Seesaw down - time to turn it around

[Gaining Strength]

But he was very magnanimous when it was his idea.  So, I received a lot of nice things that I didnt want or use, but had to scrape around trying to figure out how to get something that was a necessity.  I remember having to use a stroller with only 3 wheels because he thought that replacing it was a luxury.  But he bought a big entertainment center "for the family".

This is very poiignant for me to read.  It so clearly describes men in my life.  I see how I have lived into this strolling with three wheels while the family luxuriates with a big entertainment center.  What I need doesn't matter.  Not enough for a reasonable request but more than enough for luxury.  It is so crazymaking that I am just as confused as though I were living it now.

So glad to know that others understand.  So sorry others have lived it too.  - GS

[reallyME]

Here's another good point to help anyone still stuck living with an N or with one in your intimate lives:

A narcissist usually TELLS ON THEMSELVES if you listen close enough.

As far as not being able to tell them what you need or want, my husband once told me "Don't you SEE?  Are you that DENSE?  The more you ASK me for a baby, the less likely I will be to give you one and the longer it will take!"

I only remember standing there in disbelief when he spoke that.

~Laura

[camper]

I also was not taught about love by my parents.  I do have a natural capacity for it though.  When I had my first son, I made the mistake of thinking that I would show love by "raising" him, "molding" him, helping him to become who he would be as I saw him.

It took awhile but now I see that part of loving my children and really anyone, is learn that they are already formed and complete and through the bond of love, you will be discovering this person, discovering your relationship, and discovering yourself along the way.  It has to do with respect of the other person and approaching them where they are at from where you are at.  Ideally, each person will be safe to be themselves in such a relationship.

I have come to this approach through a lot of reading, studying, and observing.  I still have a ways to go.

Pennyplant

As someone else said...beautifully put!  This is one place that I have a hard time with my H.  He has an ulterior motive for everyone he meets.  He immediately has to find out what a person does and how he can gain from them.  Or, he figures out how he can help them.  I have posed the question to him, "do you ever want to be friends with someone just for the sake of being friends".  He didn't get it...he claims he does that with all his friends.  Most of the people he meets are "professionals" that have something for him, or they are unbelievers who need to be saved and he is going to save them(as opposed to Jesus).  He has brought many people into our church and then they are his tropheys.  Everybody knows that my H brought them into the church...he makes it known! 

Laura, I can understand if you are surrounded by these type of people, It must be really hard.  I am a stay-at-home mom so I usually don't have much to offer people like my H.  We donate to many causes and I like to give annonomously so as to not get credit and people don't befriend me to get more...my H has to let others know he gave and he gets extremely angry if they don't thank him.  I had to explain the whole concept of giving because you want to  and the concept of not expecting anything back..it is what giving is all about.  He is working on that concept and getting better.  I only bring this up as the only reason people might use me.  I quit donating when I start feeling used.

I hope you can find friends who love you for who you are!  I have a few of these and they are invaluable. 

[Gaining Strength]

Seesaw down today.  I am thinking about going back on antidepressants.  There is a low grade irritability surrounding me.  In the past week I have gone to bed twice during the day.  Just irritible and very frustrated and on the verge of a hopelessness.  I am ready to pull through it.  I want to move on.  For a while I could set up my desires for the day and accomplish them but I am lapsing a bit.  I really bellieve that I need to exercise and yet haven't been.  I want to get throught this place of enormous frustration.  I wish I could put my finger on it and extricate it. 

[pennyplant]

Hi GS, it is very important and very useful that you can see exactly what is happening with you and your emotions.  It doesn't feel GOOD, and it's frustrating too, but it is there and you are seeing it.  I tend to think this makes it possible for you to manage it and do something about it.  If going back on anti-depressants is the thing you do about, then go for it!  Grab it!  Just another one of your tools which may even enhance the other tools in your "box".

Pennyplant

[GS]

Thanks Pennyplant and CB - I went to see my T this morning.  I had very specific issues to talk about.  About half-way through I said that although I had made tremendous progress last summer and fall I don't seem to have made any progress in the past 4 months.  But he disagreed and I now see that I am doing better than it feels. 

I started at such a very low place and had so very far to go that steady progress can feel like none. 

I think some of the mood swings suggest things are getting stirred up within and creating something of a jumble.  Though it is unpleasant I see that it is a sign of progress in its own way.  I am dealing with harsh, painful things from my early childhood and I suspect my subconscious and unconscious are sorting some of it out.

It helps to come here and post.  Part of the reason is that I've not had a safe place to share my ups and downs before.  They are things that, when I am stronger, won't need to be expressed.  I'll be able to see them as gentle waves rather than fear them as battering storms. 

I see that I am making progess but I also see that in that process I am reexperiencing the pain and helplessness and hopelessness that was my life experience.  But now I get to change it.  I am finding a way to recognize that I do have a power to change it.  Thanks for pushing and prodding me.  Thanks for responding.  That's a special gift of this community is to be heard and be cared about.  I am so thankful. - GS

[Hopalong]

I am reexperiencing the pain and helplessness and hopelessness that was my life experience.

Hi GS...

I think the most important word in this sentence, that jumped out at me, is was.

Do you feel as though your re-experiencing the old pain and hopelessness is valuable?
I know in therapy we have to feel the pain to move through it.

What's hard, or has been for me anyway at times, is to realize when we're just recycling it.
Over and over and over...past the point when we can take new insights.

This is your life...now. Now was. Hard as it is, it's not free of hope.

And it's you. Now. Breathing now. Thinking now. Possible now. Acting now. Choosing now.

I've heard hope in your voice here. I've heard determination. I've heard resolve.
I've heard courage.

Most of all, I've heard effort.
That is not ever wasted and it's alive. It's present.

love
Hops

[Gaining Strength]

Yes Hops - that is absolutely it - reexperiencing in order to go through.  I am definitely determined. 

This morning I recognized a pattern.  For years I have had wretched dreams of rejection, shame, abandonment and voicelessness.  But for a couple of months those dreams are gone, replaced by one with themes of inclusion, strategizing, and inclusion but still when I wake up I am in pain.  This morning I began to think that it is a very old pattern of fear established in my childhood.  I am going to try to break this pattern.  I think it will be instrumental in stopping the seesaw.

Thank you so much for probing. - Gaining Strength

[Hopalong]

Thanks, GS.

Have you done any sensory awareness work?

Present mindfulness work? Meditation?

If you've discussed these before, forgive me if I forgot.

Also, have you read Pema Chodron's work?
In particular, I think of When Things Fall Apart, for you.
Oddly, to me, the book has the opposite effect to its title...

Hops

[Gaining Strength]

Meditation Hops.  I am completely unfamiliar with the book and author but will look into it.

This week I have learned about a brand new technique for improving meditation and helping with dissonanant emotional issues.  I haven't researched them but plan to.  The technique uses sound.  One is called Holosync at www.centerpointe.com and the other is BAUD and is provided by DR. Phil's good friend.

But significantly for me - I am on the verge of breaking through a significant block that has to do with my father.  Yesterday afternoon my mother called me to say that my father was looking for me.  (He didn't call me because he told her that he can't get me.)  He certainly can't get me if he doesn't call.  I went to a book club last night and my father called my mother over and over and threatened her.  He demanded to know where I was because he needed me.  He wanted to go and get me.  My mother called my cell phone to tell me that but I didn't answer.  He told my mother that he was going over to her house to wait for me to come and get my son.  He didn't do it.  He told her he would call me early this morning - he did and aske me to meet him tomorrow at 10am.

It is a craziness that is consuming.  But last night I got a crack in the stuff that has swallowed my whole since childhood.  I pray deeply and passionately that this crack will be come a fizzure.  It has to do with being demand of that which I did not possess, of being pushed out of the nest without being taught to fly and being cursed because I had not accomplished the flying.  That is a double bind of which I long ago posted.  And I have succombed to that bind because in this world we are expected to be able to do certain things - like fly.  I am in the midst of a painful but I am certain profitable process.  It is lonely and frightening but I believe it will be very healing.

I am not familiar with sensory awareness but I think I will look into it.  I have been tuning into where in my body my wounds are stored I suspect sensory awareness could be a good addition.  Thanks Hops for asking.  I am in a place where probing could help release the darkness so long suppressed. - Gaining Strength

[reallyME]

A while ago, someone, I think on this group, posted about a meditation technique their therapist was using with them.  There was a link to an online website about it too.  Just curious if anyone's T is using a certain technique with them...it has some letters...like Gpm or Dbt or something like that.

~L

[axa]

GS

This is a hard time for you.  I am also familiar with the see saw but mine is getting more in balance.  Feeling the loss and the pain seems to me to be part of the process.  I have gotten to the stage whereby I am hungry for my life and luck enough to have been able to feel gratitude that XN is gone out of my life.  I believe that the years and years of therapy, feeling the pain and loss, are what was instrumental in me getting here. 

I have learned doing something physical, whether I feel like it or not changes something in me for the good and I MAKE myself do this on a daily basis.  I look back at my life and the time I spent mourning Ns and realise that it was myself I was mourning.  THe loss of my childhood, the loss of not feeling loved in relationships.  My goal is to love me.  To look at what has gone wrong and what I can learn from it.  To own my own pain.  I have come to the belief that my feelings are my feelings and only I can protect them.  This has been a hard road for me but I am NOT going back there.  Sometimes I feel adult and able and other times I feel like a four year old who wants to be rescued and cared for. 

I think it is important to grieve for all the little children we were who were neglected and used and hold their hands through this painful journey.


axa

[Gaining Strength]

I think it is important to grieve for all the little children we were who were neglected and used and hold their hands through this painful journey.

I think this is such a lovely sentiment Axa.  It feels so soothing to hear such kind words to all of the suffering children.  We think of that as such a time of innocense and so easily overlook how extraordinarily painful a time it can be as well. - gs

[Hopalong]

NLP = neurolinguistic programming, I think

Pema Chodron (don't worry about theology. That's just language. Her THINKING can change you.)

xxoo
Hops

[axa]

Hops,

Reading Pema's book at the moment.......enlightening

axa