Voicelessness and Emotional Survival Message Board
Voicelessness and Emotional Survival => Members' Stories => Topic started by: Meh on November 22, 2011, 11:07:52 PM
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Guess I will have to save after every freakin line because there is a problem with my connection or my computer. SAVE
Attended the second Grief group therapy session. In both sessions I didn't utter a single word. During the first session I was feeling out the group, it was very small and I had decided the group was decent enough. When I walked into the room during the second session the group had expanded to be quite large about four times larger then the first session so I decided to feel it out again, I'm not loving the second group. There are two therapists a female student intern and a male who has a master's level. I may try to get an individual with the guy in addition with or instead of the group setting. Probably I will continue to go to the group because there are tiny tidbits that the guy occasionally interjects into the conversations that are worth hearing.
There are doodles on my forms that they give. My doodles of some kind of flora-fauna stuff that I make during the time that other people are talking about their care-taking experiences and their grief where mainly it appears that they are sad a deceased person is gone. There hasn't been a lot of discussion about grief outside the loss of a loved one. The forms are columns of basically depression and anxiety measurements so the group facilitators can justify what they are doing, we are in the end suppose to say me have less depression or anxiety. I wrote on my form "I have an insane roommate that does weird things with knifes"... because I want to express the some of the general anxiety that I have is not just emanating from the core of my being because I am JUST AN ANXIOUS PERSON just because that is my temperament. Or that all anxiety can be traced back to the impending death of one whom I am emotional ly attached to but do not love.
Getting that stupid jumping screen thing. uh SAVE
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For me greater then a sense of loss of a
loved one, which still hasn't occurred yet, is loss my SELF. And I suppose that loss of myself was perpetuated in my FOO and therefore the unspoken message that my SELF was significant.
Not knowing what to call it if it is not a loved-one then it is one whom I have an emotional imprinted attachement to dispite the idea that I want to believe these relatives are insignificant. Clearly they are not. Those whom I am attached to but do not dare use the word love to describe the attachment. Of course that in and of itself is not something I wish to try to explain in a group therapy setting.
Lately I haven't been looking at myself in depth, I think that because I have dove in there before I think I know what is there. I'm finding that even if I believe I already know what is in the depth of self-looking that I still need to do it again because looking once isn't enough I guess. Probably there is a need to be reminded of the self because it is sometimes a quieted aspect that easily becomes overlooked. In current time, for this day, being reminded again of the self because somehow it is always in a struggle to become and at risk of disappearing.
SAVE
Something missing here
SAVE
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Reminding of the self maybe can help to ensure that the self has a least one hand on the helm otherwise the whole crew could be sleeping with their eyes closed to changing tides and completely losing site of any shore.
I think of the self as being fish tanks inside of a seafaring ship. The ship being a metaphor for what I don't know the greater physical body and the fish tanks inside the ship as concealed within but not static. So yes maybe looking at or cleaning out the fish tanks is not the same as rehearing a song...but even then a song is always played a little bit different each time or even a lot different.
In here is the sense and realization of the burden of emotions. If they are a burden. They may be something else but within the context of the group therapy I went to mainly there is the idea of carrying around internally these emotional states.
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Peering over a dirt embankment, viewing down to gray water and a gray beach was a little sailboat up against the beach and tipped at a steep angle. It was truly stormy last night the winds were very strong so I guessed that this person's real boat, not metaphorical somehow became unanchored and blew into the beach. Something that pretty much can happen to people I guess for many reasons maybe a person no longer has the anchor whatever that is (money, marrage, family, job, health, sanity) and then any form of storm can carry the vessel to a place where it doesn't belong or should not be or will sustain damage.
I go on these walks for exercise or to burn time avoiding a person or some such thing. This morning I was avoiding the schizoid roommate in the kitchen. I usually make coffee in the morning but didn't want to occupy any sort of communal space with this person and being pissed off that I should have to do so...... so alternatively just went for a walk and noticed the little sail boat.
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A few paragraphs have been lost somewhere in here because of my bad connection or whatever...and my purpose for writing here seems that it has been lost also..Oh well. Part of this is coming back to not having the other to share minutia with. I would at least tell the other that I am attempting another group therapy experience, that I don't like hearing other people's stories because they don't include details of any sort of Narcissism only death related grief. I would tell the other that and then maybe I would know that I existed a little bit more compared to when I don't share minutia....only maybe there is a shared gripe.
I was laughing just a few days ago and then I went to house-sit at my mother's place..and I'm no longer feeling like laughing with people I am just darker and withdrawn and that is pretty much how I feel after spending time with her. I learned that she is planning on helping my alcoholic brother purchase a house. Yes I guess it hurts to know that she would do this for him but she would not do anything remotely helpful for me. Even if there is not a lot of logic in it my internal worth maybe feels diminished.
This evening before getting into a communal shower I grabbed some hair out of the shower drain so it wouldn't clog and overflow. When I pulled the hair out I realized it had blood all over it, what looks like some person's menstrual blood. At that point I really wished that I had at least had a plastic glove with me and had it on but I did not. So I put the wad of bloody hair in a garbage can and took it down to the staff for them to see with their own eyes and explained that it was in the shower but I'm not really sure that they get...
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...get that this is pretty much a blood-spill. I told them that if this is technically a business that they are running (they insist that it is a business) well then they should have a set protocol for cleaning up a blood spill just like a school has a clear process for how to handle it. But here that is not the case, there is no standard and there is no staff person that comes along to disinfect the blood. So eventually I know I should go get an AIDS test because of reasons like this I am more exposed to diseases then I have ever been before.
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Since I did the stupid house sitting for my mother - I did however get out of Thanksgiving....(cooking for her husband's family like a maid). This year she may end up doing that all by herself which is a self imposed decision on her part she doesn't have to do it but she would like to pass on the dutiful female servitude to her husband's family onto me. For some reason her husband's daughter's who all live in homes can't be imposed upon to make the dinner but my mother's mind shoots to ME. ME of all people to do it because she thinks I have nothing better to do...that I am lazy and should be made to do this sort of thing...that it is a natural conclusion that I am the best candidate.
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(ME) would like a very CLEAN home. Where no adult person dumps pots of food out onto the carpet because they are pissed off.
Where there is no body else's body fluids mysteriously hanging out in dark corners where I might put my hands.
Where I can take the time to make a beautiful meal and sit down and really enjoy something that simple and if there was someone else to share that meal with (a welcome someone) that would be EXTRAORDINARY...would be very out of the ordinary for me.
Going to go satisfy a late night kimchee craving. BYE.
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I would gladly share that meal with you, Boat.
Hops
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I would gladly share that meal with you, Boat.
Hops
You are so sweet HOPS!!!
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Certainly one can not afford the time usually to look deeper into everything or write about everything and possibly there is not a need to do that but I start to feel congested and out of sorts if for too long I have not been reflecting upon events.
One event that I wish to reflect upon a little bit is that I have been meeting with a housing director. Basically it is her responsibility to monitor more or less the residents in this transitional housing shelter. Since for many years I have been and felt like a relatively independent adult where I simply do a job, make a pay check and then make rental payments well I haven't required some sort of monitoring. But now I'm in the presense of this person and as nice as she likes to think she is, I do believe she has a bit of a prejudice or belief system about the people that she is (over)...rules over...monitors...whatever.
At first I thought: Okay, so what, it's a place to live so I put up with it and just try to get along.
Overall though I do think that the experience of having a person speak with me about my life is somewhat intrusive and it even feels diminishing to me because she does reflect that I and probably WE collectively that dwell here SHOULD not expect very much out of life. SAVE
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....There is something about this that feels like I am having her values put on me. At least that is my take on it.
Her values towards MY LIFE.
Since I am in the struggle with embracing and maintaining my SELFness and having my own voice this does prickle me a bit. I let it go but I do notice it.
I feel like I am be talked to sort of as a permanent low-grade member of society and that she is most comfortable thinking of us as fullfilling the societal spots that unfortunate people SHOULD inhabit. Basically that (I) or we should stay in our place as lowly.
Maybe if I had her position I would feel the same way I don't know. Ironically she is able to pay her mortgage because there are low-income people that do pay to be in this place...it is not free for us lowly people to be here... they do seem that they would like us to be forever groveling and grateful. That is not true gratefulness nor is it true charity.
I'm sorry but I am not grateful in all ways. Even in charity there are those who are well aware of and will use other's desperation.
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Some part of me still wants to believe that there is some kind of deep innocent goodness in people or maybe this is some childhood need to be able to trust someone or something. I'm not explaining what I want to say very well with that will try again later.
When I think about the things that I am grateful for, I think about mainly natures beauty maybe because it is beyond human stuff.
The combination of having my sense organs functioning, I can see, hear, smell, taste and feel the cold air and some times seeing snow on the mountains or flocks of birds migrating is the only thing that makes be feel like I am part of a divine spiritual world.
There is some farm land not too far away from where I am, this affords an unforested long sighted view of miles worth of earth that meets mountains, mountains that become dusted with snow this time of year and occasionally I will be at the right place at the right time in the afternoon and the winter sunset will make the mountain snow reflect pink light. It's just absolutely awesome. Pink snow on blue-purple mountains. I guess I could say it literally lifts my heart a little. Maybe that is the feeling of anxiety lifting. Maybe when we see something beautiful somehow spiritually we recognize some kind of basic (HOME) in that. I'm not sure but seeing things like that makes me feel like I have some kind of freedom in my heart.
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I'm grateful for a break from the human condition whatever that is...but I have my human senses and human body to experience these things. I'm grateful for artists. There is a new sculpture that appeared one day in a very unusual place and I can't help but to love that creativity and willfulness of some guys who hauled the metal sculpture way out and up onto a hard to reach rocky point so passers by could enjoy it. Grateful for music.
But I'm tired of being grateful for basic things. (Grateful for being in a warm place). I am grateful for it. But I would rather move on and be grateful for something better. Like grateful to have the stability to devote my energy and attention on learning something new.
I could be in a coma and I would have my same basic needs met that I have now. (fed and warm). That is not saying much at all really to be warm and fed really isn't enough. Life requres a lot out of people life requires more out of me and more out of every person then to just say yes I am warm today and yes I ate food today...end of story.
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Bouncing around. Back to the housing director well I wasn't happy about getting a handful of blood that I wrote about before and I did mention to the housing director that schools have a standard response to cleaning up a blood spill. Of course she didn't like that I said this because I am out of my place for saying so and apparently she doesn't care if people are spreading around disease here because she was very dismissive of me telling her about it but at least I did the responsible thing but mostly I was venting because I know she doesn't go back to a home where her kids are exposed to the kind of stuff we have to live with here and I think it is basic negligence not to respond at all. I knew that she prefers that people don't say very much about anything but sometimes I'm compelled and there is anger behind it that compels me and I often feel absolutely justified in certain things.
I would say that after I heard her response I felt rather alienated but it's also related to the fact that there is this sense of lack of leverage/powerlessness. I am not here because I want to be here, it is just what it is right now. I'm required to behave a certain way (keep mouth shut) and live a certain way (live in sometimes dirty surroundings). Most people don't seem to have a problem going along with the program. Maybe I have a little chip on my shoulder left over from childhood towards authority figures that are not living up to a standard of respectability. I had previously cleaned up someones douche bag off the shower floor and so now each similar type thing pisses me off I guess. I'm sure she wouldn't let her children shower in our facilities because they are sometimes gross. I guess there is some sort of arrogance or something that I think I see. It's not important I just want to get out of here.
I responsibly alerted her to a blood spill and what she does with the information or doesn't do is her business I suppose. I did work in health care previously so I guess the impulse is strong. SAVE
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There is some anxiety I have to stay on her good side like pleasing a boss, I am an adult though and there is something about what I am doing and how I am living that doesnt feel adult like. Now it seems that I am not on her good side. I have monthly appointments with her that involves going to her office and sitting down and she talks for about an hours worth sometimes about things that are really not very important but I'm realizing that maybe she has to have these hour long appointments to justify how she spends her days at work. Beyond the (warmth, shower) there is not much that I can really credit her with. The jobs that I have worked recently were not gained through her. I feel managed/monitored like by a parent but not a loving parent just an authority figure that has gained a lot of information into my personal life but hasnt helped much.
Maybe in the future I will just tell her that I am seeing a therapist and most of what I need to speak with somebody about I would prefer to speak with the therapist about it.
There was another resident here who mentioned that the housing director sometimes oversteps boundaries and I didn't quite understand what she was talking about at the time but I would say it makes more sense to me. If feels creepy to have someone collecting a lot of personal information about me and acting like she has a right to know everything etc. and not caring if I get AIDS!
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Currently starting to read a book called Stumbling on/upon Happiness. It's not self-help it is more a book about how the human mind works and how much people fantasize about their future being pleasant.
Since we are always living in a current time-state even if we think about the past or the future...well what I'm trying to say is I think by connecting with past traumas or rehashing or analyzed that it is an attempt to reconnect in the present with the SELF. Maybe that sounds fractured, the self being a mixture of things like the inner child and the inner adult, the inner valuable spirit, the emotional landscape, the needs and desires.
Part of my outer shell is a person who is playing a part that is agreeing that I must not expect very much out of life. That is never quite compatible with the inner self in my opinion, I think the inner self is so creative and rich and dynamic in ways that we don't always know, a mystery. I like thinking that I have a great mystery in my soul that is more beautiful then what some people can envision. Silly as it sounds, as much as there is a micro-macrocosm where some of the badness of life is part of me and my life I also believe that some of the goodness of life must be part of me as well. I feel like I am part of the greater mystery of life when I look at the beautiful mountains and feel my heart loosen up a bit, somehow I have always felt that my soul is connected with that which is amazing in life...but sometimes I forget and need to remind my self at times. I have an attitude I have been told...maybe a chip on my shoulder or something but if I didn't I would probably just be gum on the bottom of someone's shoe.
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Haven't had an intimate relationship with anyone for a long time. This is not something I think about very much, well, maybe I am lying. I guess I do think about it but what I mean is I have shut that down and I don't date, and I don't try, it is truely beyond me. It's the realm of the beyond beyond..only in the Twillight zone could romance of any sort be a possiblity for me.
So when I met someone a few nights ago and felt my heart flutter or some such thing I was surprised and I forgot that that sort of thing even exists in the world--heart flutters.. You know what I mean right? The way life makes one forget..and then it is shocking.
There was an email in my in-box sent by an organization that I had signed up to volunteer with so I'm on their mailing list, there was going to be a presentation and it was in a building that I had always wanted to see the interior of and it was only a few blocks away. Most importantly there was going to be some free wood-fired pizza...the pizza part I zeroed in on...I must have that pizza.
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Down at the event, some people had pizza, where was it coming from, watching a slide show related to volunteer accomplishments and projects (cool stuff)....but where is the pizza..so I ended up slinking around the back of the building in the dark cold night and there is someone making the pizza so I stood in front of the fire and I talked with him out there just the two of us...and my heart did flutter.
~I don't know why I am writing this. I don't expect anything would come of it, I guess it's just that I do feel like I am missing out big time on all the good things in life that make life worth living like love and romance and being excited about life and looking forward.
~It's not so much that he was extremely attractive or any such thing. It was that for the first time in months I felt really understood by another human being. And then I just stood there are stared at him flattening out pizza dough with his hands because I pretty much have a food fetish.
~Few days after the event I was walking down the sidewalk and out of a blue sky flash rain started falling. I turned back around, retraced my steps towards where I began so I could pick up my umbrella and he came walking down the sidewalk on the other side of the street. He was going out to his car and as soon as he got to his car he turned right back around and walked back into the building where the event had been held. As quickly as the rain had started the rain went away and I decided to turn around again and continue my original path with out the umbrella.....my mind has a fantastical part that wants to believe...oh things happen for a reason, and there are no accidents, and my mind even wants to entertain.... "meant to be".... But I absolutely KNOW better. Even if I am part of the great mystery of life..nobody ever said that the great mystery is going to be GREAT for everybody.
It was about the third time that I crossed paths with him after the event and at one point a couple of times he was looking at me from across the street but I was in my freaked out zone of "my father is dying" so I broke eye contact quickly. Actually that is something I normally do with everybody I don't maintain a lot of eye contact unless it is a friend. I guess I was suppose to smile and wave or something but I was hauling ass down to a clinic to try to get some therapy. :lol:
Probably that is about as close to romance as I get...looking at someone from across the other side of the street and being chased by some sort of anxiety or other.
SAVE
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...When I came out of my "dad is dying" daze then I fantasized about this guy for a few days.
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I wonder how much of happiness is related to people's ability to maintain these beliefs...like (meant to be) beliefs and....goodness.
That brings me to a concept of Buddhism that I am working on.
BASIC GOODNESS So I guess I should work on the basic goodness of Thanksgiving and I should volunteer or something.
I'm just weary in my heart and that is part of the not wanting to socialize. It's been a long time since I have had the kind of friend that I can just be with, do nothing and be very happy just being...most socializing requires a bit of an ON switch. Breathe. Or I guess I don't feel totally accepted by people so there is always an element of anxiety. It's thanksgiving, I should be around people but being around people involves some anxiety.. Really just looking forward to a long walk.
Sort of wish I just had some stone carving tools and like a huge piece of some black boulder to carve into who knows what. A big black stone turkey. Maybe a big black stone turkey with some form of cactus quills embedded into the stone. I would have to drill holes into the stone andmaybe make porcelain needles--porcupine turkey.
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My point of writing here was to pay attention to some aspect of my self that gets steam rolled over in the chaos of life. So scheduled quiet time. There is a room here where I can go and do yoga and it makes me like 20% nicer then if I don't do yoga. So I guess that points to anxiety = grumpy.
That the fish tanks inside the ship are some kind of internal living world that is somehow an aspect or reflection of the ocean which maybe symbolizes something more spiritual. Who knows. Being in touch with self is always a task for me it is a constant need and it is a continum it is not enough to be connected with it four months ago because that was in the past.
I'm not sure sometimes though. Maybe I just say to my self "sweetheart are you there".
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Around 2002 or 2003 was a time in my life when I was having what seemed like a personally profound passion and experience of some sense of spirituality and it may be offensive to some because I can not say that it is specifically Christian or any specific spiritual philosophy. I simply had a greater sense of the world being divine and imbued with spirit of some sort. Also that my connection to my own personal spirit was more tangible feeling then previously experienced in my life except for maybe during early childhood. Maybe it was delusions of spiritual grandiosity or psychosomatic something or other.
Now in this time in my life I am someone trying to knock on that door a little bit. Not so much going to church because I feel filled up with noise after those types of events. More when I try to knock it is in the form of asking to be connected with spirit. Or to sit and be quiet and contemplate on some sort of receptivity to allow spirit to be in my life or trying to hear this "spirit" whatever that is.
I guess there are just times when most humans good or ill intentioned just become like more noise and clutter...and mostly I remember something gentle about the experience of being connected with spirit. I had a sense of wellbeing that was not dependent on my interactions with other humans.
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It has been a long time since I have heard my spirit or whatever it is. I don't really remember it telling me what to do so much rather it was more like a gentle voice. I guess I wish I could go back to some previously very internal worlds that I had. Well I mean like for a period of years I was crazy passionate about art and it was a huge world that I inhabited that mostly was very private and maybe like an internal fantasy world. Then the period when I got more into spirituality maybe in the same way was some of that also. I'm reluctant to say it was nothing but a 100% fantasy world but there is an element of escape.
More recently cooking has been an escape for me and I was fattening up all of my "room-mates" until a new room mate came along and whack-a-doodled out too much so I now ended my little cooking episode so I could avoid the common area of the kitchen.
The cooking was an anxiety relief. Not liking the paranoid schizoid roomate because not only does she give me more anxiety but has closed the door to my cooking as an outlet. I simply don't want to be in a room with her for too long and whenever I am in the kitchen she comes in there and twittles around aimlessly.
Sometimes I read book after book every evening. Or sometimes I get a free one week pass to a gym and obsess with that. I need something.
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So I am just quietly and softly asking spirit to reconnect a bit with me because it seems as good an outlet as any. It also makes me not feel as alone I suppose. And the truth is when I was into art big-time there were characters in my art that existed that probably served the purpose of bandaging my aloneness.
I miss the safety and refuge of that fantasy world but because I am older I don't think I will ever have that in the same way that I did when I was younger, it was almost an extended childhood imagination event.
Mostly I experienced art as a beautiful space and place I could inhabit although looking back what I painted was pretty revealing into subconscious stuff. And maybe being able to look back on my art was a gift that my younger self gave to the older self.
SAVE
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The food fetish thing.
Well in life supposedly we are suppose to adapt and that is what it says on the handouts from my grief and loss support group.
I have had people point out to me that some start their own businesses and such stuff but honestly I just don't think I have it in me to do something like that, it's not that I am lazy it's just that usually people are not truly starting from zero when they start up a business. So I feel guilty or like I am less smart because I haven't come up with a really talented adaptation to my current state. I'm a little thankful for the grief group in that sense because I see other people that didn't come up with amazing award winning adaptation strategies. They are just in the process. So I hope that I can have faith that I am just in some sort of process that I will eventually make progress out of. I HOPE. That something will click at somepoint and tides will turn. Hope.
I mentioned humorously to some co-volunteers that pretty much all I look forward to in life is food. They didn't get the humour and decided that I was depressed because of that comment. Oh well.
I only weigh about 120lbs or something like that I don't have any sort of real eating disorder so I'm not worried. Some of my roommates I think have become suspicious of my eating capacity though. It's just that I can honestly obsess about food.
I'm on my third carrot cake cupcake with creamcheese frosting no three and a half. I should have cooked dinner but am avoiding the kitchen big time.
So if it is not cooking or eating or reading recipes or reading books about food..or not reading or fantasizing about a person I only spoke with once or art or knitting or what. I've always got to have something. I guess at the moment it is writing this.
Gardening is another. When iI read the list of adapatation strategies from grief pretty much I have been attempting this during my whole life time I have always been one big living adaptation attempt.
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I have a hard time with the schizo room-mate. The thing is I don't want to talk to her or really interact at all. Maybe it seems mean of me.
She will go into the kitchen area and boil water and then just dump it out into the sink so she is basically putzing around not really getting her business done and it gets on my nerves. Some how people are also not suppose to confront her because sometimes she flips out. It's rather unfair of the staff in this place to not really give the other residents good guidelines for how to deal with her..it's sort of just leave her alone but she puts people on edge and we all commiserate that we hope she goes to a place specifically for her problems. The other thing is somehow because of her mental illness she is getting away with not following the rules that the rest of us are suppose to abide by which further pisses off.
So this morning even though I prefer not to speak to her at all I basically nicely kicked her out of the kitchen so I could make some freaking Thanksgiving oatmeal for gods sake.... and she did vacate without a scene but it's always stressful not knowing if she is going to flip out or something. She was just in there boiling water....I feel like telling her to just put a freaking cup in the microwave for two minutes and get it over with. The boiling of the water goes on pretty much all day.
It's totally incompatible with my Martha Steward complex. Also since my mother has a personality disorder anybody with a serious personality disorder just bristles me. I intensely have this strong impulse for a very orderly, beautiful, clean, calm, relaxing HOME space. Sort of a control thing.
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Probably because I complained about her and also the hand full of blood, I am now not on the good side of the housing director. Oh well, we got a along for a long time but I don't have to agree with the housing director.
The thing is the person who performs security duties here and typically deals with the weird events personally told me that yes the paranoid schizo did stick a knife into the top of a door jam so it could fall down on the next person that walked through the door. So it was already confirmed to me by the security person.
~~I brought this up with the housing director telling her that a lot of the people here are on edge because of her and that one of the people here told me that she started carrying around her own knife because of the schizo person.
~~Basically it adds a little extra acid in my stomach when I wake up first thing in the morning. Sometimes I just have to complain.
So the housing director responded to me dismissively saying that "If I don't know something for a fact it is only GOSSIP"...but the housing director doesn't know that I spoke directly with the security guard. The housing director told me to clean up the blood with a bottle of sanitizer spray. I've seen the PAID cleaning person refill the bottle up with tap water.... So I just told the housing director that it is not my responsibility to clean up other people's body fluids. I don't care how pathetic and lowly and desperate I am suppose to act and always defer. There is a part of me sometimes that can't help but to just freaking say what I think.
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(this is all the minutia in my little world) I wish I could expand my world way beyond this. Sort of like a tree that is frantically throwing seeds to the breeze while it's trunk is burning.
So the housing director is basically being dishonest to me but doing it by suggesting that my perceptions are not correct....something that in the past has made me really upset. But I will try not to flip out..or I don't know I get a complete smart ass thing going on I guess.
It's not really a prejudice against people with mental health problems....it is a rational concern about someone who has been at times out of control and using a knife as a weapon against others. THAT IS REASONABLE IN MY WORLD.
But since she has a mental health problem she also gets a guaranteed amount of money from the state or whatever and that is why she is here...because that allows the housing director to pay of her mortgage. Happy Thanksgiving...
So it will be interesting for me to deal with the housing director from now on. I'm just trying to think of the most diplomatic way to elevate myself from the garbage. This is maybe where I have interpersonal issues with people. I am quite adamant in myself that I am RIGHT...and also have a RIGHT to think the way I think and it is sometimes incompatible with just going along with the flow.
I never really allow myself to fantasize about houses, like nice homes because it is sort of out my real right now but maybe I should allow myself that. Like in the book Stubling on Happiness people do envision a future even if it may not come true they still do it.
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If I don't like being lyed to or being in the position where we are all seen as dumb sheep to be controlled or something...and if I get pissed off when I am put at risk...Well that doesnt really make me a smart ass or someone who has issues with Authority right?
And what is wrong with having issues with authority anyways...And why at my age am I even saying something like this. To me it seems like throughout life people are beaten into stupidity and submission...and that is the way to get along and be properly socialized. Yes go along with who ever has the power to screw up your life...
I feel that I have to defend my right to think what I think. I'm not violating any sort of rules. And I feel intensly that I should stand up for some sense of personal valuing of myself.
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Few nights ago when dogsitting the Nar-Ma's cherished poodle, I watched Joy Luck Club. Think I may have written about it before. It's been a long time since I have seen the movie.
What I am struck by in the movie is the concept of the mother's spirit strength or weakness directly relating to the strength or weakness of the daughter's spirit. Maybe this is not a real concept in Chinese culture I don't know I'm not Chinese. Maybe the idea is made for the theatrical effect. Maybe there is something to it you know? It's not very scientific at all but the way it is presented in the movie it's somehow convincing on a metaphysical level. There is this concept that we are self-responsible and the creators of our own destiny and so forth an idea that is maybe opposite with that of the movie's theme where there is some sort of generational strength or weakness of the spirit that is passed down from mother to daughter.
Makes me wonder if anybody see's the Nar-people in their life as strong spirited. I don't see my Nar-Ma as strong spirited. Even if Nar people some times seem controlling or whatnot I wonder if they are ever seen as strong spirited people.
I guess I'm writing this because in someway I have probably always been trying to acheive strength of the spirit if that is possible probably because I never felt particularly strong in real life. The movie just sticks with me, accurate or not, unscientific and a little supernatural. It just hooks in my mind.
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.....continued from other post on board....Actually I shouldn't say that Narcisists never show a desire for a higher quality relationship. My mother did go to a therapist who told her just to try "being nice" to me. And she was for about two weeks back in April/May of this year. I knew better then to get my hopes up though.
It only lasted for about two weeks and now I know what it would feel like IF my mother was nice to me, it's well really nice.
I don't know why a mother would deny that to her daughter you know....it just makes life feel more "right". Rather then everything feeling "all wrong". Not that everything hinges on the mother but it sure must feel good for those people who are lucky enough to have nice mothers.
That is the part where we feel BAD or whatever because of the withholding of love that we experience. I guess we all hold on to stuff. I should probably write about it because I supress it a lot so I don't have to feel it. I suppress my feelings of unworthyness so that they don't show up for me everyday but there is probably a LONG TERM TOLE for supressing them.
It only showed that she knew HOW to be nice....she just couldn't uphold the charade I guess. But it does make me ask if she CAN be nice, if it is possible then why isn't she. I mean I almost make the assumption that she DOESNT KNOW HOW TO be nice.
So 6 months no contact equals two weeks of nice. That is about 4 weeks a year.
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So some day if I can manage it, I just say to her: you know what since we don't get along lets only talk to each other one week out of the year how does that sound to you? She would probably agree to it and that would make me feel sad at least for a while...how sick is it that I would feel sad? Right? It's messed up. But despite it and plenty else being messed up in my life I would like to do some home improvements where I add rooms onto my life. Even if some rooms are burnt and charred and over-run with termites and maybe some rooms really can not be repaired but I CAN ADD rooms right, I hope.
It's only the smallest things I can manage to do right now, the tiniest things but when I do something positive or constructive in my life I do try to give myself a little credit for it. I would like to be in the position to do A LOT, A WHOLE bunch of ADD-ONS the things that somehow compensate for the other stuff that sucks. The things that make it so the flaws are not all there is. Right now I feel like a lot is wrong!!!!! Like there are more flaws then good stuff. So that is a source of remorse or irritation for me is that I'm not adding on enough of the good stuffs BUT that is something that I do feel I can hope and pray on and dream for.
I don't really even have the ability to like envision a great or better future anymore, I guess I have lost the ability to believe that things will get better. BUT for whatever reason I can emotionally feel the concept of add-ons. "Home-improvements" that might be the smallest things like putting a pot of orange pansies in the yard that also has a giant metaphorical "septic tank" laying in it.
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The above doesn't sound like it makes sense. I think of a house as a metaphor for my life's events and parts of ME. Because my relatives are literally a part of me regardless of if I like it or not or if I go no-contact...it has shaped me. And the shape that I am in feels very flawed. The house that I am, right now may look like there are 98 gophers digging under the lawn. Snakes in the mailbox. That is all the crazy bad stuff that is already there...BUT I can ADD....ADD. if I am very lucky I can ALWAYS ADD. The reason why I believe I can do this is because there are so many small ways to do it. Isn't that an amazing idea? And getting a haircut is like taking off one old mossy shingle and nailing on a single new one. Little things....it's all I can do right now :)
I have a lot of valid fears going on and they are to some degree interferring with the "add-ons" that somehow help give me self esteem. Breathe.
Fear, fear, fear fear is there
And Grief is there
And Anger....Frustration
And I'm getting tired of these being the predominant emotional undercurrents I KNOW that it doesn't have to be that way. That the emotional undercurrents could be a different set of....excitement and joy and fulfillment. WOW how crazy is that fulfillment....That is maybe even better then content. Content is being happy with the way it is....fulfillment is when the "way it is" is great!
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Think there have been times when I have tried to tear the whole house down remove the debris and build a new house. But this has been a flawed and unrealistic approach, I know that now. So I guess there does have to be some acceptance that I have to work with the house that I have. And going no-contact is like quaranteening a section of a house or even cementing walls into doorways...but on some level it is still part of the house it seems because we humans have these crazy-strong emotional memories and ties that are beyond our ability to completely control or just discard or shut of...that is why they get suppressed and become untapped and untouched but it's still there.
So the house stands with all it's various rooms BUT the GOOD news is some of the rooms are really beautiful, and some of the rooms maybe are fun to play in. And maybe when there is a flood in 75 percent of the house...maybe there is a new door somewhere else.
I really hope so.
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Purging. Maybe it's only a minor irritation but I want to write about it anyways. It's like shining the mirror.
The housing director that I periodically meet with in someways likes to think of herself as a counselor of sorts. Who knows why maybe it makes her powerful or maybe she just pictures herself helping people I don't know. Often she asks questions that are not dirrectly related to being housed or makes comments that are really not directly related towards being housed. I don't think that what she is doing is intentional but I do find there are some parts of her conversation style that bug me a little. I don't know why she brings certain things up. The last time I met with her she brought up that I do not have children as if this is some kind of big bonus thing for me. I just smile and shake my head yes and I say "You are right, I'm lucky that I don't have children" And then I make a relieved expression like that would just be a horrible thing. She is a mother though.
It's not that I want to have children because I do not. It's just that I don't quite like her talking to me like this partly because the reason I don't have children has a lot to do with responsibility. Plus I don't think that being void of a family and loved ones is really something to rejoice about in life.
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The other part is that in saying "at least you don't have children"...I feel like all I can do is agree with her. To me there is a dismissive quality about her comments that almost make me think she doesn't realize that (we the lowlys) have internal environments and thoughts of our own. In fact I know some women would be really really upset at a comment like this.
I know it sounds harmless but it annoys me. I suppose in a little way it reminds me of voicelessness a bit. It's not a huge thing. I sort of feel like there are a lot of things that I don't have and it doesn't help me to have her point that out.
In my mind (I have never been LUCKY enough to be in a position to consider having children)...even if in reality maybe it does suck.
The point for me is that I have never been able to make a decision about it like some people do. The only decision I have made is not to go out and screw every single guy in a bar just to get pregnant with a meal-ticket wellfare baby---YEAH I made the decision not to do that.
The voicelessness part of it I'm not fully putting my finger on.....I think it comes back to some general sense that (we lowlys are to accept that we can not expect very much out of life and that we would be out of line to do so).
I told the director that in the past I paid $75 an hour for a counselor. She looked surprised as if I always have been and always will be destitute. Seriously how did I get here and who are these people? Maybe I WILL always be destitute from now on but that is not really their decision to make about me nor should they be fortune telling that to me.
I'm also getting sick of the authoritarian thing.....If she was someone else who didn't control my shelter...I probably would tell her that she doesn't know how people feel about having children so she should be more careful about those comments.
She has also compared me to herself.....BUT she has NEVER been in my position. It's rather absurd.
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I believe that people who meet with the housing director are in a bit of a vulnerable situation and almost have to be somewhat submissive or risk losing shelter. So of course one is more likely to just shut it and agree to whatever she says. That in itself sort of sets up a bit of Voicelessness.
I have been rather communicative about what I see and hear in the building. Not to rat people out but mainly to try to get her to understand. I told her that one of the residents started carrying around a knife when ever she leaves her room due to the schizo person. WHEN I said this the director immediately and quickly looked at my mid section as if to see if she could x-ray vision into my pockets if I WAS carring a knife.
Since I wasn't packing a knife I felt slightly indignant! And it feels bad to constantly be untrusted but for no specific reason. It feels BAD because it's as if she is mirroring someone back to me that I am not.
But hey I do shower with a wooden rolling pin because it's a little less weapon like. Yeah I know it's weird right?
She also is often trying to talk about things that we have in common as if it is an attempt to build repoire but she clearly does not trust me nor really care too much. It just feel like bullshit.
Well I'm glad I clarified that for myself I have been taking it too earnestly when really it's absurd BS.
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Not feeling good in my tummy right now. Earlier this night I went for a walk to get some groceries. It was quite lovely outside and Bam right after Thanksgiving the Holiday lights are up in people's yards and Bang- right there in the grocery store are pointsettia plants. I LOVE holiday decor. I could live without the actual Holiday itself but when I walk by the Chirstmas tree lots I love the smell and I feel like I could stage dive right into them..as I watch the little kids run around the trunks of the trees. I think I WANT TO DO THAT. I want to run around the christmas trees. I didn't do it.
It is a little hard though right after enduring Thanksgiving then all the Christmas stuff immediately comes out and I think "Oh right, now I have to get through the next month as well".
This writing and brooding I'm doing is pooping me out. I feel sort of exhausted but that is typical when I start to write a lot on here.
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From Flirting thread: the concept of "fear of rejection comes up" and what I think I am noticing for myself is yes I might have some of that but in addition to that I think the "Is it okay to play" thing is mainly going on. I have also experienced rejection and it really didn't bother me that much. I feel more like there is a "fear of attack or hostility" maybe this isn't the same as fear of rejection because in reality rejection is not the same as being attacked.
I really wonder if fear of rejection and fear of attack are not too separate things. I guess I am just clarifying something confusing for myself that I never took the time to look at before because I have always maybe been a little embarrassed of my shyness.
When people are shy then on top of that the Shyness is pointed out to them as a problem and as an insecurity which makes it hard to bring it up at all.
Somehow in situations where there is really not an issue of fear of rejection I still feel like it is not okay to play.
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Today I'm feeling a little yucky, it is that time of the month. Also noticing that I have become more withdrawn with all that is going on. Spending too much time sitting in bed for so many reasons, the main one being is I'm procrastinating getting a start on my days now because I don't want to leave my room to take a shower or make breakfast because I'm now always waiting for the "crazy coast to clear".
Usually how I deal with this is to just wait it out.
I don't feel good! I'm cranky. I want a hug!!! I want Thanksgiving to GO AWAY!
Today there is also a SECOND repeat after-Thanksgiving THANKSGIVING here where I live so people are all talking about that now. Someone asked me if I was going and I said "No, I see no need to prolong the agony" I feel sort of lame for being that way because the woman who asked is really quite nice..but I'm grumpy!!!!!
I'm tired of BEING HERE!!! I'm really irritable and tired of KEEPING IT TOGETHER.
I DONT WANT TO BE HERE ANYMORE!!!!!--there I said it. I have been ghosting out and slipping along in a daze just to cope with it but I really want to be somewhere better. I wanna find my home! Going to go for a walk in a while :)
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Walking, went to get some decaf coffee and CHOCOLATE covered TOFFEE, went by the Christmas tree stand, saw a car with Christmas lights on the roof driving down the road, walked by a church with amberish colored painted stained glass windows and thought that maybe I would try going there next weekend or at least maybe just for X-mas. Thought about confession.
Never really believed in the idea of confession but an old Irish-Catholic roommate told me that he always felt better as if a "burden was lifted from his shoulders"...It could be that it's because he was raised in a traditional Irish Catholic family that it works for him. I wonder if I am allowed to go to church only for the reason of having the feeling of the "burden being lifted" :?
I guess close to December is the time of year those who are not religious start to question their faith.
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Coming to the board and figuring and reading and writing stuff down and swapping stories, mostly what is occuring here on the board is rather like what happens at an AA meeting I think, it's basically a community of broken people. I write this I guess because I'm tired of feeling broken and tired of feeling like I need a crutch of some sort. But what, so...one is supposed to just absolutely accept their broken-ness or something. It's feels like such a distasteful concept to me it is basically accepting that it will never get better. I guess right now I feel like things are not getting better and mostly the truth is probably things havent been very great for years. Sorry but I'm just feeling rather stuck and powerless right now. I need for things to change.
So I Read this list of emotions associated with grief that was given out in my group therapy.
Lets see: Despair, Confusion, Bitterness, Shame, Anxiety, Fear, Anger, Yearning, Detachment, Guilt, Hopelessness, Helplessness, Loneliness, Numbness, Loss, Sadness, Shocked, Overwhelmed, Preoccupation, Vulnerability.
Oh yeah also the infamous word "Depression"
SAVE
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I thought grief was it's own emotion so now I'm rather confused to know that grief is like a process or cycle rather then one single emotion but then maybe it hasn't been explained very clearly/correctly to me.
The other thing is I get ticked off all over again to see the word depression on here because when I went to therapy in the past nobody ever said anything about grief to me, they just said "Your depressed"...take some antidepressants. But I've already been over that.
I feel that I have already been over everything at this point on this board and I'm just rehashing the same ideas.
I've been trying to go get a personal counseling referral so I can make an appointment to talk one-on-one rather then the group but I just keep playing phone tag with them. I left a message for them this morning and havent received any call back today.
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Today I went to my grief group again, I didn't speak in the group but I think I will be receiving a referral soon to speak with someone one-on-one which is more comfortable for me. Everybody in the group misses somebody with tenderness and today they talked a lot about how to continue to celebrate the loved-one which is all a bit different from what I have going on.
Definitely being a part of the group makes me wake up a little bit because there is so much death and loss discussed, one woman lost her 3 year old daughter from disease. It makes me EVEN MORE want to enjoy life and participate in being living and healthy.
So at the group I told the facilitators that I haven't been able to get through the phone for the referral so somebody there sat down to speak with me for 5 minutes to do a mini assessment. I told her what my living situation is, told her about the spotty random jobs, told her about my father being sick and I said that I was just really stressed out and that "I just want things to get better".
She asked me if I was suicidal and she wanted to give me a phone number for a crisis line....Ughhhhhh.....I told her no I am not suicidal, I just want to speak with a counselor. Maybe they are required to ask if someone is suicidal but its sort of incongruent because I'm not raving hysterical just asking for low-income counseling BUT she was pretty supportive so I'm glad we talked.
Other weird thing is that she asks if I am suicide because I am technically still "in crisis" unfortunately crisis appears to have become a way of life for me AND that is what I want to change.
So I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I find a good counselor. I never know how long I am going to be able to be in one place.
SAVE
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Just hope something weaves together, the process of finding a counselor that participates in low-income services and getting two or three referrals before I can even begin to see someone well, it's a process so once I get this process going I hope I can be here long enough to see the therapist because if I end up in another community/county then I have to go through getting referrals all over again. Sheesh!
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So there were some conflicted feelings for me about communicating regarding the paranoid schizo "roommate" here. The conflict was that she has been causing me anxiety that I don't need vs. sometimes the squeaky wheel gets ripped off and thrown into a trash compactor (Am I going to get myself kicked out due to complaining).
Luckily a lot of people have complained. So today she is packing up her stuff and it sounds like there are a network of mental health people to help her out.
So relieved about that. It didn't get to the point where anybody flipped out. So now, just waiting for her to pack and shut the door behind her. Not sure what the clincher was, the number of people complaining or the fact that she walks around with a sheet on her head like the Grim Reaper. This in a place where half or more of the people have PTSD?
Feeling a little good about contributing to making the staff aware that they needed to stay on top of her case and not just put her in here and see how it goes until something goes really wrong.
Thank God the staff came to their senses and decided that this is not the appropriate place for her.
So, maybe another mantra sometimes is (Just Try)
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Wanted to come here and write something about the possibility of crisis and issues and problems being part of the dysfuctional (STORY-LINE) (LIFE-PLOT) that one is told about...the sick family members telling (me) about the future being bad...and about it manifesting that way.
Just want to explore this idea some more because I think somewhere in there may be some personal empowerment.
I guess I would like to say at one point:
"I played the role, it unfolded, the bad stuff manifested...but now that story has come to an end"
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My father contacted me to tell me that the social worker in a clinic that he thought would advocate for him wasn't helpful at all.
It's hard for me to fathom that my mother, brother and father actually want to use me as a crutch. If a social worker can not help him, why would I be able to?
I need to write some more about this, I will come back to it in a bit.
Hearing my fathers voice gives me a sense of dred and burden...like I am unseen, and unreal...that my own personal life was never meant to unfold..that I was always only there for their purposes.
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Nothing is wrong tonight but I'm awake at an absurd hour and I could say something over complicated or something over simple.
Making an update mostly, the place to put my minutia now that my 5 minute "BF" is gone. He asked me if I believed in love, but then I told him how I'm not really a prize afterall. So coming full circle back to the first part WHERE does the love come in? It doesnt right....they are like different definitions tagged onto the same word in the dictionary.
I'm becoming more brave or more crazy or more desperate or all three...phew boy what a combo.
Soooo...church that is whats new. For some reason the down and outs become all churchy sometimes. I guess it's how the church gets new "recruits"...well maybe thats just trite. So I was invited to go on a hike with a group of church women and also to their homes for X-mas of course. I will probably go on the hike but not to their homes. It's not a bad church really, a little whelmingly HAPPY in your face HAPPY to see me. Because come on, who is really happy to see me...it reeks a little bit of the brain-washed unless I'm missing something. They have to be that happy and that nice in order to get into heaven. I don't know I never understood the church types and its so easy to make the typical stereotype comments. I just want to be part of a community, not be so alone, I don't want to be somebody's religious "project" for Xmas. Just want some understanding how hard can that be. Anyways bouncing type here. SAVE
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Is it a homophone?
Love, Love, love, Love, love......No it's not because it's spelled the same even if the word has so many different meanings.
Maybe Luv and Lurv are homophones. looov.
I went to my one-on-one counseling appointment today after all the referral rig a ma role. I know its one word but I always say it wrong with an extra a in it.
So, I talked and talked and talked to her. I was worried that I wouldn't have anything to say! That I would clam up. I didn't though, I guess I really needed to decompress and talk to somebody that I think is neutral and doesn't have an agenda because the social worker types no matter how well meaning that may be are not neutral.
I didn't go to my most recent appointment with the housing director...it was intentional.....but I also happened to have the flu-urp. Good, valid, true excuse....
My neighbors, I try to spare them from placing my stuff on them. I don't talk a lot to troubled people.
The counselor asked me about my family history of substance abuse and mental health. I told her that about every generation I'm aware of is alcoholic and I told her there is the co-dependecy or whatever ya wanna label it. I also told her that I think my Ma is a NAR!!!
It's the first time I have told anybody in 3D about my mother...maybe I'm glad for being able to tell it to a counselor. yay.
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Here I put my minutia, If I had someone to talk to that wanted to hear about my life's events I would tell them but since that person doesnt really appear to exist then I will write it all here instead. Listening to some kind of modern Christmas music on a radio. (Yay for having a second hand radio).
So mother told me through the grapevine from my brother that my father finally did get a chest X-ray done and he does have a growth in his lungs according to my brother who has been known to lie but I can't think he would lie about something about this. But I was correct in my brother wanting me to start contact with my father it is in fact because my brother has a plan to move away from where my father lives...how thoughtful of my brother. Funny how my brother uses the words (I LOVE YOU) when he talks to me about this stuff.
I spent yesterday out at my mother's place, her husband didn't even say hello to me when he saw me nor did he say a single word to me. Couldn't possibly have been more rude. What a jerk. Not surprized though. So we went to go look at a fancy Christmas light display and it was actually a pretty nice thing to do. So beyond that I guess I will go to Church but that is all I plan. I guess I will stay "home" and knit. It could be more fun but it could also be worse I guess.
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So I guess my five minute Boy Friend is gone'ish. He is probably trying to be gone, going, going, maybe he is working on fading away after calling me and texting me every morning and evening with all this naive like charm. I thought whoa, slow down dude. Now I haven't heard much from him, he texted me today though. This really went on longer than I had expected, maybe he had hope for a booty call. I don't know, he said some non-sense about wanting a relationship, and I think I made it clear that I couldn't have a relationship.
Really he probably doesnt want a relationship but says he does, and even though I say I can't have one I probably do want one.
On top of that though nobody wants to have a relationship with somebody like me. I (me, myself and I) don't wish to have a relationship with me. IF that sounds like self-pitty I don't give a cr@p. I have a right to want somebody in my life. I can't put everything on hold forever.
Can't I just be his weirdo, bohemian, oddling friend? No, probably not. How different am I really from people who are loved I ask myself. I get these lines of reasoning that come to my mind and I just think "am I unlovable"...anyways I will let it go for now.
I dislike this stuff a little passing ember of a spark is worse almost than none at all. Right!? There is a song that says that "a taste of honey is worse than none at all".
Heck anyways, I should of lied, lied, lied, maybe I would have had somebody hugging me on Christmas.
Hay, the BeachBoys sang frosty the snowman
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Ungratefulness, as uncouth as it is, well I'm still going to say it. So somebody put together some brown paper Christmas gift bags and gave them out to us Charity cases. The dumb stuff that was in the bags: Little bags of generic vanilla Oreo type cookies and unsharpened pencils along with, a lollypop, a single sample size of laundry detergent. There was also some dumb God related saying printed on to a piece of paper and cut out. Somebody put a lot of effort getting together a bag of almost worthless stuff. I mean I like the laundry detergent but come on it's almost worse to be given stuff like this compared to nothing at all. Yay! An unsharpened pencil every homeless person really wants and needs this. It doesn't matter really I just type the insignificant events of my day. Listening to Elvis sing Christmas music.
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Not sure that I have the umph to write a bunch, just gulped sleepy time tea.
Where is my quality time with family and loved ones? I spent X-mas with my homeless friend we went to a couple of church masses one today one yesterday. At least I didn't have to sit by myself in church.
So I'm on therapist number 9. I'm trying to decide what to do about this situation....the ninth.
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What I don't like about number nine is that she asks me as if it's not obvious "so what do you want to get out of therapy". Maybe they have to ask this...but it really really worries me. I spent the first session spilling my guts and she says "she is getting to know me"...I went thought this before with the previous therapist who was getting to know me and never helped. So what am I supposed to do now (I ask this to SELF). Self question. lots of questions always...not the answers I want to hear. Anyways just venting I'm becoming sleepy. Somebody just put your arms around me and kiss the side of my head and I'll stop asking questions. I feel like I need to move on, forward no matter how much debris there is, the debris is not going back together. Start over. Can I start over?
I just need love not therapy?? Sleepy eyes. Night.
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Sometimes I think this self analysis stuff just fills up the space of my loneliness
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Going to come back here and babble to myself. Having a hard time getting to the point of my feelings right now, I mean I'm sort of there but I'm stressed about my father's illness and feeling impotent to do anything to make anything better. I just want a bunch of gay men to sit and knit with and just tell them how miserable I am. "Can I be your hag?"
I went to the library today and got a self-help type book on dating. Not that I believe that I'm going to find me a rich man to bail me out of my situation, I don't think or believe that. I'm just so lonely, I was way back when--during my responsible career woman phase, I was lonely but I was making money and doing an "important" job and I was independent and I was too proud to admit that I was in any way lonely but I was and that was part of what happened when I lost that job, I cared in a stressed out way but I didn't care in a sense because part of me was saying back to myself "IS this it?" Plus it didn't help that my female boss out of the blue pointed out to me that she is never going to get married either. That was when my co-worker was getting married...so I guess my boss thought I was left out? I don't know but its a mush of confusion all I know is that I don't want to be alone for the rest of my life but I am soooo accustomed to being alone it is weird to be anything different. Plus I don't seem to be having much luck convincing anybody that they could be in company with me. Just a ramble on here. I'm a little tired right now.
Some people are so bold when it comes to dating and unless I am flinging myself with crazy abandon, well I'm shy and embarrassed as if I don't deserve to be with somebody I have shame over seeking somebody to share love with. SAVE jump screen
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well if this is a creative project for 2012 onwards here we go. It appears that I'm supposed to get clear about what I want. HA ha. Well I think I should engage the other goofy whimsical side of my brain not think so much. What is one looking for, I mean are we really looking for traits and interests or are we looking for a relating style? I know its not we who are looking its just (ME) I.
Just being in the mindset of looking causes me to put out a vibe even in church...there was a married man looking at me and then he tried to make eye contact with me when I walked by leaving the church. Boy did I feel like Madonna the singer.
I'm afraid of love and romance and sexuality and relationship stuff because I can't hide my crazy, can't hide my insecurity and fears it's so horribly out there. I've been pretty good at being uptight and responsible and hiding all of my problems I haven't really acted out my dysfunction and I don't want to act it out in relationship and I know I shouldn't even be thinking about any of this considering my situation. But maybe my personal situation will eventually change and I will have got a head start on considering life again. To be among the living. I have no gracefullness in relationship at all. If I don't tell people how screwy I think I am does that mean that I'm lying? I don't think so most people don't proclaim their "crazy". We don't sing our crazy songs in the street at the top of our lungs. When is it okay to tell another person about something serious? Oh whatever I'm gonna go read my dumb dating book for a few minutes, have a cup of tea and go to sleep soon. Afraid my dating book is gonna make me feel worse. Peace y'all.
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I'm probably going to be about as successful with this project as I was with "fixing myself".
Of course Billy Holiday is singing "I've got my love to keep me warm".
"Time to do slothful things between Christmas and New Years" The radio announcer says.
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Today I'm not feeling so good for whatever reason my tummy hurts a little maybe it's just stress or being around a bunch of people with low immune systems. OR maybe my immune system is low.
I feel really lonely. My personal situation & my fathers situation, I know this is contributing to my whole interest in dating is that I just don't want to go through this alone but I also get it that nobody is going to want to go through this with me either.
So I was thinking of going for a walk and stopping to get a cup of coffee, taking my dating book with me and reading for a few minutes, just having this thought made me want to cry, the thought of reading a dating book makes me feel dreadful today. That wasnt the case yesterday.
I know I've got some weirdo stress/greif/social alienation stuff goin on. Just had to vent.
I just want a hug and a guy just wants some jugs....I know the whole thing is a really bad idea...thinking about dating. But if I'm single and lonely then NOT dating is also a bad idea. So screw it I'm going to do it anyways.
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I like dating books because it's not just me ruminating about my stuff its info on the interaction of peoples. The relating part.
So that makes me ask the question Does ruminating and digging into our own personal stuff really = better relating skills. I BET THIS is a SOCIAL FALSEHOOD. I bet self ruminating does not =better relationships!!!!! WOW imagine that!!!!!!!!When I take my dating book into a cafe, I sit in a dark corner with the jacket of the book facing down so nobody can see what I'm reading, when I go to the library I try to discretely not show people the cover of the book that I'm checking out!!! Funny right. Or too prideful or something. I have this weird fear that somebody is going to snicker. I'm afraid somebody is going to say "you're not worthy!!! you're not worthy" Sort of like the movie...what was it called...can't remember: Waynes World.
Just the act of allowing myself to read dating books is doing something to cheer me up. It's like an action that speaks to myself "I'm worth it, I'm worthy". Even if I don't have somebody right now it still feels good to allow the idea to percolate. I didn't allow the idea to percolate in the past to the point that if a guy did flirt with me or approach with me I wasn't mentally or emotionally prepared to respond in a friendly way. I was just sort of startled.
Just to even think or believe that maybe I might be worthy of love is a BIG deal to me. So if I've been posting a lot on here about this thanks for "hearing" me while I figure it out.
Weird that my horoscope even says that in the romance area, my lack of dealing with emotional issues has started to cause it's own problems. Interesting thought right?
NOT DEALING WITH ISSUES= more issues.
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Went to my second therapy appointment today. Nothing surprizing but I did communicate to her that I'm not sure how much this cognitive feedback type stuff is going to help. I blabbed nonstop which is weird for me.
She told me I was hard on myself. I've been told this before but that is who I am, I'm intense, serious, have some high expectations for myself even if it doesnt seem like I do.
Anyways the main thing that was reflected back to me is how CONFUSED I am. Some hope that I have a spark of internal navigation and passion towards an occupation BUT I don't have that anymore. I wasn't able to pursue my passions in the past and now I don't have the passion for them anymore. Besides it's part of my personality development that I don't know what I want to do with my life.
So she reflected back to me that I am confused...that is the feedback that I got from therapy...Is that helpful??
Not really, I already knew I was confused. So WHAT to do? Dive deeper into the confusion dive dive dive. Or deflect deflect deflect confusion and set sail on a random path.
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Well, should I stay the course is the question. For now I will just keep on going to therapy because for me it's free and in the smallest ways it might be good even if it doesnt seem like it's doing much.
Why not its free...
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Why I go to therapist...because I need help. If I knew how or what I needed then I wouldn't be compelled to go.
I tell them what my issues are, then I EXPECT them to figure it out!!! She is not helping me, she is not my friend. I'm frustrated.
She said something to me that was so NOT the right thing to say. She said "Well maybe this is where you need to be right now at this time in your life"....STUPID
She doesnt know what else to say, this is the kind of thing a person says when they are at a loss. I've struggled for a long time not making progress. I need to accomplish something.
I can't waste my time going back to this dumb therapist. This is not where I NEED to be...not now, not ever, nobody needs this crap. So I guess what happens is I politely ask her if I can be sent to somebody else...which is what I thought she was going to do anyways. She is not an intern but very recently out of school...not a lot of experience...I need something more, somebody who actually cares and is engaged and has continued in the same occupation for a reason. I'm not there so she can build her career. I'm there to get help and if she is not going to be helpful then I need to do something else.
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Read an article about marriage that pointed out the costs of weddings. Even after removing the tulle and fluff and flounce, the left over skeleton framework, bones, nuts and bolts of it is that tradionally and I think even alchemically? )that a word?
Anyways...that the coming together of two families is part of it. For me this concept even puts a weird confusion in my soul because even though I am supposed to embrace the imperfectness of my family the fact of the matter is what I had was NOT family.
Meaning we didn't love each other in a healthy way...so fast forward to adult self. I don't fully love myself nor do I feel that I am lovable...nor do I have good loving THE other skills...and that is the weird magic part. Its not just what someone does or says there is an Aura around people. A relationship Aura that people have and they learned it somewhere along the way in life. I guess I'm diving into the creative project of this all. Part of the creative assignment is basically, I guess, is to create this Aura or attune it differently.
The only thing I can think of right now that is so obvious is how I can just totally feel my aura change when I am gardening or adoring plants in some way.
I think relationship actually confuses my energy because I don't want to revert backwards to family role models but reforming it is so hard and it's a manufactured thing...and so I ask myself am I only able to fake relating in a loving way or can I do what my brother wasnt able to do...and truely find my own new and different way? It's just a question to the universe not really needing an answer.MAybe I need to ask the questions more than I need to get the answers because I know the right answer is experiencial in nature. My questions are baby steps for myself so I keep asking.
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Thinking about how our relational patterns with others is part and parcel of ones relational patterns to the world at large, additionally how we relate to ourselves is brought into our relationship with other.
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BPD
Started wondering tonight if I have borderline personality disorder. I was reading about it then thought (hay maybe I have this).
Don't like the idea of it though because it sounds like a permanent disease.
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All relative of course, still I'm not feeling my regular screwed up confused self. Tonight I walked down to a place where I listen to music sometimes. I walked by the entrance, saw that it was busy, maybe a little more than typical and just didn't feel like going in. The feeling of having to be somewhere by myself feels different than it does to be somewhere with other people. It's almost like something is against some rule...the unwritten social rules...not allowed to go listen to music by myself cus I stick out like an uncomfortable sore thumb. So I just turned around went "home".
Maybe it's just a slump within a slump within a slump.
I'm too tired to hope. Hope is a pushy energy the feeling of being excited and propelled forward. I've never been haggard previous times in my life. I think haggard is it's own emotion because there is a facial expression that goes along with it. It's like when somebody is almost too tired to express despair or its sadness that has gone on for too long or who knows what. Its that broken by life look. I almost have it sometimes.
I'm just tired beyond tired and seeing a therapist makes me feel worse because it seems to reinforce that there really isnt help out there at all.
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Heck, I'm just "checking in". This morning I woke up with a combination of blatant clarity, resignation, calmness. As differentiated from trying, TRYING, figuring, MAKING, FORCING life to WORK! work...working...
It's not "good" this blatant clarity, calmness and resignation feeling. It's like being 90 years old sitting in a rocking chair on a porch watching the clouds drift westerly. creak creak creak....ssshhhhewww wind blowing by...sure throw in a tumble weed or two why not.
Three snow flakes
I'm good, that's all the checking in I need to do today. Working offline today, discovered something new.
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My father has not reached a closeness to death yet. It is clear though that his health is declining dramatically and that he is not going to get better.
As taboo as it is the last couple of days I was thinking to myself that my father's decline is a wake up call to my own mortality and also that maybe conceptually the decline of a parent shows a passing of the torch.
My father only put limitations and rules on me but didnt challenge or cheer for or support or protect or teach skills and self esteem reliance to me. He just wasnt a father figure. Nor did he teach me that I should want something out of life for myself. I think my father wanted to mold me into the kind of wife he would want--based on his own insecurities and weaknesses. His impression of what a girl should grow up to be like and what she shouldnt be. In someways I think my father brain washed me.
Where was my childhood? It was a childhood of my own world not in positive relation to adults. Me to keep my father company and me for my mother to demand money from my father. There was no family at all.
I go to church and I see all the families, a small church and I AM the only person that sits alone. I hate it when we have to shake each other's hands...I dread this....I just want to be anonymous in a big city style where you don't have to know your neighbors. I'm afraid of togetherness in someways. ( more meant hear...write more another time)
I just wonder if I will feel freed by my father's eventual passing away?
I can't rekindle a relationship with my father during his illness because I'm still recouperating from what I grew up with. I don't want to slide backwards.
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Today I have some heartache. Not sure what the source of it is. Just that dull sour feeling in my heart. Maybe it's lonliness. Maybe its the fact that I don't seem to be date-able right now if ever. I went in for a dumb data entry job skills test today in an office for a temporary data entry job that pays a very low wage and I'm already on the verge of carpel tunnel if I don't already have it. That is something I'm not feeling great about and even the Therapist says that all these odd temp jobs are not helping my self esteem at all. She is right about that.
Just wish I had something enlivening going on. Something that felt good. Cus it all feels like a drag. I'm a drag...maybe just need nap.
Been reading about 8 different dating/family relationships books some of them are very good but the more I learn the more impossible it appears that I will be anything then what I am (sort of messed up).
Try a nap, wake up see if I feel better.
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"Mamma never told me" could be "Mamma never showed me"
Doing an intensive relationship study. Along the lines of voicelessness and what contributes to it is not just the Narcissistic person but the way my family dynamics were. The "family" group as a whole never talked together as a group. There was an odd and unclear haphazard way that decisions were made often drivin by the N it seems. Some families really do all talk together in group settings maybe they BBQ together, all sit in the car together and chit chat. My "family" never ever did any of this. My personality came out of this and maybe my personality sucks.
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The need for family never goes away no matter how old a person is. It's not as if one only needs family when they are a child.
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Just checking in, weird that I do this. I have nobody real to check in with, except for maybe the therapist. Whats the point.
Today I'm in a funk more then usual, I woke up from sleep with a strange pain, then this morning I woke up from a nightmare that made my heart go pitter patter. Dreamt that I was house sitting, some people showed up being pushy claiming that they were scheduled exterminators but I knew they were not scheduled to be there. I called the police. But they ended up stabbing me with knives anyways. So I woke up. The whole time I kept thinking during the dream that I should have handled the situation differently and I think that is the important part of the dream: that I know I could or should be handleing things differently but I don't because the correct actions are a little vague or out of reach. Anyways I feel so worn out, maybe I've been trying too hard. Reading too much out of boredom and inability to do much else. Since I don't have a car and money its hard to have friends to go do things with.
The therapist isnt helping at all. She says that patients state some kind of improvement when they have somebody to listen to them. But I don't just need somebody to listen and hear. Its just not enough.
I don't want to write anymore. I woke up this morning and yelled "I want to get out of here, I hate this place!" Just a funky day. But I think my worst days are the most honest days the rest of the time the truth is being delt with really, its submerged.
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Went for a walk in the rain by the water, watched some birds dive and come back up in unison. Carried an umbrella the whole time.
My jeans got wet, I came back took them off and made some food and decaf coffee. I'm dead tired emotionally. I never was a part of a family growing up and I'm realizing that I won't even be part of a family at all. I'm homeless, unemployed, my father is sick, I really don't have a special skills except for the ones that I gained that were very job specific. Therapy isn't helping. So no wonder I find things to distract myself with, to distract my mind with. Thing is I want to face my problems I don't want to be distracted and confused and avoidant any longer but I honestly feel that I am not going to be able to tackle anything to my satisfaction. I'm not going to be satisfied with what ultimately is just my inability to deal with it all. I don't have special tricky cards up my sleeves.
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My mother called me this evening. The coversation was a conversation I've had with her probably 1,000 times. It's predictable and I can pretty much out talk her because of all the thinking I've done about my relationship with her. I can see something happening and the pattern is obvious but it's just a broken thing. Its a broken record. My mother actually find humour in my homelessness and that's a pretty harsh thing. I would call that an abusive attitude. I know people tend to steer away from the word abuse. Its been really hard for me to understand how my mother could take some kind of pleasure in my suffering.
I think its like she is taking out on me her own sense of neglect and lack, she feels that her mother did her wrong and she perpetuates it with me. Or something like that. I really don't know, somehow my aunt didn't turn out to be the kind of mother mine turned into. Mothers are supposed to provide nurturing.
When I talk with my mother on the phone its as if she is talking to somebody less mature and younger then I really am. Possibly I am not as mature as I could or should be but what I'm trying to say is I don't feel my actual age when she speaks to me.
I brought up some points that are significant to me. Even if she doesnt validate it, and I know there is no point in even discussing anything with her but still its part of me speaking my truth. I notice how when I have said something extremely important she continues to run on about her static scripted topic that she repeats every single time.
It also helps me to see why it has been so hard for me to pinpoint what is important because nobody else ever helped me to do that.
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There was literally no conscious space for aspects of me to grow & inhabit in the verbal/mind/communication/relating realm.
What would that have meant, it would have meant some space for me, it would have meant that on occasion my family had conversations with me. Or that in the middle of talking with them there was a literal pause--and space for topics to unfold. I would have existed in some of that but instead...its the conveyor belt that keeps moving in a fixed way towards the same outcome.
Simultaneously There was no break in the Narcissistic routine. The model of interactions, these unspoken things often frightened or intimidated me.
I'm seeing how I went underground and my own understanding was confused.
It's possible that I'm an example of a person who turned inward a dysfunctional reaction to a dysfunctional experience.
I'm more of a quiet, studious, shy, like to be focused on art or work or something kind of person.
My brother was never at all shy but he has had just as few good friendships/relationships as I have. My brother worked as a sales person at conventions and he worked as a bouncer in bars (strip clubs to be honest), he also did other people interacting jobs.
So maybe that's just part of his personality, I don't know where he got that from because I didn't get that ability. I almost wonder sometimes if I have a social phobia because large groups of people I don't know what to do unless I have a task. I was able to teach classes in college fine.
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I think I am probably about as unfriendly and un-nice to other people as my mother is to me.
That one brief hiatus where I hadn't talked to my mother for about 6 months that resulted in her talking to a therapist...and the therapist must have told her just to try being nice to me.
So my mother was nice for about two months. It's the only time I ever remember her being that way ever. It was strange.
I'm probably not nice, I don't mean malicious but I'm just not a friendly person. It's my habit, mode.
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I haven't been writing too much on the board lately. I'm wondering how much of daily voicelessness is just a standard aspect of relating to people. I think it's pretty normal for people to experience voicelessness now and then except that it stings more for people who have had a lot of it in terms of personality development. --Because the voicelessness also is part of an invisible personality/ and lacking a powerful sense on self-value.
So, I had to make an appointment with the housing director, I typically don't say a whole lot to her I just let her blabber on. She actually wants to tell me about her problems. Why would I care? She isn't homeless...she said to me: "Everybody has problems"...yeah I know this I don't need her to tell me this- what difference does this make to me?? This time I did talk more to her and I noticed that at the same time she is making statements about self esteem and such social worker lingo she was talking over me. She just keeps on talking over what I am saying and it's all about her being a person of authority. There is something so false in these types of interactions. On one hand she thinks she is some sort of expert on dejected poor people etc. because she must have studied social work somewhere along the path of life. Yet she doesnt even see herself talking over people like us. I'm an adult and I'm sick of meeting with her because I feel talked down to as if I am infantile. So I avoid her even though she seems pleasant-- I can't stand her right now. Plus she doesnt run this place very well. She sits there and blabs and blabs to me and repeats herself during the hour that I have scheduled with her so that she can make sure that she is filling up the hour and that the hour is documented on her own timesheets for when she gets paid. But it's not helping me. It's really sad to me that people get to the point where all they are doing is ensuring their own paycheck. It's hard to respect or admire that on my end. jump screen
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Next week I've got another counseling appointment coming up and an interview.
When my mother brings up with me over the telephone things that I don't wish to discuss with her, I just tell her now that I'm speaking with a counselor and that I would prefer to not discus it with her (my mother).
So then my mother responds to that by acting like me seeing a counselor PROVES that I'm the one who has a problem. That I am
F'-ed up. It makes me feel angry. My mother acts like my counselor is going to unearth some kind of severe psychological problem that proves that I'm garbage and flawed.
My mother acts like she is winning if I am so desperate that I have to see a counselor. Unfortunately my couselor doesnt get these weird nuances of the dynamics I have with my mother.
I've said to my counselor that I fantasize that someday I will not speak with my mother any longer that I have pretty much mained very limited contact with my father and brother and that for me I believe that I WILL HAVE accomplished something when I mother is no longer a part of my life. My counselor doesnt seem to get this and it makes me angry that she doesnt understand how emotionally painful it--
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--continue:
...how emotionally painful it is to maintain a relationship with my relatives. It's an emotional and neural network that gets reinforced over and over again in my brain. There is an emotionaly damaged and path of pain that is branded in my brain from my mother.
I wish my therapist was smarter. She just doesnt get it.
If I ask my therapist:
How do I become unhomeless
How do I cut my mother out of life forever so her presense and her impact on me ceases
How do I feel like I belong
My therapist can't answer these questions. And if I am supposed to answer these questions for myself I will just fail because look at where I got myself.
I want some answers, I want imput. I wish I had some guidance. I have no guidance and I don't know how to do what I need to do.
????????????????
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I'm not feeling understood by my therapist at all. She doesnt understand that my homeless is pretty much a version of death. It's an alternative to suicide it is just another way of completely checking out of life and the world. A way of basically not even believing or experience my right to exist in the world. On Monday I'm going to find the referral information again and see what else I can find out
I can understand my situation but I really cant change my experiences and my emotional problems.
On top of everything that I already have going on now I just have a greater sense of loss and shame from my circumstances and then trying to explain all of it to somebody. It's too much to explain. Explaining it is only one part of it THEN FEELING LIKE I HAVE TO GET MY THERAPIST TO UNDERSTAND IT. I'm too tired to be responsible for her lack of understanding. I don't want to feel like I have to make her understand it. That is where some of my frustration is. I'm too tired to explain anymore to somebody who doesnt get it.
I can just see it in her eyes that it isn't clicking and if I can't even get past that with her then how is she ever going to be useful to me.
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This just shouldnt be so much of a struggle. It's just the basics of life.
So why can't I say to my therapist: " So that friend that I have the one that isn't struggling and clueless, well tell me what she did, whatever she got that I didn't get...tell me how to get that"....
Because I didn't start therapy to ACCEPT that whatever she got I'm never going to understand/have.
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Cross my eyes, sometimes I wonder why I'm still even writing anything here, because clearly nothing in my life is changing all that much.
Today, I walked back to a beading supply store that I had past on a prior walk. Messed around, I usually don't allow myself to f*ck around with nonsense like this. I gave myself a break, I thought about making my mother a pair of earrings. I didn't bring any cash with me as I never really walk around with money unless I have a specific thing I need to buy with it like tampons.
I really don't want to write this out as it's boring to write.
So there were some light purple beads that I stacked up on a headpin to imagine what it would look like as an earrings. I spent quite a lot of time trying to figure out some configuration that didn't look kitchy. Then I put them all back and went to the grocery store and bought a bag of BBQ potato chips for lunch since I was far away from "home". I ate them on my way home. Then I bought a watermelon and ate about 80 percent of it. Previous evening I had 3 pieces of cold pizza left out by some questionable person.
I dropped some of the pizza on the floor and then I put it right back into the box for the next person to eat. Gross right.
The watermelon was from my second walk, not the greatest choice because I had to haul it a long way "home". It's Sunday. I don't have a lot to do and I have to get out of here. I often combine my exercise effort and grocery shopping at the same time.
Somebody asked me how I was doing today and I told her "Sick of living in this shit hole"
Somebody put their turds into the washing machine. Rumor has it that she has IBS. Irritable bowel syndrome.
Yet parents at least know to put their kids poop into the garbage before washing the cloth diapers.
So anyways I've been avoiding doing the laundry machine thing for a while. I have enough clean clothes I don't need to do it yet.
Think I have been drinking too much coffee. I get it at the food bank can you believe it--right how dare I get free coffee while working people must pay for a luxury item such as that. (That is what I used to think myself).
It's not good for me anyways. I think I've just been juiced up because the last couple days it's been hell to get out of bed.
I went to church today and left early because I hate it when they make people shake each other's hands and say "may the love of Christ be with you". Maybe it's a social phobia.
Today was a nice day weather wise. I'm not interested in volunteering in the community garden anymore though. I feel too unincorporated. I still don't live here permanently, still don't have a permanent job.
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Got back from spending the weekend at my mother's house to do a studio tour event with her.
A combo of maybe iron deficiency, PMS, birthday celebrations, maybe being sick, being allergic to her dog, all made me a royal itch. Oh well, can't help it, it's bad enough when I spend time at her place but add all the other things on top of it and it's too much.
So I drove around in the car with her doing the tour. Eef.....it was pretty boring. We stopped for a snack and beer midway. There were people sitting out on the porch in the nice weather relaxing at the restaurant we stopped at but my mother started complaining the second we got there that we needed immediate service and she wanted to sit near the bar so we did. It wasn't relaxing because the whole time she was impatient. Predictable.
There was also a house remodel guy there and the house reeked of glue. The woman my mother choose to plan and organize the remodel is doing a very unprofessional job so the whole time I was there she told me about how the sink had to be put in 3 times, they cut the marble the wrong way, the tiles were not the tile she ordered but she let them install it anyways. It's just dumb.
Every time she looks at the tile she is going to think: "That's not what I ordered". She should have just come up with an alternative that she liked. It was obvious when I first met the woman that she wasn't professional and organized but my mother paid her anyways. My mother installed a marble lined sink to wash her pet poodle in.
Her husband made a few snarkey comments but it's predictable so I just hear it and say to myself "Okay, I heard that but he's a jerk and I already know that, no surprise here". They have owned the same big flat screened TV for years and they still can't figure out how to use it. I don't own a TV, haven't had one for years now but even I can figure it out. So they discussed driving into town to rent a movie my mother wanted to see except that they didn't really want to bother to go into town. So her husband was talking and talking about the pay-per view thing on the TV, he couldn't get it to work and then gave up and turned the TV back on so I said "here let me try it"..In less than one minute I had the movie ordered and playing on their TV. They are just to lamest people sometimes. There was a part shipped in the mail that they needed for the remodel and they were too dumb to look in the box for the plumbing part that came with everything else so they went and purchased another part that didn't fit well and then noticed afterwards that they had the right part all along in the box.
I tried to hoe out some of her weeds near her vegetable garden but I realized that it was more work than I could complete because she doesn't really enjoy gardening--she isn't going to continue what I started or keep up with it. It requires too much effort and she is lazy. Anything that requires much effort she never gets too energized about it. She wanted me to put in some vegetables but I was like "whoa, this really needs to be weeded first".
There are a few plants that I put in years ago because there were some barren spots in their yard, now years later they have ripped them out the nice established perennials and replaced them with a few widely spaced marigolds that don't look very good. She said she wanted ground cover and once the plant does it's job "covering the ground"--she says it's taking over and it's "invasive". That is what a good ground cover is suppose to do. :roll:
It's not my home, not my project. I'm not going to put that much effort into it. I get de-energized by them.
The house was nicely landscaped when they moved in but they have really ruined it by removing too many established plants.
It was boring.
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Went on a canned clam chowder kick for the last three days. Today I got an extra can of clams to put into the chowder and got grossed out just too much clam for me after all. I like the small ones but not so much the ones that are mostly composed of their stomach contents that is green and breaks open into the clam chowder and turns it all into a sand-bit and sea-weedy mess. Seaweed and milk don't go together.
I have probably nothing to say, no major events, it's probably the lack of major events that is getting to me. Boredom and time passing and just doing nothing about it.
I think to myself "What happened to me". to ME
Where did ((I)) go.
As if I can not accept the current state of affairs and also can not do much to change it positively.
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The over all quality of my life and how did it get this lame-o.
Summer is here. I don't have a vehicle, BBQ, spending money, don't really know anybody around here who does who's sanity isn't questionable. Somebody offered to take me with her to a park etc but I didn't want to go with her.
So how is my summer going to go? Am I allowed to have fun? How do I have fun at my age? People my age have fun by spending time with their children alternatively climb Mt. Everest .
I suppose I could find trees and books and a blanket and call it good. Just chill out.
I guess not only "Where did I go" but "where did fun go? "
Feeling that I need to write about minutia, so maybe I make the time to write it elsewhere.
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I'm afraid of taking any leaps to do anything major or to go anywhere. Leaving and trying a better area is an idea that keeps on coming up for me but I'm worried about randomly just going somewhere with no money and nowhere in particular to go--that is logical, rational, reasonable. Sigh.
Breathe. So I worry, or am angry that I've gotten to this point.
I'm hateful, I want to punch the intern at the social worker's office. The intern that does her stupid text messages every 3 minutes.
I also want to punch the snot b*tch that works with her, also the "career something or other"...person who works there. All of them. I wonder why any of them get paid at all.
The intern who's project it is to help university students get food stamps? Of course these university kids can afford vehicles and gas and entertainment and beer--but I guess since their parents are paying for it- I pads and I phones and I pods and I everything.
No seriously I see people in line at the foodbank with Kindles and salon-highlights--huge SUV's? AND --I feel like I'm missing something I really do.
Anyways, I didn't really write probably what I wanted to write here only that my life has changed. All these things that are supposed to be like emergency type things has become a new way of life for me. This is it for me--right now.
I complain a lot to the people who ask me "how are you"---I just say crappy. I think it's just being honest but they see it as me being negative. I think well then stop F'ing asking me. Oh well right.
Today was really a beautiful day and I didn't do much at all. I wish that I had gone hiking or camping or BBQ'ed or done something. I find it really not practical to try to do any of the those things. I went to the library and checked out like 10 movies because it costs nothing. The librarian was elated that I actually brought my library card this time she was NICE to me for once. She even let me check out more movies than I was supposed to. Go figure.
Somebody got hauled away to a "psychiatric ward" last night or some such thing as was told by my "neighbor" I guess it was bothering her today because she had known the person for like 40 years. BUT why do I care!! I don't, I don't want to be friends with any of these people but I have to get along with them.
Today while I was in the kitchen one of the women I know who had drug issues in the "past" had to roll up her sleeves to do her dishes and I could see that her left wrist has about 8 punctures in it. It just sort of grossed me out, a little sad, a little grossed out.
At the same time she was saying she was unable to sleep. It's pretty common around here, there is another woman who came back from spending a few weeks "with her boyfriend" out of town and came back with her right hand all marked up.
It gets on my nerves, people here are not supposed to be using anything--I guess the staff doesnt notice. I mean I know it's an addiction and everything but I just really don't want to be around it at all. I have even like an aversion to it. It reminds me of zombies.
"Animated Corpses".
It's sad, it's really remarkable how many people are impacted by drug abuse. It's like everyone knows somebody at some point in their lives who had a problem like this. Yet I still don't want to be around it--AT ALL. Not at all. I don't want to be here. This place isn't doing shit for my soul, my spirit, my self esteem. I don't belong here.
I thought today I would just take some old food magazines and sit under a tree and read recipes or something but I just didn't do it.
I put on a pair of earrings and a necklace and went for a walk. Attempted to put my hair up--sort of like an up-doo but I also never got the hang of it. That's about it.----------- As I was walking I looked at myself in the reflection of a window and saw the tennis shoes and the skirt and thought I looked like a frumpy dork--and really really wondered: Who the F am I anymore.
After about 10 movies I will find something else to do I hope. Something that doesnt involve couch potato type routines.
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this morn im getting ready for an interview for a permanent job this time, unlike the seasonal and temp jobs ive had to use
so I had salsa and chips for breakfast because i'm sort of low on funds, i didn't make it to the foodbank because i wasn't feeling well and when i finally got down there the line was too long anyhow
it's going to be a crap bus trip with hours of waiting both ways at the bus station because the bus i need doesn't connect
so my frustration at how fing hard the little things are sometimes makes me want to cry or spit at the person that asks me how im doing and expects me to tell them "im happy" --but i'm not going to get into the whole cycle of frustration right now
so of course there is a part of me, the part that is pre-corporate slob, the part that is not the inner child--older but a believer and intuitive
this part was panicking this morning, an out of control claustrophobic pain around my heart
she says "NO, I don't want to do this job, i've spent years imprisoned inside lifeless cubicles and for what!!!"
she warns all sorts of things about how it will be a dead end job
i have to agree with her, she is right in her own way and thats okay---
the truth is i don't know where to find a place for her in this world--my waking reality of the me that interfaces with life is practical, mundane, anxious, bored, disappointed and responsible
this other part of me that is foreseeing one type of stuck for another type of stuck and a continual cycle
an aspect that needs freedom, creativity and to actually live out real potential in life to *live* and *be alive*
its probably my more artsy side, the seeking side, the adventurous side
I don't know how old this side is, maybe she is 20, 19, 22 yrs old
she seems to always be saying "life can be better" look at life, look at the world and experience it
versus the corporate self that says: what is my quota, what is on my calendar, what is in my e-mail, what is on my co-workers calendar, what is my tight budget saying I'm allowed to do, pat my hair down, swipe the time clock, swipe it again, sign in, where is my key card, where do I park, look at my new work shoes, do i have energy to take a class at night, where is my something, try harder to look like i actually care, lie to them and say yes "i love processing paperwork, hundreds and hundreds of the same things, thousands of the same things"
i told the different me just to get through this one day, that i wouldn't lie to her, that yes this job would take up most of my energy and leave nothing left over, that it most likely isn't going to lead to someplace she wants to be...i thanked her, told her that i need to hear from her even if the outside world isn't reflecting back to her a place where she flourishes...still it's another part and she is speaking to me in terms of a panic, an anxiety a fear of sorts and thats okay, today is Friday and we only need to get through this one day
okay time to get dressed
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Yesterday I managed to go hiking. Was pleasant and since it was such a very long time since I've done any outdoorsy activities it was sort of a reminder that things could be a hell of a lot different. Besides that I don't think there is much that I need to say at all.
Hiking gives me some sort of mental break and I really do feel like I can breathe better when I hike. Today the weather is not so good though or else I probably would have gone again today.
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Occurs to me that "no-contact" is both real and symbolic.
It's real in the sense that being a self-contained/independent/unconnected adult theoretically seems possible and even maybe some people do it.
I think about how alienated I feel from my family and how very little they honestly care.
The contact part should be more easy.
Maybe I feel guilty when I try to be "contact" because I'm being "bad"--the little disobedient child.
Relatives can treat me like cr@p but nobody says a word to them about it. It's only if I'm no contact and the (I) am the one who is acting weird/even "being manipulative".
I guess the "symbolism" of no contact is maybe a belated expression that a kid might have of "I want to do it my own way"-- or "I can do it myself".
It's just taken me a very long time to realize that nothing related to my relatives is going to be "fixed" ever--meaning that it is never going to get better. In fact it has only gotten worse.
I don't know, why is it symbolic? It's supposed to be transformative. Be a catalyst for change but it isn't.
I've noticed that the therapists I've seen plainly can't relate to me. They don't understand, truly they just don't get it.
Socially in America this is suppose to be the solution to a bad childhood, a dysfunctional family, emotional problems, co-dependency whatever ya wanta call it--"go see a therapist". Why?
I'm just rambling here. Maybe just frustrated with the fact that the "path to solutions" really isn't.
bored of the mess
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So my mother helped my tyrannically alcoholic brother buy a house, he lives in it now I guess. It astounds me because he has never saved money in his life. The most he could ever manage to save up for was for a used motorcycle. That has pretty much been his mentality, drugs, motorcycles...
They were talking about it but I thought it was all talk. Now that my brother does nothing but sit on his ass and he doesn't have a driver's license because of too many DUI's....he can't get in trouble--otherwise he would lose the house.
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A while ago I visited this social worker who was younger than me and pretty rude. She gave me another person's phone number in the same office who was their "employment" specialist. The "employment" specialist wanted to look over my resume. I showed it to her and she didn't find anything wrong because I've already had it reviewed 3 or 4 times. The employment specialist literally told me that the state and government is bankrupt. I mean I know that, I listen to the news on the radio and this is not new news.
She pointed to a computer work station in their office for job searching. After coming in a few days and using the computer the office changed their policy and told me that I could only use it at a certain time because they have an intern who works there and signs up college students for foodstamps on the computer that sits adjacent to the job search computer.
Basically they don't like that I'm coming in to use the computer that often. They said that the intern is discussing confidential information with people. Every conversation in that office I can hear and it's all confidential. I hear people residence info, medical issue info. Nothing in the office is confidential so that's hardly valid.
So today I was using the computer and I went past the idiotic time that I'm supposed to use it because the intern wasn't even there. The receptionist at the front desk came back and rudely told me to get off of the computer. I left--the two computers empty. So I figure I will just go ahead and let them rudely kick me off of the computer that was intended for the purpose I'm using it for.
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It was the end of 2009 that I started to write here on this board. Just looked at my profile info to check cause I have no good grasp of time. When I read other people's stories on here about their relatives behavior that is when I thought it described my mother very very well.
Got to admit though I'm burnt out on focusing on the dysfunction in my family. The truth is there is just way too much to process. It will never be processed. In the end I'm going to be so old by the time I feel like I've got it straight it just won't flicking matter anyhow. Sigh. Maybe if only I could have a hobby like long distance bike riding. (that doesnt really appeal)
Just something like playing cards, doing magic tricks, anything, something to obsess over. Other than this.
I've had them in the past all spontaneously finding me. But now it's like nothing really. Why do I feel this way? Am I getting old?
guess Im saying this because it's been an unfurling and i wonder really it must be okay for it to be sort of a slow process maybe.
I'm way more detached sort of I think. Or maybe a little bit more realistic. Then again I feel that I have an odd sense of reality that not many people share. The darker something is the closer to the truth I feel like I'm getting. Who wants to walk down that never ending hallway though.
Sometimes I just want to flush it all out with some clean water, sort of flood and irrigate a scrabble board of all it's pieces...no more puzzle parts just gently irrigate until it's just clean. Maybe I've been trying to scrub myself of all my families problems. It's such a horrible way to spend one's time isnt it? I mean I'm not knocking it, I do think it's valuable. It's just that wow this in itself is starting to feel like it's own mental illness, this thinking about what is wrong. It still stems from the feeling that I have and that a lot of other people here have that somehow we are just bad, flawed, unlovable, unheard, have nothing to say, no story, are invisible etc.
I'm really just writing this because I was thinking today about how I wish I had figured this out maybe 10 years ago. I don't know if that is really possible. Sometimes I feel dumb for taking so long to really get it. Then again I sort of chalk it up to the randomness of running across info and having certain experiences...can't really force that kind of thing into a timeline.
Not really processing very much right now. Sort of artificially holding myself up and out of a depression maybe. I think I have enough fear that it's preventing me from being depressed. I've got that feeling like as soon as I can really relax that I might collapse for days and days and just sleep. Then again I'm also rather bored with my personal situation.
No therapist I've talked to has ever sufficiently explained to me more about the big WHY? I know it doesnt make sense. I know life just isn't fair or rational. THERE is still some part of me after all of this that still says WHY?????
I'm tired so maybe I will sleep soon.
I mean learning that one's mother has a personality disorder or some such thing really is a major type of shift in perspective. Experiencing the innerchild work etc. Knowing that I might have a personality disorder although never have been diagnosed.
I mean is it part of the Narcissistic glamour that I feel that I'm really really f'ed up. Sometimes I see that they are f'ed up other times I think that I'm really f'ed up. Are we all really this f'ed up? Is it me, is it them, is it all of us (me and them) or is it even ALL of us, me and the postman too. All sort of insane.
Is my life a reflection of how f'ed up I am or is it just circumstances AND does it all shift when I leave for a few hours and go volunteer.
I haven't been volunteering but I miss the change in perspective.
Still think about moving out of state. I don't want to be alone. And I also feel like if only I could put some literal separation it would help.
Like maybe I really could be a different person in a new place. Like when a kid goes away to summer camp and it's the most time they have spent away from their family, when they get back home there is this feeling of confidence at having been away.
Can we get away? Do we carry it with us? Is there a magic fast track.
Part of the problem is this is all a model of unhealthy. Some people I think hem and haw and deliberate within a model of healthy. There is no fix to unhealthy. The fix is to stop. It's like smoking cigarettes. There isn't a better way to hold the cigarette, not a better place in which to smoke, not a better brand, not a correct smoking jacket, not a better friend to smoke with the only thing to do really is just to stop smoking. Same thing with women who leave alcoholics or abusive boyfriends etc.
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Yesterday, I went hiking again. I can catch a bus out to a place where I can go for a hike it's rather nice. There is a stream I can sit by and chill out. The forest has a weird sort of surreal look to me. I never used to be this way but I guess my life is so myopic now that when I get out in nature it just all seems like a weird dream.
I've come to complain as usual. So go ahead and don't read it.
I just wanted to state about my blankets. See sometimes I forget how old I am. Often I feel like I'm a teenager or something. I'm really not living an adults life. An adults life includes some sort of real autonomy and use of some type of skill etc. Some sort of expression of competence. Well none of that is happening. So I'm complaining about it. I think that "complaining" actually keeps my mind into some sort of alignment or else I begin to accept.
Yes, for me I imagine that complaining is a way of pushing something away.
When I came here I was given blankets. Yes it's very nice blah blah. Truth is I have paid for them when I pay money to stay here. They were also used. One is solid bubble gum pink. There is a quilt that is pink with little pink flowers. There are a set of sheets that have little pink baby-dolls on it. Baby dolls with weird vapid eyes wearing bonnets and aprons.
It's fine if you are cold you are cold! Or maybe I should say if I'm cold I'm cold!
It's fine for a week. It's not fine as a real life style.
That's all, I'm just reminding myself that I am not a baby doll. A vapid one.
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Well there is one thing I can say to myself and say it often: this incarnation has some very unusual lessons to teach me...and that would be a comforting thought if I believed in reincarnation. If only I had been raised on that maybe it would all be easier.
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Wanted to come and just write to myself etc. The question about the difference between Narcissistic and Histrionic had gotten me thinking about the text book and ICD 10 descriptions of these things. The avoidant personality resonates with me somewhat. I mean I don't hide behind trees when someone is walking down the sidewalk.
If I have it, it's probably relatively mild.
I just don't want to start conversations at church, don't want to shake their hands. Going up to people I don't know and introducing myself. I don't do it. I mean I really really detest it. It does feel like a weird fault that I shouldn't have at my age. A lot of other people don't have it.
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So I know that I've gotten into this whole complain type thing. For myself I think it's valid.
On the other hand I remember a time when I wasn't like this. When I was more interested in hobbies or life and learning and adventure etc. After being around a bunch of critical people at work for years I think it just rubbed off on me.
So I thought maybe I have to really intentionally balance the two. Just have time each day where I am not thinking about what needs to be solved and what is wrong.
I know it sounds simple but I feel guilty as if I'm not working hard enough unless I'm always trying to solve something.
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Different thought:
Oh heck, really I should just stop thinking for a bit. Had too much coffee probably.
I'm totally under-stimulated. Also haven't felt a full on relief for a long time--just that time where one really relaxes and knows things are just okay. That feeling that (I'm safe and there is not some impending problem)
I can kind of step away and see myself worried and stuck, I'm not sure that I'm {not doing enough}.
It's like I have been on a plane trip lay over that has lasted WAY TOO LONG. How can this be it.
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So to be honest yes I have had to borrow money from my NPD mother. I'm embarrassed to say so. Especially at my age. Other people could borrow money from their family though without it being an issue. It's so that I can stay in the living situation I am in--one that I don't wish to be in but that is simply better than some alternatives.
I can see myself. How being in a bad spot in life makes me more vulnerable and IN the sick relationship. It's sort of a fact of life for me right now though.
The truth is my Nar mother hasn't done anything new or bad....it's the same similar little bits of verbal abuse. Its just that it's taken a really long time for me to come out of the fog of the family and understand how messed up it was. After I leave that behind, and face my own life on it's own separate screen....then my personal movie scares me as well. I sort of thought I was doing good when I had a decent job going BUT I was rather lonely and maybe didn't even know it. {I'm FINE!, I'm INDEPENDENT!, I can do everything ALONE!}
In some ways I don't care though. My family didn't pay for a wedding or pay for me to finish college or buy me a car etc.
It's not like I've ever had a wedding registry. There are plenty of times when people just get stuff.
I don't want to be needing resources from my mother though. Part of me just says screw it though because she helped my brother buy a house and I'm just trying to survive and stay off the streets--so I just take it and pay my rent here. Yeah. I have to pay rent.
Sometimes I wonder if I got here in this space/place in life because of some sort of unconscious happening. That and combined with just random events in life.
What if I was living a persona that I didn't 100% want to be. I'm was like a left over from the women's lib generation-
I don't need anybody
I can do it ALL myself
I'm happy alone
I never want a family
I never want to be married
Life is easier and SAFER alone
I value my career above everything else
I'm a professional
work and hobbies are enough to fill my life
Now I feel like I'm pigeon holed into that mentality BUT I'm not even that person anymore. I told myself I'm alone by choice BUT maybe I was lying to myself and just didn't realize it.
I assumed all of these things-- it was like a persona that played itself out too long, I was getting bored with my job, realized that I was saving money and I didn't really know what for.
I didn't take the promotion then lost my job, economy dumped, became depressed...related to the Narcissism issue because I was experiencing it at work as well-- I thought {I'm a grown up, not a little child, adults are more mature, I will never experience again the things that I did when I was a kid} boy was I wrong.
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My response to TwoPenny post about friendships:
Just put it here so I don't hijack her thread.
People have different styles.
I mean what is a friend...it's just a relationship that maybe doesnt have the same depth of entanglement as family of origin stuff--and without the intensity of romantic/love/sexual relationships.
I'm not too excited about labeling you over sensitive---but Nah I wouldn't take any of it personally. People are random and have
distractions, sometime people befriend with a motive and once it's fulfilled the friendship isn't relevant anymore etc.
Maybe it's some of both, a little bit you and a little bit them.
I've only had a few long-term friends. Lots can change in life. I find that my own maturity has lead me to not identify sometimes with friends that I had when I was younger. Also for me, some of my friends from highschool etc. They are doing so well, married to doctors, go on sail boat outings, buy their second house etc. Often times I just assume they won't like me because our life experiences are maybe too different. People evolve.
There are people I know from high school who have best friends....you know they are each other's bride maids and they have been friends for years. Maybe I just moved too much or maybe it is my social avoidant things.
To me it seems that when people are in high-school or college there is more openness in forming friendships or something. It seemed like meeting people just happened back then. Spontaneous events that were fun...going over to somebody's house and having a sleep-over etc.
I feel like older people sometimes with children or without get very self involved with all the details of family OR the details of work. Maybe people really are busy. Who knows.
But no, people ARE random....
Sigh, I spend energy just trying to keep people away from me. I just want to relax. I live with a bunch of meth addicts and alcoholics and one person that I get a weird pedophile vibe from...and then there is the person who jumped out the window...and was taken away in ambulance. I've been on major KEEP TO MYSELF MODE...I know they are all people too but I'm just not interested in it. I've been playing KEEP AWAY.
I would like to be around people that I no longer feel like I'm working so hard to keep at a distance. Just the (waiting to exhale) feeling. They do exist. It's hard for me to meet people though. Maybe I should make more effort
Oh well, cest la vie. It was a good question. I've wondered it also in the past probably because I envy people who have life long bride maids friends. :)
The people I know who have had long term friends are better at creating that friendship space. I just don't have that...when I meet people...I'm stand offish. I can't help it it's just how I see the world and feel I guess. I guess I assume that they don't like me and I'm not sure if I really like them etc. It sounds childish.
Some people are so good at approaching others with a friendly vibe.
What is the friendship space anyways? You know it's like a certain atmosphere that one or more people create/embody that is pleasant, inviting, easy.
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Just thinking out loud. I know, been writing to much on here maybe. I find that sometimes I really just need to feel like I have clarified something, like I really need to say it more than once just so I can be clear.
I see how I HAVE slowly come to understand things better over the past 3 years. The dynamics are a little more clear but I know there is probably more that I don't get.
Processed but didn't read a ton about psychology itself. Now I sort of want to read more about it.
I know I've complained about the therapists I've seen but I did tell the last 2 about the Narcissism and the therapists didn't even respond to that at all. It was like--"okay that's a shame now moving on....lets give you some antidepressants". The therapists for whatever reason did not want to touch the Narcissism...and I wonder if it's because their level of training doesn't prepare them for it.
I still feel like I do need to address it so I guess I should just read more. I want to read the "Malignant Self Love" book- it's not at my library so I will just have to wait until I can find a copy.
I know there are the cliches of "don't play the victim" and "you are responsible for your own actions, your own life etc."
Isn't almost mean to say these things in a context of like this study:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11154711
Then there are other people that say "It's not your fault, and you couldn't have done anything about it because you were powerless"
I mean (my) PERSONALITY formed when I was powerless so even though I have real problems now I didn't create all of it and it's not all my fault. I do however feel like this is very much my fault and I'm being punished for being stupid and bad and not trying hard enough. Like somehow (I) alone am supposed to miraculously overcome all of this.
Now I see that there are just ups and downs and I just hope that another up time comes again.
I mean some people try to say Narcissism is even genetic instead of just being abuse. BUT how can they say that because they haven't isolated the narcissistic gene to my knowledge. You know there is so much disinformation to sort through.
I've had some people try to say that even therapists try to say that some people just have certain types of personality REGARDLESS of family--so I've had therapists tell me it is NATURE instead of nurture. I don't think this is right --and there is information out there that says otherwise but what info is right? I almost feel that the therapists avoidance of even touching on the Narcissism stuff and them trying to tell me its just NATURE...MAKES it easy for them...so all they would have to do is hand out pills. I feel let down. It's not what I needed. I need an expert who knows a lot more than I do about Narcissism. Oh well. READ READ READ
There is family disinformation
Personal disinformation
Then there is source/reference/conceptual disinformation
I read that children of Narcissist sometimes become Narcissists themselves or that the children have less than healthy Narcissism. I know I asked this before I said somewhere "So what is it when a person doesnt have a healthy sense of Narcissism"----Why isn't this a condition.
**Low Self Esteem** just doesnt seem strong enough or solid enough AND it applies to too many things.
Well I'm just going to make it up. Narcissistic deficit disorder. OR Narcissistic deficiency. I mean I think I'm doing much better with it BUT I remember my father encouraging me to be SHRINKING. TO NOT want anything, not ask for anything etc.
It wasn't healthy.
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You know I mean what if I am socially avoidant, narcissistic in someways, narcissistically deficient in otherways and maybe some OCD because look how much I have thought about this for freaken gods sake--how long.
Feh, I mean what the heck is the point of any of it anyways. Everybody has some kind of personality disorder behavior.
I could say that my father has paranoid personality disorder, socially avoidant disorder, alcoholism, and narcissistic deficit disorder
I could say that my mother is a narcissist, co-dependent on alcoholic, dependent type personality disorder
I could say that my brother has antisocial personality disorder, alcoholism and other substance abuse
Soooo :roll:.....where to go from here.....ahhhhh.....who cares sometimes you know what I mean?
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Maybe trigger isn't the best term because it means a minor insignificant event that causes a large reaction. I'm really talking about real significant events in current life that maybe tests me beyond what I am ready to deal with. Things happening now that almost sucks one back into time and all the progress one may have made in feeling better is then undone. It feels like losing a battle when it happens.
Thinking about how sometimes one can start to feel okay in one's own life...but that it is so easy to become triggered at work or in some social situation.
If these people are not all-out personality disordered people which is only a small percentage of society. There are a lot of people who use the techniques like relational aggression, gas lighting, verbal abuse, invalidation, scapegoating. It is just very very common.
So are "healthy/normal" people not effected by Personality Disordered people. I mean get a bunch of personality disordered people in a room together and what happens.
Get a bunch of normal people in a room together and what happens.
Then mix them both up in a room together the normals and the disordered--what happens.
Okay, how about this one: What if we take a NORMAL well adjusted adult and immerse them in a commune type community that is populated by diagnosed personality disordered people for a few years. Would the normal person develop a personality disorder?
I'm just wondering how long does it take for a person to develop a personality disorder and if it only happens within the window of childhood.
I mean do the people who come back from war with PTSD are then experiencing a form of personality disorder?
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Are adult-onset personality disorders sometimes misdiagnosed as PTSD???
PTSD sounds milder than saying that a whole bunch of soldiers are coming back with personality disorders.
Just wondering. I mean are they really just stressed out and traumatized or have they been impacted on a personality level.
When do we know when a fundamental personality change or shift has happened? Does it only happen in childhood?
I just read that Borderline personality disorder co-occurs often with PTSD.
Or maybe they had personality disorders before they went off to war and then when they came back they were diagnosed with PTSD.
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Do people who have narcissistic deficit syndrome see everyone who has healthy narcissism as being "arrogant"
Does Buddhism seek to eliminate narcissism altogether and cause unhealthy narcissistic deficit.
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Term "like crazy"
It's raining like crazy.
Maybe people just decide that something is crazy when it's out of control.