Questioning some things

[Clues_Of_Blue]

Those of you who know me know I have been bouncing from one rough life event to another for years, without really any time to take a breath in between. I can state well enough the things that have happened to me, but haven't had much energy to delve deeply into what those things have done to me. In the time off work since my partner had major surgery (yup, another fun crisis), I had time to start pulling at threads, to get a Mental Health Care Plan, see a psych and talk to a counsellor. As much as I always knew my life has been a steaming pile of crap, the threads I am pulling are connecting dots and giving rise to possible clarifications of events and what has arisen in their wake.

My childhood was severely neglectful. Mostly emotionally, but also in some physical ways. We kids didn't sleep in the (perfectly good) house, we slept in a caravan nearby - Mum cleaned up her and Dad's bedroom and the kitchen after the mouse plagues, but apparently our rooms weren't worth the effort. He carries on about her "unfit" parenting, but it's not like Dad did anything about it either. We were fed and clothed well enough. Never a lot of attention from either of them. I don't remember a single hug from either one during my childhood. Mum would immediately disinfect her hands if by some chance she came to touch one of us. Some years later, post parental divorce, Mum's settlement money ran out and we endured a brief stint without a home, a much longer (years) stint of inadequate food and no hot water.

I actually became pretty functional after moving out. Worked, studied, maintained a place on my own. Went through a couple of less than healthy relationships and endured with surprising resilience. Then came the last relationship. First two years, no major problems. Then bam, he's unfaithful. Enter ol' Blue's depression, that's the straw that breaks the camel's back. Damn fool remained in contact with him and we tried again at the relationship. To be fair, he didn't repeat that particular mistake. He tried hard to redeem himself and be a better partner. Until the ring was on the finger. Engagement in place, all effort fell away little by little. Dear gods did the neglect become overwhelmingly severe. I kind of got that there was a theme, but it's literally only now, years after breaking up with him, that I see why it was that straw that began my depression - just how closely what he did mirrored my parents' behaviour.

[Guest_4643]

Hey Blue.

Sorry I meant the counsellor was rude, not my Mum. I'm on the DSP so I'm not sure if I could find counselling online or whatever. I'll do a search tonight and see what I can find.

[ecomama]

Hey Blue

Yep HUGE monster mozzies lol... I ended up creeping around the kid's beds and swatting as many as I could see lol. Grrr. Hope they're not inside tonight!

Re: you talking about trauma and wondering HOW it related to you? Well you know a lot more now ofcourse... but the TWO stand out things I read in your posts (and it was like trying to unpeel an onion lol) was your mention of neglect in your childhood & adulthood and the adultery / infidelity. Mainly your deep felt emotions over the latter which I also had. I'd recognised the neglect and abuse alot earlier in my own childhood.

I don't think you realised (past tense) the deep impact either / all of that can have upon a person.
You FELT it but didn't realise it was all abuse, if you HAD have realised then it would've made sense that you felt trauma over it all.

That's what I saw. When I could work out the 2 words ie neglect and abuse then ofcourse there's going to be trauma.

Ofcourse with all the hard work our ex partners go to (AND our friends, family and even society & Courts!) to minimise the damage and impact of these. Then rug - sweeping, blame shifting and the rest... it's no wonder we feel confused about WHY we feel so incredibly hurt and damaged by it all.

But we do because it's all abuse.

Being miraculously NORMAL makes the impact of these even worse IME.

"Others" may expect crap like that but bec WE don't do it to others... we never expect others to do it to us. AND we can also appear to be just FINE to the outside world, something we've been able to do since childhood. COPE. No other choice, just COPE.

It all fills us up more and more till our cup runneth over with far too much to deal with that's NOT been dealt with.

Being SENSIBLE people we just have to deal at some point, it's not quite like us to not deal.
In fact it's shocking to us when we can't.

The reason you are so smart and couldn't see it is because like most ppl, you were IN the forest therefore couldn't see the forest for the trees. It was just too much not dealt with at the time.

Now with categorising and labelling these "things", you can deal from what I can see.
Getting support, validation etc is very important. Then it's OUT of our head, not all messy inside of it.

Hope that made sense?

My 5c lol..
Love EM

[Jstar49]

Hiya,

It's kinda like unpicking something isn't it. And as I unopick it, I think, how do I want this to be as I remake it? It helps to put labels on what we've experienced, becos then we can validate it, accept it as real. But then, it feels like I have to put it all down, and just work out, how do I get from there, (however and whyever 'there' happened) to HERE- the Here I want to be in, a Here that I don't want to leave. I guess a here that I don't feel shame, just for being me.

Blue the Covey book I'm referring to, and probably will be totally annoying about lol! has helped me with this. It's called the 7 habits of highly effective people, and it's really challenging me on how I've allowed others to hurt me. Plenty more Covey quotes popping up on my thread, if you care to check it. It's in relationships I think... I'll check.

Too tired just now, but more soon,

Love

J*

[Clues_Of_Blue]

Hey Tayla,

Gotcha. Glad your mum wasn't rude, it would be difficult dealing with a rude family member in control of the phone you use. I strongly suspect on the DSP that you will have a lot more counselling options than I do. Having a work income really works against you sometimes, I can tell you. At least, when it's not a huge one. Sigh. Best of luck, hope you find an avenue of help.

Blue.

[Clues_Of_Blue]

Hey EM,

Sounds like a bit of an adventure, with those mozzies.

Re trauma, yeah, I know a lot more now. Thing is, I knew the neglect/abuse for what it was. I obviously knew the infidelity for what it was. What I didn't know was those things as trauma. Trauma as defined in any form of media on the subject was always war, violence, accidents - very acute, very physical things. Very not what I went through. What I lived with was rubbish, sure - very chronic, slow burn rubbish. Very not trauma as I understood it. So how was I ever going to come to a conclusion that I was suffering symptoms of something like PTSD. No-one in conversation and certainly no-one in a professional capacity had given me any reason to doubt my conclusions on those things until you. So yeah, I had the understanding of neglect and abuse, but still not trauma. They were separate things.

You're right about the widespread rug-sweeping, blame shifting etc. Not that I move in circles that do a lot of that. I seem to move in circles where that definition of trauma hasn't reached, where it just isn't known and understood. We know we've been through bad, abnormal stuff, but we don't see trauma. As for being confused about feeling hurt. Nope, I just expected better of myself. These people don't deserve that sort of response, I am better than that, ergo I shouldn't be feeling this and I refuse. For a while that sort of worked. Sigh.

Oh, I expect that crap. How do you not when it's all you've ever had? Just because I do better doesn't mean I'm blind to the nature of others. Boy do I expect it. As for appearing to be fine... I don't know if that's coping so much as self-protection. I ain't doing fine, but if I show that, things gonna get a whole lot worse. Nope, not safe to do that, so I don't. I'm sure you know what that's like.

But you're right on the money about the ol' cup that runneth o'er. And yes it is shocking when we can't just deal.

Don't think I was in the forest so much as pinned under a few hundred trees. Can't see much of anything from down there!

I'm definitely better at managing if I can categorise or label things. From there I can research, learn all there is to be found about that thing, analyse the heck out of it. Support and validation in that pursuit don't go astray either. It's not necessarily out of the headspace, but at least neatly compartmentalised and makes sense.

Makes perfect sense, EM, though of course I've tweaked the ideas a bit for personal use.

Blue.

[Clues_Of_Blue]

Hey J*,

Yeah, there's a lot of unpicking and re-making. A lot of labelling. There seem to be some spare parts, might just leave them out of the re-making stage, haha. The labels really do help shift perspective, as mentioned to EM, the whole matter of "trauma" has taken some time to define. I've known my share of people with PTSD - always for things like physical assault, so I didn't have cause to think it applied to someone in my position. Granted I have dealt with stuff like physical violence and a fairly serious car accident as well, but honestly they didn't stay with me in the PTSD ways like the stuff that doesn't get called trauma. Go figure.

Getting from there to here is where I work best, I'm big on solutions once I have identified the problem and a direction. There's never a moment I'm not in some way working toward bettering my life.

I figured that was the book you were referencing, but having not read it, the quote didn't resonate with me. As to your thread, I've meant to look it up but have found the number of threads I'm already following rather overwhelming. We'll see how I go with that in future.

Too tired, you said. Me too, J*. Work has absolutely ruined me, this week, along with a heap of appointments lately. Not holding up that well to the load, unfortunately.

Blue.

[Guest_4643]

Hey Blues. Nah my Mum wasn't rude, the counsellor was, my parents are supportive and nice. They try their best.

Unfortunately I still can't get any help, even on the DSP. My Mum showed me some on Facebook she found, I've been looking into those.

[golden82]

Hi Blue (waves to Tayla, J* and EM)

Blue you write so succinctly... and it is exactly the same thoughts, feelings, beliefs whatever for me too re childhood and adulthood abuse and neglect from family of origin.. and consequences of this and being diagnosed with complex ptsd. I was the same never heard of it.. and never realised what i went thru/am going through as trauma in that sense. I knew it was/is bad, wrong etc. But that was all i knew, no other frame of reference. Just believed what i was told/am told it is my fault, my karma etc. Didn't know until 2yrs ago of narcs and psychopaths. Still finding it very hard to believe ppl are like this, and even enjoy pleasure from my pain.. especially 'family'. Still not at acceptance stage, still rose coloured glasses on for them and self blame of myself. So ditto to most everything you wrote to Em in this great post - I admire your strength to see it as not you (that is the part i differ on for myself). Thanks for writing what my scrambled brain can't:)

[Clues_Of_Blue]

Hey Tayla,

Very glad your parents are supportive of you, that's so important to have. I know sometimes you need more than that, but it sure is a good starting point.

I'm a bit surprised you didn't find options even with the DSP. Sometimes it can be hard to find the right lingo to find what you're after, online. Do you have a Mental Health Care Plan from your GP? A psychologist and/or counsellor should become more readily available with that to hand. Further, churches like Anglicare often offer counselling. Universities tend to have low cost options available for everyone, especially for those on government benefits. If either of your parents are working they may have an Employee Assistance Program, which offers a few free counselling sessions for them and may also do so for immediate family - those sessions are good starting places to help you find resources for ongoing care. Hope that helps.

Blue.

[Clues_Of_Blue]

Hey Golden,

Thanks. One of the few really valuable things I learnt from my mother was accurate communication. Mind you she doesn't always model it too well, but she did teach it and I soaked that lesson up and adapted it to my own needs and observations. And let me tell you, when there's no communication in the form of things like affection, you learn the value of words very, very well. Nevertheless, some of that learning comes from our own research and the threads connecting neglect to trauma are few and far between. So here we are. I guess now we know, and onward we go armed with new knowledge

I can imagine what an eye-opener it must have been, learning about narcissists and psychopaths. I've had some dealings but interestingly they're not the ones that have scarred me - one ex stands out to me as in that vein and I have no trouble dismissing him as irredeemable. It's the ones that weren't that which have been harder to deal with for me. I knew they considered themselves to have principles and conscience and yet they still treated me poorly. I find it so much harder knowing someone who doesn't condone that behaviour still saw fit to visit it upon me, as opposed to someone who clearly has no value system and does it to everyone. That places the message of "You don't matter" squarely on me, though intellectually I know it still isn't even about me. I was just the unfortunate soul that was close enough to get caught up in their vortex of self-hate. Boy there's a lot to unpack, there.

Sounds like you've had others heavily reinforcing the idea that you are at fault for their actions. I didn't. Another of Mum's lessons was that we are each responsible for our own behaviour (again, not so well modelled, but the words stuck and I adapted them). I don't know if it's strength or nature/teaching that makes me not believe it's my fault. Anyway, I'd like to propose an exercise for you. If someone is treating you badly, ask yourself what is different when you behave differently. I bet you've tried everything to not "provoke" them, and yet the outcome is the same. And it always will be, because only one person can control their behaviour, and that is them. It isn't you, never was, never will be. If your behaviours change to meet the situation and theirs remain the same, what is the constant, here? It's them. They choose, they are 100% responsible for their actions, no-one else. From here you can get some clarity on what isn't your fault. Just a thought.

Blue.