Rubber Bands and Chewing Gum

Well, I’m sure you’ll all be very glad that there is absolutely no danger of running into any ‘new year, new me’ bullshit here today. I think, all I can say is that from what I know of myself, I will continue to ‘keep on keeping on’ and trying my fucking best to navigate my way through whatever life throws at me…and I hope and pray that 2026 is significantly less shit than 2025 was. Although being realistic about things, I have no expectations that it will be. I don’t want to sound negative but, honestly, my life seems to be one big fucking long struggle and no matter what I do things seem too hard (I hope that doesn’t magically manifest more of the same! – but I am under no illusion that for whatever reason, my life isn’t ever smooth sailing).

I meant to come here and post something over the Christmas break but after my last post things didn’t really get any better and I found myself pretty frozen a lot of the time, so writing or any kind of processing just wasn’t possible. Thinking about it, I spent quite a bit of the Christmas holiday period dissociated because I was soooooo stressed through December that and I guess that’s the default for when things get too much- my brain just shuts down.

Things got really bad with the anxiety after the car accident (probably the most intense experience of anxiety and panic attacks I have ever had) and I fell quite quickly and deeply (and unexpectedly) into another period of not eating. I thought all that was behind me – and it largely is…

I wouldn’t describe myself as someone with an eating disorder anymore, but I don’t think that the eating disordered part of me is dead, she’s just dormant. I haven’t needed her for a long time. But recently my life has felt really out of control in very big and stressful ways and I am not at all surprised that I unconsciously found my way back to that place again – almost on autopilot.

Like I said, this stuff wasn’t triggered by anything to do with therapy or relationships (although therapy has been impacted as a result of my getting so completely overwhelmed lately – I cancelled Elle this week, first session back after the Christmas break, because it all felt too fucking painful…fortunately she was able to reach through to me and I did go in the end). It’s my actual day-to-day tangible life existence that’s the problem. Lack of security and therefore feeling desperately unsafe and like the world is about to blow up around my ears is what’s sending me through a huge loop. The thing is, this time of year is rough on the emotional front, too, and so as that has also landed bit-by-bit I have found that I have zero resilience and haven’t been able to cope.

I wrote last time about money (or lack of it) and all that stuff that is part of it – stress with insecure jobs, financial pressure, the car crash… it’s all ongoing … but there’s more, too, which is completely flooring me. I haven’t been able to talk to Elle about it yet, and I find that really hard because I feel like I am withholding stuff from her and I never want to do that but I don’t feel like there is much of a choice. So, I feel quite alone with what I am grappling with and that feels completely shit.

I hate that I have zero control or power to be able to get us (my wife and I) through what’s going on and I feel like I am just watching and waiting and panicking about an outcome I cannot control or influence. I just have to wait and see how things land and then pick up the pieces accordingly. And for someone who likes to know where she is at, NEEDS stability and security – it’s totally fucking me up. The idea of getting back to work tomorrow feels so heavy. I literally have no idea how I am going drag ‘teacher’ out of the bag when I am barely coping as RB. And yet somehow, I must find a way. I just don’t know how much more ‘digging deep’ I have in me. I literally can’t believe that I am still standing and yet time and again I have to find another level of coping when I am on empty.

Anyway, back to before Christmas. It wasn’t a conscious decision to stop eating which I guess is different from other times I have fallen into a disordered eating pattern. This time, I physically couldn’t eat because of the anxiety. I gagged every time I put something in my mouth and felt sooooo ill. I felt so tense that my body just couldn’t do it to myself and there is a difference between not eating because you ‘can’t’ and not eating because you are deliberately restricting. This was a ‘can’t’ situation.

The days rolled by and before I knew it, I hadn’t actually eaten for five days on the bounce. I know that it very bad. In fact, I don’t think even in my very most severe anorexic periods have I actually just failed to eat anything at all like that. But it really shows me just how overwhelmed I was. I lost quite a lot of weight through December and it was really noticeable to me – clothes were/are hanging off me and I felt weak but the good thing, if there is one, is that because I have been so ‘well’ and in a healthy range for so long now, my initial starting point meant that there was weight to lose and it wasn’t going to harm me…as I said, it has been years now since I was in the grips of anorexia.

So…yeah… it has been rough. But fortunately (weird explanation), over Christmas everything got so close to being too much that Brian shut off altogether and I had a week or so of relief from feeling anything much in any real depth and I got back to eating and breathing and being…but I wasn’t actively enjoying anything but I was at least not hurting myself. Tbh I don’t remember much of Christmas. Well, we all know what dissociation is like, don’t we?! But I’ll take that over the anxiety any day.

When I started to ‘feel’ again it wasn’t great, I got hit with ALL the feelings. Not just the life stress and anxiety that had knocked me for six in the first place but the other stuff too. The usual emotional achy wound stuff reared its head and bloody hell it hurt a lot. Christmas is all about family and connection…and all that I don’t have was thrown into very sharp focus this year. I became acutely aware of how painful this holiday felt compared with others and how desperately alone I felt.

Usually, I might get a bit of separation anxiety from my therapist Elle and the stuff with Em (“like a tick”) ALWAYS rears its head, and the traditional life-long betwixtmas depression hits…but this was different again. Like it had a gazillion extra jingly trauma bells ringing on top because normally this stuff is in the body and centres around attachment to therapist/s and this year it wasn’t that alone…this year I really hurt (it always really hurts!)… but this year I was also hurting for my mum, too. And I suppose that is progress – grieving the original source of the pain? Although it didn’t feel like it in the moment because I still had all the other stuff going on too.

So, this last couple of weeks I wanted to write about the impact of broken connection and estrangement from my mum over the holiday because I’ve really struggled and it had a MASSIVE knock on to how I felt about myself, how I saw my relationship with Elle, and of course it dragged back up all the pain of what happened six years ago over the Christmas period with Em, and then Anita got thrown in the mix…well…it’s four years this week since I met her…. So it’s a bumper season for emotional memories. Ugh. But I haven’t felt able to write because like I say, I’ve been barely functional. Writing this now I can really see how bad it’s been. Survival really. I probably need to find a way to really bring all this to Elle because I haven’t told her about the eating either… and I guess that is a big deal even if it is better than it was.

But to the original idea: estrangement from mum.

Christmas 2025 signalled the fourth year on the bounce where I have had minimal (for the first few years, a card) or no contact from my mum over the holidays. In February last year shortly after my daughter’s birthday, I decided to draw a boundary around my relationship (or lack of one) with my mum and sent her a message explaining how her minimal care and interest in me and my family hurt me and how it was hard for the children to understand why their grandmother no longer wanted to see them or engage. I actually said, “it’s clear that you don’t like them or me much” and so there could be no doubt what I was saying. I told her that she would be better not sending a card at all if she had no desire to see me or the kids under the pretence of maintaining a relationship.

I never heard back and she has had made no contact since.

This is both disappointing and, I guess, validating. It was hard for me to take the bull by the horns and shine a light on the reality and bring what was really happening into sharp focus. But all the while I was letting things go and almost pretending like things weren’t that bad, I realised I was not only hurting myself but allowing my mum to hurt my kids too. And that had to stop.

Of course, it is disappointing that when faced with my side of things my mum was unable to step up, take any form of accountability, or try and make amends…but then why would she? I have no value in her eyes – never have-  and what I have believed to be true my whole life – that my mum doesn’t really like me, is true. I am not insane. It it how it is and has always been and my feelings are correct. My feelings of being ‘not enough’ and ‘too much’ haven’t materialised out of nowhere…and here is evidence. If it were me, faced with the same situation I would have been on the phone in an instant, or better yet, have got in the car and gone to see my kid in person…because there is no way on earth I would ever let my kids disappear from my life but then I am not my mother and actively try not to be like her in any way.

So, yeah. Being hit once again with the reality that my mum is exactly who I think she is, I spent some days feeling really low over Christmas. I feel the absence of a mother so acutely (no shit!). Not my mother. I don’t want mine – she’s crap. But I so badly need/ed a good enough mother. One who could have done the job throughout my childhood and would still be here now to support me. I think that’s what I am struggling with a lot right now, the lack of there being anyone to act as a backstop and hold my hand as my world seems to be so fragile. I really need a parent to be there, someone who I can call up and just say, “I am struggling” and even if they can’t fix it they could remind me that I am ok, that I am safe, and that no matter what happens I always have that loving place to return to.

I don’t though.

It’s all on me and my wife.

There is nowhere to tangibly or symbolically put the bags down and rest for a bit. And I don’t mean financially – I mean emotionally. I think that even if you never ‘need’ to use the support system simply knowing it is there makes things feel better. I miss my dad so much because this is exactly what he was. He was a harbour in the storm… he was there no matter what… and now he isn’t. No one is. And I feel it ALL THE TIME. When things go wrong, I am thrust face first into just how exposed I am. How vulnerable I am. And I can’t always cope…or I do… but it’s taking its toll.

I understand that I go to therapy. And I get to an extent this is a place to put things down a bit and Elle is soooo supportive…but she is only my therapist and she is only physically there in my session/s. She is not available in the sort of way I need right now and of course that’s how it is because she isn’t a friend or family member. The rules of the game mean that I can’t text her at 11pm and ask for a call and cry or turn up at her house and collapse. She is not someone whom I can ask to come over and just help me whilst things crumble and make dinner or deal with the kids. I can’t rot in my bed and get her to come and sit with me and stroke my head and look after me. And don’t get me wrong, I am really grateful for what she does offer me – without it I would be in a very much worse state than I am now, but I am so very aware of what I need right now and how it just doesn’t exist in my life. I have some great friends but even they can’t mend this with me.

My dreams have been off the charts again this week. Two nights ago, I dreamt I was being attacked in the hallway in the downstairs of my house. It was nighttime and completely dark. I was screaming over and over again, “Help me! HELP ME! I need an adult. Please help me!” I woke up so distressed and my throat hurt from trying to shout out in my dream … or should we say nightmare? I think it’s really telling though, how I feel like I am under attack in the place that is meant to be safe and I am crying desperately out for assistance from someone to help me. My young parts are so upset right now…but so is my adult. I just wish, so much that I had … an adult to take care of things. And I know this adult is and has to be ‘me’. It’s always had to be me, even when I was a child and should not have had to be a ‘little adult’…but god. It’s a lot.

I’m just so fucking exhausted from struggling all the time. It never ends. I need a break…and yet all that seems to happen is more shit lands on my plate.

I do really get how much I seem to be moaning. I just am so done with struggling.

At least the lead into Christmas in regard to therapy wasn’t too disastrous. In the last face-to-face session Elle brought in cakes for us and we exchanged presents – although to be opened on Christmas. And then we had our zoom call on the Friday before she went on break. I felt sad that we weren’t able to see each other in person twice that week but I didn’t say anything about it because I got the distinct sense that Elle was running on fumes and if she had have wanted to come in that day she would have. Like she will always tell me if she is able to come in and do Friday session in person (like this week – which was a massive relief!) so there was no point in going down the emotional rabbit hole and entertaining any feelings about rejection or abandonment because that’s not what was going on.

When it finally got to Christmas, I was struggling but it was lovely to have something to open from Elle and she really does keep me in mind. She’d bought me a lovely poetry book, ‘Stars At Last’ by Jessica Jocelyn. It’s all about the mother wound and mothering. My god it hit that super stingy, vulnerable place. Elle gets it. She sees it. But ooooofff – wowzers – I really needed a hug after reading it because I feel like I could have written it myself.  

She also wrote me a story to read on Christmas day and illustrated it -and that felt really lovely for little parts as it was a reminder that we were connected even if we weren’t together and included characters and symbols we often reference in our therapy. It was lovely…but also hit that little part that so needs to be close.

I won’t lie, I really struggled not having any contact with Elle on Christmas day. Last year she reached out to me in the morning and this year she didn’t – not that there is any expectation of contact…but I think to the part of me who was already feeling so upset about my mum I guess I just wanted to know that I wasn’t suddenly too much…that I wasn’t forgotten about…that I wasn’t about to be discarded…that I hadn’t done anything wrong by giving her a gift (I can thank Em for that worry after rejecting the present I gave her all those years ago)…and all the worries that come up time again. Even though all of this fear was covered in her story for the small parts and I should have understood that there was nothing to worry about.

I think part of the issue that got me panicking a lot is that I gave Elle something that was pretty meaningful to the work we have been doing over the course of the year. I made/sewed her a stocking that had figures from the story I wrote her last year for her at Christmas on and filled it with all sorts of things that were relevant to us… and it felt ‘big’ because even though none of what was in there cost very much, it was very clearly from my little heart…and then on Christmas I panicked that it was all too much and that her silence meant that I was going to walk into the same sort of situation when I came back to the room as I did with Em this time six years ago. I was sure I was going to get a boundary talk and be reminded that I am a client and that I don’t need to give gifts because I already pay Elle and that hurt because I had so wanted the present to be received as it was intended.

Anyway, I had a bit of a meltdown over WhatsApp on Christmas night with my friend who did her level best to remind me that Elle is not Em, or Anita, or anyone else for that matter and that she really does care and that I am not too much and ALL THE THINGS. It didn’t really work though. I had got to the place where I felt stupid and ashamed for having bothered and all the old hurts came flooding in.  

Later in the evening, I sent a very short message to Elle on Christmas night thanking her for my presents but it was about as short and to the point as I ever get. But again, I had got myself into a place where I felt like I didn’t want to bother her, or take up time or space, or be seen as an unwelcome intrusion into her time off. Basically, I just wanted to disappear and hope that I hadn’t fucked things up. I shouldn’t have worried, though. Elle sent me a lovely email on Boxing Day in reply and I was instantly reminded that she is there and things were ok and she did like what I had given her.

On Monday Elle sent me her usual pre-session text and I was so looking forward to seeing her on Tuesday like I was sooooo ready to see her and be with her again. But on Monday night ALL the anxiety came flooding back in about ALL THE THINGS. I didn’t sleep AT ALL. Everything felt wrong. I felt completely overwhelmed by how bad things felt and how much I needed Elle but was terrified of seeing her and being too much.

I think when I am overwhelmed I am worried that I must be overwhelming.

Well – that’s exactly what happened with Em isn’t it? I came back from Christmas in a mess and the next thing I know I am being compared to a tick and we are ending. I never ever want a repeat of that and I guess part of me was trying to protect myself on Tuesday when I sent a text to Elle a couple of hours before the session:

I’m having a really bad time and I need to step away for a bit. I’m sorry x

I felt so upset that immediately after sending the message I burst into tears. I went and stood in the shower in a total freeze for an hour and just sobbed under as the water ran over me. I imagined Elle would just accept what I had to say and be glad I was giving her some extra space because who would want to spend time with me like this? Why would she want to come back when she knew what space from me and all my need felt like? Why would she want to connect with me and my mess and have me cling to her like I was drowning?

Elle didn’t just accept my cancellation, though. She replied she told me that she was right there if I wanted to come in and that she could also come in on Friday and that she really hoped that I could tell her what was going on.

It was enough to show me that I wasn’t unwanted, or too much, or any other the other negative things that were running through my brain and I made it into the session. And I am so glad I did because the moment I saw Elle I was reminded that she isn’t any of the things I worry about – and that she does care – and she does see me, all of me, and that she cares for all of me whatever state I am in. She wrapped me up in a massive hug and didn’t let me go as I cried. I could have stayed there all day tbh. And that’s the hard part, isn’t it? Making that time enough when the need is so big and the safety within that room is only available for small window of the week.

I am sooooo aware of not straying into the place where I become too much for Elle, although I imagine if that feels like it is happening she will manage that somehow, and in a better way than those who have come before her. I get the feeling she wants me to tell her exactly what is going on for me because I realise that I actually often don’t ‘tell’ her in words but I definitely ‘show’ her. I talk to her a lot in my head when I don’t see her and forget she has no idea what I have shared with ‘in my head Elle’. When I see her in person so much of what we do is about co-regulation and simply being together that I don’t verbalise a lot of the stuff. So, whilst I might think I am a lot and too much…maybe it’s not the case.

Being a human with a heart is hard, isn’t it?

Anyway, I’ll leave this here because it is long. But the sadness about my mum over Christmas morphed into something else entirely on Saturday when I was out walking the dog…and my anger has a LOT to say! That’ll come next time…be warned.

I hope that everyone is more-or-less in one piece after the shitshow that was 2025… and … that 2026 is…doable! Big hugs xxx