We All Have Vulnerabilities And It's OK :-)

For the past few days now I’ve been thinking of getting my a$$ of this house and going on the bus.  I have bought a bus pass (they are cheap in Ottawa if you are on Disability) and have been thinking of different scenarios:

·         I could pick up stuff I want at stores out of my comfort zone.

·         When I am suppose to meet someone I could plan to go out and take the bus to

              meet them somewhere. 

Then I think to myself, I do have my training pass given to me by my mental health worker Jenn NOW (a free pass for people who need encouragement to get back on the bus). Jenn gave this to me because I have agoraphobia/panic but It hasn’t helped motivated me. But I do want to get out so why don’t I go out today?  

I can’t deal with leaving the house, yet. So I’m wondering if I’m really going to get out. I was thinking 3 days a week on the bus?

And, I also want to go to my mental health drop-in. I read January’s schedule and there is a Trauma group on Tuesday so I am planning on calling them on Monday to see if it’s a drop-in. Actually this quite excites me although my mind is flipping back and forth on it…

I know I will likely be panicky on my few or dozen or million trips but the idea is to keep at it right? And, for me to try not to get bored or to frustrated. It should be fun, right?

I’m kind of afraid of ‘growing up’. It doesn’t feel very safe to be an adult. There are too many responsibilities and, there is more of a chance that I might get hurt. If I do I am so fragile I will hide in my mental illness cave, again because I’ve tried to work, volunteer and go to post-secondary school in the past!

It’s hard to be so sensitive. I was just chatting with a twitter friend who was given some misinformation by her mother in-law. The mother in-law seemed to think she was right but a few of us fellow tweeps chimed to to tell her her that we didn’t think mother in law was right at all.

I felt my friend doubted herself while all the while she knew the answers.  This it helped me feel that we all have vulnerabilities. I guess that’s a part of life and its ok. I mean I knew this but I am never sure…It is so hard to be strong when we see people as authority and who must be right. My therapist tells me the same i.e.  I need to try to be stronger in myself and believe in myself.

Another reason I am fearful to go outside of my comfort zone is that I have had to let past friends go in my life. One of my ex friends was so angry she said in a rage ‘I better not see you on the street.’ I took that to mean she is going to punch me out or something. She has anger issues and that’s exactly why I decided to let her go!

And there is another ex friend  that sent me a Christmas e-mail this year. I don’t know what to say to that.

It is hard. I really want to find people in my life who share some of the values I have come to develop and those who I feel I can talk too.

My problem is that I feel so guilty if I upset anyone in anyway. This came up in my homework with my therapist Cindy today. While working on this homework (which was to identify my thoughts associated with the feelings of fear and guilt), I fully expected my feelings of fear to outweig the guilt. Quite the opposite! It seems I carry this tremendous guilt.. Cindy informed me that I’m taking on others guilt as well and this is true. This pattern goes back very far for me…

Maybe this is good i.e. writing about it all…maybe I should blog more often, lol…Have a great rest of day readers. I think the cats want their treats....!  

Christmas Is A Sad Time Too...But Things Get Better...

Christmas is especially hard for me this year because I am not living with Kerri, my ex/bff who I lived with for the last 2 years and really miss. She lives in BC now. We will talk on the phone as we do everyday and those chats make me laugh and smile every time. Kerri is sad as well to be away from friends and family here so hopefully we will both be able to make the best of it. Kerri got in the Christmas spirit long ago and had her Christmas tree up at the end of November.

I feel that I’m stronger in a way this year. I don’t feel depressed but rather sad. I know the shrink I used to have used to try to get me to distinguish between depressed and sad. Sometimes it feels like they are both the same emotion.

I have big hopes that by next Christmas I will be attending numerous holiday parties and some are non alcoholic so that is a plus for me. I have bought a bus pass for January and I am really excited to at least vicariously go out and enjoy life. The thing I most want to do is go back to my mental health drop-in for their drop-in support groups. I want to meet people where I can chat and feel safe and secure because for people with post traumatic stress disorder it is hard to feel safe in the world.

As it is holiday time and more people are celebrating I find it really hard to read people’s tweets on drinking. I want to drink too! I have upset one or two people, I think, who I have been chatting with and then I later stop following them  because I feel jealousy and anger because I so don’t want to feel the anxiety and pain that life causes me so it really is not about them. 

I have been sober almost 6 ½ years because drugs and alcohol took over my life for 5 years. In the end I had a heart arrhythmia and elevated liver enzymes and probably a death wish. A year after I quit the docs said my heart and liver were functioning normally and I am so glad that I caught it soon enough for my body to heal. I do believe my life  IS getting better!

For the past year or more I have been telling everyone I want to live to be over 100. They just look at me funny, hehe. But I want to heal and then have the rest of my life to be amazing! Anywhoo I do feel hopeful because I will be starting a new therapy called ‘Bowen Therapy’ in February. This is suppose to help with body alignment for physical and mental ills and it is similar to the Feldenkrais Method which I tried a few years ago and I found it to be extremely helpful. During tough times it is OK to dream. Whatever it takes to help your body and spirit get stronger right? 

 Anywhoo, here is a cute video for all cat lovers on Oskar the blind kitten. He is very 'helpful' and here he is trying to help with the Christmas tree :-P.

I wish you all a wonderful Christmas or whatever you are celebrating this season. Remember if you are sad that things do get better as I believe they will for me and it's OK to dream, smile and laugh :-).

I'm Pretty Good At Distracting Myself From Myself....

As many of you know I am on twitter and I retweet true crime and many sad sad things. I find that one of the things I really feel sad and angry about is sexual abuse and I don’t retweet many of the high profile cases because I can’t deal with my own past as a sexual abuse survivor. I have been tormented by my abuse for most of my life. Now I do know that I am feeling much more solid on that front since I came out as a lesbian and found Kerri who is now my bestest friend. We met on Plenty of Fish dating site 2 ½ years ago. I can now at least watch most of the talk shows that talk about sexual abuse.

Kerri and I are very different in our beliefs. I tell her that the reason that I feel happy even though I am sad a lot is because I feel spiritually that there is something more then this shallow world we live in…It’s a great escape to think of other dimensions, hehe. I have found this free on-line radio station I like called:  http://a2zen.fm/ you don’t need to be a member to listen and they talk about all sorts of things like spiritual guides, chakras and healing, astrology, ways of changing your thinking etc…There are tons of archived shows which is mostly what I listen too…I’m way to scatterbrained to find a show I like and make time for it at the right time…I sort of have to be feeling in the mood for this sort of stuff…it’s deep!

This week Cindy has told me to write down what the thoughts are connected to my feelings of guilt and fear. I feel those two emotions 24/7 but it feels scary to sit down and pick out the root of those even though I’m pretty open at talking, expressing and showing my feelings (Cindy says I’m pretty good at distracting myself from myself and this is true as well :-P). I try to come off as strong when I am not but I hate to draw attention to myself.

For the past couple of days I have had upper back pain on my left side. Today I have even had osteoarthritis pain in my left knee and in my right. I think all these although physical are psychosomatic. Oh, and yesterday I felt like I was coming down with the flu but it never happened. It think my homeopathic remedies were the culprit but better then the real thing. In fact it seems most those I am following in Ottawa on twitter seemed to be sick yesterday. I hope they are ok now…Things physical for me usually are psychosomatic in some way…

I have had this problem on and off for much of my adult life where I pull out my hair. The shrinks call it Trichotillomania which can be a form of OCD if it gets in the way of your life but it basically when you have anxiety and that is my first name!

Last week I went on a 4 day hair pulling binge and now I have taken up Kerri’s idea of tying my hair back. It really works for me too! I still go through the motions of pulling when a hair peeks through my hair band but in the last week I have only pulled out 2 hairs and this is a record!…

 
I am so sad this Christmas that I am not sharing it with Kerri. We lived together the last 2 Christmases. I really miss her a lot but I am so grateful that we can still talk on the phone tons. She really makes me smile…