Is this a joke?

I'm still living partly in the Cave O' Hibernation but emerging every now and then to growl at people. Fun times. I'm not doing all that well, to be honest, but sometimes that's just the way it goes. I'm trying to deal with some rather heavy stuff that came up partly through writing and partly through other things and it's tough going. Very tough going.

Part of the fallout from all of this is massively increased anxiety. I've had a number of middle-of-the-night anxiety episodes of the heart-thumping, buzzing-with-adrenaline variety and they are not fun. They're not up to my level 10 yet (on a 1-10 scale) but they're certainly higher than normal and as a consequence I'm sleep deprived and I feel sick most of the time.

So here's where the cruel joke starts. Do you know what helps with anxiety? I mean really helps with it? Exercise. Not just any exercise, but exercise vigorous enough to increase the heart rate significantly. And I have to ask... why couldn't it have been chocolate? Or lying in a hammock? Or sitting on the beach?

Exercise. Honestly. Whose idea was that?
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I'm not here. Truly.

I know, I know, I said I was disappearing until the end of November... and yet here I am. Addicted? No way! Just enthusiastic. Yeah, that's it... enthusiastic.

I am, for those interested, nowhere near 50,000 words. I'm at about 17,000 now and with just over a week to go there's no way I'll reach the 50K goal. However, that's okay. I decided a while ago to forget the word goal and concentrate on the words themselves. That goes entirely against the spirit of NaNoWriMo but I don't care, because I've made some great discoveries. In the process of putting parts of my story together I am finding links I had never seen before. I'm developing an understanding of some things and starting to see the inherent sadness of other things. The entire process has been incredibly valuable, more than I ever anticipated, and that is worth a great deal more than the satisfaction of reaching a word goal.

The flipside of this, however, is that a whole lot of stuff is being churned up and I don't necessarily have the capacity to deal with it all at once. Of course I don't have to deal everything at the same time, but a lot of it is out there now and it's hard to unring a bell, you know? So I'm continuing to take things slowly... I'm still a hermit, I'm still minimising my online activity and I'm taking lots of breaks from writing when I think my body and mind need it. If I were listening to my counsellor I'd also be shunning junk food, eating more vegetables and doing plenty of exercise, but hey, one can't have everything. (Although... if I HAD listened to her advice about self-care then I might not have had those midnight anxiety attacks either so perhaps there's something in what she says...)

So this is where I'm at. And hey, who's sick to death of the interminable updates about Femina's mental health and counselling sessions? Yeah, me too... but like I said, this is where I'm at...
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"She's a rebel..."

"...and she never ever does what she should..."

I am officially a NaNoRebel. That's right, I've broken the rules. Happily there are a lot of us, hence the term 'NaNoRebel' rather than 'NaNoCheat'. I'm a rebel because I'm writing a memoir (albeit fictionalised) AND I'm using some previously written material. This is outside the NaNoWriMo guidelines... however, they're kind of okay with it and really just want people to write, so rebels are allowed so long as we admit that we're rebels. It's all good.

Current word count: 10,422. Still a bit behind but that's okay. And here's a tip I'll give you for nothing... a detailed description of a middle-of-the-night, off-the-scale anxiety attack is probably not something one should attempt to write at night, if one hopes to sleep at all. Apparently it's difficult to write about anxiety without feeling anxious. Huh. Well, lesson learned. It's also the only thing I've written so far that has made me cry.

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God made me crazy

Some months ago a friend of mine started seeing the same counsellor I see. As my friend doesn't drive I offered to take her there for appointments, and her sessions are generally in the evenings so we have dinner together at my house beforehand. We've also just completed the Anxiety Management course I mentioned a couple of weeks ago.... all up my friend and I have spent quite a bit of time together recently. Tonight I remarked that the great thing about this is that we've got to know each other a lot better, which I think we've both enjoyed.

I feel sure that God had a hand in pushing together two friends with similar insecurities into a situation where they can support each other and have fun too. Isn't that great? God made me crazy so I could make more friends! Hehe. (It's okay - you're allowed to laugh. God has a great sense of humour. Truly.)
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What? Isn't this normal??

Last night I attended the first night of a four week (one night per week) Anxiety Management Workshop. There were about 10 of us there and it was a friendly - albeit slightly anxious - little group. The idea of the sessions is to help us understand how anxiety works in the body, to recognise what can cause it to be a bit out of whack, and  to learn strategies for getting it under better control.  There were some interesting things last night, but one incident really made me laugh.

We were each doing an anxiety scale, where you rate your anxiety symptoms from 1 to 10. 1 is 'peaceful and calm' and 10 is your highest anxiety level, which is different for each person. So for me, level 10 would be things like chest pain, extremely elevated heart rate, shortness of breath, hyperventilation, light-headedness, inability to concentrate, shaking... thankfully I don't reach 10 very often!  The idea of doing a scale is to help us recognise what's happening in our bodies BEFORE reaching level 10 (or 7 or 8 or 9) so that we can employ anxiety management techniques before it gets out of control.  As we were all working on our individual lists someone asked, "What if your anxiety is up around level 8 all of the time?"

Let's pause for a second and imagine that question being asked in any other scenario. Surely it would be greeted with cries of alarm, concerned questions about why your anxiety level is that high, and assurances that it's most definitely NOT 'normal'.  At the very least there would be a muffled gasp. But in this anxiety workshop... not a single person responded, and as I looked around the room I saw the same question on every face... "Hang on - isn't that normal??"

Okay, maybe you had to be there - or maybe you need my sick sense of humour - but I found it extremely funny...
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A little bit of comfort

My brother (the one who bullied and abused me) has recently moved back to my parents' house. This doesn't thrill me and I am not willing to stay with my parents while he is living there. However, since I've never discussed the abuse with my parents I can't explain why I don't want to stay there - and the excuse of 'no room' won't really work since my parents have a four bedroom house with only three people in it. Hmmm. Anyway, that's a discussion I've deftly avoided up to now and I'm not planning a trip back there for a while so I'm not worrying about it yet.

The problem with the 'don't worry about it yet' approach is that I'm apparently too good at it. I'm so good at it that I actually forgot my brother was living at my mum and dad's house... so imagine my shock when I was chatting with my mother on the phone yesterday and suddenly my brother's voice came on the line. Let me add some context here - I haven't seen my brother face-to-face for at least two years. I haven't heard his voice in that time either. What I have done in the last two years is talk about 20 years of abuse. I've had nightmares and flashbacks. I've had frightening anxiety attacks. I've experienced depression. I've struggled. Of course, my brother is not directly to blame for these things - and in fact seeking to lay blame anywhere is unhelpful - but he is certainly a massive factor in it all and I was not ready to hear his voice on the phone. (I should add that he wasn't speaking to me and didn't even know it was me on the phone; he just picked up the downstairs extension because he wanted to tell my mother something and couldn't be bothered walking upstairs.)

When I heard his voice I started shaking and experienced other symptoms of anxiety. I had a long bath and did a few anxiety-management techniques and eventually I was fine. I slept well last night and felt pretty good today so I assumed I was over the shock of hearing his voice. Well, until this afternoon....

I made choc-chip cookies...

...and then some gluten-free dark chocolate brownies...

...and then some Mars Bar slice.

Uh.... comfort cooking, anyone?

(I haven't actually eaten any of this and will give most of it away. No, really. I swear!)

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Roller coaster

Do you ever have a day or two where so many different things happen, and they're so intensely emotional - but all different emotions - that you hardly know whether you're coming or going? Let me fill you in on the ups and downs of my personal little emotional roller coaster this week.

Friday - UP
I chatted with my counsellor and agreed that it was time to get back into some issues that had been put on hold for me whilst I was dealing with some stuff at work. This included some journal entries that I'd sent but we hadn't talked about yet. I was keen to dive into it all again and looked forward to my session on Tuesday.

Sunday - UP
I returned to church after a three month absence (long story but I wasn't in a good place and needed a break). It was great to be back.

Monday - DOWN
I have been reading a book called The Body Remembers by Babette Rothschild. Although written for therapists, and thus highly technical, it's been very helpful. On Monday I started reading the chapter on flashbacks... and almost instantly had a massive anxiety attack as I remembered some flashbacks I had had more than a year ago. It was like a flashback of a flashback, which I didn't even know was possible. It is, and it freaked me out.

Tuesday - DOWN
My counselling session was first thing in the morning and I talked about my reaction the day before. In order to explain why a 'flashback of a flashback' is indeed possible my counsellor started to tell me a story about someone becoming anxious about being anxious. The more she said the word 'anxious' the more MY anxiety level increased, until I had to ask her to stop because I thought I was going to pass out. Yeah, it was intense. After a break and some breathing exercises I felt a bit calmer and we agreed to put this aside for the moment and talk about something more innocuous and less stressful. That helped but I remained shaken by the experience for the whole day.

Tuesday - UP
After my session in the morning I met with my prayer triplet. It was both comforting and refreshing.

Tuesday - UP
I went for a two hour walk in an effort to reduce my adrenaline levels which were still high after my episode of anxiety in the morning. It was good and helped to stop some of my anxiety symptoms.

Tuesday night - DOWN
I received the news that my friend's wife had died that morning, after being diagnosed with breast cancer ten months ago. She was 40; and leaves behind her husband and two young boys.

Tuesday night - UP
After a day of suffering the effects of the morning's anxiety and feeling increasingly afraid of going back to counselling next week and having the same thing happen, I finally reached the point where I decided enough is enough. I reached for my journal and wrote the following:

After writing that I felt a lot better and far more in control. I think something vital has just clicked in my brain...

Wednesday - UP
Givinya's baby was born!

So it's been an interesting few days. Up and down and round in circles.... I'm feeling a little tired now, to be honest! Here's hoping the rest of the week is boring and dull...
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Truth

It's been one year and nine months since I first started counselling, and almost exactly one year since I started to understand the extent and impact of my brother's abuse. I have had weekly sessions during that entire period, apart from a period of about three months when I was having fortnightly appointments. That's a lot of counselling. It's such a part of my life now that I have trouble sometimes remembering what life was like before I started. In the last few months, as I've been digging deeper into trauma that's been buried for a long time, counselling has started to feel like a bad dream. I keep thinking that I went into this feeling a little bit down and depressed and now, without quite knowing how it happened, I'm living in a whole new world. It's a world where I talk about trauma and abuse in familiar terms, where anxiety is measured on a scale of severity but is never entirely absent, where often I can't sleep because talking about things has made me unsettled and upset, where sometimes I need to curl up in bed like a wounded animal and hide from the world, where I feel intense shame for things that shouldn't have shame attached to them at all - it's a world where I live with a pain that goes so deep I don't even have the words to describe it. I never intended to enter this world. I didn't even know it was there and sometimes I just can't believe this is where I live now. It feels like a bad dream and I want to wake up.

At times I think that if I'd never gone to see a counsellor I wouldn't be in this place. I wouldn't be someone who has survived abuse. I wouldn't be anxious. I wouldn't have insomnia. I would float along happily and not be in this strange and difficult world. Sometimes I feel like I made a mistake seeing a counsellor, and that taking that step caused all these things to happen... like it's my own fault that I'm now struggling, and living in a place that's frightening and hard. These are the times when I need to remind myself of what is true.

Truth: whatever his motives, the way my brother treated me was abuse. Calling it abuse or calling it something else or even ignoring it won't change the truth. Abuse is abuse.

Truth: whatever her motives or her understanding of the situation, and even though she loves me, my mother allowed my brother to continue to abuse me. The fact that she loves me and didn't see it as abuse doesn't change the effect it had on me.

Truth: just because I didn't feel traumatised doesn't mean I wasn't. If that's my 'normal', how could I possibly know?

Truth: anxiety is not new. I've always had anxiety attacks, especially at night; I just didn't know what they were. Counselling helped me name them. It didn't cause them.

Truth: before I started counselling, I wasn't happy. I didn't feel safe. I didn't know how to trust people. I didn't like myself. I wanted a 'reset' button. I longed to escape, to be a different person, to start again where no one knows me. Counselling didn't make this happen; it just made me recognise it.

Truth: sometimes I don't know what's true, or I know it but I have no idea how to get there. I need help to see the truth and live in the truth. That's the point of counselling. It's not to make me feel terrible or to condemn me to a new and painful world; it's to help me see where I'm living and then help me move on and start to live in a better place.

And that's the truth.

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