Voicelessness and Emotional Survival > Voicelessness and Emotional Survival Message Board
What gives you your sense of self worth
Twoapenny:
--- Quote from: lighter on July 14, 2016, 02:41:12 PM ---Tupp:
DD15 is happily nested in new Boarding School.... she knows some girls there, so she's very happy to have that support and familiar community. She's invested in sisterhood and supporting other young women while asking for support. It's lovely to watch her blossom. She's smiling all the time, and using her voice, TUPP!
I sent a care package today..... books, magazines, book light, work out shoes, calendar and planner. A watch. She's really on a good path, and the Brain Spotting is one of the things that her T is using. He's wonderful, and it seemed like every word from him was dead on, and overtly helpful. He has 30 years experience in this work..... I feel so blessed.
I'm going back to school in the fall, and have lots of research to do before that happens. I feel very content bustling about in the house on my own.... not lonely at all. Very.... content.
Glad you're happy with your T.... you deserve to finish up the past, put a bow on it and move ahead.
These are your days, Tupp: )
Lighter
--- End quote ---
Aw she sounds as if she's having a great time, Lighter, what amazing news! Glad that you are happy pottering at home, I do enjoy a bit of a potter myself these days, particularly at weekends, it's quite nice just to catch up on jobs and spend a bit of time reading and not doing too much. What are you going to be doing when you go back to school?
Yes, she seems like a good T, I think perhaps once you've been working on yourself for a while good T's are harder to find? I think my needs have changed and become more specific? When I first started just someone letting me speak would have been amazing, I think I was very lucky that my first ever T happened to be amazing and that I found her pretty much by accident.
She's asked me to write up one memory from each year of my life for us to work on. The focus is very much on how the memories make you feel. So for example I can remember a pair of flares when I was four, my favourite trousers and I just loved them, and just thinking about them now makes me smile. There's a little girl that lives on our road who loves clothes and is always wearing her mum and big sister's stuff and she's always so chuffed with what she's got on, she stands in the garden so she can show everyone as they leave for work in the morning which shoes she's got on. So cute.
But there are huge gaps! Years where I really can't think of a single thing I can remember And then lots of other memories where I know something happened but it feels like it happened to someone else, there's no feeling or emotion attached to it at all, or even a sense of reality. It's like something I read in a book. So it will be interesting to see how we handle those bits. I'm a bit scared of more stuff coming back. I know what he did, but I don't think I want to recall it in technicolour. Will be interesting to see what happens.
Twoapenny:
I'm working out regularly now (and enjoying it) and have made some improvements to my diet. Do feel fitter and more toned.
My son is doing well health wise at the moment and that makes life sooooo much easier so that is really good.
It has finally stopped raining and we have some proper sunshine! The difference good weather makes to me is so huge that I think I need to give serious thought to moving to a warmer/sunnier country at some point.
I am consciously reaching out to the (small) group of friends I have who are very dear to me and making the effort to arrange seeing them over the summer break. I am also 'consciously' arranging/planning a small birthday celebration that will involve only those people I really want to see and not 'everyone who might know about it that I will just invite so they don't feel slighted that they haven't been asked'. Although I know this is the right (and perfectly acceptable) thing to do I am struggling with it but keep reminding myself that I do not have to be all things to all people and that it is only right that I should spend time with people I enjoy spending time with, not with people I don't particularly want to see. Difficult but I am doing it (and will let you know how it pans out!).
Work on the van is slow and I am discovering that most of the jobs that have been done by other people (prior to my buying it) have been done badly so each job I do is leading to another ten needing to be done. I am enjoying it (although I do find it frustrating at times), I'm learning a lot and it is very heart warming to be making connections with local businesses who are going out of their way to give me help and advice when I go in to buy the bits I need. I am starting to feel comfortable in builder's merchants and auto part shops which is quite a funny feeling. We are getting there but it's taking a lot longer than I though and is costing a lot more money, but hopefully we will eventually have a really lovely, comfortable, fully functioning home away from home that we can mooch about in to our hearts' content.
I am really struggling with being around people in general, and particularly with regard to internet dating. I find I get bored very quickly and I really do not connect with many people's conversations that centre around television, smart phones, which deal they got on whatever it is they just purchased and how many take aways they've had this week. I'm struggling to find places, whether in the real world or online, where I feel comfortable with people and enjoy their company rather than finding it hard work. I think this is more down to me than it is to them but I'm not quite sure how to tackle it, but am hoping that 'recognising' it will take me a step closer.
Internet dating in particular is bothering me; men in their forties whose conversation revolves around football, sex and television is something I'm finding quite depressing so I think I'm going to lay off that for a while until my head is in a slightly more upbeat frame of mind.
Financially things are a bit tight but we're managing okay and as it is mostly to do with unexpected costs to do with the van things are slowly levelling out.
Generally things are going well; I am still finding the lack of people difficult but I'm working on it :)
Twoapenny:
I've watched this YouTube clip a couple of times:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6sC4GK93_4
It's about coping with loneliness, which is something I really struggle with.
It's quite complex and I don't completely understand it but it is ringing some bells with me. He's generally saying that we blame our unhappiness on a lack of things - lack of friends/family/partner in this case. And he says that the 'lack' makes us feel that we aren't good enough/likeable etc which is why there is a lack.
That is very, very true of me. He then goes on to talk about people simply not fitting with other people, rather than there being something wrong with them and gives lots of examples of situations where people don't fit in with the people around them. He makes the point that that doesn't mean there's something wrong with you, it just means you don't fit that particular situation.
He also talks about how we focus on what people think of us (needed a picture of Tup to illustrate that point ;) ) and how we create anxiety by concentrating on trying to impress people and make them like us instead of just 'being present'.
I'm not entirely sure where I'm going with this; there's a lot that I don't understand and I want to watch it several more times but something about it is speaking to me.
Twoapenny:
Counselling session tonight was amazing. She took me back to my first memory of being abused, which we had talked about a bit last week.
She asked me to imagine how I would react if I witnessed that event now, what I would say and do and how I would handle it as an adult seeing a child being abused. I said my first reaction would be to remove young Tup from the situation immediately and that my second would be to lay into my step-dad and give him his marching orders. Then I started to say that I didn't really know what I would say to my mum because she doesn't work on the same wave length as everybody else so trying to get her to understand that what she'd just witnessed was wrong would be difficult as she just doesn't think that way.
She stopped me at that point and pointed out that my first instinct in that scenario was to protect my mum and to explain to other people what her inabilities were and to try to get others to treat her differently. She said a usual response would be to protect the child, not the adult. And it just suddenly seemed so clear; thirty years on, even in a counselling situation that is all about me, my first thought is to protect her and justify the things that happened. It was a real revelation.
Then she starts with the visualising so we spent some time deep breathing and relaxing and then she asked me to watch the incident in my mind, which I did. Then she asked me to go in as my adult self and remove my young self and my younger sister (who was present at the time) to a place of safety, which I did. She then asked me to talk to young Tup and ask her what she wanted me to do about what had just happened and then to go and do it, so I tore a strip off of him and threw him out and then had a right go at my mum as well.
I was crying buckets by this time; it was so strong and the sensation, although imaginary, of someone getting angry on young Tup's behalf, putting her first, making sure she was safe, asking her opinion (never happened when I was a kid! Not once) and then acting on it, everything being entirely in her best interests, no excuses, no half measures. It was incredibly strong and exhilarating. I feel exhausted now! But I'm actually looking forward to going back and working on the next bit!
Hopalong:
((((((Tupp)))))
I literally got chills when I read this account of how real, how trusting, and how brave you are.
Plus, I LOVE your new counselor!
I'm so excited for you that you have intersected with her at the right time, when you are truly ready to do this kind of deep healing.
Oh BRAVO. Just dizzy-glad, deep inside, for you...
love,
Hops
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