keep on keeping on

you have really been getting a lot accomplished!

you deserve a breather. doctors and courts are exhausting.

I had a real bad time about two years ago. it was sort of the perfect storm of medical issues (including major surgeries), lots of Rx and anesthesia, occupational stress, single motherhood, moving to another city, and a crisis in my immediate family that involved flying to the other hemisphere to handle things. I was already exhausted and it was just too much. I woke up one day trembling in the bed. I had a fever, vomiting diarrhea. I was sick for four days before I went to the doctor. they told me I had stress exhaustion. aka: nervous breakdown. took me out of work and told me to rest. and I did. my panic was crazy bad if I tried to leave the house. I couldn't even cope with showering...took the curtain down.

the result of this is I spent weeks and weeks and weeks doing a lot of nothing. I watched dvd's and read books and took naps. I spent years getting to that level of exhaustion. and it took many months of rest to return to even a semi normal level of fuctioning. I left my job. I lived off savings. it was worth it. I learned some tough lessons in self care.

my point of sharing this is that..... I know what it's like to be so low. to feel like....defeated by your own weakness. to feel ashamed and embarassed. to feel like you aren't going to recover and your life is just sliding down the shitter. and beat yourself up over it. but I want to tell you that when you push yourself that hard. past the point of recuperating and onward. when you push so far down the road of exhaustion you break down. that is someone who is strong and determined and ruthlessly persistent in the face of adversity. it isn't because you were weak. it's because you made yourself stay strong for so long. and it's ok to take a rest. there's a clarity that comes at the lowest point. and it becomes a Rosetta stone for building a new life. what you are enduring has meaning. it has purpose. in the end you will be stronger. more whole. more true to yourself. be kind. have mercy and compassion. don't berate yourself. if you need to rest. just rest. brush your teeth and relax. eating, sleeping, bathing. sometimes that is enough. just keep on keeping on. it gets better. it just sucks hard until then.

yes, beccabee, it seems like nervous breakdown is an issue here...
i made it thru another day. feeling completely overwhelmed. when there are things that need to be done to take good care of ourselves and there is just not a spark of strength left to do them...

i try to let go of the self-condemnation for not being who i "should" be. who said what i needed to be? i just am. what i am right now. trying to slow down into mindfulness. just observing, not judging, no pressure to react. that is helping a little bit.

i just hope i will be able to sleep. last night i was wide awake, too exhausted to find sleep. that is horrible.

its hard to let go of worrying. the what ifs... they never get you anywhere. if i break down as well, what will happen to us? host gone. Mike gone. D taking over is like the system nightmare. so i feel like i have to stay strong for all of us. just slowly getting the idea that staying strong on the long run means not pushing too hard now. its not a sprint. its a marathon.

Hi Asti,

You don't have to be ashamed of anything! You are doing a really hard job and nobody has the right to say you are messed up. You are working without support and things are hard! I think you are super brave to keep going. I hope you get some rest really soon. Don't give up.

What kind of stupid court makes people get up in public and say they are messed up? It sounds awful!!! That makes me really mad!

Iain

today felt a little bit better. i try to sleep as much as possible. that really helps to make the day shorter
but i think i am actually doing better, because i found the quiet moments to draw. its been 7 months since my last drawing... it means that i need at least 3 hours of un-interrupted me-time and i got it. at an artists hour (past midnight ) but anyway. feeling better. i always feel better when i can produce something visible.

i got some wonderful things done today. finally bought and replaced all the light bulbs that were broken. a lot. now that its getting dark so early we need lights to chase away the fears. it felt great turning on all the lights
totally forgot about eating but its never too late for that.

i am still a lousy babysitter and Maya was up all day, terrified and very worried. when our assistant T doesnt write back for a long time she always believes he died. its very hard for her. someone gave us a very good book with exercises, some of them specifically for alters and littles, and with the help of the book i could help her with her fears. that was an amazing moment. i am so not good with kids, but with a little help from outside its not that bad. i am surprised and touched by what i managed there. i never thought i could be good for stuff like that.

sounds good!

keep resting, it helps. it feels like doing nothing, but resting and taking indulgent time in things that charge your batteries is really important! so it actually is doing something resting is actually one of the most important things.

gosh, this is hard. resting is not my strength.
i am beginning to realize that i have to change. thats like getting hit by a rock. a huge one.
i am used to living life with bursts of activity. whenever something was needed, just needed to be done no matter what, i would leave all emotions and needs behind and push thru.
it looks like i have reached the end of my pushing. its just not possible to do that all day long and then do it another day. life is more like music, you have to play the pauses or there wont be any rhythm to the melody, no air to breathe.

i kept working with the soothing exercises from that book, tried not to forget to be mindful. not to push. its hard.
i made it thru the day so well, then realized that i forgot to eat again. how does that happen? i think i am doing great and then i forget something that important for the body.
i feel like there are a million things i need to remember and i just cant do it all at the same time.
pretty crushed.

i have always looked down at L for being so slow and weak and ya, mainly terribly slow, and now i am beginning to understand what she was doing. i kind of hate it. being slow. being weak. being responsible for everything. this is not me. i am not me anymore.

tired, just exhausted. i went downtown today to get us a warm coat for winter.
and i did. i was focussed, until i found one. then everything got blurry.
the cashier was patient with me while i stood there, just very obviously confused, not remembering the date and i forgot how to pay and basically what money is and even what that number is she told me and how that could be related to pieces of paper in my pocket.
getting used to being looked at with pity and horror. i have such a beautiful face, a sophisticated look, and then i am standing there, too confused to pay.
barely made it home. decided not to do any grocery shopping after that. who knows what would happen. i could get lost in that store for hours like this other day...

so YAY for taking care of us and having a warm coat. it cost me way more than money. yay for frozen pizza.
i am losing courage to leave the house. i am just a sad creature out there, confused and lost.
i am not used to that. my brain not working properly. i am strong. i am focussed. i am sharp and controlled and i am efficient and capable. was. i was. feeling so terribly lost and very sad.

Okay, it may help to consider what might have happened. If you have had the ability to do this type of transaction in the past, it's possible one or more of you wa striggered somehow by what was happening -- the salesperson, the store, the money, the choosing, the coat itself. Does this ring any bells? For us a trigger can bring someone else forward who unintentionally interferes with the ability to function for the usual person out.

Is it possible that an alter was in front and didn't have the skills or experience to pull off the particular transaction? I'll give you examples from our system. We have (at least) two hosts who we weren't aware were distinct alters until about a year ago and we've only made some key distinctions of how we function lately.

We've been caught in work situations with me out, John. I don't have a good memory for the job or great social skills and I get overwhelmed easily, so I have to switch to Johnny. Just a couple days ago, Johnny went into therapy and realized quickly that he is not skilled handling the emotional stuff. His access to how the rest of us feel is poor and by habit he avoids negative emotions. He tried hard to check with everyone inside, as the T asked, but it was clear that a wall was there with him that isn't when I'm in front. So he tried to switch to me but wasn't able to for half a minute because he didn't know how. We're skilled at switching quickly from me to him, but not the other way around.

Rider does detailed analytical parts of the job which Johnny gets bored with and unless Rider's allowed to front, we're not very productive. Ulric communicates anger or similar emotions for us but his underlying habit is to do it in a way that distances us from others. He's good at expressing tough things I just can't but usually goes overboard. It has taken our realizing that the wrong one of us is out to make things go accordingly to plans. And just a year ago we were entirely unaware there were several of us out in different situations rather than one.

It's remarkable how inept some of us are trying to perform activities which other alters are quite skilled at. And what's worse, it's not even as clean-cut as I make it above. It's not just a matter of switching and we aren't always thinking "is the right one of us in front?" My guess is we slip and slide past each other. We know that if we get interruptions, it can be disastrous for getting things done because it means Johnny gets pulled forward to deal with the people and isn't in the habit of letting go of control so he'll go looking for informal meetings, which is only part of our job.

I mention all this because for quite a bit over the past few years, I've just felt helpless about the confusion and frustration and about being unable to do things I used to be able to. I'm beginning to see that for our system at least, our success in regular life transactions is definitely related to who's active (or activated) and who's fronting. As well as I know who is here in our system, I don't know as much about how we all function (or don't function) together, overlapping, mixing, and slip-sliding past one another as we do.

i know that money has been a trigger before. this was not the first time paying was messy...
it was a store that stirred the hypervigilance. packed with people, packed with clothes, nice but loud music and they had a special going on that was confusing for me. i cant stand it when i cant see what is going on behind me and this paying scene was just that, a lot going on behind me.

if an alter was involved i am not aware of it. how do you tell its an alter? connection is so broken...
just yesterday a friend thanked me for helping her thru her panic attack concerning this family thing and i couldnt remember the tiniest bit of that whole story... but it sounded like Mike helped her order her thoughts and feelings. (we call him "inner therapist" cause he is really good at that stuff). but why the memory gap? we used to be able to do these kind of things while co-con and everything was fine...
everything is so messed up inside and its hard to tell what is happening. its like i am starting from zero again

pretty frustrated. got the results of my last blood test and there is nothing that could explain the physical symptomes. again.

this has happened so many times before... the body is showing symptoms that cannot be explained medically. and thats that. nobody can do anything about it, its probably psychological and i just have to live with it. we were sent to see 2 other doctors who might or might not be able to say something about all this. just what i needed, more medical appointments.

i am feeling so slow. i get things done, but i need a week for what i used to do in a day. its so frustrating to be so slow.
after the washer the heating broke today.

i just wanna be myself again. i feel like i am trying to live someone elses life and that person is really damaged...