Surviving The Blip To Smile And Carry On

I was going to tweak and “fix” this piece before publishing but I have decided to leave it as it came.  I think that if I were to alter it, it would stop being a true reflection of me. Instead, like many facebook and instagram posts, it would be the ideal and filtered version of me and my experience. For that reason I have left in the double start.  I was going to call it a false start, but in reality it is anything but false.

I really don't know what I am going to write this morning.  What I do know is that I need to write this morning.  I am a bit scared to let what I am really feeling in this moment come spilling out onto this page.  What if its too much? My instinct is to clear up all the tears and snot and tell you everything is ok, and its just a wee blip.  That may well be true, but blips are real. They are part of me and what I am experiencing therefore why do they get denied and swept away into an unmarked box somewhere behind me?
It’s the same old reasons really, fear and shame.  Fear of judgment of the world and the shame left after my own self judgement.  “What will they think of me?”, “how could I be so weak?”.  On the whole I don’t feel like this but.....
I haven’t quite mastered or clicked with the idea of finding true strength in my vulnerabilities. Well, in saying that, I do recognise my vulnerabilities more readily than I ever have, and although I still feel shame when they side swipe me, it is a shadow of the true shame and loathing that I have experienced in the past. On reflection, I think I am probably further down the road to accepting my vulnerabilities than I had appreciated when I started this piece.  I don't believe that I could have managed to sit with my shame long enough ....

I am going to restart this.  I feel that I am going down a very deep and heavy road and my instinct is to say that it would be too much for you, the reader, but I think it is actually that it is going to be too much for me today. Digging over my past inner feelings still feels a bit too raw.  I hope that I find the strength to write and then publish something on it in the future.

The reason that I sat down at the keyboard with the need to write my thoughts down was my unexpected response to the post and how it has made me reflect on how this past 

week has gone.
I will start by saying that this week has been a tough one.  B has been ok in most part, struggling with boredom and feeling unable to do anything well. The dog has, well from my perspective, I have had a terrible week with the dog. On reflection I think that she has been feeding off of my emotions as well as her own boredom.  This morning after trying to fight past the dog on my way to get the post, I sat down with my back against the living room door (with the dog still trying to get at me through the door) feeling just a bit battered, attacked and bruised. There was just one letter on the mat.  A letter from Bs occupational therapist or at least her service. We haven’t seen her since December due to absences and other appointments.  The letter was to inform us that due to Covid 19 all services were being pulled and Bs case would now be closed. It did manage to imply that this was because B has been unable to engage when the OT has visited, due to her levels of anxiety.  After reading it I just sat.  I sat. I sat and I cried, behind the door, hiding from the dog. Feeling deflated, beaten, helpless

and alone.

It’s not that I have pinned any huge hope on the OT services or that I expected them to do anything in the current circumstances. But it still felt like an invisible lifeline had just been severed.  Sitting there, I was aware that it was more than just this letter that I was crying about. I realised that I had been off all week. I have been struggling to focus on tasks.  Feeling overwhelmed by the radio, barking and the noise in my head all at the same time. I have felt like the day has run out before I realise that I haven’t done my daily Duolingo or I realise that I have missed yesterdays bible 20/20 reading. I feel like I am never getting on top of the dishes when there is only me really using any.  
CAMHS have cancelled all appointments but I have spoken to them and B is still on their list and will be contacted when this is all over. I am not good at asking for help. When things are getting too much for me to deal with, the first things to slip are phone calls and asking for help. It gives me the image of being on a raft that is only held to the shore by some weak looking lines and the letter was another of them being cut, putting me at greater risk of going adrift, praying desperately that the final connections aren’t lost.
I need to go and see what B wants just now and fight my way past the dog.  So life goes on through the blips, stumbles and prayers. That is where I will find my feet, my strength and my security.

I am aware that this piece is unfocused and unrefined, but this is where I am currently.  Part of me feels I should apologies for this, but I won’t. I do not want to apologise for me. It is a scary thing, letting you in and showing you my mess before I have had a chance to process it, tidy it up and present it all neatly wrapped with a bow. That is what I have tried to do today. No bows. Just simply how I feel warts and all.

Trying To Rewrite My Inner Script

The tsunami of survival, inspirational, and “look how well I’m doing” posts definitely trigger my feelings of inadequacy and shame. These powerful emotions are familiar old frienemies that never actually leave me, but shrink in power, into the back ground only too happy to grasp any opportunity to swell up to fill my inner space with doubt and accusations. 

We all have our inner script, that dialogue that goes on within us that we believe to be absolute irrefutable truth.  Our core belief about ourselves.  Many of us are adept at ignoring, masking or defending against these without even

being aware of it.  Our subconscious works really hard to protect us from uncomfortable and painful feelings, emotions and traumas. Often these defences become obstacles and prisons that inhibit our awareness from recognising who we truly are. A lifetime of minimising emotions and trauma can result in an impenetrable citadel being constructed around the raw darkness and pain that you fear seeing or the world catching a glimpse off.  
I am not suggesting that anyone should take a battering ram to their inner citadel.  Defences are there for a reason, to protect.  Awareness is at the centre of gradually uncovering the hidden and finding who we are.  It doesn't matter how far along the road of processing your “stuff” you are, awareness and acceptance is key. With awareness comes the opportunity for change or to choose not to.  For me it has taken years to get to where I am today, and I am very much a work in progress.  

In preparation for this I did a timeline of when I thought I started working on myself.  Off the top of my head I would have said that it was around the time of some major incidents that occurred within my job that shook me to the core and turned my perception of who I was in relation to the world upside down. A full on identity crisis. In doing the timeline and listing in order when things happened, started, stopped etc I noticed that I actually started the process over a year earlier.  Out of the blue and with no identifiable reason, I asked my close friend if I could go to church with her.  I never had a road to Damascus moment of suddenly and spectacularly switching the light on. For me it has been a much slower and organic growth. In saying that, a moment that particularly comes to mind as being a significant point in my awareness process and my faith, was during a session of Christianity Explored. The group were shown a clip looking at what it means for God to shine a light on your heart.  I am sure I wasn’t the only person in the group that felt the terror of my all being known, but what it did for me over time, was to unlock something.  In feeling the fear of being seen, I had acknowledged that there was something to see.  I wasn’t simply what the world saw, the mask or what my blinkered view revealed to me.  Was this all part of Gods plan? He allowed me the space I needed to build trust in what I was feeling about developing faith. Had it happened like a bolt of lightening, I wouldn’t have trusted the extreme nature of the emotions. Going through life, relationships, work, trials and challenges as well as intense psychodynamic training and therapy, without God would have been unimaginable. That clip had given me a new inner script, a counter script. God knows all of me and yet he still loves me. No matter how massive my shame grows, no matter how unworthy and helpless I feel, it cannot consume me any longer.

The understanding that feelings, losses and traumas don't leave us but instead become a part of who we are was both reassuring and disappointing. Knowing that I didn't need to defeat them was welcome but that I wouldn’t be free of them, not so much.  In a training session the void and emptiness felt in bereavement was described as always present but altered in the space it took up within. That it changes in size and density. Sometimes it is overwhelming and yet it can become like a smaller shadow that sits with you always and is welcome as part of your life as you hold the loss and allow it to be.  As overwhelming as it is to begin with, I would wager that nobody would want the love and memories to be forgotten. To denying your grief and loss of any sort is denying the importance that the person is to you. I feel that viewing other difficult emotions in the same way could be helpful.  I know it sounds good but it isn’t my default position and therefore not easily maintained when remembered.
My identity and therefore my world were turned upside down by external events and loss, triggering my inner vulnerabilities and accepted perceptions of my place, purpose and defining character. For you it may be or have been something very different, a bereavement, the loss of relationship, empty nest, a change of place within a family, loss of health or the loss or addition of a label that has defined you in some way.  The list goes on and for each of us, whatever it is that changes your solid ground to swamp, it is life altering. The desolation of being alone in the swamp, vulnerable and uncertain and not sure how you are supposed to be now.  Who am I now, without XXX? It takes time to reorder a world.  

Working on my awareness of me, has been key in my search for self. Once, during a check in at the beginning of one of my first counselling trainings, I described myself as being like the weather. Some days its not rainy or sunny or cold or hot, it’s just there.  There was nothing there to identify.  That terrified me. Either I was totally empty inside or I was unable to feel. After 4 years of therapy, it turns out that I have spent a lifetime denying my feelings and silencing my inner voice because of my belief that I’m not worthy to be heard. The irony of this is that, throughout my childhood I was called a chatterbox, often told that I say the same thing in several different ways, using too many words where only a few were necessary (necessary for who?). Amazingly my subconscious has been trying to be heard all this time. Trying to be seen. To have a voice. To feel understood and acceptable. 
The first person I need to be seen, heard and accepted by is myself. How can I ask it of others, if I don’t connect with and acknowledge myself? My whole self, the good and the bad, my strengths and vulnerabilities, my darkness and my light.  There are still the same internal scripts and feelings that have overwhelmed me more than once, but they are not the whole, they are a part. They no longer fill my horizons.  Knowing that I have God beside, behind and in front of me, holding me up, I can weather whatever storms are released from within, little by little, even through the overwhelming darknesses there is light.