small positive gains

I know I mentioned that I disclosed to my doctor and my physical therapist about my sexual assault. What I think I forgot to mention is that part of what I talked to them about was taking some time off from PT. While I can’t actually…get a temporary postponement in disability (and become magically healthy for a few months) to focus on my emotional problems,  I realized that I did need some time away from this constant focus on my physical health. My doc and my PT agreed that taking some time off to try to just scrape by with the minimum in stretching exercises would be a reasonable thing to try.

So I took about a month off, to work on my emotions.

More Than Two commentary – Chapter Four: Tending Your Self (part 5a – prologue to my dark night of the soul)

I went away to college.

I was a mess. I didn’t know why David stopped loving me. I didn’t know what I did wrong. I worried that I was a terrible person, flawed, messed up. Also, I’d had per-marital sex. A lot of it. With someone I wasn’t going to marry! I felt incredibly guilty about that. I’d let God down. I also felt betrayed by David, who knew how I felt about sex. Surely, if he wasn’t 100% sure that we were getting married, he wouldn’t have pushed to have sex. What happened? Maybe it was my fault; as he kept getting to know me, he saw that I was flawed, and so he changed his mind about marrying me. And now I was even more flawed, because of all this sex I’d had.

These are the thoughts of an eighteen year old in regards to sex with she had absolutely no concept of consent or her right to dictate what is done with her own body. All I had to go on, in terms of “right” and “wrong” were things I’d learned in the church. And according to the church, I’d done a whole bunch of wrong.

therapy

I had therapy last week. It was a good session. My therapist had already had some really great points and thoughts about previous problems with Lora, so hearing some great realizations from her about this sexual assault was not surprising, but extremely comforting. Especially since I had been really, really stressed about talking to her.

I keep expecting people to judge me. I’ve been judged before after sexual assault and that’s still often the general societal response. I mean, I judge me, mainly for freezing. Why wouldn’t someone else?

a letter

I’ve composed a letter to send to the women of my class:

a realization

I’ve mentioned repeatedly over the last few months that I’d really like to start dating again. But, I always conclude, I feel too sickly and low energy to date. So I shelve the idea for another few weeks. Until it starts tickling at my mind again.

For the umpteenth time in the past few months, I got that tickle again. I should be dating. Not because the universe says I should be dating, or that other people think that I should be dating, but because something inside me wants me to be dating. Given how many times I’ve gotten that urge, I decided that I needed to take some time to really sit with it and unravel what inside me was pushing at me.

So I cleared some mental space in my internal calendar, sat down, and started thinking. My little transcript is really a nearly word-for-word relay of how I do this. I talk to myself, with an open mind, reassuring myself that whatever thoughts come to the front are OK to have, and feelings I have are OK to feel. The process almost feels like using a Ouija board, if you remember those. Or, as I once saw in a dream of mine, sitting in front of a still pool of water in the forest, and watching as ideas and scenes floated to the surface in answer to questions that I asked.

If that sounds confusing, the other other thing I can say is that it’s about really letting go of expectation and seeing what comes forward when the mind is still and neutral and receptive.

PSA: mental health resource

Randomly scoping out the YouTubes, I came across a video on mental illness (specifically Borderline Personality Disorder) that recommended a particular book as being really helpful. The book is called The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook: Practical DBT Exercises for Learning Mindfulness, Interpersonal Effectiveness, Emotion Regulation & Distress Tolerance (how’s that for a mouthful?). I was initially curious because it’s a self-help book that complies to certain standards of cognitive behavioral therapy treatments. My depression and mental health issues were treated (greatly improved, and in some cases, totally eliminated) by cognitive behavioral therapy, so my ears always perk up when I hear about a resource that has to do with that.

Even though I think my mental health is generally good, I’m going to buy this book to see if it can help me become and even more awesome version of myself. 😉

In all seriousness though, even if I feel like I don’t need it now, based off of the reviews I’ve read about it, it sounds like an extremely powerful and helpful resource.

If you – or someone you love – is having a difficult time with mental health problems, it might be worthwhile to get this book and try it out. It’s not expensive, and it has a lot of rave reviews on helping people to gain better coping skills and ways of handling stress, as well as a layout that seems to encourage working at your own pace. Using this book alone (or in conjunction with a good therapist) could potentially help foster faster and more permanent mental shifts that would bring about better mental health.

Hope everybody is staying warm and dry!

 

new year, new experiences, new beginnings

Happy New Year!

I hope you had a wonderful holiday.

Mine was nice, though somewhat exhausting. We went and visited Jon’s family for the holidays. His mom and dad had some amazing vacation time available to them for the holidays (lucky European vacation policies), so they traveled back to the US for a few weeks. We spent some time down south, visiting with one branch of the family, before heading west to visit with another branch.

past relationships: Jessica (part 4 – where we are now)

Part 4 of this series. Links to part 1 , part 2, and part 3.

So in light of the realizations I’d had about Jessica’s behavior, and what she was willing to do to maintain her relationships, I pulled away from her. I didn’t do it the way that I’d normally do it, with a face-to-face honest talk. At this point, I’d experienced a number times when I’d tried to have a serious talk about Jessica’s concerningly coercive or manipulative behavior and she either blew me off, minimized my feelings, took the talk as a sign to talk to me about problems that she had with my behavior (thus shifting the talk away from her and on to me), or acted like I was exaggerating/remembering incorrectly/misreading her. I knew that having an honest, open conversation simply couldn’t happen. I’d walked away from too many conversations with her feeling gas-lighted or tricked to want to try to have another serious, open conversation again.

a surprising bit of news

Lora and Jon went out to dinner earlier this week. She told him that she’s leaving our area and moving back in with her mom. The last few months, she’s needed to get extra money from her mom just to be able to eat and pay all her bills. Her mom can’t afford to help her out as much as she has been, so she’s moving home.

I had an abortion too

TW: rape, abortion