Still need to work through early trauma

[Gaining Strength]

Thanks for your post Twoapenny, it is such a help to have a place to share. It helps memfeel
Connected and I need that.'items essential to me.

I've had amcouplemof things happen recently that give me great hope that when I get my home cleared there will be a decent life
For me. I am getting small invitations for inclusion. It gives me hoPe. I say when my house gets cleaned because that will me that I can follow through on most anything.

[Gaining Strength]

So I had a call from Outward Bound yesterday to say that my child has been wholly uncooperative and wants to leave, they have an agreement to revisit the conversation tomorrow after a couple of days on the river. I am to send a letter to him today.

I have worked for over a year to get him here, believing this is an opportunity for him to have a profound experience that will teach him how to take on responsibility and get
Over the obstacles so that he might have a full life. His defiance unaltered completely limits him academically and intellectually which will limit his Educational opportunities. To date he has pretty much refused to do his Schoolwork. This past year I drove him hundreds of miles each week to a small school that Specifically works with such issues. There they did not Give zeros for Late Work but used a system of incentives to coax out the work. Even still his work product was levels below his intellectual ability.

So I decided to send him to an Outward Bound program so he might have an experience of facing difficulty and challenges and overcoming them. But he began balking and refusing to carry his load and asking to go home by day two.

I am working to keep my mind in the right place. To write a letter of encouragement and to know that there is always hope for a bright future whatever his choice is.

[Gaining Strength]

Today, I will give it everything I have to stay above the darkness and in the light moving forward. I am heading out to get errands done . That is a plus. I am moving. The big step is to make small goals the day before and keep them, then it is to keepoving not standing still.

Yesterday I was very tired from my travels. I had a meting at 9:00  but felt too tired to get up. In recent years I have developed a pattern of giving up.  To my great surprise I rallied myself to get up and get there.  Again today I needed to get my car in at 8:00 . I woke up at 7:30 and was tired.  I considered not doing it. But I got up, dressed and did it.  

The pendulum is starting to swing.  It is not just the accomplishments  tha show me but the feelings underneath.  There is hope that is growing.  The condemnation is losing ground to the hope and the practise love of self and others.  

There was a man in the meeting yesterday who irritates me.  I  saw how I had turned my back to him.  So I turned, faced him and envisioned my heart sending him rays of loving kindness.  It shifted my whole demeanour. And I liked it.  It is changing me.  I am finding myself opening up.  The logs in the log jam are shifting.

[Gaining Strength]

I have to say, that just this morning, I am finding it a bit easier to do what needs to be done.  It has everything to do with finally having a means to override the wretched feeling of doom that has overcome and fettered me for decades.  I am celebrating and finding the joy  and courage to declare this victory to be growing. 

Though 60 to 90 days looks like an eternity going forward, it feels like a minute in hindsight.  To make this much progress in another 90 days  will put me into another lifetime.  I'm believing.

[Gaining Strength]

I make progress then slip back, progress and back.

What seems permanent in progress is the way I see the world and others in it.  I am significantly less volitile and feeling much less tossed around by what I perceive as slights and rejection.  I feel them but am not rocked by them.  And what a marvellous shift this is after so many, many years of struggling to respond differently.

What has not yet shifted is the ability to connect to my will.  I spent some time today watching a lengthy video by an authority on ADHD, Russell Barkly.  So much of what he discussed fits my struggles precisely.  Sadly, I have always viewed them  as a moral deficiency, and the moral and psychological.  Fortunately, I am at long lady able to drop the moral judgement against myself while recognizing them from society.

But, I will find a way to address the "frozen" issue.  I am continuing with using my mind and intention to heal aspects if shame and anxiety and will continue to apply the same strategies to connect to will and see how far I can get.  Fingers crossed.

[Hopalong]

GS, can you share more about the video?
As an ADD-er who suffers the same "lack of willpower" (fried brain scrambling between options to start)...I"d like to watch it.

Keep going, you're an inspiration...

xo
Hops

[Gaining Strength]

Hops, I'll send a link.  It was very lengthy but what he had to say was extremely interesting to me.  Particularly the descriptive portion about the effects of the disorder. He even renames it and I am going to use that going forward.  "Attention Deficit" has lost any value.  It has become part of the vernacular for any lack of concentration.  But the brain for those who suffer is simply different and different in a debilitating way.

When it comes to treatment I am not in 100% agreement with him particularly when he says diet does not matter.  Because the Neurotransmitters are generated in the gut it does matter what the health of the gut and the nutrient delivered to it for the generation of Neurotransmitters.


https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SCAGc-rkIf

[Gaining Strength]

Ann3,
I apologize for being slow to respond.  Yesterday was down in the dips. 

I love the work you do with dreams.  I believe that dreams reveal much about the psyche.  I appreciate your words.  I think it is time that I begin to look into the meaning again.  Especially now that I am at long last making progress in dealing with long held issues.

[Gaining Strength]

I learned yesterday that the number one hinge that helps me get things done is to get up and get out.  The number 2 thing is to break things down into tiny pieces.

It is beyond difficult for me to get started.  But now that I know this I can put my focus on it and get it done.  Now that the shame has been tamed.

I have been surprised that the block did not lift with the shame but it will be much easier to overcome the block without the shame.  The shame was the glue.

Today, I exercise my dogs, start eating healthy by a bite at a time, go to a meeting, return home and knock out 3 things on my list and then begin working on a plan for generating order. Mi have an organizer I am going to call.

I believe that bit by bit, I can do this.  For me, the big hurdle is getting started.

[Gaining Strength]

When I was 30 a friend mad me aware that I approached every task with a subconscious, "I can't."  I finally have the tools to consciously replace that with "I can!"  That original message is directly from my father, cemented in by years of fulfment and shame.  Now that the shame is weakened and the voice being replaced, and I have the tools to chip away at the cement of experience and means to overcome a defective frontal lobe, I am on my way. 

I took the dogs.  Now for a shower and meeting. 

Then call organizer, pay 3 bills, begin plan on organizing and work on clothes closet.

Have I on paper and then chip away one item at a time.  Success is each item not the entire list.  But it is also staying in order. Distraction is an issue.

[Gaining Strength]

I am making progress in many areas.  But I am stalled in others. 

Consistency is hard to attain.  I am persistent but not consistent.

Very down today.

But I'm keeping my eye on the progress.  I have made much progress in understanding some parts of myself that have shifted.  The rest will come.  I see that now.  Slow is ok.

I'm including this link.  I know before. Opened it that many would have belonged to me.  I'm glad to say that most of those that were part are now past. 
http://www.marcandangel.com/2014/08/10/12-toxic-behaviors-that-push-people-away-from-you/#more-769

[Gaining Strength]

Still learning. 

Must find some ways around this block. 
Will continue to wrk mind set.  Have been pushing through I getting out and seeing people.

Very clear I need outside stimulus. I must figure out a way to generate and structure it.

[Gaining Strength]

Inthe Russell Barkley video onADHD, he says that one of the greatest pains is watching an afflicted child be left out socially is one of the most painful things a parent endures.  He is so right.  Today on FB I saw a photo of one of his contemporaries bday party.  All the buys my son' sage were there.  It can feel like such a kick. 

I am learning to shift from that into a mental state that is totally different.  This goes against all of my training, all of my experience.  It will take time but it will. Win out.

[Gaining Strength]

Through a dialogue with a friend when I was 30, I became aware of my expectation of failing.  That is the brake to my life.  After all of these years it is still operating unconsciously and subconsciously.  I am becoming more aware of it  now.  This is where me focus and intention will be . This has been a large obstacle.but it is time to surmount it.

Even as I wrote this I was hit with a wave of fear. Almost as if surmounting this obstacle is dangerous.  It has kept me safe at some point but no longer.  It feels something like that fear that keeps me from touching a hot stove but it is misdirected. 

I'll focus here for a whole.

[Gaining Strength]

I my vision is coming to focus on my immediate past and presence.  Stepping out of the omnipresent shame and anxiety has given me a foundation from which I can see how my mind took on my father's OCPD, scanning my world for what could go wrong, on the lookout for  any atom of rejection.  I always found the dark. I focused on it, obsessed about it, dwelt in it, inadvertently conjured more of it.

I have long known that the mess of my home was an outward manifestation of my inward state but I thought the solution was to create order by action, acting right, moral cleanliness.  The mess was the absence of moral order and so was shaming, producing more debilitating anxiety.  It was a complete system, perpetuating itself.

Now that I have broken the fetters of shame and stepped out of the bounds of anxiety, (oh they revisit but their interference is no longer gripping)it is now time to turn to my mind's eye to focus my intention on creating beauty and order in my life.

When I set up my intention I feel awash with internal recrimination, doubt and a ever subtle voice that says I am not worth it, I will fail.  I feel the anxiety and shame that accompany that ancient voice. But I am no longer a prisoner so I remind myself and return to the good work that previously was derailed by that internalized false sense of self.

I wonder: will this be more difficult than breaking through the sham shame? Am I more capable because I now have the strength and the knowledge and experience to oppose those false voices?  Time will tell. But I do know I will win this battle because even in my darkest days I knew I was persistent.