Voicelessness and Emotional Survival > Voicelessness and Emotional Survival Message Board
What gives you your sense of self worth
Twoapenny:
Another update!
This week has been a bit of a funny one, I think that there has been a lot going on under the surface? Early in the week I had a very strong sense that young Tup just wanted to be dead and I didn't really know what to do in that situation. The week took on its own momentum and things feel more peaceful now so I think something has sort of shifted itself without my needing to do anything specific about it?
It was my birthday this week and I took my son to a safari park for the day. A friend met us there with her husband and son and it was such a lovely day out I really couldn't have hoped for anything more. Both the kids really enjoyed it and I am slowly finding it easier to focus on the good people in my life who are there for me and who I enjoy spending time with instead of the people who do odd or weird things and that I find difficult to be around. My son's doing better again at the minute which is really nice and life just seems calmer and more settled. The house is clean and tidy and I've been spending a bit of time on craft projects, which I really enjoy.
Twoapenny:
Counselling last night and I am finding it tough going at the minute - tough to reconnect with my younger self and incredibly tough living where I do. There are memories and people I can't stand all around me, as well as the area itself just being very poorly resourced which means we have to travel a lot to do basic things.
Bumped into someone in the supermarket - someone I thought was a friend, years ago, but various things have happened over the years that showed me she wasn't. We chatted briefly but I came out wishing I hadn't seen her. Just reminded me of everything I don't like and don't want to have in my life.
We are going to move within the next three months. I can't begin to imagine having to spend another Christmas here. I have realised that I put a huge amount of energy into coping with being here. I'm so exhausted I just can't see the wood for the trees. So the move needs to happen. The downside will be we'll be too far away for me to see the therapist. Initially I had thought I would stay put until I'd finished my work with her but I feel living here is actually making it harder for me to do the work in the first place. There are still plenty of sessions before we go and I am learning lots of techniques with her that I can use after we move. I can find another therapist a bit further down the line if need be. I feel like a prisoner in my own house; there are just too many triggers wherever I go around here and too many people that I just don't want to see anymore.
lighter:
Whew.... so glad to read the move is happening before Christmas, Tupp.
Young Tupp, and son will have Mother Tupp moving through more relaxed space.... building new holiday rituals, and keeping cherished ones in place in new safe nest. Leaving old triggers, people, and place behind really sounds like a blessing to me.
About the T, can you keep her, even with phone sessions, until you find a new T after the move?
It might take some time, and finding the right T is uber important, IMO. I don't think phone sessions, with a trusted very wise T, are a bad thing.
(((Tupp and son)))
The journey continues: )
Lighter
Hopalong:
Hi Tupp,
If at any point the idea of a physical move seems too unsettling, could you trust this T to help you build a plan to get through the holidays in emotional safety?
I totally cheer your plan to get relocated, completely. But I also think that moving is so huge to the psyche that if you're making powerful progress with this T, it might be worth examining whether a sudden decision to move NOW might be an emotional impulse to ride out. I'm saying that because: 1) you've just gotten in touch with your inner adolescent's suicidal pain, 2) run into a person who houses bad memories, and 3) are increasingly aware of how toxic it feels to live exactly where you do. I think the latter is huge and valid, but I wonder if the decision to move now might be more an implusive reaction to the first two.
So...it might work out fine to move house before Christmas. But in case after the emotions change you question that decision, there might also be value in sticking it out a while longer so that you don't abort the work with your T. Or in moving instead to a different local place, to give yourself a full year with this T.
I would urge you to trust your strength and know that whether it's before-holiday or after, you do have the ability to continue your insight and growth, and make wise decisions that are stabilizing for you.
Don't misunderstand--I totally support your awareness that you need to wind up somewhere else. I'm only a little concerned about the timing. Partly to ask, is it about these very painful and naked feelings that are coming up in the T work? If that's so, is it possible the sudden decision to move immediately is what they call in AA a "geographical cure"? The reason I ask is that over the years, I've heard so many times that although of course you can move to be not across the street...perhaps in chucking it all for a different area entirely, just as you've started amazing work with an amazing T....the impulse to go NOW might be to escape from feeling, sitting with, being patient with, taking the risks about, and continuing the difficult and scary work of trusting another person (AND yourself) with that depth of intimacy. It's exhausting, draining, and overwhelming--this life-changing work. And the AA reference means, when you move geographically, you take yourself with you.
I think the INNER journey you've embarked on will ultimately change your life more than any geographical one. So I'm concerned about you tossing away that map so readily.
Love,
Hops
Twoapenny:
Hops and Lighter, thank you, as always, for your responses. They mean a lot :)
Hopsie, I hear ya! There is an element of escaping from it to moving, always has been with me (I think it's the reason travelling has always held such an appeal for me). But there are also practical elements as well. I can't afford the therapy beyond the end of November anyway. We're on a relatively tight budget so the money for therapy comes out of the general household budget for groceries, utilities, fuel and so on. So it isn't something I can generally do long term (and she has very kindly given me a discount due to my circumstances as well). It's fine, I'm used to doing therapy this way and it's one of the reasons I try and do a lot of work on myself in between sessions (and I have to say this board is an invaluable source of therapy for me as well). But it isn't something I would be able to carry on with beyond the next two to three months. I could probably pick it up again next summer and do another few months then.
It's also difficult because of course my son's needs come into it all as well and I need to submit the funding application for his college place in six months time. We need to be living in the area the college is otherwise the funding becomes much more complicated and it will be harder to get because payments are made by your local authority. If I'm trying to get our local authority to pay for a college that's two hundred miles away it will cause all sorts of problems and delays so it's more likely to go smoothly if we are living in the area. I do feel really strongly at the moment that I have been really stupid in living this close to them. He's literally across the road. I see his truck most weeks. I feel like those people you see on hoarding programmes who say they didn't really notice the mess when they're living in houses they can't even walk through because the clutter is floor to ceiling?
There's time for another eight to ten sessions before Christmas, give or take a couple, so I sort of feel in terms of what I can cope with in one go that's going to be enough. I do feel I get to a point where I need a break from all the self examination and being raw and having things dragged out of me. And I do think that living somewhere where there is something else to focus on other than my family will be really good for me. I kind of feel like I'm going to go crazy if I keep living here indefinitely. Even forgetting about my family it is a ghastly place to live, lol, and if we hadn't been so skint and in such a crisis I'd never have moved here.
I do look back on the past and I can see times when if something didn't happen it turned out for the best. So I'm kind of thinking that if moving isn't the right thing now then it won't happen anyway. I can't really explain it.
I will keep posting and seeing how things go and, the good thing for us is that we rent which is much easier to change or not change depending on circumstances so in a practical way it's going to be easy to change plans if I need or want to. I do appreciate very much the input and support I get on here and people being kind and interested enough in me to point out things I might not be seeing (which can be a lot!) and I do thank you all very much :D
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