I can’t tell you how it will be for you, but in my experience it’s counterintuitively easier. Hearing about something like that second hand, I’m helpless. Hearing about trauma firsthand, I am not. I can help. It’s like any other injury. When the person is right there and they’re hurting, that’s the priority. Freaking out about it takes a back seat until that’s dealt with. It’s almost even calming in a way. I have to be calm, so I am. You’re good at this, and you’ve got training. It probably won’t cover every eventuality, but I think the basics of emotional labor are fairly consistent even in the face of... that. There’s absolutely no shame if this is too much because my God, and I say that as a religious person who takes invocations of God very seriously, that is terrible. I think you can do this. I really believe in you. But if you decide you can’t or it’s just not worth it, that would be totally understandable.
@Verily this was an incredibly thoughtful response that I cannot tell you how much I appreciate. Thank you very much, I even teared up. I think you're right about it feeling different when you're able to do something, even if that thing is listening calmly and playing witness to their experiences. I think that will help a lot.
Okay, turns out full time jobs suck. I'm completely exhausted basically all the time. Today was particularly difficult because they gave me a thing to do that no one has trained me on. The woman there today is a very nice and helpful person, but she's horrible at training people. I'm still so lost after watching her do the thing. Everything is about time management GO GO GO with her so things seem half way completed and I have no time to take notes. Plus this other co-worker of mine is just the most deliberately unhelpful, complaining, abrasive person ever. I kind of hate her a little bit. She fucked over my client because she insists on throwing away everything left on "her" desk even though she's per diem and doesn't get her own fucking desk thank you very much. I don't want to feel this way, I just want to know how to do my job and interact with clients and not have to deal with people who hate their fucking jobs. If you hate it so much then LEAVE LIKE YOU KEEP THREATENING TO, JESUS CHRIST.
I don't know how to comfort and show support with words right now. I just hope you have a fondness for reptiles as much as I do (or half as much, which would still be A LOT).
I don't know if this is appropriate, but I wanted to wish you a happy birthday! I sent you a text, but I'm unsure if you got it haha. So here, have some more birthday pics of lil' beardies! Spoiler: Pics of beardies!
whoa, it's beldaran's birthday today? wow, i know two sams whose birthdays are today happy birthday, beldaran!
I probably have about a million work things to talk about here, like how half of the people I work with are fuckers who refuse to do their goddamn work. But I just got done talking about that in therapy so let's talk about other things that bother me! Like how I've only lost 8 pounds in the last 6 months. And I'm not denigrating that, it is something, but it was so much easier and faster before. Ugh, I'm so annoyed and resentful because I wanted it to be as easy as it was in the beginning but of course it's not like that because reality is terrible. I have been feeling pretty okay about myself on and off, but I still would like to weigh less. Which is pure vanity at this point because even if I'm still overweight it's not really affecting my health probably? Maybe it is and I'm just kidding myself. Also! I'm super scared of going to the doctor for my first visit in 3 weeks because I've worked hard (I mean, for a certain definition of hard work) to get to this weight and if she's one of those doctors who is all about the bmi she'll see my 29-30ish bmi and start in on me about it. Ugh. UGH! Anxiety! I'm also having the most unexpected anxiety about getting old. I'm 32, that's not exactly ancient, but I might not be at the age where I can lose a bunch of weight and not have tons of loose skin. Which, again, an embarrassing amount of vanity there because I should be happy and proud of myself for my accomplishments and not all fretting about a problem I both can't control and will never have if I don't get my shit together. I don't know.
I'm not doing very well. I've spent a little less than a week feeling disgusted with my weight and having really bad body image problems. All while my partners are insistent that I look great and don't need to look any different or lose any more weight. I trust their judgement intellectually, but it doesn't make me feel less like garbage. Like actual garbage, a useless and filthy object that's no good to anyone. I talked to my therapist about it today and ugh, ended up near tears like twice which I never do. Talking about how I cannot deal with gross bad things, and I've got this body that I have to take with me everywhere that feels gross and bad. It's incredibly emotionally draining; I can't handle being in the same room as cat throw up for more than half a minute and I get other people to deal with it for me, but here I am carting around this... Gross bad thing everywhere. I've always loved the Last Unicorn, and the moment they trap her in the body of a human woman has resonated with me since before I can even remember. She claws at her own skin like she could tear it off and walk away from it, the first thing she does in her body is fall to the ground screaming. From memory, "I wish you had let the Red Bull take me. I wish you had left me to the harpy. I can feel this body dying all around me." I feel wrong, and that ends up coming out in superficial ways that seem under my control, but in reality it's completely futile. It doesn't matter how much weight I lose or how beautiful I am or am not, and getting fixated on that is so pointless and annoying and damaging. To steal a friend's wording, the earth of my body is salted and dead, and I find the experience of having to live in it horrifying and viscerally disgusting. It's a never ending spiral of nonsense. We were talking about how not feeling useful makes me kind of suicidal, and afterward I realized that I feel like there's nothing inherently good about me, so I need to make myself useful to be worth anything. And some very young part of me is like, "well if you were beautiful that'd be a good thing about you, and then you wouldn't need to worry about being useless so much." Which reminds me of when I was younger and functioned pretty much exclusively as my mom's dress up doll. Or my so-called foster brother's cute little sex toy. But being beautiful doesn't actually help, because I feel rotting and ruined inside no matter how I alter the wrapping. Feeling worthless because I'm not a useful or beautiful object doesn't mean I should become one of those things to feel better. But I don't don't how to inhabit or relate to my body in a way that involves being a person. I'm a person, but my body doesn't feel like a part of that arrangement. It's an object that isn't me, and the closer attention I pay it the more horrifying the experience is. And I'm deeply annoyed by how stereotypical this all is. Some guy sticks his dick in a 4 year old and almost 30 years later she's crying in a therapist's office about feeling tainted. I hate this.
Wow, there's a lot here to unpack, but I'm sure you're on your way of doing that with your therapist and maybe with your partners if they are feeling up to the emotional work. I think what you are feeling and going through is quite common with sexual/physical early childhood trauma. I don't mean to say this in like a.. I don't know.. cold, calculating manner of like, "ah yes, your childhood experiences have certainly fucked you up." But like... they kind of have? Like, where do we go from here? I remember the first time I was raped... or at least the first time I remember being raped... and the trauma and healing that had to happen after that occurrence took years... decades even. I don't even know if I'm "all better". I hope you continue to go to therapy and continue to unpack all this and try to gain some understanding or whatever. I hope when the suicidal thoughts come, that they flow down the river of consciousness just as swiftly as they come about... My inbox/phone/text/whatever is always, always available to you friend. Please reach out if you ever feel overwhelmed with bad feelings or something, okay? I care about you a lot. You're family to me as far as I'm concerned... Take care.
This client was on the phone yelling about how being here isn't helpful because he's stuck in here with a bunch of drug addicts. Like, buddy. I have some bad news for you.
This giant dude with a terrible shirt was staring at me on the train and he was real gross. He started sucking on one of his fingers while staring at me and I still feel like I'm going to cry. I almost did at the time but some friends talked to me and helped. I could feel the heavy dissociation coming on, feels like I'm going to pass out still. At least I'm on my way to therapy.
A noncomprehensive field guide to your classic narcissistic abuser and their methods of dealing with conflict: Insists on all conversations about possible wrongdoing being held in private where they cannot be held accountable for their behavior. "No actually I'M the victim here and in this 200,000 word essay/20 minute monologue I will explain-." Boundaries what boundaries? "I'm not upset so no one else should be either." "I'm upset so EVERYONE else should be too." Unilaterally decides that an issue involving multiple people is closed. Attacks and berates you and others until most people are too scared or exhausted to interact anymore. "I'M SO HURT BY THIS ACCUSATION, HOW DARE YOU HURT ME THIS WAY?!" Evidence what evidence Your pain is not your pain, it's an attack you're making against them. To be continued.
@people who have full time jobs, do/did you experience full body nausea and the urge to cry at the end of the weekend and if so does it ever stop happening?
