Tag: Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID)

Managing money with Borderline Personality Disorder

I am bad with money. I panic about it. I’ll panic for days beside being able to sit down to look at my financial situation. Partly this is because it’s usually so dire and it’s a constant background stressor in my mind that sends me to extremes of distress when my thoughts are in the foreground and that I block out at other times. I even find myself dissociating from it. Additionally, there’s the fact that I find it hard to deal with figures and hold them in my head and follow steps through when I’m budgeting. I always did find dealing with numbers hard, even before I was particularly ill.

However, with help, for example from my lovely support worker or my very close friend L., I can list out all my money coming in and my expenses and I can draw up a budget based on that – even though the outcome for months has been that I don’t have enough to meet basic expenses. It may not be workable but I can at least get things down on paper.

It’s very hard for me to get to that stage but that’s not the biggest problem. The biggest problem is when it comes to spending. I have been very bad with money and very impulsive and out of control and I really want to change that. I must change that if I’m to stay out of debt and all the spiralling material and mental consequences.

Even if I have made a budget plan, when I’m most ill I do not stick to it. Best laid plans to waste, as the saying goes… When I dissociate, or flip, I am no longer in control. It’s my responsibility and I don’t want to deny that but I’m not mentally in control. I make decisions and act on impulses and spend money rashly. I act on a temporary conpulsion to buy things I’d never normally touch. Sometimes I know it’s temporarily squashing down the unbearable feelings. Sometimes I’m buying a different life. Sometimes I’m buying for one of my “others” or it’s the “other” wanting and needing it and making the decisions. Often I’m too far gone to have any awareness of what or why I’m doing it and afterwards I see what I’ve bought and have only a dim recollection of why and when i did it.

Afterwards, infallibly, I feel terrible: guilty, disgusted, that I’ve been selfish, greedy, confused, angry with myself, scared, an absolutely unbearable feeling I can’t describe. There’s dread there. There’s shame – a lot of shame. There’s panic. There’s something more. Yet I still do it. There’s always the next time I lose control and dissociate and spend again. I’d call it a kind of manic dissociation that leads me to spending (it leads me to impulsively angry and needy actions too), as opposed to the frozen and numb dissociation that accompanies self harm or the safe dissociation of slipping away from this world into the imaginary one in my head. The manic dissociation is probably the most socially dangerous.

I really want to break this. I can’t stop the dissociation and impulsivity yet but I’m trying to find ways to reduce its impact. It’s become very important right now because, having had problems for nearly a year with my disability-related Benefits, with my support worker’s help we have now resolved the problems and I am due to receive some back-payment of money I should have received some time ago. This is absolutely great for me because it means that I can pay off my arrears and make a stable budget going forward and it looks as if finally I will have enough to live on! I am so so so thankful for this. It also means that I have a lot more money than I usually do (even if only temporarily til I pay the arrears). This is scary because I know that I cannot be trusted with it.

I texted my support worker straight away about the back payment and he’s going to call me this afternoon so that we can make a plan, pay the arrears and make an appointment to look at my budget again now that I’ll have a bit more money coming in. I’m hoping we can come up with some things we can do so that, at the times I’m being impulsive and not in control, I can spot this quicker and ideally, my access to money could be strictly limited at these times. I’m not sure how we could achieve that but maybe he will have ideas.

I know that ultimately I need to get to the root of what’s causing the impulsivity and learn to take back control of my actions at those times and stop the dangerous behaviour. I’m hoping therapy is going to help me find this, though it worries me I’m so far through therapy and still I don’t think I’ve changed in this area. Until I can do that I need to try to stay safe and be as responsible as I can.

I’m interested to know, if you or someone you know has Borderline, or indeed any other mental health condition, does it affect how you / they feel about money and how you / they can manage it? Is it an area you feel vulnerable or find stressful? In all the years I worked at a hospital and in the various services I’ve been seen in, it isn’t talked about very much.

Just recently I saw a useful self-help booklet at the PD Service I’m seen in, on these kind of issues. I’ll share here the booklet here later today or tomorrow (I think there’s an online version). It was about the first publication about managing finances which I’ve come across targeted specifically for patients.

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

 

All change…

Officially, my last day of work at the department store was yesterday, although as I am currently signed off sick, I was not actually in work. Last week I had my exit meeting with my manager (handing back my ID and keys etc) and said goodbye to my closest colleagues. I’ll be popping in again this week to say bye in person to a few people I was not able to see, and deliver some notes of thanks. They gave me a reed diffuser in a summery freesia scent, which is already providing a perfect calming aroma in my lounge, as well as a card wishing me well. I hope that I keep in touch, in particular with a few people from the department where I worked. We found a lot in common in the months I was there.

So it’s all change again now. I’m sad to leave. I’ll miss people – colleagues and some customers. I’ll miss the creativity. I’ll miss some aspects of the routine and order. I feel bad for having to go after I’d got to grips with things, received training and my colleagues and manager had put time in to show me what to do and support me into my role. They are all incredibly understanding and caring over my situation that has led me to need to leave and that helped me a lot; I still feel bad for leaving the team and leaving more work back on other people. I guess the good side of that is I must have had some confidence, in the end, that whilst I was there I did manage to do some good. Before I started this job I felt utterly useless, unable to trust that I could do any good because my previous employer seemed to find me so deficient. I see now that at the store I gained a tiny bit of confidence, as well as knowledge.

I’m amazingly anxious and I’m not quite sure why. I’m feeling it physically and feeling shaken and near crumbling and crying and really wishing someone could hold me and tell me it would be alright. I don’t know exactly what is causing this. I’m teetering on the edge of dissociating but I’m staying on this fragile edge instead of slipping over. On the edge are raw and exhausting emotions and I’m spinning and spiralling rather than falling into the safety in the hidden mist of dissociating. It’s painful. I’m trying to use my grounding techniques and self soothing and trying, if only in tiny moments, to avoid falling over that edge. Dissociating may be a relief but the pain it causes me afterwards, and others during, is even worse.

I’m trying to find the way through the next steps now that I will not be working for a while (on my GP’ s and support worker’s and others’ advice). I’m confused about all the forms I have to complete and assessments I have to go through. I’m scared of how they’ll judge me. Scared of whether I’ll manage financially. Scared of so many things that are making me feel trapped, not believed, going into the unknown…. I’m so thankful I have my support worker guiding me through, otherwise I’d implode and go back to shutting down and hurting myself out of fear and pain and flashbacks. I’m so thankful I’m not alone. I’m trying to find ways that this instance of having to leave work – because I’ve lost or head to leave more jobs than I can cope with counting, for the same reasons every time – is not yet another repeat of this cycle and is not only another failure, loss, or let down to those who have tried to help me. I’m trying to find ways I can make this different. I have therapy now. I have my doctors and support worker. I have a home. God willing I am soon going to have some more social interaction and a place to contribute something, in a mental health charity I’ve been referred to. These all count for a lot in stopping me going so deep over the edge and now I pray I can build something good from this place.

Ginny xxx

This is different, somehow

This is different, somehow

I’m feeling very very anxious today. My emotions have been shifting quickly in the last two weeks. Many of the emotions are familiar but some aren’t and the startling changes are raw and unexpected.  I feel so shaken and quickly exhausted. A substantial part is physical but a lot is emotional or mental too. Anxiety and hurt and pain but also thankfulness, feeling overwhelmed at goodness and expressions of love – from friends, for example – come suddenly and something is different. It sounds nonsensical because so much of my problem for a long time (and a big feature of BPD) is that my emotions have been so total, overwhelming, all-consuming, the only thing that seems to exist, the only thing I seem to be. Now I’m saying I’m feeling overwhelmed but it’s different. So, what’s different?

I can’t express it properly but since my therapy group two weeks ago things are shifting. I admitted in that group to strong and frightening feelings of anger and need and fear of the voices I hear that tell me I will do terrible, violent things; I admitted that since I have tried to stop self-harming I’m experiencing every feeling I so much wanted to cut off and control to keep other people safe from the evil I fear in me; I admitted how I detach and dissociate and how a lot of my needs and emotions, I only allow myself to feel through the pain of self-harm or in my escape (“imaginary”) world. I admitted I knew that  they would be horrified and disgusted at me and that I was disgusted at myself. Then something happened. The other group members weren’t disgusted or afraid of me.  Several people said that they hear the voices too and that they have similar feelings too. These three things stunned me – that they were not disgusted or afraid, that they hear the voices too, that they also have these feelings. This started to change things. It was more than a feeling of “oh thank goodness I’m not the only crazy one”. It started to mean that if these things are felt by other people too, experienced by other people too – other people who I trust and who are good and kind – then it is no longer something that means I’m evil inside or that I’m just all bad really and everyone else knows it or everyone else will be hurt because nobody could believe I was really so bad but they will find me out in the end, fulfilling my abuser’s threats.

Since then, and even more since therapy group this week, I’m feeling my forbidden emotions, without doubt. Some connection is appearing that was not previously there. The void between my emotion and my ability to be present and think and speak is closing, somehow. Before, everything was either consuming emotion, leading to explosion, violence to myself; or to total dissociation, impulsivity and non-presence then utter horror and depression afterwards and memory loss; or thinking spiralling compulsive thoughts, being unable to connect to the emotion behind them that was just too frightening. Now somehow I am starting to pray and think in the emotion, experience its presence, experience its coming and going… it’s very raw but somehow it is different from how previously the emotion was my everything, my only reality, and the self-destruction (self-harm, overdose, starvation) was utter safety. My escape world of my other dissociated identities is encountering this world more and more, whereas previously they stayed safely separate, present with me much of the time, but not overlapping with my own consciousness, thoughts, feelings, needs…. Now I am feeling what previously “they” felt. That’s scary. That’s unknown. Also, that could be good.

I’m frustrated by how very inadequately I am able to explain what’s happening to me. It seems as if I could put it together better some of the anxiety I have might reduce. I know it isn’t a bad thing and that it’s very important but I am extremely shaken and high in anxiety and needing comforting, grounding things. I am going to find it a struggle the next 3 weeks or so, because there is a break in the therapy programme for the summer holiday time, meaning I don’t have any group therapy this coming week or the next and no 1:1 therapy until the second week of August. Right now I so need someone to work with through what’s happening. I have to try to dare to call the duty support team if I’m getting bad in the meantime. I have to take the step to trying to trust them again and this is as good a point as any, I guess. Perhaps it’s also good that I’ll have to try to cope without therapy. I know part of these changes is going to be learning to experience and emotion of my own without it being understood or accepted or cared about (and indeed without me being cared for) by anyone else. I’ll have to do that in these two weeks.

Ginny xxx

Is this pain real?

WARNING: this post contains brief mentions of eating disorders and self-harm.

Which is harder to deal with: physical pain and physical disability / ill health, or mental pain and distress and poor mental health? Is there a difference for you? Does one seem more real than the other?

At the moment my physical health is poor and my physical pain and limitations have been worsening fast, in particular in the last couple of weeks. Any standing or walking is painful and shaky. I need to use my walking stick again, having had 5 years or so not needing it (apart from one time for a few weeks).

Physical health problems can be tangible and visible in a way that mental health isn’t. People can see that I’m using a stick or that I need to rest often. They can’t see in the same direct way when I’m having obsessional thoughts or hearing the voices. I’ve posted before on how many people I’ve met who have Borderline or other mental health problems, feel a shame about their mental health condition and support needs and a guilt for needing help or “not being normal” or not being able to cope. Many of these people, again myself included, have physical health issues too, and the common feeling seems to be that these are more allowed and acceptable (in others’ eyes and also our own thoughts) than the mental health needs. Often that does ring true with me and I’m sad so many people find that. I’ll post on that topic more separately.

Just now I’m struggling to trust that my physical pain is real and allowed too rather than being something I’ve invented, is my fault, not real…

Physical pain is still subjective. Nobody can objectively see how much, say, my back hurts or there are weird numb sensations then burning pain in my feet. Anatomic problems can be seen and measured on scans and tests but what our experience of pain and weakness is, can’t be.

I have been desperate for more visible and concrete proofs of what I experience physically. I have some, for example, a scan has showed some degeneration in my lower spine, the GP performed various tests which diagnosed they inflammatory condition in my knees, and so on. However much of my physical struggles aren’t documented in the same way. You can’t see nerve pain or nervous system inflammation, painful joints, muscle spasms, poor regulation in the autonomic nervous system (well not directly anyway, although some tests can show disrupted adrenal or thyroid function or high white blood cell counts)…

The lack of physical, external evidence of what I’m experiencing is a real problem for me. If i let myself think on it the voices get loud. I think I must be going mad. It must be my fault. It must be my invention or my imagination. I should just get on with it and push through. I’m weak. The worst thing is the thought I must be a fake. I hate using my stick because of it even when I’m in more pain and more unstable without it. I’m deceiving everyone, the voice tells me. Look. Everyone knows. Everyone’s looking at me. Everyone’s talking about what a fake I am. They all know nothing’s wrong with me really. I’m terrified it’s all made up and I’ve faked it all without realising. I’ll never stop it but my whole life I’ll be a fake and at the end I’ll be judged and punished for it. Other voices tell me I’m doing it for attention to make people worry about me. Don’t you know how much upset you’re causing, they ask…

In the past I’ve felt I’ve deserved physical pain. That it’s safe if I have pain or cause myself pain. It means I’m being punished and suffering and that’s safe. It means I won’t be so bad. I won’t be so dangerous. I’ll be weak and that’ll be safe. That was how I thought during my anorexia. That was how getting thinner and thinner and more ill kept me safe. It is/was part of how self harming was safe too because it punished only me, just only me, stopped the evil emotions as I saw them getting out. I say “was” because I’ve managed not to self harm for a month and I’m grappling with the feelings that come to be now I’m not doing it.

The physical pain from my illnesses that I can’t control is different. It is overwhelming. It isn’t safe. It might show my badness (because I’m fake). It’s overwhelming and can feel inescapable but I feel I don’t have the right to think it’s real.

It interacts with my mental control too. When the pain is bad part of my mind freezes. I cannot be warm or present for other people. Trying to interact at all is a fight. Sometimes I want to hide and sleep. Being around anyone can be too much. I panic and want to be safe at home in my secure place. I mix up words and sounds and can’t get a simple sentence out straight. The all encompassing nature of emotions and especially anxieties and fears and psychotic thoughts increases. I feel shut tighter into the world of my Borderline.

I doubt the reality and truth of my physical and emotional experiences. The only pain I knew was real and undoubted was the pain of self harming or starving. The rest of my experience I doubt, as though the real me that’s bad really, angry, fake, deceitful, will be found out in the end, but I can’t escape from it/her. I only just realised that in writing this post. Trying to stop self harming is going to change a lot, I think.

Ginny xxxx

Lost and hurting

[WARNING: this post contains content that may be distressing including mention of past abuse and things said and done to me by my abuser; it also reflects my very distressed and confused state. If this may be upsetting or unhelpful I would suggest giving this one a miss.]

It’s been a really bad day.

I’m sorry I can’t post quite what I said yesterday that I would although this is quite closely related.

I can’t do anything right now really. I’ve never felt so lost and fragmented. My thoughts are racing but I can’t get them into words. I’m freezing cold. I literally feel far from everything real. I tried to go for a walk to calm down. Everything around me – trees, people, sounds of talking around me, the ground – seemed to be existing and happening further away than usual behind a screen. The pain and exhaustion is intense and shattering.

Something inside me that was the last thing pushing me forward even in the mess things are, seems to have switched off. I can’t do anything. I don’t want anything except desperately wanting someone to hold me. I don’t know for sure what I feel apart from lost.

I feel a total failure. Failure as a friend. Failure in what everyone else can do. Failure as a Catholic. Failure at being. Not enough.

My friend told me he’s known for years I’m angry. That terrifies me. I have done everything to stop it getting out. I stopped eating. I cut myself. I overdosed. In the end it came back to stopping the evil getting out of me. It didn’t work. Everything I feared. There are evil things in me I can’t control. They got out when I was a child. What my mother said is coming true. I can’t even hurt myself enough to stop it getting out.

He said I’m too angry to let God in; that I don’t want God to love me,  I always want there to be a barrier, I won’t let God love me.

But I thought nothing could stop God’s love. I so want to love God. It has never occurred to me to think I don’t want God to love me. I don’t think I please God and I don’t think I love Him enough and it is very hard to truly believe He does love me. I find it very hard to think He does want me and I’m terrified whatever i do, in the end He’ll reject me and everyone will see how bad i am and I’ll be damned. But to think I don’t want God to love me? It terrifies me.

The thought terrifies me constantly that my real desires and motivations are evil however much i want them to be good and even when I think they are good. That God knows and other people know they’re bad really. That it’ll be exposed sooner or later. That it means I can never be loved and never be good.

Just like when my mother told me, she’d be taken away because of me or whatever she was threatening at the time, I’d fool people it was because of her but she’d know and I’d know it was all because of me really. Nobody would believe a child could be that bad but really it would all be because of me. When all along I didn’t know what I’d done wrong and desperately tried to do what she wanted and needed, it turned out that was how bad I was really. I took in totally on board.

And – they’ll know you enjoyed it, she’d say after she put her hands in me. They’ll know you wanted it and you enjoyed it. Mind you don’t do that,  don’t breathe like that,  or they’ll realise. It hurt and I was frightened but she told me they’d realise I wanted it. It plays over and over in my mind now. The thought that I wanted it, is  as bad again as what she did. And when she had me do things. You love that don’t you, you really like it…. I wonder if anyone’s listening. ..no one would believe it’s all because of you, daddy and I would be taken away and you’d be sent to a special school for morons. Are you a moron?

Another time, just because i couldn’t do something – Look, this is a toddler walking rein. This is what you put on babies when you go out. So if you’re going to pretend, we’ll put this on you whenever we go out so everyone knows you’re a baby.

As a kid I knew I was evil. But even as a kid I wanted to be loved. I wanted it but I knew I was too bad really.

I’m fragmenting now.

Now my friend has said I don’t want God’s love. I don’t want a relationship with God. I want to put up barriers. I’m too angry. I didn’t think it was possible not to let God love. My only hope was we can’t stop God loving. But he said I refuse to receive it. What I feel is shaken and darkness and alone and losing one by one everything that gave me any stability at all. I try to read the Bible and I feel fear. Where I should feel hope. Where my friend tells me i should feel hope and joy and I just have to keep on doing it and i have to make the choice and if hopelessness carries on it’s a choice. My friend said he doesn’t think I’ve really tried to pray. That I haven’t kept doing it. That if I don’t feel hope I have to stir myself back up to it. That it works for most people so why would I be different, why wouldn’t it work for me? I repeat words I cannot believe and promises I cannot feel and try to follow a God I cannot find, I am twisted inside trying to act against everything I feel and say only what I want to believe but isn’t real in my heart.

I am completely lost. The relationships that meant most to me all broke down and it turned out I’m not a good enough friend, that when I was trying everything I could to do good and to keep all the frightening horrible evil things inside me, I was just a burden.

I have lost any grasp on what I can trust. I’ve lost any grasp on my faith. I think I desperately want my God – i thought I did, at least that was sure, although I found it impossible to believe He could want me. The terror of the harm I do and the evil that will come out of me and knowing I can never really know if I think or mean or want what I think I do, was too great. But now I have been told I don’t even want God, am too angry to want God’s love. I’m utterly shaken. Have I never had any faith. …if despite everything I really don’t even want God and everyone but me knows that then I’ve never had any faith and I’m lost.

This is absolute pain now. I cannot function. I am so frightened.

Ginny xxx

Not my day off

Today has been demanding. It’s one of those days that seems too much to have been only one day. I got big stuff done but also I’m losing time in unsettling ways and I know I was dissociating a lot between the different tasks and meetings I had to do, slipping out of being engaged with what’s going on and what I’m feeling and struggling to come back. Nevertheless I got through quite a few challenges.

Last night I knew I needed to tidy and clean my flat. My support worker was coming today. Also I hadn’t been on top of the housework since my operation and it was bothering me more and more. Recently I’ve started to find a greater sense of order and calmness if I don’t have too many things disorganised around me. This is interesting because til now, I’ve tended towards accumulating things I don’t need and not being able to keep my house ordered, not exactly hoarding but not being able to face items and paperwork and household tasks without going into panic.

Yesterday I was very anxious about today but put some of the physical drive from the anxiety into cleaning and then went on to clearing out some of my cupboards. By late evening I’d cleared 7 big bags (between rubbish and charity shop) and set 3 more big bags of things to try to sell at a car boot sale. The fact I don’t have a car for the boot element of that plan is potentially problematic 🙂 but there are the odd few table-top, largely indoor, sales in community centres / church halls here in the summer and I’m hoping I can find one to join in.

Today was a struggle to get up. Everything hurt. Still, I got together the papers I needed to show my new support worker (more on this tomorrow), then it was off to my care coordination appointment with my CPN. This wasn’t easy to go to because, although my last appointment was okay, in the two previous appointments I’d been really distressed and felt I didn’t get heard when I was desperate and at risk. Today’s appointment was actually really good. We looked at some DBT skills and we did a review which was overdue (every 6 months or so is a review appointment). I’ve not yet felt able to discuss with my care coordinator exactly what went wrong in the difficult appointments earlier this year when everything was going to pieces. I’m scared I’d lose control and the feelings of anger and not being believed would return and I’d do bad things and be back where I was. However my care coordinator and I have managed to move forwards having 2 positive appointments. I was scared after what I’d done – how upset and angry I’d got – he wouldn’t believe me or want me anymore and they’d know how bad I am and that I didn’t deserve help. That hasn’t happened. That’s something that I don’t usually get to experience.

Straight after my care coordination I met my support worker, H., who is from a housing support charity I was referred to recently. He is going to help me sort out my benefits like Housing & Council Tax Benefit, Tax Credits and disability benefits,  as well as liaising with my landlord about the rent arrears that I got into when I lost my job last year. It was a long appointment. We went through the background to how I’d got here, financially and in terms of my health, and we looked at lots of documentation, my income and my benefit and Council Tax notices. This took a lot out of me and I came so close inside to panic and losing it and emotions shooting too high. H. was very calm and non judgemental, which helped a lot. (More on this in the next couple of days.)

Then I had to rush to my GP appointment, which was the first since I’d been very distressed and angry at the surgery a couple of weeks ago;  also the first since my operation and finding out endometriosis isn’t actually the explanation for my pain and gynae issues. I’m still working through what happened in today’s appointment. I was dreading going into the surgery because I’m still terrified of what I did and how much I lost it. I was ashamed and embarrased and knew that they probably didn’t want me around again. I knew I’d really upset and inconvenienced and disturbed people. I’d scared people. That’s the worst thing,  the harm I caused, the bad I’ve always feared getting out of me. Talking to the GP  and discussing what happened and then also talking about my physical health was really emotionally charged.  It’s hard trying to deal with a lot of uncertainties about my physical symptoms. I know not having endometriosis is a really good thing but not having any explanation for all the things I thought it explained, and the fact the doctor isn’t really interested any more in investigating what may be wrong – well, that’s hard and triggers all my fears that it’s all in my head, I’ve made it up or I’m mad, it’s my fault. …

After the GP it was off to the pharmacy with my prescription, then finally home.

It’s been quite a day. I had a soothing bath tonight. Today was the first day I could have a bath since the operation (don’t worry I promise I did still wash 😉 !). The doctor sealed the wound with dissolvable stitches so it was important not to soak them in water too soon or they could have come undone. Also it was not safe to try to get in and out of the bath whilst my mobility was further reduced with post op effects. Falling is a risk for me anyway because of the problems the fibromyalgia and arthritis cause in my legs. So, tonight was a good little relaxation and refreshment. The little things do help!

How has your day been?

Ginny xxx

 

A closing drawbridge and a silent cry: too much; too big

 

A closing drawbridge and a silent cry

Eating disorders and personality disorder

My body becoming too much

WARNING: this post contains potentially triggering content on the topic of eating disorders, weight, body image and emotions. Please proceed with caution. Please note that in this post I express my distressed thoughts about my body and the relationship between my body, needs, emotions and relationships. I’m aware that a lot of these thoughts are part of my personality disorder and historic eating disorders. I am not advocating or encouraging these perceptions and feelings but describing what the process of trying to live with my body and face emotions is like. I think the stage of therapy I’m going through is bringing a lot of this distress to the surface. 

My body is changing. It’s out of my control (or so it feels, though the angry punishing eating disordered voice in my head says it’s me that’s out of control – disgusting fat b*tch – and my own disgusting failure).

I have gained so much weight in the past 2 years. I have tried hard in the last few weeks to lose and done all the things that used to be my trusted go-to solutions, with the exception of using illicit medications. I have failed and no matter that I succeeded in restriction, my weight has hardly dropped. If anything, now I feel more out of control. Sometimes I wonder if any of it is to do with being in my 30s now (quarter aged spread instead of middle aged spread?!) and my mobility being poorer with so much physical pain just now.  But that does nothing to justify the gain or calm me. Many people taking the medications I take report weight gain as a side effect even when restricting.  I think it increases my appetite but I know so does my need for comfort and my lonely emptiness and my…feeling. Feeling that’s dangerous and unchecked and explosive.

Anorexia meant I was never alone. I was cold and numb and empty and hurting, but needs and unbearable feeling stayed where they belonged and I dissociated, living somewhere whiter, higher, safer, always with the twisted pleasure of bitter success in my spiral to greater protection and greater weakness. Anorexia was my companion, that reassured me all would be well if I did not deviate from this path,  spurring me on with wild energy to control and deprive and make dangerous need and demands unreachable. Soon enough I would detach and dissociate totally then maybe disappear.

Anorexia left me. Abandoned me. I failed yet again. Just like my friends, even my family, my protector and guide left me. Found out I was a vile disgusting greedy failure, undeserving of that whiter place. Anorexia too abandoned me, and sped away to a place I can no longer reach, now that it is proved yet again that really the evil inside consumes and demands and if anyone else thinks differently, it’s only that I’ve tricked them into staying and caring. They’ll leave soon, when they find out.

I could take it if it were only for my protection that I needed my friend anorexia. But the thing is, it was to protect everyone else, first and foremost, from the danger and “too much” “too big”that I am. Without my friend I hurt beyond control and I hurt others beyond control.

I look in the mirror and I’m frightened and recoil from what I see. I wish I could rip myself away from the “too much” in the presence that I see, hating every part of the space I occupy, the weight, the body that absolutely does not seem to fit together right and screams too much, too much. I cannot escape. I cannot get rid of this body and these needs. I cannot stop what it contains, the out of control, the demanding, aching. … alone without my friend to starve and cut and numb and leave this place, I cannot stop the damage I will cause to everyone I so care for and so wish to save, protect and love.

Ginny xxx

That should have been me

Do you ever feel that someone else’s place or circumstances should have been yours? That you really wish you could swap, or take for them what they are going through? I am not talking about good things, more about difficult things. So many times, when someone I care about is suffering, I’ve wished that I could take for them what they are going through. I guess that much is natural, when we care for someone, particularly with parents and children – I’m not a parent but I imagine loving parents would probably willingly take suffering themselves to spare their children’s suffering. Weirdly, I get these feelings with people I don’t really know. I can get really strong feelings that I should have been in their place, that it should have been me, not them.

When I was in the hospital for my operation last week, there were several of us on the ward having similar procedures. Lovely NHS blue curtains round the beds are fine for privacy in visual terms but do nothing to stop you overhearing what is going on, much as you really try not to! So, I ended up gathering that the lady in the next bed, about the same age as me, was having the same operation as me for suspected endometriosis. We both went into theatre and both came out and the doctors came round to see us to tell us the outcome. I’d gone in expecting to be told I had extensive endometriosis and that it had grown across my bladder and potentially other organs. I’m single and I do not want to have my own children. The lady next door to me had a (from what I saw) caring, loving husband or partner and I gathered that they were at the stage to consider starting a family. She didn’t know what to expect in the op. We both came out. I got told that there was no endometriosis. She got told that she has severe endometriosis, it has grown through her other organs, it was so severe they could not remove it in that operation and will need to do another more complicated operation, and if she wants any chance of having children it’s very unlikely and she would have to go through freezing eggs and having IVF. She was so astoundingly brave, talking to the doctors and talking to her husband / partner, I was stunned, but she has this shock and loss to face of likely not being able to have children.

Now – apart from acknowledging the fact that I have distinctly too big ears and need to stop being such a nosy moo (bring ear plugs next time!?) – I instantly felt that my place and hers should have been swapped. I should have been the one to have the endometriosis. I’m single. I don’t plan to have children, for so many reasons. I knew that already. I expected endometriosis. I’d not really have lost anything if I had it. She has a partner and they love each other and probably wanted a family and she’d have been a lovely lovely mum.

I didn’t know her and I’m sure I’ll never cross paths with her again but I cried and prayed to God, that should have been me. It should have been me, not her. It hurt.

Frequently, I get this strong feeling that it should have been me. It happens with friends, where I really wish I could, and feel I should, be able to take on pain that they are going through and go through it in their place. It also happens with people I barely know. Possibly it’s connected to times I dissociate, or my feelings that I “shouldn’t have been me”, shouldn’t have been who I am, I’m not real, everyone knows my thoughts and intentions are something other than what I think they are (something bad) – but this is different. Feeling I should have been in the other person’s place when they are suffering… that I wish I could take it on for them… that I want to take it away from them (but it’s more than that)….

Is that a typical Borderline Personality Disorder feeling? Or typical of Personality Disorders in general? Do you ever experience these feelings?

I’m sorry this is a badly written post.

Ginny xxx

 

 

Selling star maps to the sun – disconnecting behind the front

Camera One closes in, the soundtrack starts, the scene begins- you’re playing you now…

on the corner of a street, in a lawn chair in the heat, sightseers see what they want, you’re selling star maps to the sun…

(Josh Jopin – Camera One)

The disconnection between what’s going on inside me and what I have to be on the outside is scaring me. I’m getting worse at it. Out of control emotions are scaring me, especially explosive rage. I’m losing control. It feels as if everything I feared might happen if I stopped self harming is now unfolding rapidly and I’m losing it.

I’m faking being alright whilst I’m dissociating inside, until a dream-state traps me and I can’t function or speak,  or until for no good reason at all the anger explodes.

I have to take responsibility and I desperately don’t want to run away from this but I have no control in those times. I’ve been taken over by a dangerous angry screaming force that can only hurt, or a needing, crying child. Afterwards for days it’s as if I’m just watching myself playing a part.

I don’t know how to break out of it.

Ginny xxx