Dear Drama

Dear Drama,

It seems that for quite some time now you and I have had this love/hate thing going on. I hated having you around, but used you without even realizing it. That's right, I used you. I used you to test people, to see who cared enough about me to respond, or save me from YOU, from the drama. Sometimes, I even created you so that I could later use you. So many of my relationships have been based on how people responded to you drama. Not to me as a person, but you drama. When others in my life did not see you the way I did, I assume that I meant so little to them that they could not be bothered by my crisis. I wanted to be important enough to someone, anyone, that they would drop everything in order to come to my rescue. If they did not, I would create MORE of you, drama, in an attempt to get them to notice. At times becoming so desperate that I would scream, yell, and throw things. Sometimes I would try to bribe people with whatever I thought I had to offer. Often pitting one relationship in my life against another.  When that failed, I turned on myself. Becoming increasingly self destructive until I finally reached the point of no return.

I did not see you clearly. I did not know much I was held captive by you. I would say over and over, how you had no place in my life. I said how I hated you. How I was tired of you. How I did not want you around, but then time and time again I pulled you back into my life. Whipping you into scenario, after scenario, not understanding how much I needed you, or why I needed you. But now, now I see you more clearly than ever before, and I am making a choice to begin using you less and using myself more. I do not need you to make people see me, help me, love me. I need me. More than anything I need me. I need to worry less about being important to other people, and more about being important to myself. I need to stop hiding behind drama, and crises to get people to notice me. I need to be noticed for me, for my talent, my creativity, my sense of humor, my kindness.

That said, drama, I think we have reached the end of the line you and I. I know our paths will continue to cross from time to time, but I can no longer have you as my main coping mechanism. It's just not working any more, and I have to take control of my life now while I still can. I need to take control of my interactions with the people in my life now. We will meet from time to time, and I will not pretend not to know you. I will acknowledge you. I will appreciate the challenge you are bringing to me, and I will use it as an opportunity for growth, instead of a chance to test those who love me. I will make peace with you, and in doing so I will make peace with myself, and with those who love me. That is all.

Laur

Ok Anger Just You & Me

This is the article from my last blog. Lets see how this goes.

 

What Is Anger Trying To Tell You About Your Life?

By Gabrielle Gawne-Kelnar
 (LOVE the Pic)
Anger. It’s got a pretty bad reputation. And we’re often told what to do with it: be careful with it. Suppress it. Vent it. Override it. It’s like anger’s some kind of volatile, toxic force to be harnessed or defused.
But maybe there’s another way of looking at it altogether.
Maybe you can actually learn from anger. Listen to it. See what it has to tell you. Get curious about it.
The sticker in the photo (above), in a cleverly vandalised train carriage I travelled in recently, has another suggestion for how to respond to anger:

“If anger is present
rove to another age”

So let’s take another look at anger for a moment.

When was the last time you felt angry? Well last night Seething. Really hot and bothered. Maybe you were even having those pretend conversations in your mind with the other person (your “enemy” for that moment), setting them straight with devastating wit or eloquence.
Remember that? Very Clearly
And now, instead of being drawn down into the detail of whatever lit your fury at the time, just try sort of stepping back for a second. See what happens if you ask yourself something like:

• What’s this anger trying to tell me? That I am completely overwhelmed and exhausted by this situation? And I am scared.
• Or what’s missing in this picture for me? A sense of feeling important, appreciated. A sense that my needs and feelings are AS important as the rest of my family, and a sense of safety. I think the 2 go hand in hand for me.
• What would resolve this for me – and why? To hear some supportive loving words, because I am working very hard to make sure EVERYONE else is making this transition as smoothly as possible, but no one sees that.
• What do I actually need right now? Love and support. A place to feel safe. No angry words.
• What’s this really about for me? For me it is often about not feeling validated, important, or seen. I really want Chuck to just see how hard I am trying and how much I am struggling right now.

And, as the sticker suggests, maybe another good query to ask is:
How old am I right now? What age do I feel inside?
For maybe your anger isn’t just about this one isolated event. Maybe it relates back to a specific incident, or a whole string of them, that you previously experienced. Or a pattern of some kind that started decades ago. Or maybe it’s simply exposing or tapping-into the vulnerability or hurt or lack of control you may have felt when you were young.
So what age are you in the heat of the moment? Hummmm...Last night I would have to say I did well and stayed in my 30's. Walking away and or tell Chuck to leave me alone rather than throwing a fit. Earlier this week I was clearly a 5 year old throwing a temper tantrum.
And what psychological or emotional age might put you in the best position to start resolving this problem? Would you be older? Younger? Younger Maybe it’s possible to consciously “rove to another age” and draw on things like your adult negotiating skills, your experience of self-soothing, and your fully-grown sense of agency and personal power. Or maybe you want to invite a younger sense of play. I need to have an inter sense of self importance and self love to draw from in moments when I feel others are paying me lip service. I will never be heard if I am screaming at the top of my lungs the way I will be heard if I am calm and patient. I need to feel like I am safe from angry, hurtful words, but I must also then stop using them myself. (easier said then done)
Of course, it can be a big ask to do any of this stuff in the heat of the moment. So it can also be worth coming back to that moment again later. To do some investigating after the fact. To practice.
So that next time anger’s upon you, you’ll have a better chance of really choosing your response – a response that brings you closer to resolving what hurt you in the first place – rather than just being captive to a knee-jerk reaction that often just keeps the damage going.
And maybe that’s another vital lesson which anger can remind us of – that we have choice. Right there, when all your buttons are being pushed, is exactly the time that something you really value is usually centre stage. So, in a way, anger is like a signpost, pointing directly to the moments, the values, that matter most to you. A signpost reminding you of your choices.
And, if you can learn to really see anger like that, with all its invitations and lessons, it’s actually a pretty amazing thing – at any age Pretty amazing way to look at it. In order to view anger in this way, I think you must first have a greater amount of mindfulness of emotion over all then what most people have. You must be able to KNOW your buttons are being pushed and begin to separate yourself from the emotion of the moment. Perhaps that is more possible the farther away from the angry moment you get, but i think most people automatically switch in to "old brain" or "fight or flight mode" when their values or safety is threatened. So how does one cope with that? How does one fight through that old brain thought pattern in order to start a new pattern? THAT is what I need to find now. Plus, everyone feels anger. Like I said I feel it is more what you DO with that anger that makes a difference in your life. So what is my release? How do I not let that angry build inside me?

Ok below are the texts I later sent to Chuck explaining the way I was truly feeling without the hurt and anger:
 I am not trying to fight here honestly
That is the last thing I want, but there is stuff going on with u that u can't see clearly right now
I am worried
U r not urself and maybe its the meds I don't know but
Remind me of an injured animal who is scared and lashing out trying to protect itself
I don't know how to keep myself together
It reminds me of the last time I ask u to go to your sister's and I am really scared
Really scared

So that was the truth. The truth is Chuck and I have been through A LOT and we have not always handled it well. Some times the Adderall makes him more aggressive, and some times my feelings get hurt by his straight forward nature. Sometimes his feelings get hurt by my sarcasm, and this has lead to some pretty explosive fights. And because I have been emotionally abused in the past, that is always where my mind goes. I am always fighting to make my importance known, and so is he, which makes us less visible to each other. Each of us willing to push just a little harder to get the other to notice, eventually someone pushes too hard. Each time that happens we ware away a little more trust, making the breaking point that much closer with each fight, and making it that much harder to back down, back up, and repair with each fight. So I guess the "sign" my anger was pointing to was self value and how I need to find some before I can expect to have value to others. I'm sorry Chuck. I hear you Honey.

AHHHHHHHHHHH I AM ANGRY

I realized yesterday that much of my life, and mood lately has been based on anger. As has much of Chucks. Not even angry with each other, though there has been some of that, but anger at his ex, anger at the situation, and anger at the "unfairness" of life. Yesterday I sent 16 text messages in a 10 minute time spand to my BFF. All of them in tirade form. Here are a few snippits (please keep in mind, especially if you are Chuck that I was venting to a friend)

My comments About Chuck:

 Omg! Omg! Omg! They took chuck off his meds and I am ready to kill him! My dog 
hit her head and there is blood on it

We ran out of gas this morning on the way to work. Then he was late picking me 
up and I am STILL not sure y he had to drive me in the 1st place

 I walk in the house all 3 of them talking at once and I ask chuck why the front 
door is unlocked and he says "here honey come in here"

So I go in the kitchen and he says " let me help u out. Here ya go" and hands me a frying pan

 I think he was joking but I nearly kicked his ass

My comments about Chuck's ex:

I am so fucking sick of thinking about this woman

So fucking sick of hearing about her

So fucking sick of debating what's wrong w/ her

Where is she? What is she doing? Is she high?

What did she do to the kids?
 
Since chuck and I met off and on over and over
 
Well now girly is safe so who fucking cares what she does? Where she is? Y does 
this still effect MY day to day?
 
 
While I am not the kinda girl who is afraid to throw the occasional f bomb,
I would not consider myself the kinda gal who curses like a sailor. Yet
 I am finding that word entering my vocabulary more and more. No other 
word seems to allow me to express exactly HOW agitated I am, truly.
Between the Adderall, the actual 
stress of the situation, and his PTSD Chuck is...well...last night I 
compared him to an injured animal that has been backed into a corner. He
 is defensive, and scared all the time. It makes it hard to talk to him 
reason with him, and knowing he is already feeling upset, I don't want 
to then dump all my angry feelings on top of his. He is switching to 
Ritalin today, and we are hoping that helps lessen the aggression and 
agitation he is experiencing, as well as, bring down his overall anxiety level. We have seen a difference as he has tapered hid dose down.

Now I believe that there is more 
than one type of anger. There is the type that pushes you, moves you to 
do more, make changes, move forward, grow. It is warranted, it is 
legitimate. It motivates you make the world, your world better. It 
empowers you. Then there is the type of anger that holds you down, 
weighs on you, and keeps you stuck in a continuing downward spiral. This may start as legitimate, but then take on a life of its own. This anger is locked inside you burning, eating away at you. So the question becomes what will you do with your anger? This
 is what I struggle with the most. I am so convinced from my past 
experiences that I have no voice, that no one care, and that my feelings
 don't matter that I don't know what to do with intense feelings when I 
have them. That in and of itself makes me angry and I begin to fester, 
until my mind and body can no longer subdue it and I explode, but then I
 just feel ashamed, out of control, and crazy. And on top of that 
whomever I am angry with, will never hear me when I am screaming and out
 of control, making whatever legitimate hurt they may have caused 
secondary to my current actions, which in turn (at least in my slightly 
maladjusted thought process) re-enforces to me that my feelings are 
unheard, illegitimate. Now I am stuck. While, in the beginning I may 
have been trying to use the anger to move myself forward, I have now 
made it into a my own downfall. 
Today I found this blog/ article on
 PsychCentral, complete with a link to a page of questions to help 
change the way you look at anger in your life.

Therapist-within learning from anger

To Ben and Jerry's or NOT to Ben and Jerry's

Let's just put it out there, right out in the open. I am having a bit of trouble dealing with my current stress level, and in an attempt to lessen the spinning in my brain I find myself doing things I would have otherwise had more self control over. Like for example, I don't drink much maybe a few drinks every two weeks or so. Though recently I have noticed that when I do drink, it is a few more drinks than usual. A few weekends ago not only did I have a few more drinks than usual, but I also had my first cigarette in like 10 years. Just one, and it took me like 4 days to erase the taste from my mouth, but I had refused to allow myself even one for years out of fear that would start me down a slippery slope. Thankfully it did not, and of course my no, or limited coffee intake....RIGHT out the window! I am averaging 3 or more cups a day. Clearly not helpful in the shaking, panic attack anxiety arena, but I am so exhausted I truly need something to keep from passing out at my desk. The big thing that I am struggling with, the thing that I KNOW is the biggest issue for me personally, is... stress eating!

Body image and eating in general. I seem to be on a continuous pendulum of guilt. I feel fat, unattractive, run down. I start to get down and I stop eating. After a bit of that the low blood sugar, all the caffeine, and stress in general start to kick in and I begin to get light headed, shaky, and I begin to feel like I am STARVING. After going 12 hour stretches with no, or limited food, even the convenience store seems like a festival of edible delights! Candy, cookies, sandwiches, chips, I briefly eye some fresh strawberries, but decide that I have gotten enough food (none with ANY nutritional value) and move on, but not without also getting more coffee. Then I eat EVERYTHING. All the food I bought myself, the cookie I bought Chuck, AND the cookie I bought my new "step" daughter. (She didn't eat well and was told by her daddy that she did not get a cookie. So I ate it for her.) I think at the time that I am eating ENTIRELY too much, but I justify it. In my head I tell myself, well you have been really stressed out lately. Plus, you may have PMS. It's ok. But later, I feel awful about all of it.  I have to get ready for an event with my daughter's school and I find myself hating my hair, my body, my skin, my make-up...pretty much the whole picture. Again I tell myself that I am being hyper sensative, hyper critical of myself because my depression and anxiety levels are on the rise. And so I swing, holding on to the guilt pendulum as for dear life. Stuck between candy bars and my "fat pants". I decide to make today's blog about stress and the other excuses we use to allow ourselves to treat our bodies poorly.

So I Google stress eating and what I get is a pile of images of people looking forlorn about their situation, most of them skinnier than I am, several diet books and about a hundred images of really fatty, rich, greasy food, and I think YIKES, no wonder I feel all mixed up and guilty. So what's a girl to do? Clearly, the good affects of eating the ice cream and chips is short term, not to mention not helping me to stablize my mood by keeping my blood suger and guilt levels bouncing all over the map. But when I am in the middle of dealing with a work crisis, or dealing with a screaming 4 year old who does not stand why she is suddenly living in a whole new area and house with new (or in her case some) rules to follow, that cady bar seems like something abtainable, while 10 minutes of quiet menditation seems completely out of reach. And exercise, which was helping both Chuck and me stay on top of our depression and anxiety, seems like such a luxury at this point. I am hopeful that we will all settle in and that we can begin to funtion in a healthier way once that happens, but what do we do until that? How do I get myself off this horrible ride that I know is not doing much good for my mental OR physical health. Or do I just ride it and deal with the fatness when I am able to? Chuck keeps joking that I did just have a 4 year old, and that should take it easy on myself. Probably I should take it easier on myself, but I just don't know how to get myself to do that right now.



Do Kids Come With a Reset Button?

http://mybin.wordpress.com/nature-vs-nurture-series/

Due to the living situation of Chuck's daughter, and her current diagnoses of behavioral and mental disorders, in addition to her mother and brother's mental health disorders, we have been talking quite a bit about nurture vs nature in our house recently. What elements of one's personality are innate and unchangeable, and what are coping mechanisms that stem from our environment? Of those, what can be changed by a change of environment, and what becomes innate after time? For example, it is widely believed that conditions like depression and anxiety are highly hereditary traits, but if you are depressed or anxious your in child will pick up on those emotions, your reactions, and learn from you as a role model. So by the time a child is old enough to display symptoms of either disorder, how do you determine what is a learned behavior and what is something intrinsic? Are the issues this little girl has, something she does TRULY need to be medicated for, or with a more stable, consistent, and nurturing environment, can we change her reactions, and behaviors over time? I tend to believe that your have certain traits that you are born with, and even more that are learned. In conjunction with that, you LEARN how to deal with your inherited thought processes and behaviors. For example, my anxiety, maybe inherited or learned, however, through out the years I have learned different coping mechanisms to deal with anxiety. My initial coping skills where not very health, or helpful for that matter. They involved crying, fit throwing, screaming. Then as I got old they involved more self destructive behaviors, but after some help from counselors I was able to relearn new coping skills that were healthier. Now I practice yoga, draw, blog, do some deep breathing. I still have the anxiety but I have learned to control it.

Chuck believes similarly, but he also believes that if you are traumatized or have a behavioral or mental health issue come up during brain development and you are not taught healthy coping mechanisms, that your brain will, in a sense rewire its self. Therefore something that was once learned becomes ingrained, and permanent. So a child who is not able to develop a health sleep pattern as an infant, my have permanent developmental issues and long-term sleep pattern issues. Bringing to question can you "reset" these behaviors over time, or must you simply teach your child a to cope with this? These are questions we are now studying deeply as we try to create the best atmosphere for this young girl to learn grow and develop in. How do we best help her? What does she need from the adults around her to heal and become a strong individual? How do we reduce the use of medications, and replace them with cognitive behavioral techniques? How many of her issues came from an unstable environment, a lack of guidance, a lack of attention, and how many will remain with her for a life time? What therapies will best help her? Cogitative? Play? Art? Developmental? We are prepared to try them all if we need to. Any advice is appreciated, and I will continue to share what we learn on our journey.

Dealing with an Elephant

Tonight is an especially hard night. I had a bad day at work, also a busy and exhausting day. All I wanted to do was come home to my happy little family, or at least what I thought was my happy little family. When I got home Chuck had cleaned up and had dinner made. My daughter ran out to meet me in the driveway with a hug. It seemed like just the retreat from my crazy day that I was needed. But then the tide turned and my daughter started acting crazy and testing my nerves. As soon as I got her to bed and came downstairs to finally spend some time with Chuck, the thing I was looking forward to all day, he starts in on me about the house and the dogs. Seemed as though he had been storing it up all evening...of course I get pissed and throw a loose my temper, because frankly that is what I do best. all said and done, I feel horrible and I am alone. crying.

I am thinking about my old habits of cutting, but knowing that is not an option I just crying and hoping the sleeping meds kick in soon.

The truth is I kinda saw this coming. Chuck is home a lot now that he is not working, our house is less than organized and the animals are a handful. It is hard to take care of a house, pets, dinner, and help raise a child. Lots of stay at home moms and dads will tell you that. It is normal to feel burnt out or just flat out get tired of taking care of everyone. I try to tell him over and over how grateful I am, but I know from experience, some times even that doesn't help. Likewise, it is hard to work all day then come home to all the needs of the house and family. There is a lot of pressure to make the small family company I work for...well, work. Since it is our only income currently.

Meanwhile, I have felt myself feeling less and less stable as of late. I have rages. They generally happen when I have tried all my coping mechanisms without results, and/or I am totally overwhelmed and tired (ie- my tool bag is empty). Currently, I feel all of the above. I feel myself ready to fly off the handle at any given moment. I am also finding myself feeling increasingly depressed. It is like I see the tailspin coming, but I can't seem to pull out of it. The fighting is increasing with Chuck, and my normal calm mothering style is more erratic. There is more yelling over all and it makes me feel like a horrible partner and mom. How can I expect to raise a happy healthy kid if I can't deal with my own emotions? It breaks my heart, and makes me feel more helpless and weak. What do I do? How do I regain control of my own emotional well being? I have counseling on Friday. I hope to be able to get a plan together. So far it seems all she has been able to do is help me through one crisis after another. I am tired of crisi and constant drama! Where is my little slice of happy? My mental illness makes me feel weak and cazy in the most negative sense of the word. I hope that someone is ready this blog, and I hope it is someone like me. Someone, who will suddenly feel less alone, less weak, less crazy. And even if not, I am thankful to have this blog as an outlet tonight. I way to deal with my pain that makes me feel braver & stronger.