It’s easy to list all the things we haven’t done right. I bet it’s challenging to list what we have progressed so far, but don’t we all deserve compassion?
My psychologist told me that even though healing progress is not linear (not always forward), the distance of me going backwards become less and less. Is it true? Sometimes I believe it, sometimes not.
Please, share about what you have achieved. Big, small doesn’t matter. They’re all achievements and very crucial!
I've been very diligently on my Therapy Homework. I've learned a great deal about emotional dysregulation, emotional flashbacks, and mindfulness, thanks to youtube and the DBT Manual. I'm working on self-hypnosis to re-train the Inner Critic, and have a lovely assortment of ideas for what to do when distressed.
Recovery is hard, and you have to fight tooth-and-nail against misdiagnosis and bad practitioners, but the good ones are out there. They take time to find, but if you don't give up hope, you get to them eventually. I am so grateful for my Psychiatrist and Group Therapy. They gave me the tools to start finding what I need on my own.
Thank you for your post, js_k.
My therapist says the same thing and my experience is like that, too.
But the way I see myself is "less than" others.
I agree about self compassion.
Unfortunately my family in the past used to be a source of pressure. Self compassion wasn't practiced.
Now things are changing. I have renewed contact with family and old friends and travelling to see everyone.
They can see the progress and appreciate the effort and courage I have put into things.
I have to push myself so far in so many different aspects of life, including changing my mindset and so many new things, that I don't have energy anymore to feel the progress much. I know it's not "normal" to push myself like that.
There is also the fear.
But I do believe in healing and have a plan. Pushing myself so much is not how I want to live, it's a transition period.
I know what I want, I am healing from trauma, going through big changes and facing fears. At the same time I'm connecting to my inner self, finding my identity and lots more.
I wish I could feel good about the progress but I am not able to. Only very rarely.
Thank you for making me reflect on this.
Having only had an intake therapy session, I've been having to work on my own for the time being, but that doesn't mean that I've been stagnant. A week ago, I was completely paralyzed with fear of just about everything. Just seeing another person that I didn't know would freak me out. I've needed to get a job for weeks and needed to figure out transportation to get to whatever job I found, but no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn't get past that fear.
This week has been quite different for me. A friend came by and basically offered me a job where he works so that he can advance and I could take his. This nudged me past my fear, though it took me two days to get there. But I finally applied and as long as my background check comes back OK then I have the job.
The transportation one is resolved with my sons bike, which I was of course afraid to ride. So all week I've been forcing myself to ride it so that I can peddle my way out of this mess I've found myself in. Baby steps, I know but we have to start somewhere. So I guess my achievement was simply facing fears. I do have another therapy session this afternoon. I'll see what happens there.
I’m meeting people after joining buy nothing group. Getting out of my house.
I processed my repressed memories.
I call blocked my abuser.
I’m choosing to self care listening to what I need and living my life instead of fixing other people.
I’m learning to blend into life instead of bringing attention to myself.
Thanks for asking
I found a therapy that works after 13 tries...got good at using the technique myself, got myself to a safe place after 11 years of bad situations and circumstances-a really tough challenge as i have been unable to work all these years or drive and need the therapy i finally found...but i finally fought my way to safety with my nails...
I went for years without any movement forward at all. Recovery for me had it's own agenda. It's really only been the last five years or so that I've progressed. I survived a suicide attempt in 2015. I'd simply run out of options at that point. I'd tried so hard to work towards teaching fellow first responders. My first gig? Triggered it all again for me, wiping out any progress I'd made up until that point.
Re-Educating myself just happened. I started studying online whatever courses I found that interested me. One course at a time, I caught myself back up to having current information about the world in my head. I was drawn to Philosophy Courses. As I progressed, my thinking cap seems to have rewritten itself.
I achieve remissions. They come following a relapse more quickly between than in the past. I'm there now again. The last melt-down in spring, although it was about processing some of the trauma that had yet to be looked it, it was one disjointed mess.
I was afraid I'd fall into the state I was in in 2015, so reached out to my sons and first wife, along with others. My meltdown was too-in the end-about throwing back to others their share of the responsibility for any harms we'd put on one another. I was scared, and wanted my sons especially near me. Everything came out of me in emails and social media posts. They misunderstood and I'd not had time to warn them-I knew the meltdown was coming. I'd been on an eight month advocacy and coaching (volunteer) stint. A very dear friend passed in November. My sis and I fell apart at Christmas and my Mom was getting up in the night and passing out on me-only three times-and all is well. All this combined and the unresolved trauma that wanted to escape: meltdown through March and most of April.
My sons ditched me again. I made a mistake including them. I'd thought we'd come to a new place. They've been so hurt from growing up as boys with me working all the time and losing myself. It took us a long time after my suicide attempt to start spending time together.
That's all good. I understand where they're at.
Anyway: I get these remissions out of the deal. Along with much more in my head resolved-the stories of the traumas and losses in my life needed, for me, to come to a place of acceptance and integration of the experience into myself as life-lessons.
For so long, having been betrayed by my employer and systems meant to be there for helping we damaged on-duty paramedics and the like (sanctuary traumas on top of all the others): The world became a very frightening place. As did my fellow humans. Those closest to me most of all.
I've sorted out reality-and accept all of what's going on-precisely as things are.
PRECISELY.
If I can muster solutions to something? I do that. If not? I'm learning to leave whatever alone.
There is personal growth through this recovery thing. As defeated as I still feel when I lose myself again, I've come to accept that I will learn more having fallen than I knew before.
I really like this scene from Cast Away: In 2015, after not only failing to teach. I lost my then partner. The falling away again from success with that was her last straw.
I'd pushed myself way to hard for years trying to keep her. She was with me through most of my stuff since diagnosis in 06. So losing her . . . . that brought pain all it's own.
Cast Away: I so related to the character Hanks played. Being stuck on an island is exactly what being stuck inside myself was/is like:
"We both had done the math. Kelly added it all up and... knew she had to let me go. I added it up, and knew that I had... lost her. 'cos I was never gonna get off that island. I was gonna die there, totally alone. I was gonna get sick, or get injured or something. The only choice I had, the only thing I could control was when, and how, and where it was going to happen. So... I made a rope and I went up to the summit, to hang myself. I had to test it, you know? Of course. You know me. And the weight of the log, snapped the limb of the tree, so I-I - , I couldn't even kill myself the way I wanted to. I had power over *nothing*. And that's when this feeling came over me like a warm blanket. I knew, somehow, that I had to stay alive. Somehow. I had to keep breathing. Even though there was no reason to hope. And all my logic said that I would never see this place again. So that's what I did. I stayed alive. I kept breathing. And one day my logic was proven all wrong because the tide came in, and gave me a sail. And now, here I am. I'm back. In Memphis, talking to you. I have ice in my glass... And I've lost her all over again. I'm so sad that I don't have Kelly. But I'm so grateful that she was with me on that island. And I know what I have to do now. I gotta keep breathing. Because tomorrow the sun will rise. Who knows what the tide could bring?"
I wish the end of our time together had ended with this kind of grace.
It didn't. I'm finally okay with that.
Sorry for writing a book here.
Be well all.
Cheers.
Just read a post....
Well, what do you know?
Very horrible dream. 
One triumph , many challenges 
