What I Like About My Body #Write31Days

Posted on by Astrid

Welcome to day 17 in #Write31Days. Man, this challenge gets hard and I have almost half the month still in front of me. Then again, I can show my persistence by continuing with it anyway. Today, I have yet another post about my body for you. I am going to describe the aspects of my body I like.

My body image tends to fluctuate a lot. Some of my insiders are not adjusted to living in an adult body, and as such they hate my feminine figure. I am quite curvy with large breasts, so I understand that’s difficult for the child and young teen alters. I must say though that most of the adult insiders are pretty content with my feminine body. It helps that my husband is attracted to my curves too.

The first thing I like about my body is my hair. I have long, dark hair. I need to make a hairdresser’s appointment soon, as it’s been almost six months since I had a haircut.

I also like my femininely narrow shoulders. My husband occasionally uses a quote from Schopenhauer about women with their narrow shoulders and broad hips being inferior. He doesn’t mean it seriously though and I also like my hips, although they’re not terribly broad.

Another thing I like about my body are my hands. I have pretty thin wrists and fair hands. Skip my nails for now, as I tend to bite them.

Lastly, as of recently, I’ve developed a greater appreciation of my feet. I used to have terrible toenail fungus. That is, until my husband sent me to the doctor and I got oral medication for it, since the topically-applied stuff wasn’t working. I still don’t really like my feet, but I don’t hate them as much as I used to.

What parts of your body do you like?

Resisting an Impulse #Write31Days

Posted on by Astrid

Welcoe to day 16 in #Write31Days. Today, I picekd yet another prompt from The Self Exploation Journal, but I twisted it around. Thhe prompt was to write about the last time you did something impulsive. Instead, I am going to write about the last tire I resisted a destructive impulse

I have been struggling a lot over the past few weeks. My husband has been working extremely long horus this past week and has been very stressed about it. Thankfully, he contacted his manager on it today and will be working slightly more normal hours from tomorrow on. However, today he wasn’t home till 9:30PM.

I hadn’t slept very well last night, because my husband was stressed out yesterday and I took over his stress. In my mind, it became worse and worse, until I was imagining my husband dying in a crash with his truck today. Needless to say, I was quite tired when I got to day activities in the morning.

On top of that, one of the regular staff was off sick, so there was a substitute. Because this regular staff would remain on sick leave tomorrow, the staff worked out who to find as a sub. Wednesdays are the busiest days at day activities, so I was quite scared that one staff would need to handle the full group on her own.

By 2:30PM, I was very irritable. I didn’t understand the jokes people were cracking. I was constantly worrying too about how to make it through the evening. I got an impulse to elope. Instead, I decided to try to walk around the building on my own while the staff checked on me tha tI was headed in the right direction. I did fine.

My staff did notice that I wasn’t coping thoguh. She asked whom I could call if I wasn’t coping while home. I decided to call my mother-in-law right then and she informed me my husband had already asked that I could eat with my in-laws.

Had I actually given in to the impulse and run off, people would’ve been a lot more worried than they already were. Besides, since this was my second time going to day activities for a full day, I might have been suspended. I don’t think I’d have gotten in any physical danger had I actually run off, as the day activities place is in a very quiet neighborhood. However, I’m still glad I didn’t give in to the urge.

Ways to Take Better Care of My Body #Write31Days

Posted on by Astrid

Welcome to day 14 in #Write31Days. Last week, I wrote a post on the topic of what my body is telling me. Today, I’m writing on a similar theme. The prompt from The Self Exploration Journal I’m using today supposes that your body is a temple. How could you better take care of it?

There are many ways in which I could take better care of my body. I’m already doing a lot better though than I used to. Like, until I was eighteen, I wouldn’t touch toothpaste and would brush my teeth with just water. Then, I went to the dentist to find out I had seven cavities. Filling them (without anesthetic) was horrible. From that point on, I started using toothpaste, buut I still had trouble sticking to a regular teeth-brushing routine. I struggled with this for many years to come and have only recently been able to consistently brush my teeth twice a day. I’m still not doing it very well, but I’m getting better.

Another way to take better care of my body is by getting off my behind. As a child, I was fairly active, but my activity level declined sharply in my teens. I got a computer, which meant hours upon hours of screen time. At this point, I’m still pretty sedentary, although I love walking. Since I cannot leave the house on my own, I need to think of ideas to fit in more activity at home. I already go on the elliptical regularly, but I’m thinking I could be dancing too.

Sleep is another aspect of body care that I’ve improved in. As a child and teen, I’d get no more than five to six hours of sleep a night. Now, I make sure that on week days, I get eight to nine hours of sleep. On week-ends, I get much more. That probably means that I’m still not fully rested from those eight to nine hours on week days, but I do’t know how to fit in even more sleep.

An aspect of body care in which I really need to pick up the pieces again, is food. I am doing better than I was when in the institution, when I’d binge on candy twice to three times a week. However, I’m still snacking a lot more than I should.

In what ways could you take better care of your body?

The Greatest Life Lesson #Write31Days

Posted on by Astrid

Welcome to day eleven in #Write31Days. Today, I picked a prompt from 100 Self-Help Journal Prompts by Francie Brunswick. It asks us about the greatest lesson we’ve learned in life and what makes this lesson so important.

Here I’m going to be a bit repetitive, as I covered this topic already in my letter to my younger self. The greatest lesson I’ve learnd in life is that you need to stay true to yourself.

I have some codependent tendencies. In other words, I tend to be a people-pleaser. For years, I thought that to make up for the burden that I was due to my blindness and other disabilities, I’d need to let other people make everyday decisions for me. In that sense, at age seventeen or eighteen, I definitely would’ve met the criteria for dependent personality disorder. Not because I wanted others to do stuff for me or because I claimed support I didn’t really need, but rather because I allowed others to take responsibility for my life. Conversely though, practically, I thought I had to be extremely independent, never asking for help, for fear of losing other people’s approval.

Until my mental crisis of 2007, I let my parents rule my life. That may be normal’ish for someone at that age, but it wasn’t healthy. Then when I went into the mental hospital, I let my social worker make decisions for me. She was a very authoritarian person, threatening me with forced discharge from the hospital or guardianship if I didn’t do as she wanted.

Then, of course, I let my psychologist on the long-term care unit make decisions for me. Ironically, when she diagnosed me with dependent personality disorder in 2016, she used as one of the reasons the fact that I wouldn’t openly disagree with her. I told her half-jokingly that I assumed she’d remove my diagnosis again if I fought her hard enough on it. She wouldn’t. Her diagnosing me as dependent was based on her screwed beliefs about disability and mental health.

I am now 32. I have the most supportive care team I could wish for. However, if I ever get to deal with less supportive staff in my life again, I know I can and must stick up for myself. I cherish Leonie, my fights-like-a-lioness insider, who emerged when I most needed her, when fighting my psychologist on the DPD diagnosis. I have a right to be myself. I am not dependent on anyone for making my decisions.

What Emotions Drive Me to Bad Habits? #Write31Days

Posted on by Astrid

Welcome to day eight in #Write31Days. Today’s post, like last week Monday’s, is yet again focused on emotions. I took another prompt from The Self-Exploration Journal. It asks what emotions drive me to bad habits.

I have a few self-destructive habits, some of which I engage more regularly in than others. For example, I overeat on average at least once a week, but only self-injure by cutting occasionally. Then there are these little habits that I engage in so often that I barely even notice them anymore, such as nail-biting or most recently teeth-grinding. Just a few minutes ago, my husband asked me to stop grinding my teeth.

Basically, I can be pretty sure that the type of emotional state that drives me to engage in all of these bad habits is stress. Stress is usually thought of as a type of anxiety, but it is not necessarily fear that drives it.

I tend mostly to engage in the little bad habits, like nail-biting or teeth-grinding, when not feeling much of a clear emotion at all. Rather, I tend to be in a state of worry, thinking in circles.

When emotions do reach the point where I notice them, they are pretty close to boiling point already. When this happens I may engage in self-harm behaviors or overeat.

When I look closely at what emotion causes me to engage in these self-destructive behaviors, I see that it is usually a sense of loneliness. Loneliness is not an emotion or so I’m told. At least it isn’t a primary emotion. Sadness is and that’s often what’s underneath this sense of loneliness.

Anger can also drive me to engage in self-destructive habits. Usually though, I am angry at something too minor to matter. The emotion underlying this anger is once again sadness.

What emotions drive you to bad habits?

What Is My Body Telling Me? #Write31Days

Posted on by Astrid

Welcome to day seven in #Write31Days. Man, I’m getting tired of this challenge, as it doesn’t look like any of my readers care for it. However, I try to remember what the challenge organizer said, that this isn’t about gaining followers. It is instead a writing challenge to get you writing every single day.

Today I picked yet another prompt from The Self-Exploration Journal. It is: “What is your body telling you?”

I find this a really hard question to answer. I don’t focus on my bodily sensations much, yet when I do, they tend to overwhelm me. I regularly have a meltdown because I simply need to use the toilet. Usually this happens when I am not in a position to find the bathroom independently and the need-to-use-the-toilet sensation has robbed me of my speech. I also commonly have meltdowns because of hunger, pain or being cold.

As I focus on my body, I notice how my mouth hurts from having burned it on a hot snack I just ate. I notice my nose is a little runny.

I have distressing pain in my neck and shoulder muscles. It’s not as bad as it was yesterday, but still bad enough to distract me as I type this post. Good thing that this post is focused on my body.

If I have to guess what my body is telling me with these sensations, it’s probably to take a step back. I was impatient with my snack, thinking I’d need time to write this blog post too so I’d better eat my snack fast.

I’m not sure what the neck and shoulder pain are from. My husband says it’s most likely stress, but is that from doing too much or giving in too easily?

I know about the spoon theory, which describes the limited energy levels of people with chronic conditions. My support worker, who works mostly with people with acquired brain injury, reminded me of it on Monday. This morning, I was quite tired from the mere acts of showering and getting dressed. Yet I still can’t shake that little voice that says that, before I had support, I did these things too and never complained.

So my body tells me to take a break. Now I need to decide whether to listen or overpower its noise with my own and go on.

My Biggest Emotional Strength #Write31Days

Posted on by Astrid

Welcome to day one in my 31 Days of Writing for Growth. For this first post, I took a prompt from the Journaling with Lisa Shea series. Specifically, I chose the day 1 prompt in the book on journaling for self-esteem. In this prompt, Lisa asks us to reflect on our greatest emotional strength. It could be courage in the presence of spiders, being able to stay calm in a crisis, etc.

This is a really tough one. I don’t pride myself on my emotional strengths that much, after all. People also may not agree with what I’m going to say here. I think myself that my biggest emotinal strength is the ability to bounce back from adversity.

Many people would disagree with this. They’d say that I give up easily in the face of frustration. In a way, they would be right. I do not pride myself on my frustration tolerance. In fact, when even a tiny thing goes against the way I’d planned it, I can fall off my rocker easily.

What I said, however, is not that I push through when faced with adversity, but that I do fall and yet I get back up. Some people would disagree even here. After all, if I’d truly gotten back up after my crisis of 2007, wouldn’t I have gone back to university or found myself a job by now? I certainly wouldn’t have spent 9 1/2 years in a mental institution, right? And yet I did.

Maybe I need to reword myself. I don’t have that much of an ability to regroup after a crisis. But I do have quite an ability to pick up the pieces, even though what I create with those pieces of my life may not be what. my life was like before

For years, I did exactly what my parents and teachers had decidied for me that I should do. It took a crisis for me to step back from that state of codependency and to follow my own path. I didn’t give up – not completely. If I had, I wouldn’t have been able to write this post. Instead, I used the opportunity to gain insight and inspiratioon to bounce back and move on with my life.

Preverbal Trauma

Posted on by Astrid

Today, I wrote in a Facebook group about preverbal trauma. I know for a fact that I endured a lot that could have caused PTSD from birth on. I was born prematurely, spent the first three months of my life in hospital and was hospitalized several more times before the age of five.

About seven or eight years ago, I started experiencing body memories that I immediately associated with a medical emergency that I endured at age four. At the time, my trachea closed up and I as a result had difficulty breathing. I never completely repressed that memory, always knew that it’s something that actually did happen.

So I wonder if I made said association because it makes more sense than connecting the body memory to preverbal trauma. I mean, preverbal trauma is very controversial, because people do not form that clear memories until the age of three. That doesn’t mean people cannot be affected by preverbal trauma. It just means the memory is hard to recover.

I have alters. About six years ago, an alter emerged that is constantly curled up in a fetal position. We don’t know more about her. A seven-year-old alter who also emerged around that same time talks about that alter as a baby in the incubator. Now of course babies in incubators are not in the fetal position, so yeah.

Still, it all makes me wonder whether I’m making all this trauma stuff up. I mean, yes, I was born prematurely. Yes, I spent three months in hospital and had repeated re-admissions before the age of five. But my parents say that until age seven, I was completely fine and carefree. I mean, it’s not like everyone who endured trauma develops PTSD. So could it be I’m just making this whole preverbal trauma thing up?

In a preemie parent support group, I asked whether anyone has experience with their child getting EMDR for medical trauma. I have always wondered whether EMDR could help me. It was recommended when I had just been diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder in 2010. Then I heard it’s not recommended unless you’re very stable otherwise. Well, the consultant I talked with on Monday said that’s no longer the case. So maybe I could benefit from it. Several parents responded about reading their child a “life story” about their birth and hospital stay while the psychologist did the EMDR. Since my parents aren’t very supportive, I cannot ask them to help me with this, but I could create my own life story based on what my alers tell me.

Embracing My Neuroses

Posted on by Astrid

A lot has been on my mind lately, but for whatever reason, I can’t get it out onto the screen. As such, I keep reverting back to standard, mundane blogging features such as #TToT and the like. I don’t mean these aren’t important to me and they are among my most popular posts, but I intended this blog for myself, not (primarily) for my readers. Of course, now that my blog is off to a start, I do worry about my stats.

As I was browsing Paperblanks, a journal writing prompts app on my iPhone, I came across an interesting prompt in this respect. It is: “This year, I’ll learn to embrace my neuroses, such as ___”.

Embracing neurosis. That seems like quite a counterproductive thing to do, as neurosis often is seen as something negative, something we need to overcome. Then again, in dialectical behavior therapy (I think), it is said that you cann’t change something without accepting it.

This year, I will learn to embrace my neuroses. I will learn to accept them as they are and move on from there. I have several neuroses that I need to embrace.

My main neurosis is my heighteneed response to being triggered or criticized. Pete Walker calls this the fight-flight-freeze-fawn response. I tend to lean towards fight. As such, I tend to perceive an outer critic as more severe than it is intended as due to my own inner critic chiming in. I am to an extent aware of it, but not usually when it happens. By practising mindfulness, I hope to become more aware of this response.

I also want to embrace my freeze response of retreating into my inner world. I am often judgmental of myself and my alters when not online, but this doesn’t seem to do us well. I am going to learn to validate myselves.

I have a lot of little “neuroses” that I’ll want to embrace and not change much at all. These include my stims, such as twirling my hair. I will write more about stimming on the upcoming International Day of the Stim.

What is a neurosis you need to embrace?

Quote of the Day (August 30, 2018): Cultivating Mindfulness

Posted on by Astrid

“The best way to capture moments is to pay attention. This is how we cultivate mindfulness. Mindfulness means being awake. It means knowing what you are doing.” – Jon Kabat-Zinn

I had another session of dialectical behavior therapy with my nurse practitioner today. In it, we discussed the skill of participation, which essentially boils down to doing something with attention without constantly being aware of the fact that you’re doing it. This seems pretty contradictory to me, because how do you do something mindfully without constantly being aware of it?

In this repsect, this quote speaks to me. It describes mindfulness as a way of knowing what we’re doing and paying attention to it.

It also seems that this may be what Pete Walker means when he describes the flight-freeze continuum of healthy relating to self in his book Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving. He says that the healthy middle between freeze and flight is the middle between doing and being. Freeze then is the state of constantly dissociating, daydreaming away time, while flight is the state of constant doing stuff, working time away. I tend to fall closer to the freeze end, while other people might lean closer to the flight end. Whenever I’m upset, I retreat into my own world. Someone who is a flight type would more go and do stuff, such as housekeeping, work, etc.

Kabat-Zinn in his quote says that mindfulness means being awake and knowing what we’re doing. It means not mindlessly staying busy to avoid hard feelings (flight), nor means it being disconnected from one’s surroundings (and oneself) to avoid hard feelings (freeze).

Now I seem to understand where the flight-freeze continuum also comes in handy in my DBT skills training. Flight then describes rational mind, not feeling anything because we’re busy doing (work, housekeeping, etc.). Freeze describes emotional mind, being stuck in the inability to do something about our experience. The middle ground in DBT is called Wise Mind.