I am a bucket with a hole in its base. Nothing I put in will last. I turn to online dating in need of elevating but meaningful connection is scarce.
I didn’t realise how far I’ve come in my journey of self-growth until now. I used to put up with people pushing me around and not respecting my boundaries. I can now set boundaries, and I set a hard one today. Today I wrote the following message to a person who has not been treating me right:
The other day I received some stickers from an animal rights organisation called SPANA. They contain my name and address and are to be used on the back of envelopes. I’m not sure how SPANA got my details, but I am over the moon because they have used the gender-neutral title “Mx” on the sticker. I would really like more people to address me using gender neutral titles and pronouns. I’d like to be seen as a person first, not put into a box and all the expectations that come with that. I find gender to be an oppressive construct, especially the different rules for men and women (e.g. women should shave but men don’t have to). I’m not throwing away womanhood altogether, but I only partially identify as a girl. I am going by both “she” and “they” pronouns at the moment. I have even discovered a word for how I feel, and that is “demigirl”. People are going to call me a “young lady” etc. as I don’t look “in the middle”, and I’m not going to give up what I like just so I look more “in the middle”. But for those who know me, it would make my heart sing if you could refer to me in a gender-neutral way for a change.
The CPTSD Foundation posted a great article the other day, “The Problem Isn’t Your Motivation, It’s Your Wound” by Alison Wegner. Here is the beginning segment:
“A woman in her mid-forties walks into a therapist’s office with a broken leg. She is at her wits’ end. Sitting down in the therapist’s chair, she says, “I’m so frustrated. I’ve been trying to run a marathon for years, but I just can’t do it. There must be something wrong with me. I try to get out of bed to train, but I just don’t want to. Even when I force myself, I can’t go nearly as far as everyone else. It is like I’m somehow deficient. After practicing, I am in so much agony that I have to take pain killers. Other people can run without resorting to pain killers. I just don’t understand what is wrong with me.”
What is the first thing you would say to this person? “The problem is your broken leg.”
I use this as a metaphor for those with trauma. Such individuals often try to ‘willpower’ their way past severe and debilitating wounds- wounds that are present and yet invisible.”
I’m going to start posting a few song interpretations on here, starting with “Every Day Is Exactly The Same” by Nine Inch Nails. Continue reading “Every Day Is Exactly The Same”
Something that I have learnt is that hurt people hurt people. It doesn’t make it ok, but it can help us understand why they hurt us. It is because they themselves have been hurt.
Is it normal to grieve someone you knew as briefly as a teardrop, or a rainbow in the sky? Continue reading “The girl in the hospital”
Image from “Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia” by Rob Breesny
As Mike Lloyd explains in his video “Introduction to Structural Dissociation”, when we apply stress to a solid object, it is likely to fracture and split off into various components. A similar thing happens to people. My current therapist introduced me to the idea that I am a system of different parts or subpersonalities. These parts can be categorised into “exiles” (young parts that carry trauma), “managers” (parts which prevent exiles from being activated), and “firefighters” (parts that react when exiles are activated, turning to drastic things like drug and alcohol use, self-harm, binge-eating, sex binges, and other addictions). This model of therapy is called Internal Family Systems. A similar model, called “Structural Dissociation”, categorises the parts into two categories: the “Going on with Normal Life” part and the emotional, “Traumatised Child” part. We all have different parts of ourselves, but the greater the degree of stress a person has experienced (and the presence of certain factors listed here), the more fragmentation there is. Dissociative Identity Disorder is the most extreme case of this where the parts act independently from each other (separated by amnesia) and are incredibly nuanced. Continue reading “Parts”
hsphaven 