Ok, the thought for after dinner was to select some Bach remedies on finding hope. Bach remedies are natural remedies which influence the emotional state of a person. I always benefit from them greatly but when I go down into a pit I have issues selecting them because I don’t feel worth taking care of me. And I am always too late. I have to stand with my back against to wall to actually start taking care of me.
This is a chart of the traditional English Bach Remedies. Several people around the world have developed their own sets, like the Californian remedies. These are keywords, online or in books you can find more detailed info.
I was not sure how to select what I am looking for but I started crying at Gorse, Olive, Star of Bethlehem, Sweet Chestnut and Wild Oat. So I guess that makes it clear.
Adding Cherry Plum and Rock Rose to soften the blow a bit. Even though it is dangerous to take Cherry Plum when without professional help. I think I have the worst behind me so I guess I am safe.
With homeopathy and Bach remedies there can be the danger of extreme aggravation when the energetic system is awakened by the medicine. I have a pretty reactive system so when I take a remedy against ‘irrational fears’ e.g. I will spend 2 days fearing the whole CIA, KGB, NSA and Facebook are on my case and that the remedy is actually pro-irrational fears and that this is done to me by purpose bla bla bla bla bla. At day 3 I do not worry anymore and can not even believe I ever came up with a thought like that.
Theoretically Wild Oat would be something for when I am ready to look for work again, not for emergencies, but the word ‘alienated’ sticks with me. My brother was killed in the womb by a chemical process which in plain English would be called ‘alienating’ and my first name is based on a noun derived from the verb ‘alienating’. Yeah. I am not surprised I have difficulty landing in this world and uphold a typical view of its inhabitants :-D. Wild Oat, to get my feet back on the ground?
Ok, the above list is quite long, I prefer taking 2 or 3 remedies at the time.
Agrimony is good for anybody with an addictive personality. Not taking that now though because I am opening up by myself and I don’t want to mess with that process currently. Not sure why, all of a sudden for the one process I think I need Bach remedy help and for the other I find it ‘messing’. Which… might strenghten the thought that one can not medicate oneself. 😉 You are welcome to give it a try btw. I am curious to learn what you think.
Willow gave the sensation of a cold, bitter lightning through my body. Resentment is certainly something to look at. Specifically because somewhere in my mind there is this cold voice saying: “They deserve my hatred.” (yikes!!) But now is not the time. Or? No. Not now.
I would assume anybody reading this would want to give me Honeysuckle. I am not taking this because it is about romantisizing the past. I thought I did not do that. Until I just read an online addition from Edward Bach: “They do not expect further happiness such as they have had.” which would be true for the womb-dream I have. No greater happiness than being in the womb with somebody who is somebody else, but me. Never alone, experiencing everything without speaking. I like you because you are me – you like me because I am you. Food for analyses. We might have had Narcissus for breakfast. Not sure.
We are us, You are us, I am us, We are you! We are me! I am you, You are me.
You died.
It is called the dream of the womb. Which then turned into the hell of the womb. I realise that I long back to that dream and I will never, as long as I live, experience the intensity, the wholeness of that contact again. Hole in the soul.
I am happy that I quit. 🙂 I assume, know, the mess would be bigger if I had not. Again. I would not be alive. In the last few weeks I have somehow found that I am worth saving. Or learned to not give a shit about others opinion of me anymore, maybe. That would take some pressure off too. Not sure. I am still scared, what if I save myself and fall back in the pit? I am scared but I am going to try anyway. I think I can do this. I mean, I quit drinking and I thought I could not do that. I started with writing down what I was scared of and did not know. And then I started looking for answers. I can do that again. I have got plenty of time. Well, The Universe gave us all we needed for Life, so let’s see what tools I have and can apply.
Ok, I am happy that I quit. Gonna make my remedy mix now. 1 Or 2 drops of each in a bottle of a liter water. Then poor half a glass and fill up with water again.
Bach remedies are 40% alcohol I believe. So the concoction can still smell like alcohol but somehow it does not hinder me. I have these remedies stored in the brain box ‘medicine’ and that keeps me from linking this smell to drinking. It has never been in the brain box ‘drink’. Funny side note: there is a lemonade I can not drink because I used to drink it when trying to moderate. And I projected my drinking thoughts on it. So now it feels like drinking alcohol when I smell it. :-D. The mind is strange.
Wishing you a good sober day / evening. Thanks for reading.
After my visit to the government doctor I visited my GP. We worked out that I would get help. Up till then I had thought along the same lines as when being addicted to drinking: if I just do this and that, all will be well. This and that would be ‘moderate’ when I was drinking. Currently it would be ‘wake up on time, shower, dress, eat well, excercise, socialize, go to be early’. And then I found it did not work anymore.
Not all was not well. That night I went into a psychotic episode force 5 on a 10 point scale. That was extremely scary. I had to pull everything together not to lose my mind. I realised that my fear of losing my mind put extra pressure on whatever it was that was happening. So with what was left I deliberately looked through my toolbox. I found: breath, relax, drink water, pat the cat and EFT and EMDR. I did not have the energy for EFT but I did move my eyeballs from left to right and back repeatedly. In only seconds I relaxed, yawned and found a little footing. WONDERFUL. It helped me through the next half hour and I fell asleep. Sleeping is better. Next days I keep on moving my eyeballs left and right and I can literally feel the pressure receding. Immediately. Wonderful. 🙂 Thank you Louise and all others who are involved for pointing me at this methode. 🙂
I also found: call somebody. I can not remember why I dismissed that. Possibly because it was night. Most likely because I do not want people to think I have gone over the edge.
I just read my former post again. Sound quite crazy, difficult to read. Things got worse. Some of you might have read the post where I spoke about the abuse issues I encountered in New Zealand. My niece just moved over there. She is 17 years old. She has not even been there a full month I believe and she has been forcefully kissed against her will by a guy at a party. Photo’s were made too and used against her when she replied in a chat that she did not like it. This is the same niece I wanted to have a talk with about safety and well, the rape culture before she went to NZ, her mother ‘forbade’ that. Same mother and father (my brother) who laughed at her and the situation when she reported guys had put a wager on who ‘got her first’. She is lesbian but not out of the closet in NZ.
Not sure how but I sensed something was off, I don’t know, the photos of outings just looked too glamorous but her personality was not filling up the gap between her and the glamour. I started chatting. It took me 2 hours of chatting with her before she finally came clear on what had happened and she still is too ashamed and traumatized to give the details.
She does not want me to inform her parents. I haggled a deal with her that she connects with a teacher at school the moment she feels scared. Also that she will tell the counsellor of the exchange organisation whom she meets this week.
I know this is not about me but at some point I was wondering: how the hell am I to stay sane during this? This theme in my life where I sense and see danger and nobody listens and bad things happen. Even after they happen people laugh and traumatized persons get dissed. It is, well, very unpleasant. Traumatizing in itself. Eyes left, right, left, right, left. Breathe….. yawn. I yawn within 10 times left and right. 🙂 Not sure what that is about. Guess I am tired.
And I am sick and tired of things like these pushing me towards the edge. There must be another way of dealing with this.
I am grateful that I have this 6th sense where I can literally feel around the world that a person I know is in trouble. I am grateful that I have enough knowledge of speaking with traumatized people to be able to hold some space for her. I am absolutely pissed that she has to go through this. I am absolutely pissed that I have to go through this. I am absolutely pissed at this sick sick world.
Ok. Thanks for reading that :-).
So…. I’m looking for therapists. I’m thinking I would like to start with a therapist on vanishing twin syndrome. There are several around by now but many are ‘far’ away. I am scared to travel currently. I guess I could speak with friends and ask them to go with me. Also…. if this is so intense, maybe I should wait till I am a little more stable. But then again… will I get stable if I do not address the main issue.
Maybe the main issue is not having hope left. I was thinking about this. Can’t believe the jokes the Universe plays on me because I IMMEDIATELY got a FB message on ‘Hope in these dark Trump times’. 🙂 It was good. 🙂
Ok. If the main issue is not having any hope left, I have Bach remedies on the subject of Hope in my toolbox. I keep on not wanting to do the work to get me healthy and back because I am SO SICK of falling back in this dark pit. The loneliness. The despair. The pain of seeing how things are run in this world. Again and again walking into people and situations which press my buttons. Not being able to deal with that. The sensitivity which sometimes feels like I am walking around without skin and everybody can look into my soul. Hahaha, and if they don’t they can read this blog ;-). Ghegheghe…. eh…
Ok, I need to step up my game. I have found parts of self-love where I now believe I do matter. In the process of allowing me to live, I also decided that I do not suck – the whole world sucks. This is not a personal thing, it is ‘just’ governments, multinationals like Monsanto and Shell, environmental polluters, rapists etc.) I guess in time this will balance out. Now I ‘just’ (?) do not have the energy anymore and I am scared for relapsing into where I am now. Hmmm…. I am scared to relapse so I stay still down in the pit. Hmmm…. food for thought.
I put the word ‘just’ between quotes because I have an issue with that word. I noticed it is used by me and others to quickly skip past something which is can/must/should/whatever be mentioned. It is a word to help hide stuff. Not sure what I am hiding. My justs are never just. Which is a very funny sentence. A scary one. I’m leaving it in here. Future will tell what it means. Feels like there is something lying its ass off here and I can’t see it. 😀 OMG, well, future will tell. Ok, future is here, it is in the paragraph already, I started off with it; whenever I want to use ‘just’ I skip feelings, that is unjust about it. My justs are never just.
Ok, cooking time and after that tea time and looking up Bach remedies on hope. 🙂
Thank you for reading. I do realise that I unload on this page and it is not elegant. I can totally understand when this is too much for people. I would wish to carry messages of ‘hope’ and baking cakes but that is not the flavour of the dish called ‘Feeling’. I wish it were different.
I am happy that I quit. I, haha, would be such a mess if I had not. 😀 Yeah, realising that things could be way worse. 🙂 Realising that is good.
Life has been tough. Tougher than I can handle or maybe tougher than chocolate can handle :-). I have let myself slip to the bottom of the pit and stayed there too long. I have been lying to my friends and family about how I feel because I did not want to be confronted with myself. I kept on saying “I am ok” or “I don’t want to talk about it.” while inside I was dying. I lost faith in myself, my life, my future. Everything was very dark.
I don’t want to lose my friends. And I know about the untrue friends and the true friend, but the energy unload which happens when I really let go is BIG. I do not think it is not suitable for friendship relations.
A new truth I found is that I have lived with adjusting myself all of my life. Adjusting what I say, adjusting what I feel, what I think, to fit in. And then followed the hiding and drinking away what could not be transformed otherwise. 😦 Obviously that is a sick system and not sustainable. 😦 So there I was, another much-needed rock bottom again – the emotional one.
This Tuesday I had to visit the doctor who determines whether I need to look for a job or are entitled to further financial government support. She was rather persistent in finding out how bad things were. Her repeated questioning brought me to places I hope to never visit again, though that might be a wish that will not be granted. I was crying and shaking all over. I knew things were bad, I had no idea it was this bad. New memories of my early youth, teenage time and young adulthood have been popping up off late and it is tough; mostly, dark experiences which then feel so overwhelmingly real in the here and now that it is baffling. I assume it is a side effect of quitting drinking and not having tasks on hand which propel my thoughts into the future.
I tell so much lies about how I feel in daily life and adjust myself to the outside world that I have shut myself down totally. I deliberately place cheerful and silly Facebook post and comments with quick responses and smiling emojis to (try to) make sure nobody thinks I have changed.
I notice I build another me at quite an emotional distance from where I actually am. That is what addiction is to me and it is SO DESTRUCTIVE. It is like I am trying to build a several story house but in order to deal with technical issues and difficulties in the design, I shift the coordinates for everything to avoid having to solve stuff or think about what is going on. I do this for all the plumbing, electricity, for every room and for every layer of the building. Now the rooms do no stack onto each other or on the founding even, the plumbing does not connect from room to room or story to story, planks from the stairs are missing, the sewage system is dysfunctional because not placed at the tap or toilet points, the light shines in places where the floor does not exist and the roof lies on its back in the garden. It is how I feel energetically and it is NOT WORKING!!!
I guess telling others all is OK is not working either. The doctor was a good mirror. She indirectly ordered me to go into therapy; if I do not improve within a few months she was obliged to take action. In that she hinted at ordering me into therapy involuntarily because of danger to self – or shut down the funds. As threats go, these are quite effective.
Today I had a GP visit – for the record, this appointment was based on a talk I had with my administrative guy to whom I could not keep up appearances – the mask fell of and he stimulated me to make changes.
I found out I have the idea that nobody understands how I am wired. I have the idea that if I tell how I feel everybody thinks I am crazy. Maybe I am, to a lot. But not to everybody and not to myself although I fear to have experienced pre-psychotic episodes off late where I started to doubt the existence of the world. Yeah, funny, in a not funny way. Pressure in my mind went up so big that I could not deal anymore. In order to deal something had to give: it was me or the world, I decided the world was not real and I could walk through walls if I felt like it. Scary shit. And while my mind is telling me of this new order I KNOW it is not correct but shit the pressure is high. Not advisable.
But it is always darkest before dawn and a lot happened for the good in the last several days. I came home from the doctor’s and made myself an extremely healthy salad. Taking care of myself with a last resort of force, but I did it. The next 2 days I battled the darkness like I battled quitting drinking in the first days; actually using willpower to stop negative thinking and pull it out by its roots. Again and again I find that if I do that, I feel better. Yeah: “duh?!” but ah, difficult when depression has drawn its tracks into the mental state and thinking.
BUT I DID IT!!!! I’m not there yet obviously but I made a start to turn things around. The chocolate is still there but the vegetables are back on the menu big time, so is hope, love for myself and so are the Bach remedies (a type of ‘homeopathy’ / energetic ‘medicine’ to promote happiness and emotional health) I chose something to give me hope, settle the crazy, deal with shock.
In the last months I have sorted my problems into several categories and I found that these are big. The last two days I realised that, as with drinking, I just (?) need to work out what is the problem and where I can find help. My issues are big, but not insurmountable. Or so she said upfront ;-).
In the below paragraphs I write about what I think makes it difficult for me to exist in this world. Please note that I am aware there are billions of people who are worse off than I am. Many of them amongst readers of this blog. But that does not mean I can cope with what I am in this world. 😦 The toughening up I did led me into drinking so I guess there is something I did and do not understand. Please note this is my own analyses, I should be open to the possibility that things are not as I think they are in order not to close off any learning opportunities. But for now this is it.
What makes my issues, the PTSS, the VTS (vanishing twin syndrome), the high IQ, the hypersensitivity, I am clair-ish sentient 😉 difficult is the mix with the addiction; the not wanting to be here and experience what is. That makes it impossible for me to build on anything – that goes for anything: I can not hold on to anything, not to money, not to a job, not to a partner, not to a thought. Only to not drinking actually. 🙂
The Vanishing Twin Syndrome (losing my twin brother in the womb and actually remember that as a very traumatic experience) which leads to a lot but mostly caused my eternal ‘not wanting to be here on this earth’, a big part of my PTSS, the clear sentience and the hypersensitivity. I also believe this openness somehow set me on a path of finding difficulties in the field of sexual abuse. But that might ‘just’ be coincidental. It made me vulnerable to not feeling worthy of being alive: I had already caused somebodies’ death before I was born. No wonder I have no right to be happy and be me.
Because of the hole in my energy system where my brother used to be I am open to all kinds of energies. I feel I am not connected to this body, to this human shape, I am connected to everything non-material.
His death was so overwhelming that it broke my natural defenses and threw me out of my core. I have not been able to repair this. I need to learn to close myself off in order to make myself feel safe in this world and actually want to be here, to fully incarnate. Currently I am like a sender/receiver with no on and off button and no ability to distinguish between incoming and outgoing. I never know where I end and the other begins. Makes for great sex though, when all is well. Learning to deal with this will hopefully help me to close myself off instead going into hiding or being aggressive, tactless, nasty to others when I feel unsafe.
I am thinking my hypersensitivity is caused by the VTS but has been worsened by the abuse of alcohol, sugar and other addictions which stress out my system and make it vulnerable – not only energetically but also chemically. Over the years I have become hypersensitive to chemical smells and coffee for instance. When my neighbours drink coffee my bowels start doing their bowel thing and I need to go to the toilet.
Next there is PTSS from the VT experience and (sexual) abuse, mother with cancer, father with Aspergers and his religious fixation on the apocalypse. We had a stressful home situation with continuous fighting and passive aggressiveness dripping off the walls. My parents with their structural sexual abuse issues, their continuous financial issues (while they were never out of money! btw) were not able to do their parenting job because of their own mental and physical states; mom’s cancer and their addictions and their own traumas.
Finally there is me being intellectually gifted – which is difficult to say because it sounds arrogant and ha! it does not keep me from being stupid. Intelligence and being streetwise/smart are NOT related :-D. But I guess being best of class for many years of my life puts me in the gifted category. I followed an online course on the subject and I the teacher mentioned that being gifted comes with specific disadvantages as not feeling understood and having difficulty to connect with what is ‘normal’. Also: the inability to connect intelectually actually made and makes people (me!) feel stupid and incapable because others do/did not understand me. Through the years though I have learned to connect to people over the human factor. Which is good, and way more useful in life but it leaves me unsatisfied in working some stuff out and somehow people do not help me with stuff because they think I can manage myself. Not true.
One of the happenings which send me spinning a few weeks ago is finding out my gifted, primary school friend had killed herself, leaving 2 kids behind. We always competed over the best school results. She was very creative and very skilled in that area, she studied to be an architect.
Being gifted does combine badly with my anxiety. In work situations I use my giftedness to oversee processes and all the tiny details which make the business clock tick. In combination with my anxiety and perfection I focus on the things which go wrong. It is a useful trait for a Quality/Safety Manager but it causes continuous anxiety and it is a bad way of using gifts. Also: it freaks out colleagues to see bears on every spot of every road.
My GP does not call my breakdown a rock-bottom but uses the word T-junction. 🙂 Not taking action will lead to darkness, despair and death. Taking action can lead to light. I choose the light because in the darkness of where I was I realised that underneath all of it I like myself.
My GP gave me a few names of therapists, I am to investigate by myself and I come back next week to make a decision with her and sign up somewhere.
I am happy that I quit. Seeing how much I loathed myself when I drank I think I would not be able to bear being alive right now if I would be drinking. Not a positive choice, but a much-needed one. 🙂
The hug-buddy is back. We did not speak about what happened (NEW). After having been asked by the tax service to pay back 4500 euros (half of my savings). I was aware of their claim on my, and I do have the money, but the real thing was a bit more real than I had imagined. I only found out a few days later that they would also be GIVING me 5000 euros for another reason so I’m going 500 plus iso 4500 minus. Realising how extremely stressful these money issues are I suddenly felt ashamed about my harsh judgement of him. We hugged it back to ok. 🙂 I guess some day we will talk.
These days I will be sorting out my issues further and trying to find places and people whom I think can help me with these. For all those who have tried EMD or EFT: there seems to be no organisation without it anymore so I guess that will be on the menu. 🙂
Now is bedtime, tomorrow is another day. I look forward to sorting stuff out and cleaning up this emotional mess. 🙂 I have a lot to give and to live for, if I allow myself to be me.
I am grateful for the people and professionals I have been meeting this last week.
Thank you for hanging in there and reading this rather unedited, dark process of me unaddicting. I want to become clear, transparent and I want to become me. To feel safe to be me. To not be afraid of me. I also want to understand the energetic ways of life. I want to love and be loved.
Yesterday a friend and I returned a crate of empty beer bottles which had been on my balcony for over 4 years. As I live on the 4th floor without an elevator I used to drink from cans but… at some point, 4 years ago I was trying to quit and then favo beer came on sale in the bottles. I promised myself that it would not be so bad if I just moderated. Well, I guess you know how that works out… Some 4 years and 2 days later…. I FINALLY got to bringing it back. 🙂 It has 4 euro deposit money so obviously I wanted to cash that.
All this time of not drinking I had been hesitant to bring the bottles back. At first the rattling of bottles in a crate ignited thoughts of drinking. Later it brought back specific memories of what I call our ‘drunken nest’ at home. My dad, brother, friends and I would drink bottled beer on a summer evening at a campfire. I won’t go romanticising this because the truth was that I was already addicted then and the family dysfunctional partially because of the use of alcohol. Looking back now I realise that both my parents had ‘the gene’ even though they never got into it to the max. My father did for a few years when he studied but that finished off his study and he had to move back to his teetotaler parents so that sorted that.
That is the thing with drinking while having a family: it is not only the person who drinks who is affected, it is everybody. When drinking my mother was not available, not for normal conversation, not for connecting, everything was ‘dealt’ with quickly and in an irritated manner. She made clear that we came between her and her drink, or as she would phrase it: “the only moment of the day I have to myself”. A lot of the issues I could have used help with as a teenager, like sexual assault where not spoken off because she was already irritated when I mentioned something simple as school stuff. That is what she taught us; alcohol is more important than you are. And in my twisted and already addicted mind that read: drinking = solving problems.
When my dad drank he would become even more convinced of himself and start orating for 3 hours on end on dark subjects nobody was interested in like doomsday and the end of times. Hmm, orating for 3 hours… how does that sound familiar? If anybody protested, specifically when my mother protested, he would lash out like trying to win the first price for bullying. After that we would all smooth it over with more booze. Flush the tension away.
Mike from the blog ‘dharmaholic‘ spoke about having a family and drinking a few days ago in an interesting post and the shame based family:
For your information, here are some of the things Bradshaw (edit: writer of the book ‘Healing The Shame That Binds You’ about shame, shame based families and addiction) speaks about parent modeling and why shame-based parents have little ability in these matters.
‘Modeling includes how to be a man or a woman; how to relate intimately to another person; how to acknowledge and express emotions; how to fight fairly; how to have physical, emotional, and intellectual boundaries; how to communicate;how to cope and survive life’s unending problems; how to be self-disciplined; and how to love oneself and another. Shame-based parents cannot do any of these”.
That was how my parents failed to be present to my brother and I, to themselves, to eachother and to family and the few friends they had; because of their drinking and their fights with themselves and the fights between them. 😦
The tv-series Patrick Melrose (addicty trying to get clean and trying to deal with his past of abuse) is on in The Netherlands. Obviously my parents were not quite as far away from me as his and the abuse did not come from within the family – but what is very familiar is that undertone of dread. continuous insecurity, fearing I, my integrity, would be attacked, abused. In early childhood I could ‘get over things’ and ‘forget about them’ but the older I grew and the more incidents added on the more I would freeze. And from early puberty onwards I was continuously in a fight/flight/freeze….. and drink mode.
Ok, well, back to the crate on the balcony. I had cleaned the balcony but the crate was staring at me. Earlier I thought keeping it was a good idea to remind me of my stupidity and all the wrongs I had done. I mentioned this to friend who came by and she said: if you do not dare to do it alone, let’s go take it to the store together. We did. 🙂 While walking I spoke about the sound being a trigger. She mentioned that it triggered her to drink cola because it reminded her of bottles of cola. 🙂 That is about focusing on not continuously fighting the old, but replacing our behaviour with new behaviour. In this case that would be drinking cola which I will not – but the sound could be from apple juice or water bottles too. Good changes. 🙂
Also: now I am able to detect what was going on and how this crate calls up memories, guilt and self-hate. In the last 4 years I have also developed some form of self-worth to realise that the hurt coming with the memories and my own judgement is not so much ‘what I deserve’ but more ‘what I learned to do to myself’. I realise guilt is a suitable emotion when applied in moderation in the correct situation. However feeling guilty, always, about everything, about being alive is not a sustainable way of living – so to say. 😉
For me shame is a big issue and finding back my voice, my right to live and right to protect myself, my right to be safe is difficult. So many damaged my physical and emotional integrity to rid themselves of their own feelings of shame through aggressive sexual acts against me. Sexual abuse was the key ingredient of my parents marriage with daily doses of forced sex. That layer of vile acts seeped through the family and poisoned everbodies’ mind, heart, soul and energy system.
So yeah, shame is something to work on for me. And I am guessing at some point in my life it would be nice to be free of reproaching my parents for letting me down. Hell, not reproaching parents for having kids and thinking they can keep them safe while my mother actually knew their marriage would be a destructive one, would be nice. And yes, I know this is twisted thinking but that is a part within which is fucked up badly. I decided that I would never have kids because I would not want to do to anybody what my parents did to me / did not do for me. Everybody kept on and keeps on saying ‘but they were trying their best’. But if unleashing ones own shame on kids is the best… I don’t want to walk down that road. And knowing I was addicted to alcohol: what did I have to offer? Continuation of damaged genes and sick coping mechanisms?
Back to the crate: 3 Years and 10 months sober I do not have to ‘keep up appearances’ and then buckle under the weight of shame and self-hate only to drink again. I am now able to voice my worries to a friend who comforts me and helps me out in a practical way: walk with me to the store, be present to my discomfort. And I am able to accept that just as it is without feeling inferior. I can thank her for that without feeling stupid and not suitable to live.
Those are a lot of changes. 🙂 I am not in AA but seeing how my developments go I can see how they touch upon the 12 steps. 🙂 And indeed, how resentment is an important part of me and it hinders me. But I can not step past the deliberate hurt they caused me, for putting me in harm’s way on purpose, for not listening when I expressed abuse. For sending me back into social situations in which I had been abused. For not believing me when telling them my brother was egging the abusers on. For not believing me my brother pulled a knife at me. For disbelieving everything I said from that point onwards because ‘he would not do such stuff’. Well. He did. And they did. And while I was losing myself and almost soiled myself my mother was looking sincere but not fully. I never understood until I learned about micro-expressions; that explained the glimpses of joy combined with power and sex. Vile. She was smiling at me and experiencing lust when sending me back into the crowd with luring, lusting and grabbing guys willing to go to any length to get some action – there was no protecting me. Because drinking. Because my misery made her feel less alone? I do not know. She had been perverted and now it was my turn. That is what families are about: handing down experiences. Unfortunately that counts for the darker ones too. 😦 Patrick Melrose is very explicit about not wanting to live in this system himself and at the same time behaves exactly the same way his father did. 😦
That’s the thing isn’t it: we all think we will be there for kids, friends, nephews, nieces, family, colleagues, neighbours when they want to express something awful and need help. But the reality is: as long as we do not look at our own pain and darkness, kids, friends, nephews, nieces, family, collegues, neighbours turn into people who are uncomfortable to be around with after they have been hurt. Typically kids who have been abused or bullied will not ‘just cry’ so others can feel sorry for them and comfort them. They have been touched by the shame of the abuser and therefore do not feel the right to cry anymore. They whine, become silent, they can become aggressive or withdraw and stumble over their own feet exactly when others ‘need’ them to be inspirational and show off. And if they can not perform beautifully on Sundays at grandma’s, at school or at football, at least don’t be a whining embarrassment. I cried, I begged, I moaned, I sabotaged and I got dismissed by my parents for whining so they send me back into the lion’s pit. I learned I had no value.
“You are an embarrassment, I am ashamed of you.” actually means: “Your behaviour touches something in me I can not carry, and I dislike you for reminding me of the shame, guilt, self-loathing I have inside.” That is how transfer works. I have shame, you remind me of it, I need to lash out so I can feel better, you feel worse and now you carry my shame.
The other way around: I am thinking, when experiencing discomfort like shame and unworthiness in dealing with somebody, especially kids, it is extremely important to be aware of what is going on and what is carried over, what does not want to be seen, what has no right to exist. Alcohol and other drugs prevents parents, teachers, therapists from doing that because addiction is a shame fueled misunderstanding of life.
In the last months I ended up in a dark depression and allowed myself to go into my underdog mode. Rock bottom will be the solid bottom on which I rebuild my life – I hope ;-). I will sink and sink till I let go of the attachment to destructive patterns. Knowing that I let go. I cut out everybody who did not exactly believe me as I experienced my life and speak about it. No matter how much I moan I expect people to listen and if they don’t they can get out of my life. I had to do that to make space for me to believe me, to take myself seriously, to take back room in myself to experience. Moaning only happens when people do not take their own pain seriously. Moaning is a structure of squeezing a non-existent pimple right next to a giant white head. I was going to not dismiss myself too, upfront. Not going to set boundaries to experiencing the damage which has been done. Not going to slightly change my story or leave stuff out to make people accept it.
My dreams looked and felt like this vid, that person. “The monsters are running wild inside of me. I am faded. So lost. I am faded.”
It was informative. The utter darkness of not wanting to live, not being able to be social, not taking care of me; it was dark. Days filled with planning on how to take my life. How will I make sure the right people take care of the cat and will keep her. How will I make sure they do not suspect that I’m not going on a holiday. Dark. Some days in I realised I was wanting myself out of my body constantly. Do you recognise that?
Also, I had changed the security settings to my blog and I had to type in the name to this blog every time I wanted to read something. I realised that I was not feeling my way back into life. I was pushing myself away from experiencing what was going on but making a ‘kill the ego’ solution to it by wanting to die. As I was laying in my bed anyway I dove into what was.
I can tell you, the running for the darkness and going into suicide thinking is dark. What is behind that within me is dark too but there is a difference. Behind it is destruction. It is natural. It is Thanatos. The Universe has 2 main powers: one is life and the other is death. You can call it light and darkness, yin and yang, whatever. One is expanding, the other is subtracting. The one can not live without the other. The substracting balances the growth. It is that which brings order to the chaos so the growth can follow a sustainable path, not grow wild, not overgrow itself. It sets boundaries to that without boundaries, which is infinite, which is unlimited. I dread endings. Every ending has an atmosphere of my brother dying. I dread boundaries and limits. I ‘chose’ an addiction which I thought helped me to avoid all of that – only to find that the alcohol in the end limited me. Which is correct. That is how Life is.
The darkness is where I do not want to be, I relate this back to the suffering in the womb when my brother died. And funny; I realised that me backing away from this energy to quit building, to make sensible choices instead of wanting it all, makes it impossible for me to fulfill any project or actually achieve something in life because I dread the ending of it. The energy connected to ‘being done’ is for me connected with terror and death. So I back away.
And obviously, in backing away I do not accept life on life’s terms and get unbalanced. 😦 Just Universal laws. The darkness, it is real. It is part of Life. It is natural. I feel I have gotten an extra leg to walk on, like parts in my body have re-integrated with experiencing this darkness within. The suicidal thinking is another darkness, one with ‘opinions’ and ‘wants and needs’, an ego created darkness. The darkness of Life, as I experienced it then is just what it is: destruction. Not personal. Not focussed on the ego. Overwhelming and powerful but true and clear. Quite a relieve actually.
The last month has been about falling apart, looking at all the pieces and the glue which kept them together. Most of the glue is/was not so much a life force but it consists of freeze. Frozen emotions, frozen processes, blocked paths through life. Funny how that what I fear ‘the darkness’ actually ends up building my system itself and preventing the opposite ‘Life’ to happen. Which is… exactly how I think it works. I wanted to find freedom in alcohol while I found enslavement. I wanted financial freedom while I found that depletes my funds :-). I wanted to live without boundaries while I found that means that indeed I reach nothing. I want to explain stuff and bury people in words.
Living Life on life’s terms. 🙂 I have made a big step and while I thought I stepped into the darkness I stepped into freedom. Not kaboom Light, but well, relieve, understanding of the workings of me. Experiencing internal freedom, you know; when you understand stuff and feel your DNA change. 🙂
One of the characteristics of people with a vanishing twin is that they can not finish stuff. Their energy is in the start of a project and then…. pfffff…. they seem to lose interest, fall into pits nobody else would fall in, digress (like now ;-)) find another subject which is way more interesting. I have that. It looks like something which could be just ‘solved’ with improving my moral. But that is not how it works. Like addiction is not a moral disease, my running for the darkness which I connect to endings is not a moral failing either – it is a structural design mistake of my energetic system, or a solution my system made up to deal with the trauma. It would however be very nice to sort of get a grip on my life. 😉 Fix it. Quick! 😀 Getting there.
Some days I can eat well which means 2 home-made meals a day. Sleep well, which by now means going to bed before 02:00 (waaaaay to late for me). Read some, currently the Artemis Fowl series again. I clean the house before visits from friends and the hug-budy which means at least weekly cleaning. He is a cosy, sexy comfort but even after 7 months I do not want to engage into a full sex act. It is actually quite interesting to do all the other things which normally fade out of a relation. When was the last time you spend 4 hours hugging, talking, tickling, massaging and well, some more sexually oriented frolicking?
I am starting to notice differences between us which I am not sure we can or I want to bridge. Also I am not sure if being friends with benefits is a good thing for my dysfunctional heart. Sometimes it only teaches my heart to be more dysfunctional; loving is ok, receiving is impossible. Addict trait; don’t touch me. My heart is shut.
Workwise I am still lost on what and where. The social security people have put me at the bottom of the pile. I guess this is because I start crying every time they ask a question…. sigh, how will I ever be ‘normal’ again? I just don’t know what I want. I want a simple job in a safe environment. But the simple jobs don’t seem to come with safe environments until I find some stability within myself. Having stepped in the darkness behind my own ‘made-up’ darkness is a good thing. However, I do not know how many layers this onion has. And if I need to peel them all to be able to function again at my level of education. Or maybe, maybe, the level at which I am supposed to function is not equal to my emotional intelligence or stress control and maybe I never will. I am going to ask the social security if they can help find out what I want and can do, where my strengths and weaknesses are. Writing short posts is not one of them ;-).
Post 526 in this blog. 🙂 I am happy that I quit. I realise that my happiness is something of an ‘obligatory’ thing. I do not experience a lot of happiness lately, more ‘relieve’ from the darkness. That does not count in my daily practise for ‘being happy that I quit’ but there is no other experience currently. I do resent drinking. My SIL was eating an oven dish with mushrooms in a wine-cheese sauce. I had forgotten about the wine and took a small bite. MG. Tastes like cheese vomit. Brrrr…. People with alcohol breath smell like they swallowed cleaning agent. So no, not in the danger zone but it worries me that I do not ‘repair’ more quickly. And then again: I have gotten a big dose of the darkness and this comes back layer after layer. These last weeks have changed a lot. I hope when the next bout of depression comes a long I am brave enough to really feel into it again. 🙂
How many years did you count between the first thought: ‘Maybe I should not be drinking so much?’ and actually quitting?
Apart from thinking this on a daily base… it took me more than 20 years for it to sort of get it to the forefront of my brain and another 10 years to actually quit. I literally knew that I would get addicted to alcohol at the first glass I took. I also downplayed it by thinking ‘Ooh, since I know that, I will be able to control it.” Yup. Not.
Weeks ago I looked at negative self talk and self-hate while reading a book called ‘There is nothing wrong with you’ from Cheri Huber. That had quite some impact and caused some mind shifts but the execution of replacing self-hate with self-love is not there yet. Not that I expected that – it is difficult to change behaviour. And this behaviour has been going on longer than my drinking career so I’m guessing it is more difficult to change.
For me, negative thinking has a lot in common with addiction: repetitive destructive behaviour. Also: it keeps me away from what really is. Even though that reality generally is nicer than the negativity. Keeping a watch on negative thinking was really helpful and insightful for a while. Also: I felt really happy and it is A-MA-ZING how much energy I had during the day. I was surprised by my openness, the good intention and love, joy and activity which came floating to the surface. I felt the same energy I felt when I was a child in my safe years. Then something happened, everything backfired and I totally lost myself only to go back to negativity and self-hate with even more energy. Sound familiar?
I had the same with trying to quit drinking. I would play with the thoughts to quit and then try it for a week. Something would happen and I would go back to drinking and most of the time I would catch up with the amount of ‘lost’ glasses during the week.
2 Weeks back the cat got really ill. At some point I was so down that I hoped she would quietly slip away into eternity so I could do the same. Very often it is only the cat which keeps me here. Could be a mind trick. Hope I never have to find out. I do feel that every time I return to these dark thoughts they get edged in me, where they even out the road to destruction. In trying to feel into / look at these thoughts I found I have a difficulty with connecting to people. I can love but I can not be loved. I can not let people in. This becomes more and more apparent now I experience how lonely my existence is in these dark moments. I have friends, very good friends. Friends who carefully listen to all this which you might find difficult to read because dark or because repetitive and boring. But in those dark moment that does not matter because this ‘hole in the soul’ is so much darker and bigger than anybody can fill.
I’m not sure what caused this ‘hole’. Do I miss my vanished twin brother? Yes, very much so. A partner in my life? Not specifically. Do I miss, I don’t know fundamental idea of goodness of the world, faith? Yes. Or maybe I miss myself? Yes, very much. What I do to myself is cruel, soul crushing. If anybody would do that to anybody else I would go berserk. And still, somewhere in my life I started to believe, or maybe I even made it up myself, that hating me is the best thing I can do. And I never changed. It is so engrained that it takes more than 3,5 years of sobriety to even get an inkling of it. And then, when trying to quit I this behaviour it calls me back and punishes me for leaving with even more and more darkness. And even though I guess this is learned behaviour be it picked up by an eager student, I still do it all to myself. Cunning, baffling and powerful.
So… I have tuned down the watch on self-hate to let the dust settle a bit and see how I can work on this from another entrance. I need to get my negativity act and food addiction together because they both keep me from being clear and from being honest to myself and other people. As long as I keep on eating away my own shadow, keep on disliking myself for perceived weaknesses, I will keep on transferring this dislike and anger to others. Not good.
So, looking at shadows is good. Ramadan is past so I am eating chocolate and refined sugar again, within 1 day I was back at my usual intake. I eat it and at the same time really dislike it and feel bad. Sound familiar? 🙂 And every day, even now I think: tomorrow I will do it differently. Cunning, baffling and powerful.
Somehow quitting addictive stuff and behaviour jogs memories of events past. Part of quitting the chocolate and refined sugar were (mini) trauma’s I have encountered while living abroad without my parents at age 15/16. In real life and in the sober blogosphere I have met so many people whose life has been damaged and put to a halt because of severe (sexual) trauma and consequently addiction. My traumas are not so severe in comparison with most but I can not seem to get away from them. Whenever I do get really clear, other events keep on popping up. I watched part of the Trauma and healing online conference but I sank so deep that I could not follow-up.
Abuse trigger warning for the next few Italic paragraphs till the fat print.
No chocolate – no sugar brought back this memory from sitting in a tiny park like spot in the country side, next to an enormous white water river, reading a book, my lower legs dangling down the quay/ledge which had been put in place to keep the river from eating in on the environment. A guy comes up, he must be in his twenties, I was 16 or so. Even though I do not trust him we chat because I can not get away safely. I make sure to steer away from anything which might indicate interest in him or look like advances. I try to bore him with excessively speaking about the book I am reading. (Ha! Nothing changed there :-D) At some point he starts requesting I go with him to his house to have sex. I sort of joke around the issue knowing that downright offending or refusing him makes things worse. He comes back with; “Why would you talk to me if you do not want sex?” Followed up by: “We have sex now otherwise I push you off the ledge.”
I would not be able to stop him from where I sit and falling down would have meant sure death. Even at age 16 I make jokes like: “Is that how you pick up all your girls? Not sure it is such a succesful line….” trying to take the sting out of it while trying not to show how my hands trembled and I am so scared I feel I can not even stand-up. He was serious. Not so much in wanting to kill me but he was very thick headed, possibly officially retarded (sorry, not inclined to look for nicer words here). His intent and anger where very real and also he did not seem to have the faintest idea that falling into a deep white water river with rocks all over can not be easily survived – specifically with the 6 meter waterfall further down and a following 12 meter waterfall within a 100 meter. He just did not care. He wanted what he wanted and I refused that so I had to be hurt.
Also: even though the place was max 10 meters away from the road and bus-stop, at that moment there was nobody around. Passing by cars had made it seem a safe spot but when they do not actually stop there is no safety to be found. And even now I have the idea that I have to explain the surroundings to you to make sure that you do not think me silly. I had to come up with silly jokes and conversation for 5 minutes for some car to pop up at the car park 30 meters further before I had the guts to stand up and go home. My knees buckled and I almost shit my pants. I walked home, checking at every turn in the road to see that he did not follow me.
At that time I had stopped speaking about things like this to people because anybody would start with “What did you wear?” and “Why did you even go there?” and “He would not speak to you if you did not give him the idea that you were available.”
I can see now how every bit of anger I held against guys like this was redirected inwards by being blamed for their behaviour.
This is how the female spirit is killed in this world. This is how our freedom and sovereignty is taken
What would a woman who loves herself do? She would love herself. How will I get there? Not sure. Going to bed would be a good thing. 🙂 It always is. And tomorrow slowly start examining and taking loving actions.
I am happy that I quit be it in a dark way. Even though my days have been rather nasty for a long time, I know it was worst when I drank. The guilt and the shame, my god. Unbearable. I literally could not look people in the eye. And that physical feeling of being bloated and stuffed. The high blood pressure. Ooh! Yeah, no sugar, no chocolate made my blood pressure drop quite some points. Eating it makes it rise; I feel my blood pumping in my ears when I lay down on my pillow. So: not good. I also appreciated getting more veggies in because of having better eating habits. Veggies are good.
Sorry for another way too long post. Hope you are doing well.
This morning I wrote the previous post ‘Dying is not the problem – sort-of= ish‘ And when re-reading it I found what I had noticed earlier that I write about ‘upholding the status of not clinging’ which, in grown up terms would probably refer to non attachment but in my specific issue here it was not ‘just’ attachment, it was clinging. So I call it clinging.
“Now the practise for me is to maintain and uphold the status of ‘not clinging’ insight in daily life. Ghegheghe….. guess that will take some practise since we live in a world where clinging, wanting, striving is very much stimulated as a tool to ‘make you happy’. “
Did anyone notice the strangeness of upholding ‘not clinging’. Contradictio in adjecto much? To really arrive back again (?) at the place where I had this beautiful, freeing insight I guess I should exactly NOT be clinging to the non-clinging. 😀 New Task. Can be done I guess, it is like letting the train of an urge to drink pass by without attaching. And then for every train, no matter what is on it. Hihihihihi…. easy peasy ?????!!!
” Then what would I do in Life?? If I do not cling, if I do not have opinions? What is left of me?” Shouted the caddis I am. A caddis is a larvae of some insect, it lives under water and gathers all kinds of pieces of ‘rubbish’ which get built into a armour to protect its delicate skin, its life. I feel I do that with fears, with experiences, with well, whatever; building an outer armours to fend new experiences off. To not be touched, not be hurt again. My system reacts as if touching, in the sense of being touched equals pain for me. Seems to be an addicty trait. But disconnecting and carrying rubbish around also hurts. 🙂
Things are shifting, things have shifted in the last 3,5 years. Very slowly the armour gets lighter. Sometimes it gets heavier but that also means clearer. The systems that uphold the armour and the systems which are uphelt by the armer get clearer and lose their energetic intensity. Or, when getting more intense, they also get clearer.
I am still reading ‘There is nothing wrong with you’ from Cheri Huber but now 2-4 pages a day. I’m at the part where I need to understand (WTF) I need to do with my life if I do not criticise myself and put me down.
Live without attachment to the outcome. Or so they say. Currently not exactly sure that is what Cheri says. I’m not there yet. I need to practise the feel of that more in order to continue reading. Possibly I need to re-read stuff. How do other people do that? I have friends who read several books a month. I can’t. Too intense. My cells don’t shift so quickly.
A lot of books are written on the subject of not attaching. I have read a few. I am guessing this is one of those experiences I need to feel through in combination with some exploration by the mind. I am thinking today I found a good experience to remember and hopefully to re-experience. My heart however is still shifted into a cramp and I keep on burping.
It is time to go to bed. In addition to writing the above I need to add here that since a few weeks I am taking added Iodine and some Schuessler salts. The salts are specifically for letting go. Some of them help me lose water weight too. Which….. I am not sure (I am VERY SURE) if I am fooling myself because I eat a bag of chips and some very salty cheese in really hot weather without drinking a lot and then go ‘Whoops, I need to shed waterweight because my feet are swelling up’. Abuse, just comes easy to me. It could be a song. But I am learning. Right now my heart (!!!) softly tells me: you do not have to write that. No need, let go.
I feel my heart is coming alive again. Today I walked up 4 long stairs and I was a little out of breath and my heart was pumping. My first reaction was fear but then I remembered the pride I used to feel as a child in the strength of my body and everything changed. The air I was taking in was not a desperate gasp but life bringing oxygen. The pumping of my heart not a desperate attempt to stay alive but the strong beating of a heart which joins with the body to do work.
Did I tell you the hug-buddy missed me and invited himself back over. Hmmm, it is like an addiction; stop for a while without really pulling out the root of the desire…. the attachment deepens when you re-connect again. And yes, I know, when it comes to man-women things that comparison could be perceived a little awkward…. But I guess that is the revengeful bitch in me speaking. Pulling out roots. Ghegheghe… did not do that. That sounds weird too. Gonna leave it in here thought because I resorted to a little aggressive behaviour and this comparison is part of that. Same shit as talking about pulling out roots. Not good. Ramadan coming up next Tuesday, no hugging with the hug-buddy so he says. That is good -> talk time.
I am grateful I do not drink anymore. A few posts ago I wondered about my sobriety. I have reset my wish for sobriety and clarity, newly expressed it to myself and that feels way better. I guess I was taking it for granted like ‘3,5 years no problem, what’s gonna happen to me now’. But that is not sobriety. I need intent to become clear. Move beyond only the not drinking. Not drinking is only a ‘tool’. Or more like an area of destructive behaviour I should not move into when I want to become clear. I guess today the experience of being able to, for a certain amount of time, be conscious of letting go of attachment to my dying brother has helped me with that. Being clear is good.
Thank you for reading. I wish you a good sober day or evening or weekend! Enjoy!
Today I continued reading the book and re-read the part which upset me earlier. I found that I was ‘on track’ with feeling into the matter and ‘becoming one with the message’ when the book said something about ‘I could not make a decision if I wanted A or B.’ and that is where I stepped of the track. Not sure how other people experience book reading but I like to, as I said, become one with the message; breathe in the meaning, the feeling of the text. And then when there is something that blocks inside I can feel it in my body, it is like the cloud of energy which is normally a stream, then suddenly does not want to pass through my stomach, or into my right leg. Or my throat gets all tense. That’s when I know something is up and I have to slow down and pay attention. How DO other people do that?
This one I missed because ‘I was in the right’; not being able to make a decision is stupid. Yup, sorry to the world. It is so again, funny in a not funny way, how we (i) think that having opinions on something is important, of essential to living, while actually it keeps me away from exploring and perceiving what actually is out there.
It is like quitting drinking. I was all anxious about ‘will I miss it?’ and ‘I am going to fail sooooooo badly’ that I could not continue. Then I realised that when I think I will fail, I will automatically diminish all the options in which I do not. I will not believe those. My energy will be focussed on fearing that I will fail so I will be watching out extra for signs that prove I will fail. And while doing so I am already one foot into the trap of alcohol because I am not focussing on being happy that I quit, I am focussing on that failing. And as you know with driving a car through a narrow street: don’t look at the parked cars or you will steer into them, look at the road and the open space. Or:
I am not one of those positivity persons (ooh, gosh, you noticed?!) but yes, it can be wise to pay attention to what you fear, expect and hope. Those 3 are fundamental and sometimes detrimental in how things play out.
Ooh, the hug-buddy has decided he misses me so badly and he physically deteriorates so quickly that he needs to be hugged. By me that is. My inner floozy said yes. To tea. Not sure about the hugging and not at all sure about the sexy hugging. This is new territory for me and I find that I am not dealing well. I feel this is a new addiction. Maybe I should get a book…. 😀
Ooh, on that topic: yesterday I deleted a sentence in my writing which I did not want to have true. Yup. Sorry :-(. I was upset and my reaction was to think that I should read something about a specific topic, something on addiction of the society by A. Schaef. Most interesting. I had a title in mind and went looking for it on Amazon, and then on Dutch shops. But I deleted the literal sentence ‘I need to buy a book’ from my post. Low and behold: here comes Wendy and she comments: “I need to buy a book.”. The truth is out there and it will smack you in the face, shit on your porch or be way nicer and drop by with the Wendy express service. 🙂 <3. I deleted the sentence because lately I literally go buy books when I am upset. Splitting up with the hug-buddy cost me 53 Euro on books. I do have the money but it is not a good idea to spend that kind of money if I do not know where next months’ money will be coming from. I did not want to have that true. I deleted the sentence and told myself that it ‘would confuse you to have so many subjects in one post’. Same shit, different day. THANK GOD it is books and not booze.
Ok, where did I trail off? Aah, yeah, opinions blocking experiences. So I found that I ridiculed the indecisiveness of the woman in the book and that put me on the trail of hate and self-hate. I am not able to be indecisive. In my mind indecisiveness is for sissies who will not survive this life. “Make up your mind! I haven’t got all day! If you don’t make up your mind right now you are not getting anything at all! And no! No whining! Ok! You don’t want anything?! Then we go. Nope, you did not decide from which I conclude that you do not want anything.” WHOAH! And the connection to survival is amazing too ‘they will not survive this life’. Well, we all leave here in a coffin. Guessing this is strongly related to the biblical story of the 6 stupid maiden and the 6 wise maiden. Guess it is called differently, and maybe they were 12 and 12. 🙂 Our noses were rubbed in this story, combined with ‘guilty ignorance’. “There is no such thing as ‘I did not know!’ YOU SHOULD HAVE KNOWN!!” And that people, is how you make kids who struggle with perfection.
All this darkness stored in one body. I don’t want that anymore. Everything I do not uncover, bring into the light, will live in the darkness in me and it will fester and I will spread it unconsciously. That is how projecting, transference works. 😦
I picked up the ‘There is nothing wrong with you.’ book again and got to read another 1,5 page untill I got stuck in me again. Not sure what that was about. I was fed up with getting stuck so I Netflixed it all away.
I am grateful that I have given myself the opportunity to see life from a not drinking standpoint. Lately I am confronted with so much of my addictive behaviour like chocolating, Netflixing and self-hating behaviour that I do not feel ‘sober’. I have a problem with calling myself sober. Feels like I am lying. This one is difficult to bear because the addict within pops up saying: “Well, if you do not call yourself sober, you might as well drink.” I have a persistent, astute, sharp-eyed addict within who is too smart for my own good. But then again, if he were any less cunning and in my face, I would have underestimated him. Hmm… funny, creating my own matching demon and then wrestling it. Wonder what a psychiatrist would say about that. 😀
I am however grateful that I quit drinking. And also that the Dutch government gives me the possibility on being at home on sick-leave. I have not heard from them. That is ok for me because I am not ready to get out there again. I have the feeling I need to undo myself of some more onionrings or I will walk into the same shit again.
Self-hate is back in its fullest form and I had a bad, bad day. Thought it should go into the journal of my trip to/through the land of no-self hate. I am starting to realise how self-hate / judgement / continuously commenting and having opinions is another form of addiction. It is funny to change perspectives which are so engrained in my life. It even feels like they are in engrained in my body.
It also wears me out, this shifting from one point and taking an effort without taking an effort to not judge, not self-hate, not comment, getting to this point of tranquility. And then falling deep down into the darkness again over something. The opposites get so big. Which is good. I mean: is this not how anybody comes into sobriety too? Drinking and then trying not to drink, not drinking for one day and feeling good and then drinking again and thinking ‘should not have done that….’ etc. etc. untill the good side of sobriety outweighs the ‘good’ side of drinking.
Well, today was what formerly would have been a bad drinking day and I had no clue what so ever what would help me get out. So I self-hated some more because “By now you should know how to do this! You have read 80% of the book. When are you going to learn if not now?! You say you want to read the book again if you do not get it?! How many books do you have to read to actually ‘get it?! God knows you have enough unread books laying about….. I trip over them every day…”
And you know what the not so funny funny thing is? I have been doing this ALL MY LIFE! I did not want to notice. Denial? Check! It is amazing how many layers and layers of self-destructive adaptations to Life I have put into place to, to…. to I do not know what.
I stay with the idea that everything we do, we do because we think it is the best option feasible at that moment. My mind is making over-hours do discard that and self-hate me for “the sorry excuse of my life being the best option feasable” 😦 With a me like I have, I don’t need enemies. And I guess that is exactly what this whole process of self-hate is for: to make myself an underdog so I will not be attacked. Best option feasable at that moment. “Well, parents are dead-ish, other options could possibly evolve so get on with it then…”
In the book ‘There is nothing wrong with you.’ (“Then you have not met me yet…” says the internal voice.) from Cheri Huber, I have come to the page where she asks students of her group how they went home after a day of learning about self-hate. And funny in a not funny way, the left from heaven to walk into hell. Just as I did. And the more I read, the more I got caught up so that was not the answer today. I could not stay with myself.
This then, also reminded me of moments before I quit drinking; it was almost impossible to be me, it hurt so bad, the despair, the self-destruction, the darkness. And alone in that because; “Who would like you if they knew who you really are?” And also: “Those professional addiction people are only nice because it is their job. Behind your back the think you are worthless.”
I finally did find a video of Jeff Foster. It is about aspects of (self)hate and how feeling displaced in this world is actually stirred on by a real intense wish to live (in a good world). To throw away the mask. To undo myself from the fakeness I have layered upon me.
My energy for doing things has returned in the past week. Again with taking Iodine pills. I keep on forgetting how important supplementing these seems to be for me. And magically it looks like I’m losing some weight too. I think to know by now that I am not depressed. I have seen some depressed people on video and that is not me (anymore). But there is also another thing going on and that is me realising that I put on a lot of different masks. The one who does not always want to be the problem is very prevalent now. I find it difficult to differentiate between real happy and made up happy currently Specifically because I switch from not self-hating and being happy to self-hating like crazy and denying myself to feel that and pretending to be happy for the outside world. Which I then find out later.
When I fall back into the darkness on a day like today I am flabbergasted on they why and how and I have no clue. Would not like to find me like this on a working day. That scares me too.
Maybe today’s darkness was me missing the hug-buddy. Maybe it was the portal day on the Mayan calender which makes people feel down. Or maybe… I am in transition. I have not had a period since the Mirena IUD was taken out a few months ago so… maybe that is here, or has been, or….? Who knows? Maybe I can get my hormone levels checked. That would be an idea.
I have been here before I think to remember but what I experience is something like: a personality is made up of bricks of pieces, experiences, feelings, however you want to see that and it has a glue with a certain personality taste so the bricks of the experience are all facing the way that causes me to react a certain way. Like the above drawing: if my personality is set up to always see the squares, the glue which puts all the experiences in place is now falling apart at some moments and then I see the round thingies. Also I see both the thingies and sometimes I see the ‘whole’ picture. But mostly I am rather tired of all the shifting that is going on.
Ok, cat says it is (way past) bed time. Which it is. She comes to get me from behind my desk and then walks to the bedroom. 🙂 Hint hint.
Last night I had a nightmare I got killed by different people I know in 5 different ways and I kept on getting up and saying “No, that does not kill me, you have to do better than that” in a pretty defiant way. I was however crazy scared shitless. But then the cat woke me up, she does that when I’m having a bad dream. ❤ ❤ ❤
Thank you for staying with my musings which, even in my perception, can be very uncomfortable. I have been reading older posts from me a few weeks now and they even make me uncomfortable. Or maybe that is because they stir things in me which other people possibly do not have. Not sure.
I am grateful that I have quit drinking alcohol. Addiction is a destructive way of ‘living’. Summer has come to The Netherlands and the way people treat themselves is not nice.
A friend of mine came to visit last week. She is from a non Western background and her husband has gotten addicted to alcohol over the last 5 years. We spoke, I finally advised her to go to her GP and get into contact with an addiction care-taker. She would not want to do so without informing her husband so this is where we left it. I hope all goes well. At least the wheels are set in motion. I really dislike seeing how he treats her. I really hope they find good help.
Currently not reading in the Cheri Huber book but trying to notice love and hate as they pop up during the day.
Since I have a lot of energy returning to me now I do not constantly dislike myself I feel I can work again. This is not true according to my friends and I still tear up when I think about my former workplace experiences, but I do like to think it is true. So the last days I have tried to force myself to think about work and direction in life. Guess with writing that down I realise that the forcing part is never a good recipe for getting good results… hmmm…. Well, I force myself and the ONLY thing that comes back currently is a whining; “But I want to be special. I don’t want to do something normal, something average. I want to do something NEW and EXCITING and I want people to be in awe over it.” Yeah, well, not my proudest acknowledgment here.. but it is here and I can not leave from where I am not so I thought I would write about it.
I think to know when exactly I adopted this attitude. It was while admiring a very fashionable, beautiful woman who visited my neighbours and everybody was in awe of her. I thought something along the lines off: “If I become like here they will not touch me anymore, not hurt me.” I am guessing that is where my need for being special started.
It must be about 25 years ago when I spoke with a professional care-giver, he said: “with the right attitude, people do not harass you”. Even after this time I still carry it with me and it was one of the reasons why I hardly ever spoke about sex or abuse in therapy. These tiny sentences with such big consequences.
Being at the receiving end of that judgement about abuse I wanted to become special even more. Only if I was really, really special, with the right attitude, people would not harass me and not judge me for having been harassed. I would need to rise above humanity to be safe. This escapism, it is so big in me.
Last week a friend treated me on a horoscope explanation. Every word the man said was recognisable in my life. My main issue in life was ‘manifestation’ and my fear of it. And indeed: not being fully incarnated in this world, as I had already assumed. It is time. And I think self-acceptance, self-love is the way. 🙂
While writing I try to go from the sort of neutral state of observing my state to acceptance of the situation and love for me. In every attempt I meet up with another blockage. Maybe I should not grapple with the Truth but wait for it to come by. Same shit, different excercise. 🙂 How many reasons do I need to exactly not like myself?
It must have been about 10 years ago that I realised that from all the people I knew, I could not mention one of whom I felt they loved themselves. How many people do you know who genuinely love themselves?
There is this pretty persistent Dutch mentality in me that says “Doe ff normaal!” it means as much as: Act normal! NOW! It tells me I would be bragging if I said I love myself. That I would be stuck up. Dutch culture does not advise you to hate yourself, but a normal, neutral state is preferred. 🙂 Which, now I come to think about it, is as logical as not loving somebody else ‘because that would give them the idea they were too good for this world.’ 🙂
Because of the book by Cheri Huber I am starting to doubt if I can love somebody if I do not love myself. I think I can, but it is not unconditional, it is as conditional as I ‘love’ myself. Not only hate is a projection, a transfer, love can be too. When love is not a state of being of acceptance and realisation within the Life force, it seems to be a projection. Lately it seems to me that all emotions I could have about somebody else are projections. Obviously there are many moments I do not want to accept that because I prefer the guy whom I call an asshole to be an asshole rather than having to look at myself…. OBVIOUSLY!
Love can be emitting from my core and be aligned with Life or ‘put on somebody because of how he/she makes me feel’. Or so I experience it 10th of a seconds ever so now and then. (I would not want to presume I know anything about love because I “Doe normaal!”) Reading ‘There is nothing wrong with you’ at times brings me in this state of tranquility. It is a good antidote to the stress which is locked in my body. Ok. Did I tell you I think it is a good book? 😉
My new course on a specific gardening subject started this week. Wonderful, wonderful , wonderful! I full classroom with mostly people of the same hair colour all excited about the same subjects. 🙂 We are going to do excursions too. Yay! 🙂
I am grateful that I do not drink alcohol anymore. Slowly, slowly this ship is turning away from the collision course it was on.
A friend came over last week. We spoke and she found out I had not been opening my social security mail. I can not lie about those things anymore or change the subject. When I try to change the subject or speak half truth I feel bad; like my internal system just blocks. Things inside get twisted and I feel like I am threading the path to addiction again. It is very informative and also very unhandy and it feels childish but if this is what it takes to get me unaddicted and keep me sober… then it is what it takes.
As she had been working for such an organisations she says: “80 Percent of the people in your situation have a big problem with procrastinating and actually fear doing their administrative work. A lot of people do not open their mail.” And there I am, hating myself for it, thinking I am the only one. Noticing that I still can not do what I think I should. Still can not ask for help. She was nice and just offered; “Let’s do this together.” We opened the mail, did the online thingies and yay – social security money coming my way.
What will I do? I will contact the social security organisation and really start looking for help. Together we set a date to do so within 2 weeks. This has gone too far. I could not see that earlier and I still do not want to see it. I have read this writing 3 times in the last days and still I internally move away from the shame that is related to, to failing I guess. I feel I am failing here big time.
My inability to get my life in order frustrates the hell out of me. I have so many skills, very unusual ones which are extremely well-developed and when it comes to my own life, I collapse. I notice that I go from utter frustration to admiring what I can do. This, I found, is another trait of addictive thinking: cancelling out frustration with admiration, dreams, ideals, anything unreal, always polarised, never neutral, never the middle road.
Well, the Good Thing from reading the book on self-hate and self-love is that I am experiencing more and more and more peace inside. I can breathe easier for instance. I have been practicing this but now I notice much better when I get upset over a (social) media post. I notice how destructive most of the posts are and indeed: Facebook, anything social media is addictive to me because of the arousal of feelings.
For logging purposes: When I opened my online bank account and realised that I misjudged my spendings of the last 5 months with a whooping 2000 euro. That sucks. I tried to reason with that while saying the most ridiculous things to myself at topspeed. My friend asked me if I knew where it went. Since I pay everything by debit card I guess I can work that out. Money and figures are not negotiable and pretty black and white I came nowhere. I realised what I do felt familiar. I did this, I felt like this, when was it? Aaaah! When I was drinking! So, this is denial. Different subject. Same shit.
What surprises me is now I found a little bit of self-love, new levels of self-hate open up. Yeah, that is what it is. And that is how it works. Denial: the ‘not wanting to look at that’, the darkness, the shadow, the ‘not wanting to feel’, the ‘not wanting to be present’ – it is all the same energetic movement away from my centre, away from what is.
Also: energy flows where attention goes. And I guess this is how I learn; build up the most unbearable amount of stress and then explode or implode and sink to a rock bottom from where I start again. Very much how people with an addictive personality ‘lead’ their life. :-). I wrote this paragraph earlier, now, a few days later I have difficulty with the energetic polarisation which is in it. And if it were somebody elses writing this I would get tired of it and wonder when this person’s personal hell will see some daylight.
So, lots going on. Practicing almost every moment of the day with self-care and finding out that love can be in every detail of my life, not only in how I treat my body with eating or not eating but also in how I sit, in how I breathe, what I watch, what I let my mind think about, what I let my eyes see. I read more. Reading beats Netflix and Facebook by far.
I am grateful that I quit drinking alcohol. I feel internally pressured into writing here that I my life is ‘not working out yet’. I guess I could call that shame, it feels like shame. But I am on the right track. Maybe I did not fail, I just found out a 10.000 things that don’t work. 😉 I am a way nicer person than I was 4 years ago, than I was half a year ago, than I was a 2 months ago.
Based on the idea that money is not all too tight I ordered some new jeans. The old pair had holes in them. I fitted 20 pairs and send back 18. I had an hour of practise on not hating my formidable behind. Repeating: I can not hate myself thin, I can not dislike myself happy. 🙂 It worked somewhat.
Healing from Your Childhood is the Only Way to be Emotionally Free. Growing Up in a Home Controlled by Addiction/Mental Illness Causes Childhood Trauma. Healing from Your Childhood Takes a Lifetime.
Well, The Universe gave us all we needed for Life, so let’s see what tools I have and can apply.
feelingmywaybackintolife 