Why I Haven’t Been Able to Meditate

Tags

blogging, life's riddle, meditation, personal blog, riddle to life, stickers, what life is all about

So I’m doing my darnedest to do a breathing meditation. It’s been 3 weeks so far. I know this because I have a calendar that I’m putting stickers on to mark the days I do it. So far I haven’t missed a single day. I haven’t missed because I don’t want any days on the calendar that don’t have a sticker on them. Tonight I managed to do it at 8:30 pm. I do it for half an hour in my computer chair with an MS Word document up that I can quickly jot down things I need to remember so I don’t have to hold them in my brain. It’s so difficult trying to do this meditation. Up til now my attempts have met with a 100% failure rate. But with the stickers as motivation, it’s finally coming together.

Coffee Grounds

Tags

blogging, coffee grounds, God, holocaust, low self esteem, Maus, pain, persecution complex, personal blog, Poem, Poetry, prose, victimlicious

i dumped the coffee grounds this morning… all over everything.

i was trying to be so careful to take the coffee grounds container out of the coffee maker.

It flipped over.

It didn’t just flip over – it flipped over backwards.

Into everything on the counter that it could possibly flip into.

Wet coffee grounds… in every appliance – in the kitchen basket where i keep my rubber bands and pot holders.

i got so mad.

i feel really…  picked on.

Why I Have Anxiety Around Everyone I Meet

Tags

Anxiety, blog, blogging, dogs, Family, Father, feelings, happiness, journal, making everyone happy, Nancy Napier, Parents, pets, relationships

I was laying in bed thinking. Why am I so anxious around everybody all the time? 100% of the time I am anxious around every person I come in contact with. Then something occurred to me as I was rubbing Joshy’s belly. Why don’t I feel love for my dogs? All they seem to me to be is – responsibility.

On Being a Reject

Tags

AA, ACA, adult children of alcoholics, Alcoholics Anonymous, feeling worthless, God, journal, La Femme Nikita, rejection, relationships, self-esteem, spirituality, TV show, unwanted children

I watched LaFemme Nikita on TV tonight. It’s a totally weird show about the authorities not caring a twit about their ’employees’ lives, whether they live or die. Those in charge blatantly use people who were former prisoners and treat them as though they weren’t worth a nickel. I so related to that. It got to me and added umph to my feelings of worthlessness already.  As a child I felt like I wasn’t worth a nickel either. I feel totally worthless. Just like when I was growing up. I hope the ACA meeting will continue and not fold. I need ACA people. I want to call Anne but it’s 10 pm and she’s pretty old. I don’t want to be waking her up for such a stupid reason. I want to talk to someone about what happened today with Gordon and how I keep messing up and messing up with AA people. No matter how I try I keep messing up with them. I don’t belong in AA anymore.

I Don’t Feel Safe in AA

Tags

AA, AA meetings, ACA, adult children of alcoholics, Alcoholics, Alcoholics Anonymous, alcoholism, conversation, fear, relationships

Jerry got me to go to the Saturday noon AA meeting. I shared that I didn’t feel safe in AA because my growth has been so slow – that I was just beginning to explore my ACA issues. I tried to be honest and Cheryl caught up on that but she didn’t approach me after the meeting. No one did. No one ever does no matter how I share. Whether I say things like I know it all, or I sound utterly incompetent, no one ever comes up to me after a meeting. After a while it starts to get to a person. All the rejection. I can’t face it and I can’t talk about it in a meeting. This is the one thing I can’t talk about – how I feel so rejected in AA. I ‘talked’ to Gordon after the meeting. I wanted to address him telling Jerry and me that he was afraid of his father. I thought I might be able to interest him in ACA (Adult Children of Alcholics and Dysfunctional Families), but the conversation went nowhere and he ‘politely’ stepped away from me. It was all very uncomfortable. I’m not going back to mixed AA meetings. If there’s going to be any AA in my life at all it will be with women only.

Nancy Napier

Tags

ACA, blog, communicate by the unconscious, complex ptsd, Family, Father, Holy Spirit, mental illness, Nancy Napier, orb, recreating Your Self, relationships, unconscious symbolism

I really needed to talk to someone but it’s midnight and I don’t want to disturb anyone at such a late hour.

I’ve been reading books by Nancy Napier. She works with self-hypnosis and she knows how to recover from child abuse like no one I’ve ever come in contact with before. I read Recreating Your Self and bought 3 more books by her.

One exercise she suggested was when you’re feeling something disturbing, make your ability to dissociate work for you. Give the disturbing feelings to the child within (who already owns them anyway) so that you can become calm enough to be able to support the child  with these out of control feelings.

On being an ‘outsider’

Tags

being an outsider, book, Family, family roles, lost child role, Nancy Napier, recreating Your Self

(from my journal)

I was reading “Recreating Your Self” (Nancy Napier) where it talked about (pg 211) children having roles around their parents needs and interaction with each other and I was struck with how I fit into the family. I didn’t have a role to play at all. I only took abuse and shut up about it trying to make myself (though not very successfully) invisible. I didn’t ‘help’ my parents at all. I was not a part of the family at all. I was, and always will be, an outsider. I have a memory that just came up about going with mom on one of her daily walks. It was night and we were passing by the Pendergast’s house. We could see into their front window and watched the family all gathered together for dinner. We were outsiders looking in. For some reason this stuck with me deeply because it demonstrated, in living color, how much of an outsider I really am. Right there, I was an outsider – looking in.

Finding meditation impossible

Tags

amygdala, corpus colosum, dissociation, dissociatve disorder, fighting, inner child work, logic, meditating, meditation, relationship, silly stickers, solfeggio, solfeggio tones, stickers

So I meditated today for 30 minutes just so I could put a sticker on my calendar. I’ve had the hardest time knuckling down and mediating. No matter what I do, I just won’t do it for very long. Maybe a few days but then I always find some reason to not do it. It’s about my little girl inside. She’s the one who doesn’t want to meditate – because she thinks it’s boring.

Thursday – 4-5-18

Tags

abuse, Family, gratitude, in-laws, journal, lost child, scape goat, Suicide

A nothing day.

My sponsor sent me an e-mail telling me that I broke an AlAnon member’s anonymity because I talked to her about her new adventure as a member of AA (she’s sober 60 days). The girl went to my sponsor and said “I guess the cat’s out of the bag”. I feel TERRIBLE about doing this. I tried to call the girl but she didn’t answer the phone. I thought about e-mailing her but then I wondered if anyone else read her e-mails. So I e-mailed my sponsor and told her how terrible I felt about what I did.

Wednesday – 4-4-18

Tags

12 Step Program, aging, being unlovable, EMDR, eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, Family, journal, letting go of old ideas, PTSD, therapy

EMDR with Cynthia Pickett LSW. (a type of therapy called: Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing )

I’m doing EMDR therapy for my terrible problem with relationships.

I began this session by recalling the memory of growing up never having had a single conversation with either of my parents. This brought tears. Then I cried from being reminded that I was just a child and had to raise myself and that, since I was only a child with a child’s mind, I did a totally rotten job of it. Then I talked about the idea that you form your ideas before you’re seven and that it’s nearly impossible to get control over these ideas in order to change them. Then she piped in that one actually could change these ideas and that, if I had control, I was not a victim. At first I highly resisted this but then I saw the value of not being a victim because if I was a victim I could never change my circumstance and I vigorously wanted to change it. Because I was resisting I asked her if she had overcome anything herself. Then she talked about her journey overcoming the childish idea that she was unlovable because her mother tried to kill her when she was only two years old. I asked her how hard it was to change this. She said; “Very hard.” I also asked her how long it took and she said; “A long time. But with the EMDR it won’t take you as long as it took me.” So I decided not to resist her idea anymore because it was better than what I was telling myself. The 12 Step Program says ‘we let go of ALL our old ideas’ and I realized that the idea that I couldn’t change my mind was a ‘old idea’, so I decided to let go of it and go with her idea instead. I think that resistance to another person’s new (and better) idea is what takes so long to get well and I was not going to take a long time doing this if I could possibly help it. After all, I am – 63 years – old and I’m not getting any younger.

During this week my assignment was to tell myself; “Your parents were wrong. You ARE lovable and you deserve love and kindness”. Taking direction is really hard for me but I’m going to follow her directions this week.

Monday – 4-2-18

Tags

12-step, Al Anon, being human, exercise, fights, journal, journaling, Marriage, meditation, progress not perfection, PTSD, taking directions, treadmill

I made a little progress with Jerry today. Even the smallest thing triggers both of our PTSD issues. Then we have to fight each other. Well tonight I managed to do something different. I was on the treadmill late. 8 pm – 10 pm. Apparently this didn’t sit well with him and he came into the exercise room and gave me the evil eye. Then he SLAMMED the door shut. I just kept walking and didn’t ‘rise’. When I was done, I came to him in bed and very gently asked; “Why did you slam the door?” He said that I was doing my walking too late and that the TV, which is next to our bedroom, was keeping him awake. So I told him I’d try not to get on the treadmill so late. He said sarcastically; “Try!!??” I didn’t say anything back. The truth of the matter is, I can’t guarantee that it won’t happen again. I’m human. All I can do is try.

                                                                                                                       

For 38 years in 12 Step Program I have been unable to keep up a meditation routine. Today I finally took my sponsor’s direction about meditating. I sat on my loveseat for 5 minutes and not a second longer. I have to find out why I can’t do it after all these years of trying. Now I’m finally ready to take direction!!

Tuesday – 4-3-2018

Tags

AA, abuse, Alano club, friendship, journal, money, relationships, users

Today was an ‘interesting’ day. I just got blown over by an AA ‘friend’, a lively girl named Terrena. I had only been befriending her for a month or so when something came up. She was living in a motel situation and was trying to get a studio apartment. But – low and behold – she was short $275. You can guess the rest I think.

Well I forked up the money for her to get it.

Stupid me. I fell for the oldest trick in the book. She came off as a friend but all she turned out to be was a user. Today we were supposed to get together. She had just gotten paid and told me that when we hooked up, she’d pay me $100 of the $275. Then a funny thing happened. Right in the middle of our phone conversation we got disconnected. But the truth is I think she hung up on me. I tried to call her back about 5 – 6 times but no answer. She didn’t call me back either. She just disappeared of the face of the earth. I was supposed to pick her up for an AA meeting that we always went to. I went to her apartment but she wasn’t there or she didn’t answer the door . It’s all so frustrating!

Did she die? Have a heart attack right in he middle of our phone conversation? That’s a possibility – but I seriously doubt it. She’s only in her mid 50’s.

So there. She’s gone. A stupid AA user. As a general rule, AA people – especially those that frequent Alano clubs – are pathetic and abusive. I don’t have any AA friends. The only reason we were ‘friends’ was because my husband foisted her on me because she was new to the AA scene (she had however 10 years sober). She told him she was bipolar (I’m schizo-effective) so he threw her my way. I swear, if he tries to hook me up with anyone else in AA, I’ll sock him one.

           

I went to my usual Al Anon meeting after the AA meeting. The topic was Step 4 (made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves). I got to sit next to my sponsor Cheryl which was nice after the episode with Terrena. One of the women shared about the slogan; “You didn’t cause it. You can’t control it. And you can’t cure it.” This is about the alcoholic. But it hit me in the heart about my senior that I have been visiting for the past year. We hit a snag and she went on a starvation kick – I think to get back at me. I have been feeling so guilty about that and I hadn’t been able to shake the feeling until the woman shared this slogan. Something broke inside. I fully and finally accepted this slogan as if it applied to her crazy behavior even though she doesn’t have alcoholism. Her reaction to me was HER CHOICE! and not because of what I had done. All I did was tell her I couldn’t come see her that week. Now she’s in the hospital dying from starvation. The last time I saw her, she looked like a skeleton with skin on. They put her on palliative care. I stopped dropping by because I couldn’t bear to see her die like that. She’s 97 and in perfect health, and I wondered what she was going to die of. Now I know. Death by Stubbornness!!

What a Virgo.

From My Journal – 7 – Therapy

Tags

abstinence, child abuse, child within, complex ptsd, compulsive overeating, crying, Mental health, mental illness, PTSD, spirituality, tears, therapist, therapy, trauma

So I went to therapy yesterday. I love my current therapist, Elizabeth. I love, love, love her. She’s so busy that I have to make appointments up to two months in advance to keep my same time slot. Where I go, you can’t claim a regular slot for yourself, you have to take what you can get. I was lucky. Someone had cancelled so I got to meet with her yesterday.

From my Journal – 6 – Help with the Projection

Tags

abstinence, anti-social, Anxiety, child abuse, complex ptsd, Group psychotherapy, Intimate relationship, journaling, Love, Mental health, mental illness, Prayer, projection, PTSD, spirituality

This pertains to Journal entry # 4.

About a week ago, I got some very interesting help with the projection I did during the Woman’s Weekend for my church.

From My Journal – 5 – Self Hatred

Tags

abstinence, alcoholism, anti-social, Anxiety, child abuse, complex ptsd, God, journal, Mental health, mental illness, Overeaters Anonymous, PTSD, relationship, self-hatred, Suicide

I’m still abstaining from flour/sugar products. On the 15^th it will be three months.

I was on the phone with my Overeater’s Anonymous (OA) sponsor last night and what came out was the word depression. She asked why the depression and I could only say; “I don’t know why.”  So she suggested I write about it… which is why I’m writing about it.

From my Journal – 4 – Projection

Tags

abstinence, Anxiety, child abuse, complex ptsd, Defence mechanism, Delusion, God, Holy Spirit, Psychology, Psychosis, PTSD, relationship, trauma, Twilight Zone, violence

Remember, I said I was going to write with complete abandon on this blog? Well this is one of those times. I’ve written this post entirely uncensored. I have written this with utter abandon.

*  *  *

From My Journal – 3

Tags

abandonment, complex ptsd, compulsive overeating, Family, journal, Mental health, mental illness, Overeaters Anonymous, PTSD, relationship, trauma, violence

So this morning I’ve been feeling sorry for myself… feeling like an abandoned little waif. This is difficult, writing so that you might read my stuff. I want to let my hair down a bit and allow you into my world. I wear my hair in a ponytail. It’s uncomfortable to leave it hanging down. This is difficult. Impossible? I will keep trying.

From My Journal – 2

Tags

abstinence, anti-social, Anxiety, child abuse, christianity, complex ptsd, compulsive overeating, God, intimacy, intimacy with God, Mental health, PTSD, relationship

Getting on my knees is getting harder and harder. I am railing against turning my life and will over to something other than myself. I am so used to taking care of me by myself. Funny… I need God to stay away from alcohol. I have a conscious connection with Him all day long… to stay sober. But this food business is a whole lot trickier than the alcohol. I am truly bewildered by it all.

From My Journal – 1

Tags

abstinence, anti-social, child abuse, complex post-traumatic stress disorder, complex ptsd, compulsive overeating, God, Health, journaling, Mental health, mental illness, post traumatic stress disorder, PTSD, Sadness, trauma

I feel so, so sad these last few days. My eyes look dead to me in the mirror. Life is sad. The days go by and nothing happens in them. I feel like I should cry but I can’t cry.