Category: The emotional and the physical

Jealous of the Angels tonight…

These past two months several good people at my former church have passed. This week, I heard that the mother of one of the Priests had passed. She had suffered with MS for many years and in the end she had pancreatic cancer as well. I would not say I knew her well but she made a great impression on me the times I met her. She was kind and had a lot of selfless energy. She was an artist and prayed through her painting too.

Today, I learnt that an elderly Priest with whom I was at one time in close contact, is right at the end of his life. He is in a coma and it is likely to be a matter of a day or hours now. I’m asking that I may be able to go to pray with him and say goodbye tomorrow morning, if he is still with us. He is a dear friend though circumstances have meant that we have not so often spoken in the last year or so. I am very upset with myself that a lot of these circumstances I should have changed and didn’t and in my illness and fear I allowed or even set distance from this dear friend. I really care for him and he has been so kind to me and led me on in my faith. I have been useless and I don’t know if he knows how much he means and did for me. But soon he will, in heaven.

These two people both particularly affected me through their calm hope and the way they truly lived, really present and  experiencing the joys, costs, pains, losses, weaknesses, hopes and needs of every day. The experience was raw and awful and scary sometimes, especially in their illness. They didn’t stop being present or deny the feeling. They didn’t deny or worry about their imperfections or give up because of them.  They accepted their need for help, mercy and love. They gave it abundantly to others around them. Their feelings and their reality, and others’, was all part of what I’d describe as their constant prayer and thanksgiving. They didn’t deny or push down others’ feelings or tell them to think positive or that they should feel another way instead or that certain feelings are sinful or have to be overcome. They showed me that God is right here, right now. Not when we’re pure or perfect or when we’ve mastered and suppressed everything we fear about ourselves or when we’ve assured ourselves we’ve punished ourselves enough or atoned enough. God is here, with us and within us, in this scary, hurting, angry, overwhelming feeling, in our error, even in our failing and sin, just as much as in our joy, success and delight. I still get scared very often and still take the instinctive way of running, hiding, hurting myself. I still spiral down in very dark places. But what these two friends taught me is one of the very few things I can cling onto.

I miss them very much already. Part of it It feels like this.

Losing them has hit hard. Also, some conversations I’ve had this week, have hit me with some things I have to change. I can’t stop crying tonight. Therapy tomorrow will be…unstable I think. The very vulnerable child part of me is integrating with me and her emotions are coming out as mine, not just in the escape world. This will be scary in therapy group but I know it needs to be.

Ginny xxx

“Jealous of the Angels”, by Jenn Bostic. With thanks to Lite Brite for the video.

Self-care

Yesterday I put on makeup for the first time for a long time. It was an ordinary day. I used to always wear a lot of makeup and coordinate some of the colours to my outfit. Then I stopped. I was exhausted and down and couldn’t find any will to take care what I looked like. The emotions that would surface when I looked at myself in a mirror for any length of time were unbearable. I felt revulsion. I’d start scratching at my skin, the emotion seeming to creep there and take hold like a rotten, evil force that I wanted to cut away.

Yesterday I was motivated to begin to take better care of myself. I got out the mirror and for the first time in as long as I can remember, the hatred and revulsion didn’t come overwhelmingly to the fore. I started to put on makeup and actually once I’d got through starting, I enjoyed it. Somehow, I began to feel a bit better, more prepared and lifted from the pervading exhaustion.

I carried on. Later in the day I painted my nails red. I used some nice moisturiser. I began to try to think caring thoughts towards my body and come up with caring replies to counteract the shouting voice in my head telling me I’m disgusting.

It’s a tiny couple of steps but it’s a start and each time I can do something caring to myself, it reminds me and strengthens my resolve to come up with new images of myself and new answers to the voices.

Ginny xxx

A closing drawbridge and a silent cry: when it’s less safe

A closing drawbridge and a silent cry

Eating disorders and personality disorder

When it’s less safe, but I am no longer my abuser’s child

WARNING: this post contains mention of childhood abuse, discussion of my experience of anorexia and disordered eating and the purpose it served for me in my eating disordered thought processes.

When I started drafting this post, I didn’t actually intend it to form part of this series on eating disorders and personality disorder. I didn’t realise that it would be so much about my eating disorders, but it turns out that it is. I started writing tonight in preparation for my therapy group tomorrow. Last week, we were talking about feeling safe. In the discussion, I said that at some points during therapy (around the past 14 months so far), I’ve actually been less safe than when I was not in therapy. In hindsight, perhaps I should say, felt less safe. It has felt less safe. Despite this, I still feel therapy is a process I need and want to go through. Someone asked me a question about that, to which I struggled to verbalise the answer. I’ve thought on her question during the week. I’m not going to write what she said because I don’t want to break her confidentiality, but I wanted to share the reflection she has led me to about becoming more or less safe during therapy.

As soon as I tried to explain, the familiar eating disorder thought came into my mind – when I was anorexic it was safe. I know how sick and dangerous that thought is and how illogical, the physical destruction of my body having been so clear. Yet, there was a point not very long ago in therapy where I so desperately wanted my anorexia back, because it would have been safe, and not so much too much. With anorexia, I wasn’t too much and nothing was too much. (Except food, of course!) I was encased in a safe, protected place, and I felt nothing but its power, voice and drive. My emotions and my body made no more demands.

With anorexia I could be certain in the knowledge I was starving, punishing, weakening, enough to atone for what my abuser told me I was, enough to avoid the damnation I thought I otherwise deserved, enough to ensure I was not a threat. Enough to satisfy my abuser.  And even years after I had got away from her, I thought perhaps anorexia could take me back to that one time where it had seemed she wanted me, seemed through a child’s eyes that perhaps she loved me, the one time I wasn’t bad, where I was so weakened she took total control. That would be totally safe.

I was never cared for by her. Total control stood in for care instead. The closest thing to care and safety for me was my total self-destruction, total physical weakness, allowing her to take total control of me. My BMI was about 13. I was in unbearable pain in my back and legs. I could just barely walk with crutches and had to spend a lot of time in bed. She took control literally of my movements, my food, my use of the bathroom and toilet, my washing, my dressing and undressing, my weighing (any action that could have and should have been private, she invaded) my contact with other people (even the doctors who wanted to help me, whom she prevented me seeing most of the time). Telling me what I was thinking, telling me what I was doing to the family, telling me what to say, total control – but this total control was the only time that the terrible powers and terrible intentions she told me I had, seemed to cease. My body and my mind ceased to make demands and I succumbed to her totally. This was the only safe place. The rest of the time I lived in fear of what I would do to her or the family and of her terrible threats coming true.

Paradoxically, at other times my anorexia gave me something that was nevertheless mine. It was my anorexia and my body. I think I’ve written before how when she had me strip in front of the mirror, a fierce voice in my head said, this is my body and you will never touch me again, and I resolved to lose as much more weight as I could.

That determination and angry strength was unusual. It was more about cutting off. Later, I stayed as numbed and weakened as I could. Long after I was out of the anorexic weight range, physically safe, I continued to punish myself. Starving. Vomiting. Cutting. Overdose. On the outside, I could do what was required and expected. I achieved. I was together, doing what they required in terms of education and work. Again, that was safe, because I was doing what was required, my dangerous emotions were numbed, my atonement continued. Until I imploded. Everything went to pieces.

As everything fragmented, numb was no longer sure and safe. I desired the end and wanted to end my life. At the same time, my child voice that I had suppressed so successfully for so long, was screaming and desperately needed to be cared for. This was explosively dangerous. My abuser’s threats about what I was would come true; they’d be proved to be true for all to see. The evil in me would explode out of control, if I could no longer punish and weaken myself. I would cause unlimited hurt to others without even seeing it myself, but everyone else knowing the evil I was. I would never be cared for (ie in someone’s total control).

Straight away, the rejections began. (Again. Just as I’d been rejected when I had needs and sought help as a child – terrified what my abuser’s reaction would be; my father not knowing what was going on, so not protecting me.) I was not under my abuser’s control any more, but there was no care for me, no one to protect me, and the few people I trusted were not there for me. The pressures – I don’t know if consciously or not – piled on me made it very clear I am a disappointment, not good enough, not what they need me to be, that they will only accept me as long as I am moving in the direction they think I should be at the pace they have dictated.

I cannot silence the needs any more. Anger boiled out of control, hurt screamed. Going through therapy, the feelings intensified. There was no way back to the protection my eating disorder had given me. Now, when I write about how it worked and why I wanted my eating disorder back, I am horrified. I am horrified at the power my abuser had over me and how I allowed her to have it and how that made me feel safe.

I will never receive now the care I did not receive when I was a child being abused. I will never receive again the closest thing I knew to care, the total submission to another person and control by them. Terrible as that was, I feel as though I will never be sure, as I could for a brief time be then when I was totally dependent on her, that I am not the bad, evil thing I had been taught that I am.

With the loss of all my coping mechanisms, including stopping self-harming and stopping overdosing, as I have somehow by the grace of God managed not to do in the past few weeks, it does feel more dangerous. I don’t know how to find any reassurance, internal or external. My feelings, my emotions, experiences, feel so out of control and dangerous. I am no longer my abuser’s child. I am no longer what my family requires. I will never have the care and security I did not have as a child, nor will I have the safety unconditional acceptance would give, because I do not have that now that I’m no longer what they require. I don’t yet know how to exist without these things.

Part of me grieves for the loss of the eating disorder and mechanisms that kept me safe, because stupid and twisted as it sounds, they did at least protect me; despite the harm they caused, they protected me from ending my life, and though it was fairly illusory, they gave me the closest thing I had experienced to being cared for.

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I should say that I think that another important part of the safety issue in therapy is coping between sessions with the emotions that have come up in sessions. Also, the impact that this disorder and the recovery process has across your life. Until very recently having the help of my support worker, I struggled badly with the social isolation that followed the loss of many important relationships, and the “domino effect” of all the material stability in my life falling away because of the financial problems caused by losing job after job and my erratic spending when I was out of control. Struggling with this at the same time as my emotions were going out of control anyway, my desperation for help increasing but being unheard by everyone I tried to get help from and had been led to believe I could trust, brought me very much too close to the edge. My support worker has greatly contributed to my safety now.

Ginny xxx

Constant anticipation of the next error – and consequential disaster: Part #1

I try hard to look for good things to appreciate. I’m trying to counteract my anxiety and overwhelming emotions by looking for the positive, hopeful things that can come from a situation. (It’s something of a DBT technique which I’ll elaborate on in another post.) I’m told I’m not yet very good at finding positive things about myself. I think gradually I’m getting better at seeing positive things in the outside world.

However in some areas it’s hard not to not only feel overwhelmed by both emotions and external negative events and also to expect them.

Benefits is a case in point right now and it has been for years, every single time I’ve needed to claim a Benefit when I haven’t been able to work / haven’t been able to work full time, because of my health.

Today, I received a letter from the Tax Credit Office about an error made in my tax credits earlier this year, when I was working at the department store. I was aware of that mistake. They had incorrectly recorded the income figures I had given them and given me only partial information about eligibility. Consequently they paid me tax credits I wasn’t entitled to. The letter I received today was rather confusing but essentially confirmed that. So far, that wasn’t too bad – I will have to pay back the overpaid money when they ask for it but I already knew that.

Next, I opened two letters from the Housing Benefit Department. The first contained two award notices both almost the same but with completely confusing dates, entitlement and income figures. What’s that about, I wondered. One of them was marked “change in personal circumstances”. What change in circumstances? I haven’t had a change recently. I opened the second letter from Housing Benefits, with a certain sense of foreboding!

Yup, disaster again. The letter told me that the Housing Benefit Department had been informed by the tax office that I am in receipt of working tax credit, therefore I am working and my housing benefit has been suspended until I give them details of my new job and current income.

Oh my days. I assume they have received a copy of the letter I got from Tax Credits. If they took time to actually read the letter, they would have seen it was saying that I am not entitled to tax credits. If they had looked at the dates in the letter (not to mention previous documentation I’ve supplied them and previous discussions I’ve had with them about my receipt of tax credits) they would have seen that it referred to a period earlier this year, not to now. They also know that I am not working – I have given them proof that I am currently in receipt of Employment Support Allowance because I am not working because of my health.

So, my housing benefit has been stopped. I will have to contact my landlord on Monday to explain why the benefits payments have stopped. I will have to contact Housing Benefits and try to prove to them that I am not working. This will probably involve chasing around the tax office and the other oxus involved in my employment support allowance. I have to make a written statement and gather together copy documents from my employment support allowance claim and tax credits. Quite probably I will have to take this in to the housing office, queue for a long time to see someone, which physically I cannot cope with at the moment as I can walk so little. My anxiety has skyrocketed because of the financial problems this suspension in my housing benefit will cause. Worse, from my past experience, once one benefit gets stopped, all the other benefits get stopped too. I am anticipating that I’ll be contacted by the employment support allowance office next week saying they’ve received information I’m working so my benefit has been stopped. Then I’ll have nothing coming in.

This may sound like an exaggeration but it has happened to me and to friends of mine before. And it could all so, so easily have been avoided. How easily the housing benefit office could have seen that the correspondence referred to months ago. How easily they could have checked with the tax office to see if I was working. How easily they could have made a quick phonecall to me or my support worker, if something wasn’t clear or they needed a particular piece of evidence. Wouldn’t this have cost them less, as well as me? The situation would have been resolved in minutes. Instead they have sent out a letter, required a statement, someone has to take copies of this, take copies of documentation, probably see me for an appointment, restart everything, set up payments to my landlord again (God willing!). Even without counting the cost and distress and anxiety caused to me, it is a hive waste of resources and confusion for nothing.

Since I first had to claim Benefits in something like January 2015, I reckon I have been paid the correct amount I was entitled to for a maximum of one month at a time, before the next error or mess-up has occurred and at least one of my Benefits has been cut, stopped or refused incorrectly – and completely avoidably. Last year when I rented as a lodger in a private landlord’s family home, this array of errors left me so very close to being on the street; if it were not for an extremely generous friend who paid my rent one month, I would have been out with nowhere to go. It is hugely fortunate that I now live in a housing association flat where I will not be thrown out immediately if there is a problem with my housing benefit. It is hugely fortunate I have the expertise of my support worker who will help me get this resolved as fast as possible and stop me going to pieces in the meantime. Most people don’t have those two blessings.

I don’t want to complain and whinge and expect money for nothing. I don’t think I deserve other people’s constant support. I could very well have nothing. I need to try to become independent and able to support myself. Support doesn’t come for nothing and I should expect to take responsibility, not have everything handed to me.

I think one thing that makes it so hard is when you have been through every process as well as you can, given all the information asked of you, taken all the steps you can, and despite this everything still crumbles. My experiences over the years tell me as soon as there’s any stability, it gets taken away again through error or miscommunication, despite all your best efforts. And the error seems to have an effect like tumbling dominoes on all the other areas of your life there is any stability. Losing stability has immediate big consequences when you have very little to live on. It also drains all your energy, time and emotional resources, which go into trying to correct the error before disaster point (losing your home, no money for food, etc) rather than leaving you any strength to recover, contribute something to your community in your day to day life, benefit from opportunities that might make your situation better (and even maybe less dependent on social and state support, not that needing it is a bad thing). When you are constantly using all your resources fighting the next mistake and next disaster, trying to ensure that you have the basics you need to get by, in a state of anticipation of the next disaster so you can try to minimise or allow for its impact; when you feel as if you’re being knocked back, kept vulnerable, denied any security, despite your hardest work to set things right; then there is no way you can do more than just get by, in a constant state of strain.

So, I’m wondering what I can change. It seems I cannot change the fact that mistakes constantly occur, despite me trying my hardest to do the best I can for my part and to take steps to pre-empt the problems. I don’t want to feel so spent, trapped, angry, vulnerable and at risk as I do at the moment as a result of the repeated cycle of mistakes.

So, what can I change?

[Part 2 to follow, not that I have any answers yet! Thoughts are most greatly welcome, as ever.]

Ginny xxx

 

Ten dishes challenge #4: jacket potatoes with a difference

I haven’t been able to cook much at all recently but I’m trying to persevere with this series and remember my aim of rediscovering some of the enjoyment in cooking as well as building a little range of familiar dishes I can prepare economically.

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I made this when my friend visited. We both enjoy simple oven cooked jacket potatoes with the lovely crispy, salty skin and fluffy insides. This recipe adds a slight difference. Once the potatoes are cooked, you cut them in half and carefully scoop out the inside, taking care not to puncture the skins. You mix the fluffy potato with some very finely chopped lightly fried peppers and onion (you could use lots of different veg of your choosing) and a little finely diced ham, a beaten egg (mainly to bind it together and stop it being too dry) and some seasoning of your choice. After that you spoon the mixture back into the potato skins, sprinkle a little grated cheese on top and bake them again in the oven for 15-20 minutes or so.

And that’s the end of Ready Steady Cook for today!

Ginny xxx

I’m sorry – I haven’t forgotten you

I’m sorry I haven’t posted here or visited your blogs in quite a while. I haven’t forgotten you. I know it’s not obligatory but I feel guilty being inconsistent ams not being there for others.

It’s been a few weeks of pretty big changes in my home life, family, friendships, work (or temporary absence of!), finances, therapy – not all the changes are negative however they are all demanding and not necessarily unsettling but all taking energy to work through. Physical pain is still having a big impact on me at the moment and I’ve needed to take things much more slowly than I’d choose. It used to be something I could deal with but now I’m not coping well. I feel as if I’m constantly saying this. It’s not am excuse but it is a big part of my life right now.

There is another event I’ve been struggling with, which has held me back from blogging. I had a really upsetting experience in an internet based support group and blog, in which I had previously trusted, thinking I was finding a reliable source of information, understanding and solidarity with other members as well as being able to offer support to others. I don’t think it is the right time to go into detail here about what happened although I will explain a little more in a future post. Please don’t worry – I’m okay and safe; I was never in any physical danger and I have ceased contact that was proving damaging. Fortunately, I had never divulged personal information like my full name or contact details. Also, just to be clear, this experience was absolutely nothing to do with this blog or any of the lovely people who visit it. It happened somewhere completely different.

The experience has had a big impact on me. I was very distressed. I felt a huge loss although also a huge betrayal. I got very scared of writing anything online, including in my own blog and in messages to anyone, although that is not necessarily rational. My obsessional thoughts were very triggered and the voices got loud. A whole range of feelings and thoughts spiralled out of control about how I trust other people, how I feel about getting support or not and being believed or not; perhaps most scarily, whether I’m harmful to other people without knowing…

On the positive side, the events have brought up lots of issues I need to discuss in therapy. They’ve led me to think about how therapy is changing the way I think. They’ve shown me ways I’ve started to react differently (for example, I did not follow through the compulsion to self-harm).

Most of all, it made me all the more thankful for the genuine and compassionate support everyone who visits this blog has shown me. It’s a rare and precious thing. THANK YOU.

I’m trying to get back into writing, gradually.

Ginny xxx

More cards – trying out some new materials

Feeling fairly useless as I do this week, I’ve tried very hard to do a little bit each day towards creating something good. I’ve been trying out some new materials for my greetings cards – different card backs and adhesive, for example. I focused on making photo cards as a friend had particularly requested some. She likes simple, un-frilly, photographic designs. It’s only recently I’ve started using my photos in my cards (usually I use decoupage, collage and similar) so I need to perfect my technique – a lot!

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It took me ages because of the pain but I’m so happy I persevered. There’s still a lot I need to streamline but I was pleased with some of the results; even more so when I showed them to my friend today and she was delighted. She’d even like some more. It really encouraged me and made me thankful to be able to do something nice for a friend.

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It’s helpful for me as well to make them for friends and get honest feedback so that I can improve and see what kind of designs are popular.

It’s a long range goal at present but one day I’d like to take part in a craft fair selling some of my creations. I think it would be hard for it to be truly profitable financially once my time is taken into account – doing it with the precision and finish I want to is labour-intensive – but I’d get a lot of enjoyment from it. Letter-writing is another favorite of mine though I don’t do as much as I used to as writing can be painful at present. Knowing that sending and receiving cards and letters can bring people lots of pleasure, I’d enjoy selling affordable cards. Many of those available in shops locally are incredibly expensive, maybe over £3 or even over £4 each, and that’s just too much for most people, especially once postage is factored in, and puts people off writing to friends and family.

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This year I hope to have time to make Christmas cards too.

Ginny xxx

Feeling very useless again

I am feeling bad because I’ve not managed to post on several things I hoped to and a couple of them I’d promised to. I should just stop saying I’ll post on x at a certain time because too often I fail to! I should be able to stick to these things. It’s not just about posting; there are so many daily tasks that are taking me much longer than usual and things I want to get done that I haven’t done. It hasn’t been a great few days. I keep saying that. I’m trying not to think of them as bad days because that dismisses the good things that can still happen and the fact that the Lord is always bringing good from every situation.

I haven’t been feeling stable. I’ve had a lot of forms to fill in for out of work / disability Benefits. I’ve had to try to explain my conditions and go to assessments. My support worker is helping me a lot and the hospital I go to for therapy is providing supporting letters that have to go along with the forms I submit. Things are not going badly and without my support worker’s help I wouldn’t be getting through it as I am. It’s still difficult and raises a lot of obsessional thoughts. Whenever I talk to people about my health conditions in this kind of context, or ask for help, afterwards the voices go mad and shout at me that I’ve lied and I’m a fake and everything becomes terrible and hollow and full of dread and guilt. I feel so stupid because this means even when things go well and get sorted out, instead of pure relief, I feel stressed and I’m having to overcome what the voices and hallucinations tell me: that I don’t deserve the help, that I’m a fake.

Physically I am really struggling and getting scared by how little I can walk at the moment. I’m needing to sleep a lot. The pain means I’m needing to lie down often and I’m trying not to give into it as I know doing nothing isn’t good for me either. I’ve tried to keep at least stepping outside into my little garden and enjoy so many things I do have which are good, like talking to a friend on the phone, trying to create something pretty with my meditative colouring books, even an interesting TV programme or passage in a book.

I don’t want to keep on complaining and being negative so I won’t keep writing but I just wanted to try to explain how things have been.

Ginny xxx

Emotional flashbacks – Lilly Hope Lucario

It seems very providential that just after writing my post, Really Bad Day, where I talked about re-experiencing emotions and recognising situations that put me in the same emotional state and behaving according to the same patterns as when I was abused, and feeling shock for things that happened a long time ago, I then came by a blog post by Lilly Hope Lucario on emotional flashbacks.

You can read her blog post HERE. Further, Lilly’s website about healing from trauma, post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and complex PTSD (CPTSD) can be found HERE.  This material is created and written by Lilly Hope Lucario and all rights belong to her.

I’m very new to her blog and it looks as if she has some fascinating material that’s going to help me a lot in understanding what’s happening to me. The concept of emotional flashbacks certainly goes a long way to explaining emotions I experience that I may be afraid of, or that seem too intense, shameful, inappropriate, or not warranted by a certain situation. I know that learning to accept my emotions and sit with them rather than exploding or doing something harmful to numb them is a whole separate issue of its own. But I think identifying when emotional flashbacks are happening is a critical part of understanding the extremes of feelings I get in my BPD and my consequent behaviour patterns.

Thank you Lilly! I think I’ll be visiting her site often!

Ginny xxx

 

Really bad day

Well I probably shouldn’t say really bad. Nothing that bad has happened at all. It’s just how I’m feeling and it’s hard to stay with this.

I had my first 1:1 therapy yesterday for about a month because the PD Service took a 2 week break in therapy sessions for the summer and also I had missed one session shortly before the break. It’ll be the first group therapy since the break this Friday. It was a hard session. I was dealing with lots of strong uncomfortable feelings and a situation that’s very scary for me. I know we’re going to have to come back to it in group on Friday. I realised times when I experience the same thoughts and states as I did when I was being abused as a child and they come back at bizarre uncontrollable times.

Perhaps these feelings and what we went through yesterday have something to do with how today has been. Definitely… but I only just now made that link. Also yesterday afternoon I saw my support worker and we got through a lot  (finishing filing out a huge form for my assessment for a Benefit). Though this was great I was exhausted and in a weird state afterwards – cold and exhausted and sad and I don’t remember the rest of yesterday apart from that.

The pain has been awful too because I really overdid it physically over the weekend to travel to my friend’s and back, though I don’t regret for a minute going and the time with her and her family was precious. Today it took me until 11 to be able to stand more than a couple of minutes.

Then I went out for an appointment which was supposed to be for a referral scheme for physical therapy. About everything possible went wrong and I won’t bore you with it now but it was upsetting at discriminatory, turned out to be nothing like what I’d been led to expect and cost me a lot in terms of time, pain and anxiety for nothing.

I’m scared how I reacted and how I felt after. I hate feeling angry and trapped and out of control. I hate feeling used, dismissed, laughed at, tricked, punished… I hate these thoughts and feelings even occurring. Not because of what they feel like in themselves but what they mean about me and the flashbacks and reexperiencing that comes with it. I hate how all the feelings and actions that stayed inside and stayed locked away into my… I don’t know how to name them because I don’t talk about them. My others, my “imaginary” people that are anything but imaginary, my others, that’s all I can say… they stayed safely in the worlds I made for them – the worlds I could escape to – but now they don’t. Now they’re here all the time. In every day.

The rest of the day again I can’t remember apart from that I picked up milk and a couple of things on the way home. I didn’t really even remember that til I saw the shopping bag on the floor. I’m terrified about this dissociating… the time that just disappears after I get the overwhelming emotions…sometimes before too… Then I’ve just been lying down too drained and tired to do anything, trying to do little things to ground me but I can’t concentrate. Everything hurts. Inside my head hurts too.

If this is feeling without self-harm, without overdosing, without starving and purging, it’s scary. It’s a scary place. I’m scared of what I am. Scared of how I’m acting. How I’m feeling. What I’m remembering – my feelings, as much as what was done to me. What I’ll do to people now. That my actions now are based on the trauma and abuse and who this means I am.

I’m scared, crying for no reason. Feels like I’m exhausted and in shock but there’s no good reason now. Can you feel shock years after an event?

Ginny xxx