Dollhouse

     First, I am really excited about the Body As Art project! I have a couple of submissions already and I am looking forward to seeing what everyone comes up with. You can definitely submit more than one hand and there are no rules about it. It's your hand :-) You can check out the gallery under the Artwork tab to see what's going on. I would love to get enough submissions to create a small printed book, and everyone that would like one can get one...well, that is the plan at least.

Yesterday I was really struggling and I am not sure why. My day started unusually early as I had to be at work at 6:30AM and I am never good with radical schedule changes. But, I made it to work on time (early) and the day went by rather slowly and it was long. I was able to leave by 3PM and had the whole afternoon in front of me. Around 5PM I was getting edgy sitting at home and decided to go out and try to find some new art supplies, or a bookbag I need for my upcoming vacation and then when none of those made me happy I settled on an Office Supply store for a whiteboard. I came home with nothing because I was too angsty to spend money and I think I was just overtired setting me up for a bad mood.

While at my first stop "Hobby Lobby" I was walking the aisles looking for nothing in particular when I came across the dollhouse section. I saw this "My Family" set which was the EXACT set I had when I was little!!!! It was freakish! I had the same little girl with the pink dress and white shoes and the mother, I remember her very well. The little baby came in the same blanket with the pink bow which I remember discarding early on. I received this set 16 years ago and they are still making them the same. How weird is that??

Then I saw the SAME EXACT bathroom set I had in my dollhouse, right down to the pink floral decal on the bathtub. It was like taking a step back in time. I remember how the toilet seat actually moved up and down and was weirded out by it being wooden. Apparently most of the furniture I had in my little house is still being produced and you can buy it.

It got me thinking about my dollhouse. I remember it perfectly! My dad made it for me for Christmas. I remember coming down the stairs and it was sitting on a table with a giant red bow. HEAVEN. He painted the exterior walls white and the roof was grey, and the shutters were blue. The doors opened and closed and there were two porches. Inside he had painted a few rooms as well as added wallpaper to a few. I guess he ran out of time because the stairs were not finished...he actually never finished them. The house had 10 rooms and was almost as tall as me. I played out a lot of my childhood drama inside those rooms...runaways, abuse, teen pregnancy, divorce and deaths were all common themes. I played with it for the rest of my childhood until I was probably 13, when my parents made me pack it up and put it in the attic.

It's strange how these snippets come back, vividly and ellusively..

Shame and Fantasy

All this thinking about attachment has me hypervigilant about my feelings around relationships or non-relationships in which I feel I need someone or want someone, whether that want/need be based in reality or not, and after all that thinking I am left feeling really sad. I feel very freakish when I think about how strange I am when it comes to wanting someone or something that cannot possibly happen, it's so unrealistic, etc. I think when I desire attachment to a person that is unrealistic the sadness or wanting feelings that I have are somewhat more manageable than feeling the grief over not having healthy attachments in my present life, or just spending more time focusing on the impossible versus coping with how crazy I feel.

Let's examine a little bit further. When I was in the 7-8-9 age range I had a lot of medical stuff going on, I wasn't in school and I was left alone for 10-11 hours a day (aside from the time I spent in foster care). I didn't have any contact with peers and I certainly was not getting any attention at home. Meanwhile I was on terribly high doses of prednisone as well as fast acting inhalers, all of those medications cause me to be paranoid and anxious. I began developing imaginary relationships with people I had more contact with than my parents like my doctors or someone I would watch on TV. I was so alone and out of my mind craving attachment that I would come up with stories in my head about how tv people would take care of me and how I would be so much happier if they were a parent. I would listen to every word they would say and I would relish personal disclosures and feel like I was honored to know something about them. I was never delusional about our actual level of interaction, I would just spend a lot of time in my head wishing they were my parent or wishing that they were my friend. I definitely attached more to women with strong personalities that were funny and loud because that is what I wanted at home.

When I was 10 years old, The X-Files came out which was quite a double edged sword for me. I was terrified of the stories but I was amazed by the Scully character. She was so strong and kick ass and more than anything I wanted her to bust down my door and rescue me from my family life. Scully was more consistent than anything in my life, she was always on television when they said she would be, her character was very rigid (and in fact that is part of the character development) and she was a rescuer. What more would a kid like me want? 9:00PM on Friday nights was the best part of my week. There were many attachments similar to this one but this is the first I remember actually hurting because the reality was that Scully was not real and Gillian Anderson the actress was a big flake. But I really enjoyed the fantasy that Scully would one day save me. I preferred this internal drama versus the real life drama where I would ask for something I needed and be denied or hurt. It was a safety thing for me.

This would all seem pointless to look at if I had grown out of that phase or stopped playing it out in my present day life but at some point I must have internalized that pattern so deeply that even now I cannot get out of it. I ignore the real-ness of most of my relationships whether they be healthy or not because nothing is predictable in reality. I have some very solid healthy and wonderful connections in my life, but those can end it hurt or disappointment or what if they leave me because I am too needy or crazy? Fake people and wishing for fake people to be in life is a lot safer and extremely distracting.

Back in 2001 or 2002, I cannot remember, Law and Order: SVU came out. I immediately glommed on to the idea of the lead character Olivia Benson existing outside of a TV show. She was compassionate, a rescuer and yet a very strong female. I remember wishing I knew someone just like her that I could tell my story to, that would pick me out of my life and punish the guilty parties. I desperately wanted her to exist and it I was terribly hurt knowing that someone like her was probably not out there. When the actress Mariska Hargitay (the woman behind Olivia Benson) began to do a lot of work in helping survivors, especially founding The Joyful Heart Foundation I was so excited to know that she was like the character and I created a fantasy in which she would rescue me too. Obviously this fantasy was never really dealt with and it was a private thing for so long. I feel a lot of shame about how crazy all of this can seem, especially out of context but now I think that I am getting it that it is not something to be so ashamed of, that maybe it's just really sad that I was so deprived as a kid that imaginary relationships and attachments are more safe than actual attachments.

Where does this leave me now? I think I often brush off very important feelings of connectedness and attachment to healthy people in my life because my fantasy world of attachment seems so much more connected and safe. In my head, my current attachments can never seem as real or as meaningful because the expectations and ideas I have around attachment all revolve around the child-like idea of being rescued. I become very defensive and hurt when I feel disappointed because I want people to be Scully or Benson busting down my door and saving me from someone else or even myself, and when someone doesn't do that I just assume it is because they don't care enough. I never consider that maybe I should be my own Scully and care for myself...I still yearn for someone to prove to me that I am worth it. I guess I just don't believe that I am and want external validation from a second party that I am worth saving.

Anyway, I know I am weird..but this shame needed a voice today.

Jesus, here we go again. I have that awful anxious feeling, the kind where your stomach feels as if it might just drop out of you and light and sounds are sharp and annihilating. Last night was kind of a spiral that I wish I could have stopped when I realized it was a spiral. I've had quite a bit of time lately to ruminate as I sprained my back and haven't been able to do much other than lay on the floor and hope the vicodin would put me to sleep. I feel shut down and unable to connect to much and it's kind of lonely and has me feeling just plain sad. It's not that I am isolated because I am still talking to people but I just don't feel anything when I am talking.

I was on the phone with my best friend last night and all I could do was barely listen while my head screamed for me to reach out to her, but how? So I eventually went to bed and woke up around 3AM with a terrible nightmare that made me completely crazy. I wanted to run so bad, to leave and just get the hell out of my house but that didn't make any rational sense. So I called my friend back and she talked about animals until I felt sleepy again. Then I woke up at 5AM with a different yet more terrifying dream and I walked around downstairs until I could calm down enough to return to my room. Today nothing seems real or ok and I am just going in circles. Nothing bad is happening to me right now, nothing has happened to me for awhile now but I feel as if it has.

Thinking about Therapist's wedding is literally making me nuts. I want it to go away and just be over but I can't get it out of my head. I feel insane thinking about how to make it go away because I don't want to remember what it feels like to be left. This probably does not make any sense but honestly, the most awful feeling for me is feeling left. I would do anything to not feel it so naturally my brain keeps going to irrational thinking patterns like suicide or just running away. I've never been so afraid of her leaving me and it just doesn't make any sense. In some ways it does but my experience with her for the last seven years tells me otherwise.

While my heart is a shield and I won't let it down
While I am so afraid to fail so I won't even try
Well how can I say I'm alive

If my life is for rent and I don't learn to buy
Well I deserve nothing more than I get
Cos nothing I have is truly mine

I keep replaying the times I was left by my parents, mostly my mother. I can see the difference and I know differently but the feeling itself is a trigger. How do I make the feeling different? Not all of these feelings are from my childhood either. I think about the relationships from adolescence and adulthood that I have been left because I wasn't enough for them. I'll never be anything more than a patient to Therapist but honestly, how does the patient let go of the neediness of a person that doesn't need you? I trust her, I do...but what is keeping her attached to me? She doesn't need me.

I need to keep moving. Sitting here typing isn't making this any easier.

Flexibility and Flight.

One thing I have learned from the hundreds of thousands of dollars of therapy I have received is that flexibility is a key to success in therapy. Things that were necessary in the past to feel safe or accomplished don't always work in the present and just as I have learned that feelings are fluid and ever changing, so are coping skills and needs. What I needed in the past isn't exactly working and all the strategies I developed aren't fitting the present. At first this was frustrating because I had such a strong handle on my skills and needs and to find myself grappling around for whatever would work was mindless and annoying. I had become too rigid in my abilities and overwhelmed at the thought of 'starting over' again but now I am realizing that this is not really starting over, but just adjusting to the current situation.

I know I detest change and I know routines and rigidity make life seem predictable and controllable however, this idea has been holding me back. I know that all the quick fixes I used to rely on aren't working because they are just that...quick fixes. It seems now I need to find stability in flexibility and hold true to the foundations I have created. All this work has led up to this point, where I am no longer following the book but now I am following my instincts and feelings just the way a child learns to grow and change. So it's fitting that I have changed my theme here to the crane...growing wings and trusting I can fly.

Poor Coping and Choices

It's been awhile since I've posted, a lot is going on and it seems my brain is either going too fast to comprehend or much slower and distracted than I can handle. I have reached a point in which negative coping mechanisms are not an option or they don't really work, nor do all the healthy ones my treatment providers have taught or suggested to me. So I sit here often like a deer in headlights wishing I had some sort of relief.

Therapy has been a pain in my ass lately. I doubt I can explain what is going on but I will try to give the more brief version. Therapist has been working with an introject (a part that mimics ones abuser/s and acts out a lot of what was done to an abused person) for about a month now. This part has regressed and it's complicated. I know I have written about her but even still I don't know how to explain her. I don't think Therapist could either because this part so rapidly changes back and forth between sounding like a child to a raging teenager and at moments totally calm. Therapist has a hypothesis that this part does this because that is what was necessary to survive with my mother. Makes sense, but doesn't make it any easier. This part disclosed a couple of weeks ago that my mother was making a trip down here, mostly because something happened in my mother's past this time of year and she blames me for making her remember when I was younger. She re-enacts this trauma with me every year as punishment. She is one sick lady, trust me, I know. She is due in town later this week. Therapist has decided that either I have a solid plan that involves another person staying with me to make sure she doesn't hurt me or to be hospitalized.

I have a few problems with both plans, hospitalization I think is self-explanatory. Having someone stay with me brings up a lot of feelings of guilt and neediness. So I am pretty stuck as to what to do and I need to have it figured out by tomorrow afternoon. If I have someone stay with me I am completely inconveniencing them and admitting that I need something. The need is the bigger problem because with a need comes guilt and regret. Sometimes I think I should go inpatient because at least it would be me accepting the consequences of not being able to stand up to my mother and no one else would suffer. Then I think of how my job would be at risk and how much regret financially I'd have. It's so f' ed up. I need to figure it out though.

As for my coping skills not working, hmmph. So frustrating. In the past I'd do all kinds of things to try and make this anxiety and craziness go away but several things are now out of the question. For instance, I cannot self harm because I am in a romantic and physical relationship in which I could not hide cuts or burns. I live with my partner and drinking is out of the question. He is not into it. I cannot just dissociate for the said reason and also because my job is so nuts right now I have to be on top of everything. That leaves my eating disorder. This is also complicated because cooking has become my new hobby and my partner expects it at this point. I LOVE to cook and it relaxes me, but now the food fears are raging so I get caught up in it. I had abstained from my ED for awhile because I have been so sick for well over a month. I decided I HAD to keep from the behaviors so my body could heal, the only problem with being sick, eating and being on steroids is that no matter what your body retains. I haven't been very active and the steroids have made me swell...so I am feeling enormous and I know I have gained quite a bit of weight. I tried to be ok with that but honestly, the past two days have been an ED nightmare and I admit I am welcoming it. The anxiety I have is enough to make me lose my appetite anyway. I also figured since my boss is not taking me seriously about needing some things to change about my schedule I can show him that I do have a problem, because looking at me right now you'd tell me it was fine to lose some weight.

In other therapy related news I had a strange moment last session. Therapist had just brought me back after she was speaking to the introject part and I was all kinds of messed up from that. She was telling me what the other part was talking about which included the part disclosing how she shut down and freaked out when she saw my mothers hands in the flesh. She asked me if that resonated with me and for the first time I felt extremely connected to that moment in which my mother is in front of me. I felt the actual fear and my body began to shake and I had true panic running through me. I knew what that felt like instead of remembering it in the third person. I did NOT like it at all. I assume that this is probably a good thing and means I am becoming less dissociative but seriously, I don't like it.

I was also proud of last session how a part of me stood up to Therapist. Sometimes I think she forgets about how I respond to certain topics or how I interpret things. Basically Therapist was telling this part that she is an adult now and has choices about what happens to her (in relation to my mothers impending visit) and she said "You are an adult, this is your choice" and this part of me interpreted it as "You are doing nothing to prevent it so you must want it" and that part made it very clear why she doesn't have a lot of choices. In trying to get this part to understand the amount of power she has, Therapist thought it a good idea to say "You're and adult, you are 5'3'' and taller than me" which is never ok to compare anything body related to any part of me. That part shot back "Let's NOT compare body sizes" to which Therapist backed the hell off and apologized. Even though the session totally sucked, it was good to know improvements have been made.

I need to go to work, off the clock, to get things done. Toodles.