I think I finally understand that when I ask for help between session that I am not being punished then next session by having to talk about it. I kinda felt that way for a long time, then it dawned on me that talking about it IS help. It isn’t about me calling and being talked off a ledge and then done, never to be talked about again. It is about why I felt the way I did and what can I do next time to not feel that way.
Talking about things does not equal punishment.
for the last month I have been following the Primal Diet this is basically, meat and vegetables, eliminating processed foods from my diet. mentally I feel better than I have in a long time, my ups and downs are not so dramatic and I have lost weight. I feel better all over, but this isn’t easy because processed food is everywhere and it is easy to get. Whole foods aren’t and I find myself eating at home more often because I can control my food better there. I still have treats now and then and recently found myself doing it more and more. I need to stop doing that and get back on the plan.
I had to give up milk, one of my favorite drinks, I thought it would be very hard and I would crave it. Two weeks in and I didn’t even want it anymore. Same with bread, cheese and rice. Chocolate is something I haven’t been able to kick the habit of but I cut down on it. Working out has been tough lately as I have an injury that doesn’t seem to be healing. Maybe I just need to take time off from squats to let it heal right. there are no good or right answers for healing injuries.
Therapy has been kinda confusing as of lately, I don’t really understand the significance of working on being vulnerable or being ok with my anxiety when I feel vulnerable. you try being raped a couple of times and then being ok with feeling vulnerable…..not an easy task and not one I think I can accomplish. If I am having a hard time processing something I reach out for help from my therapist but then at the next session I feel like she is punishing me for asking for help by saying “we have to work on this so you don’t need my help”…..so is reaching out for help good or bad? I can’t tell and I get super frustrated. I kinda feel like I want a break from it all, like I want my head to be quiet and not have to work hard on anything.
Maybe a couple weeks away from therapy would be good.
Last week we went on a ski vacation, up on the north shore of MN, stayed in a great resort and had so much family time I think we are sick of each other. I actually had some “me time” in the evenings where I could go down to the lobby, sit by the fire and read. I took a book with me, one my trainer gave me and one I have been interested in reading. The book is “Primal Blueprint” and it is all about eating like a caveman, meats and vegetables and cutting out the processed stuff. The rational is that our bodies are not made to process complex carbs, which is true or we would have 3 stomachs like cows. For once I had some quite time and I wasn’t feeling anything bad, I wasn’t wrapped up in my own pain and hurt. I was happy, content and present with my family and thinking about the future. I had moments where my head wandered but they were just moments and then I was right back in the present. This right here is where I belong.
Today is Easter and suddenly I had this feeling of not belonging, or hurt and sadness and I can’t put my finger on it but it is when I think of my family. I always felt like they abandoned me but if I am honest, I ran away from them. I always wanted it both ways, for my mom or dad to fix things when they went wrong but nothing to do with them when things were good. They didn’t shut me out, I shut them out. There were many reasons for this, including serious lack of trust and years of abuse but we are all in a different place now. I need to forgive them and maybe understand that they were doing the best they could at the time. I just got caught up in their fucked up shit, dad spending 2 years in Vietnam, Mom losing her dad when I was 5 or 6 and having to take care of her mother for the rest of her life. Both my parents running their own businesses and both taking care of extended family. They were trying their hardest and did the best they could, just like I am trying my hardest as well. I need to mourn my childhood and move on and be who I am in the present.
Bring out the strong girl maybe with a pinch of compassion.
I have cried. Yup, cried. This is not entirely new, however, crying because I am sad is new. I am sad that I was raped, I am sad that I had power taken away from me and I am sad that I didn’t have anyone to turn to. That is a lot to be sad about and I am just scratching the surface of this emotion. My sadness drains me, takes all my energy and makes me feel as though I am being cut in half. My head hurts and my stomach churns, I get chills and goosbumps and I can’t concentrate. I feel like I am shutting down. the longer I hold onto this sadness the more I hurt and I have made myself very sick holding onto all of this pain. My body can’t take it and starts to breakdown, so I need to let it out, I need to cry. Tonight I laid down and my body when through all this and I held myself tight and I closed my eyes and I let all those emotions out…..I cried. I cried until I stopped crying, it wasn’t that long and I might not be done but my body felt so much better. I could move again and while I am not jumping for joy or anything like that I am also not in extreme physical pain, which I totally welcome.
I suppose what I really wanted when I was hurt was comfort, but no one was there to give it me. I still don’t like comfort when I am hurting, physically or mentally, I deal with it myself, the more attention put on me the worse it is. Maybe I need to accept comfort? Seems very scary to me and freaks me out quite a bit but I think that I need to do this, for me and for the little girl in me that didn’t get comfort.
So often when I am upset, I can image someone with their arms around me, stroking my hair, holding me close and telling me that it is going to be alright, in that image I feel very safe and loved. In reality, I would have a very hard time asking someone to comfort me…what if they said no. Well, interesting enough I think I remember my friend Julia comforting me, I was laying on her couch crying and she put my head in her lap and was stroking my hair. It felt good and helped me calm down quite a bit. Ok so I did do it, I just didn’t remember….interesting. Compassion and comfort.
Last week my therapist asked me what my ultimate goal is. I pause and then said, “you are gonna make me cry” I almost did cry when I said it. My goal is to love myself. To feel about me what I feel for others. I don’t think I know how to do it and never have, I just judge, judge, judge. I have hated myself for so long that I feel like I need a do over to even have a shot at this goal. However, it seems completely worth trying, I mean, what do I have to lose right?
sometimes I google PTSD symptoms and cures just to see if there is anything new out there, usually there isn’t but sometimes I take away a couple new pieces of information. One is that weight gain is normal with PTSD, some people blame it on the depression part of it and some blame it on the meds that the doctors prescribe. It really could be either or both, depression causes weight gain and so do drugs like Prozac, guess it just depends on the person.
I also know I am not alone, some of the forums and blogs out there for PTSD suffers have grown leaps and bounds in the last couple of years. Partly because of veterans coming back from the War in Iraq and Afghanistan but also because more diagnosis and treatment is available. I am glad that I know what I have and that there are treatments for it but I wish to hell that I didn’t have it at all.
I have had some meltdowns in the last couple of weeks, some large and some small but my emotional side seems to be coming and going quite a bit. Large meltdown is sitting at a bar alone for 5 hours and drinking and talking to no one while contemplating going for a walk on thin ice. It wasn’t the best use of my time and probably one of my worst coping skills, but I didn’t drive home, didn’t end up in the hospital or die…so all in all, not bad.
It is really the small ones that are bothering me, one minute I seem fine, totally happy and joking around then I am triggered and I turn into this other person, my switch is being flipped a lot lately. This last time was at the gym, was in an ok mood, probably not the best, just came from talk about shit at therapy so I was a little tired. I rallied though and was excited about working out. Then I couldn’t do one move, it was a pull-up, everyone else was doing it and I couldn’t. I got up there and tried though and when I couldn’t the switch flipped. The trainer gave me a modification and I took that as an opportunity to beat myself up “you are weak, you are fat, you don’t belong here, you suck”. He tried to help me out and talk me through it “everyone starts somewhere and no one can do it the first time”. It sunk in a little. Then I was doing the walking lunge with a plate held over my head. All I wanted to do was make it from one side of the gym to the other, everytime I tried my legs gave out about 4 steps from the wall. I held it together until the end and then the class was moving onto the next move and I lost it. I sat down on a box and said “everything I am trying today sucks, I can’t do anything, it just sucks”. As everyone moved on, the trainer (Mark) came around in front of my, knelt down and looked me straight in the eye and said “what is going on”. I sat there in silence because I wasn’t gonna cry in the middle of the fucking gym.
I really wanted to say ” I AM BROKEN” and “I HATE MYSELF” i used to have anger when I said these things but now when I say them tears come, maybe that is progress but it doesn’t feel so good.
I said to him “I’m fine” and he got up and left me alone. Later I beat the shit out of a tire with a big sledge hammer, which was nice. Came home mentally and physically exhausted and fell into a good sleep. Better than drinking I suppose.
I said this to someone at the gym yesterday “Fear doesn’t accomplish anything”, I was referencing my fear of jumping on the box. I stood at the box and cursed it, I have for weeks, fear kept me from jumping on it, then I said “fuck you” to the box and jumped on it. It was awesome and everyone was really happy for me.
Yesterday I was at the gym again and there was the box. I was excited at the prospect of jumping on it again because hell, I did it before. I stood at the box and hesitated, my heart was pounding, why was I so scared, I had this, I did it before. My trainer came over and said “look, fear is motivating too, don’t get upset because you are a little afraid to jump, fear just means that you want to do something”. I took some deep breathes and hesitated again, I couldn’t get my feet to leave the ground, I was disappointed. So I grabbed a 2 in plate and put it up against the box, jumped and landed it. I did that 5 more times and then I said “fuck you plate” and I stood at the box and jumped. It wasn’t pretty, but I landed it and my heart went through the roof, like panic attack. It hurt so bad and I could barely breathe, the trainer came back over and talked to me, I can’t tell you what we talked about but I slowly started to come down. I went back to the box and stood there again, I jumped 5 more times and then I was done, exhausted, wiped out and feeling happy and disappointed at the same time.
Doing something once just means I conquered fear for that day and time, the next time it means I still have to conquer that fear again. Same fear, different time period. This goes for healing from this pain that I fear, this emotional pain that I have spent a lifetime cramming into a box and putting on a shelf. I have taken it out a couple of times and conquered it but that doesn’t mean that I am still not afraid.
Fear might cause me to hesitate but it won’t stop me from healing or showing this emotional pain. It just takes a little time, I don’t jump the first time but I eventually do and the payoff is always worth it.
I recently was kicked in the head by my current choices. Yep, like I know that I have been fucking up lately and not making the best choices. I won’t go into detail because there are many parties involved and no one needs to get hurt. This lead to a huge confession to my therapist, I called her and left a message spilling some of the beans and then when she called me back, I spilled the rest of them. She asked me a question though that I couldn’t answer “Why are you making these choices”? I honestly couldn’t answer her, I didn’t know they were choices I was just “being me”. She didn’t think that was a real good answer, kind of a cop out.
Fast forward a few days later to your therapy session. I lay everything out, she asks me questions and I emotionally bring up the shields and start in with my “I don’t give a fuck about anyone else” attitude. This doesn’t really go over well with therapist, they can smell bullshit from a mile away. So we battled the entire session and then I broke, I said it out loud “because all I want to do it know why me, why they chose me to hurt”. There is no answer, right? I totally get that i my head but I am searching, I keep doing these behaviors that end with me saying “look, you are bad, you deserved it all, bad, bad, bad”.
Truth is, I wish I had a fucking time machine, I would undo it all, I wouldn’t go in that room alone or into the woods with that boy, I wouldn’t party with that group and I would have fought them off instead of laying there. These are the things I need to change because in my head, I can’t move on with them in the way, there is no way around these giant piles of shit! realizing that I was thinking this way stopped me in my tracks and reduced me to a child curled up in a ball, crying and helpless. I spent the last 3 days crying at the drop of a hat and that is not normal for me. Today, I fought my way out of it and had a semi normal day. I just want to change what happened, I know it is hard to understand, it is hard for me to as well. It kills me that I can’t change any of it.
