Tag: mental health and relationships

Aching and doubting

I’m aching. I want to curl up right now and I probably will soon under my blanket… literal comfort blanket. ..

I wish someone would hold me. So much it hurts. I’m scared. Of these feelings and just the state of hurting and all the thoughts and voices.

It’s very raw and very childish.

I don’t expect anyone to believe me. I know everyone thinks I’m fake. I can never be sure I’m not evil and I think I am and everyone knows but I can’t stop it hurting everyone. Some little part of my head knows that’s maybe psychotic.

Longing is dangerous. I’ve really really hurt someone who is good and who has been generous to me beyond what I deserve because I needed too much and asked too much and though I know I don’t deserve it, I really needed help. I know it’s her choice to not be there and that’s her right and I’m not her responsibility but in my version of trust she always absolutely left me. At the very point I trusted and needed most. How can I have those two ideas? Knowing she had no need to be there and the choice had to be hers but also desperate longing turning into violent hurt and anger and consuming desperation when I was left? How can I be guilty but still angry?

She hasn’t contacted me. I have no idea what to do. I’ve hurt her so much and I need to make it right and I need to tell her it was my choice alone and my responsibility alone what I did. I need to try to make the hurt right. But what about the fact that I’m still angry? She hasn’t contacted me and she knows what happened the last couple of days I think. So that means definitively she doesn’t want contact, I think. All at once it’s very final. If she knows I was at the end and she says nothing? Doesn’t come? That means she definitely doesn’t want to know anymore. And she shouldn’t. I’m almost sure, despite hurting, that now I’ve done this I mustn’t contact her again and I must stay away because now everything has too much risk and meaning and I would manipulate her without wanting to because I was and am so out of control. I’ve needed too much. Always that’s my wrong.

I was so angry when she said I can’t have anyone now, some point in the future I’ll be able to have normal relationships. That i have to learn to be independent. I’m not allowed anyone there now? But I think she’s right maybe. I always need too much and cause hurt.

Ginny xxx

The 1000th last straw

[TRIGGER warning for mention of self harm, overdose and suicidal thoughts, and childhood sexual abuse;  and for anger, i am really angry and hurt writing this.  I am not meaning people to worry about me. When i say I’ve given up i mean on therapy and the doctors and everyone i trusted, not that I’m immediately suicidal.]

I am so far beyond angry. Hurting. They can decide I don’t get help. But it does come to a point I can’t just keep going one day more and being told the bad things are temporary.

In group and after I desperately needed to talk about the abuse and trauma and the decision I’ve now got to make whether to make a full statement to the police. I needed help when I told them I was really high, right on the edge, really unstable, not safe. Nobody heard.

I’d dared to ask a friend for help and to help me talk through some of what I have to decide about the police. She’s cancelled and changed arrangements so many times we’ve had to meet. I doubt she really wants to anymore. She keeps meetings to the most difficult and shortest times. She knows I’m ill, she knows I’m desperate, she surely knows how difficult it is to talk about abuse! She agreed to meet in the middle of the day at her work. Obviously I needed to talk in private but if that was all the time she had then I was thankful for it. I was at my wits end today after group. She changed the time and place back and forth through the morning today. She knows this puts me right on edge if I have no idea what’s happening. She told me she only had 30 minutes, then that she had work to do and hadn’t finished, then couldn’t I wait an hour and a half later, then asking where I was, 2 hours earlier,  when she knew I was still at my hospital appointment. When I finally pinned her down to a time she still came 20 minutes late without even letting me know and we had to meet in a crowded cafe where I obviously couldn’t talk about a thing – what did she expect me to do?! “How’s your cappuccino? Oh yes and by the way, I’m not quite sure how I’m going to cope when I tell the police about my mother sticking things up me when I was 7, any thoughts?” I don’t think so!

Then she told me I ask too much, it would be impossible to do what I ask (really? Is it so very hard to agree to meet a friend, stick to the arrangement and turn up?) And she doesn’t believe i wanted to meet in private because I thanked her for agreeing to meet in the middle of the day (well just because I thanked her and was grateful doesn’t mean I was happy or it was what I needed, I was just grateful for any help – or what I thought was help). She said she didn’t know we needed to meet in private (really? Is she that stupid she doesn’t know if you have to talk about abuse you won’t do it in the middle of a cafe? I don’t think so).

I was in bits and in so much pain as well  – and yet again the last hope of getting help or to talk to anyone was snatched away. It’s not just today. It’s every single time. I’ve had it now after this is just repeated – every one i should be able to trust,  every place i should get help. They don’t hear. They don’t believe me. They don’t help. It’s some sick joke or someone’s plan to find out when I break, to laugh at me, to test if I want help enough. Well I’m screaming and nobody can hear. I can’t scream louder. They can choose to keep up this game. Well I guess they’ve won. I can’t shout louder. I can’t make them believe. I can’t make it so that I deserve or am allowed help. I can stop trying anymore because it does just hurt too much. That one’s down to me. It’s not really a choice because it simply now is too painful. But I can choose not to let anyone near me again so they can’t trick me, so they can’t decide to keep a distance because I’m not allowed help and cut me down again because I’d just started to trust and go forward believing they’d be there, so they can’t disappear and show me how they don’t really want me around and it isn’t a friendship and they won’t be there.

(Funny. She’ll threaten to call an ambulance – and if I do go to a&e I just talk to someone then get bounced back out after a few hours and I’m alone again – but she won’t come to see me when I’m not safe, understand how hard it is, sit with me when I’m terrified, come to see me when I was in hospital – every time I was in I was the only person on the ward who didn’t get a single visitor -or hug me when I’m crying. Why is it so hard to do any of that? The doctors don’t care and don’t help me and the only friend I have nearby doesn’t want me around and says go to the emergency services. So I’m not allowed medical help and not allowed friends.)

I’m not allowed any help. I need a friend and I need someone with me and I need to trust someone but every single thing I trust gets taken. It’s not just today it’s every time and I’ve had enough. Oh, you must keep going to work, they say. You’ll feel worse if you have nothing to do. No, I won’t. All I want is it to stop. I don’t want to go out. I want to sleep. I want drugs to stop me feeling.

Oh it won’t help you if you have anyone with you it won’t help you get better you have to be independent. Why is it for her to decide what I need? She’s not my doctor! She doesn’t know what it’s like! I need help. I need someone with me. I want a friend. I want someone to help me. I want someone to care. I want someone to be there when I can’t cope. Not only when I can say everything is fine. Not only when it suits them. Not only because they’ve decided I have to learn to be independent. I’ve always been independent. Nobody has ever been there when I needed them. Now I Can’t cope anymore. It’s even more cruel that every time I’m most desperate I have to be deceived into thinking someone’s there then left alone.

If you’re friends with someone, if you care for them, you are there when they need help. You don’t decide what they need or that something else is best for them or they have to learn something. You don’t see them sometimes then walk off when they’re ill. You don’t constantly change every arrangement. You don’t only allow them in certain situations and certain parts of your life. If they need you you’re there for them. If they’re sick you help them and care for them. You don’t just disappear because it isn’t convenient. That’s just utterly basic friendship and actually basic morality. I’d do it and do do it for anyone.

Is it really so terribly much to ask? Every other person in therapy has family, a carer or a spouse with them. I’m the only person who doesn’t, who lives totally alone. Is it really so terribly awful to want someone to be with me when I’m in crisis, to hug me when I’ve been crying for hours, someone to stick to a commitment, someone to be a friend, someone to help me when I’m cutting as soon as I’m alone, when I’m terrified of the hallucinations?

And the doctors know and they don’t care. They don’t help me. My friend says call them if I’m not safe. She says persist. I’ve been persisting for years. I’ve been accepting nobody wants me. I’ve told them in not safe. I’ve told them I’m cutting and overdosing and when I was planning to end it. They didn’t help me. I don’t want some stupid phone number for a few minutes of so called support. That doesn’t keep me safe or get me help or a friend or anyone with me. I’m on my own again. Left to just go back to the same cutting and overdosing. There’s no other way to cope. They tell me just keep going is temporary. I don’t care if it’s temporary. I can’t right now.

After years of making sure never to say what I needed and always to do weekday I’m meant to, I’ve had it. I’m a disgusting selfish b*tch and a baby and I’m screaming and I need help now and nobody can hear me. I’m not allowed help and I know I’m not but every time it’s proved the kick hurts even harder. I know it’s selfish and disgusting but actually the need and the hurt has taken over. Nobody wants me. Nobody wants me really, not what’s really me.

 

 

Walking this Borderland #8: when it costs to smile

I don’t think that the saying “it doesn’t cost anything to smile” is true. It can cost a very great deal to get up, step outside, meet anyone’s gaze, smile, speak, even keep breathing, when you are crippled with anxiety, voices in your head, emotional pain, traumatic flashbacks and hurt or sadness that hits you any time, anywhere.

I believe in still trying. Through this cost, keep on trying to smile. Through the awful feelings, trying to do one little kind thing for another person and one little kind thing for ourselves. We may not succeed but the will is there. Only we ourselves and God may know the huge cost. Yet good will surely still come of the action, however small. We have taken an action opposite to our illness, opposite to the inclination of our anxiety and hurt, choosing goodness and strength.

This is a small victory and a small step forward in hope.

I emphasise that I do not mean we should try to push away what we are feeling, deny it or tell ourselves we mustn’t feel it or aren’t allowed to. Far from it. We should do quite the opposite. But every little action done in love – for others and ourselves – is a choice for good. When we are suffering very much and when it costs very much to smile, then every smile and every action is worth all the more because it is necessarily done with greater effort and greater love.

What makes you feel loved?  How do you love?

Ginny xx

What do you hold onto in the darkest times?

I’ve posted before about how, like many people with Borderline Personality Disorder, one of the things I find hardest when I feel really bad is to hold on to any knowledge that it will not always be this way. The overwhelming emotions – especially fear, sadness, loneliness, anger, pain, frustration, self hatred, self disgust, hurt, distress, longing or needing, or the feelings I can’t yet name that come with flashbacks – they eclipse everything else and become all that exists.

I wonder if their power is greater if I fear the emotion I sense. But the totality of the experience, their consuming nature, makes them the more frightening.

Descriptions of this emotional experience in BPD often term the feelings intolerable or unbearable. It is that but it isn’t quite either; it’s not all of it. Intolerable, more than I can stand, yes… but it’s not something I can’t stand because it’s me. In that state there is nothing but the emotion and there is nothing of me but the emotion. I cannot stand it but neither do I exist apart from it.

I hate it so I hate myself. I must get rid of it, purge it, so I must get rid of myself and cut away the bad – so I cut.

I can name some of the emotions afterwards. Maybe the therapy is helping me to do that. But in the experience, I cannot. I cannot recognise anything but hurt and pain and hate and evil (me); I cannot hold in mind anything but the impulses to cut, run, scream, end it, reach back for numb. .. and I am gone. ..and I spin between cut off and unable to feel and any attempt to engage being painful, and the state of total emotion, of only existing as that pain.

I cannot control it. I cannot bridge that gap. Therapy is helping me identify what feelings are. But it doesn’t separate them from me, from time, from permanent reality, from right and wrong. It doesn’t tell me how to feel, rather than be, the emotion. It doesn’t tell me how to bridge the gap between the different people I become – the cut off numb one;, the one that hides everything to cope day to day and do what I’m meant to and fulfil my responsibilities and pretend and hope I could ever be good but knowing all the time that everyone really knows how fake it is and how evil I am deceiving everyone; the frightened needing child; the angry, vengeful and impulsive one. More and more they seem to be separate personalities. I am fragmenting. I am more unstable. I lose more periods of the day – when I’m in one state I cannot “access” the other and I can’t remember things that happened (though I may remember the state). I flick so quickly between states without being able to engage my rational mind and try to employ any grounding techniques or DBT techniques to control my behaviour or my experience.

I guess it’s good that I can start to be curious about the process, from the temporary relative stability of my “coping” state. It must show I do have some ability to learn to mentalisa about what’s going on in my mind. Usually my “coping” state would be trying to suppress what I’m exploring right now. Perhaps eventually I’ll be able to build a more curious and stable personality at least alongside these others.

What do you hold on to when your whole reality, your whole existence, is unbearable sensation and emotion? It sounds utterly stupid. It sounds utterly out of proportion. It sounds self centred and I am forced to admit that though it’s the very last thing I want and one of the things I most hate in myself, in a way it is, though at the same time self has got totally lost in the feeling and emotion coming from everywhere.

What do you hold on to when you can’t access your coping strategies or even your most rooted beliefs and deepest cares? I love my God and know God is mercy and compassion, but in the bad states I can only conceive of a vengeful God or a God casting me out. I love my godchildren, I care about keeping my commitments at work,  but in those states I can conceive only that I do everyone harm and everyone knows I’m bad really and would rather I weren’t around. The centre of my beliefs and values warp according to the state I’m in.

What to I hold on to?

Ginny xxx

Blessings of friendship

I’m thankful for the visit of a special friend tonight. She came for tea and a catch up and we exchanged much belated little Christmas gifts. We’re going to meet again in a couple of weeks.

It always amazes me that she wants to be my friend. It amazes me she wants to meet up again soon. I’m not good enough to have friends – I’m not any good to be around – that’s what’s in my head.

I’m very thankful that she has kept in touch and continues to want to meet up,  when I’m well and when I’m struggling and when I’m very sick. Very few people stay around in all those times.

Ginny xxx

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

Walking this Borderland #7: Pigs in the clouds

Walking this Borderland #7: Pigs in the clouds

It’s very easily impossible to believe “this too shall pass”.

In BPD, that can feel like the most hurtful thing to be told, in the midst of utter pain. Even if the pain was triggered by a very small thing, at the time, it is not minor – it is the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back or the rope you were holding onto so so tight because everything else had been snatched from you, then this too disintegrates.

But the fact that is at once cruel and possibly hopeful, is that every time you go through that utter pain, and still continue, it is proved that “this too shall pass”.

On Friday afternoon this week I was about to end it because for the n’th time it was more than I could stand, more betrayals than I could bear, pain only for pain, the original source now lost amid the impossibility of existing beyond that moment. I was evil rubbish and the world was laughing at my hurt. It was time to overdose and walk in front of a train and end it. And perhaps I was going to hurt someone. My memory blacked out.

Somehow, on Saturday morning I was at my friend’s and she was cooking breakfast. She made “eggs in clouds” for a treat (look at the picture – literally a little egg yolk in a little savoury souflee cloud).  There’s chopped bacon in the soufflee cloud so we thought perhaps it should be “pigs in clouds” instead. We talked about everything, minutiae and serious: baby showers, Harry Potter, Alan Rickman, jogging, marriage, how to stay in love and what to do when something nobody else cares very much about is unbearable to you, a mutual friend who may be in a bad home situation, sunshine, work…

So you see, it turns out pigs do fly, and this too did pass. It seems ridiculous that both these scenarios were real and followed each other by less than one day. But both were real. The change, although I do not know what brought it about, was real.

Perhaps it’s worth keeping a short note of the times that pigs did fly, that the darkness did end, what you did to change things, if you can remember – but if you can’t, even just record the fact that you did change things. That although that night you thought you could not go on one more moment, the next day you took a few steps out of your house, maybe walked down to the bottom of the road and back. That through the terrible flashbacks, you held on, and now you are back in today’s reality.

Both are real. Neither are permanent, both shall pass, but both are real. Note it down, however small it seems. Then the next time when the darkness starts to come, you can look back and be encouraged.

 

I can’t. ..

I’m going to be disloyal, or hypocritical, I don’t know which the word is, to my last post. But I’m crashing tonight. I can’t do it. I’m done and I haven’t got anything to be able to go on. I know it’s stupid and they say it’s not worth getting worked up over, it can be fixed; but it’s done and I ran out a long time ago. Why can’t anyone hear me? Why do they tell me it’s okay? It’s not anxiety it’s desperation and just needing one tiny thing to hold onto – no I’m not strong enough without anything to cling to and I know it’s stupid it’s so small but it really, really matters when everything else is too much and spiraling apart.

So it’s taken away as well and I’m done. Nobody will come and nobody can hear me screaming (stupid nasty spoiled child inside me and stupid ugly needing. ..) Even now I’ve told them the very worst and how much I can’t do it and nobody will come. And I won’t go to the hospital and I don’t deserve it and I don’t want them to stop me because I don’t want to go on and it’s nobody’s fault or responsibility but mine. I should have been able to do it.

I don’t think I can do any good…

I cut and cut but it wasn’t enough. I don’t think I can feel anything but this spent, hurting, screaming silently, needing it over.

I don’t think I can go to work tomorrow or anymore. Not even go out. I don’t know how to get to tomorrow. I’ll lose my job again. Well it’s clear enough I’m rubbish anyway. They’ll want me out of my house. I’ve wasted so much again. I should have done good. But I’m so so … just had it…

And everything I say I’m scared and whoever I tell I might manipulate or they think it’s to threaten or think it’s just stupid and not worth it and just get over it. ..and I’m scared of my anger. I’m sliding in and out of dissociative states right now.

To me it can be all I am holding to and I’m on the edge of ending it all, but to someone else it’s nothing, not worth it, and just fine that more and more is taken that I was clinging to and more and more heaped on that I cannot cope with. I can’t cope with this detachment itself either and knowing every worst feeling is invalid.

You don’t waste good

“You don’t waste good.” [Or, Gibbs’ Rule #5, for NCIS fans 😉 ]

Don’t waste good…. I’m trying to hold on to that right now. Hold on. There is good even though it’s very hard to feel it right now. I have a home (for now). I have a job. I have an understanding employer. These things can be built on. Two very good friends seem to be able to see some hope that it will be alright, even though I can’t. Don’t waste good. Don’t waste it because I give up right now because it’s so scary and I don’t know how to get through this night. Don’t waste it because everything crumbles and I lose my job because I stop going to work and give in to the fear and drowning sensation that tells me to stay at home. Don’t waste it because I stop looking for little gifts and little joys – or big ones – my beautiful god children, compassion of a friend, something at work that makes me laugh, being able to try to do at least something to help people at work. Don’t waste it because I assume rejection and punishment is all I deserve and all I will get in the end. Don’t waste it because I get so wrapped up in my own little world and little problems that I miss chances to serve, chances to thank, chances to show compassion or do that little bit more to help another in some small way.

You don’t waste good.

Ginny xx

[“You don’t waste good,” – from NCIS Series ?8 episode “Baltimore”. All rights to NCIS series belong to CBS / Channel 5 and respective directors and artists]

Hurting tonight

It hasn’t been a great week.

Hurting with physical pain from gynae problems and joint problems.

Going between guilt for worrying and burdening my family and not being able to do what I should, and feeling cut up that I’m “in the way” to them and need to be compartmentalised so I don’t intrude on their life – the part of it they actually want not just feel obligated to do.

Seeing far too many things. ..scary things. ..that aren’t there… that are hallucinations from memories that grip me and shake me.

Wishing someone would hold me and tell me it would be alright even when the flashbacks come.

Working through water or a fog each day and knowing I’m getting it wrong and doing wrong and so so tired.

I slept about 4 hours tonight if that. Tomorrow is group therapy again. I am so scared to go. I will go because I mace this commitment to everyone in the group, the therapists, and to trying to get better, to God, and I won’t throw away what I’ve been given. But I’m scared. I don’t know where we are, I don’t know how to be, I don’t know who to trust, and I can’t trust what I did trust or where I thought we were before. Everything unraveled last week. I wish I need not speak. I wish I could just sleep and stop it all.

I will try to go forward thankful. I will ask thankfulness for another day, to learn to thank our God for revealing His loving kindness in the tiny little helps of each day and pray to notice and see them not just the mess in my head. I will try to work to make something beautiful – even just draw, colour, sew, write to my family and my closest friends who mean so much to me simply by still somehow being here.

Somehow this moment will pass but good will remain. I’m trying to believe.