Triggers and jobs

I could do without triggers and a job at the moment.  Life would be much simpler without them!  So far this week:

1)  30 sq.m. of office space was taken from the office at work.  This meant that the two people we get on with, have moved out of the office.  This is good for them, in that they are further away from the drama and poisonous environment that exists in the library.  But it’s really bad for us.  We’re not going to talk to people unless we’re doing a desk shift now, so our grip on reality is going to lessen.

The new wall is partially up – along with the associated noise, disruption etc.  This has caused the library staff, who were already stressed, to basically turn on each other.  Several of the woman we work with have a tendency to speak before they think.  One in particular will get upset and fly off the handle with very little provocation.  She needs to have tight control over everything and if that control is threatened, then there will be fireworks.  The problem is, that she often moans about it all to our cynical friend, who just doesn’t have the emotional reserves to cope with anything else.

2)  We carried out a major system upgrade this week.  So all week we’ve been testing different aspects of the system and how the new library catalogue will appear.  It was all going OK, until it did a false “live” status on Thursday morning.  That meant that our cynical friend got caught off-guard with an off-line upload which she knew wasn’t meant to happen, but couldn’t stop.  Then today, when we finally went live.  Suddenly it was doing weird things with the images and giving temporary location statuses which were unnecessary.  Everyone came and complained to us individually about it – like we were meant to magically fix the stupid thing.

3)  Because of factors 1 and 2 as well as her husband being told his cancer is now stage IV, our cynical friend has had several melt-downs at work – bursting into tears, having to go for a walk to calm down etc.  She wrote her resignation letter on Thursday morning while still crying her eyes out.  I managed to tell her to wait until next week to hand it in, to give herself the chance to calm down.

4)  Because of factors 1-3, we’ve been self-injuring daily.  When we talked to Liz on Monday, we had to rate the severity and regularity of our self-injury.  We rarely cut, but our self-injury ranges from the subtle to the severe and occurs daily.  That was a scary realisation.  That realisation led to another round of self-injury.  M has stated that one of our goals with Liz is to try and work on hating this body a little less – she’s thinking big picture, as she knows it won’t happen overnight.  Liz gave us a time-frame of 18 months to being better, I hope she’s right.

5)  A friend shared something positive with us, but it caused so much confusion and hurt.  Nothing they did, purely our screwed up responses to a normal situation.  The image they provided of innocence, got so caught up in our past that we couldn’t cope with it.  I got overwhelmed by the young ones screaming that the girl would be hurt.  Sometimes its really easy to believe that we’re making up events from the past, then something like that happens and it stops you in your tracks.  Why would we react that way if we were making it all up?

6)  Matthew (our American friend) has returned to prostitution.  We’re all so worried about him.  It’s his choice, but he’s hurting, is going to get hurt further and there’s nothing we can do about it.

7)  Mother is moving in with us for the month of August.  Yup, the whole month.

I know that Zombie by The Cranberries is a protest song about Northern Ireland, but many of the lyrics also are relevant to what goes on in this head – the bombs and guns are like the triggers which cause the violence, silence and crying…

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Now playing: The Cranberries – Zombie
via FoxyTunes
watch via YouTube

Raindrops

Raindrops

The ripple from each drop is similar to how each part of the system can impact on another, or be totally out of touch and isolated…

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Photos and coping

It’s been a rough week.  There’s so much happening at work that it’s just chaos.  Work is usually our anchor – it forces us to get out of the house and interact with people.  But there have been so many changes that the anchor sort of got cut free for a few days.  We walked out on a meeting on Thursday – something we’ve NEVER done before (no matter how much we’ve wanted to).  Part of the changes, are a renovation to the office space, which will mean the area being reduced by 30m sq.  The flow on effect is that three people in our office are having to be relocated elsewhere in the organisation and another three people are going to have to be shifted from where they currently sit.  Ordinarily, we would have jumped at the chance to go to another office area, but the new office space is open plan with no walls behind the work station.  We HAVE to have our back to a wall, doesn’t matter where we are, we just do.  But everyone else in the office is suggesting that we move.  Our team leader and the manager know that we have to have a wall behind us, but the manager made a point out of talking about us during the meeting and using us as an example as to why some people can’t work in every office space.  That was the last straw, we had to get up and leave.  She’s a really nice person, but she’s not a good manager.

As a further blow, our cynical friend is one of the people moving out of the office.  She needs to do this in order to stay calm while her husband deteriorates from the cancer.  So the only person we talk to and laugh with is leaving the office.

All of this lead up to a fairly intense bout of suicidal intent.  We contacted (via email) the woman’s programme we go to and Liz detailing what was happening.  The interaction with Liz was interesting, it got to the point where we knew that if we didn’t head her off, we’d be sent up the the hospital for a risk assessment…

To Liz:
… shouldn’t have contacted you or anyone, it’s just attention seeking.  It will be fine, at work now and then go home and forget everything for awhile.

Liz’s response:
I have found that talking about things, hard stuff, etc does help.  If it had not done so, I don’t know where I would be today.

Are you attention seeking?  Doesn’t sound like attention seeking from where I sit.  Although saying it is, will be another way that you avoid talking / dealing with it, aye?  Of course talking about hard stuff can seem to make things worse. Do they get worse before they get better?  Sometimes it works that way.  Sometimes there can be immediate clarity and balance.  I would like you to know that I am available to talk about this situation when you are ready to.
Regards
Liz

She saw through our rubbish, avoidance etc.  Will be an interesting session tomorrow…

As for our photos… we’ve realised by taking photos that our focus of the world is very narrow.  We’re not comfortable with the expanse of a landscape and the idea of taking photos of people is absolutely terrifying.  We tried taking photos of the mother while she was here, but immediately dissociated.  Yesterday we went for a walk and tried to take some photos of the surrounding landscape (managed a couple – try 1 & try 2), but we much prefer the narrow focus (e.g. dew drop).  I wonder if this is about our style of photography, or being caught up in PTSD and dissociative issues?

Why you shouldn’t read newspapers

Today has been one of those last straw days.  It started out fairly normally, the traffic on the way to work was light because the university students are in the middle of exams.  Our cynical friend at work was in a good mood and it was all looking positive.  Then…

Blow 1:  Our cynical friend didn’t come out to morning tea with us all – which is unusual.  When we were walking back to our desk we saw the graphic surgical procedure pictures she was looking at.  They had found a cyst which they are going to operate on.  As if she hasn’t got enough on her plate.

Blow 2:  We’ve been nominated as the union representative for the workplace.  Considering how we don’t like arguments or confrontation, I’ve no idea why they elected us – especially as we refused to volunteer.

Blow 3:  Each website we visited today that had an Ad banner, was advertising the “Death Quiz”.  It invited you to fill in the quiz to find out when you would die.  Considering how suicidal we are at the moment, those subtle messages are not helpful.

Blow 4:  One of the most vivid abuse memories we have is an event that occurred on the grounds of the local kindergarten.  Today in the newspaper feeds, a headline jumped out – that kindergarten had been set on fire.  It started on the couch they kept on the porch.  How the kindergarten is used on the weekend at night as a gathering place for teens was mentioned.  SO and W are triggered so badly.  We were already unsteady, but this has pushed us over.

Blow 5:  We were 3 minutes late for our desk shift because we got caught up in a conversation about a major system upgrade that is happening next week.  Another team leader came up and yelled at us for being late in front of other team members.

It’s now 1am and we’re terrified of trying to sleep.  We know the nightmares will be there.  It’s just one bad day right?  We can do this……….

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Now playing: Christina Aguilera – The Voice
via FoxyTunes

Swirling mess

What a day.  Sitting at work shaking like a leaf.  My hands won’t stop, even when typing or trying to drink something warm to try and soothe.  We’ve been sick with the flu, but we didn’t have the shakes then, just today.  I know the shaking is due to emotions, but it’s such a weird experience – knowing that the body is shaking due to emotions, but not actually feeling those emotions.

I don’t experience the emotions and I’m not sure what has triggered this, but it started last night when there was a sudden feeling of being lost and empty.  Considering we didn’t go anywhere or see anyone yesterday, I’m not sure what’s brought this on.  Maybe talking to the mother on the phone?  Maybe watching mindless DVDs?  There was a draft done last night about a secret fear we have, maybe that’s caused it?  I try to look at what’s happening internally and all I see is a swirling mess.  Why can’t the answers ever be obvious and simple?

When you look at the injustices people are experiencing all over the world, it’s so pathetic to be sitting in an office shaking like a leaf for no identifiable reason.

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Now playing: Brooke Fraser – Scarlet
via FoxyTunes

A day in the life…

A day in the life of a spoilt domestic cat…

Morning: Sleep until the human has woken and prepared a morning snack.

Morning...

Afternoon: Bask in the sun on this convenient thermal rug.

Basking in the Sun

Mid-afternoon: Look scornfully at the human who is sitting on the floor, but can be forgiven as she is fairly well trained – for a human.

Ahhh... the Sun... ohh you poor human

Soon after: Go back to looking out over my domain.

Looking out over my domain

Night: After licking the gravy off the evening meal, curl up in my bed in front of the heater.

Ahhh... the heater... Wait... go away human...

Some time during the night: Retire to the igloo bed in preparation for a new day.  It is truly a hard life, one which humans will never really understand.

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Now playing: Brooke Fraser – Shadowfeet
via FoxyTunes

Trust and healing

One of the first things we learned from the abuse that we were part of, was that you can’t trust anyone.  In particular, you couldn’t trust the little girl that went stumbling through life in a dissociative daze.  She was unable to see the potential harm that would result from following the instructions given to her (part of her conditioning was to obey without question).  As a result, we experience a total lack of trust of anything and anyone.  With this in mind…

How do you learn to trust someone else to help you heal, when you don’t trust your own judgement?

Our conditioning has meant that we find it incredibly difficult to question authority of any kind.  We perceive the therapist as an authority figure.  They may have toys in their office, have an open body language and tone; but we still see them as authority.  This is because they have qualifications (they are meant to be the expert at this healing thing), we pay for the appointment (paying for a service from a professional) and we go to their office (on their turf or comfort area).  So the power dynamics are off from the start.  As a further complication, the mother is a nurse.  This fact means that we live in fear of the medical field, but yet are totally sucked into obeying it without question - I hate being a product of my environment! 

Looking at the decisions we have made over the years, it’s obvious that we still haven’t learned to trust our instinct about people.  A prime example is the ex-husband, Management tried to end the relationship very early on, but wasn’t able to communicate the reasons why he shouldn’t be trusted, so we ended up marrying him with disastrous results.  In regard to therapists, the decision-making is even more warped.  We don’t know how to begin to trust them and the power dynamics make it almost impossible.  We’ll sometimes get clues that the relationship isn’t working as it should, but sometimes we look at these as us creating blocks.  It can be very hard to differentiate between the two – are we avoiding going to therapy because we don’t trust Liz, or because we don’t want to do the work?  It feels like we’re walking a tightrope.  Needing to trust yourself and your own judgement, but knowing from past experience that this judgement is flawed.

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Now playing: Anna Nalick – Breathe
via FoxyTunes

Importance of “ie”

In a comment to the Froggie entry, we made a casual observation that “Froggie” must mean something to a young one because the name given ended in “ie”.  This didn’t really mean much to us at the time, but last night we were thinking about it and wondering what the “ie” ending meant for us.  In the context of our dissociative system it obviously means a great deal in that our names include Sophie, Carrie, Mickie and Ellie.  What is interesting is that none of these parts hold any abusive memories – Sophie was born to ensure we were a happy teenager and looks after young ones; Mickie protects young ones; Carrie is the protector of The Attic, while Ellie is a main protector on another floor.  So it could be concluded that someone who protected us in some way had a similar name ending.  This could be the case for our childhood neighbour whom everyone called Cloudy; we adapted that to Cloudie to fit with a more idealised person who loved us unconditionally – which in reality she didn’t.

Two of our main protectors don’t have the “ie” ending – One and Management.  These two aren’t as affectionate as the other protectors, but are instead a watchful caring – a simple example is that The Basement is always dark and when Aimee goes to visit One, he turns on a spotlight so that it always on Aimee and she won’t get scared.  One also ensures that everyone in The Basement is quiet while Aimee is there.  So it’s gentle caring that isn’t overly affectionate, but is a dependable (always there) kind of love.  Management and One pre-date Ellie and Carrie in being given names and their defined roles, I think this has influenced their names.

Names we’ve given to pets and objects we like which pre-date our understanding of the dissociation also have this “ie” ending – for example, we’ve had Winnie for about 14 years now.  So it’s been an unconscious association for many years.  I wonder if it’s to do with Katie?  Katie is our youngest one and was formally known as Sweetie Pie.  She holds an innocence that we all need to protect.  Because of this it would make sense that if our brain decided that names ending in “ie” held some innocence, then names such as Management are stronger ones to protect that innocence.  In many ways our system is built around protecting Katie, but she is not in The Attic where the innocents/innocence is kept.  Maybe we needed a reminder of what we needed to protect?  She is a hurt innocent though, so maybe that is why she is with us?

Sorry for the rambling, it’s not really working out with Liz and so we’re trying to do the work things out without having someone there to talk to.

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Now playing: Finger Eleven – One thing
via FoxyTunes
Watch via You Tube

Froggie – the birthday watering can present

Froggie

A birthday present from the mother.  I reckon it’s the closest thing we’ll ever get to a Prince Charming… :)