Scattered pieces

I’ll admit, it’s hard to write something after getting so many comments on the last post.  It scares some of the young ones to realise that people actually read what is written here.  It’s even scarier for them when we state an opinion and open ourselves up to negative comments.  Part of me wants to write further posts on similar topics because they see it as helping people – something that feeds our self-worth; but there is a fear that if we did this, we’d lose sight of why we write this blog… which is to help us work through the issues we’re facing.  So, this entry is about finding our way back to that space.  In many ways, the previous post is an indication that we’re trying to avoid the issues… a great diversionary tactic if ever there was one.  It’s hard to work through what is really going on in my head at the moment, it’s all very confused, messy and hidden deep beneath layers of dissociation.  But a clue comes from Liz saying in three of my previous sessions… “we keep on coming back to your anger”.

Anger…  Hmmm, so she means I have anger?  But I don’t “do” anger…  Yes, I get frustrated sometimes, and confused.  But I don’t get angry, do I?  Angry is that scary silence when everyone walks around you on egg-shells… Angry is that violent rage of a raised hand, belt, spoon…  Angry is sex…  “I” don’t do any of that!

That is what my daily functioning self can say easily… “I” have no concept that I experience anger.  Then there are little reality checks… I know that some of my self-injury is motivated by anger or angry ones; therapists have said to me “you left angry last week”; and my cynical friend at work has commented on my anger in a teasing way.  So, apparently I do get angry, I’m just not in touch with it.  Sometimes I can glimpse the anger… if there is a dissociative switch from an angry one, they often leave the body feeling tight and wound up.  That feeling is quickly stamped down and I can ignore that it ever happened; but it’s there, ever so fleetingly.

Another clue to my anger came earlier this week.  I wasn’t able to sleep and was looking at the 25 popular YouTube clips on the iPhone; one of the clips that came up, was the “Angry Dance” from the film Billy Elliot.

I immediately recognised some of the feelings of frustration that Billy was experiencing… having all these conflicting inputs and emotions, while feeling powerless to stop it.  That powerlessness then building into feelings of anger with the world around him and himself.  In Billy’s case, he released that emotion in dance… for us, it’s bottle up and buried within the dissociative system.  I know this intellectually, but I’m not sure I understand it on a functional level… or, more accurately, I don’t know how to deal with those feelings in a more appropriate way.

My knowledge of therapeutic techniques would indicate that I need to work on identifying, experiencing and appropriately managing my anger.  That’s all well and good, but as my anger is so fleetingly realised within my normal functional states, I’m not sure how to proceed in understanding it.  I know that Liz has talked to angry ones and unsuccessfully tried to stop some of the mild self injury (scratching, picking etc) that happens in session when they are present.  She also seems to be actively poking at me and trying to encourage the anger – she was thrilled the other week when I showed frustration at her via a text message.  She wanted to explore my reaction and find out what happened, she saw the event as important… I saw it as Liz being an idiot and stating the obvious, so I snapped a curt response back to her and ignored that she existed.  I’ve noticed more and more lately that I’m losing all sense of Liz between sessions, and I wonder if this is because she wants to explore my anger.  It’s like my system is protecting me from the anger and the scariness of exploring it by shutting down everything that could prod at it.  I think this is also the reason why there are threats and desires to quit therapy…  Liz has become a huge threat to parts of the system that don’t want those emotions looked at.

Anger has always terrified me, I know that much.  Nothing will cause a dissociative switch quicker than someone showing anger.  I know I need to explore and work my anger issues through, I just wish it didn’t seem so daunting and scary…

I said in my last post that I’m treading water in an ocean rip… well the current just got bumped up a notch or three…

I had my last session for the year with Liz on Tuesday.  I’ve totally forgotten everything that was said except for one thing… I told her that I wasn’t angry and she laughed, saying that she didn’t believe me as she could cut the pain and anger that was in the air with a knife.  I’m honestly not aware of the pain and anger.  Sometimes I can get a glimpse of annoyance with something, but not pain and anger.  But they must be there, I’ve disclosed two more abusive events over the last two weeks, that must generate some emotion… surely.

As a result of the session, I had a really bad night trying to work through the different messages and fantasies that were coming through.  It was a blur of switching, talking to a friend and negative behaviours.  By morning the previous day was a gone from my memory and I had a made a firm commitment to taking further steps toward respite care.  I still hadn’t heard back from my psychiatrist, so I went to see my GP yesterday afternoon.  The appointment was very surreal…  I explained why I needed respite care and she was so unprepared for organising it that she didn’t have the right referral forms with her and was unsure if they would accept me because I have suicidal ideation.  I can understand them not wanting to accept someone with suicidal intent, and I’m not sure how far along the scale I am between ideation and intent, so I’m possibly not a safe bet for respite.  But I have to try.

When I got home, after assurances that the doctor will fill in the forms the next day and send them off, I found an email from my psychiatrist.  I’d also asked him about respite, but basically he passed the buck to the crisis team.  To put this into context, I haven’t physically seen the man in over six months.  He’s changed and increased prescriptions via email based on my reporting of issues.  So this latest passing of the buck is a bit of a blow.  Whenever I’ve asked the crisis team about respite care in the past, they’ve always said that they are full.  The only option is the psychiatric ward.  The psychiatrist said that he will warn them that I might need respite care… well that’s pretty meaningless in the scheme of things…

So… I have no therapist for the next month; a GP who has said that I might not get into respite because of suicidal ideation; if I do get into respite, it could take weeks to get a spot; and a psychiatrist who is fairly casual in their level of response.  I wasn’t expecting anyone to come and save me… but at least someone to offer some realistic hope would’ve been good.  I’m now at work and can feel the heaviness of the depression and hopelessness closing in.

In the good news stakes, the mother has suggested that she doesn’t come up for Christmas.  I can’t yet bring myself to confirming that I don’t want her here, but I know I have to.

The other night I watched Sunitha Krishnan’s TED India talk about her fight against sex slavery and Deliver us from evil: The Catholic Church lies, a documentary about clergy sexual abuse.  As a note: both the talk and documentary carry trigger and adult content warnings. I’m not familiar with either of these forms of abuse, other than what I’ve read and seen through the media, but both of these clips affected me.

Sunitha talked with passion and courage when describing the horrific stories of some of the people she has rescued. To see the smiling photos of the children who had been used so badly by society that they died of HIV/AIDS before their 10th birthday…  The main focus of her talk, was not to tell horrific stories, but rather to confront societies attitude towards the survivors that she and her organisation Prajwala have rescued.  She was challenging our intolerance, judgments and the cruelty directed towards this group of survivors.  Turning a blind eye to the abuse is not acceptable… Finding excuses not to employ these survivors is not acceptable…  Society shuns these victims and ostracizes them to the fringes, making it difficult to find employment and develop a sense of self.  Society refuses to open our minds and hearts to their plight…

Within my context, I know that my mental health issues would be treated with scorn, derision and skepticism amongst my co-workers.  I know this, because I have seen how they have treated students who have mental health issues – with one being labeled a stalker!  Because I had to take time off work after my ex-husband attacked me, everyone at work knew that I was a victim of domestic violence.  In the months that followed, I got sympathy and understanding from some people, but I also heard domestic violence jokes from others.  If this is the reaction within my small workplace to what is a relatively common occurrence, I’d hate to imagine how they would react to my full abuse history – would I hear child abuse or suicide jokes?

My situation cannot be compared to the situation of those rescued from sexual slavery.  I live in a relatively wealthy farm based city where homelessness and drug problems are considered the greatest blight on our landscape.  I will never know the horror of the sexual slave industry as experienced by those children; and looking at their stories of survival, I’ll never experience their strength.  The context and extremity of the situations is worlds apart, yet there is still a general theme regarding a lack of acceptance by society.  Both situations show how people can be stigmatised for being a victim…

The documentary, Deliver us from evil, affected me for several reasons – our family was asked not to return to the Catholic Church after the mother started using birth control, and we have been subjected to varying forms of odd Catholic based indoctrination by the father, youth groups and camps.  But, the single thing that affected me the most about the documentary, was witnessing the father’s pain at knowing his daughter had been victimised by one of the priests.  The priest was a man the family had welcomed into their home, and he had abused that trust on so many levels.  The images of this grown man crying and distraught over the pain inflicted on his daughter and his inability to protect her were so confusing for us.  Is this how an otherwise healthy family reacts to such an event?  When I told the mother that I had been raped by three teenagers when I was 7 or 8, I don’t think she shed a tear.  I know she told my oldest brother, but he hasn’t said anything to me about any of my abuse history…  I compare this to when my sister was raped by her boyfriend when she was in her late teens, and both my brothers were willing to track him down and beat him up.  They didn’t, but there was some emotional response.  Am I so worthless that I don’t deserve such emotions?  I don’t want anyone to be hurt because of what happened to me, but some sort of reaction would have helped me gain some form of validation that I am a person worthy of concern.

Again, I can’t compare what happened to me to those who suffered at the hands of the abusive clergy.  There can be no generalisations made that those who were victims of the clergy were from otherwise healthy families or that all parents were as demonstrative in their grief over what had occurred to their children.  The daughter of the man who was open with his grief had been abused for years, and the daughter had made a conscious decision not to tell about the abuse for fear of her father being sent to jail for killing the offending priest – basic questioning as a child had led her to believe this as being a very real possibility.  So again, there are some similar general themes, but the context is totally different.

Sex slavery, sexual abuse by the clergy and my own situation should never be compared in regard to their severity; but there are similar themes which run through all incidents – societies acceptance and reaction to the victim seems to be the most common.  Anger seems to be the another.  Sunitha mentioned that she trained her survivors in male dominated trades because they have the courage and strength to push through and succeed in that area – she mentions anger as being one of the drivers.  The survivors of the clergy abuse, openly and strongly voiced their anger.  I’m just starting to realise that I might be angry about what happened to me, and more importantly how angry I am at those around me at the time – the mother suspected something but did nothing, while my sister would’ve been blind not to notice.

The question for all of us is, what do we do with that anger?

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Now playing: Audioslave – Like a Stone
via FoxyTunes

School is out for summer in New Zealand, for us that means a change in our work hours and therefore the times we see Liz.  During semester time, we work one evening so that we can have a morning off to go to therapy and try to recover before heading into work; while during the semester breaks, we have late afternoon appointments so that we minimise our time off work.  I’m not sure which is better – the afternoon sessions mean that I arrive wound up from work, and the morning sessions mean I have to quickly recover from therapy so that I’m ready for work.  Yesterday was our first afternoon session, and it was challenging for several reasons:

1. Our summers are humid and the building isn’t air conditioned, so her office smelt like previous clients.
2. We’d had a bad day at work, with lots of in-fighting amongst the staff about a staff member who isn’t doing their fair share of the work.
3. We were worried how Liz would interpret a piece of writing we’d sent her that one of us had done.
4. We had self-injured recently and were worried how Liz would react to that.

It was the piece of writing that worried us the most, possibly because it was the first time we’d shared something like that with Liz.  To us, this piece was a clear warning to the daily functional ones that we are hated and will be destroyed if we continue down the path we have taken.  We went in with the expectation that Liz would see it in a similar way… but, she didn’t.  She saw the piece of writing as a warning to her from some young ones.  This threw us.  We didn’t see Liz within the writing at all, but I wonder if that is because we don’t really consider Liz part of our healing…  Sometimes it seems as if she is part of the “healing hoop” we have to jump through in order to heal, rather than a real person who can help us along the way.

Leading on from this, Liz asked us to play a game where we took turns drawing a line on a piece of paper.  We’re deeply suspicious of Liz and her art therapy abilities, so we were worried about what this would show her about our state of mind, but went along with it.  It was terrifying… absolutely and utterly terrifying… Liz was drawing on the same piece of paper as us… we couldn’t control where she put her lines, we couldn’t keep her to one corner of the paper while we had the opposite corner…  At several points we froze in total panic.  Having just read about the technique, it’s often used in Gestalt and art therapy with difficult clients, where the “typical therapist-client interaction can often be distant, demanding, and frustrating”.  Great, I’m a difficult client…  Sometimes I really shouldn’t research!  I know that I should take from the technique that Liz is trying to find new ways to build a relationship and interact with me… but all I see are the words “difficult clients”.

One thing that got stuck in my mind from the session, is Liz saying “it concerns me what you are doing with all of these repressed emotions”.  I know what I’m doing with them… I’m systematically sabotaging and destroying myself.

As a warning, this might not be one of my most rational entries – and there have been some pretty irrational ones over the past year…

Today we went to see Liz for our scheduled appointment.  It was a monumental disaster.  We had to talk about a report for ACC to ensure we continue to receive funding (yes, this funding seems to be a continual battle).  We were in protection mode, pretty much shut down with Sophie only able to look at the keys she was playing with in her hands.  We’re very aware that ACC want to see improvement – no matter how small.  But, we haven’t improved much and if we put that in the report, we would probably end up being sent for a psychiatric assessment.  We had this knowledge sitting in the back of our head and were trying to tailor our answers as a consequence.  Then Liz casually dropped a bombshell…

“We can’t have you functioning too low or out of control or they’ll refer you to mental health services for the DBT programme.”

This is one of our nightmares… being sent to DBT in New Zealand.

I know people are helped by that programme every day.  I know it helps with emotion regulation and mindfulness… I know it could potentially help me immensely.  BUT over here, there is no streaming or grouping according to functioning, you are placed in the first opening they have.  There aren’t any evening courses, so I’d end up having to take time off work.  This means that I could end up in a group which is incredibly low functioning and triggering for me.  I don’t cope well with groups, so I’d sit there like a stuffed dummy, avoiding the whole situation – I didn’t talk once during a Mindfulness course which lasted for six weeks.  What’s worse is that it will odds are trigger M to come forward to protect us, so we’d end up appearing saner than the therapists and be ticked off as “cured” very quickly.

Yes, I know this hasn’t happened and was just an idle comment by Liz… but with the changes in ACC policy, it’s a very real possibility.  I never thought I’d say it, but please let them decide that I need a psychiatric assessment.  Anything but DBT.

The flip side of this conversation, is that we now think that we’re too much for Liz to cope with and this is her way of introducing the idea of us moving on to someone else.  So the concept of testing her with our trust, went flying out the window.  Again, I know that she hasn’t said that she’s going anywhere…  It’s just our damaged perception of what happened.

Problem is, our damaged perception seems very real right now.

I’ve just come from an appointment with Jo.  Jo is a physically similar to us in many ways, which made it hard when we walked in today and found her with her arm in a sling, a foot brace on her right foot, bruises on her arms and a black eye.  We were already a little fragile, but that sent us over the edge.  It was impossible to stop transferring her injuries to how it was with us when we were with the husband.  She assured us that she had been hurt in a fall caused by her wearing high heels which she was unfamiliar with…  But inside the young ones were screaming that someone had pushed her.  Even after further assurance, they still didn’t believe her – we used to make excuses and say that the bruises were for all sorts of reasons.

We couldn’t cope with her in all of the bandages, so blocked her from our vision.  When we get particularly stressed about something visual, that object becomes blurred in our vision.  So Jo became a dark blur in the upper left corner, of what became a narrower and narrower field of vision.  We had to leave, we couldn’t stay.  We were dissociating and switching all over the place.  M was trying to bring a sense of calm to the system by blocking out and stamping down the memories again, but it was too late… the memories were triggered and running rampant.

We felt so guilty for making her injuries about us and our triggers.  We were worried for her, but the overwhelming message came about us being hurt.  Feeling so pathetic and weak for not showing someone the care that they needed.

We’re now sitting at work freaking… we usually wear our headphones and listen to music when we’re like this, but each time the cords touch our neck we’re triggered into thinking his hands are around our neck again.  We can’t stop shaking and jumping at each sound or flash of light.  Only four more hours before we can go home to the safety of the house…

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Now playing: Brooke Fraser – Lifeline
via FoxyTunes

I’ve noticed over the last week that we’ve moved from a state of denial to one of superficial happiness and coping.  I’m not sure which is worse.  Both of these states allow me to block out the chaos caused by some of our negative actions and allow me to get through the day at work without too much trouble…

The ex-husbands birthday is less than a week away.  To understand what that day meant to us in the past, read this potentially triggering post we did last year at about this time.  I know we’re nearly a year gone with no interaction from him, but the memories are still very fresh.  What’s been interesting is that we’ve been remembering more of the good times as well as the bad – he could make us laugh and smile…  Sometimes the two are blending in our memory, so they’re flicking from him laughing to him hurting us almost seamlessly.

Hating anniversaries… hating this depersonalised functioning…

Two good things from this week:

1. ACC have approved 20 sessions with Liz (yippee!!)
2. We got an “Excellent” rating on our job performance review.  This is surprising considering that we hate the job – we even said so in the review.  But, we have specialised skills that the library needs, so they want us to get a bonus for retention purposes.

Last week I knew that I was going to talk to Liz about denial.  In many ways I see my denial as attention seeking – like I’m wanting Liz (or whomever) to say “of course it happened” or “you’re right, it didn’t happen and you’re just attention seeking”.  It feels manipulative to be in denial, like I’m playing games.  But then, when I’m in the denial, it seems as if I’m playing games when I say that the abuse happened.  It’s an awful place to be in.  You have the clarity to see your actions in the past and you judge those actions, every word or behaviour is analysed and destroyed.  As a perfectionist, I’m my own worst critic, so nothing is spared.

Liz questioned me as to why this was happening now, when 2 weeks ago I said that I needed to turn and face the past, instead of continuing to run from it.  I’m not sure of the answer to that question.  I think it is partly due to the stress that I’m faced with – wedding anniversary, disastrous visit from my mother, yearly performance review at work, etc.  Objectively I understand that I may be stressed and this is what has caused the denial/lock-down, but I don’t get any sense of being stressed.  When I’m like this I don’t feel much of anything, sort of like I’m on auto-pilot.

In order to sort through some of the issues, Liz said that I needed to try and re-frame the anniversary into a new context as a way of trying to move forward.  We were nearly out of session time, so this was very much a passing comment.  I know what she means, but this year it was impossible to do.  I’m not aware of any real reaction, other than losing great chunks of time.

I almost broke through the denial yesterday by listening to Beethoven’s Grosse Fugue, but it didn’t last.  As it’s a long weekend in New Zealand, I’m not seeing Liz this week.  Possibly the wrong time to have an interruption in sessions, but it couldn’t be avoided.

I’m dreading looking at the dissociative walls again – whether it be to knock them down, or to reinforce that they never existed to begin with.  I know that this is not a positive place to be in, but I’m not sure how to move beyond it.  I also know that living like this is full of contradictions…  How can I be losing chunks of time and not be dissociative?  How can I have no personal history beyond newspaper headlines and not be dissociative?  It’s confusing and yet meaningless all at once, for when I’m like this, I only live in the present moment with headlines as reminders of what I need to do.

It feels very odd and very normal all at once.

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Now playing: Sting – Fields of Gold
via FoxyTunes

Please note that this entry may trigger.

“Are you safe?”

This is the question I’m often asked by a friend who knows the extent of my self-injury.  I often hesitate in answering, not because I don’t want to answer, but because I don’t really know what “safe” means.  When you’re a survivor of abuse, your goalposts surrounding the concept of safety often shift – it could be that “safe” becomes not being physically assaulted, but still experiencing psychological abuse.  This is what most of my marriage was like.  He rarely hit me, so I thought I was “safe”.  This sort of understanding ignores the broader definition of safety as being secure from danger, harm, or evil.  Many survivors wouldn’t know what that sort of security means or feels like.

It was interesting when I was asked this question today, I hadn’t been safe over the weekend and I realised that I didn’t particularly care.  This isn’t because I’m suicidal or tied to a feeling of deserving the self-injury, but because I don’t have any sense of it being negative or being “me”.  Up until last week I was actively trying to work through the self-injury so that I knew what had triggered it and could potentially prevent it in the future.  That’s all changed.  I’m no longer worried about preventing it, because I don’t have any sense of it impacting on me in any way.  I know this is a dissociative event and compartmentalisation, but I can’t move beyond that knowledge into any solid concept of it doing harm.  I know that this is probably tied to the denial that I’m currently experiencing, but I don’t get a sense of needing to move beyond that denial.  This all could also be contributed to ACC still not approving any further sessions with Liz, I’m not sure.  I know that this is a potentially dangerous place to be in, but it also has it’s benefits.  I’m moving back to my high functioning at work, I’m enrolling for another qualification and am getting back to exercising regularly.  This is close to my functioning during the middle years of my relationship with my ex-husband, when I was considered high-functioning and an asset.

I’m not sure of what to make of it all and I get a sense that I don’t want to analyse it.  All I know is that the screaming inside my head has gone.  Everything is back in the boxes behind the wall.  I don’t even get a sense of that having occurring,  I just get a sense that this is what has happened.  It’s both confusing and totally clear at the same time.  When I saw Liz on Monday, I mentioned the denial and she responded that I wasn’t wanting to look at the past.  But I don’t have any sense of the past, I don’t need it or want it.  All I have a sense of, is my life becoming a tickable list of things to do – mow the lawns, check FaceBook, go to bed and read for an hour, etc.

Not quite sure what is happening, or how long it will last.  But it’s an easier life than the one filled with anxiety, flashbacks and suicidal ideation.

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Now playing: Brooke Fraser – Lifeline
via FoxyTunes