Mind Body and Trauma

[manuel_moe_g]

I hate hearing that you have nightmares, Mental Fairy, wish i could make them disappear.

[Mental Fairy]

Hi Friends

Well the rain has stopped and the flood waters have withdrawn back to normal levels. In a way the storm reminded me of an emotional mood. Once the tears have all dried up we have the clean up to carry out.

Had therapy yesterday, i have a lot more homework given to me through this therapist. As i have been having the odd panic attack and teary meltdowns we have been trying to work out where they are generating from. It all comes back to loss every single time.

However, on Saturday after the big floods i was asked to help retrieve some equipment from the farm Matt was working at last year. The crew from the farm had to evacuate leaving behind trailers and quad bikes chained to trees hoping they could be saved. I was asked to stop by a farmers house and pick up a trailer to help load quad bikes onto. I was informed it was in the driveway and just attach and meet up with the others about 1km down the road. I got out of the car at the top of the driveway and for some reason i started to have a panic attack. I paced, put my hands on my head and walked back and forth trying to talk myself down. I women came down over the paddocks behind me with her farm dogs and her older son, i tried my level best to hide how i was feeling. I introduced myself to this very kind and lovely lady and her son. Both very pleasant and approachable people. But for some reason i was fighting this panic. Long story short i got the job done and made it home. All the while scratching my head wondering why i had such an attack.

Therapy time came on Monday and i explained what had happened in greater detail. It was pointed out that i had gone into flight mode. Why? Because i didn't have a clue who the people were, i had never meet them before and because i felt alone. Even when i am with people, regardless of who they are, i still feel very alone. I was in an area of Taranaki that was hit the hardest by flood waters, there was damage everywhere, live stock missing and flooded homes. I was going somewhere i had not been before, i didn't know the owners of the farm and i was not aware i was going to see anyone. My body just wanted to get away from strangers as fast as i could. Yet, i meet strangers everyday in my job.

As i process the new approach to therapy i learn there is no right way and no wrong way. It comes down to how one responds to particular approaches.
My therapist lost her husband suddenly only a few weeks ago and had a great understanding of grief. Yet when others hear my story that all ask how am i still here. My only answer is - dissociation. I tap out mentally to get a hard thing over and done with. Yet other times i have to focus so hard and block everything else out around me, something i have to do at the gym daily.

I am slowly learning self love. It is taking time but i am working on it.

This weekend i am going away to spend some time in the bush, get grounded and find some birds! I will be staying in a yellow submarine in the bush! Yes, i know that sounds weird but it is true. Will send you link to see what i mean!

https://www.airbnb.co.nz/rooms/20605023?source_impression_id=p3_1751933163_P34UhTc-qE1LZXT2

My homework this week is CBT thought recording. I have to learn my triggers and behaviors, then follow up with noted body sensations and the thoughts i get both helpful and unhelpful. Once upon a time i ignored them all and just went for a run. I have to stop doing that so much and face things head on. Lucky i have a helmet!

Still putting my itinerary together for south island trip. I am thinking i will change my return flights and stay on an extra four days to make room for an extra hike or two. Hoping this weather bomb system is all over and done with soon. Feels like we having storms every two weeks.

Hugs to all

[snoringdog]

Hello Mental Fairy,

This makes me so happy to read, that you're getting a handle on some of the sh!t that's been driving you so long.
It's a daily struggle!

I for one, am looking forward to reports of your upcoming adventure, and especially your updated exotic-NZ bird list!

So, which of these NZ parrots might you see there?

The Kākāpō, the Kākā and the Kea

[Mental Fairy]

Look at you Mr SD, doing your South Island Bird homework. I am hoping to see all of the above. This morning i was going over my geocaching map and locating some remote and not so common areas people go. As Christchurch is the first stop i am hoping to head out to Lyttelton first and get into the hills above the port. This area was flattened by the earthquake when i left the south island, will be interesting to see rebuilt again. I can't wait to share with you the landscape and different bird life in the bush down there.

Meanwhile, i am looking forward to being away this weekend staying in a submarine!!! I get sea sick on wet grass so i have chewed my nails off already wondering if it was such a good idea!

We are in for a huge dump of rain again tomorrow onward. This weather is getting a bit much. We can't take much water. The rivers are changing directions as all the slash from the hills is coming down and blocking them.

I am training at the gym with weights now, trying to keep the headspace in a more manageable way.

Currently for therapy i have to make notes about when i am set off by a situation, the feelings it gives me, both physical and mentally. Then i have to challenge my thoughts. I have to say, i don't like it much! (there i go, Ms Negative)

The law i have laid down at work is that staff is not to contact me outside of work hours. I might have my phone on me but i will not be taking calls or doing any work outside of normal hours. My boss doesn't like this at all. So much so he has been making horrible comments about it. I have to put up boundaries otherwise they all take advantage.

Does anyone else here take sleeping pills to sleep?? If so, i need some advice on them.

Anywho, better go do my job! So many teeth, so little time.

[manuel_moe_g]

I am slowly learning self love. It is taking time but i am working on it.

working with my therapist for over 7 years, she always starts and finishes every session by taking time for me to honor my inner-children

for the first 5 years, it made me feel nothing, less than nothing. only after all that time did i start to have a sense of my inner-children inside of me, and loving them in they way that they should have always been loved, and giving them grace that was always denied them

please take care, all the very best

Manny

[troebia]

Does anyone else here take sleeping pills to sleep?? If so, i need some advice on them.

Aside from a couple of shots of whisky, my drug of choice is alprazolam/Xanax. It has a shorter half-life in the body than diazepam/Valium which I think is used more for prolonged states of anxiety. 0.5mg of Xanax will knock you out for about five hours, then you'd have to top off with more if needed.

[snoringdog]

I've use Valerian root off an on, it's a mild herbal sedative

[Mental Fairy]

So team

Been away on my group trip for geocaching. Got to meet my kind of people. It was much like finding my tribe.

Last Friday we got hit with yet more rain, so much so I gave up on wet weather gear as the water seemed to penetrate everything. Our rivers here can’t take much more.
After work on Friday I very slowly made my way south to a place called Fielding. There I had the inner child experience, I stayed in a yellow submarine. Best nights sleep I have had in a long time. I think I worse myself out playing with all the gadgets, buttons and levers. Great fun to wake up and look out a porthole that highlights a green paddock full of cows grazing on their fields.
I’ve learnt attending events is not an easy thing for me over the years. The best approach is don’t overthink it and just go.

The geocaching event is called the winter warmer. Held every year at a random yet interesting location. In my case it was in a cafe that was once a working farm wool factory. Walking in was daunting and loud, over 80 people attended from all over the district. Within minutes one person zoomed in on me asking if I was the tooth fairy. I nodded and introduced myself and shook hands with a retried aviation engineer who I know only by his geocache name. I can’t for the life of me pronounce his name, so I call him Pete. He is a legend in the geocache world. Many years under his belt and a wealth of knowledge.
Pete informed me there is a target on my back as I have come into the circle of geocaching with such force I am a force to be reckoned with. General knowledge is my thing so I tend to solve the local puzzles rather quick and do a lot of first to finds before others even have a chance to take their Pyjamas off. Within minutes there were stories and tales being told of each other’s adventures as well as people interested in what got each other into this hobby. For the first time I felt I was part of something I understood, we all understood each other. Some people there are of the incredibly high IQ range with the outfit to match. It was an honour to meet some of these people I read about on a daily basis when solving puzzles.

Upon leaving the event the hunt was on. I needed to get my numbers up to 800+ before I head to the South Island in August. We all jumped in our modes of transport and hit the roads, I hunted in churches, mailboxes, fake power boxes, kitty litter boxes, trees, under bridges, on bridges, buildings, man holes, road signs, trains, lakes, seats…..the list goes on…..and on…. Winging it I just followed my nose and stayed in the submarine one night and two farm stays over Saturday and Sunday. I felt free, childish and yet I felt like an adult in a kids mindset, being playful and random. Meeting people along the way.

But, there it is. I close my eyes to sleep, the dreams come, the reliving, the nightmares, the sleep walking and crying. The begging for it to stop. Knowing I had to be in therapy on Monday at 4pm I had to hit the road by lunch to make it back to Taranaki. I arrived on her doorstep with 1min to spare. Dressed in my hiking boots, tights, swanndri top and a beanie, i looked like I just fell out of a tree and hit every branch on the way down. My hands and arms had pen marks from writing down waypoints and codes. Truth be known I fell off a bridge while trying to climb a tree hours earlier. Haha got the cache though!

It started, the talking the pussyfooting around the subject of my childhood, that inner child. The little Gia. Six year old Gia who gave her innocence up for someone else’s desires. The flood gates opened, the mind shut down, I would stutter, switch off, look away and recoil. She told me what I knew deep down. I was coping, but only just, hanging on by a thread she said.

I can’t fool her, she knows me now. She was me once upon a time, anorexic, sports driven, bulimia was her demon of choice back in the day, self love at a zero and no understanding why, no shits given to the pain she was in, just wishing to end it all but without the fallout if one fails.

I sat on that couch last night for the first time in years and looked across at this empty plush pink seat, pillows to match, I saw her. This young girl, dressed in a witch costume for fancy dress for the annual school dance, or a devil, or alien, all because her mother thought her to me demonic and horrible because she lived through her mothers traumatic failed attempts of aborting the twins. I was once part of a pair. There was two of me, identified as identical twins. I survived the curtain hanger, I survived the incubator of doom in the era where survival was slim for babies 8-10weeks premature. I lived, but I stopped living at 6, I started to exist only for those that needed me for what ever they needed me for.

Now I have to start to learn to live….i’m trying.

[manuel_moe_g]

It started, the talking the pussyfooting around the subject of my childhood, that inner child. The little Gia. Six year old Gia who gave her innocence up for someone else’s desires. The flood gates opened, the mind shut down, I would stutter, switch off, look away and recoil. She told me what I knew deep down. I was coping, but only just, hanging on by a thread she said.

[...]

I was once part of a pair. There was two of me, identified as identical twins. I survived the curtain hanger, I survived the incubator of doom in the era where survival was slim for babies 8-10weeks premature. I lived, but I stopped living at 6, I started to exist only for those that needed me for what ever they needed me for.

Now I have to start to learn to live….i’m trying.

wow, i am so sorry

you didn't deserve such dreadfulness, hell on earth, you were thrown into the middle of hell

i am so sorry

Manny Moe

[lutherangirl]

MF,

Honesty is the best policy. I'm six drinks into this this response. I've been pondering your story all day and how to respond, because it hits so close to home; it breaks my heart. All I can say is that no one deserves to have their innocents taken. Once it is, it is a rabbit hole of questioning ones existence of who we are, what we are, do we like this or that, etc. We envy people who had a "normal life" where they can be free to be whomever they choose to be. I've tried many medications, TMS treatments, hypnosis, CBT, etc. No doctor can fix you! You have to pull all those things, exercise, treatments, diets, etc., and such say" THIS DOESN'T DEFINE ME ANYMORE! You have the power, the knowledge, the strength to say, I'm not going to allow this to ruin my life! What happened 20 some years doesn't define you now!

LG