Tag: abuser

A closing drawbridge and a silent cry – Eating Disorders and Personality Disorder – #6

A closing drawbridge and a silent cry – Eating Disorders and Personality Disorder – #6

Protection in Emptiness

Eating Disorders and Personality Disorder – #6

“Closing the drawbridge” – eating disorders and rigidity

PLEASE READ WITH CAUTION – this post contains discussion of eating disorders (primarily anorexia), description of my eating-disordered thinking patterns, and a link to an article about studies on calorie restriction

[Wow, again it has been too long since I have posted in this series. Sorry.]

Many books about eating disorders, in particular anorexia, mention rigidity of thinking as a symptom which emerges as restriction of food increases and weight drops. When I worked at an eating disorder service, it was frequently described in inpatients on the ward. I’ve been pondering why this is and how much did I experience it when I was anorexic. I never used to think that my eating disorder was about control, although I now would take that back and I think I did use it if not exactly for control, in order to separate myself from my mother’s abuse and protect myself (and, I thought, others too) from demands, emotions and the dangers I felt they presented.

Perhaps it is logical that counting calories and measuring portions and exercise, forcing yourself to adhere to a punishing regime of starvation and painfully excessive activity in the very weakened physical state of anorexia, requires a strong, almost angry, obsessional drive. Sticking to this above and against all the natural urges of your body to keep you well and nourished, to the point that your body consumes its own muscle for energy, requires a steely determination that must be fuelled from somewhere. This could be seen as rigidity. It could easily spread to other areas of cognition and daily routine.

Certain chemical changes in the brain are thought to contribute to this rigidity as well, I believe. Two studies were conducted in the 1950s, using as participants conscientious objectors to National Service and former prisoners of war. One of these is the Minnesota Starvation Experiment, where starvation was imposed on physically and psychologically healthy participants who had no history of eating disorders. As the participants’ calories were reduced and their weights dropped, their thinking patterns became more rigid and obsessional thought and behaviour patterns emerged. When their calories were no longer restricted, they also became vulnerable to binge-eating. You can read more about Ancel Keys’ Minnesota Study here. (It would be considered highly immoral by today’s standards, although perhaps it is worth bearing in mind that one purpose of the study was in order to find out how to care for and manage re-feeding and weight restoration in victims of starvation in several countries following World War II.)

I am not sure to what extent rigid thinking was a big feature in me when I was severely underweight. Others who knew me at the time might disagree! It was mentioned to me on a couple of occasions.

On further thought, perhaps I did not struggle so much with rigidity over, say, my daily timetable – with the notable exception of excessive exercise, as I forced myself to swim a certain distance a certain number of times per week, until I was so exhausted and weakened that I could no longer move through the water which felt ice cold, my legs cramping, and I would drag myself to the changing rooms with my skin purple and blue, bruises appearing that did not heal and no number of layers of clothing warming me up.

However, if the rigidity was not externalised, it was certainly internal. This is what I think of as the “closing drawbridge” of anorexia that locks up or locks away everything we fear. I’ve talked in previous posts about the blissful, safe numbness of anorexia, ensuring my emotions were in check and flattened, and ensuring the evil I perceived in me was locked away to hurt only me, weaken only me, so that I could not hurt anyone else. Locking up the perceived evil locked up feeling, too. No more panic – just obsessive counting calories, distances, how to hide or avoid food. No more fear – just explicable pain, wonderful blanks and emptiness, safe empty gnawing in my stomach. No need to feel others’ feelings. No need to be hurt or be overwhelmed. Just glorious numb, nothing, whiter. lighter, clearer than before. No needing; no taking; just closing down, separated, apart from everything, locked up safe, pushing away and always succeeding, taking nothing in, frozen.

As a friend pointed out to me recently, emotions take energy, just as physical exertion takes energy, so with vastly insufficient calorie intake, there simply is no energy with which to feel. Despite the lack of energy, the drawbridge was shut tight and closing harder. The further I starved and restricted, paradoxically, tighter shut the door and even stronger came the energy driving me on, not to need, not to feel, not to fear, not to touch anyone or anything.

Coupled with that strength came a desperation never to leave this closed up place and never to need or feel again, to remain unreachable, to keep safe away and to keep everyone else safe away from me. If I could just be sure to hurt myself enough and never to eat, this wonderful place would stay with me. The fear of everything the drawbridge kept away joined the energy and both drove me harder and deeper into the numb place of anorexia.

Combined with my mother’s illness and abusive actions, there was no shortage of reinforcement from the outside that this numb place was good. The only period of my life in which my mother’s emotional abuse and threats reduced and in which she was even caring towards me, in which interactions with her were free of threats and scorn and twisted statements about the harm I was doing to her and my father, was when I was severely underweight with anorexia so severe it was probably life threatening. I was no longer a danger and no longer seemed to be so evil. I even thought perhaps she loved me. I even dared to hope perhaps the evil thing I was sure was in me and that came out and hurt and controlled and deceived everyone, was gone. If I could just stay like this, perhaps it wouldn’t come back. On the other hand with the drawbridge tight shut my body was mine as well, only mine, and the anorexia was mine, and she would never come near me again, literally never touch me again.

(Perhaps that was the one thing that was eventually true in all my twisted anorexic thinking. She did abuse me sexually during the anorexia but afterwards, she didn’t ever abuse me sexually again.)

Until I started to eat again and weight restore, there was only one thing that cut through my rigid defences, and that was singing. I’m not a particularly good singer but I was in a musical at my school (more because I used to be able to dance, than for my voice, I think!) and afterwards I took singing lessons, which were about the only part of my later school years that was enjoyable. Although I enjoyed singing, during the anorexia I would find that the music had a peculiar effect. We didn’t usually sing particularly emotive songs but I would often find music bringing me to want to cry or causing a strange twisting feeling of unease inside me, as though it was draining away the rigid kind of energy but I wouldn’t let it go. My mother prevented me seeking any professional help for my eating disorder but the only two people to whom I did talk about it honestly at all at school were my singing teacher and my art teacher. (My swimming coach was also very concerned about me and to some extent I did talk to her but, for some reason, although I knew she cared and was a safe person to trust, I was never able to be truthful to her, I think because in some way I feared hurting or disappointing her too much.) I don’t know why music and to some extent art, broke through the rigid protective mechanisms, but it did. I know that music can be very helpful in therapy for people with various conditions, including dementia and depression. I’ve never read about it in relation to anorexia but that might be something I should look into!

The struggles I have with overpowering, overwhelming emotions in my Borderline Personality Disorder, are the complete opposite of the protective place I entered in my anorexia, and they are an excess of feeling and needing which are probably, actually everything I feared. If I’m honest the numb place was safer. I’ve long lost the way back there and lost the key to the drawbridge and I hate that and I’ll admit that in the worst times, when I really hate myself and everything I feel and need, I wish I could return and it’s hardest at these times to try not to punish myself with cutting or purging. I’m trying to learn how to choose life and staying connected to other people – and to my body and my emotions – without the unbearable and dangerous becoming all that there is.

Ginny xx

My cell phone is depressed (and Catholic) – on walking through cognitive dissonance

My cell phone is depressed (and Catholic) – on walking through cognitive dissonance

Just now I was typing a text message to my friend to say thank you for a good catch up that we had a couple of days ago. Like most Android phones now (I think – dodo alert!) it not only has predictive text in terms of suggesting the word you are currently typing, it also predicts the following words (so for example, if I type “hello how” it will prompt “are” then “you” “?” and so on). Sometimes it is rather over zealous in that function and inserts words you don’t want. Or, as I said, possibly dodo alert again.

So there I am starting to write “It really was good to see you” and my phone changes it to “it really hurts”. Then tries to do it again the next time, too.

It’s not just me you see – now it’s official, my cell phone is depressed too. It’s going for all the sad options!

This made me laugh and also realise that I must whinge a lot more than I realise if it has learnt that word combination. Then it reminded me of the time a while back when I had to send numerous messages about the choir arrangements over  Holy Week* and Easter at my church, so frequently that come Easter Sunday my phone’s predictive text learnt how to spell “Triduum”* and  “Attende Domine”*. So I’ve got a Catholic phone too 😉 .

On a more serious note, this got me thinking that my cell phone mirrors what the cells in our brains – y’all see what I did there 😉 – what the cells in our brains do as we have our life’s range of emotional and interpersonal experiences. Like my phone literally expecting “hurt”, the more hurts and pains we experience, the more we can readily expect this, the more we feel it and the harder it may be to feel anything else. Perhaps the longer we’ve suffered in an abusive or otherwise harmful relationship, the more we are only able to see ourselves and others only in the light of how our reality and our identity and our relationships were in that abusive trap. It’s somehow sadly a lot easier to continue to believe a very painful belief about ourselves that we’ve always held, than to be able to dare to adopt a new belief and to tolerate the cognitive dissonance we need to go through in order to begin to switch our beliefs. It’s easier to continue to believe rubbish about ourselves that our abuser(s) indoctrinated to us, than to accept any good. We long for care and help but we may be unable to receive it. Which sounds bizarre and I hope that it does not sound offensive.

To give an example, in therapy this week I identified that I have lots of rigid and entrenched beliefs along the lines of: “if N. wanted to be my friend, s/he would do xyz” “if N. cared about me, s/he would have [replied straight away to this message because I said abc in it] and because s/he didn’t it shows s/he doesn’t care and doesn’t want to be in touch and couldn’t stand me anyway, what an idiot I was to think s/he’d want me around anyway” or “if you’re someone’s friend and they are upset you do xyz, it’s just obvious, and N. didn’t so it just shows they really think abc [negative thing / opinion that I’m evil] about me”. The thoughts that spiral from these beliefs mean that if they aren’t fulfilled and someone doesn’t do one of these things that I have set as absolutes in my mind (and which, incidentally, I would hold myself to in relationships as well, as rules I must follow as a friend) then very quickly I use them to confirm an even deeper-seated view of myself which stems from things my abuser told me. Such as that I’m evil really, I manipulate people, everyone will think it isn’t my fault but she and I will always know it’s because of how evil I am, xyz person I care about will die or be taken away because of the harm I’ve caused, I’m disgusting and ugly, etc, etc. It’s impossible for me to get past these beliefs and they are a big block in therapy and in everyday life. It’s impossible to believe that my beliefs and motivations are what I think they are and impossible to believe anyone could really want me. My cell’s predictive text is set to “hurt”.

I’m not sure how to get around this at all. I’m not sure if my psychiatrist is either. I met with her yesterday. It was a very helpful meeting and was about a lot of things other than this as well. However, I think to this there isn’t a short answer. How do I go through this? How do I learn a new setting, a setting in my mind that is open to a different belief? How do I dare to actually feel differently? I can try to explore other possibilities cognitively, but I cannot link it up to the emotions and what I really feel and believe about myself and others. I just cannot reach that. What the psychiatrist did help me identify is that only with repetition can we learn something new (as with my cell phone’s expanding Catholic vocabulary). I need to try to continue in relationships long enough to get past the point at which my default beliefs about myself as evil are (or so it seems) absolutely confirmed. Currently I don’t. Like my cell phone I go into “predictive” mode and I pull away from the interaction or even end the relationship at that point.

That’s the one thing I can change, though with a great deal of help from what I think would have to be incredibly supportive and understanding friends. That’s almost too much to ask. This is going to be a long road.

Ginny xx

*Quick (hopefully simple) explanation of Catholic terms: Holy Week is the week leading up to Easter Sunday. The Triduum is a term which refers to the Thursday, Friday and Saturday immediately before Easter Sunday: Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday. “Attende Domine” is a piece of chant music often used during Lent at one of the churches I attend – “Attende Domine et miserere” or “Hear, O Lord, and have mercy”. I find it quite beautiful and relaxing to listen to.

https://youtu.be/t7Glyu7tEWU – Attende Domine – with thanks to Petrus Josephus for the video

Image from Gilmore Girls (sorry I am not sure which Season) – Lauren Graham and Scott Patterson – Gilmore Girls produced by Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino. All rights belong to respective artists.

 

Fat, and hot, and horrible.

The hardest thing about the quetiapine (and venlafaxine maybe, though I attribute it more to the quetiapine) and clonazepam is what it’s done to my body, or rather what I’ve let happen.

Fat. Disgusting. Sweating and hot (that’s the pain meds too I guess). Conscious of my expanded body. I have gained so much weight in the last couple of years. And I’ve let it happen. It’s true the drugs make you gain weight and increase your appetite, but I’ve failed. I haven’t stopped it.

I’m repulsed when I pass a mirror and see the foul reflection, bigger and bigger; when I feel the flab around my stomach and waist, the one thing I used to be able to keep flat and small even if I did have chunky thighs I hid under skirts. It’s everywhere. Crawling disgusting flesh and fat.

Why did I let it? Why? Why did I return to this demanding sick big disgusting body? I want to rip and claw and cut. It’s out of control. It’s all wrong. Growing and needing and hungry and hurting inside and out, aching within, stabbing in my stomach, darts and shooting burning pains as my feet touch the ground and my joints feel like they’ve been smashed and bruised.

Failure. Why. Hate. Hate hate hate this growing sick too big too present body. Even in my dreams I’m fat fat fat, running and clawing to get out of my body. My mother is there, shouting and mocking and threatening and I wake up drenched in sweat and shaking because the nightmare is real now. I couldn’t save her and the foul thing I am stares back at me out of every mirror.

And I cry.

Telling

Telling

On Tuesday I made my statement reporting the years of emotional and sexual abuse from my mother. Two officers were with me for about 3 hours. There were a lot of preliminary questions and forms to complete then my statement was recorded by a small camera. The recording itself may be used in evidence, and a transcript will be typed.

It was a bit surreal at first, but the anxiety was rising in my throat and pumping through my whole body. I thought it would consume me and I would not be able to speak. The officer stated the date, time, place, who was present. Rather like on TV shows, except this was real. Then I spoke. I spoke for about 50 minutes with just a few breaks and questions, then there came more questions at the end.

The officers were incredibly kind and compassionate and made the process as “best” as it could be in this situation. It did make a difference. They were respectful, and gentle, and had empathy for the impact and the cost of speaking. I know from what readers have shared in the comments on other posts that this is not everyone’s experience of reporting this kind of crime to the police. How I wish it was.

Right now I feel shattered, like the picture. I’m so tired. Every joint feels as though it has been smashed with a hammer. At the end of the day at work today, my legs are hurting so much I can only walk very slowly and my feet recoil from the ground. Partly it’s the fibromyalgia and arthritis. Partly the stress, I’m sure.

It’s as if I don’t really know how to stand right now. I know that it was the right thing to do and that I needed to give this statement. Yet those 3 hours change everything.

Suddenly those “touches”, those words, the coercion, the threats, the violence, are unquestionably crimes. A substantial chunk of my childhood written, taped, recorded, in a couple of hours. What happened was no longer sickness (or no longer only sickness). No longer to be excused. No longer misunderstanding or as she sometimes claimed, the product of her fear. It was a crime. In the police’s words I am the victim of her crime. My mind is shattered, too, try to understand this concept….

Ginny xx

WHY. (This ends tonight.)

I have been wondering for a couple of days whether to post about this or not, considering various thoughts about whether this would be too triggering or disturbing and whether potential dangers would outweigh the benefits.

However, I think this is so personally specific that I hope it isn’t triggering, if you see what I mean. Also I’m bearing in mind the advice that acknowledging and talking and asking about suicidal feelings doesn’t cause people to become suicidal.

Something else prompted me to post this tonight, which I’ll explain momentarily.

This post attempts to describe a tiny bit of what I was feeling on Saturday when I overdosed and why I did.

Someone I know has just essentially described my overdose as drama because of a cancelled coffee date. This is so incredibly far from the truth of what led to my overdose and what I felt. It was massively painful to realise that is what it was for her. She is not by nature a judgemental person. She has herself suffered with mental health problems. She is highly intelligent. She is medically trained.

I’m not posting this to tell her she’s hurt me. I don’t understand how she could possibly think that’s why I overdosed.  Perhaps my “why” is equally incomprehensible to her. I do wonder if anyone wanting to understand more about why people overdose or attempt suicide may be interested to read this. But as I said, it’s only very personal to me. Every person’s story and pain is different.

I want to be very clear I am not glorifying overdose or self harm – I am describing what I felt. I am not describing a solution. At the bottom of this article I’ve listed a couple of details of organisations that I think can help towards getting support.

In italics below I’ve tried to describe some of what happened to me in the days and minutes before I overdosed. Though factors and thoughts had been multiplying over days and weeks and months, the actual “1000th last straw” kind of feeling and the final loss of control and “snap” came very suddenly that night.

I guess this comes against a background of mounting external stresses – numerous cancelled appointments, lost support, lost relationships, lost job, financial hardship, threats from my landlord, debt, endless difficulties with numerous benefits and being stuck in hopeless inextricable messes with error after error on the authorities’ part despite my best efforts, poor physical health and constant pain – as well as the internal stresses of my mental health like hallucinations, flashbacks, reexperiencing, voices in my head, memory gaps and dissociation.

Because:

Because everything is utter pain and nothing else exists. All of me is lost outside it. Because nothing, no cutting, no purging, no screaming voices or obedience to their call, is enough to rid the sick evil inside me.

Everyone knows I’m a fake, a liar, foul, ugly, greedy, everyone knows what I’m really like. But I can never stop the evil.

Because the voices do not stop and I so badly need to sleep.

No matter how much more you say, just one more day, one more hour, there really is a limit somewhere, don’t they see? And I know it’s weak but I passed it long ago. It’s true when I say in tired. Let me sleep.

Because I’m screaming, crying, and no one ever came and no one hears today either.

Cruellest – every person has left me when I was most raw. They tricked me to trust, they got at the most bad and vulnerable – then they left. [Like my abuser.] First this hurts with utter fear. Utter loss yet again of all I am. Loss of any hope.

Then rising anger boils and it is just one sick joke or cruel game too many, where they delight in punishing me, I can never win, tricked and tricked again, delighting in hurting me – like HER abuser] – and God delights in my downfall and hurt and he has crushed me to the ground and taken all of me.

No good is visible, no hope exists; no caring is possible, only no more; no more; only sleep.

Then in one moment, comes blinding rage and tears. From numb, dissociated, to intolerable existence to exploding anger, cutting and smashing, no hurt enough. Fears of this exploding monster turning outward now, to someone else, no longer just assuredly to me?

This is all now. ..

In some vague place in another part of my mind, knowing and hoping my heart will stop now I’ve taken the pills.

Running.

Blank.

Slowing.

Tired and the screaming pain is silenced and the voices gone. I can sense my heart, my breathing high and caught and slow but rising. ..

So. This is it now. After that unbearable state consuming – …. the end seems very simple.

 

Of course, it is not at all simple. One most bitter thought in my mind right now, after the comment that it is drama over a minor thing and can’t be dealt with, is that having reached this absolute end point of not being able to go on, even in this I am causing anger and harm and manipulating without wanting to, because to others it’s not real, just drama, trouble, unnecessary, manipulative, can’t be dealt with. I cannot go on and I cannot even stop. Twisted, but definitive, proof ending it isn’t the solution.

FOR HELP, THE FOLLOWING NUMBERS AND SITES COULD BE OF USE:

Samaritans, call for help 24 hours – 08457 90 90 90

http://www.stopsuicidepledge.org

http://www.mind.org.uk

http://www.b-eat.co.uk (eating disorders support)

Ginny xxx

 

Going to the police

[TRIGGER warning for mention of and thoughts around memories of childhood sexual emotional and physical abuse, reporting abuse and so on; also as I wrote I know I’ve gone totally crazy and this post could be frightening.]

I’m waiting for the police to call me. A DC called me earlier in the week and we talked about making a statement reporting the abuse. (I’ve another post I haven’t uploaded yet about how this all came about – will upload that as soon as I can. ) We decided I’d take a few days to think and the DC would ring me back this evening about 7.00 to talk again. He hasn’t rung yet. But I can well understand they’re busy and have emergencies to deal with. I’m just on edge and really unstable today.

However, my decision is made. Funnily enough my friend’s actions yesterday, when she knew I was in pieces and really needed help and had asked her please did she just have a little time to talk about how to get through reporting what my mother did to me – she messed around the time of the meeting, then still left me waiting 20 minutes, made sure we had no privacy and very little time so I couldn’t talk about a thing and then left me when I was really distressed and unsafe (why exactly do all this? Why not just refuse to meet? Why trick me again and pretend to be there, drag it out and string me on more and more desperate?) – all of that has crystallised my decision in my mind.

This is yet another time nobody hears me and nobody is there when I’m most desperate. When I try to tell them about this it gets brushed off, I’m not allowed help, I just have to keep going and be independent, nobody will listen, they say I’m making impossible demands. … when I have had absolutely everything I needed to be safe taken away then I’m thrown out on my own and told just get on with it you’re responsible for your self. … it’s a really sick game.

Nobody will help me. They’ve tricked me.

I don’t want anything to do with them again. I’m not letting them near me.

I will report what she’s done. I found out she attacked a paramedic, attacked my father twice at least, as well. So what she did to me she is capable of to others too. If others can be in danger from her it makes some difference too. I thought perhaps it was only to me. She had so many delusions about me. The things she did were always bound in some way to those. That we were being watched, that I had a special intelligence and knew her thoughts exactly and had plans to punish her, that I was causing my father to have a heart attack or her to be paralysed, that people had done things to me and she had to check it out and then show me what a woman I’d be taken to would do when she examined me – that was her way in when she started putting things inside me. Was it all bound to her sickness? How can we know? Her intent wasn’t the same as an abuser who take sexual pleasure from it if she was sick and doing it because of weird beliefs? What does that mean? Was it a crime still?

And so much was emotional. Does that count as a crime? She trapped me and trapped the family and isolated me totally and did quite a good job of the same with my father. She made false allegations about my father. She told me I was saying and showing my father had abused me sexually unless someone else had done it and she told me I had to tell her what had happened or that was what it meant. They’d be taken away and go to prison and all because of me. So I had to tell her. I had to stop it. I lied but I had to stop it. I could have got someone else in trouble with my lie though. I was 6 or 7 I should have, must have known. I took it back as soon as I made myself dare. I took it back and I hate myself since. I hate the foul thing I am to do that. I know I invented something – so I can never trust myself and never be sure because I did that. She told me for years how evil I am inside. If i lied like that perhaps I could be. It’s not perhaps. I am.

But she encouraged me in the story. She didn’t go right to the police. She told me I’d be taken to be examined. She kept coming back to me to get me to tell. She showed me books and wanted me to draw pictures. Something is not right. Something is not the normal action of a frightened or worried parent. Was she actually sick getting some pleasure from it? That thought has never been in my head before today.

I’m going to the police. They will have to listen when they take my statement. Perhaps they will tell me. Perhaps they will find the sick thing in me and if I’m evil they’ll punish me. They’ll take me in. They’ll tell me if it’s abuse or if it’s me that’s the sick one and invented in some twisted part of my mind. They’ll tell me if she was sick or if she was abusing me. She did hurt other people and maybe at least I can stop that. I need the answer now because I am going mad with this and this will be how I get it because everyone else I trusted has decided I don’t get any help and have to be left. I think the police are my very last hope now.

Ginny

A closing drawbridge and a silent cry – Eating Disorders and Personality Disorder – #5

A closing drawbridge and a silent cry – Eating Disorders and Personality Disorder – #5

Protection in emptiness

Eating Disorders and Personality Disorder – #5

“You will never touch me”

[I am sorry I have not updated this series for a while!]

In my first period of anorexia, one of the greatest functions of my eating disorder was a kind of defiance and separation. Anorexia definitely changed my personality, or rather, it was often as if there was a separate personality, much stronger than my own, rising inside me and gaining strength as I got thinner. She was strong and defiant and could not be hurt. She could keep me away from everyone and every thing that hurt me.

I was about 15 by this time and had suffered at least 11 years of emotional, physical and sexual abuse and exploitation. The family unit of my mother, my father and I were increasingly isolated and cut off into my mother’s sick (in both senses of the word) world and anything that tried to penetrate it led to terrible consequences (her sickness, her threats to kill herself, her threats to abandon the family, her threats of breaking up the family or of me causing her and my father to die, be taken away and so on). Anything that posed a risk to the world of her twisted thinking, delusions and manipulation had to be invalidated or removed. Visitors weren’t allowed to come into the home. Any social contact had to be planned and rehearsed beforehand, carried out to Mother’s specifications, reported back to her, analysed against her pre-prepared script. The daily routine had to run exactly according to her needs. She had to be recognised as super-human, a genius that nobody could ever sufficiently understand, the victim of everyone’s cruelty and misunderstanding who was so gracious as to forgive everyone because she “loved” them so much. Appease, pacify, agree, conform….the disaster wouldn’t happen, maybe….

My eating disorder couldn’t appease, pacify, agree or conform. It couldn’t be manipulated or invalidated. My eating disorder could defy, protect, shield, consume, grow stronger, defend, refuse to succumb and refuse to be controlled or analysed by her and even refuse to recognise her at all.

I remember that eventually, as my weight dropped and dropped, even Mother started to worry I was too thin and getting weaker. She’d encouraged my eating disorder at first, requiring my weight loss and dieting and reminding me how ugly I really was. Eventually it snapped out of her control and I think it was the one thing that actually scared her.

One evening, she called me into her bedroom. She told me to get undressed and stand in front of the full-length mirror. She’d done this many times before in order to shame and humiliate me and to slowly and methodically point out all the bits of my body that were bad and “too plump” and “too much fat”. Usually it followed a ritual weighing and reporting of my weight to her, her disbelief and being forced to repeat weighing myself in front of her. Now I flatly refused to weigh myself in front of her, but delighted in doing it in my bedroom in secret (always in exactly the same place, lining the scales up with a particular pair of floorboards) and was satisfied with the thrill of seeing the pounds drop. But for some reason, this day, I did obey her to get undressed and stand in front of the mirror. This time, instead of pointing out the places I was too fat, she pointed out where it showed I was too thin. Even I was shocked when I was forced to look at where the normal shape of my behind had started to flatten and disappear at the base of my spine. She continued telling me I was too thin and how she was worried.

A thrill of power went through me. It was frightening but I had never felt power like that. No, I thought. No. This is my body. All mine and you will never touch me again. In total silence I walked away from the mirror, away from her, out of her bedroom back to mine and got dressed again. I resolved to lose as much more weight as I possibly could and get as sick as I could, because this meant she would never ever touch me again. I hated her at that moment. I don’t think I was thinking of the sexual invasions, specifically (and indeed a lot of them I didn’t even accept as invasions at that time), but of all the hold she had on me and all the hurt. She would never do it again.

I had an awareness, somewhere, that she was worried for me and she was upset, and that my father was too. At that time, the need for the protection and power of my anorexia was much greater. I had become quite a nasty person, disregarding the hurt I was causing people who loved me (my dad loved me, if my mother didn’t). Or the anorexia in me was quite a nasty personality and I was becoming that personality. The power of anorexia was stronger than my usual nature.

Of course, it didn’t really stop me getting hurt, and it hurt lots of other people in the process. Eventually, it was acknowledging my father’s fear of what was happening to me that started to bring me out of this first period of starvation. To this day, I am not quite sure what, at that time, made me acknowledge that and shifted the balance of power towards empathy and reason, and away from the protective force of anorexia.

Ginny xxx

Victim roles – holding on tight and falling faster

Victim roles – holding on tight and falling faster

A couple of posts ago I said it is very hard not to be bitter. This week it continued to feel like a twisted game someone is playing. God, perhaps, and I have to keep looking back at the Cross to remember my God is not vengeful, twisted, scornful or delighting in our hurt.

This last week, things continued to snowball and I clung harder and harder to the smallest things. I felt completely alone and the importance of every tiny possible bit of help or hope increased.  The pattern repeated relentlessly that every time I counted on something, inside I built up to, “if I can just hang on to xyz, maybe then I can just manage, maybe then there will be help, maybe then I won’t die” and just as that had started to give me some security, whatever xyz was would be snatched away.

Whatever xyz was didn’t matter so much. I went to the Housing Benefit office to try to get some questions answered. I got some answers but also found out my Benefit will be suspended for weeks because of a 2-hours-per-week change in my working hours, likely putting me further in debt with my rent. I got another 3 page long form to fill out and supplementary statements to write. The time I’d counted on to rest to be able to work the next day was then filled with more anxiety over debt and more form-filling. In pieces losing it I phoned the hospital. We agreed that I could cope with telephone support until my care coordination appointment on Friday. 30 minutes later someone else from the hospital phoned to say that my appointment was cancelled (second month running) because my CPN is on training. I insisted I needed to see someone else.  My friend cancelled our meet-up for the second time within a week (not really for any fault of hers). But I snapped at this point.  The last thing I was hanging on to had been snatched away from me and I couldn’t take any more. Then Friday came and the day of the “replacement” appointment to try to talk about support I needed to cope with finances, Benefits, the threats from my landlord, the mountainous paperwork that needed to be completed and numerous telephone calls, and the effect all the confusion, delays, stress was causing to me, to the point that I was overdosing and cutting several times per week. I admitted that I’m not safe on my own, especially at night, and can’t manage simple things like cooking or keeping my flat in order, because the strain of trying to keep working, therapy, then all the financial problems, combine to be too much and leave me with nothing to go on with. The first person I was speaking to appeared to understand and suggested that there would be help available to me and that we could look at whether more social care support could be available. She asked one of the hospital social workers to see me straight away. The social worker came in and said I wouldn’t qualify for any help, that nobody gets anyone to intervene on their behalf or do forms etc for them, that I wouldn’t qualify for personal independence payment as they don’t recognise BPD and I’m working, and that I’m just “in a bit of a pickle” and that everyone has to deal with problems with benefits, tax and so on. She had no conception whatsoever of the extent of my distress, my self-harm, the danger I am in. I lost it totally and walked out.

At that point, yes it was a twisted game. In my mind, someone was delighting in my hurt, laughing at me, seeing just how far they could push me before I broke totally. And they were going to win that day. I was going to take an overdose or maybe I’d walk onto the train line because that was it and they had finally won. They’d had everything they wanted of me and there was nothing left. Everything had gone beyond possible to absolute desperation and this was the end. Everyone who was “supposed” to help me or whom I tried to rely on, was doing me the most harm when I had most hoped and could least take more hurt.

Obviously, I didn’t go and end it,  because I’m here writing this blog post. I can’t really remember exactly how I didn’t, though I’ll write another post about that later.

Something hit me today.

Vengeful. Ridiculing. Laughing at me. Hurting. Snatching from me. Hitting me when I’m most vulnerable. Rejection when I most need help, by those I most trusted. Scornful. Delighting in hurt. Delighting in making everything my fault and taking no responsibility. That’s what I find I meet with when I most need help and they push me to self-harm and suicide.

My abuser was all those things. Now the world takes that role to me and I am in the same position of being hurt. I’ve got away from my abuser, physically (though not in my head), but now the world takes that role to me and I am trapped and still its (her?) victim, not allowed to be saved. I got away (bodily) from her when I walked out, shut the door, got on the train, hung up the phone. That was hard enough and took over 20 years. Getting away from this abuser’s force in the world is going to be much much harder and the leaving I must do this time is going to take much much longer, I think. I don’t think it’s leaving, exactly, but changing something in me so as to receive something other than abuse.

Ginny xxx (Very confused)