Week 28 - 2014-04-27 Sun.

2014-04-27 Sun.

When we, people in general, are young we need a stable environment. From birth to roughly five or six life is nothing but change from a child’s perspective. We are learning constantly at a very accelerated pace or maybe it’s that out learning slows as we age. Parental attention, supervision, and rules change with age. We need constants to balance these thing out.

My mother was emotionally absent most of the time, this is change/ inconsistency. My father was never there emotionally and his moods went from neutral to bad, at least when it came to me. Fortunately he wasn’t around most of the time, though this is another change/inconsistency.

When I was 18 I had lived in eighteen different places in Maine Mass., Fla., NH, Indiana, and DC. From 6 to 15 I had lived in eight different places and I lived in one of them for two years. Even military kids don’t move that often and when they move they still have the military.

For trauma people who lived in one place through their childhood the inconsistencies and insanity of home life versus life outside the home are enough to create the same effect. We, people, are born with a need for stability and safety.

So ask yourself Why Change. I’m no longer in that environment. I live very well for my needs on disability. My environment is very stable. I need to change Cause He Almost Never Got Enough.

I got enough to keep me alive. My mother gave me enough love that I know what love is. Though she is one of two people in my life now that I could say I really love. My friend, yes one real friend, lives in Chicago. We met when I was 16 and she moved away when I was 27. I’m now 58 and we have managed to stay in touch all of this time. When she left we probably wouldn’t have said we loved each other, now we do.

I need more people in my life but, that requires change. Change I know I need but, I still fight unconsciously. The only real attachments I have are my mother, my friend, my therapist, and my computers. That order is always changing, another thing I need to change.

Week 27 - 2014-04-22 Tue.

I didn't write anything last week so I'm going to fill this space with some of my stuff from expressive therapy, both pictures and writing.  Some of these I'm just going to paste in scans of what I wrote or drew others need to be typed or I typed them when I wrote them.  I'm not going to make any effort to put them in date order.  In part because I can't with some of it and I don't want to.  This is my toy and I'll do it my way *¿*.

---

The writing says:

Not contained but held in place and allowed to burn.  No fuel needed, none taken away.  To be kept at a distance from myself and others as needed.

I used to get really angry about almost anything.  It's not all gone by any means but, I would say I have it under control as long as I don't stray to far from my current environment.  The idea of the picture is the brown thing at the bottom is keeping the black and blue ball of anger floating in place.  The anger is so intense it's creating the flames and this can not be allowed to touch the ground. The reason I added the “as needed." is because sometimes we should be angry and I know I shouldn't cut it out completely. The smudge in the lower left corner is a tree growing on a rocky hill. I doodled in the corner of almost all of the pages while we were being given instructions and sometimes during the art making time and the discussion time.

---

a sense of validation

remove my blocks let some of the stuff

escape

it's far to easy to turn off

That man turned me into what I am. I'm trying to live with the pain, fear, and anxiety that floods my mind whenever I open up to what's inside of me.

I need to let some of this stuff out. This is What gets in the way whenever I let out any emotion. Why am I afraid of love and hate, afraid of being myself.

I want out, out of promises, out of the feeling of guilt. I need out of guilt, I need to feel that others can and do believe me and are willing to work with my raw emotions, and that I'm not looking for attention I need to be able to believe in others even when what they say hurts.

The man was my father I climbed between the tub and the wall wall one night. He didn't get me that night.

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This one is from 2005-03-21 and in all honesty I can't tell you anything about it. Though I can tell you I enjoyed doing it. It was calming which was good because I couldn't do whatever the project was suppose to be.

For me a lot of drawing is texture how the pencil feels on the paper and the texture of the picture it's self. I think that that dark patch was meant to be something like a lava flow. It's not how I draw plants or water.

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What's in the way of my emotional growth?

Some of the problem in never having learned that emotions are all about. And some of it is only having one place where I feel that it's alright to deal with my emotions.

When I do feel I tend to get "little", meaning, I tend to behave like a small child. There are some obvious draw backs to this but, it seems to be the only way I can stay in touch with what I'm feeling.

I know what difficulties this can present. However, I think that with the understanding that can come with knowing what I feel I will be able to? I will be able to stay grown up and feel my feelings and act appropriately with them. I lack the understanding of what I feel and the knowledge of how to act with my feelings.

Let go of the logical

Let go of the physical

The let go of logic makes a certain amount of sense to me since I tend to be overly cognitive. I think the let go of the physical means the physical world around me. I'm very hypervigilant and have ADD so I'm constantly doing, watching, and hearing. The only time I'm not in motion is when I read. Though I have been reading and thinking something entirely different at the same time. What I mean is while my eyes are scanning the page and I'm taking in the information a second part of my mind is talking to it's self.

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To bring all of them together without blending. Being able to go from "Rage" to "Calm" without having to treat emotions as a color spectrum.

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I keep splitting my cognitive from my emotional.

I split my emotions into individual parts or become anxious when I have more than one emotion.

I speak of cognitive and emotional states in the second or third person.

---

This is another anger thing. War in my head. Body burning up. Chain to keep me together.

---

      Lost in space and time, not knowing what to do or where to be. Confusion setting in. Aahhh I don't know what to do. Why can't I just do this simple thing. I know what it is I need but, I'm lost in this stupid song.

      So maybe I should just write the words down and see if I can find a direction to follow. No that's not the topic.

      Okay so maybe I can just write what's going on in my head. That's it I can dialog about how hard it can be to think of the constructive tools I can use to help calm myself down.

      Oh ho I think I've been doing what I'm trying to figure out...

---

I added this last one after I had decided to quite because it ends on a positive note. However, sometimes one of the quickest ways I get depressed is reading about what to do to get me better. I know what to do when I'm feeling bad but, I have a hard time doing it sometimes. Going through this stuff is kind of the same thing because it's trying to figure out what I'm going through and how to deal with it. So since it's starting to get to me I'm going to leave it where it is.

Week 26 - 2014-04-15 Tue.

2014-04-15 Tue.

Well I just erased the first quarter of a page not thinking of what I was doing. The first step of my three steps. Pay attention! Oh well. so what had I written? I don't really know enough to replicate it but I run it down.

I'm still in my not funk. Some of this is because I have to put in extensions for Pat's taxes again for the third year in a row. My own fault for not telling TIAA-CREF that Pat moved to Maryland. No beating myself over the head for this one.

I'm still watching a lot of video for all of me.

Though comedy to a very large extent is something I just don't understand. I get jokes, even understand funny real life stories. It's probably that I don't understand making TV shows or movies about such things. Though I do laugh at a lot of the humor the whole thing leaves me kind of hollow.

I think in part I started writing through a bit of guilt over not writing at all over the past week. And the week when Jeanne wasn't here on Friday. I basically did Pat's taxes (and finished them) on Friday to take my mind off of the fact that Jeanne wasn't here. Not necessarily the best tactic I suppose but it works for me. I guess adding it all together makes it easier to deal with than spreading it out.

I'm sure that having to deal with Pat's taxes is part of the reason I haven't gotten over the funk yet also.

So now I covered everything I erased and some, and I have about the same amount of text as I did before.

On Saturday someone on Trauma and Dissociation (Google+ Community) wrote, "I am feeling disoriented today." To which I replied. "What I do is take the day off as much as possible. Remember it's not procrastination in this case if you need the space." This is one of those things I figured out, or at reasoned to be true a long time ago.

This is the twenty-sixth week, I've been writing for half a year for the second time in my life. *¿*

Week 25 - 2014-04-08 Tue.

2014-04-08 Tue.

This is the third time I started to write this week. I still don't know what to write. I've been in a weird state of mind. Not bad just different. I think I could be considered to be in a kind of mental state of shock. I've been watching a bunch of different kinds of video for many hours hours every since last Thursday. Maybe that should even be last Wednesday. I think that finally getting off the list for Jury Duty has a lot to do with it.

Maybe I'm still in a depressed state but in a depersonalized way. My sleep and eating is still off but, I don't feel it. In retrospect even some of my good feeling on Thursday may have been hysterical. I'm not sure I can tell. I don't/haven't felt bummed out.

On Friday I told Jeanie I was taking the day off. She laugh, meaning this was kind of silly/stupid since I take every day off. This isn't the same thing to her as it is to me. Though she did notice I was feeling better. I do work most days. Just not what most people call work. It is hard work to be me, almost every day, just to be here.

Some days I think to myself, "I could go to work, I could be a Hack." that's cabby to most people. Then I say "Right! How long would I last before I quit or got canned either because of customer complaints about my driving my driving, or from my lack of driving." I really don't have any idea which would come first. I might (maybe) be able to go a week without having to take time off. As for my driving. I can't drive slow, at 25 mph I feel like I could walk faster. I get other ideas for getting a job and while the results of my success at keeping them have a longer time frame they never seem to last longer than six months. I can't imagine ever having a job for a year again.

So what do I do that I think of as work? The most obvious thing I do that others would think of as work is programming. In truth I do very little of this. While I have thought about my TM_Notes program fairly often since I last worked on it I haven't done any work on it since January. If I could get myself to write what I think about any number of things, social, psychological, political, money, software, hardware and others, I could possibly make some money at them. (I'm too much of a perfectionist.) I play with software though most of my reviews wouldn't make it into a magazine because I don't go into great depth. I write about what the avarage user might use and I tend to go off an tangents about some issues about particular parts while all but ignoring others. Also I write like I talk. While this is novel and to some refreshing, it's not what I see when I read these kind of things. Though my lack of or explanation of tech talk could be seen as a real plus. I'd like to get some feed back on this sometime from someone other than a therapist or close friend.

I keep myself busy reading and watching video. I have no idea of what others think of what I have to say bout these. My step father, who was a well known writer, was book critic for a while. He brought home a book one time that I read. I later told him I thought it was a really good 150 page novel written in 300 pages. This is not to say that I didn't like the book I did. However, you could tell the writer was getting paid by the word. My step father agreed with me, though he would never have said so in print. He has also agreed with me on other comments I have made about these things he has written about. He also liked my tech writing. So I have some bases for thinking I have a little talent in these areas.

I make, or think of things to make. All likes of things. An umbrella I strapped to my back so I could read while walking in the rain. I've never seen any but there are five patents on the idea. I modified a crutch to hold my umbrella while not in use. (I prefer a crutch to a cane.) I also made a couple of bags to hang on my crutch. One of which was three layers thick the middle lining was plastic so the contents didn't get wet in the rain. I invented a frame work for winterizing old windows. Even a set of macramé straps to hook my big cup to my backpack strap so I wouldn't have to carry it in my hand.

Other than this I think a lot. Sometimes I think too much on things I shouldn't. Everyone does, sometimes though. So I don't go too hard on myself most of the time.

I've been following an interesting thread on line.

Nem Changsan

Extended circles - Apr 6, 2014

Liv Laffluve originally shared:

16 comments

James L. Smith

Apr 6, 2014

The West looks at Depression as an illness. The Freinch call is misery normale. In the east they think it's something to learn from and move through, nothing is permanent. I've even heard depression called "Pride in Reverse". Many thanks.

Nem Changsan

Apr 6, 2014

+James L. Smith WOW...that's the coolest thing i learn today. Many thanks for the input James :)

James L. Smith

Apr 6, 2014

Wordup homegirl. Ha ha ha. Have too much fun.

Simran Mann

Apr 6, 2014

Like the post very much :)

Vish Thakur

Apr 6, 2014

Good post.

graeme russell ellis

Apr 6, 2014

At least some people realize it exists :)

Robin E. Douglas

Apr 6, 2014

+graeme russell ellis rather than realizing Depression exists. I think most people don't want to realize or deal with depression. Because it can be such a heavy burden.

James L. Smith

Yesterday 2:18 AM

I'm depressed right now. I can't be bothered with anything. I'm just checking out the comments. I can't cope with people or music or t.v. or any stimulus at all. All I can do is wait for it to pass and, it eventually will. Many thanks.

graeme russell ellis

Yesterday 3:47 AM

+James L. Smith I hear ya I dont watch tv for that very reason .......it will pass man

James L. Smith

Yesterday 3:51 AM

+graeme russell ellis thanks

It's already improving. Your comment came at just the right time. God bless you man, James.

graeme russell ellis

Yesterday 8:39 AM

+James L. Smith we share the black dog man I understand am afflicted too !

James L. Smith

Yesterday 8:45 AM

+graeme russell ellis wordup brother.

Robin E. Douglas

Yesterday 10:23 AM

+James L. Smith I to carry this burden alone all to often.

James L. Smith

Yesterday 10:28 AM

We all do. Don't bother trying to cure it. Just be still and let it pass. When you find peace in depression your released from it. It's objective is to have you alone, in the Foeatel (fetal?) position, crying, talking to no one. Don't let it win. Bless. James.

graeme russell ellis

Yesterday 5:10 PM

+James L. Smith so true if you accept it ......better in the end........everyday have a level of it nothing can do just move forward.......some days are worse than others

Nem Changsan

3:05 AM

Oooh looks like i miss a party :(

Robin E. Douglas

9:55 AM

+Nem Changsan you've missed a non-pity party. +James L. Smith I go for this also, to a point. Depression will suck away my outer awareness. This can be dangerous. It's also Very weird as I have a bad case of hypervigilance. I do watch these things but there are times I do have to go out.

This is an interesting take on depression.

To think I started this because I was feeling bad about not writing this week and I wrote a whole page without even trying. Guess it just shows what you can do when you don't think about it.

I found this great thing on the Trauma and Dissociation Project Google+ page.

Kallena Kucers

5:53 AM

OK - can't resist sharing this (though it's not 'formal research') I LOVE it as it's both hysterically funny and also (in my view!) very very accurate (George Atwood is a well-known theorist, writer and clinician and one of the people who have contributed most to the development of inter-subjective systems theory. Apparently this came to him in a dream):

http://www.georgeatwood.com/men-on-hooks.html

It is well worth the read.  Funny!

I haven't been on Google+ very much this past week. Enough too take care of my e-mail kinds of things but, not hunting through other stuff as much. Though I did copy a forty-four page thread on DID. That was a lot of work because of the way it copied. I haven't read it all yet. it's very technical and a bit depressing. The reason for copying it as I said in the thread:

Robin E. Douglas

Apr 3, 2014

Hi all, I've been following this thread off and on. I have made a copy of it for myself so I can really read it and I thought some of you might like a copy.

I'm not DID but I definitely dissociate. For me it's more like there are three of us who are totally co-conscious. Sometimes it's almost like there is a fourth who comes out two or three times an years and freaks out sending my stress levels through the ceiling.

Anyway, reading this stuff helps me understand myself better. I'm going to keep coping it for myself. As it is I have 43 pages which could take me several days to get through.

Actually I've only read the first seven or eight pages. I'll finish it though.

I'm running out of things to say. Bye bye.

Week 24 - 2014-03-26 Wed.

2014-03-26 Wed.

How do you armor yourself to deal with stress. I can float the idea of trying to deal with stress but this has the disadvantage keeping stress on my mind. Kind of counter-productive.

2014-03-28 Fri.

OK that was a long wait for the end of a thought. Life does that sometimes.

The counter-productive part is most of the time I find I find thinking about stress can cause it to linger. If could see stress like I do physical pain this might be good. I would just immerse myself in it and normalize it. Unfortunately this doesn't work with psychological states. With physical the immersion dissipates the sensation through my body. I don't know how to to dissipate stress or depression. However this works great if I'm feeling good.

Jeanne said today that some people talk of "personifying" things like stress and anxiety. I have Little and 12 year old. This is worth a try. Stress and anxiety are pretty much the physical and emotional aspects, respectively, of the same thing. I need to capture the anxiety in a way that I can give it some kind of a personality, or at least a primitive personality. Most of this is in Little's domain. Though 12 year old s quite precocious he (12 year old is a boy) seems to have a better balance of emotion and cognition. However I don't yet have a solid connection with him.

While 12 year old has I'm sure been around for many years (30 or more), I only became truly aware of him in late 2008. When Karin started bitching about him. However, between his intelligence and his emotional capabilities he might be the better place to start. Maybe I can find a way of using both of them together at least to start with. Little has a way of dealing stress and anxiety that is different and in this case her talents might not be the best avenue since she tends not ignore but, displace or, in a way, disperse the "harder" emotions.

To change the subject for minute or two or twenty. I just got an connector for Andi (the android) that allows me to connect a mouse to it. This is really nice I don't have to worry about the accuracy of the stylus anymore. It's very handy here when I'm writing because I can use the menus and such even faster. It even interfaces with the on-screen keyboard. I can use double-clicks and right-clicks to open and close the the keyboard and even use it to click on the keyboard if for some reason I don't want to type. Pretty cool huh. The only drawback to it is that I have to unplug it to charge the battery. One last thing to test whether I can use it with my Logitech mouse keyboard combo. That would be super. It works I'm now typing on a full size keyboard. this makes working at home much easier than it was before. I now, kind of, have a eight inch laptop. Even more so than before. Well back to the real world now. Not that I'm saying this isn't real. It is and it's really nice to. I should have done this before.

Little's abilities have a draw back, I don't know what it is she does. As an adult with my limited emotional abilities I'm not sure I'll be able to figure it out without my two little friends (me) working together.. I wonder if this is what integration is like.

It reminds me of a day at The Center I was trying to figure this stuff out and talking and asking question about DID. One woman asked what I was going on about and another said "Oh it just Bobbie trying to be DID again." The separation can be so great sometimes. It is like having two people in my head. Granted this is less so now that I know what is going on but...

Another draw back to doing it could be that I will be trying to split myself into more people in a manner of speaking. Looking for the parts that hold the stress and/or anxiety. Are there more parts to me or is it just that Big me doesn't know how to deal with this stuff so I sub/unconsciously stuff it. To paraphrase an old adage; "Be careful of what you go looking for you just might create it."

I think for starters I try and figure if I can slow the Little down enough so that I can see what she is doing and try writing about what is going on when my leg starts going. Like it is now.

I kind of just noticed that my leg "all of a sudden" started going crazy. Also my stomach acid started to get real bad but, this could be because I'm drinking peach tea with cranberry juice, and I had some chocolate earlier and my stomach is basically empty by now. So I just made some diner.

What I've been doing is writing. Yes this stirs things up but, not normally quite so much or not so suddenly. I have been trying to analysis what's going on too. Yet it doesn't to fit the facts. I don't really feel anything that would seem to cause this. Little's not around right now but she rarely is when I write unless it's something like writing about the mouse and keyboard. Those kinds of things are fun. This is more like big people talk which for the most part she has little interest in. Like most little kids she'd rather play.

2014-03-29 Sat.

I've been having fun today. I rooted Andi (I decided this Android should be female). Then I found some neat new programs that only work on rooted devices. One of them "freezes" programs so they don't work or show up in program lists. I finally got rid of Google Play Music!!!!! Can you tell I'm happy?

Therapy time. My leg started going almost as soon as I started to write. I didn't even intend to write any therapy stuff. It's 23:40 and I'm getting tired. Well that's all I just needed to note this down. G-night.

2014-03-30 Sun.

I'm just lying here doing nothing. I don't want to read because I'll probably just fall asleep. Not that I don't necessarily need some. I was probably out by 24:00. At 3:30 I woke up went to the bathroom. I saw 3:30 on the clock as I closed my eyes. Next thing I know it's 3:56 and I'm pretty close to being totally awake. The rest of the night was on and off. Almost like a kid playing with a light switch irregular but, never in one state for very long.

I think I will try reading for a while I've just had a head ache start up.

2014-03-31 Mon.

Almost as soon as I came out of my book my leg started going off.

I don't want to be doing things. I feel like I’m on overload. I'm bored with Google+. It's not what I want. I don't know what I want.

2014-04-04 Tue.

The world is like a bed of rose petals and I feel as if I'm lying on a cloud of bliss. This is a stupid April Fools joke. Just had to make one.

It's Spring isn't it. Twice a year usually in the Spring and Fall I get like this. "I don't want to do anything." "The world sucks." "Why can't I just die and get it over with." I don't know why this happens. I can't think of anything that happened in either Spring or Fall that didn't happen all the rest of the time.

Sally once guessed that it might be because we moved every year in the Spring or Fall. Well it was more like early and late Summer but, there might be something to it. Yet, I know there is more.

My Ritalin didn't bother me today like it has been. This is a good sign.