Can anyone else understand a survivor?

There are days I feel I'm so on course, healing, strong, close to healthy. And then, there are days like today when I feel so horribly, horribly broken. I don't know where to begin as I sit here just letting my fingers fly over the keys. It started with the incident at choir last night (prior post) and I thought I did so awesome in figuring things out. And then I had a conversation with my BFF and now I'm left feeling confused and crazy. And I wonder....among many other things....can anyone else understand an abuse survivor? Can anyone not living with PTSD understand how it warps and ties experiences together whether they seem relevant to an outsider? Can someone with no reference point of abuse begin to comprehend what comes along with the aftermath? The intense shame and self doubt that permeate areas of our lives? Or....am I using that as an excuse because I don't want to hear the things she's saying to me?

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My BFF, Jennie, has been my friend for 27 years now. I am a year older than she and it was always sortof a big sis/lil sis type of dynamic. She came to me, the wise older sister. She talked, I listened. She asked, I advised. She cried, I comforted. I never talked about me. When we met I was 13 years old and just at the tail end of the sexual abuse, still mired in physical and emotional abuse from my father, abusive neglect from my mother and feeling entirely confused, wrong, ashamed, unsure. As we've grown up, we've had some parallels and even go to the same therapist. She was never abused but we've shared some of the same insecurity issues, codependency issues. We laugh about our polar opposite upbringings and yet, still some similar problems. Jennie has made great strides in the past couple years and she's pretty healthy right now. There was a time when our relationship only existed in a codependent form. I needed her to need me. It gave me an outlet to sink my energy so that I didn't have to deal with my own emotions.....I was too busy getting caught up in hers. Now all that has changed and I'm happy but I find myself feeling anxiety, unfamiliar, *gulp* vulnerable.

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In my past I've twisted vulnerability around to try to make it work for me. I didn't bother to evaluate if a person was worthy of my opening up to them. I did it, with men, to portray myself in a certain way...the victim, the damsel in distress...feel sorry for me, love me, save me. And inevitably it ended badly which confirmed my suspicions about opening up to people. It only serves to hurt me. So I find myself in this unique situation with Jennie where there is reward in the risk of opening up (after 27 years!). I can prove that vulnerability can be safe. I can deepen our friendship, make it more reciprocal. Yet I find myself on edge when I talk to her....afraid to show my "weakness", afraid to no longer be the "older, wiser", afraid to drop the facade of having it all together, being able to handle things myself. I find myself irritated with some of the things she says to me. Sometimes b/c I feel like she doesn't get it and other times because I clearly see she DOES get it! I don't always take advice well, especially if I've not asked for it. Yet, there are two people I trust to give me advice and it never seems to ruffle me....one is my therapist and the other is a (mostly) online friend, who also happens to be a survivor. (I'm lookin' at you, Enola!)

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And then I begin to question.....is Jennie just not the right person for me to talk to? And I hate that thought b/c she is my BFF and she knows me so well and I want her to be that person. I love her to death, I trust her implicitly. Do I now criticize the advice she's given me b/c it made me angry and overstepped a line for me? Do I need to school her on PTSD? Am I being way too hyper about it? Am I just getting used to how this works? Or does she have an intrinsic inability to comprehend the way things filter in a survivors brain? Or am I hiding behind that?

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Somehow all of these thoughts swirled in my head for an hour as I drove to pick up Bianca at camp and I was throwing into the mix that I'm a bad friend, too sensitive, haven't made any progress, stupid, crazy, disorganized, can't do anything right, etc etc etc etc. My mind would not stay focused on any one thing that made any sense. It was simply a barrage of negative self talk that would not cease.

Silenced, again.

I had choir rehearsal tonight. I sing in a small group that I love. I've been in it for seven years now and, when I began, I was very quiet and shy. That has changed over the past few years and I've really come into my own as a singer.

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We're preparing for our most significant performance; it's coming up in two weeks. Last week, we were solidifying our song list and "Amazing Grace" was suggested with a solo verse going to me. Yeah! Love it!! We rehearsed it, it was lovely. I've been practicing it all week, trying to get my breathing and phrasing *just* right.

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Tonight, I get to rehearsal and the song list is written & printed, copies for everyone. I glance it over. Hmmm....let me look that over again. This one, that one, this song, dat da da daa......Amazing Grace is not on the list. ? No one said anything to me about it. Just took it right out. Well, I stewed about it and didn't say anything. Later in the evening, someone else asked "Hey what happened to Amazing Grace?" and I just stood there, hands on hips, waiting.... The guy who makes the schedule doesn't even make eye contact with me, just says he wanted a different song. Oh....YOU wanted?? There are 11 other people in this group. He's not the director, he IS someone I love dearly and has been like a father to me for 27 years so this is hard for me. But I'm pissed. He hoards the spotlight in the choir and doesn't like to give others the opportunity to shine. I want to shine. Dammit, I *deserve* to shine!

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So I'm stewing away at choir and starting to lose it. At any moment, I'm either going to burst into tears or I'm going to rip into someone. Or maybe both. So I grab my stuff and just run out. Driving home (a long drive, thankfully), I'm ruminating on what happened. I'm running the gamut of emotions and holy crap, I need to pull over!! I'm steaming about the situation with my "dad"..."sure he never writes himself & his songs out of a schedule. Can't he share the spotlight?. It took me sooo many years to find my voice & now he's silencing me." *lightbulb* And there is the trigger that makes this sooo huge for me. It took me so many years to find my "voice" in life....to talk about my abuse, what happened to me, to open up and people wanted me to keep quiet. That is why the disproportionate emotional response. I feel silenced, trivialized and unvalued. Aaaahhhh. I love a good epiphany.

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And a side note to the previous "Silenced" post....I emailed my mother tonight and told her in no uncertain terms, she is never to talk about my brother with me again. More on that later, most likely, as I anticipate some sort of response from her which undoubtedly will piss me off in some way. :o)

Silenced

It's been five months since an incident with my Mom sent my head reeling. The backstory is here. It took me some time (and therapy) but I was able to claim back the good feelings I had about being validated and I also came up with a plan. I prepared myself for the next time my Mom would mention my brother (an abuser) and what I would say to her.

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My mom babysits once a week when I have choir rehearsal. When I get home, Bianca is asleep and it's pretty much the only time she and I talk. I expected any reference to my brother would come at this time and I was on edge, waiting, rehearsed, prepared. For weeks and months. And it never came.

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Here we are now, nearly six months later and she decides to bring him up today while she's with me and my daughter. I don't want to have this conversation in front of my daughter and, of course, it's been so long that I don't even remember what I was supposed to say!! I felt a knot in my stomach....I felt silenced, like I'd been so many times for so many years. So I sat there in my stunned silence, my head reeling once again....do I blurt something out just to seize the opportune moment? Am I losing my chance? I felt a small sense of failure because I'd previously felt so amped up to put her in her place and now it was all gone. No wind in the sails! But in the end, I decided I needed to think it through and also, I did not want to say my peace in front of Bianca.

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So now I sit here trying to recall what I wanted to say then, trying to figure out what I want to say now. Damn her for catching me off guard!!

Negating Childrens Feelings

I've been reading this book called "How To Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk"

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My daughter, Bianca, will be 6 next month and the struggles that occur between us can be monumental. I wanted a better way to communicate. She is so much like me and we often clash because we both want to be in control. Well I'm the Mom so I need to be in control! But that doesn't mean I need to squash her thoughts and feelings in the process.

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The main thrust of the book is simple. Validate your child's feelings. Don't excuse or negate their feelings with statements like "You don't really feel that way.", "You're just saying that because you're tired.", "There's no reason to be so upset." In our grown up world, we *wish* our biggest problem was that "Billy made a face at me" or "Lauren wouldn't sit next to me at lunch" so it's easy for us to brush it off. But to kids, it's a big deal and they need to know we understand and accept their feelings.

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It was funny, on Sunday, we were leaving a pool party and Bianca was exhausted, did not want to get out of the pool, did not want to leave and she was crying. All the other grownups were telling her "you're okay, you had such a fun day, you'll be back soon, oh you're just tired, don't be sad, don't cry, etc..." I just let her cry & told her I understand you feel sad, it's hard to leave when you've had so much fun. I just let her work it through and kept validating her and, within a few minutes, she was done crying and we were laughing and being silly.

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More importantly, when they are sad, angry or frustrated, we have to help them label those feelings that they may not understand and, without jumping in to solve their problem, give them the opportunity to feel their feelings and talk things out on their own. Help them to trust their own feelings. Give them the tools to work through bad experiences. I know, as parents, we just want to make things all better ASAP! But that desire to step in and "solve" the problem may do more harm than good in the long run. Now I'm brand new at this so I don't have many examples of how it's worked for me yet but I hope to update later on with my success stories.

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But the point of this post is what it's brought up for me. As abuse survivors, we've likely had our fears, feelings and experiences negated more than the average child. Not only did the abuse mess us up but the disbelief or failure to act on the part of our caregivers caused us to doubt our own experiences and feelings. No wonder so many of us have a hard time expressing and trusting our emotions!

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I have a seriously hard time feeling my feelings. And an even harder time talking about them. When I do talk about them, there is this laundry list of expectations of how I want the person listening to respond. If you get it wrong.....bbbbzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz!! You're out. I'm not likely to confide in you again! Well, I certainly realized how unrealistic this was. Who could live up to that? It became a self fulfilling prophecy that I could not trust anyone to help me. I'm genuinely uncomfortable with people who give me the "look on the bright side" approach because I feel dismissed. And I realized that is because of my mother. She cannot tolerate unhappiness or discomfort in any way and she turns into a whirling dervish of sunshine trying to dispel the negative feelings. The biggest example I saw of this in my own life was my nightmares. When we moved to CT, I was 10 and my brother (abuser) was 12. It had been going on for many years already but this was the point that it began to escalate in severity. I had such horrible nightmares, so terrifying that my screams would not even make a sound. When my panic finally came down to a level that I could scream, my mother would come into my room. Never asking what the dream was, never empathizing that dreams could feel real and be scary. Just telling me to go back to bed, nothing is wrong, everything is fine, think about butterflies, kittens & ballerinas. No room for bad things here, let's just pretend none of this ever happened. Push all those fears down, down, down (where you can deal with them in therapy 20 years later.....) Only talk to me about rainbows, lollipops and unicorns. Because that's much more helpful. Because that was all she could deal with. And I was left feeling like my fears were "wrong", unfounded, unimportant, something to stuff down and not talk about. Ever.

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Now I see why I'm such a freak about talking about my problems as well as talking myself out of my problems ie: getting ready to reach out to talk to a friend and then I say to myself "oh this isn't so bad, it's not a big deal, I don't want to bother so&so with this stupid stuff, I can work through it myself. Sure....because my problems were never given credibility. No one gave me permission to feel sad or angry or scared. I refuse to do that to my daughter anymore and I'm really excited to see how this process will develop.

Wow....

Has it really been almost 3 months since I've posted??? Wow.
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We were on vacation last week and I had every intention of posting while away. But, as it turned out, there was a freak heatwave. With the temp inside the house reaching upward of 90 degrees, I didn't feel like doing much other than a cold shower and trying to sleep with numerous fans pointed at me. Despite the heat, we had a great week. Vacation with a 5 year old is never relaxing. There was much running around, arcade, amusement park, boat rides, day at the beach. I got together with an old friend which was wonderful.
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I am still doing acupuncture once a week. We're focusing on balancing out my body energy and reducing the food addiction. It's working amazingly well. Where I used to estimate my urge (on a scale of 1 - 10) about a 9, it's now at about a 3. The hard part is that while acupuncture is causing the physical addiction to diminish, it does not address the emotional desire to binge. Food was my way to disconnect from myself, to escape. It's been my comfort, my companion. Now what happens is that my mind still desires that disconnect. It wants the comfort and draws me to the familiar outlet of eating but my mind is now engaged in the process. I'm not disconnected. This is good....this is progress. This also sucks when I really do want to disconnect!! I know it's "healthy" to be connected and it's what I've worked for in therapy. But who can deny the peace that sometimes comes with a nice, mindless dissociation? Right??!?!
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Recently, in therapy, I asked my T what she thought about hypnotism. I think I mentioned it here before. Ah yes, here. I had contacted someone about it. T tells me that hypnosis can be helpful in a variety of situations. She warned me about the "age regression" technique and that it can be potentially traumatizing. She does not recommend it for me. She asked me what I hope to gain through hypnosis. I told her that I wanted it to help diconnect me from the desire to binge. She said that tapping would accomplish the same thing.
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Now, she and I have talked about tapping (info about it here) many, many times. I've tried it on occasion. I believe in it but, for some reason, I cannot seem to commit to it. I asked her, rhetorically, "Why am I so resistant to the tapping?" Her reasonable reply...."I don't know. Why are you so resistant to the tapping?" I sat with this question for a moment when the answer came to me. Like acupuncture, hypnosis is a "passive" activity. It's something someone else does to, or for, me. Tapping is active. It's all on me. It requires my participation, my commitment, my effort. And, if it fails, then I perceive that *I* have failed. That's my resistance. I don't want to be to blame for something failing.
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That appointment was several weeks ago. T and I spoke at length about different tapping techniques, different times to use them, the most effective statements for me to focus on. I think about it daily but I've not done it yet. As of today, I created a journal with all my tapping statements and instructions as well as a section to keep track of what is happening with me when the urge to binge hits me. I post this here in an effort to follow through with my plan and be accountable to give this a serious try. And if it doesn't work then it's just not the answer for me. It doesn't make ME a failure. (let's see how many times I have to say that til I actually believe it....)