Voiceless AGAIN?!

[Ami]

How are you doing, Rose? Thinking of you.      Ami

[rosencrantz]

Hi Ami - I'm realising that I'm not in a good place - small challenges and unkindnesses set off tears.  I've no intention of popping pills but reading 'self help' stuff leaves me wondering whether it's possible to move on at the moment.

Limiting beliefs, thinking positive thoughts, affirmations...

I thought the following was useful but...

http://www.craigharper.com.au/2009/05/taking-back-your-personal-power-part-1/

I know the principles - I think it doesn't work if you've reached a point of not being well. 

I don't know - as I think it through I just end up feeling confused.

I'm going to acknowledge I've been let down and rejected and ignored and crushed by too many people in too many different parts of my life all at the same time.

I had the courage to go on retreats - and, where possible, not to put myself in the presence of people who hurt me.  I allowed myself to be a little bit dependent without fearing I was taking advantage or would be harmful - I avoided thinking that it was my role to be the strong one, not allowed to ask for or receive help.

That's about as far as I've got!!

[Ami]

Dear Rose
 For me, self help groups and people's trite sayings about "Get over it"  left me with guilt not help.Rose, our pain is deep. It is real. It is not being a baby or a victim.
 It is a deep posture toward life that we HAD to adopt in our crazy families in order to survive. It was survival, Rose.
 For me, being understood allowed me to begin to heal.
 My M made me feel like *I* was the crazy, incompetent one. It sounds like yours did the same.
 I have to heal every small layer by layer with people who say,"I understand" and can see the real me behind all the mess.If a book or person wants to give me trite advice, I reject it and find someone who has the wisdom to see beyond the superficial to the real.
 There is an intelligent,insightful, funny and real you under all the lies your M told you.
      Love , Ami

[rosencrantz]

But then...if everything I feel is a result of what i think - and I have control over what I think...

Except i don't feel I do have control over what I think.  What I think comes unbidden.  I can choose to 'change my mind' and refuse to listen to the little demons chattering away.

But quite often I don't know what to replace those 'demons' WITH!!

If it's about self-esteem, that's easy.  If it's about putting myself down, then that's easy too.  I've done those things.  If it's about not allowing my mind to chatter on about some interaction, then (if I catch myself) I can choose to bundle it up and put it out of my mind, over there, out of sight.  I can roll it into a ball and throw it (metaphorically) at the person concerned.  Let THEM keep the trouble they've caused.

And then I feel such an idiot for having let someone trouble my mind so much.  I ended up flailing around, helpless - made helpless by their lies and anger.  Allowed myself to be made helpless.  So now I feel too humiliated and ashamed to enter back into the fray - when actually THEY should be ashamed of THEIR lies and anger.  

But I feel too (mentally, emotionally) fragile to hold up against more of the same.

I watched Slumdog Millionaire today.  I don't know what it was that got to me but I found myself sobbing way out of control.  My theme appeared to be 'let me live'.  After the cancer 'scare', I don't trust myself to keep myself healthy when difficult situations come along.  I know that my primary feeling when the diagnosis came along was that I wanted to let it 'just take me away'.  Isn't that just sodding awful.  I was living in stressful misery.  And after working really hard, taking risks, doing the unthinkable, even having to give up my son, I had hope, less constant stress, and freshness and health.  I have been very strong in 'giving up' what's not good for me.  But then, I've done that all my life.

But now I'm back where I started (or worse).  And all because of 'other people'.  My inability to cope with difficult people.  My 'ability' to stir up other people.   My feelings of frustration and hopelessness from not being heard - and the horror of the impact I seem to have when I am finally 'heard'.  Why am I so impotent and yet so challenging?

I can see that I'm constantly coming up against other people.  Why do I have to do that?  Is there any way I can do without them, without the need for recognition and a few positive strokes?  My mind is constantly going over how I am ignored, not valued, put down behind my back - and become an irritant or threat when I try to be noticed.

I've often thought that if I treated other people the way i am treated, I wouldn't HAVE a business.  And I need to interact with all these people...

Or do I?

They constantly enter my  mind because they are associated with either a) my business b) my mother c) where I live.

Do they really matter?  Do I REALLY need them? I have chosen to need them, to require their permission or approval or acceptance in some way.

I have indeed given my power away.

But I feel too tired, fragile, wobbly to take it back.

So I remain somehow their victim.

[Ami]

Oh (((Rose)))
  I hear you not trusting yourself but needing the outside to validate your  being.  That is why it is so stressful to deal with people.
 The solid 'Rose"is not there. She is  absorbing people's  definitions of her.
  Our present situation comes from not being entitled to have an identity, a personhood.
  My M never wanted me to have the power of my own independence. Then, she would mock me b/c I was too dependent. How ,in God's  name, was I supposed to develop a self?
 It seems like you came from a  place like this.
 The answers--- that is the hard thing. I think being understood is a first step.
 Having at least one person who understands can make the difference between life and death.      Love to you   Ami
 

[rosencrantz]

Thanks Ami.  I thought I was stronger than this.  I thought I had learned all sorts of things but I seem never to have moved on at all.

How did I manage to become a warm, wise, confident, strong woman - someone who people thought was BORN with a silver spoon in her mouth - when I had a mother who took every chance she could to put me down and yes do the kind of things you mention, Ami.  I came across an old photo of me I had never seen before and I can see why people would think I was kind and strong.  (Interesting that my mother kept that photo hidden away - I found it in a box when clearing out the house - she kept out on display a really horrible one.  Sadly typical!  Although saying that is making assumptions about her motivations...)

Anyway, I don't feel I can be that strong and caring person any more.  I'm beaten to a pulp. I will not accept this is my ageing 'lot'.  I will not live the next 20, 30 years incapacitated.  But I am exhausted, worn down.

But forget that.  It's a fact.  I AM exhausted and I can't get away from that fact.  But let's forget it.

You're right. I am indeed allowing other people to define me.  I'm saying 'but I didn't mean it to be taken that way' instead of saying 'this is who I am - if you think I'm something different then that's unfortunate but get over it'  !!  'I am still 'me', no matter what you think or how you choose to define me'  'You define me according to your own filters - why don't YOU be embarrassed for a change'.  Never, never, never give away your power for an instant.

Actually, it's the 'who defines reality' thing.  When and why did I give that up? 

When I was a child, I retained my right to my own reality - and it was strong but only if kept hidden away, well out of reach.  Externally, I think I was numb/dumb.  I hid everything so it couldn't be 'got at' and damaged.  As an adult, as I grew up, I wanted to come out of my hiding place.  I had experiences which told me it would be OK - and so I went into therapy with the WORST possible therapist!  And it's been touch and go every since.  Discovering Aspergers gave me my right to my own reality : they can't help having a slightly 'skewed' sense of reality.  Actually, I discovered it here before I discovered Aspergers - some people actually NEED their purple clouds with yellow spots!! Anyway, I'm thinking that the whole confluence of things coming together would have knocked the strongest person off their perch.  Mental Health Assessors who fight you and crush you and express anger at you for daring to express your thoughts and those of other professionals (however right you are) is a pretty powerful nemesis.  They are the ones who hold the power over the definition of mental (in)sanity after all!!!!!  But the man was just plain ignorant.

Anway...

It's funny how things come along in threes!  It's funny how things change when you change - or perhaps we feel the energy changing 'in the air' and so it enables us to change :

I spent most of yesterday trying to work on my thoughts - changing them, finding a better way of defining my situation.  And then, in the evening, I found letters on the mat from both the social worker and care home.  And today an email from the business side of things.   

Social services have rewritten the notes of the meeting (although I don't have the courage to read it! I just can't bear the emotion if it hasn't fully responded to my complaint!! But it has taken weeks for them to respond so they must have put *some* thought into it)  And the care home has finally sorted out the continued demands for overpayment (it's only taken a year!) : I can't say the letter was helpful - it contained the usual 'wasn't us guv' kind of defensive half truths. But the feeling I have is more akin to contempt than any kind of fear. And the email from the business-side singled me out for thanks and...der?????? was that actually whole-hearted, no holds barred...PRAISE?! Recognition that the kind of intelligent, well-thought-out and detailed feedback I give is actually USEFUL instead of a pain-in-the-bum malevolent attempt to catch them all out??!  For the first time EVER!!!

How did that come about?

I did two things

i) I didn't rush in to rescue everyone.  I didn't take pity on the social worker.  I suppose I made her do her effing job. I left everyone to stew in their own juices. Much as I was advised by just about everyone I spoke to.  Much as it hurt and humiliated me to relinquish 'control'.

ii) I asked to be recognised as a thoughtful contributor - and then, when that wasn't forthcoming, I said (and meant it) that I was leaving.  (I suppose - actually i pretty much did that in both situations except in the one I 'left' by getting too 'ill' to do anything else.)

Was it all just a 'cunning plan' by a wiser side of me?!!!

Not quite that simple.  Although THEY have 'shifted' - for which relief much thanks (because it means other things will shift) - I don't actually feel any different.  I still feel I'd throw up before I could get anywhere near the care home for a meeting or a visit or whatever...And i feel 'too little, too late' about the business side of things.

Worn out by writing this - and I've not even written about anything particularly emotional....(Sigh!)

Bye for now!!

[rosencrantz]

I came across this today :

Dealing with negative thoughts is a life-long process for most of us – and definitely becomes easier over time when we work at it. Negative thoughts (that is the initial thought) “arrive” in our head regularly. Think of them as cars pulling into a petrol (gas) station. They can pull in, stop for a second and move on (good option) – or – they can pull in, you can jump in the front seat and start “driving” them (not-so-good).

Thoughts only become powerful when you attach emotion to them. They are meaningless until you give them meaning.

And it's us that gives them meaning.

It encapsulates what I've been struggling with but I'm still at a loss when I try to find my own words.

I allowed other people to decide my reality for me.  I capsized under the strain.  "OK, I give in - every time I try to get you, the care home, to understand what's going on for my mother, you respond by telling me 'she's fine, she is just manipulating you'." : The answer doesn't connect with the question.  I can't make sense of it.  The two are diametrically opposed.  If I enter the care home's experience to empathise with their point of view, I can't deny what they say and that's where I got lost.

But the fact is their response is just totally irrelevant. She's manipulating because it's the only way she can get across her meaning.  And just 'saying' she's manipulating  doesn't mean that they have  understood her meaning. I am prepared to listen beyond and behind the manipulation but it's tough going.  I work beyond and below the surface - it leaves me open and vulnerable.  And frustrated.

I can't PROVE what I say is correct.  I can't PROVE that I understand my mother.  And the problem is that they see this as trying to prove that I understand her better than the care home staff who have her pegged in some pigeon hole about elderly people and want to turn it into a 'who cares most' competition (more irrelevance).  I THOUGHT we had begun to work with a psychologist who would understand the perspective I was sharing - but apparently not - it's a mental health worker, someone only trained to work at the surface level (?? Can I make sense of that? - NO!)

PLUS I'm trying to get my message across to someone in the care home who is angry with me - for disrupting, for being involved, for being invited to tell them what to do (again, that's how they see it, not what I'm trying to do)! I'm working with someone who doesn't want to work 'with' but wants to exclude and ignore - yes, and squash out of existence.  It was unexpected, bad manners, inappropriate, not good working practices - but, hey, it happens!!  I didn't understand until too late - and then didn't have the words to put to my inner recognition of what was happening.  And by that time, all the other professionals had walked away, not expecting the bad stuff to happen, not believing it could be happening or that it could (all) have had such an impact.

The social worker is most to blame in all this for being a weak link.  She saw me being attacked in return for asking a question and pursuing it and then set the standard by not 'calling' them on their bad behaviour; she colluded with other bad behaviour, too.  And then she colluded again - after I shared with her what was happening, she went off to make the care home feel better!  I think it just never occurred to her that it would have any impact on me. It wasn't that I was irrelevant, I think it demonstrates that she thought I was in HER shoes.  

BUT from my point of view, she sided with the bully.  What I'd been asked to do, created a crisis.  It was the moment to press forward but she stifled it.

If I'd have been stronger, I could have pressed forward myself but the care home manager said things one day, denied them the next, had a conversation in which I thought everything had been sorted and then sent me a letter with an entirely different slant, threatening me, telling me to remove my mother if they aren't good enough (she's the one giving 'meaning' to everything!!) instead of just dealing with the issues raised.  And it's left to me to be the one who is supposed to understand THEM, see their point of view, help them out of their self-flagellation...

It was like juggling so many balls and then having them all come crashing on my head - one twist in the tale too many.  And yes, I felt hugely guilty.  But SHE is the most manipulative person in the whole shebang!!

The only other person who has driven me into this insane corner where my reality is breaking down is my mother.

And she has some form of autism - AS, HFA - whatever.

So what does that tell me about the care home manager?!

If she has the same problem as my mother, I'll NEVER get sanity and reality into our meetings.  Whatever is agreed, will just be words and not action.

I would remove my mother but this whole thing has incapacitated me - plus we need the diagnosis to make sure the next care home is ready to help and support her.

And alongside this, I'm struggling with a business where I just can't cope any more with the requirement to be 'out there' and dealing with stuff so I'm definitely doing a lot of negative 'self-talk' on this one!!  And I can't do the business because I'm depressed and I 'crashed' due to the care home and the whole bl**dy situation with my mother.  I crashed after my father died.  I crashed after my mother drove me insane.  I crashed after I discovered my marriage was a whole bl**dy lie. I crashed after I was on stupid hormone medication for cancer.  I COULD NOT COPE.  And it's supposed to be because I can't think straight!???   I THINK I've just worked myself up into another scream.  Aaaaaaaaaaaghhhhhghhhhhhghhhhh.  I'm just off to have a good cry.

PS There's also a whole load of stuff that happened where I didn't crash!!!  I didn't crash when I discovered I had cancer.  I didn't crash when I discovered my son had autism.  Knowing me, I'm sure I walked through a whole forest of things that most people would expect to stop someone in their tracks.  But I just pick up my bags and walk on, picking up knowledge and people and their experiences as I go...

PPS Actually - I didn't crash when my father died.  I stoically shouldered my mother's grief - and it was her behaviour which led to my crash a year later.  I HAVE BEEN STRONG AND I WILL BE STRONG AGAIN.

[Hopalong]

Hi Rose...

It's really hard to release this stuff, isn't it.

Could you try it? Just as an exercise...

Mother, I release you. I let you be who you are.

Care home, I release you. I let you be who you are.

How about it?

What about if you sit in a serene place, unplug the phone, turn off distractions.

Breathe in and out, just slowly, just repeating it.
Notice your breath, how it fills your diaphragm, then empties.

Breathe, slowly. No goal. Just breathing.

Do that for a little while.

(Thoughts and feelings will race through, they will. Don't worry about it. Just notice them:
there, that was a thought. Let it go...return to noticing your breathing.)

After you feel yourself settle a little bit into some stillness, try it, thinking intentionally:

Mother, I release you. I let you be who you are.

Care home, I release you. I let you be who you are.

Do that for a few minutes.

Then just breathe some more.

Then stretch a little. Go take care of yourself.

Don't worry, things will come back. But maybe do it again tomorrow.

Work it into your days.

See what happens.

love,
Hops

[rosencrantz]

Hi Hops (ooh I did a typo - your name is close to Hope! )  Thanks!!

I have no problem in allowing my mother to be 'who she is'.  I am reconciled to her, to it, to the life we have had (and wasted).  We had become friends until the care home drove a wedge between us and did so much harm.

I don't particularly have a problem with the care home.

I have a problem with the care home manager - and no I'm not prepared to allow her to be who she is.  She damaged me through ego and ignorance.  

I have a problem with some of the nurses who played nasty cat and mouse, passive-aggressive games with my mother and refused to recognise that she wasn't just badly behaving (like them and like the care home manager) but couldn't be any different.  She was confused and unhappy because nobody understood her - and the glorious thing was that she recognised that fact and was able to articulate it to me.  Her consciousness was developing while her body was deteriorating. (Well, autism is a brain developmental delay and being in care homes has forced her to become more 'self' conscious - instead of getting away with terrible behaviour by beating up the 'opposition' all the time - the opposition being me and my father and just about everybody she came up against!)  The 'self' consciousness is marvellous and terrible all at the same time

Ooh - a thought has just popped into my head.  The nurses could have been kicking the cat - if they have the same problems with the care home manager as they have with my mother...Anyway, I don't 'do' understanding others any more!!!!!  The REASONS for their behaviour are no longer relevant to ME and my role in all this.

What I have a REAL problem with is inside my head!!  

The way I see the world isn't 'mainstream'.  I'm more in touch with the reality of everyday experience than most.  I connect at a deeper level.  The people I help say things like 'sometimes I think you can see inside my head' or 'I didn't know I felt that until you hit the nail on the head'.  (I don't know how to be different except by becoming speechless)

OR...

I've spotted a truth they DON'T want to see.  And then they do everything they can to destroy the threat (ie me).

I don't need to prove that I'm right - I can offer a thought and then let it go (except where the caretaking of someone dependent on me is concerned).  Even then, I don't need to PROVE I am right - but I DO need people to listen and allow themselves to be open to a different perspective.  

And if they don't, and are determined to discredit me, to get rid of me...and other people I trust find it expedient to support them...and other people I trust simply turn their back on me, ignore me, shut the door in my face...

I'm not strong enough (apparently) to hold up (mentally) against the onslaught.

But it's not that easy because I'm not giving in. I'm not going to go under mentally.  I'm not going to allow them to force me to give up my reality.

But I don't know how to do that without fighting and struggling.  I don't want the humiliation of fighting and struggling in a public arena.  But then I'm locked in (to my mind) with no way out, fighting and struggling with my mind, emotions, body.  Turmoil.  And the added burden is that I can't afford to do this with cancer lurking in the wings and just looking for a vulnerability in the defences to wade back in again.  "I can't do this"  "I have to do this" "You'll kill yourself"  "I won't be annihilated"

One begins to understand why people would die for a cause, for something they believe in.  If you don't, you give up...???  You certainly give up hope.  Perhaps we give up our reason for living - our MEANING for living.

As I've said before the ONLY other person who has done this to me is my mother.

I experienced it after my father died because I HAD to stay in the relationship to support her.  She asked me to and for once I couldn't turn away.  The only reason she didn't destroy me when I was a child was because I kept my reality away from her.  I finally knew that staying around would mean I'd end up in a mental hospital or dead by my own hand and I spent the rest of my life staying in touch 'barely', just doing enough of the 'right thing' while also protecting myself.  Even tho everyone else thought it was ME who was in the wrong for not having a closer relationship.

So...now I know that she screwed up my sense of reality because HER sense of reality is skewed.  I experienced the same thing with my husband except I was stronger with him.  I met him after I had learned better skills, confidence, my 'self'.  But, even so, he was wearing me down, year after year until we all reached a massive crisis and he agreed to go into therapy.  And THEN we discovered Aspergers.  We could have had a much better outcome if we'd known earlier but it was all too late.  

The gift he has given me is his ability to know that he has screwed up my sense of reality. (Gaslighting)  He does at least understand and 'believes' me.

So that's what it is.  I've defined it.  Or I think I have.

And I'm so angry that my therapist refused to offer me a referral to help me when I plunged into this maelstrom.  I am disgusted beyond speech.  I didn't feel I should be her client while she was going through breast cancer treatment so I had made a choice to leave (I did the right thing and it was brave) but her husband is a therapist too and between them they should have been able to come up with some signpost for me to follow up.  Here it all was again and I NEEDED to go into this in a safe place to get it sorted once adn for all.  I am sickened by the whole (God WHY do you make it SO hard for me????  I try and try to get to grips with the hand I've been dealt and you just THROW me right back in and then shut all the doors and isolate me) They say that you have to keep revisiting the same thing until you deal with it.  I'm TRYING to deal with it.

I'd rebuilt my life - I was still in the process of rebuilding it - and like a house of straw the wolf came and blew it all down.

I don't know HOW to find bricks.

[rosencrantz]

But apparently I DO know how to find joy!!  But that's what the care home insists I give up.

I quote from another thread : And..you know what...it's a GLORIOUS feeling to 'understand'.  It's tough getting beyond what AS does to you as a child when the parent has remained undiagnosed but once you get there - there's absolute JOY in understanding.  JOY and serenity.

And that's what has made my mother's care home's reaction to my understanding of my mother so difficult to accept : their refusal to validate something joyous and their determination to destroy it.

As part of what I was asked to do for the care home, I produced a particular piece of paper and read through the content to my mother over the phone.  She was so absolutely overjoyed.  She was crying when she picked up the phone (they'd say she was manipulating me!) but cheerful when I left the call.  The care home refused to use it - as part of the process of sending me packing!!  That was upsetting but somebody pointed this out to me : I had given her a gift of understanding which nobody could take away because it had happened!!!!!!  OK, so the care home staff refuse to use it and thereby signal that they refuse to understand.  But my mother at some level knows that she CAN be understood.  AND at least some staff will have read the content and it will have had an influence of some kind whatever they 'protest' at the surface level.  She does say that I'm the only person who understands her but the care home would say that it's not true.  Invalidating sh**heads.

But that's why I can't go back.  I'd have to eat crow and pretend with them that I'm in the wrong while continuing to understand my mother 'in secret'.  There madness lies.  (Because THAT's what I did when I was a small child - THAT's how I coped with the craziness of KNOWING there's something WRONG WRONG WRONG but nobody was going to listen to a small child who can't possibly know what she's talking about)  And THAT's where I STILL am today.  

I have to have a scream here - Aaaaaaaaaagghhghghghghghghghhhhhhhhhhhhhh

[Hopalong]

I hear your deep frustration, such painful turmoil.

I think the emotion itself is what is harming you.

That's why I think meditation...you can continue to assert yourself to anyone (including the care home manager) while allowing them to be who they are.

The thing about assertion is, you learn you can ask for anything.
You just have to release the outcome.

Asking is unhooked from getting. Sometimes they connect, sometimes they don't.
The only half of the equation you can control is your asking.

Deep beneath her diagnoses and disturbances and distress, your mother (the piece of her, of whatever size, that wishes you well) would not want you to be destroying yourself as you are.
It's not something she can tell you, or narrate. But it's as real as anything else is.

Can you draw on that knowledge, no matter what she or anyone else is doing in the present?

Can you draw on that knowledge about anyone real in the entire universe, whether you know them or not, who is sending powerful healing thoughts right now as you read this, that people in your kind of pain are eased?

It's a source. You need a source of peace.

I think that kind of thinking can save you, Rose. Tapping into something much much larger than yourself or your mother or your or her circumstances.

I think you need a practice -- daily -- that plugs you into that.

I think that is what can heal you and save your life.

You've tried everything else. Even if you've tried something spiritual before, now is a different time.

love,
Hops

[sKePTiKal]

Hey Rosie - I hear you. Let's both scream together - I know that knot of frustration, all too well.

And when we've screamed ourselves silly, dizzy and out of breath - think about:

every person has their own reality... what is real for you isn't for me. I have had some of the same experiences you're talking about, and mine are pretty real to me, but the concrete factual details - the he said, she said of it - would be "too much information" and you COULDN'T attach the same emotional meaning to the details and you'd pull out only the commonality of the experiences in my "story" to connect to. That's what all the players in your drama(s) are doing, ya know? Translating a connection - they heard part of what you said - into their reality... what they know, what their experience helps them understand... and they're not hearing everything you said... or you haven't said everything they need to understand - in a way that they are used to understanding. (It happens to me.)

Teartracks posted about "context" awhile back... and this might also be a useful idea for you to apply in your situation. Since everyone has a different role... they understand things/situations in the context of that role... and the situation itself provides a context for the role. There are patterns to this. You don't have to allow yourself to be forced into any role that you don't feel is you, or you're not attached to in some way. You don't have to act according to the "role". It doesn't make you "bad" or difficult... you simply refuse to get hooked into the "game".

By the way - I'm really beginning to like you! 

I'm also used to being the strong one... the last to sleep... the last to give up a struggle. Lately, though... I'm seeing that isn't quite the whole definition of me; it's more the role I took on in the context of my FOO. I mean, someone had to be the "resident adult" in that situation, after all! But, there was price I paid for that role. I was strong at the expense of my own needs; understanding and knowing my own vulnerabilities... I wasn't comfortable with those vulnerable places; lots of fear there, too. And I don't know how to let someone care for me very well... I'm simply not accustomed to it. I'm learning, right now.

Sometimes there are great treasures in "giving up". I found that if I "gave up" in the right way - I was free of the expectations of the old roles in my head and somehow that freed me from acting "according to role" when dealing with other people. It's still a work in progress. You're right about asking "what to replace the old thoughts" with - nature abhors a vacumn, so you have to think fast sometimes, to come up with something - anything will do - to replace the old thought. It can be quite humorous, even.

You wrote:

PS There's also a whole load of stuff that happened where I didn't crash!!!  I didn't crash when I discovered I had cancer.  I didn't crash when I discovered my son had autism.  Knowing me, I'm sure I walked through a whole forest of things that most people would expect to stop someone in their tracks.  But I just pick up my bags and walk on, picking up knowledge and people and their experiences as I go...

So what's the difference between the situations where you were able to "walk on"... and where you think you've crashed? And is it possible that you still haven't, in actuality, crashed... but only FEEL like you have? Because of some "definition" somewhere that doesn't take into account rest, refreshing yourself, taking a breather - a time out for you (a previously unknown vulnerability - or a new one perhaps?) ... perhaps it's the "definition" that's the problem, eh?

Hops' is quite right about the power of releasing the outcome of asking - it's helped me quite a bit, to learn to be ABLE to ask for things I need. Sometimes I even get what I need!  And when I don't - oddly, it's never been a catastrophe; it's always been OK. It's a very useful - and powerful - concept, technique or tool... whatever it is, it really WORKS.

It sounds to me, like if you can afford it - a week at a spa would be just the thing for you! Good food, nice people relaxing too, and plenty of physical, emotional, and intellectual REST and REFRESHMENT... and ahem!        truly: from the sounds of what you have gotten through, with your wit and intelligence this intact - you've earned the badge: "burnt-out" and deserve to take that time-out just for yourself. Wonder Woman and Superman need this kind of thing, too. There's no harm, no foul in just escaping to a nurturing, comforting retreat for a series of days... physical comfort can go a very long way to giving you a boost in the emotional pursuits, too.

But then, ya gotta come back & tell all about how nice it was!! I'm thinking I might just do the same thing, soon.

[rosencrantz]

I'm hearing, I'm reading, I'm listening - I really am - both of you.  I smile in parts.  I agree.

But, as I read, what's going on inside...my BODY!?...is an outrageous raging BATTLE.  Bash, bash, crash.  Grrrrrrr!  Bash, bash, crash.  Grrrrrrr!  I want to make it louder and bigger.  BASH, BASH, CRASH. GRRRRRRRRRRR!  The Hulk!  fighting, fighting, fighting.  I imagine how a small child might deal with something too big for them to manage.  Being held until calm by a powerful understanding parent so they can't hurt themselves.  I daren't relax my hold until the child is calm - otherwise goodness only knows what damage she'd inflict on body, soul, relationships.  She'd probably give ammunition to the people who want to discredit and disown her.  I'm angry with my mother too and she doesn't deserve it.  And with my cousin for emailing and saying 'I'm almost too embarrassed to write - it's such a long time since you wrote your very long email about the care home but everything seemed fine when i visited'   Grrrrrrr!  Cowardy custard for not even bothering to reply to my outpouring!!  I'm ANGRY with myself for being so stupid - for not realising the care home wasn't 'with' me. Stupid, stupid, stupid.  I still haven't picked my jaw up off the floor!!!!!  And angry with the social worker for being patronising and complacent.  How DARE you leave me to carry this massive weight all by myself.  Well I SHAN'T!  (Further sounds of crashing as biggest dummy in the world gets thrown out of pram!!!)

PhoenixRising - Thank you for the badge.  Holiday sounds good.  I don't know why I don't upsticks more often.  I'm supposed to be free!  (New car and SATNAV first and then my son's visit and then the taxman and then a round of business meetings - that's WHY! Kick, kick)

Hops - The spiritual - I do have some help with this - someone who has a good perspective on life.  I couldn't have survived this long without her.  I am getting my iPod re-organised (not long had my PC back after a year's absence) so can get back into the habit of daily meditation.  I've collected loads  I do that.  Collect and not 'do'. ;-(

Thank you both very very much for being so considerate and sharing so much.

[sKePTiKal]

LOL! Yeppers, I'll bet the inner child is in a doozy of a tantrum! 

Sometimes, it's possible to distract them long enough for the body-consequences to chill out...
sometimes, you really do have to hold on for dear life till they calm down.

And sometimes, you can just ask them: what is it you'd REALLY like? Forgot who did what to whom... all that. What is it that you REALLY, TRULY, cross-your-heart-and hope to die want more than anything else in the whole, wide world? Right this very minute???

And if you can make enough space in the thoughts & feelings and listen carefully - she'll tell you.

See the thing is, I've found after years of going through the he said - she said, the drama and the unfairness of it... the answers and the clues to "what the inner child really wants" isn't there in all that. I rewound and replayed it all until I thought I'd go bonkers from it all. I kicked myself for not foreseeing all the bait & switches, all the gotchas AHEAD of time... All because I thought that the clues to working out what "to do" was there. Well, like I said - giving up was part of it. And letting the drama slide away for any amount of time was the "right" thing to do for me - and the inner child. At this place in my process, I think I could safely say that all the details of that drama were irrelevant to truly solving my inner dilemmas.

Except that it was MY drama and all I had to work with, at the time. And yes, I had to get out too. I've written reams; even here - though much of it no longer exists. So: like you, I continually (and sometimes still do) went through the story, or parts of it... looking at it over & over, until like a really bad reality-TV show... a predictable outcome... I even complained here about how sick & tired I was of hearing myself go over the same issues - again. I was truly ready to be done with it...

This might not be the case with you: but I found that when I was completely engrossed in the details of my own drama, I was avoiding something else. I made the drama SOOOOOOOOO important, so time-consuming, that damn - no time left over for me to practice tai chi, eat breakfast today... hurry, rush, run, be overwhelmed & snappy at the first little life-obstacle in my path.

It was by allowing myself that time out... even if it's only 5 minutes of sitting with a cup of tea, at the beginning... that I eventually came to understand that I was simply avoiding dealing with my own inner self - feared it in fact. I'm still quite amazed that I like her, after all is said and done; and she is bucking around a lot less these days. It took lots of time, to build a relationship with her. Lots of journals... where I could write in both voices... all the time, trying to figure out what it is she really wanted and why she had such death-hold grip on certain vices and had mastered self-sabotage.

And yes, I found myself getting triggered by new dramas, periodically. But each time I moved another nano-inch ahead or had a small victory in one area or another. It didn't matter how small... it was the first progress in 40+ years of living. But these time outs are vital to that progress because I have to know what the inner me can tolerate... what she whats... and what she's willing to live with, if together we can't quite get there - this time. No fair kicking myself - or her - if we don't get it right. Life is practice; no one comes into a master of it.

[rosencrantz]

I did do some of the going over and over it - but not too much - tho it all came back out here.

Trying to identify the moment of 'breaking'...

The feeling of being completely trapped with no way out.  Surrounded by blank doors and not knowing what horror (IF a horror) stood behind it.  Every one of them risked tipping me over into complete madness.  Trapped in a double bind, triple bind, quadruple bind.  And no way out.  Nobody to defend me.  I wanted someone in my corner and there was no-one.  There was no-one to trust. 

I was not the important one anyway.  My mother was.  Whatever door I opened, whether or not horror awaited me, I was irrelevant. Nobody was going to be interested in my hurt pride, damaged ego, confusion, pain, horror.

Social worker, solicitor, mental health worker, mental health assessor, care home manager, nurses station, cousin(s), my therapist, neighbours, groups I belong to...

As I turn from one to the other in my mind...

No one is likely to protect me. (My inner strength disappeared when my father died - I think he protected me from afar and I never knew it - he sent me his strength energetically - and I don't suppose he even knew what he was doing - we didn't have a relationship because my mother stood in between us - but that feeling of BEING protected and safe just went when he died.  I never noticed it was there til it went.)

So...no protection.  Then...who would validate me? 

Not a single beeping one of them.

I couldn't trust them to validate me cos (truthfully) what do they know (nothing) plus who believes me anyway-type stuff and most of these people don't even know me or know me well.  I'm not relevant to THEM either!!

My friend had disappeared from my life in a puff of smoke.

I was left with my husband, healer and reflexologist and thank God they stood firmly by me and stepped up to the plate - I had to become 'less than', a mess, a caterwauling chaotic mess, swallow my pride and show not just vulnerability but someone with feelings and thoughts almost out of control and going off her rocker.  I don't 'do' chaos and mess.   My mother is the one who carries that stigma.  Borderline Personality Disorder.  That's what I reckon.  (But you won't know how I define that label - so it doesn't really have meaning)  I don't break. H - H - R (and everyone) have expectations of 'who I am'.  But my persona has broken into shards.

Even now, I haven't actually let them see wholly and totally who I am, the pain and the chaos and the mess.  I've still been alert and careful.  Don't want to end up being sectioned!!  (Memories of my mother's constant hysteria throughout my teens - and the secrets which had to be kept - and my schizophrenic aunt constantly being sent off for ECT and pills and the attempts to control her life and her spending - but I now suspect she was AS as well - AS often misdiagnosed as schizophrenia in the old days). 

I can either be strong and credible - or break and never regain any credibiity at all ever again (in my OWN eyes).  Labelled.  Like having been in prison - it goes on your record.  I have enough shame already.  My self-esteem has been slowly eroded over time - I can't AFFORD to allow it to be destroyed completely.

That's why the anonymity of the board has always been so helpful.  Exposure - complete exposure.  But not attached to me.  I can let it go and leave it here.  I can look after it here.  It won't follow me and force me to 'be' 'it'.