Hobbies and Interests: Finding Your Passion(s) #AtoZChallenge

Posted on by Astrid

Welcome to my letter H post in the #AtoZChallenge. Today I have another lighthearted topic for you. I am going to talk about finding your passions, your hobbies and interests.

I looked over my A to Z posts of last year a few days ago. I found that one of the major goals I set myself in my letter G post was to find a hobby other than blogging that I can do independently. I probably meant a craft, but I feel that other hobbies and interests can become a passion too.

Anything can really be a hobby. You also don’t need to stick to one or two hobbies for life. I mean, of course it can be problematic if you spend lots of money on a hobby that you don’t really like. For example, I spent probably over €1000 on card making supplies over the years, even though it never became a real passion. I probably have spent at least half of that on soaping supplies so far too, but at least I still like that hobby. I’m not great with it and never will be, but oh well.

You don’t need to be talented to find pleasure in a hobby. That being said, feeling you’re good at something and/or getting positive feedback from others, can help you stay motivated.

Anything can be a hobby. It doesn’t have to be art or crafts. It doesn’t have to be music or sports. These are all hobbies that you may enjoy more if you’re good at them. Reading, listening to music or watching movies can be hobbies too and they are things almost everyone can do.

Besides hobbies, your passions can also be interests. Again, anything goes. I have said before that I at one point had an unusual fascination for calendar calculation.

Most people do not find their passions in isolation. They strive to share their hobbies and interests with other people. No, that doesn’t just mean blogging or vlogging about them. (I know I’ve said that I do practically everything I do at least partly with the purpose of blogging about it.) It can also mean sharing with friends. Note that no passion is so weird there’s no-one out there who shares it or is interested in it at least. I mean, calendar calculation is a rather odd interest that no-one in my family or circle of friends shared, but I did enjoy surprising people with my ability. Besides, now, with the Internet, you can be sure to find people who do share your passion online.

Feel free to inspire me and share your passions in the comments.

Cognitive Distortions: Change Your Thought Patterns to Feel Better #AtoZChallenge

Posted on by Astrid

I have been debating whether to continue the self-care theme for A to Z or not. I mean, I want to, but right now I’m not really motivated. I have a post in my drafts folder talking about coffee instead. Then I realized that, since I am struggling quite a bit today, I could really benefit from some self-care. For my letter C post, I am focusing on cognitive distortions. These are those dysfunctional thought patterns that often stand in the way of us feeling better.

While cognitive distortions are dysfunctional and often incorrect, they do make sense to our minds. Everyone employs cognitive distortions at times. Some thought patterns that aren’t reality-based, may even be helpful. For example, most drivers think they are less likely to end up in a car crash than other drivers, even though statistically only 50% of drivers can be less likely than others to end up in a car crash. This is called unrealistic optimism.

Many cognitive distortions though can be unhelpful. Examples of such cognitive distortions include:

  • Filtering: seeing the world through blue-tinted glasses. In other words, seeing the negative aspects of a situation only and overlooking the positive.
  • Polarized or black-and-white thinking.
  • Over-generalizing: drawing general conclusions based on limited experience.
  • Jumping to conclusions: thinking that you can read other people’s minds or predict the future.
  • Catastrophizing: always expecting the worst possible outcome.
  • Personalization: taking things that are not even remotely related to you personally. This can mean you apply random occurrences as being specifically about you, often in a negative way.
  • Fallacy of control: thinking either that everything is in your control or that nothing is. In reality, life is a complex combination of choice and circumstance.
  • Fallacy of fairness: mistakenly believing that everything should be based on what’s fair. Well, life isn’t fair.
  • Blaming: holding other people responsible for your feelings rather than taking ownership of them yourself.
  • Emotional reasoning: seeing your feelings as facts.
  • Fallacy of change: believing someone else or a situation will change if you’re patient enough. Basing your happiness on someone else’s or a situation’s changing rather than taking actions to change your own thoughts or behavior.

Now that I think of it, I can identify at least a couple of these cognitive distortions as reasons behind my recent struggling. For example, yesterday I had symptoms that signaled a UTI, but I catastrophized that I had some serious illness. This was based on the thought that I’ve had for years that, once I’d find a place to live in where I feel safe, I’d die. This is jumping to conclusions. Then I thought that, by thinking I had a serious illness, I was making it real through some kind of twisted law of attraction that I don’t even generally believe in. This is an example of the fallacy of control. In the end, I felt miserable and all because of some cognitive distortions.

Do you often find yourself employing cognitive distortions?

Breathe: Using Meditation for Self-Care #AtoZChallenge

Posted on by Astrid

I originally intended to write today’s post for the #AtoZChallenge yesterday and schedule it for this morning, but somehow I didn’t get down to writing it at all. I hadn’t even decided on a topic yet, although several floated through my mind. Eventually, I decided to continue with the self-care theme. B is for “breathe”.

Deep breathing is often hard for people at the best of times. It can be a real challenge if you’re anxious. That’s why you may benefit from breathing exercises while you’re calm. Then you will train your body to breathe properly, so that it comes more naturally when you’re stressed.

That being said, the first step to learning to breathe deeply into your belly is to be aware of your breathing. You can use meditation for this.

Beginner’s guided meditations often focus on being aware of your breathing without the need to change anything about it. You will learn to notice each inhale and exhale without judgment.

Once you are aware of your breathing, you can learn to control your breathing more consciously. Often, it is recommended that you take a long, but not too long, inbreath through your nose. Then you are advised to hold your breath for a few seconds and then do a long outbreath through your mouth.

Another common meditation practice is the body scan. This allows you to feel each sensation in your body systematically without judgment. Start by feeling your toes, feet and ankles. Then gradually move up through your legs, lower abdomen, upper abdomen and chest, hands and arms, shoulders, neck and finally your head. Most body scan meditations have you check in with your mental processes at the end. Remember, this is a check-in. You don’t need to change anything.

You can add other aspects of meditation to your practice, such as mantras or visualizations. I like to use affirmations as mantras. I also love visualizations, such as visualizing the colors of the rainbow.

There are tons of good meditation apps out there that offer guided meditations and often a timer to practise on your own. I have tried a few and must say my favorite is Insight Timer. This app has thousands of guided meditations by a variety of teachers. Most guided meditations are free. The premium plan offers additional content, such as courses. Right now, the app has a specific category called For Uncertain Times that’s geared towards coping with the COVID-19 crisis.

ACCEPTS: Coping with Distress By Using DBT #AtoZChallenge

Posted on by Astrid

I haven’t decided on a theme for this year’s #AtoZChallenge, so I can basically write about whatever comes to mind. Right now, we’re in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis and we’ll most likely be by the end of April still. As such, today’s post is about self-care in times of distress.

Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) is a commonly-used approach to treating emotion regulation issues such as those found in borderline personality disorder, but its strategies can be useful for anyone having a hard time coping with crisis. DBT’s founder Marsha M. Linehan was probably fond of acronyms, as DBT has many. One such acronym, which is particularly useful for coping with difficult emotions during times of distress, is ACCEPTS. ACCEPTS stands for the following.

Activities: find a hobby or sport to do. Yes, playing video games or watching Netflix counts. For me, reading is my hobby of choice.

Contributing: do some form of volunteer work or help a friend. The book The More or Less Definitive Guide to Self-Care by Anna Borges provides babysitting for a friend as an example. This is not likely possible in these times of lockdown, but helping out online probably also counts.

Comparison: look to a real or fictional situation that could be worse.

Emotions: try to channel the exact opposite of the emotion you’re trying to fight. For example, if you’re sad, watch funny YouTube videos. You can also train yourself to act opposite of the emotion. This doesn’t necessarily mean you need to put on a smile when you’re sad, though that might help. It also means, for example, doing the opposite of your initial response to your emotion. For example, if you’re feeling like sleeping it off, try exercise.

Push away: visualize building a wall between you and the negative emotion or imagine that it is a mass you can push away.

Thoughts: do something that requires your full cognitive attention. The More or Less Definitive Guide to Self-Care clarifies that you don’t need to do any sort of critical thinking. Borges instead provides the example of reading a book, focusing on each sentence intently. I prefer word games.

Sensation: provide yourself with a strong sensation to focus on. For example, hold some cubes of ice. I’ve seen some people even suggest smelling ammonia. That’s crazy to me (I initially thought ammonia was another acronym). Borges, however, says you can actually focus on pleasant sensations such as soft textures too. I love essential oils.

What are your favorite techniques of coping with distress?

Working On Us Prompt: Coping With Crisis

Posted on by Astrid

Today, I’m once again joining in with Beckie’s Working On Us Prompt. This week, the topic is to write a narrative of what works for you when facing a panic or anxiety attack, manic episode or other crisis. I don’t get panic or anxiety attacks much or mania at all, so I’m going to describe what works for me when I’m in an emotionally dysregulated crisis.

Like I’ve said before, I have BPD (traits). These are also known as emotion regulation issues. I also experience complex PTSD symptoms. Both can cause me to suffer emotional outbursts. In addition, I can get severely overloaded due to my autism. This can cause me meltdowns, which in some ways are similar to BPD outbursts. In fact, I’m not 100% sure my BPD diagnosis is correct given that autistics, particularly women, are often misdiagnosed as BPD.

Anyway, I usually notice an outburst coming on when I experience an increase in sensory reactivity. I also often start to experience a decrease in my language abilities. I start to stutter or can only make humming noises and repeat the same phrases. My staff at day activities say that when in this state, my communication abilities resemble those of a toddler. It is interesting, in that we have only one toddler alter. When I can’t do something to calm down, I may progress to a full-blown state of meltdown, in which I become angry and sometimes aggressive or self-injurious.

What helps me when I’m in such a state, is to physicaly remove myself from the situation. This is hard though, as often it feels as though everything that happens around me is important. Usually, my staff help me by clarifying what’s important and what is not.

Of course, now that I still live independently, I don’t always have a staff member available to help me sort through a crisis or make suggestions on how I can cope. I, however, have a phone number of a psych hospital I can call in a state when I’m close to a crisis. They can’t do much but listen to me and try to offer advice, but it’s definitely been helpful in some situations. The mental health team that treats me also has a staff available on the phone for crisis intervention during office hours.

Sometimes, when I’m in a really bad crisis, I take my PRN lorazepam. However, I have some experience with it being overused on me in the psych hospital. Like, whenever I’d react to a sound in an irritated tone of voice, staff would tell me to take a lorazepam rather than helping me to figure out what was causing me overload. This has really gotten me weary of PRN medication.

Healing From Childhood Trauma: Progress I’ve Made #AtoZChallenge

Posted on by Astrid

Welcome to the #AtoZChallenge, day eight. It’s already nearly 9PM as I start writing this post. I wasn’t home from day activities till 5PM, then had dinner and then drove 50 minutes one way with my husband to pick something up he had bought. On our way back, we stopped by McDonald’s, which was fun.

Anyway, today’s theme is healing. I was inspired to choose this theme by yesterday’s post, in which my final goal was to heal from my childhood trauma. Let me share today how far I’ve come on my journey.

My trauma-based symptoms first became fully apparent in 2009 or 2010. I had moved from a locked acute psych unit to a resocialization unit in early 2009. Once I developed trust in my staff, I apparently felt more ready to uncover the trauma-based conditions I’ve been living with all my life. You see, my trauma started early on and is in some respects ongoing.

When I started to open up about my symptoms, it still took a long time for them to be diagnosed as first dissociative identity disorder and PTSD and later borderline personality disorder. Borderline personality disorder shares a ton of symptoms with complex PTSD and I think that’s what I have.

I have never been in formal trauma therapy. The reason is that, first, it was hard to find a therapist with expertise on DID. Once I’d found one, my diagnosis had been changed and I was assumed to be making it up.

As a result, I’ve done most healing on my own. I got the book Coping with Trauma-Related Dissociation as soon as it came out in 2011. I worked through some of it on my own, but that wasn’t helping much. Talking a lot about my experiences was.

After I’d been talking through my experiences for a long while with my resocialization unit staff, my classic PTSD symptoms started to fade. Unfortunately, they’ve been back to an extent lately. However, my emotion regulation issues are a lot less pronounced.

I still have dissociative symptoms. Accepting them and validating my alters has helped me manage these symptoms.

Since I experience ongoing stress that reminds me of my trauma, I don’t expect to find the peace to fully heal anytime soon. However, I really hope I can continue to make progress.

Was I Sometimes Raised as a Golden Child?

Posted on by Astrid

I have been feeling really off lately. I keep having flashbacks. I also keep having what I’d describe as flashforwards, where I imagine my parents’ reaction to the different possible outcomes of the long-term care situation. These then lead to more flashbacks. One particular flashback I keep having is to a phone conversation I had with my mother when I’d just been admitted to the mental hospital in 2007, or maybe it was shortly before then. She yelled at me “You can’t even wipe your butt without your support worker there”. While this was and still is exaggerated, I do have issues with my personal hygiene, including sometimes with toileting.

I have noticed that there’s a lot of shame attached to my needs. Like, there is this constant nagging voice in my mind saying that I really do manipulate everyone into giving me more care. After all, am I not getting by? This part of me is telling me to erase everyone from my life and just go live on my own, since even if I lived with my husband and no support, there was still my husband to be manipulated.

I was discussing all this with my nurse practitioner last Thursday. He said even if I do manipulate people (and I no doubt do, as does everyone else), these people also let themselves be manipulated. Like, if they have an attitude like they’d rather help me with every little thing than endure my frustration, it’s no wonder I become dependent.

There was this show on Dutch television last Sunday about a second grade class. I didn’t see it, but a term used in it that was repeated often throughout the week, was “curling mother”. I have no idea whether that’s the correct English term, but it refers to a parent who helps their child with everything until they’re eighteen and then magically expects them to have learned independence and leave the nest. My nurse practitioner was reminded of this when I described my parents. It feels odd, because even though yes my parents did help me with every little thing, this expectation that I move out at eighteen was made very explicit from an early age on. It wasn’t like my parents were hoovering over me not realizing that they’d not be there for me forever. In fact, I’m pretty sure they couldn’t wait for me to move out. It just ugh, feels so off. Like I was spoiled somehow because my parents did everything for me.

At this point, I remember a discussion in an inner child healing group in which the original poster commented on some author or speaker saying that the golden child of narcissistic parents suffers a lot. This person was confused, because the golden child is the child favorited by the narcissistic parent, the child who doesn’t get abused (or so it seems). Some people said that the golden child suffers a lot because, well, they are only the narcissist’s favorite as long as they live up to their perfect standards.

I was raised in a household where the golden child/scapegoat roles reversed repeatedly. For those not aware, the scapegoat is the main target of obvious abuse in a narcissistic family. As such, I can relate to a lot of golden child attributes. Like, I was often praised excessively, bragged about and let off the hook. Then again, I was, and this was always very clear, expected to livve up to my parents’ perfect-image plan for me. Once I stopped doing this, I was placed in a clearer scapegoat role.

It still feels off to think of myself as having been spoiled. I know Pete Walker says spoiling is a severe kind of trauma too. However, in society, it is often treated like the spoiled child is to blame for being spoiled. And they definitely aren’t. Only as adults can they choose to undo the effects of this trauma, but they have to admit it first. I have to accept this.

Self-Care: Doing Absolutely Nothing

Posted on by Astrid

Sienna over at Therapy Bits wrote about self-care today. She had a day of doing absolutely nothing, as she worded it. I loved the idea. Too often, my attempts at “self-care” include making all kinds of resolutions to do things for myself and not doing anything at all. Like, I’ve been starting and restarting blog posts for today at least half a dozen times, thinking I needed and wanted to write. However, then I quickly deleted the post again, thinking it was pointless. Maybe it is, but maybe that’s the point.

Self-care, to me, means listening to your own body and mind without judgment. It means not considering what others will think of your attempts to care for yourself (within ethical and legal limits, of course).

I consider writing an important act of self-care, but I also often judge my blogging attempts. I don’t write often enough, or my writing isn’t good enough, or whatever. Today, I am setting these limiting beliefs aside and just taking care of myself.

Besides writing, another good self-care practice is meditation. I often find myself judging myself over not doing it enough too, or not being focused enough when doing it. At other times, when I do successfully meditate, I find that the effect wears off quickly and I end up beating myself up over that.

Today, I have been looking at affirmations and inspirational quotes. I love them, but I still find myself wanting to do something “productive” with them. Like, several of these blog posts I started then deleted, were quote-of-the-day posts that I deleted for being pointless.

Maybe the point of self-care, of this blog and of my life in general is not to fulfill other people’s expectations of me, but to be who I am. To be who we are. There, Sienna’s “doing absolutely nothing” sounds appealing. I do “nothing” much of the time, but then I’m usually beating myself up over it. What if I could stop judging myself and start being in the present?

Mother As Source

Posted on by Astrid

I was finally able to read The Emotionally Absent Mother again, since transferring it from my computer to my iPhone. Until I did this, I was unable to read any of my EPUB eBooks, because the program I used for it was no longer supported by my screen reader. I missed reading this book in particular, since it had a lot of eye-opening questions in it. I last wrote about it last August, when I shared about good enough mother messages. Now, I am moving on in the book and starting with the roles good enough mothers have. The first one is mother as source.

This section starts with the assertion that mother is what we’re made of. It goes on to assert that, both literally and on a more spiritual level, we come from mother. Literally, we come out of her womb. Spiritually, nature is often seen as coming from the ocean, which is in mythology seen as a mother goddess.

This whole assertion seems a bit off to me. Like I said in my post last August, I was raised primarily by my father as a child. Obviously, I came from my mother’s womb, but this is hard to imagine.

One of the thought-provoking questions in this section is to imagine yourself in your mother’s womb. If you can’t imagine this, you are encouraged to imagine being engulfed by her energy. This gave me uneasy feelings. I have never felt able to see that I come from my mother. In fact, my parents used to joke that the neonatologist brought me into the world, not my mother.

Good enough mother-sources are able to create a positive and welcoming environment for their children with their presence. They make the child feel proud to be of her. As such, the next question in the book is whether you wanted to be similar to your mother or as different as possible (or anything in between). If someone were to say you’re so like your mother, would you be proud?

I have to clarify here that my mother herself didn’t and still doesn’t have the healthiest self-esteem. She used to say, and it came across only half jokingly, that I inherited all my bad characteristics from her and all the good ones from my father. As untrue as this is, I didn’t grow up feeling proud to be like my mother, because she didn’t convey that she had any characteristics to be proud of.

With respect to my father, who primarily raised me, I wanted to be like him as much as possible. Until I was an adolescent, I saw my father as the ultimate embodiment of success and every other positive quality. Then I started realizing that he too has his flaws. I now feel more closely related to my mother than to him.

The next question is whether you can imagine being proud to be of your mother. Do you identify yourself in relation to her? My short answer to this is “No”. I identify myself more in relation to my mother-in-law than my own mother.

In short, I do not feel my mother was able to be a good enough source. Of course, physically she wasn’t, by no fault of her own. By this I mean that all her pregnancies were complicated and the one with me ended in my premature birth. I don’t want to say that somehow she rejected me, because I know she didn’t. Once I was born, in fact, I was more unconditionally – or should I say less conditionally? – welcomed by her than by my father.

Of course, the stress of having had four pregnancy losses prior to being pregnant with me, could’ve caused her body to be less welcoming to a fetus. That, however, and I want to be very clear about this, isn’t her fault, or anyone’s fault. There is nothing my mother did to cause my premature birth!

What I’d Put Into a Self-Care Kit

Posted on by Astrid

So I eventually gave up on the #Writ31Days chalenge. I couldn’t cope. It had become too much of a burden. But I still want to write. Today, I am sharing another personal growth-inspired post. I am writing about those things I use to take care of myself. A Dutch blogger posted about using a self-care kit, which is a box with self-care/positive items in it. Here is what I’d put in my self-care kit.

1. My crisis plan. I cannot read print, so I’d have to either type out my plan in Braille, which is too much work, or put a simple reminder on the box lid to read my crisis plan.

2. Stuffed animals. I as well as the inner children love the stuffies! Rainbow/Sofie, the stuffed unicorn we got at our old day activities, is best used for fidgeting. The inner kids prefer our toy sheep. When we’re cold, we prefer the sensory cat, which you can heat in the microwave and then gives off a nice lavender scent.

3. Essential oils and wax melts. I love love love essential oils! I do happen to have some faith in aromatherapy too, even though I know that it’s not scientifically proven. I would still someday like to create my own mmassage products with essential oils, but for now I just diffuse them. I have a box filled with over 20 different oils.

I also love wax melts, althogh my husband often gets a headache from the strong scent. I particularly love fruity and sweet smells.

4. My sensory exercise products. I have an exercise ball, which obviously doesn’t fit into a box, but which I love anyway. My air stepper pad does fit in a box. I’d love to someday get a Flowee spiky mattress too.

5. Soothing music. Nowadays I don’t listen to CDs. I get all my music from Spotify. I have a custom playlist with soothing sounds and peaceful music. I also love a lot of playlists created by Spotify itself.

What would you put into a self-care kit?