A Tangled Mess

I'm a mess. Much of my life is a mess. I'm spending so much energy distracting myself from my messes that I barely have enough energy left to breathe. I feel like I'm caught  in a mass of tangled yarn.

I'm reading obsessively, including books that I'm not normally interested in, as long as the books are light entertainment. And when I read, I skip over more and more of the text to just get to the main plot points. I'm not taking much enjoyment from the books. Books with greater emotional or mental content get set aside. I just purchased a new Tawna Fenske book and haven't been able to enjoy it. I love Tawna's work, but I'm anticipating the emotional and romantic complications and getting anxious about them. Anxious about fictional characters, people!

I'm not watching any TV series with my housemates anymore. Everything they watch has character arcs: I become invested in the characters and get stressed out when their lives are difficult. In general I've always had difficulty detaching from movies and TV, but it's a lot worse now.

There are people in my life I haven't contacted in months, some of them in over a year, and not because I don't like them. I don't read blogs much at all. I don't know why I've dropped contact with most people: I have no idea how doing so connects with how I'm feeling.

Right now, I'm in the middle of a two-week experiment proposed by my psych. For two weeks, I'm not going to try to go to bed earlier. I've been staying up until 3 am, but wanting to go to bed around 10 pm. I spend mental and emotional energy chastising myself for staying up so late. So for these two weeks, I'm just going to let myself stay up as late as I want to and sleep as late as I want to. No judgements.

As a corollary of this experiment, I'm setting aside all shoulds and should-nots. No judgement. No restrictions. Want to eat ice cream? Sure. As much as I want. Be a slug on the couch? Sure, as usual, but this time no judgements. Do it because I want to.

When I manage to quiet the shoulds and should-nots, I feel less stressed, more peaceful. It does take effort to quiet them. In addition, my housemates do NOT like this experiment. They think it's a bad idea. They disapprove. They disagree with my psych. Even though it's only for two weeks and I wasn't making any progress doing things the other way!

Squish

I gained more insight into my attitudes toward strength, bravery, and resilience this week. It comes down to stress balls and Silly Putty.

I still have difficulties seeing myself as strong, brave, or resilient. For example, throughout my life I have been victimized, bullied, and abused in some way or another. Bullies, predators, and people who need to diminish someone else in order to feel bigger have found me and made it their purpose to squash me. Other children, adults, coworkers, bosses, even friends: people of all sorts have seen me as weaker than them and gone on to prove it.

My fight or flight reflex? Permanently set to flight. When the group of friends I hung out with in my 20s would get too overbearing and downright mean, instead of standing up for myself, I would take a break from them until I felt recovered. One of them even went so far as to tell me I was like a soft, furry bunny — and he didn't mean it as a cute thing but as a nonthreatening prey object. (BTW: I stopped hanging out with those folks regularly in my late 20s.)

Even some of my well-meaning friends have diminished me. Because I ask other people's opinion, many of my friends and even my mother sometimes treated me as if I were unable to make my own decisions, as if I were not quite a responsible adult. Really, because I have been single and lived alone most of my adult life, I like to get second opinions and bounce my own off of other people from time to time. Some of my male friends think of me as delicate or fragile.

Layers of Defense

My inner self, my core self, sits inside a stone tower within a stone castle behind a moat behind a low stone wall behind a white picket fence behind a low fence of iron pickets with roses growing up the fence.

I used to have a problem with boundaries, in that I had virtually none. This is typical of someone who has been sexually abused as a child. Over the years, I worked hard at developing boundaries. Then, as I continued to be hurt by relationships, rejections, disappointments, and letting too many people in too soon, I began developing protections.

I have a vivid and strong imagination and am good at visualization. Every time I felt hurt, I imagined myself protected by a thick wall. This wall extended out to become a fortified castle, a wide land filled with dangerous creatures, and a series of walls and fences, all with manned gates. The outer fence was too tall to see over and the roses grew huge, sharp thorns and obscured an onlooker's view inside. Eventually, no one could see inside and I couldn't see out. I had become almost completely protected against emotional pain, yet I still hurt because I didn't have close intimate friendships (I had even protected myself from my oldest, closest friends). I still felt alone. But no one could hurt me.

Several years ago, my protective barriers crumbled and broke down completely, leaving me naked and vulnerable. My therapist at the time was stunned by the self that was revealed because she had taken what she'd seen of me as truth: that I was fairly superficial and had solid boundaries. Finally we were able to do deep work. I learned that vulnerability was a strength and that being as protected as I'd made myself actually made it impossible for me to form and maintain the emotionally intimate connections I craved. I agreed to not create such an impenetrable barrier again, but I would still create the layered barriers to remind me to not let everyone in and to let people further in only when I knew I could trust them.

Over the past several years, I've experienced some heartbreaking pain. I've wanted so much to build up those barriers again, wanting to be safe from pain, but I have learned that they won't keep me safe from pain. Nothing can. And I want to be able to experience life fully, which does require being vulnerable to pain.

The Wrong Life

Sometimes in therapy I learn something about myself that seems so new, or I get a brilliant new perspective or I see something I hadn't seen clearly before. I guess that's why going to therapy remains worth it. (Besides that whole life ring while I'm drowning in depression thing, of course.) Moments like that bring into sharp focus how for quite a few years I learned nothing new in therapy.

In my mind, I sometimes try to "re-do" my past, think that I can somehow "fix" things. I know it isn't rational: I'm not going to be able to make my family be alive again or change any of a number of other past traumas. But emotionally I feel as if I can do so if only I do it right.

People define themselves differently. In many places in the world, people define themselves by their place within their community. The Navaho people define themselves by their family connections. LIke the Navaho, so did I. Without my family, I feel cut off, I feel like there are huge gaping holes inside me that nothing can fill.

This is not how my life should be. I wanted to marry and have children: I would have made a terrific wife and mother. I am nurturing and loving and giving. The fact that no one ever wanted to marry me has long made me feel there is something wrong with me. I see so many people who have lifelong relationships, people who don't seem to have the qualities I have, people who are takers or who are high-maintenance, and I have to wonder what is wrong with me that no one wanted what I have to give.

My brother was supposed to be my friend when we grew up. He was supposed to be here with me after our parents died. Our children would have been friends and we would have spent a lot of time together.

Seesaw

It's been a bumpy winter. I've had phases of depression so deep I could barely say hello to my housemates and I've slept in until noon or 1 pm virtually every day. There was one day that was the worst I'e had since I checked myself into the hospital over two years ago. But as I am no longer in denial about how my untimely death would affect those who care about me, I am no longer in danger of blithely harming myself.

Then I've had days where I have noticed the sun was shining outside, days where I've spent time with good friends and I've smiled and laughed and felt all would be well. I am in such a mood today. Will it last? I don't know: I never expected the deep depression that has held me hostage for most of the last few months.

Being without work or income is hard on me. So is being dependent. And as much as I care for Griffin and Sabine, it is their house, not mine, and their ways are not my own. I am not made to be so quiet.

One of my best friends and her husband invited me to start spending weekends at their house. Inside their house are they, their teenage daughter, a dog, two cats, and a bunny. In their house are noise, cheesy horror movies, and laughter. They are my tribe. I think that having a break from G&S will be good for me and for them so we can live differently for 2-3 days a week.

When I was getting my hair cut yesterday, my stylist and I spent quite some time talking about what we want to do for a living and how we want to live. She and I want very similar things in how we live and work: flexibility, variety, and freedom. While I will continue to seek work in the high-tech industry, I'm doing so only to keep my net wide so I can find some work, but I've realized that I no longer care about the high-tech sector. I no longer want to document software or internet applications. I want to do something that matters more. And I think that doing something more useful and/or meaningful than documenting things that few people will use and fewer people will read about will make me happier in my life, even if it won't pay as well as writing said documentation.

Damn, Damn, Damn Depression!

I'm sunk in the stupid pit again. Why? Hell if I know. And it's not just depression, although that is an overriding emotion. I'm crabby and antisocial. I'm terrifically stressed and anxious, to the tune of taking an extra 1 mg of Xanax each of the last two days. (So far today I haven't taken any extra.) I took a four-hour nap yesterday and still slept for 9.5 hours last night … and still didn't want to get up this morning.

I'm really tired of being "the sick one", the one people have to ask "how are you doing today?" I have no idea what I'm doing wrong or what I'm not doing right that keeps dumping me back into this debilitating space. "Functional" might as well be at the top of the highest glacier on Mt. Rainier, it seems to impossible to reach.

You can't get there from here.

I'm trying. But I've been sleeping so late (thanks to this great melatonin-based supplement my psych recommended) that I feel if I don't get up NOW then the day is fucking OVER, so I haven't been journaling or trying to meditate or visualize. And when I do try to meditate or visualize, I haven't been able to achieve the levels I was at back before I tried the Abilify (which I've been off of all this month).

In therapy yesterday, Michele asked why I feel I have to get up and start my day as soon as I wake up. What will happen if I put it off for another half an hour while I journal or meditate or something? If I stay in bed even later, I feel as if the entire day is over, wasted. I feel like a complete failure for the day. I feel judged and judging.

We also talked about writing. And drawing. About how I used to do them all the time virtually every day, from the time I was quite young. How somewhere in my 20s, I stopped doing them much and they became fraught with difficulties and issues. And yet, I need to do them. Writing and drawing are parts of me that need attention. When I do them I feel better. I feel like myself.

A Long Way

Two years ago tomorrow I checked myself into a psychiatric hospital because I was planning — very rationally and practically — to end my life. Just days prior to my checking myself into the hospital, my mom's 72nd birthday came and went. Because I am a fair and practical person, I told my therapist about my plans. And at her urging, I went to the hospital.

After a couple of weeks of almost constant tears and almost complete immobility, it felt good to let someone else make the decisions for a while.

One of the things about being in a psychiatric hospital or ward is that they assume that you will try to hurt yourself or someone else. By assuming that, and guarding against it, they probably save themselves and others a lot of unnecessary grief. Of course, they should have taken away my pen, but they either missed it or pitied me and let me keep it.

I was quietly and calmly matter-of-fact about why I was there when I checked in on Thanksgiving Day. I had missed lunch, but they arranged to get my a turkey lunch anyway. I talked to a psychiatrist and a nurse and filled out forms. I was searched to make sure I wasn't bringing in anything they didn't know about. They took virtually everything. I kept most of my clothes (those that either had nothing overtly dangerous to them or that I was willing to allow to be "adjusted"), my shoes (sans laces) and slippers, a couple of books, my toiletries, and my pen.

For the first two days, I stayed in the room I shared with another patient, except for meals and when I needed to take my meds. I wouldn't even go to Group sessions those two days. I slept, I cried, and I read The Goddess is in the Details by Deborah Blake, which was a comfort to me. I didn't have to prepare food, think about when and what to eat, or clean my dishes or my living space. It was a relief.

Flake

I have a confession: I am a flake. Iffy. Dodgy. A really good liar and undependable in work and play. Torpid. Stubborn. Lacking integrity, untrustworthy, and afraid of commitment. Basically, I kinda suck. I don't much like myself and I'm still working on loving myself.

I didn't used to be this way. Before I fell apart in my mid-30s, when an overwhelming depression washed over me and pulled me into deep, dark water. Before my ex-boyfriend — the one who'd changed his mind and decided he didn't want to get married, have children, or buy a house with me — got married and asked me how I used my 401K to buy my house. Before my insecure boss made me so diminished, anxious, and crazy-feeling that my psychiatrist prescribed not one but TWO mental health leaves within a six-month period. Before all that I was not perfect, but anyone could count on me to do what I said. Friends, family, and employers could trust me. I was active, flexible, creative, and committed.

I hate the way I am. I hate that I'm not the way I used to be. I hate that I can't seem to find my way back, after nearly 20 years. Twenty years is a long time to be disgusted by the person you've become.

"Ah, the sun is blindin'
I stayed up again
Oh, I am findin'
That that's not the way I want my story to end"

Who Am I?

Just got back from therapy a little while ago, a session that was basically a rambling, tangled talk about how I no longer feel as if I know who and what my authentic self even is, much less how to find her.

I articulated my ideas about self (well, at least I tried), and Michele provided some other ways to view self. I rambled over how much I hate that I am still in therapy, almost 30 years later; how I am afraid to "follow my dreams", not even being sure what they are anymore and being afraid of following them and being poor and insecure; about choices I've made in the way of relationships with men that where less than beneficial for me and why I might have made those choices; about feeling so many emotions and how they affect me physically and how I wonder if all my meds are messing me up and I wish I could go off them …. It was a turgid, tangled mess.

Sometimes I wonder if therapy is even helping me anymore, if I'm beyond the point where it could help. I wonder if I can every be functional again, or if I am now stuck in this mental and emotional tangle forever.

In therapy, I posited that we all have a basic (right now I'd say "essential') self — the person we are when we are born. The core of our personality, perhaps. And that we gain layers as we grow, and maybe we get twisted around our core self, or get too many layers between our authentic self and the self we have become, obscuring our authentic self. In this schema, I no longer know who I am when I'm authentic, what my core self is like. Is it the child I remember? The woman in her early 30s who went to Britain alone for a month, who published a story, who applied to and was accepted into a competitive six-week writing workshop?

Or am I the pleaser, the one who has a puppy-like need to make others like me, who makes herself as "normal" and non-threatening as possible, who doesn't make waves?

Michele's concept is that we have a central personality who is the kind of overseer of the sub-personalities. Our sub-personalities — the rebel, the responsible adult, whoever else one may have tucked in there — are kind of like board members of a corporation or organization. And that I, as the central personality, can have dialogues with the various sub-personalities of me. This concept has intriguing possibilities. However, it doesn't answer the questions of who am I? What is my authentic self like? And how do I know what my "dreams" are that I should follow?

I pointed out to her that she didn't give me what I wanted, which was a clear, pure answer. She was understandably amused.

Sunshine Lentil Soup and Stock Recipe

Soup Fixin's!

Lately I've shared this recipe with some friends. I recently made a pot of it for my housemates and myself and they loved it. I just made a pot of stock so I can make the soup tomorrow for a friend who is enduring some major life crises right now. So I decided to make the recipe my post for tonight!

I don't cook much, but when I do, I tend to go all out. So I make my own vegetable stock from scratch; that's what we'll start with. And this is one of the things that I do while being entirely mindful and in the moment.

I was given the basic outline for the stock by a friend many years ago. Originally I used it with a soup using standard brown lentils that you can find anywhere. I don't know where I first learned about red lentils, but I assumed they behaved just like brown lentils when cooked. They don't. When they are cooked, they turn a sunshiny yellow and break up; I like to use enough of them that they make the soup thick. I don't even remember how I came up with this recipe, as I am not much of a cook, but I did make up this recipe myself.

I call the soup Sunshine Lentil for its bright color and its bright flavor. And it tastes much better the second day! (It also freezes well, as does the stock.)

Feeling, Detaching, Continuing

I haven't written in wow — 10 days! I know I usually write about my therapy, but last week, I just couldn't.

Last week's therapy ended up being very emotional and very raw. We started talking about what I wrote about in my last post and pursued it far into my mind and my feelings to see what is behind this desire to reconnect with my past. At the very base of the vortex, we found abandonment and being completely alone. Intellectually, I know that my family did not abandon me and I am not completely alone (besides that fact that we are all basically one on one level). I have people who love me, both locally and scattered across the country. But, at the heart of the matter, those are what I feel.

I cried some. Not as bad as most of the times I cried in Karen's office, but the first time I've cried in Michele's, and the first time I've cried in a while. I really don't like to cry, for numerous reasons. Even more, I don't like to cry in front of someone else. It exhausts me. And when I experience a strong emotion, afterward I detach from emotion for some amount of time.

We ended the hour with a long imaging session. Imaging, visualization, creative imaging: whatever you want to call it. Michele led me and helped me find my way through it and discover things. I'm not going to describe it because it's intensely personal and there are very few people I would be comfortable sharing it with. Hell, I'm barely comfortable sharing it with myself!

Thus, whenever I thought about writing for the blog, I kept thinking about writing about the session, then about how I didn't want to write about the session. So I didn't write, and I didn't write.

I had therapy again today, and after I finished chattering, I told Michele about how I didn't write about last week's session and why. Which in turn led to my emotion/detachment pattern.

I don't want to have this pattern. Last week, on the way home, I left the radio off so I could stay with the feelings from the session and the imaging work. I wanted to ride that emotional wave to the end, the way Michele encouraged me to do. And I did ride it, all the way home. Then, exhausted, I took a long nap. Afterward, I didn't return to thinking about the therapy session or my feelings or the work we'd done and ended with. I didn't do so again until today's therapy.

Power, Protection, and Progress

So. Therapy today was powerful. We talked about a major theme in my life: power and powerlessness, authenticity and invisibility. I came away with my mind spinning, feeling full to the brim, and feeling good. I even turned off my radio so my mind could keep resonating with what we talked about and when I got home I wrote the important bits down so I'd remember them.

It started off with me talking about the TED Talk by Amy Cuddy about body language and using it to change your own perceptions and feelings and behaviors. About the "Wonder Woman pose" that the media has played up and how to use it. (And I have used it, and Amy's other suggestions, and they seem to actually work.)

From there we went into how I diminish my own strengths and talents and accomplishments, and why I do so. I tend to have "don't look at me, I'm no threat" submissive and powerless postures: head or eyes down, shoulders hunched, arms and legs drawn in. I have often thought that I don't deserve as much space as other people, as much air as other people.

Then we went to why. Mostly self-protection, plus a lot of being squashed so much I've just given in and stayed squashed most of the time. Because of being molested, and from such a young age. Because my parents were always telling me "don't show off" (my intelligence and vocabulary), "don't brag," even while encouraging my little brother to show what an exceptional athlete he was and revolving our lives (mine included) around his sports. Because at a job I stayed at for six years (four years longer than I should have), my boss and co-workers treated me worse and worse the more authentically I lived my life and the more I threatened their world view: I both worked AND wrote (and published a story); I took a month off and went to Britain; I took six weeks off and attended a full-time writers' workshop (that you have to apply and compete for). Some people can be downright hostile if you do what they have told themselves they cannot do because that is How Things Are.

I have often in my life felt that The Universe hates me. It has seemed as if, just when my life was going particularly well, the Universe has reached out and slammed me, with moving when I was 16, with the deaths of my father and my brother and my mother, and with other things. And that has happened a lot, but there are times when I've been slammed while things were going very badly, and I'm sure there have been times when things have been going well and I haven't been slammed (I just have to remember them!).

A Body at Rest Tends to Stay at Rest

Inertia. Newton's First Law: a body at rest tends to stay at rest, unless a force is acted upon it. And I haven't been enacting any force upon myself since I arrived in Seattle. Well, not much.

As a result, I've lost the muscle tone I'd gained by doing exercises in the apartment. I have barely blogged at all. I haven't even been doing my therapy work, and I did my therapy work in Houston even when I was at my least functional! I have disappointed myself. My confidence has ebbed even lower than when I was in Houston.

However, I've had one phone interview for a full-time job and have another scheduled for next week. (According to my friend who works there, they screen very thoroughly so they get people who will work well with the team.) I think I have a shot, as long as I can convince them I am technical enough.

I've also acquired a part-time freelance job! They contacted me out of the blue: they'd found my profile on LinkedIn, then through that found my web site, which was unfortunately unchanged since Houston and they could only access one link to my work, but they still contacted me and by the time we talked in a two-hour meeting, they had decided upon me. It pays lower than a for-profit company would pay, naturally, but the work is very meaningful, challenging, and varied. Not only can I feel good about my contribution to this organization and the work they do, but I will not be bored and I will be stretching myself. Just for your info, this organization facilitates collaborations between researchers at small to large companies and institutions with other institutions and large pharmaceutical companies to address neglected diseases in the developing worlds and poor populations the world over. These diseases are not high-ticket items in terms of money-making, so the big companies don't pursue them. But the big pharmaceutical companies who have joined this consortium are committed to providing information — even about their compounds — and expertise to other researchers in this sphere. It's amazing!

So, this week my new therapist and I addressed my inertia. She asks good questions, such as when did I live my life more like I wanted it, when was I happier, when was I more active. We went all the way back to childhood for the answers. Among the answers we found was that I need to create for my mental health. I used to write and draw and paint all the time as a child, and even in my 20s. It began to taper off in my 30s, especially as my depression worsened. I developed the thought that I needed to write toward publication, rather than simply write the stories I want to tell. After taking my Scientific Illustration courses and doing beautiful work, I seemed to feel that I could no longer just mess around with my drawing and painting like I did before, but that I had to create at that same high level, so I stopped drawing and painting at all. And I really haven't crocheted a lot since creating a very intricate and difficult doily for my Grandma (which I now have framed).

Stuck to Unstuck? My New Journey

Oh, how badly I've been stuck. I've been exhausted. My brain has felt clogged and slow. I've taken naps for hours almost every day. I have done virtually nothing to further my plans or contribute to the household. I have been a lump since arriving in Seattle.

Luckily for me, my hosts have been very understanding of my exhaustion and have asked little of me so far. Friends have supported my need for sleep and rest. It's just been me who has had higher expectations.

I have a comprehensive list of things I need to do: catch up with people online and over the phone; contact professional connections; get in touch with local contracting agencies; join professional organizations and meetups and attend meetings and events; unpack what I brought to the house; and begin revising my novel.

I don't expect myself to do everything every day or all at once. I have date ranges for everything in my list. Of course, I'm behind on probably half the list so far. But maybe that's due to my unreasonable expectations in the face of unexpected setbacks. Like needing to sleep all the time.

I have a long history of overindulging myself. In response to what seemed to me a lifetime of excessive and unreasonable expectations and a lack of understanding of my needs, I began to allow myself to slack off on things, which started small and gradually grew to encompass everything in my life.

Well, I've completely changed my life again and this, too, must change. There are things I want to do and things I need to do and blowing them off is not acceptable to me any longer. Blowing off these things does not lead to the life I want to live. And that's the important point: there is a life I want to live and I have to put in the time and effort to create it. Always before, I've waited for it to happen. No more.

When I was younger, I pursued my life more actively, so I know I can do it. There are many things I did and was when I was younger: I cleaned frequently and regularly; I wrote and drew and painted on virtually a daily basis; I did physical activities that I enjoyed; and I didn't dwell on my mostly solitary state. And I daydreamed. I played. I imagined. Those are important things in anybody's life, but particularly in the life of a creative person.

So I'm going to relearn old good habits and discard current bad ones. I'm going to be healthier in ways that I can enjoy. I'm going to rediscover my true self and let her out of the various boxes and closets where I've hidden her and all her wonderful, brilliant aspects. I'm going to love for love's sake, I'm going to love and value myself, and I'm going to live a full and rich life for as long as I possibly can.

Lingering Effects

People say you shouldn't live in the past, and I agree with that. What I don't agree with is when people say "you shouldn't let what happened in the past affect you now." 

It's not like it's a choice. Past traumas have to be dealt with and processed before you can move on. Some people are lucky enough to have done that processing back when the trauma happened. Others of us were a little overflowing in the trauma department and are still working on processing old traumas.

For example, my discussions of connections and friendship with my therapist. This week we were just chatting at first and we got on the topic of my rosacea, which is doing the best it's ever done. It's mostly pink with some light red areas. Before I had laser treatment on it in 2007 (thanks, Mom!), it was pretty much the color of a fire truck in bright sunlight, and was that way since I was 12 or 13. 

That took us into a discussion of the effects the rosacea had on me in junior high and much of the rest of my life, because people ALWAYS commented on it, asking if I'd been out in the sun and gotten a sunburn, offering home remedy suggestions, and, in junior high, being total asshats about it, pointing it out, calling me names, and in general picking on me to an extreme extent. Yes, I was that kid, the one who everyone picked on and put down so as to not be the lowest person on the totem pole. 

I also think my rosacea contributed in part to my lack of romantic success: it made me stand out in a non-attractive way and men are very visual creatures. As a couple of friends said when we talked about my face over the years, they noticed the red a lot until we became good friends. Then they never noticed it again. So a guy would have had to become friends with me to even get past the redness of my face, I imagine. But no, I'm not going to blame the rosacea entirely for my eternal singlehood: I just think it was a contributing factor both as being visually off-putting to others (people are still more attracted to attractive individuals) and developing in me a hesitancy and a defensive manner toward others.

It's Hot

It's hot out — 102-plus this afternoon. I'm learning to be like the natives and stay inside during the hottest part of the day. I still haven't developed the habit of getting up and out early. It's the habit of the unemployed: stay up late and get up late.

I'm taking a trip back to the Oregon Coast in a couple of weeks, where it's still not hit 70 degrees even once this summer and sometimes doesn't get out of the 50s during the day. Unless the weather changes substantially, I will experience a drop of 40 to 50 degrees over the course of an air trip and a shuttle trip. In fact, I'll probably hit 90 degrees temps in Portland. I'm pulling out a pair of shorts and a couple of tees and the rest is jeans, a sweater and some long-sleeve shirts. Thank goodness for layering! And staying with someone who will have sweaters.

I wouldn't mind being a snowbird, because I love my temperature range to be between the 40s or 50s in the winter (I like sweaters) to the 80s or low 90s in the summer (I like shorts). But I'd need to be able to work anywhere I lived, either having a job that existed in two places or having two jobs or being able to telecommute. 

My friend Thea told me I need to live in San Diego. My BFF and a handful of other folks want me in Seattle. I have some people who think I'm in Houston forever. And I have a compulsion toward living on the Oregon Coast. 

I feel as if I were a kid wondering what I'm going to be when I grow up: I don't know what I want in specific. It's all just dreams right now, dreams of heat and cold, light and dark, here and there.

What climate do you prefer? Would you be a snowbird if you could? Where do you want to be?

Telling Stories

So, my therapist loved the two posts and all the comments and we talked about whether or not my perspective has changed ("not yet") because of telling my story from a stronger point of view. She also loved that Lora called me on using more passive verbs ("got through") rather than more active, stronger verbs. I'm working on that.

So this form of cognitive therapy seems right for me, because I am a story teller. Telling my stories with power and strength to overcome my feelings of powerlessness and weakness seems right up my alley.

My biggest problem is just that I am so anxious I don't think to do this. I don't think to do any of the other cognitive therapy I've learned. I don't think to do anything other than to hold onto myself so I don't fly apart into bits and hold onto the ground so I don't fly off into space. Because that is how I feel most of the time anymore.

The Story of My Life - Part 2

As I explained in Part 1, my therapist told me that there is another way to look at my life, rather than the powerless, victimized, trauma-ridden way. She talked about it as telling stories about our lives and how we can choose to emphasize different things. I've learned to emphasize the sad and fearful things, but my life has had so much more than that to it.

So here's another way to look at the story of my life. Beware: this is even longer than Part 1. If you want, you can scroll to the end and just read the conclusions.

It's true that I was molested, became afraid of the dark, and was bullied for many years. But I didn't live with my cousin (or my grandfather) and wasn't around either too often for the most part. And I didn't live near my school peers who bullied me. So I had the room to build a stronger self than it first seemed.

Although victimized early, and having parents who were kind of clueless about how to raise me and what was going on in my life, I did some powerful things. There was the time I taught myself to ride a two-wheel bicycle in a day so that my parents would buy me one. Because we didn't live near my school friends and there was seldom anyone for me to play with, I learned to keep myself entertained  --- I was bad at most sports so the boys in the neighborhood didn't usually want to play with me if they were playing football or baseball, and none of the girls were my age. I enjoyed skating around the cul de sac for long periods, I loved to read and write and draw, and I liked pretending to be a detective or something else that required me to sneak around the neighborhood. I didn't retaliate against my bullies, nor did I become cynical and bitter. When things got better for me in 10th grade, I simply enjoyed my good fortune and made more friends.

Then I survived a move away from everything and everyone I'd ever known. I survived the death of my father from a heart attack. And I survived going away to college and even thrived there. I was wary enough and strong enough to take myself out of an uncomfortable situation and move out of my aunt and uncle's house and into on-campus housing. And I did begin the steps toward adulthood, something I didn't realize until I casually brought up the following story to my therapist. 

Has It Been Six Weeks Already?

My e-course on shame, love, and worthiness is almost over and I haven't reported in to to you folks at all! The time just flew by and I'm behind in my reading of the teacher's book, but I'm finally caught up with everything else.

There is a lot to learn about how to become shame resilient, and the most important lesson is the last, of course: your healing can depend on your telling someone what you feel and what you need, but not on whether or not they give it to you or what their response is. And that is so true!

My life has been full of shame from various sources and for various reasons, from the mild shame my mom used to try to get me to stop biting my nails ("boys won't want to hold hands with you") to the major shame of having been sexually molested for most of my early and young childhood. (Not by anyone in my nuclear family.) The baseball story I told several posts back is a story of my teammates shaming me and my coach and my parents allowing it. I have lots of such stories.

And now I have some tools for dealing with any shame in the present and future. I have tools for looking at past shames and letting them go (I think).

One of the big points for me was that shame is normal and it happens to everyone every day. There is always someone around who tries to control you using shame. While I have taken on the badge that being normal isn't attractive, that I liked being "different", "weird", "unique", etc., I think it has been shame that has left me feeling isolated and like I wasn't lovable or likable and that I didn't belong. It's one thing to belong to a group (nerds, geeks, jocks, etc.), but to feel that I don't belong to any group is too isolating. It's not healthy. 

Not Enough

I've mentioned the cognitive-behavioral therapy I'm doing right now with my therapist. It's got great potential and it's very promising, but ... not much is happening. I feel I've made very little progress in the past few months. So today I asked my therapist why, and she told me.

It's not enough to read the book and talk to her about the theory and how it can work and talk about the intellectual aspect, which I can do ad infinitum. I have to actually do the work. I have to think about it and apply it all through the week.

She said, "This therapy is the most important thing in your life right now."

The most important thing in my life. I hadn't been thinking of it that way. 

She said, "This is the only way you are going to be able to make your life be what you want it to be."

I more or less knew that, on an intellectual basis, but not on a gut basis. I wasn't feeling it. I wasn't thinking "I need to do this NOW before my life passes even further by me without my control or passion or action.

My attitudes and perspective changed today; I hope they changed for good. The work I'm doing now IS the most important thing in my life and always has been, I just didn't know it. I need to act on learning this therapeutic form and making it natural and automatic. I need to act, period.

I know me: I might forget all this in a day or two of feeling miserably anxious and failing all over the place. I won't mind gentle reminders. I expect my therapist to be a bit less than gentle because it is time and past for me to get this done. I'm 51. I don't want to still be exactly in this same place when I'm 52. In fact, I have an intention. I intend to make great progress by summer so I can actually begin looking hard for freelance work and be able to handle the anxiety, be able to make it smaller and smaller.

But it starts with making the therapy natural and automatic, and with action rather than with the passivity I've grown into. There's another Skye who views me as Superman for a variety of reasons; I can try to live up to that.

In the coming days, I'll tell stories of when I acted, when I persisted against failure or lack of support, when I succeeded and learned, and when I was my own superhero. Those are the anecdotes and examples I need to remember in order to regain those aspects of myself again and get back to my authentic self.

So hang around. And feel free to share your own stories of being stuck, of getting unstuck, and of becoming You.