Finally coming together

Maybe one way could be to find a song that says what you want to move yourself towards believing.  Music reaches me in ways that sometimes nothing else can.  It still doesn’t work instantly, but it’s something.

For example, I know that I have to work on self-esteem, but it is so hard for me to accept any statements from myself or anyone that indicate that there is anything good about me.  My primary assumptions that I live by every day include that I am not good enough, I never do anything right, and nobody even notices me or remembers me.  The last two can be disproven logically by producing even one counterexample.  On a thinking level, I guess I can accept that.  But the emotional level feels so much stronger, still!  It’s hardest to resolve feeling like I’m not good enough, because “good enough” can be defined however you want to define it, and I’m perfectionistic.  So if I make one mistake, or anybody is critical of me, there’s my proof of not being good enough. 

Here’s where music comes in.  I can sing this song and accept these words, because it’s music, and also being in Swedish probably doesn’t hurt, and I have learned the words and I understand them.  I’m trying to replace the more negative songs in my head with this one instead:

Artist: Helen Sjøholm Song: GABRIELLAS SåNG Album: Så SOM I HIMMELEN
Det är nu som livet är mitt
Jag har fått en stund här på jorden
Och min längtan har fört mig hit
Det jag saknat och det jag fått

Det är ändå vägen jag valt
Min förtröstan långt bort om orden
Som har visat en liten bit
Av den himmel jag aldrig nått

Jag vill känna att jag lever
All den tid jag har ska jag leva som jag vill
Jag vill känna att jag lever
Veta att jag räcker till
(Oh, oh, oh…)

Jag har aldrig glömt vem jag var
Jag har bara låtit det sova
Kanske hade jag inget val
Bara viljan att finnas kvar

Jag vill leva lycklig
För att jag är jag
Kunna vara stark och fri
Se hur natten går mot dag

Jag är här
Och mitt liv är bara mitt
Och den himmel jag trodde fanns
Ska jag hitta där nånstans

Jag vill känna att jag levt mitt liv

In English:

It’s now that life is mine
I’ve got this short time on Earth
And my longing has led me here
What I lacked and what I gained

And yet it’s the way that I chose
My trust was far beyond words
That has shown me a little bit
Of the heaven I’ve never found

I want to feel that I’m alive
All the time I have
I will live as I desire
I want to feel that I’m alive
Knowing that I’m good enough

I have never forgotten who I was
I have only left it sleeping
Maybe I never had a choice
Just the will to exist

I want to live happily, because I am me
To be able to be strong and free
See how night turns into day
I am here, and my life is only mine
And the heaven I thought was there
I will find it there somewhere.

I want to feel that I’ve lived my life.

If you want to hear it: GABRIELLAS SåNG

A few things, actually.

At least three different people have commented on my kids being good citizens, well-adjusted, happy, good influences, enjoyable, and nice to have around.  Three people who don’t know each other as far as I know.  Maybe I’ve done something right afterall.

If you have read my story  or some of my other writings, you may have gotten the impression that I wished that I hadn’t become a parent.  I realized that I don’t resent or regret that I have my kids.  They are good kids, and I love them, and I am glad that they are mine.  What I resent and regret is that I have never been good enough.  I resent

• that I wasn’t ready
• that I didn’t know that I had choices
• that I thought that having babies was supposed to be my only purpose in life
• that I felt guilty for wanting more than that
• that I didn’t have help when I needed it
• that I wasn’t able to enjoy being a mom when I was home with the kids
• that I felt so trapped
• that now I don’t have the time to spend with them that I want to and that they need
• that I wasn’t good enough.

But I am glad to have the kids that I do, and that they are the people they are.  They are neat kids.

There were other things that I’m trying to hang on to, and I’m afraid they will slip away.  I had a dream about a week ago about someone following me and harrassing me, and I kept trying to call for help, but my voice wouldn’t work and neither would the phones.  My therapist pointed out that my silence isn’t working for me, and my message to myself is I don’t like this and don’t want to do this anymore.  And at least I did keep trying, so there’s a positive. 

I am usually so resistant, and she must think that I don’t really want to change.  The part of me that wants to change seems to be getting strong enough to get heard.  Life as a victim isn’t the way that I want to live anymore.  Am I really allowed to have any other purpose in life, and to believe that I am here for a reason?

Raising my children is part of my purpose.  There are other things too.  I want to be able to help people, specifically others like me.  I know that’s not going to be easy.  I have some talents, not limited to that area - music, arts, languages, animals, and sometimes an ability to understand other people.  I don’t know if I’ll ever be satisfied with any of it, or ever be good enough.  But maybe I have a purpose, or several, afterall.  If I believe that everyone is here for a reason, then why should I make an exception of myself?  It doesn’t make sense.  But something seems to be coming together.

This happened a week ago Saturday.  I’ve been called hard-headed before.  I’m not as bad as my father.  He tells a joke about flying over his bicycle handlebars and hitting the sidewalk straight on with his head.  The punch line is “they repaired the sidewalk the next day.”

Anyway, I was shearing goats, and my clipping machine wasn’t cutting hair effectively, so I switched to the more effective shearing machine, which is also louder.  My goat had been a total sweetie and cooperating very well, but he was scared and dived under the deck to hide.  I didn’t let go fast enough and hit my head, hard, on the side of the deck.  Yeah, it hurt a lot.  There was a huge bump on my head.  Nobody said much about that though, until 3 days later when it started draining and started to look like a black eye.  Again, this is not the first time that this has happened to me (different circumstances).  One would think that I might start learning when to let go.

Guess what?  The head injury didn’t hurt nearly as much as another situation where I didn’t know when to let go.  Last week (immediately after the head injury, when I was hurting), I lost the ability to keep my thoughts and feelings to myself.  I had been containing it for a long time, and it leaked out and I couldn’t stop it.  I am glad that I stood up for values that are important to me, but the way that I did it was out of control.  I should have let go a long time ago.  I was a member of the community team here, and I couldn’t deal with the split between representing the team, and the team taking actions that I couldn’t support.  I should have resigned rather than repeating my own feelings.  Then, I hope, I would have been freer to express my opinions.  I waited too long to let go (for lots of reasons such as not wanting to lose the close association I had with people I was working with), and it hurt.

How many of our problems in life are related to not letting go when we need to?  Probably more than we think.  Letting go is really hard.  Think about letting go of the past, letting go of our problems, letting go of hard feelings.  Letting go of our excuses for being the way that we are.  I’m not one to lecture.  This is my problem.  I just think that it’s a problem that probably affects a lot of us.  It’s not always easy to see how not letting go hurts us, but it does hurt and limit us.

Just something to think about.

Apparently I can’t upload music here.  There is a song by Michael McLean called Let it Go, that seems to fit perfectly.  It will be available here for one week.

This post is an invitation for those who have something to say and can’t say it elsewhere.  I’ll respond as I can.  This comment section is for you.  I miss the open sharing that I thought we had, and I’d like to try to make some space where we can share and learn from each other again, and hopefully feel safe.

What is it?  Besides the most likely cause of most of our mental health problems.

According to Cognitive-Behavioral Treatment of Borderline Personality Disorder, (paraphrased) there are many things, including temperament, that influence development of BPD, but one of the strongest predictors is “poorness of fit” with the environment.  Linehan proposes that invalidating environments are the most likely to facilitate development of BPD.

What does an invalidating environment consist of?

“An invalidating environment is one in which communication of private experiences is met by erratic, inappropriate, and extreme responses.” (Linehan, 1993, p. 49).

Characteristics:

• expression of private experiences is not validated
• it is often punished and/or trivialized
• experience of painful emotions is disregarded
• interpretations of one’s own behavior, including intents and motivations, are dismissed

The individual is told that she is wrong about her own experiences, including the causes of her emotions, beliefs, and actions.

Her experiences are attributed to socially unacceptable characteristics or personality traits.

Displays of negative affect are generally not tolerated.

“Invalidating members of such environments are often vigorous in promulgating their point of view and actively communicate frustration with an individual’s inability to adhere to a similar point of view.”

What are the consequences of invalidating environments?

• the child is not taught to label emotions
• the child doesn’t learn to modulate emotional arousal
• the problems of the emotionally vulnerable child are not recognized
• little effort goes into solving those problems
• the child is told to control her emotions, without being taught how to do that
• the child does not learn to tolerate distress or to form realistic goals and expectations
• extreme emotional displays become necessary to provoke a helpful response (and these become reinforced)
• the child oscillates between emotional inhibition and extreme emotional states (no wonder we lose it and blow up!)
• the child is taught not to trust her own emotional and cognitive responses as valid interpretations
• the child learns to invalidate herself and search the environment for cues on how to think, feel, and act.

Does any of this sound a little bit familiar?  I see it all the time in daily life.  I’m always trying to teach my clients’ staff to recognize the client’s feelings as real and valid, and to let them know that they are understood, rather than brushing them off with “I like it better when you’re happy.”  If you’re not happy, you’re not happy.  Sometimes all it takes is for the person you are talking to to understand what you are trying to say and recognize that it is important to you, rather than brushing you off.  When we feel unheard, we tend to keep saying it louder and louder to try to be heard.  It may not be possible to let it go without a clear response that is sensitive to the validity of our feelings and message.

I guess that’s all that I dare to say right here and right now.  I don’t think that I can handle the risk of being shut down again.

was last week.  I love conference weekends, both because I get to stay home and listen and watch on TV, so it’s like a day off (which I hardly ever get these days), and because the messages really are great.

I waited to post about conference until the written transcripts were published.  Anyone interested may find video, audio, and written versions at http://lds.org

I would like to mention in particular a talk by Richard G. Scott about healing the Shattering Consequences of Abuse that may be of particular interest here. 

Here is a brief excerpt:

To find relief from the consequences of abuse, it is helpful to understand their source. Satan is the author of all of the destructive outcomes of abuse. He has extraordinary capacity to lead an individual into blind alleys where the solution to extremely challenging problems cannot be found. His strategy is to separate the suffering soul from the healing attainable from a compassionate Heavenly Father and a loving Redeemer.

If you have been abused, Satan will strive to convince you that there is no solution. Yet he knows perfectly well that there is. Satan recognizes that healing comes through the unwavering love of Heavenly Father for each of His children. He also understands that the power of healing is inherent in the Atonement of Jesus Christ. Therefore, his strategy is to do all possible to separate you from your Father and His Son. Do not let Satan convince you that you are beyond help.

Satan uses your abuse to undermine your self-confidence, destroy trust in authority, create fear, and generate feelings of despair. Abuse can damage your ability to form healthy human relationships. You must have faith that all of these negative consequences can be resolved; otherwise they will keep you from full recovery. While these outcomes have powerful influence in your life, they do not define the real you.

Satan will strive to alienate you from your Father in Heaven with the thought that if He loved you He would have prevented the tragedy. Do not be kept from the very source of true healing by the craftiness of the prince of evil and his wicked lies. Recognize that if you have feelings that you are not loved by your Father in Heaven, you are being manipulated by Satan. Even when it may seem very difficult to pray, kneel and ask Father in Heaven to give you the capacity to trust Him and to feel His love for you. Ask to come to know that His Son can heal you through His merciful Atonement.

I have to be real, and I can’t keep stuffing my feelings and pretending that I’m okay when I’m not.  That’s part of “finally coming together.”  Too many times in the past I have pretended, not wanting to offend people or risk having someone mad at me or losing relationships.  But then I sit there and steam inside, and don’t trust anybody because I never know when they are going to hurt me again, and I’ll just take it, and go on pretending.  It’s not working.

I’m reading Cognitive-Behavioral Treatment of Borderline Personality Disorder.  None of my therapists has ever wanted to diagnose me with BPD, although I do meet the DSM-IV-TR criteria.  I’m learning a lot about myself from this book.  I hope to learn how to fix some of this.  The author, Marsha Linehan, includes a table of Behavioral Patterns in BPD that she has identified in the women she worked with in developing DBT.  All of the items in the table describe me very accurately:

1. Emotional vulnerability: A pattern of pervasive difficulties in regulating negative emotions, including high sensitivity to negative emotional stimuli, high emotional intensity, and slow return to emotional baseline, as well as awareness and experience of emotional vulnerability.  May include a tendency to blame the social environment for unrealistic expectations and demands.
2. Self-invalidation: Tendency to invalidate or fail to recognize one’s own emotional responses, thoughts, beliefs, and behaviors.  Unrealistically high standards and expectations for self.  May include intense shame, self-hate, and self-directed anger.
3. Unrelenting crises: Pattern of frequent, stressful, negative environmental events, disruptions, and roadblocks - some causes by the individual’s dysfunctional lifestyle, others by an inadequate social milieu, and many by fate or chance.
4. Inhibited grieving: Tendency to inhibit and overcontrol negative emotional responses, especially those associated with grief and loss, including sadness, anger, guilt, shame, anxiety, and panic.
5. Active passivity: Tendency to passive interpersonal problem-solving style, involving failure to engage actively in solving of own life problems, often together with active attempts to solicit problem solving from others in the environment; learned helplessness, hopelessness.
6. Apparent competence: Tendency for the individual to appear deceptively more competent than she actually is; usually due to failure of competencies to generalize across expected moods, situations, and time, and to failure to display adequate nonverbal cues of emotional distress.

Which ones of these am I showing right now?  All of them.  Particularly #6, #1, and #2 for today.  But they are all typical for how I go about life.  Some of them seem contradictory, like the inhibition and overcontrol of emotional responses in grieving; and emotional vulnerability.  But both of them fit.  I wish that I could feel something about losses such as my brother’s suicide a year ago.  I feel like something is missing, but I’m just numb, and pretty much was from the night that I got the news.  And I wish that every little thing didn’t hurt me so much that it feels like I will always hurt, and there is no escape.

Or unrelenting crises and apparent competence.  People who don’t know me well tend to think I’ve got my act together.  I’m pretty good at looking like I can handle just about anything.  But I fall apart so easily.  And I attack myself, and I go passive and try to disappear, dissociate, and be invisible.

I hope that as I continue to read, and also to work on myself in therapy and try to apply it in real life, that I will learn how to change some of these patterns.  Right now it seems hopeless.  But I’m trying not to hide it anymore, and I hope that will be a step in the right direction.  I also hope it doesn’t turn around and bite me.

Last night my family and I had the honor of attending the confirmation of a pair of sisters who have become friends with my daughters.  Our families came together when my daughter became friends with one of the girls in orchestra, and now we do a lot together.

To return to the subject of Easter, the comfirmation was held as part of a full Pascal celebration and Mass.  Please forgive me if my terminology is less than accurate.  I am a non-Catholic attempting to describe a Catholic religious service.  In fact, we were not the only non-Catholics invited to support people receiving ordinances at that service.  We were told that the man sitting in front of us was an atheist.  My family and I are LDS.  I had been to a Catholic baptism before, but not a complete worship service.

The service was beautiful, especially the music.  I often wish for more music in the church meetings that I normally attend, and I think that we are limited by some drive to try to compete with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir every time we sing, and thus we overcomplicate everything.  This Catholic congregation (I don’t know enough about others to compare or generalize) had a simple choir with piano and guitar, and the congregation followed along in places with one person leading a simple one-part melody.  It was easy enough to pick up and join in.  It was entrancing.

Apart from some small doctrinal and procedural differences, the messages, themes and the scriptures used were familiar.  The Priest spent some time explaining the meanings and encouraged the congregation to ponder and find meaning.  I was also impressed with the spirit of peace and goodwill that was there, especially at the end when people got up and hugged each other and wished each other peace.  We don’t do much of that in my church.  They accepted us, and recognized our beliefs as valid also.

I miss the similar sharing that we have lost on Psych Central.  It is rare that I have the opportunity, as I did yesterday, of visiting and learning about someone else’s beliefs that are different from mine.  We could learn so much from each other if we would listen to each other with acceptance, and without judgement.  I feel very unqualified to judge anyone, because I know that what they believe makes sense to them.  Although I do believe in the necessity of the atonement and resurrection of Christ, I believe that those gifts are or will be offered to everyone, whether in this life or the next.  According to my beliefs, we all knew the plan, that Christ would come to Earth as our brother and show us the way and pay the price for us, before we were born.  But if we are not taught in this life, all is not lost.  We will be judged according to what we have been given, and will be offered the necessary keys as we are ready for them.  I can’t judge anyone because I don’t know what they are accountable for, or the path that was chosen for them.  I don’t profess to know and understand everything, and I believe that everyone has some truth that they could share with me if I would listen.

I welcome comments here, both questions, and sharing, as long as it is kept respectful.  I can’t promise when I will have time to answer, but I will do what I can.

From time to time, I would like to share some of what I believe and value.  Today it seems fitting to share a link to a new site about The Savior, JesusChrist.lds.org . If you are interested, please take a look. I find comfort in that He cares about us so much to give everything for us, and also that He took upon Himself all of our suffering. He knows everything that we are going through, because He suffered our pains. It’s hard for me sometimes to believe that anyone could care that much about me, but He did that for all of us.

 I hope that you had a good Easter, however you celebrated it.

I have been thinking about starting another blog for some time, and I thought that I didn’t have time.  I thought that in a few months I would start to have more time, life would settle down.  It doesn’t work that way though.  So many of the things that I have wanted to say, or even have written out in my head, are not here because I didn’t take the time to write them down, or to create a space to write them down.  If not now, then when?

Many of you may already know me from the community at Psych Central.  I have shared much more of my story there already than I will ever get around to here.  I won’t backtrack a lot, except where relevant.  For some reason, it is important to me for you to know a little about where I am coming from, and this is the main theme that I have intended to write about.  I am on a journey, as we all are.  At this place in my journey, I have been moving slowly forward, personally and professionally, for about the last five years.  My memory of my life before that turning point, when my depression bottomed out and there was noplace to go but up, is pretty cloudy and confusing.  My survival depended upon picking up some lost or given up dreams, that included education and career.  Now I am nearly finished with a master’s program in Counseling.  I am doing work as a student intern.  I still have a ton of my own stuff to work through, although I have come a long way already.

Around the middle of January, I remember thinking to myself that I was getting through the winter fairly well this year, with no particularly bad lapses into depression.  Then things started to happen, and my world fell apart again.  Lots of things happened, one after another, and for a while I thought I was coping, but I wasn’t really.  I should have taken a break, but I didn’t want to admit that I couldn’t handle it.  In one week (towards the end of February, and actually the 5-year anniversary week of when I had bottomed out before), it all caught up with me at once.  My internship clients asked not to see me anymore because I wasn’t helping them, they didn’t feel a connection, and one of them said that I seemed scared, and that scared her.  Then I had an annual evaluation at my regular job that I could tell was starting to go very badly.  I broke down and cried, told my boss that I hadn’t been at my best the last several weeks, and the evaluation was put on hold.  Everything was going wrong everywhere: school, work, family, pets, hobbies, cars, and even online.  When I told my therapist that everything was falling apart, she said that it isn’t really.  She says that this is really a step in the right direction, and now that I can’t maintain the divided selves (totally competent in some areas and totally incompetent in others) that I have been struggling to maintain, I will finally have to learn to be one whole person with strengths and weaknesses.  It is scary, but I will try to trust (and hope) that it is finally coming together.

“It’s the night that makes the dawning.
“It’s the depths that make the heights.
“It’s the roots that make the branches.
“It’s the darkness that gives birth to Light.”

Joel Heathcote