe you’ve cheated on your diet for the third time in a week, or spent money you promised yourself you were going to save, or been unable to turn down a drink despite getting close to being a whole month sober (P is for projection!). Chances are, you feel very disappointed in yourself and start questioning whether or not you’re actually serious about this life.

This is where forcing yourself to remember why you started is imperative, because it really could be the only thing standing between moving past the slip up and losing your motivation, leading to you giving up completely. If you’ve been regularly tracking your progress, use this as a reminder of how far you’ve come. Also, refer back to Tip 1 again. Sure, holding yourself accountable for your actions is important, but that doesn’t mean you now have to fully cancel yourself just because of one bad day.

More time you’ve even come further than you think, so reflecting on your journey up until you messed up is definitely a good idea.

5. Stop comparing yourself to others.

For me, this mostly applies to my fitness goals and how far other people in my age group have come in life. I used to spend so much time on social media scrolling through endless pictures of people that “have their sh*t together” - with their perfect bodies, perfect relationships, perfect engagement rings, perfect baby scan photos, perfect homes… you get the point. All it ever did was make me feel like crap about myself and like I somehow was too far behind in life, or somehow inferior to my agemates. Because we all know that having a perfect life online makes you superior to everyone else.

To be clear, I’m obviously joking. Once you understand that everyone’s journey is different, and that your own blessings will come when the time is right - you will be so much more at peace with yourself. Minding your own business and channelling all your energy into bettering yourself (for your own benefit!) is extremely invigorating. With this in mind, you should also ensure that the goals you are setting are solely for the betterment of yourself, and not to compete with others (I’ll definitely be writing a post on this at some stage, so… stay tuned and that).

So, there you have it. My 5 tips on how to achieve your goals with your sanity and mental health intact. At the end of the year, maybe I should revisit this post and reflect on how the tips worked out for me in achieving my goals? Perhaps I can reflect on how much better my patience, discipline and motivation has become?

If not, well...hopefully it can help you. If it did, let me know so I can feel better about putting all this energy into giving yet more advice that I didn’t apply to myself. Good luck!

Love,

Liv

#goals #selfhelp

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thecurtainscalling · 4 years

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08.04.2020 update

Wow! I knew I was gonna be bad at keeping this up, but not THIS bad, lol.

So. It’s now a month since this whole corona thing has started, and a lot has happened musical-wise, lol!

I actually got accepted into a musical university in Vienna, it’s crazy. The Prayner Konservatorium has accepted me as their student, and if I want to, from February on, I can start studying what I love most. I don’t think I’ve quite grasped it yet. Luckily I got the opportunity to do my audition via zoom, and it worked really well. I trained every day for it, repeating my songs, getting acting classes via Zoom from Chris and stretching and filming my choreography, and it actually went so well that they accepted me.

The unlucky thing is that I still need to apply to other schools, and the most important school of all, the Performing Center Austria, has rescheduled their audition to nobody knows when. I mean, things are getting better every day very slowly corona-wise. The numbers of deaths and new infections are still rising, but it’s not that exponential anymore, and in politics everyone is already talking about slowly putting an end to the restrictions and social distancing. So let’s see how I’ll slam the other auditions, but in the meantime I am trying to make the best out of the lots of time I have:

Today is the fucking thirtieth day in a row I’ve ran in the morning, which is just crazy and I don’t recognise myself anymore. I also started doing a muscle workout every day, stretch religiously to keep up my flexibility and started changing my nutrition to less carbs and less snacks and also go more vegan. Now that I know that I’ll soon be living alone I started to pick up cooking skills and do a lot of household chores, so that I already get kinda used to it. I practise self and body care by putting on body lotion daily and I’m tanning, and my skin is clear and all in all I feel really well, body-wise. Obviously my mental health isn’t the best because of this awful situation, but I am improving soo much and am mentally preparing to study this hard field.

I also do my singing exercise almost daily, and I can now belt up to a D, which is such an awesome feeling. If I sing loud enough, there are almost no cracks in between chest, mix and head voice, and I manage to belt out a lot of showtunes without having to switch into falsetto. The next challenge is to sing in mix voice more silently, because uptempo songs have always been my strength, and I need to focus on training away my weaknesses. Facts are, I really switch into actual head voice when on a F#, maybe a G, and if that’s not awesome, I don’t know what is. I also need to work on my sustain, because I am still unable to hold high notes in chest voice very long without screlting out of my throat, and it still sounds very pressured, but I often remind myself to color my voice with more of the speaking-nosey-twang, so that it doesn’t come out of my throat too much. I feel like everything is still too low in my mouth and I need to bring it more forward, but I can work on that. Now that I’m able to exercise my vocal cords, nutrition, stamina and muscles every day, I feel like I can finally see some results. I am not losing weight, which bothers me a bit, but I hope that I can fix this in summer by doing a lot of swimming.

Well, the sad thing about this blog post is the fact that I have probably befriend myself with the fact that I won’t be able to participate at Musical Fever this year. Because of this godforsaken virus we have to reschedule MurX, and Doris rescheduled it exactly to the week Musical Fever was planned in, and of course I would have to choose MurX. It is always MurX above everything, but it hurts to know that I am missing the most important opportunity to further educate myself in musical theatre business, and especially singing, because that is what I need most! Plus, I’d need it to keep up my contacts... it’s devastating. But well, it’s life, and I gotta work with what I got.

And what I got is a place to study in Vienna and a whole future ahead of me, so I think I’ll manage. 🌞

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relativelyanonymousgirl · 4 years

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My blog

It’s time for some changes around here. Well, not actually around here, you’re probably not gonna notice anything. As usual, the work has to be done inside my brain regarding this blog. And I’m taking you along for the ride. ‘

So I haven’t posted in a couple of weeks and this is why. When I started my blog I was in the positive part of the sinus wave that is my life. I was feeling good. I was feeling inspired. I was feeling motivated. And although I still had a lot of drama in my head surrounding my blog, it was a lot less drama then during the negative parts of my sinus ways or even just the parts where the derivative is negative. You can ignore that.

Furtermore, this blog is dedicated to things that I know and have learned about the mental health journey and when you’re in one of those bad periods you’re not learning much and your brain isnt really enjoying thinking about it when you do. So coupled with some fear of failure issues regarding the act of blogging itself. Well I wasnt blogging.

Now I could give you a lot os reasonable excuses and you’d probably believe them like I would. Examples are the ones I gave above but the thing is. The only thing I need to blog is a laptop and an idea. And even though I am in a bad period and I’m learning less, I’m still learning. I’ve got about one of those realisations per day so technically I could write a blog post per day.

So I tried. I was grinding, work hard play hard and all that shit. It didnt work well. I wrote that post about the ‘messy middle’ and although I am happy i did that and that was all I could manage at that point it’s not really the content that I made this blog for. Now this is a no-rules blog (to battle my fear of failure) so its allowed to be there and all that, but it’s not my intention to write those type of posts.

This is what I believe. Everywhere you feel resistance in your mind, there is a problem that you can solve by working on your brain. It’s a problem you cant (okay probs you can but its gonna take you soo much more energy and pain, not worth it) solve by simply grinding. I was feeling resistance in my mind about blogging and I tried to solve it by grinding, it didnt work and felt really wrong as well. Like writing that one blog post did not feel great.

It comes down to what I wrote in my last post. You have a subconcious, negative belief (unknown at this point), but you notice the symptoms, which often means experiencing resistance (you don’t feel like writing for your blog) then your brain offers The Excuse or The Excuses (writing a blog is not easy, I haven’t had any good realisations in a while, my brain isn’t tuned to realisations bc I feel bad and also dude, I feel bad, leave me alone). They’re probably all true and theorethically all valid reasons. But they’re not your reason. Your reason is the subconcious negative belief you have about yourself and writing this blog.

So I have been having some subconcious negative belief(s) about my blog. For me, these usually have to do with fear of failure, which apperently has been with me for my whole life unlike my other mental health.. issues. So I’m scared that the posts that I wrote wouldn’t be as good as the posts that I wrote when I felt good. And when I felt good I had the right mindset about blogging, which for me is that at this point I’m just blogging to find my voice and after that learn how to write a good blog and just see what issues come up and battle.

I feel resistance around having a public blog and I’m trying to expand my comfort zone (I’ll write about expanding your comfort zone vs stepping out of it later) by taking the biggest step in the right direction that still feels comfortable (also a superimportant concept, I think I wrote about this already some time ago). Which is writing a private blog.

So I actually started writing and I was amazed at how good the stuff that I was writing was. Like not form-wise, I’m just rambling, but content-wise. And that’s where the perfectionism/fear of failure kicked in.

One technique that I use to feel my resistance and imagine the size of the resistance is to compare the acitivty that I have a hard time doing to a similar acitivty that I find very easy. In my previous blog post I compared learning about computers, which I was unable to do, with learning about psychology, which I’m very good at. In this post it is writing for my blog, which I haven’t done in two weeks, compared to writing in my journal. I almost completely fill up an entire notebook per month.

This technique is helpful because you can’t trust your brain. It believed The Excuse and even after you realise that that belief isn’t entire gone. If it was you could just start doing the activity that you felt resistance for. You cant, the resistance is still lingering and so is a little of your negative belief. For me, right now, this means that I know I’m not writing because of the negative belief but I think that if I’ve worked away the negative belief i would feel comfortable writing like three posts in a week maybe. Even though i could write on my blog equally much as in my journal which is at least one time a day. (when i wrote that i would feel comfortable writing three posts in a week I already got that little sliver of fear from my mind that goes ‘no you cant! I dont want to think about this! your posts won’t be good enough!).

Okay so I now know a. I have a problem b. my Excuse and c. the size of the resistance (which means i know what to work towards).

So let’s get to the juicy stuff. The negative subconscious thought. Okay I’m drawing up a blank. That’s okay, it happens. you gotta work with what you got. If you can’t turn the negative belief into words and it’s not entirely necessary, then just dont. The reason I know it’s not entirely necessary is because I’ve already got the solution in my head (it’s still a bit vague but I’ll work it out more). In fact I’m already exercising the solution, which you might have noticed by the fact that this is the second post I am writing today.

You might be reading my blog (right, all those 0 followers am i right) and you’re trying to employ the little techniques and stuff that I tell you and you draw up a blank. That’s okay, it happens to me ALLL the time. I know what the next step is, but I cant figure it out. For example, I might feel some resistance and know something is ‘off’, but I don’t know exactly what feels off, I dont know my negative subconcious belief or my Excuse and I’m just not getting anywhere. In this case I know enough about my negative belief that I can work futher (it’s about fear of failure/perfectionism and has to with that I want my posts to be perfect or at least good enough or at least as good as the previous ones. I am viewing my blog as an end-result (good posts!) and means of validation (see, I am smart) instead of as a means (I am learning how to blog, mistakes are part of the process).

But sometimes you don’t. And that can be frustrating. Now the thing is, the brain is so immensely powerful, especially the subconcious part. So just let that part figure it out (I do this all the time, a genuine life hack). Now how do you do that? You already did. Your subconcious brain can only work on thoughts that you’re not trying to run away from AND that you are concious of. So the moment you realised there was some resistance and there was something off and you wanted to know what, this thought was added to your knowledge base and your subconious can start working on it.

How does that work? not so sure, but it probably has something to do with sleep (where you solidify memories and somehow make connections between the new concepts you’ve learned and all the old ones) and just your brain associating at other times. Let me explain that last part. Imagine your thought is x and the solution is y. Now what you’ll want to do is think about x really really hard and try to come up with solutions (maye its z or maybe its p, or q or b) and it won’t work. Instead, you just allow it into your knowledge base and while you go about your day and you encounter new concepts (e, r, a, z, etc) your brain is making associations on its own. At some point you encounter y (the solution remember), Now your brain will associate it with x. tadaa! solution. But if x hadn’t been in your knowledge base, your brain would never have connected the two.

Right let’s get back to the original post. I was talking about The negative subconscious belief and then made a detour to explain why it is okay if you can’t figure that one out exactly or at all. In this case its a “can’t turn it into words, but I know enough to work (at least partly) on the solution”. And the Negative belief is about perfectionism, as I also explained above. Now the solution for me is to start viewing my blog as I view my journal. The way I view my journal is that it’s not about what I write or the quality of what I am writing. That is not important at all, it’s about what the writing does to me, which is it helps clarify my thoughts. Now it’s a little different with my blog. Whereas I do not have an end-goal with my journal, I do have an end-goal with my blog, because I would like to end up with good quality posts. However, the way to get there is not to try to write good-quality posts at this point.

So I used to think that the most important hurdles of writing my blog would be a. my perfectionism and b. my ability to explain the concepts in a way that it constitues good blog posts. But also I didn’t know shit about writing blogs, since I was an absolute beginner. That’s how it’s supposed to be and it means that you’re gonna encounter hurdles that you couldn’t imagine before you started writing. Obviously. Now although my fear of failure/perfectionism is probably #nr 1, I am battling that by changing the way I view my blog. And here is the new ‘hurdle’ that I’ve discovered: i can’t write posts where I explain the concepts I come up with eloquently, because I dont think about my concepts eloquently either. i dont have some kind of organised mind palace up there. It’s more like an abandoned dungeon and I only got this crappy flashlight that turns off halt of the time and sometimes I glimpe a concept and I try to hold on to it with all my might. But I don’t know much about it and I also don’t know how it connects with the other concepts in my head. It’s a bit of a jumbled mess.

I’d like to create some order in that chaos. One way to do this is by writing about the concepts. First off, you’ll learn more about the concept itself as you write, secondly it’ll start to make more sense since you’re ordering your thoughts and thirdly, which at this point I’m most interested in, you’ll make connections with the other concepts in your mind. For example, this blog post was just supposed to be about how i’m gonna change my brain to write more, but half of it is dedicated on how to let your subconcsious (yes I still cant write that word, fuck off) work for you. That certainly doesn’t make for a quality blog post but it does make for more order in my head.

So let’s summarize: at this point in time these are the three main hurdles I have in getting towards my end-goal, which is writing good quality posts. The hurdles are #1 perfectionism, #2 eloquent writing, #3 having order in my mind about the concepts I write about. Now the eloquent writing will solve itself by me writing a lot. Writing is a skill and I’m practicing it. (it’s not that easy, there’s brain-changing involved here too, maybe I’ll write a blog post about that too someday). The perfectionism is ‘solved’ by changing the way I view my blog-posts: not as end-products but as a means to... create order in my mind about the concepts I write about, which is how I’m working on hurdle #3.

There you go. A little insight in how I’m learning how to blog. And basically how I think too. I need to go eat breakfast now or I’d try to summarize the whole post a little more. Maybe in my next post. See ya.

#blog #blogging #subconcious #belief #Excuse #Excuses

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