N.

[Hopalong]

Meh,
I don't believe there is a "right" or "wrong" time to process your path to mental freedom. I spent YEARS (living with Nmom) analysing, reading, breaking it down, spotting and recognizing the behaviors, figuring out sloooooowly what behaviors and damage it all left in me.....

There were times I was absolutely thrilled about getting a new insight into Nism. Every single small thing I learned about it felt like the window to my mind had opened another inch and more oxygen was breezing in. There were times I felt so drained by it that I was paralysed into that work-home-survive thing you've experienced so much of.

It's easy to say at 75, but time does heal. It doesn't perfect, but it does heal. My mother, at 98, finally left the planet. And eventually, left me too. And in time, I found out more about her, and unavoidable compassion and forgiveness occurred.

That said, I seldom think of her in my liberated life now, and I don't wake up thinking about narcissism. Endlessly grateful for a name for it, I'm just living and writing, and facing up to my own mess now. Not liking it, but not ashamed.

I think you're beginning to weigh and value and defend your OWN TIME.

hugs
Hops

[lighter]

What you're describing, Meh.....feels adjacent to my "nose on pebble" lesson in therapy.

When one's nose is ON the pebble/problem/trauma/person,/people who created the trauma...

the pebble is HUGE .....
it's all we see.

Once we learn to create some distance......emotional distance.... the crude up and view the entire field....
we begin to see the other pebbles.
We see grass and flowers.....
we see trees and eventually sky and stars and moon and sea. Amazing.

Learning to meditate/breathe/rest our limbic systems.....
creates a split second of choice, IME.

Choice to NOT tumble down old, familiar rabbit holes of reactivity....of lightening fast brain pathways.

It builds a split second to SEE choice, and sometimes select it, IME.....to build on new choices.  Build them strong.

Your father and mother are pebbles, and you're learning how to create enough distance to see other things.....
this is HUGE, Meh!!! IME, of course.

In your experience, it may feel like something else.  I look forward to hearing about it.

[Meh]

Thanks. You can see I was having a bit of trouble getting focused there.

The other question I had was this: Do you have examples of learned helplessness? Have you experienced it in yourself?

This area is something I want to work on as well as "agency."

The thing is I listened to a book on tape about anticipation anxiety and it really FITS VERY WELL I think my habits/behaviors.

So I am wondering if learned helplessness and anticipation anxiety basically are two terms to describe the same thing OR if these things are different.

Couple days ago I had to clean out my voicemail on my phone for example. Now this sounds pathetically dumb but my heart just kind of squeezed in at the thought of doing it. I don't mean "heart squeezed in" just as a phrase of speech. I actually had a physical sensation of dread, fear, loathing, stress, anxiety... something.. .heck even heart brokenness. And this was all about the SMALL TASK of clearing my voicemails... now it could be that it's 1) I feel I have not much to look forward to 2) most the voicemails I get are spam or some kind of headache to deal with. Maybe I am hoarding voicemails like a timestamp of past events.

Maybe the small task of clearing voicemails feels emotionally loaded. And things that are emotionally loaded I just have to focus on that one thing and do a small portion of it take ACTION and then it's just no longer a big deal I think.

In any case I did go through some of my voicemails and it wasn't a big deal when I actually did it.

Now I suspect there is a procrastination anxiety anticipation anxiety thing where the gravity of consequence is significant. Like how when a person is living paycheck to paycheck that deposit into your account has consequences if it doesn't get in there. But when you have savings there is no consequence it's just a routine maintenance thing after a while.

In any case I really do have to research learned helplessness, forced helplessness, agency, and "anxiety" a bit more.
I will just give myself allowance to do that when I can. I think it's worth it. I don't think that is merely over-intellectualization. I mean it sort of is but there could be something useful in it.

Is being too stressed and over-whelmed the same as learned helplessness. Maybe it is.

Have any of you worked on this learned helplessness thing? What is it for you?

Okay so I am going off to get something done today.

[Meh]

 It appears that I am reading GAD is same as learned helplessness. It's just that in books about anxiety they don't use the term learned helplessness and they do not say what caused it. I suppose it doesn't matter as long as one attempts to use some techniques. So this also means procrastination is linked to learned helplessness.