Tag: mental health and friendships

I’msorry for getting so behind

I’m sorry for getting so behind on responding to comments and visiting other blogs. I owe several replies and I’m not ignoring you, I’m sorry. In the past few weeks I seem to have been almost constantly under the weather with colds / flu and my fibromyalgia has really flared up now – I’m quickly fatigued, have a lot of pain, glands inflamed etc. Together with the endometriosis it isn’t a great combination. I spent most of yesterday and today sleeping (I wasn’t well enough to go to group therapy yesterday) apart from some attempts at cleaning up my flat. I feel so useless right now.

You are in my thoughts and I’m very grateful to you for still reading when I’m so rubbish at keeping in touch. I promise I’ll get back to you as soon as possible and I’m sorry for being useless.

Ginny xxx

Not being there

In the past few weeks I have been struggling more physically with a lot of pain, exhaustion and several viruses one after the other not helping. I’m learning slowly to not get frustrated or panicked when there are things I just can’t do at the moment. This is a very slow process of learning about what I can do – it’s been over 15 years now since my physical health conditions started. It still makes me feel very useless when I compare myself with other people and see how much less I seem to manage to achieve day to day than they do and comments that bring it home, deliberate or not, hurt.

However the hardest part is feeling that I can’t be there for other people (friends, family, people I work for, and so on) in the way I would like to. At the moment I manage to work part time. Usually after work I am exhausted and dealing with too much pain to do anything else. I get behind on simple things like housework. I’m behind on replying to comments and messages on here – I’m really sorry all the more because I am grateful for the time you take to stop by and read and comment and you are all far more supportive to me than I manage to be to you. I had to stop most of the voluntary work I used to do and I feel I’m not there for my friends or family in the way I’d like to be. Most live a long way away and the journey can usually be too much, plus I can’t even write or telephone as I’d like to when I’m very low physically or mentally.

I really feel like I’m selfish and should push harder (though I know I can’t) and that I’m really failing in friendship. Even in my dreams – which have been really disturbing lately – there seems to be a theme of not being able to help people or watching bad things happen to people and screaming out but not being able to stop it and the not being able to stop it comes with a sense of horror and judgment on myself that lasts quite some time after waking.

I try to take courage from remembering that it’s not grand accomplishments that are necessary and even little actions done with love and care can be meaningful even if we don’t see how they are at the time. I don’t have a high powered or even full time job but in the work I do I can still do it with dedication and care and going that bit further to help those I’m serving (literally, since I work in a shop!).

But when it comes to not being able to be present in the way I should be for others in relationships – I’m not giving the time or the help I should in practical ways – I feel I’m failing. However much I care for someone, if I can’t do the practical things (visiting, writing, helping and being there when they need it) then aren’t I really failing, from their point of view?

I know we don’t earn a genuine friendship any more than we earn God’s love. We aren’t loved by God because of what we do or because we have earned it or made ourselves successful or good enough. We are loved, still in our weakness, because His nature is loving. The more we admit our need for Him the more He fills us with His love. The good we do is the work of His love through us and every little act and prayer we offer is this love, gives this love to other people and gives love back to Him. “We love because He loved us first.” He even says it is by this love we will be known – people will say, “see these Christians, how they love one another.” In their work with the poorest people, Mother Teresa’s nuns made it their aim not to begin by preaching but by care, love and selflessness in their actions. If someone asked them why they acted as they did, then they would speak about the Love that led them to it.

Actions aren’t what make us good or acceptable people, though I can certainly tend to feel that. They are the fruit of being loved and wanting to love. But what if I can’t do the things that are needed and expected in friendship, that bring care and support to the other person and show to them that I care? In the past I’ve even ended relationships because I’ve felt so strongly that I’m not a real friend because I can’t be there as the other person needs. Recent ways relationships (one or two in particular) have gone wrong because (I think) the other person doesn’t find anything good in the relationship and thinks I need too much, make me think this even more.

Perhaps it’s something to discuss in therapy group.

Ginny xxx

Mixed up

It’s a night of confusing feelings. It felt like a strange day from the start as group therapy was cancelled. Tonight I keep nearly crying for no reason. My chest hurts. Feels like there’s a weight under my ribs. Anxiety? I don’t know. I just want a hug.

It wasn’t all bad today. Actually there was a lot of good. I met my friend for coffee. She has a beautiful baby girl, six months old. Baby was in the mood for cuddles, despite not having seen me for a couple of months, and giggled away in my arms. Being loved and trusted by her just made me really happy. With a little baby there’s no room for the second guessing and doubting that comes into all my other relationships (like the voices telling me they can’t stand me really even if they pretend to like me and finding proof all too easily of how bad I’m sure they think I am). With a baby it’s open emotion that I don’t doubt.

It was good to talk to my friend and I realised how much I miss her. She’s special, very astute and empathic and reflective. She is really supportive to me and still so through the fulness of her own life as a mum when she has do many demands and many people might understandably lose touch or be less “present” for friends.

We talked some about how I feel really unhappy with the hospital at the moment. On the way to meet her I’d had another upsetting phonecall with the hospital which I won’t bore you with detailing right now. Talking helped at the time for a little while and stopped me losing it but soon after the crashing guilt hit me, that I shouldn’t have said anything and shouldn’t moan and it’s my fault anyway and that I took up her time and took over the conversation; although I really tried not to and tried to turn the conversation back to her quickly, I worry what if it did. I’m trying to trust she meant it when she said she enjoyed meeting.

Through the afternoon spikes of anger kept hitting me about the phonecall. I kept actively choosing to do things other than self-harm, which did have the one positive effect that I cleaned my flat as distraction!

This evening I made a card for my colleague B’s golden wedding anniversary. Tomorrow evening B and her husband are having a party and she’s kindly invited us from work. I’m very happy for her and it’s very generous of her indeed to include us. At the same time I’m anxious already. I’m getting a lift with another colleague as it’s not really on a bus route, which means I don’t have control over when I can leave if I don’t feel good. I worry about spoiling things for other people. There’ll be lots of people, it’ll be busy, it’s in the evening, I don’t know the venue and it’s the first socialising I’ve done with colleagues outside work (apart from one coffee with someone). All challenges for me right now. I’m trying to just focus on being happy for B. and being warm towards new people I meet. I don’t want to waste all the good of the lovely celebration with my anxieties.

I’m missing N. and feeling very upset with how I left things with her. I’m determined to do something, go to see her, to tell her meaningfully I’m sorry and try to sort it all out but I’m not sure how she’ll feel about me approaching her or if it’s better for her that I leave things be now and don’t try to get in touch if I’d only cause more hurt.

Anyhow. It’s a lot of feelings to sit with tonight. I’m tired and I need to try to be still. Thanks be for tea and hot water bottles!

Goodnight. I’m praying for you.

Ginny xxx

All I want is to be your harbour

Sail your sea, meet your storm. All I want is to be your harbour. The light in me will guide you home, all I want is to be your harbour. Fear is the brightest of signs – the shape of the boundary you leave behind….

I love this song by Vienna Teng, “Harbour“. I feel it will inspire a couple of posts over the next few days 😉

I pray I can grow stronger and be able to be there for the people I care about so much, as a safe place and a harbour and a faithful, un-judging, unwavering, companion. I pray we can all find our own harbour.

To everyone who sails this turbulent sea and just by being here, helps me meet this storm –

THANK YOU.

Ginny xxx

 

Happy Easter to you, with love

Happy Easter to you, with love

I should have posted this yesterday, but better late than never!

Wishing you a very happy Easter! I pray that this time bring you good in all the little things, and that each day something brings you hope, something makes you smile, something makes you remember good times, someone shows you friendship, someone helps you know that you are dearly loved, and that peace enfolds your heart.

Thank you so so much for taking the time to come by here. I am very thankful for you. You mean more than I can express.

Sending big hugs.

Ginny xx

A visit to my goddaughters

A visit to my goddaughters

This Palm Sunday weekend has been a special one. The last couple of days, I have been staying with my goddaughters’ family. They are several hours away by coach so I do not get to visit as often as we might all like, partly as I am very anxious about travelling and my physical pain exacerbated makes the journey tiring too. Visits have always been a blessed time. My goddaughters’ mum L. is my closest friend and when I was at college, I lived with her and her family in holidays when I was unable to live with my own. Though a long while may go between times we see each other at the moment, we stay close in friendship and prayer for each other and don’t seem to lose the closeness despite the geographical distance.

L. is a very non-judgemental person, extremely compassionate and reflective, talented especially in work, study and music, selfless and giving, gentle and sensitive to others and extremely accepting. I am so thankful, in recent years especially, that she accepts me however I am, whatever I cannot do, whatever I’m feeling, however rubbish I feel. She makes it okay. I dare to tell her more than any other friend how I really feel.

My goddaughters bring abounding energy and a lot of happiness. Everything is exciting and new. They ask questions that make me smile and open my eyes to notice and be mindful. They find purpose and feeling in every moment.

We made cookies and iced them. This took several stages through the day and a lot of floury stickiness along the way – mixing, forming the dough, kneading in dried fruits and peel, waiting, rolling out the dough, cutting shapes, building new ones, then finally icing. We coloured. We went to the soft play centre. We read books. We played with the inevitable Peppa Pig Princess Palace. We went to Mass for Palm Sunday of Our Lord’s Passion. I got to watch my eldest goddaughter in her very first ballet show where she danced as a twinkling star.

I’m thankful. My heart melted to see happy eyes, smiling faces, hands outstretched to me for a hug, genuinely and fully pleased to see me, which astounded me. Their trust and unreserved enjoyment found me deeper within and for once I did not feel as though I was only watching from the outside and for a while, the real was stronger and louder than the voices and the noise in my head. I truly am blessed by my wonderful friends in this family.

Tomorrow morning I go home. This weekend is a gift I will carry with me. I am so thankful and so fortunate to be cared about and welcomed and loved in this way.

Ginny xxx

Trying to be curious about trust #1

As you may know if you stop by regularly ( 🙂 thank you lovely people!!) I’m finding it very hard to trust the personality disorder service at the hospital (where I go for therapy) at the moment. It has become harder and harder over the last few months, in part due to repeated occasions where, in my experience at least, I’ve been let down, not had the promised support, or been turned away when in desperate need of help. I feel they do not believe me and do not think I deserve help and the more I’m in crisis the more they don’t believe me. Everything that happens confirms this now. In my last care coordination appointment I felt again completely dismissed, not listened to and that what was recorded on my care plan did not reflect what I was going through or needed, until I’d insisted time and time again that my care coordinator write what I actually said rather than re-phrase it in a way that minimised and avoided a lot of the issues at stake. Aargh….

I can’t explain it more than this right now because I will get so angry and out of control. Plus you’ve all probably heard me go on about it so much you’re bored 😉 ! Sorry.

I’m trying to be curious about my feelings about trusting the service and how they see me, as Mentalisation Based Therapy focuses on this and trying to be curious and open to different feelings and uncertainties about what is in our mind and other peoples’.

Right now, although I can try to examine different possibilities, I’m certain in my heart that the service don’t believe me. This doesn’t apply so much to my 1:1 and group therapy sessions. In some way the group feels honest and safe. Perhaps it’s something to do with my commitment being to the other people in the group, listening to them and being there for them, present with them, and sharing honestly as much as I’m able, rather than it being a relationship just with the service or the therapists. It applies more to when I need support between sessions, or when I’m in crisis, or talking about support outside therapy with managing daily life, or in my care coordination appointments.

After the experiences I have had so far, I am not sure what would now reassure me that they did and do believe me and do want me. I got on to thinking about how my recent falling out with a close friend N. involved my absolutely unchangeable feeling that she didn’t believe me, didn’t really want me, didn’t think I deserved help, and I was just a burden and irritation. I don’t know what would convince me otherwise (except, just perhaps, if she had come to help me when I was at my worst, in some of the times she was adamant she could not or should not come).

Not being believed and not deserving help is a big theme for me. Ultimately, I do it to myself too, because I can’t really believe myself. Some of my psychotic symptoms feed into that, with the voices in and outside my head telling me I’ve lied, I’m a fraud, that everyone knows and is thinking and saying I’m a disgusting fraud, cheated people to get help, and no matter if I may think I want to be good and try to do good, there’s all the bad things in me really and everyone else knows and I’ll hurt everyone in the end. Only self-harming in some form quiets this.

In my last 1:1, we talked about my recent falling out with N. We started going slowly through my feelings and thoughts step by step from the beginning of the day things really fell apart between us. We didn’t get very far through. Nevertheless it brought back a lot of the feelings of that day. I’d been feeling very bad about things I said and how things were left at our meeting and in our exchanges the week after (since which, we haven’t been in touch – I couldn’t anymore and felt she didn’t want to either, really). I’d been trying to write to apologise. But in the 1:1, what was even harder than this was that guilty as I felt (and still feel), a lot of the hurt is still there too.

As the memories of these feelings, and more of the feelings, surfaced in the 1:1, I suddenly felt sure that my therapist must think I’m a horrible, childish, needy, jealous, selfish, demanding, nasty person who thinks terrible things about people. Then I started thinking these things about myself together with feeling guilt, disgust that I was so evil, and worry about what would happen to my relationship with my therapist now she thought these things – I couldn’t say what I thought would happen at the time but now I think it was feeling that, oh now she’s started to realise that I really am bad after all and she’ll leave me and not want me around any more.

I was certain about what my therapist must think. Just as I was/am certain about what N. thinks about me. It was actually very hard for me to think curiously about what N. (or my therapist for that matter) would feel. I spend a lot of time certain and horrified about what the people I’m interacting with think about me, and feeling bad for what I am (because of what they’re thinking), what I cause, and the feelings that are then in me, confirming my self-disgust and self-hate. My self identity is somehow, in a way I can’t yet express properly, bound up with what I am certain the other person is thinking about me. My own feeling follows immediately being so certain of their thoughts. I am not necessarily at all able to access beforehand what I am feeling, and I am not necessarily able to think about what the other person is feeling (separate of me, as opposed to being convinced about their thoughts about me).

I am not necessarily bad at picking up what other people are feeling. Actually, I can be very accurate in it, and sense it before other people do. I’ll post about that separately and will put a link here when I’ve posted. However, in these situations, I’m entirely sucked into the certainty of their thoughts.

I am not at all able to “mentalise” – to reflect and be curious about what is in their minds and what they are feeling and what I am thinking and feeling. There is no possible questioning or genuine entertaining of different possibilities about the other person’s mind. I am absolutely certain of their thoughts about me and I have absolutely certain thoughts and feelings as a result. Even though I may at some level be able to come up with a distant idea of other possible thoughts that could be in the other person’s mind, it is completely disconnected from my beliefs and emotions.

Written down like this, it is quite easy to see that this could lead to or be part of my psychotic experiences. I am certain of other people’s thoughts about me. The voices repeat them to me. I feel disgust and guilt and horror of what I’m doing to people. Somehow I become linked with the thoughts I think the other person is having and I am all those horrible things.

I am starting to wonder whether I am actually having the thoughts (which I attribute to the other person) myself, and having the resultant feelings myself, but I am unable to recognise them or feel them in myself, and then for some reason attribute them to the other person as though I know for sure that they are thinking these things. Really they are just my own thoughts or feelings about myself.

Perhaps my certainty nobody believes me or wants me and my resultant inability to trust, is in fact simply nobody else’s thought but rather just what I think of myself – and the fact that I cannot trust or believe myself because I always doubt my own motivation for good or evil, because I have no identity except what I find in what I think are others’ thoughts.

I don’t know quite where this came from. Certainly my mother’s very unwell beliefs about thoughts and emotions during the time I was growing up, clouded my learning about my and others’ feelings and thoughts and the demarcation between them. Her deeply psychotic beliefs were pervasive and persistent. She believed that I knew exactly her thoughts even in advance and when I did not, she told me this was deceptive; she believed she knew my thoughts and intentions; she frequently presented to me my intentions as malevolent and manipulative in incredibly complex ways, when I was unaware of any such motives or thoughts (precisely because they didn’t exist, but I didn’t know that as a child); she made inconsequential, morally neutral actions (such as being able to do some particular thing or not) have a moral value or manipulative power (“repeatedly punishing her” for example); she perceived my emotions as controlling her and done to her (unless they perfectly matched hers); and this was coupled with dire threats (including her suicide, my father’s death, the family breaking apart, my parents being taken away) because of my emotions and thoughts – and of course, with the abuse.

I don’t know quite how to unpick that to find out how much does it explain how I now feel about others’ thoughts about me. Maybe I don’t need to and just need to find out how to change my certain, set-in-stone thought patterns now.

Oh my days I’m tired now and I need a hug. Think I’m going to have a hot bath and curl up under my blanket when I get home.

Ginny xxx

How often do you “need” to spend time with others?

I’ve been trying for a long time to arrange to meet to catch up with a particular friend. We used to be close and live in the same city, but we haven’t met since a very brief meeting at Christmas, and before then the last time we met was at a an event at her Church in September. I miss her a lot and have been feeling very sad that we live so close but meet a handful of times a year and never in such a way we can catch up properly.

Part of the reason we don’t is that she has a family now, including young children, and I completely understand and agree that family comes first before friends. Still I’m sad to see her so very little – and also (and this is a big part of my feeling) worried for her. She gives all her time to her children and various numerous volunteer works at her church and parish. She home-schools her two older children. She almost never suggests meeting up, she never seems to socialise except for seeing other mothers at home-ed groups, and she told me she hasn’t met up with a friend for over a year. She never takes any time for herself and she does not seem to have any desire to socialise.

Should I be worried about her? I am, very. I feel like she must be so tired and drained and stressed and never have a moment to take care of herself or do something she wants to. Most of all I fear she never has any time that really is for talking and sharing with her friends. I know I wouldn’t be able to cope with even one day of her schedule let alone the foreseeable future.

I think she is amazingly strong, dedicated and generous to her family and she is responsive to their every need (let alone all the time she volunteers). She has clearly made big sacrifices. She says she loves it and never feels the need for any break or to see any one. I just can’t see how she can possibly be well or happy and it seems really isolating to have so little contact with others.

At first I was hurt that she had no interest in meeting – i made no end of suggestions and she declined them all and didn’t suggest any alternatives and pretty much said she doesn’t do that kind of thing. I was lonely and upset already and I’m sad that we are no longer close friends. She really matters to me and I care for her and miss her. There’s only so much you can keep a friendship going and only so close you can be when you only text message and email. And I’m worried for her welfare, as I said.

Perhaps I should just accept that she says she’s happy and she is. It got me thinking, perhaps it’s a difference of personality. She’s happy not to leave the house for several days at times, whereas I usually feel compelled to go outside, see the outdoors, be around people,  even if I’m not meeting or speaking to anyone (except when I’m very low and not going out is then a sign I’m very unwell). Meeting up with someone is of no interest to her, whereas it’s very important to me, although there are few people I trust and am able to be with at the moment. That probably is a particularly bad combination and makes me particularly needy with the few people I do trust! I need time alone too and have times it’s all too much but loneliness is a big struggle for me. So I’d silence, which is another thing she loves. Perhaps it’s as impossible for her to understand my needs, or values in a relationship, as it is for me to understand hers and how she can be well and happy in her current situation.

I wonder whether she doesn’t value meeting in person, spending time together in friendship, catching up, doing some things for herself outside the family and so on? Or does she just need less of them?

This got me thinking, do we all have such very different needs firstly for contact with other people, and secondly beyond that, what I somewhat inadequately call deeper or more meaningful interactions (a good conversation with a friend you trust and can be “real” with,  as opposed to eg a passing interaction in a shop or talking to a work colleague – all are important but I know I very much need to be able to share how things really are sometimes, not just keep up the acceptable businesslike front where I seem to be well and in control of myself! ).

What do you find that you need? What is important to you in a friendship? How do we know which is normal?! I think my therapist would say that’s one of those questions where there isn’t a definite answer right or wrong. … I’m left wondering in this friendship,  firstly if she’s really okay or not and then how can I be there for her, when she has no interest in regular contact? How do we keep up a friendship with someone whose values here are very different from ours?

Ginny xxx

Lonely, lost and loud

This evening I think I feel lonely and alone. Sometimes I’m not sure of the difference between those two feelings. Alone is isolated and separated and not belonging, not-empathised-with, not wanted even. Perhaps lonely is more without others, wishing for someone.

Since my close friend and her husband and I are no longer in contact at present, I have almost no interaction in person with anyone outside work, no genuine meaningful interaction at least, beyond exchanges in shops or chance meetings with acquaintances where the front must stay most securely up. That’s a selfish and self-centred reason to miss her, but it’s true, as well as missing her tenacity, determination, energy, faith and curious perspectives; her surprising kindnesses.

I do not know whether or how to try to repair our relationship and whether to expect her in any way to cope with me now, would be fair or something she’d want. She’s said and done things that are clear enough to me that our friendship had no goodness, enjoyment or happiness for her and that it had a lot of frustration, irritation and just a sense of obligation. If she were in need of someone or something of any kind, company,  help, happiness or prayer, I know I’d be the last person she’d choose.

I’m hurting and longing. I’m asking God to give me strength to turn to His Word and stay close to Him, who gives all we need and more and pours love into our emptiness.

I’m trying to make each interaction with anyone, down to the most seemingly insignificant, a chance to give my best – caring, patience, a smile, a warm response. Doing these things outwardly, perhaps my heart that’s hurting and cold right now may be changed.

It’s loud in my head today. It’s been a day of doubting and checking everything and a cloud of trepidation telling me everything I’ve done wrong and every way I’ve failed. Every comment and criticism ridicules and mocks me, cutting deeply. It feels like being surrounded on all sides. I actually startle easily and feel someone is following and watching me; I hear whispers of anger and disgust and voices pulling me apart – and my mother’s voice.  It’s like I’m stumbling on a jagged path where there is too much mist to see where it will lead. I can only see as far as a very few steps ahead. But I must keep walking on this way because either side is thick darkness, trees and unknown beings with branches or arms that would enmesh me, surround me and call me into deeper night that would obscure all hope. The path turns and does not follow the expected course and I have no idea where or if it will end. Often it twists and seems to lead me deeper into the forest, the branches clutching closer and the voices louder. I cannot retreat because behind me,  somehow, the path has fallen away. I can only stay on the path unfolding gradually before me, the rocks mark out the way, and I try to walk forward through the mist.

I wonder how many others may follow a way such as this and whether we may be nearer to each other than we know.

Ginny xxx

I’m sorry for being rubbish this week

I’m sorry for being rubbish this week

I’m sorry for being rubbish this week. I’m sorry for being so slow to reply to comments and not being there enough for you (lovely readers / bloggers) as well as other people important to me in my life. I have been so shattered and sinking and though that’s true and consuming, I hate yet again using that as an excuse. Someone I was close to told me a little while ago that at first maybe you can hope people will understand but not after it’s gone on for years. Certainly “it” has gone on for years for me. Whilst it hurt when she said that I can also sort of see that you cannot expect endless understanding and it feels like asking more and more the longer I am not there and not well.

It is only very special and very empathic people who continue to understand and to be there. I am very very thankful for you. I care about you and I am so sorry for the times I fail to show it when I cannot write or say or otherwise show the love and support I wish I could. You mean so much to me. Thank you.

***

Also, in the past few days I have been trying to put together something in writing, a kind of open letter, about how I feel about my current care and how I have been treated by different services in my struggle to get help. I’m going to finish this tonight in preparation for, hopefully, meetings with a nurse practitioner and the Psychiatrist at the hospital this week. I think I may share some of it on here because I don’t think I’m the only person fighting the failings that have pushed me nearer the edge.

Ginny xx