Still Alive!

“Still alive” might sound like a melodramatic way to title the post, but in this particular case it is actually not, in that in the time since I last wrote, it has not been entirely clear that would be the case.  I last wrote about my job search, and that actually turned out reasonably well for now at least; rather late in the summer I did in fact acquire a full time job with benefits–a couple hours away from home so I have to stay there a few days a week, but otherwise a job that I quite like.  So while my anxiety wasn’t unfounded, and I still am not sure what to do long-term, that didn’t devolve into homelessness or some other kind of misery as I was fearing.  I have in fact felt appreciated where I’m working and that has gone a long way to help get past the painfulness of before, though it doesn’t just leave completely of course.

What has been rather more dramatic is that I was suddenly diagnosed with stage three cancer (with very little in the way of symptoms until two weeks before diagnosis).  Obviously, this was not was I was picturing, though I was picturing other sorts of dire outcomes to how life had been going.  I am now through two surgeries and six months of chemo and it could be over, though it also might not.  Now I am trying to learn to live with this reality.  I haven’t wanted to write much during this process but maybe will now.  Seems like a start.

Digging Deep, Scraping the Bottom

I thought I’d try a little writing to see if it helps uncrazy me a little.  My main drama is still the looking for jobs thing, the being rejected–or feeling rejected I should say I am told, maybe it’s not actually exactly what it is, the not knowing what’s coming jobwise or anythingwise really, and I could go on, but it is just more of that same sort of thing.

I did have some interviews and I at least found that the utter discouragement of a tenure denial process hasn’t completely killed my feeling for the work, which is nice to see, and which I really didn’t know ’til I had to talk about it in that way.  And I didn’t know that I’d be able to do that at all after what’s happened, and now I do.  They didn’t seem to go badly, which is a way of saying that they seemed to go well.  Not that the positions would go that far toward solving the problems of wanting to live and work in the city I’m in–to not have to live elsewhere and be able to pay the bills.  But still, better than zero even marginally hopeful signs which is where we were a couple weeks ago.

Still, it’s hard to forge again unflaggingly.  I do think that anyone would find it so, but I wish to complain about the fact that life generally has tended to feel this way and it does sort of add up and wear on me a bit.  Dig deep, they say, when it’s hard to find the spark in oneself.  I am digging deep; I have always been digging deep, deep down into the dark where one finds such things as unexpected sparks.

It just sometimes seems too hard, and so it is, but there we are.

Dictators and Vampires

Recently I met a person with a narcissist mother who hadn’t ever talked to anyone else with one, and I remember what that was like, when I first learned about that whole concept. She was so glad not to have to say or hear any of the things people say–they do the best the can, they really do love us, things will get better between you now that you’re sober–those things. Maybe the first is somewhat true, though I don’t know that it is, and anyway that doesn’t make everything fine. It certainly doesn’t help the least bit with the damage.

What does help is being able to admit to each other that with these relationships it is highly unlikely to get better. Because the choices are that or keep banging my head on that same old wall pointlessly, hoping for something different. And that is in fact what I might prefer/tend to do–the banging on out of some hope of a different result–and exactly what we must learn to quit doing and what we’re responsible for.

What does help is to hear my friend make comparisons between growing up that way, with one or more narcissists, and living in a totalitarian state. Because that’s the best analogue for the kind of mind control and psychological violence (and physical violence for many, not really in my experience though). That and what it’s light being looked after by vampires.

None of this is comforting exactly, but it is true, and being able to speak that truth at least in some places/with some people goes a long way.

struggles

in and out of despair. . .not much of a way to live but it’s what it is.  not always, but this not knowing if i’ll be able to find a job and afford the mortgage is not going so well.  and there’s the ickiness of still working at the place that’s dropping me, and there’s the crazy making quality of it all.  academia is not charming me that much right now.

i know anyone would be having a hard time with my situation and that’s that.  so i guess i want to write about the other things that aren’t standard, and i want to complain about how hard it is.

this would be an excellent time to relapse, says my addict brain, though of course it always says that.  but i have to do a lot of things to take care of the addiction thing and that can be hard.  also my brain was doing a lot of nasty things, having fears and getting confused about what is real, and i do mean getting confused about that–not for long, just little bits of time, but still.  i don’t mean hallucinating things, but believing things are happening or about to happen that probably aren’t–i think it’s a bit like the veteran who hears a sound and thinks he’s back on a battlefield.  this is hard to bear.  but i don’t want to take the meds they recommend for that for fear of various things, especially of losing what mental clarity and quickness i have, so i’m stuck with the fears.  i do have an anti anx med i could take but when i get that afraid i don’t want to take it because i want to stay alert to face the threats i’m anticipating–there is that problem, if the patient is too afraid to take the anti anxiety pill, since pills work best if actually taken.  but that’s settled a bit, now it’s more that i’m struggling to stay out of despair and not always succeeding.

that concludes my complaints for now.

May the Days Be Aimless

May the days be aimless.  Do not advance the action according to a plan.

That’s from DeLillo’s White Noise via the filter of my memory.

I like the sound of those lines as much as anything, but some other things too, though I should mention that speaking these lines do not exactly solve the narrator’s problems.  He has a wee bit of trouble taking his own advice, and does in fact advance the action in his life according to a plan, and shall we say it’s a bit of a bad plan and goes disastrously, but not unamusingly.

But the thought–

I don’t suppose it would be practical to abandon all plans and be aimless, but I’m thinking that a little of this lightness and non-attachment could help sometimes.  Especially because non-aimlessness planified actions do not always seem to be entirely optimal in my case, not least because I sometimes have bad plans, or a combination of bad and good plans, or just a general crazed drivenness or obsessiveness.  These, of course, are not particularly productive even if they are well-meaning.

What works is me doing things toward goals but not always too narrowly defined–sometimes just directions–and not crazed plottingplanning.  And then once I’ve done some of each those things it would be better to let go and quite fussing with things or over things.

And aimless days–what a thought–like a dream.  May they be.

Because then I think there’s space for things to happen.

NYT Yoga Dangers Article

There’s something to get me to come write a little something after this while–the recent NYT article on the many injuries that can arise in yoga.  Funny, because I was just told by my massage therapist that I seem to be doing some things I shouldn’t do so much all at once–she suggested a week off-which I of course find too extreme as with most suggestions.  I guess they do say that’s a good idea to do regularly.  But I have the fear I’ll revert back to not feeling like exercising and couch potatoing my way through life.  That has been a mode of mine at other times in the past, not for a while, but it has, and it’s even worse for my brain than the rest of me.  So I worry about sliding back into that–it’s funny how even after a couple days of not exercising (not that it’s happened in while, though I can stop any time I want to–sure, like I’m good at stopping anything) it’s hard to start back up.

But I do see the value of recuperating every now and then.  Really the trouble (other than the moremoremore issue that pervades all parts of my life) is that I’ve been attemping to cope with things as they are through yoga and running instead of other ways, and things as they are haven’t been so optimal–job ending, holidays, those sorts of things.

But the article.  It talks about some rather disturbing injuries (neck related, for instance) that I’d rather not have.  And there are ways to get hurt doing yoga, as with many things.  There are also, I think, ways of doing yoga safely.  Probably it would involve being reasonable and not getting carried away.  Not my area of expertise, though I am trying a bit.  So how it seems to me is that it’s not really yoga’s fault if I stubbornly/foolishly do things that are too much.  It might be someone else’s fault, just maybe, the person who gets going on the moremoremore kicks.  Seems to me.  Of course I do also think it matters how the instructor is skill-wise and attentiveness-wise, and we have to learn what our own bodies can do and need and we need to keep track because it changes.  But in my case, the little twingey things I get seem more to do with my non-stopping tendencies than anything else.  And yes, I can overdo yoga, just like I can overdo anything, and often do.

There’s a response to the debate about yoga safety/harmfulness without all the reflective wisdom and placid reasonableness that you find everywhere.  We don’t want to be too sensible or too evolved, after all, do we?

Being Understood, and Not

I’m trying to make hard decision.  It doesn’t seem like everyone would think it hard, but figuring out what the right thing for me to do sometimes is–the decision that wouldn’t necessarily be what others want or think I should do.  It’s that I’m having some uncertainty about the therapy group I go to, which maybe wouldn’t have to be difficult, but seems to be.  My spouse thinks it’s not so good for me but I am not sure if that’s something to go by–also it could be about saving money for him too, and it’s hard to explain that sometimes struggly group experiences can be part of a good process.  But sometimes it’s not just that but actual problematic things–the tricky bit is that sometimes it’s so good and helpful.  And sometimes it seems a little uncontained and maybe some people don’t get thrown by that but I seem to.

I tried speaking up about it and it went okay, except i think people give advice out of reasons that are often their own rather than knowing what I should actually do.  I don’t think that the things that apply to lots of emotional issues fit exactly with certain kinds of trauma–like the really early sexual kind by parents.  People say to sit with the feelings, and while I normally throw tantrums about that but begrudgingly admit it’s the right thing, it’s not exactly the same with this stuff.  Going through the feelings can mean reliving things, and reliving things with a different result and an Alice Miller style enlightened witness and safety and such is one thing; reexperiencing them just as they were the first time just deepens the trauma.  The line is fine, or fine-ish.  Not everyone seems to know this, even therapists sometimes don’t totally seem to get it.

The fact that I’m even trying to figure this out and taking a time out to let myself settle down from getting all triggered and overwhelmed is something in itself–not my usual approach.  So that in itself seems like a step.

Where is My Off Switch?

So jewelry-making has become an absorbing and lovely part of life (especially important when major parts of it are falling/have fallen apart). And it’s much more “adaptive” as they say, I’m sure, than a lot of things. Now I just have to find my off switch to keep myself from going ’til I get blisters . I guess the point of blistering from too much bezel-setting tool friction is sort of working as an off switch, but I wonder if I could learn to “quit while I’m ahead” as they say. They say so many things, don’t they. But they don’t seem to be able to help me find the off switch or the middle way or what I believe they call balance.

As per the going to extremes, I am planning to do a thing at a local yoga place tomorrow where they’re doing the primary series followed by the second series and some bits of the third series, as it’s meant to be done and wiry Ashtanga types do, but which is to take three hours. I should also mention that I am not wiry or guru-y. But this sort of thing does, more or less, keep me out of trouble, or at least just on the outskirts of trouble. I could do better, but also worse.

I’m coming off a series of nights of fits of fear over various imaginary dangers and threats (I am saying that I’m coming off it because that is what I hope but I don’t know–this sort of thing comes in chunks/episodes it seems). But utterly exhausting myself through a long exercisey thing often helps, like a sort of rebooting–we shall see.

Twisted Knickers

Okay so they’re in a twist as they so often are.

A lovely friend pointed me to this Pema Chodron thing:

http://www.shambhala.org/teachers/pema/shenpa3a.php

about the phenomenon of shenpa–a way we all have of getting hooked by something in an interaction–it seems like it’s a way of getting all reactive, or maybe we could say triggered, or getting into some old script and acting automatically; maybe it’s a lot like what they call acting out.

and then she talks about how we all tend to reach for some habitual way of distracting ourselves from the discomfort of getting hooked, a button pushed.

so i was in a group that seemed a bit jumble of shenpa, others’ and mine.  i’m trying to write about it instead of just doing the whole reactive/escape/acting out/triggered approach that i usually run to. maybe this is just another way to escape the discomfort of a difficult social interaction but hey–it’s a lot better than my usual selection of ways to evade the discomfort.  nobody has to go to the psych ward or rehab, for instance (since my favorite evasion strategy was for a time alcohol, and those are the places it took me).

what happened was that i was speaking my mind/speaking up for myself in a situation where it felt hard.  i did it though and somewhat effectively but also with a smidgen of clumsiness in one aspect (got to have a smidgen) which i could improve upon, or maybe it’s not even that is was actually clumsy much–more than i said something that hit a sore spot, which i did expect might happen and i tried to minimize but may have done that part clumsily, or not, maybe the spot was just that sore.

so as i have now demonstrated, when somebody says things that hook me, that hit my sore spot, one of my reactions is to obsess/replay and second guess myself.  this at first didn’t sound like Pema’s list of shenpa escape strategies but of course it is the same sort of thing.  plus she explicitly mentions how turning the hookiness against oneself can be a way we react/act out:

“In the West, it is very, very common at that point to turn it against yourself: something is wrong with me.”

Yes, well that is one of my favorite hobbies.  And you know it is a way of escaping the discomfort, or sort of, or maybe not that great of a way because it is pretty uncomfortable in itself.  But it is familiar and so easy to slide into that in a way it is sort of perversely comfortable.  It’s certainly one of my top ways of reacting to that icky hooked triggered trancey scripty feeling (I guess shenpa is a bit more concise a term than that little amalgamation).  And right now I’m really seeing my preferred ways of reacting.  I suppose it is needless to say that i do not naturally tend toward what she recommends–“refraining” from whatever habitual escape comforter thing we tend to favor.  But maybe it would be freeing.  More than maybe.  It’s just that it’s so hard not to get pulling into those nice deep habitual grooves!  I like to slip into those grooves. . .but maybe not so much. . .maybe it’s just scary not to.  I think it is more the fear of not reaching for those habits that’s the trouble as opposed to any actual discomfort that refraining from them might bring.  This seems especially likely given that my current top habitual escape reactive thingamos are not particularly pleasurable.  Not like a nice drug.

I would prefer to say I respond placidly to shenpa and gracefully, but really what I do is more like this:

1.  Feel guilty about whatever I might have done to provoke the response that has hooked me.

2.  Feel even more guilty about that and perhaps also just my general existence.

3. Become outraged at the unfairness of whatever was said to me.

4.  Think about how they just aren’t being very nice/wise/self-aware and that’s why they said this thing that is bothering me, while failing to realize that has very little to do with anything.

5.  Feel guilty about #4, and shame about every aspect of the entire interaction.

6.  Obsess/replay what happened, with some further occasional outrage sprinkled in and lots of guilt/shame.

7.  Want to use drugs or any other addictive behavior that happens to appeal at the time.

8.  Possibly use a little of a non-drug addictive behavior to attempt to distract myself or feel better.

9.  Not feel better.  Also possibly feel bad about whatever I just did.

10.  Decide I just can’t handle interpersonal anything.  Feel shame about that.

11.  Try to figure out how to fix the situation, to make it right, often by apologizing, often excessively and without really knowing why or fully meaning it because i’m not even thinking about anything, just trying to fix whatever happened.

12.  Try to get other people to reassure me that i didn’t actually do anything that bad.

So while I am talking about it here, I did refrain from trying to do #12 despite EXTREME URGE to do so right now.  I’m writing this but leaving it alone it all the other ways.  I think it’s not quite refraining but it’s not bad for me.  And I can report that it has been really hard to refrain even to the degree that i did, and uncomfortable, but i think it’s passing now.  When I do all those other things listed above it doesn’t really pass until a lot longer time has gone by.  So that’s pretty exciting.  Maybe this sitting with your feelings/tolerating discomfort advice isn’t as hideous as it sounds.  Maybe a little hideous, but if it works it works.  And it’s not like my little array of methods was working.

 

Compassion and Understanding do Exist Sometimes

So that was weird.  I wasn’t in such great shape on Friday and was talking on the phone to my therapist (the current one, not the one I’ve talked about in connection which so much hurt and painful rejection feelings) and she said I needed to come meet with her (on a Saturday).  Actually she started out in her more natural way of offering to meet with me if I needed to, but she has gotten to know me a bit better and my somewhat ridiculous ways and seemed to realize that the only way I was going to accept was if she just told me to come.  Otherwise too much crushing guilt about being burdensome would be the order of the day.  So give to me simple and without a lot of confusing choices.  Apparently I am a bit silly like that about things, but it actually felt like a very warming experience because it does appear to indicate the possibility that she cares, possibly (that’s about all I seem to be able to manage but it’s a lot for me).  It also totally brought back memories of my early recovery, which might not sound heartwarming but it was such a relief to have people finally know what to do with me.  They knew what I was and how to work with me and did it without making me feel judged as a person.  They just helped me.  And sometimes that included threats, but that’s what it took, and they knew that and it was okay.  So it’s odd but being understood even when one is being a bit ridiculous can feel good more than shameful.  And for  me to say anything felt more good than shameful is kind of a big deal.