Month: February 2019

‘You Look Tired’

rubberbandsandchewinggum10 Comments

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I was hanging on by a frayed thread by the time it reached last Friday. I was both emotionally and physically exhausted. I literally felt as though I was running on empty and really struggled to motivate myself to get through the last few teaching sessions of the week.

It’s weird, knowing the half-term was imminent didn’t make things feel easier. It wasn’t, ‘I only have x sessions left and I can do this’ instead it felt like I was wading through treacle, ‘Please god when will this stop? I can’t do this’. To be fair to myself it has been a manic busy couple of months again workwise so I’m not really surprised I was crawling towards the finish line last week. When physical tiredness is combined with a big mental health wobble it’s never great! (When will I ever learn?!)

It felt like such a struggle by the time the holiday was actually within touching distance but it doesn’t make it feel any better knowing that how my life is structured basically saps me of everything I have and I am essentially walking wounded at the end of each term. It’s not sustainable and I really need to look at self-care again.

Fortunately, the inner emotional storm that touched down in my Monday therapy session had eased off a bit and was now more like an unfortunate patch of drizzle by the time I got to Friday’s session. I was still without an umbrella but didn’t feel as though I might be swept up and away to Oz now.

Phew!

Em and I probably had one of the best sessions we’ve had in a long while. I was able to keep a foot in the present whilst being very much aware of what had gone on earlier in the week where I had been caught up in trauma time, dissociated, and ended up self-harming. It feels really good when I am able to open up, be vulnerable, and actually take in my therapist rather than being stuck in that awful space where I feel like looking at her could burn me and am perpetually worried that she is going to leave.

I can’t really remember much about what we talked about but I know I spoke a lot and let her know some stuff about my process and it felt really connecting. I had really hoped to build on that session this week but you know what it’s like – one step forward and two steps back! I don’t know what happened – you’d think without work in the mix I would have been able to relax into my sessions and really unpick stuff – but no! Typical.

A friend of mine suggested that maybe I have slightly gone into self-protection mode as I have my cancer follow up appointment this week and so am armouring up ready for that. I suspect she might be right. I am dreading Wednesday because when I feel as tired as I do at the moment I can’t help but compare it with how I felt before I got diagnosed. I would say I feel as exhausted now as I did in the months leading up to the horror that was being told I had Hodgkin’s and frankly, that is fucking terrifying.

I hope I just feel knackered because I have a busy life but there is always a niggling doubt that it could be that I have relapsed.

Wow, that was super cheery wasn’t it?!

Back to therapy!!

To be honest, therapy was a bit of a waste of time this week. I mean I wasted it. I was conscious of the fact that I was sitting talking about shit that really didn’t matter at all. I was just letting off steam about annoyances – like about someone who came to stay who was fully ill with a chest infection and hacking cough. Sure, it pissed me off, but really? Why waste my Monday session on that stuff????

I had friends visiting all week and so I was busy with them – the first visitors drained me because I get really anxious when people are ill around me – low lymphocytes mean I get ill easily and it can take quite some time to recover but the second group of visitors was really restorative. I love spending time with this particular woman and her kids. We’ve known each other twenty years and have one of those easy relationships where months can go by without contact and then when we get together it’s like no time has passed.

Part of me didn’t really want to go to my session on Friday because my lovely friend was leaving that day (she’d arrived Weds evening) and my taking three hours out to drive to session seemed to be eating into precious time with a real person whom I have a reciprocal relationship with and haven’t seen in 18 months! Sure, I could have Skyped but I am not a huge fan of that and with both my kids and hers running around it wouldn’t have been easy to find a quiet spot. I also kind of knew that if I had cancelled the session at least a couple of parts would have had some kind of meltdown about it. They are already freaking out about my holiday in May when EM IS NOT ON HOLIDAY AND WILL BE IN THE ROOM!!!

Anyway, get to the point….

I actually don’t think there is one! ha. Oh, tiredness?

Yesterday I got it into my head that I wanted to go to the beach where I grew up – it’s about 75 mins drive and I love it there. We had a lovely time – eating fish and chips, getting an ice cream and running around on the beach…well my wife and kids ran about and I took pictures because I WAS TIRED!

It was lovely to get away from home for a bit and relax a bit. Even though my childhood was a complete shit show at times I still love that area. I feel most at home there. As we were leaving the beach I text my best friend from primary school (who is living through the hell that is metastatic breast cancer and has found its way into her bones) to see if she wanted to have a very quick hello. As it turned out she was at a local shopping mall with her mum and we met up for a quick hug. As you do! 😉

I haven’t seen my friend’s mum since I finished chemo around three years ago when I was on holiday in the area and we had all got together (my mum too). The first thing she said to me was, ‘Gosh x you look really tired’. This woman has known me since I was six years old and putting my foot in a bowl of custard the first time I went for tea after school – as a child she was like another mother to me. Again, it made me worry a bit that I look so noticeably tired that it is the first thing someone would say to me – especially as the last time she saw me I was bald and had just come off the back of twelve chemotherapies and fifteen radiotherapies…. I mean… I think I should be positively glowing in comparison!

The thing is, I know I am not.

I do look tired. Really tired. And no matter how much sleep I get I still wake up feeling devoid of energy. I haven’t exercised in a really long time now because I simply do not have it in me  and that is not like me at all. I really hope that as the days get longer and the sun appears more I find myself with a new lease of life because, frankly, this right now is shit!! I hope that some good news on Wednesday will also lift some of the tension I feel.

Anyway, on that note I need to go to bed as I am soooo tired and emotional (because I am tired!) that I currently have no clue how I will make it through the week! – apologies that this blog has hit a new low so far as being boring goes. I have lots to say, I just don’t have energy or time to get it down properly at the moment.

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Wobbly

rubberbandsandchewinggum9 Comments

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Wobbly. That’s how I feel right now. After a period of relative stability and calm things seem to have shifted into that uncomfortable space where everything feels ‘not quite right’ again and I am in danger of completely losing my balance. It’s not desperately bad (yet!)…it’s just ‘not ok’…you know? I don’t really know what’s happened; all I know is that I was fine and now I am not! Ha. Great!

Life is just my usual kind of busy: nothing is really any different to normal. There’s lots of work (more teaching taken on last week but nothing I can’t manage), running kids about, therapy, general life stuff- and yet for some reason I have gone from coping, no, better than that – living – to not really coping very well at all. I feel almost paralysed by whatever is going on inside me.

I desperately want to crawl into my bed and sleep and just hide from the world for a bit. I have very little motivation to do anything. I actually feel tearful at the thought of having to go to work later this evening. It feels like putting on the ‘professional me’ will be too much…and yet, of course, I will go and do my sessions tonight, it will be fine (as it always is), I might even enjoy it whilst I’m doing it…just part of me isn’t convinced.

In addition to this, I’ve noticed that I have shut my social circle down to essentially one poor bugger who gets it warts and all. Other than this interaction I am struggling to engage in social contact. I have a bunch of emails and messages I want/need to respond to but I simply don’t have the energy to think about appropriate messages that don’t basically end up with me looking like a self-absorbed twat.

I need to spend some time really unpicking what’s happened for me to end up here again because right now I don’t have a very clear picture. This, in part is down to the fact that I have been dissociating a lot lately (WHY?) and having periods of amnesia when I bring emotional stuff to mind. It’s like trying to catch something on the breeze,  I can see it and then it’s completely gone. I feel as though I have just been thrown out a vehicle in the middle of nowhere and have absolutely no idea how I got here, or indeed, where I am now. It’s a bit disconcerting (terrifying!).

Therapy on Monday was complete agony. I don’t know what happened. I just didn’t feel right on the way there and the moment I sat down my body started freaking out – I guess I felt fear/panic initially and then I was frozen, my vision blurred and then there were stars, and I felt as though I was being sucked out the room. I tried to hang on in there and not succumb to being pulled into the vacuum but it was so so hard.

Staying with my body when it is oscillating between pain and numbness and tingling etc is hard going. Sometimes the feeling of letting go and escaping the bodily sensations is really quite appealing (I used to do this a lot in therapy)…however ‘leaving the room’ comes with its own problems and I really do want/need to stay present with Em if I am able to, otherwise there is no hope of connection which is really what I need when things get like this.

The thing is, whatever has been triggered in me also triggers all my defences and so no matter how I want/need to connect, I just can’t – parts of me won’t allow it. I’m not stupid, I know that the core problem lies somewhere in the feelings around being needy and vulnerable and wanting intimacy but it all feeling too dangerous to be open…that old chestnut again!

The problem with the kind of sessions I had on Monday is there’s a lot of discomfort and silence and me saying, ‘I don’t know’ when she asks me questions because my brain is empty – like a void- all the stuff I want to say before I get there just vanishes. It’s not that I am being deliberately avoidant or withholding, it’s actually that everything is gone and I am just left with the body sensations. Nightmare.

Em is always really good when this happens and tries to help me ground and reassures me that things are ok, that it’s been like this before, and that we will work through it. The problem is, when it gets like it did on Monday, the shame floods in. It is so embarrassing be such a mess in the presence of someone else. My adult self is pretty high-functioning and a bit of (a lot of) a control freak, so to find myself mute and struggling is really hard for me. For my adult to have been overridden by whatever this stuff is (attachment stuff!) is really hard especially after several weeks of my adult doing therapy and getting a lot from it.

I hate that my brain makes it so that I can’t talk. I hate that when I get close to that core wound (#motherwound) that my mind does everything in its power to run away and shutdown. I hate that whilst parts of me trust Em implicitly that there are other parts that don’t/can’t and so I end up in this horrendous place over and over again. I know, because this is happening again, that I am steadily creeping towards talking about the big stuff (again). I know this pattern – I take my adult to therapy and do some useful work and the young parts get left at home. That’s fine for a while and the suddenly something happens and it’s as though the whole system activates and EVERYONE HAS STUFF TO SAY!

The problem is, I/they don’t know how to say it and are scared stiff….so generally I write something, email it, or take it to session and a discussion starts. Every time I fear the worst (abandonment, being told I am too much etc) and every time that doesn’t happen and yet for some reason I am hardwired to be fearful of being open about my feelings. Every time I let stuff out that is raw and vulnerable it feels like I am doing it for the first time. I can’t seem to bring to mind that I have said, on multiple occasions, that I sometimes struggle between sessions, that I miss Em when she’s not around, that I love her AS WELL AS the other stuff like when things are bad my Inner Critic is vile and I sometimes resort to negative coping strategies such as not eating or self-harming…

I need to bring that stuff up in session tomorrow because things felt so utterly awful after Monday that for the first time in two years I did self-harm….it wasn’t really anything, I don’t keep sharp stuff in the house these days, but the fact that I was using scissors on my skin… well, that isn’t good is it? I feel ashamed about it. I feel embarrassed about it.

Ugh.

Anyway, I really really hope that tomorrow turns out ok and I can get myself up and out of this pit of meh! There’s more to say but I have to go to work… oh adult responsibilities!

 

 

Therapy Breaks…

rubberbandsandchewinggum2 Comments

How many times have I talked about therapy breaks on this blog?! Loads, right? But hey, here we go again! 😉

Last Monday I missed my therapy session because my therapist was away. It wasn’t brilliant but it was ok; I focused on self-care and wrote a blog post when I would usually have had my session and had a slow day before I had to go to work. It was fine. In fact, as I said at the time, not having to drive an hour either side of the session was quite a relief and freed up quite a bit of space for me to just potter and do not much (lie in bed with my cats and drink tea!).

So…that was ok wasn’t it?

I made it through the minor disruption, worked hard all week (sigh), and was more than ready for my session when it got to Thursday. Internally I was pretty much repeating ‘one more sleep to go’ to appease the younger parts.

Only guess what happened this week on Thursday evening?

SNOW.

LOTS OF SNOW.

LOTS OF SNOW THAT SETTLED.

LOTS OF SNOW THAT MADE IT UNSAFE TO VENTURE OUT ON THE ROADS.

FUUUUCCCCCKKKKK IT!!!

I live on the edge of a National Park, on high ground, in the S.W of the UK. Basically, despite only being a few miles from a city I live high enough up for snow (and even simply ice) to be problematic. We live in a small village and it doesn’t form part of the network of roads that get gritted so essentially if a couple of inches of snow settles no one is going anywhere until it’s melted.

On Thursday night I could already see that I would not be going to my therapy session as I had had to abandon a tutoring session in the city and cancel another in order to drive back home when my wife text to say if I didn’t leave to come home I may not actually get home because there was so much snow falling.

By the time I got home it looked like something out a Christmas movie; the school had already emailed to say it would be closed on Friday; and my kids were unbelievably excited to be having a snow day. There was an Amber weather warning for the whole country. We don’t get much snow in the S.W and aside from last year’s ‘Beast From The East’ the last time we got snow was on the day I moved into my house in 2010.

As much as I would have liked to have been able to feel pleased about the prospect of snowman building and sledging you can probably imagine what my reaction to knowing I would not be seeing my therapist in person yesterday was…

Child parts had a meltdown!

I felt instantly grumpy and so so sad. I wasn’t able to be pragmatic about it at all. I just felt bloody miserable and hard done by! I feel sorry for my wife and kids as I was such a misery guts.

I know that this reaction was partly due to the fact that I hadn’t had my session on Monday either….so by the time I next see Em it will have been 10 days since I have seen her. That feels like quite a long time especially when it’s been a while since I have really talked. I had a weird session the other week where I got choked by shame and embarrassment about a dream I’d had where she ignored me – I couldn’t connect (or even look at her) or tell her about it. Ugh. Then after that therapy bomb I had a couple of very adult sessions. So there’s stuff we need to come back to but I feel like it has to be in person not via a screen.

Yesterday, I text Em to tell her I was snowed in and asked to Skype. In theory, this shouldn’t have bugged me quite so much as it did- these Friday sessions started out as Skype calls because it’s a 9:30am session and unless my wife is available to take the kids to school I can’t do the school run and still make it to session on time. Lately, however, my wife has been off work and so I have been able to go to my sessions in person. I much prefer this. Skype is ok but it is a very different experience.

So, I dialled in yesterday and to be fair it was a really nice session. Really relaxed. We laughed and it felt easy. My cat kept getting in the camera and interrupting the therapy but it was nice to sit on my couch with a cup of tea and a fur baby and talk. It was nice to see Em too. I think I spend so much of my sessions not looking at her and instead scanning the bookshelves or looking at the door that I don’t really see her much… so in a weird way Skype is good because I can look as much as I like and I don’t feel like a weirdo.

(Oh man I have issues don’t I?!)

It’s a bit of a weird thing then: I prefer to be in the room with Em and yet I hate not being able to look at her without feeling awkward; yet I hate Skype despite the fact I can see her….I guess it’s because I am always locked firmly in my adult via Skype calls and the parts that want to reach out just can’t.

Anyway eventually the conversation came round to the missed session on Monday and how I felt about it.

Adult: ‘Fine’

[meanwhile child parts locked inside adult fortress are screaming ‘NOT FINE!!!’]

Deflecting the question again I said something about looking forward to half-term and a break from my teaching work. Em said that she wasn’t going to be away this half-term (praise be!) but that she would be off the week before Easter as well as Easter itself (groan) and would be taking a little longer in August than this last summer (which was shorter than the one before). Ugh.

Instantly my brain started whirring and thinking about the summer and the young parts definitely came to the surface.

There was a bit of silence.

I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t want to dig into how hard breaks have felt. I didn’t want to acknowledge the attachment stuff.

So I glossed over it and started rambling on about something else. Good tactic!

There’s no reason that summer break shouldn’t be ok or even ‘as good as’ Christmas break.  The thing is, there are quite a few breaks coming up and lots of bank holidays which means no Monday sessions. Basically, there’s lots and lots of small disruptions and few lengthier ones. I am going away in May half-term for a holiday and so will miss two sessions. Weirdly it feels worse that I might be away and she could still be there working – opening my space up for someone else. It feels less bad if we are both away simultaneously, like last May she was on holiday but so was I….so it was ok. Ugh. At some point I will look at the calendar and see just how many sessions will be missed – I know the time between April and September always feels yuck, though.

Anyway, I now have six and a half months warning about the summer break and this actually makes me laugh a bit. Clearly, Em doesn’t think I’m going anywhere anytime soon….there’s still a lot of work to do and it’s unlikely to be completed by the summer or else why give me this forewarning?!

This got me to wondering just exactly when I will be done with therapy? I know I am making progress and little by little I am working through and processing years and years (a lifetime) of trauma… right now I can’t imagine a time where I wouldn’t be participating in some kind of therapy- that’s not because of the attachment stuff, but actually just because I can’t imagine how my life will ever feel ok enough to not need to touch base with a therapist on a monthly basis.

I guess I’ll just have to wait and see what happens.

In the meantime I guess I’ll just try and remain calm and not freak out about the summer therapy break! Only 197ish days to go!! x

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