Just over the last few weeks I have been trying to develop more of a sense of self while making sure that it is a positive sense of self. I feel very successful and credit a lot of that to my writing and also to trying to feel my emotions. I also have been able to stop – temporarily at least – thinking that at certain points of the day I “should” be doing something more constructive. I don’t know if I was criticizing myself but I never took any time to consider what I wanted. I want a lot of things – like I want to feel good all the time, to relax once in a while, to talk to people, to eat chocolate, to ignore one of Mike’s bad moods. Not all of these are things I can or should do but it doesn’t hurt to admit that I want them nonetheless. The rest of them I can do if I want but I just have to do them in moderation.
It is very difficult to say why I feel like a better person today than I did a few weeks ago. I like myself sometimes and even take myself seriously. Everybody else makes mistakes in life so I should be able to also. Perhaps that is part of it. I have lived a lot of my life thinking that I was not allowed to make mistakes. That one fact alone is a totally self-defined assumption that is responsible for much of my unhappiness. I have a better relationship with myself today because I know that I am allowed to make mistakes.
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Monday, December 22, 2008
More Gratitude
Today I am grateful for:
- Serenity on a Monday morning
- Serenity in the face of the holidays
- Unexpected moments of calm - both internal and external
- Courage to Change
As I gear up for the holidays and to go visit the family I am feeling more at peace with the world than I have in many years. I don't even feel the need to sabotage my serenity or worry about what will happen if I lose it. Feelings come and go - that's life. What a wonderful experience.
Friday, December 19, 2008
A Life Narrative
Just a few thoughts on a lazy Friday because I have not been very good about blogging recently. I have been directing the bulk of my writing to coming up with my entire story, which some people – like psychologists – like to call a Life Narrative. I have two main motivations for trying to tackle such a huge task.
First, I recently finished my fourth step and it raised a lot more questions than it answered. I can see pretty clearly what my positive and negative behaviors and habits have been but I am at a complete loss as to why I feel the need to do them. For example, I get very defensive and even angry when people have expectations of me. I couldn’t quite tell why I react this way but have a gut feeling that it relates to the abuse I endured as a kid. This leads me to my next point.
Second, I just finished a book called “The Drama of the Gifted Child” by Alice Miller. My sponsor recommended it and it’s about children who survived abuse and adapted to extreme cruelty by becoming numb. She emphasizes again and again the point that in order to deal with the emotional scars we need to face the abuse and our resulting emotions. In order to face them most of us need to unpack a lot of repressed memories and figure out exactly what happened to us.
This is where I have to put in my plug that I always thought the idea of repressed memories was something drama queens made up to get more attention. I thought this until about 6 months ago when I was doing some writing and started to remember traumatic events that I hadn’t thought about since they happened 10 or 15 years ago. If you have ever suspected that you might have endured abuse, you owe it to yourself to do some exploring of your own.
So I sat down about 10 days ago to write my life story and have been going ever since. It’s currently at about 18 pages and growing. It’s hard to explain what it feels like to attempt to write down a traumatic event and realize for the first time that such experiences are not normal. It was as if my brain had previously refused to label the experience as bad or scary or dangerous. It was a memory labeled with the same emotions as my memory of eating breakfast this morning. There were no emotions – until I looked at it and realized the abuse for what it was.
I don’t even mean for this to sound dark because it has been one of the most surprising experiences of my life. I had always taken for granted that I would remember big events in my life because that’s the way it’s supposed to work. I guess the mind has its own way of surviving. So much to learn…
First, I recently finished my fourth step and it raised a lot more questions than it answered. I can see pretty clearly what my positive and negative behaviors and habits have been but I am at a complete loss as to why I feel the need to do them. For example, I get very defensive and even angry when people have expectations of me. I couldn’t quite tell why I react this way but have a gut feeling that it relates to the abuse I endured as a kid. This leads me to my next point.
Second, I just finished a book called “The Drama of the Gifted Child” by Alice Miller. My sponsor recommended it and it’s about children who survived abuse and adapted to extreme cruelty by becoming numb. She emphasizes again and again the point that in order to deal with the emotional scars we need to face the abuse and our resulting emotions. In order to face them most of us need to unpack a lot of repressed memories and figure out exactly what happened to us.
This is where I have to put in my plug that I always thought the idea of repressed memories was something drama queens made up to get more attention. I thought this until about 6 months ago when I was doing some writing and started to remember traumatic events that I hadn’t thought about since they happened 10 or 15 years ago. If you have ever suspected that you might have endured abuse, you owe it to yourself to do some exploring of your own.
So I sat down about 10 days ago to write my life story and have been going ever since. It’s currently at about 18 pages and growing. It’s hard to explain what it feels like to attempt to write down a traumatic event and realize for the first time that such experiences are not normal. It was as if my brain had previously refused to label the experience as bad or scary or dangerous. It was a memory labeled with the same emotions as my memory of eating breakfast this morning. There were no emotions – until I looked at it and realized the abuse for what it was.
I don’t even mean for this to sound dark because it has been one of the most surprising experiences of my life. I had always taken for granted that I would remember big events in my life because that’s the way it’s supposed to work. I guess the mind has its own way of surviving. So much to learn…
Monday, December 15, 2008
Gratitude
Today I am grateful for:
- My program - especially the literature
- My apartment
- My job
- My sisters
The people I have in my life right now encourage and demonstrate how I can start to live a healthy life. They help me maintain perspective when things go wrong and simply enjoy it when things go right.
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Suppressing Emotions
For years I have considered myself to be a person who is empathetic, understanding, and loving; especially concerning the abuse I endured at the hands of family members when I was young. I learned that forgiveness is a gift I give myself so that I can put the hurtful actions of others behind me and move beyond self-destructive feelings.
But there is a huge difference between forgiveness and suppression.
Forgiveness is about making a conscious decision to move on with life and not dwell on things that I cannot change. Emotional suppression is a survival instinct I learned in order to disconnect from a life-threatening situation. Suppression allowed me to live in my abusive house without seeing that the people I cared for most were endangering my life on a regular basis. With practice I was eventually able to avoid emotional reactions to all but the most dangerous or unexpected situations. But without emotional responses I became unable to interact with the world.
After this type of detachment the overwhelming fear and anger were replaced by chronic emptiness and depression.
It has been very difficult to try and learn what a genuine emotion feels like. It’s like trying to see the 3D image in those pictures that require you to relax your eyes and look through the image.
Yesterday I was overcome with an anger at my parents that I don’t ever remember feeling before. I was able to see them as adults whose actions were unequivocally wrong instead of co-victims that needed my sympathy. I was not prepared for this aspect of my recovery. But even though I felt drained at the end of the day, I felt none of the emptiness and depression that I have come to know so well. Today I feel light and energetic yet calm. What a wonderful and unexpected experience.
But there is a huge difference between forgiveness and suppression.
Forgiveness is about making a conscious decision to move on with life and not dwell on things that I cannot change. Emotional suppression is a survival instinct I learned in order to disconnect from a life-threatening situation. Suppression allowed me to live in my abusive house without seeing that the people I cared for most were endangering my life on a regular basis. With practice I was eventually able to avoid emotional reactions to all but the most dangerous or unexpected situations. But without emotional responses I became unable to interact with the world.
After this type of detachment the overwhelming fear and anger were replaced by chronic emptiness and depression.
It has been very difficult to try and learn what a genuine emotion feels like. It’s like trying to see the 3D image in those pictures that require you to relax your eyes and look through the image.
Yesterday I was overcome with an anger at my parents that I don’t ever remember feeling before. I was able to see them as adults whose actions were unequivocally wrong instead of co-victims that needed my sympathy. I was not prepared for this aspect of my recovery. But even though I felt drained at the end of the day, I felt none of the emptiness and depression that I have come to know so well. Today I feel light and energetic yet calm. What a wonderful and unexpected experience.
Thursday, December 4, 2008
Feelings
I want to do some writing today before my medication starts to wear off and I get edgy or irritated. Sometimes my writing can get dark or obsessive if I write too late in the day.
This ties into today’s reading in Courage to Change which is about feelings and how we have learned to deal with them. A very, very large part of my recovery is learning to feel my feelings and accept them for what they are. The first step of getting to an acceptance of my feelings is coming to a belief that I am worthy of having feelings. I have written in the past about growing up with ADHD and feeling like I constantly wanted to sleep, eat, watch TV, run outside, play on the computer, or any other number of things to the point that it interfered with going to school and especially doing homework. I had to try and convince myself that none of these feelings were appropriate because I NEEDED to do well in school. In short, I suppressed all of my natural desires.
I needed to do well in school because many times it was the only positive attention I got in my alcoholic home. I needed approval to compensate for the neglect. I sought – and still seek – approval rather than love or affection. I learned how to stuff my feelings.
So where am I today? First of all I am learning that feelings pass and it is okay, and even healthy, to let them go. I take myself so seriously that I believe every emotion is special and needs to be indulged, analyzed, or even documented. My feelings are mostly unconscious and - much of the time - are out of proportion with reality. It is okay to laugh at a feeling and then let it go. I am working on not becoming so attached to my feelings.
It is also possible for me to value my feelings without bending to their every command. What are some feelings that I act on the most?
- Worthlessness
- The compulsion to amount to “something”
- Loneliness
- Embarrassment
- That I owe people something with my life
- That I don’t deserve peace or happiness
I am worthy of having feelings.
It is okay to acknowledge my feelings.
It is okay to value my feelings.
It is okay to let a feeling pass – this does not amount to disrespect.
It is okay to talk about my feelings.
Monday, December 1, 2008
The Perfectionist
Adapted from Kelly and Ramundo
“The Perfectionist: Luke has decided that being the best regardless of the cost, is the only way to hide his deficits. Luke is a perfectionist. He has ADHD but those who know him would never believe it. Although his poor conduct grades reflected his restlessness, his behavior wasn’t disruptive enough to cause serious discipline problems in school. In general he followed the rules and did what was asked of him. Before he graduated he took part in many extracurricular activities and could be counted on to volunteer for any task that needed to be done.
You might be asking how someone with ADHD could function so well. Actually, he wasn’t really functioning very well despite his carefully constructed façade…Sometimes he longed to get off his treadmill but didn’t dare risk disclosure. If he failed to do everything, his secret would be out. Everyone would know he wasn’t normal. The hitch was that Luke didn’t have a clue about what normal was. He had kept his secret so long that he had inflated ideas about what other people could accomplish. His impaired sense of self, distorted by differences he didn’t understand, caused him to do anything that would bring acceptance.
Today he still works himself to death, compelled to do it all. It’s becoming increasingly more difficult to do it all with so many conflicting demands on his time. Lately he feels that he’s losing control and that at any moment something horrible is going to happen. He can’t keep all the pieces together anymore. While Luke may look good to outsiders, he feels terrible inside. He has to spend all his energy running and hiding behind his façade of perfection. Knowing that he has just about pushed himself beyond his limits, he wonders when he’ll totally self-destruct.”
This was me two years ago. I ran across this description of a woman named Debra in the book “You Mean I’m Not Lazy, Stupid, or Crazy.” It explains me better than I have ever been able to so I changed the name and a few pronouns to suit me. When I first read it I had to put the book down because it was so powerful. I didn’t know whether I wanted to cry or vomit.
In the past I have tried to write about or explain why I have always felt like an outsider. I always ended up frustrated or sad because I didn’t have the structure or descriptive characteristics needed to describe myself. I didn’t fit the stereotype of the disruptive and under-achieving ADDer but I could see every one of those qualities in my inner life.
I wanted to put this out there for anyone else in the same situation. I have come a long way in the last two years and am happy with a lot of my life today. There is hope. There are others who have been there or are still there. Things can get better!
“The Perfectionist: Luke has decided that being the best regardless of the cost, is the only way to hide his deficits. Luke is a perfectionist. He has ADHD but those who know him would never believe it. Although his poor conduct grades reflected his restlessness, his behavior wasn’t disruptive enough to cause serious discipline problems in school. In general he followed the rules and did what was asked of him. Before he graduated he took part in many extracurricular activities and could be counted on to volunteer for any task that needed to be done.
You might be asking how someone with ADHD could function so well. Actually, he wasn’t really functioning very well despite his carefully constructed façade…Sometimes he longed to get off his treadmill but didn’t dare risk disclosure. If he failed to do everything, his secret would be out. Everyone would know he wasn’t normal. The hitch was that Luke didn’t have a clue about what normal was. He had kept his secret so long that he had inflated ideas about what other people could accomplish. His impaired sense of self, distorted by differences he didn’t understand, caused him to do anything that would bring acceptance.
Today he still works himself to death, compelled to do it all. It’s becoming increasingly more difficult to do it all with so many conflicting demands on his time. Lately he feels that he’s losing control and that at any moment something horrible is going to happen. He can’t keep all the pieces together anymore. While Luke may look good to outsiders, he feels terrible inside. He has to spend all his energy running and hiding behind his façade of perfection. Knowing that he has just about pushed himself beyond his limits, he wonders when he’ll totally self-destruct.”
This was me two years ago. I ran across this description of a woman named Debra in the book “You Mean I’m Not Lazy, Stupid, or Crazy.” It explains me better than I have ever been able to so I changed the name and a few pronouns to suit me. When I first read it I had to put the book down because it was so powerful. I didn’t know whether I wanted to cry or vomit.
In the past I have tried to write about or explain why I have always felt like an outsider. I always ended up frustrated or sad because I didn’t have the structure or descriptive characteristics needed to describe myself. I didn’t fit the stereotype of the disruptive and under-achieving ADDer but I could see every one of those qualities in my inner life.
I wanted to put this out there for anyone else in the same situation. I have come a long way in the last two years and am happy with a lot of my life today. There is hope. There are others who have been there or are still there. Things can get better!
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