Heal yourself first, relationship second

Today I received the latest phone call from a good friend who was in an overwhelming, unbearable state of fear and confusion over her relationship.

She said she was unnerved by her partner because she felt he was not responsive enough, that he replied too little, too late to her messages, and that only her repeated "reminders" could move him into action. She felt that perhaps he no longer wanted to be with her, and she was absolutely terrified he was going to leave.

My friend is very, very dear to me, so I don't mind that this is the umpteenth time I receive such a call from her. I feel very grateful that I am able to help, even if sometimes I struggle and have to work hard to stay present and compassionate. I have found that when I am in no state to engage, it is best that I don't answer the phone when she rings.

Today, however, I felt I had to be a little tough. For the first time something became clear to me, about her problems but also about my own: There are relationship issues concerning the couple that need to be figured out together, adult to adult, of course with outside help if necessary. Communication is just one of them.

However, I certainly have experienced what my friend is going through: A problem one should be able to sort out in a mature and compassionate conversation, escalates into a gigantic existential crisis that nearly sinks the whole relationship.

This is because, if you have very little self esteem (and depression, anxiety etc), then your ability to cope with the discomfort of uncertainty around a partner is severely restricted. The terror of being abandoned, the fear and pain, are just too overwhelming. It feels, literally, like drowning.

This is co-dependency, dependency, fear of abandonment, love addiction...I could go on.

So I had to spell something out to her that I have been lucky to see first-hand this year:

Until she begins to heal her core, until she seeks treatment for her depression and anxiety, until she builds up her self-esteem and learns how to self-nurture and self-love, she will always be vulnerable to this kind of intense suffering and unhappiness.

Her relationship may survive and stabilise, as my marriage did for many years. My ex and I solved many relationship problems together, and I thought I was happy for a long time -- but underneath I was trapped,  trapped by my fear of being left, and by my fear of leaving.

I still struggle -- perhaps once a week I go through a day or two where I am consumed by a burning fear or sadness to do with my relationship. I can be jealous and possessive, manipulative and oversensitive, because I suddenly feel not good enough, that my boyfriend will certainly leave me.

It usually takes me another day to unfreeze myself, to remember how to let go, to release my heart and my mind. Then I come back to what I knew all along: I cannot control whether he wants to be with me or not, and this is okay. The uncertainty, not knowing what will happen, may be uncomfortable, but it will not kill me.

I want him to be free, only then will I feel truly happy and fulfilled in this relationship. The more I cling, the more I drive him away, and I also lose my own ability to choose him.

What changed? One huge thing: I began to address my mental health, seriously. This is not because I am particularly clever or responsible: The fact is, I hit rockbottom and was forced to get help.

For me, tackling my mental health issues meant going on medication (I am still on Lithium and Venlafaxine) and embarking on intense therapy for almost three years so far, including EMDR, which I am still doing.

Other things that are helping include attending SLAA, and I also read what I could on the subjects that I felt were relevant to me: Childhood trauma, books on bipolar and borderline personality disorder, love addiction, co-dependency, sexual abuse, intimacy issues, family and romantic relationships and so on.

Luckily my friend understood what I was getting at, and hopefully she will take action and stay committed to herself and take responsibility for her own well-being. If she doesn't, I will keep trying to help her, as I will try to keep helping myself!

Happy New Year to you all!

With much love,
Rosamunde

Feeling better? Time for a bit of drama

Recovery is uncomfortable at the moment. In the absence of any obvious obstacles or struggles, I feel uneasy. I am waiting for misery to strike, perhaps so I can resume my old ways and everything can get back to "normal". After all, depression and/or anxiety have been the norm for me for most of my life. 

But now, where the turmoil and mood swings and desperation and fear used to be, I have a space to fill with actual LIFE. Books to read, friends to talk to, and a zillion other things I can just do because I want to. 

But I still find ways to torture myself. I question my relationship, my feelings. I revisit old traumas and pick at them like old scabs. My dreams are still reassuringly unpleasant, but they seem strangely out of sync with my general state of mind, which is not fearful but a little more gutsy and robust. 

Why am I doing this? I think it is a combination of habit and a longing for some security. I am, of course, in a much safer place these days, but everything feels slightly strange, unfamiliar and precarious.  Part of me thinks: Surely this level of stability is just not sustainable?  But this question misses the point. Of course I will not always be this stable, but at least now I have seen it is possible. I know what it feels and looks like, so hopefully I can return to it should I ever lose it.

I think it is also self-propelling - stability seems to breed more stability. However, there is something in me that does not want to give itself up to recovery, a part that almost doesn't want to get better, and this can only heal if I let go. Perhaps I fear losing myself if I relinquish that part of me. 

What resides there? My first instinct is to say it's the trauma of the abuse by my husband. I see his eyes and feel his anger again. Perhaps the suicidal part of me lives there too: she still makes an appearance now and again. And my punitive side is there too, although her voice is much quieter these days. 

This is all stuff to work on in therapy I think. As for how it affects the rest of me, I have come to the conclusion that seems to crop up again and again:  I must keep an open heart and an open mind, to stay connected to my core.  

If I feel overwhelmed, I live a minute, an hour, a day at a time. I ask my heart how it feels right now, and often I find that I am ok. 

I am also practising to be more patient. Sometimes I feel a dark storm is brewing in me, and the tendency is to whip up some kind of angsty drama with my boyfriend. The aim is to get him to meet my needs, for validation, reassurance. 

To pull the breaks on that is not easy. I have to put aside some pride - it's not easy to admit that deep insecurity is skewing my perception of reality. And I somehow I have to cope with the feeling that I am drowning. How do I do that? I struggled before, but it is easier now to remember that I am not drowning at all.

I am on dry land, snug as a bug. But it doesn't help if he just reminds me of that alone -- I have to know it too. 

Anyway, I have to learn to live with the strangeness of being largely fine, and stop myself from sliding back into more familiar territory of anxiety and sadness. 

  

  

 

  

Free to love

I spend a huge chunk of my time and energy on learning how to be more emotionally stable and connected, on practising mindfulness and other methods for better mental health, and on managing to stay true to myself and grounded in my relationship. Today was the first time I thought that I would quite like a break from the constant mental toil, and I wondered: Will it always be this exhausting, so consuming?

I have felt a growing pressure in me these past days, because I want to tell my boyfriend that I am in love with him. And yet I know I am not ready - I still have a lot of healing and growing to do. Our relationship is not ready either, and perhaps neither is he. 

I used to say "I love you" at the drop of a hat, but now I know that what I actually meant was: "promise me you will stay" or "are you there for me?". I am not sure I have these dysfunctional tendencies out of my system yet, and I don't want to build myself another cage. That would mean the end of this relationship, and I don't want that. 

And so, having largely held back on professing my love for him (with some glitches early on), this is the first time in my life that I have let my feelings for someone just flow and develop freely. It's been an amazing experience so far, glorious in fact. Why ruin it with an "I love you" if right now it still brings such expectation and pressures with it?

The freedom has helped me to thrive:  I have not felt such happiness, connectedness and well-being with someone before, all while knowing that it is mutual and not just in my imagination. Is it love? It may well be, but I don't know, and right now I don't want this to matter. 

I realise now how limiting "I love you" can be, how striving only for this little phrase stifles your spirit, that of the other person and of the relationship. In the past, I always, always said it far too soon, and in the most ludicrous of instances, to people I hardly knew, people I didn't really like, and so on. To those among them that I hurt, I must have seemed like a sociopath. I would tell them I loved them with all my being and pressure them to reciprocate, then disappear or betray them. I still have amends to be make. They didn't know - and neither did I - that inside I was a shipwrecked person in a storm, clutching at driftwood, discarding one float for another. I was desperate for love and affection, for security. I was also hopelessly ignorant about what love meant, and on top of that I didn't know myself and was immature to boot.

I said "I love you's" in the same way I slept with people - it was really the expression of a deep, burning need. Saying it caused me dreadful anxiety, even to the point of panic attacks, because I knew something wasn't right, I just didn't know what. Soon enough I would start to doubt my feelings and suddenly the relationship - and thus my whole existence and survival - hung in the balance.

Now I don't say it, not yet. I think I may recently have had glimpses of what true love could mean, but for now I must stay free of this notion to get to know myself and my heart. Free to like him a little less one day, or a little more the next, without such fluctuations being a matter of life and death. 

 And when I feel that familiar urge again to blurt out an "I love you", I tell myself to be patient, to dance a bit more in the sunshine, to let things flow instead of trying to influence, secure and control. It's not easy, but I think it's worth it. 

Much love because I am in a loving mood. 

Rosamunde 

Sex and love addiction - a "disease"?

One of the biggest gifts I have received from SLAA is that it has made me far more humane and understanding of people than I was before. I could be so judgmental and harsh that I shudder to think about it now. But sitting in the meetings and listening to people from all walks of lives, of all different ages and levels of income and education, talk with absolute honesty about their struggles and efforts to get better and help themselves...it is extraordinarily humbling. 

Sometimes though, it can happen that someone's share makes me uncomfortable, or it feels so removed from my own experience that it is hard to find common ground. But this is quite rare. It's usually not about differinces in how we act out - there is quite a big spectrum of sex and love addiction related behaviour found in the fellowship. For some people acting out means completely avoiding romantic or sexual relationships, while others find they cannot stop. 

But I have found that in SLAA the strength of the common experiences means that such differences rarely matter. I have found deep identification with people whose acting out takes a totally different form to mine, but I recognised myself in their descriptions of what drove them, how it made them feel and impacted their lives. 

In the instances where I feel I disagree with someone or just cannot relate, I remember one of the mottos of SLAA, which is to "take what you like and leave the rest". This works well. Everyone has a right to be in those rooms and if I don't identify with someone, then this is my problem, not theirs. 

However, I have found that I don't get as much identification as I would like on issues around relationship abuse. Of course there are women and men in the fellowship with similar experiences, and I have really been profoundly inspired and moved by some who shared. But I often feel quite alone with it at meetings. I am not sure why that is exactly. 

People also differ on how they conceive of their sex and love addiction. My views on this has changed considerably in the last year, but one take I never subscribed to was the idea that this is a "disease". For me, this term gives it too much power and also makes it something we cannot get better from. I don't totally disagree with this. 

It is often said in the rooms that even after years of recovery, much of the painful stuff doesn't go away - you just learn to cope with it better. We lead better lives, stop acting out because we apply we have so many more tools and experience to cope. 

But I just don't see myself as diseased. I feel parts of me are damaged, wounded, and that slowly, slowly, I will be able to heal them. It will take a long time and much "work" (or as little as possible?)  but I feel I can see a path ahead. 

Having said that, I understand that for some the idea of their sex and love addiction is a disease can be helpful. The term contains everything the addiction entails, bundles all the dysfunction together, perhaps making it more manageable.  I can see how it could also seem like a curse though, inescapable, a sentence. This I don't want for myself. 

Of course some also use the term in its literal meaning "dis-ease" - I think (?) to say that sex and love addiction is the main cause of their struggles. 

I have even begun to question the term addiction in this context. I certainly exhibited addictive and compulsive behaviour in the past, but that was a long time ago. I am starting to think that addiction/compulsion is a symptom of the whole, not the whole itself.  I have other symptoms too, eg being manipulative or needy. 

Anyway. I am glad I wrote about this subject, it's been bothering me for a while! 

"Jeune et Jolie" - a film about sex addiction

Last night I watched the film "Jeune et jolie" (young and beautiful) by François Ozon. I want to post about it because for me, the story was mainly about sex addiction, how it can emerge and how damaging it is. 

The protagonist is an extremely beautiful,17-year-old girl from a wealthy Parisian family. One summer, she loses her virginity on a beach to some guy that she doesn't really care about.  It is an unpleasant, mechanical and impersonal experience for her, but she seems numb. Not long after their return to Paris for the autumn, she is working as a high-end prostitute. 

Many things about the film moved me because like me, she  had such a loveless introduction to sex - it wasn't anything connected to emotion, tenderness or intimacy. For the girl sex quickly becomes a tool with which she exerts power over men, with which to make money. This is how she gets her validation and sometimes affection. 

There are a few twists I won't reveal in case you want to watch it, except that her mum finds out and goes berserk. And it becomes clear that the girl is really isolated, lonely and disconnected from those closest to her.  Her mother is not trustworthy,  her kind stepfather starts to seem unsafe, her best friend is clueless and inexperienced. She is close to her younger brother but the main topic of conversation is sex and their relationship seems unhealthy.

She doesn't confide in anyone, and nobody can get through to her. What is striking is that she seems unable to to tolerate any positive, wholesome family scenes, any feelings of togetherness or belonging.  I can identify with that - I always felt it was a lie and so uncomfortable, I just wanted to get away and blot out the feelings with booze or pot or emotional fixes. 

This discomfort/hatred is one of the forces that drives her to prostitution I think, because what she is doing is filling the void in her with something strong, destructive and dark, something "bad".  She is using sex and masturbation to change the way she feels, and end up totally cut off from her own body and her feelings. 

I could write a lot more about this but I will leave it there. I don't like the subject  much but I wanted to watch it because it's important to me. Yes the past is sad but it reminded me how lucky I am. 

Missing him triggers my childhood pain

This morning has been interesting for me, from a SLAA perspective. I mentioned before that my boyfriend is away for a few days, and although I was quite happy at first, I am now starting to become agitated as that all-too-familiar anguish over separation returns. 

I can see how it could be hard to understand why I am struggling - it must seem ridiculous.  He's only gone for a short period, and he has written to say he misses me. We are happy and will spend Christmas together. 

 

And yet, something as trivial as his absence for a few days is really painful for me. I have had some tough times in the last two years, so I find it astonishing that something like this can threaten to derail me in such a way. 

But I realise that this sits squarely at the centre of what SLAA has illuminated for me: this pain I am feeling comes from pre-existing wounds and goes very deep, back to my childhood and adolescence. I feel alone, helpless, abandoned, in danger and desperate. My unconscious quest to get rid of these feelings were what led me to my self-destructive and dysfunctional behaviour in the past. Often my actions created even more pain and chaos. 

I can feel the itch to act out, anything to make the discomfort go. I am nervous, obsessing. I keep checking my phone.

And I am still ashamed of myself and frustrated. Why am I so needy, so clingy, so insecure? I worry that if I don't keep myself in check he will no longer want to be in this relationship. And I don't really feel like this is me --- it's happening against my will, against my own values and aspirations of how I want to live and love. 

However, I have learnt some ways to cope. 

The old, pre-SLAA me would have kept contacting him, trying to extract some expression of his love or affection to prop me up and keep me going. I would have gone deeper and deeper into agonising and exaggerated emotional states and confuse these with being in love.

I would also be living a double life - one in the real world and one in my head, which would be consumed by my obsession with him. I would only be half-present in my own life. 

At worst, I would get so sad or distraught that I would become suicidal. 

The post-SLAA me tries to stay connected to myself and the present, to the people around me and whatever it is I am doing. I am more accepting of myself and compassionate. 

I also keep my goals in sight, and I accept that I have to work for them: 

- I want to be independent.

- I want to live my life and not get sucked into fantasy or into a parallel world of obsession.

- I don't want this relationship to dominate my life. I need to keep an identity. 

- Lastly, I want this relationship to thrive because it makes me really happy. 

I try to "sit" with the feelings, just let them flow freely rather than trying to block them. Sometimes they lose their intensity after a few seconds. 

Finally I have been telling myself that missing the man in my life is not exclusively a bad thing, and that it's normal. I suppose it's when I get desperate, sad, angry and suspicious that things are getting out of hand and that I need to pay attention to it. 

Have a nice day! 

Battling trust issues with light and flow

I have heard people in the rooms talk about how they struggle when their partners are away. They are tempted to act out on their addictive behaviour because they have the freedom to or because they need a fix to make up for the absence of emotional fixes. Intense longing, obsession, restlessness and pain can take over, accompanied by shame for having these feelings and not being more self-sufficient.

My boyfriend is away and out of touch for a few days, and I am thinking about him a lot. Before I went into recovery, I would have been paralysed, incapacitated during this time, desperately trying to get hold of him for some word of reassurance. Now, I am not even tempted to contact him. I don't want to upset myself by getting into a waiting-for-reply pattern, and more importantly, I dont want to infringe on his space.  This is certainly a result of recovery: I would not previously been able to be truly considerate towards someone. My needs were too overwhelming, too pressing.

But my trust in him is plummeting as the hours go by, for no other reason than him being out of sight, out of contact. I manage to put the brakes on my imagination, but the paranoid images and fantasies are bubbling away below the surface somewhere. Rather than indulge them, I want to know what is really troubling me so much. I have no reason not to trust him but I am afraid to do so. I can feel something in my body holding me back,  I tense up. To let go and embrace the flow and warmth would mean opening myself up to danger. I think it is the right thing to do and I want to try, but it feels like such a risk. What if he hurts me, betrays me? I am afraid.

If you strip everything away, including my boyfriend, then it comes down to this: I am face to face with my own vulnerability. It is not about me trusting him as much as trusting the universe, trusting a higher power. I want to control something I cannot control, and this brings me pain. My boyfriend can always let me down and vice versa, but the light and the flow that I feel when I think about the higher power will always be there. The "I" that has a boyfriend, a son, a job and so on, is just one part of me. The other part is my soul, my inner life. I think this must be my core and from there I witness everything on the outside, the events in my life, my thoughts and actions.

While he is away and the negative feelings arise, I will say to myself: "Of course you find it hard to trust after everything that has happened, and that's ok. Try to let go, to open yourself up. Yes, it is a risk, but you can handle it if things go wrong. You are strong, and you always have the light and flow at your core to back you up."

Self-care on negative thoughts

Self-care is a concept I picked up in SLAA. Before that, it was really not on my radar. Sure, I treated myself to stuff, but mostly these were mostly of the "guilty pleasure" variety -- literally. I felt guilty, as if I was doing something wrong. Often it involved  spending money I didn't have. Somewhere along the way I acquired the belief that I should be living austerely, with only the bare necessities. Anything that was purely for pleasure - even fun with friends - was somehow bad. I felt my parents disapproved, that they believed I didn't deserve it.

Now self-care is my main method of soothing myself. It is not always about physical needs but also spiritual. I see self-care as connecting to my higher power. It's a moment in which I value myself, my body and my soul, regardless of the circumstances I am in. I am affirming that I am worth it.

I have learnt to say 'no thanks' to certain thoughts that bring me sadness or anxiety, like turning down another cup of coffee when I have already had too many. Embarking on these fantasies or indulging my fears could lead to me feeling unwell for the rest of the day, and I don't want that. I am surprised I learnt how to do this because before my thoughts were not something I could control. They ruled me, attacking and torturing me at random. I was entirely defenceless.

But now I can choose not to go down that route, and the more I practise, the better I get at it. When a bad though hits me, I think: "I really don't feel like feeling this bad today. I can always revisit this thought later." I don't slap the thought down or dismiss it -- it has a good reason for being there. I deserve compassion and understanding for having such thoughts and whatever led to them. But right now is not the time to let them dominate. And then I think or do something else.

Of course I had to reach a decent level of stability before doing this regularly, but I believe it has helped me not to slip back. Entertaining those thoughts makes me more unwell, and I have little to gain from turning them over again. Sometimes I have to think about difficult and distressing topics of course.

Strange feelings: A new relationship

I have been in a new relationship for just over four months now, the first since I left my husband two years ago. For most of those two years, dating anyone was unthinkable. There were times when a random male face or voice on public transport could make me panic, like a switch being flicked. The thought of sex repulsed me and I couldn't imagine ever meeting anyone who I would want to touch or be touched by, let alone whom I could trust. 

They were dark days but in a way they also served me well. I was able to turn inward, to become a freely floating entity, not attached to anyone. 

I entered SLAA and began to evaluate my past relationships, including my marriage, realistically, without blaming myself. SLAA's concept of bottom lines - i.e. identifying your addictive behaviours and abstaining from them - is a very powerful tool. It allowed me to see my life had been determined by my pursuit of "fixes" - mainly in the form of validation and support from men and relationships. 

So when I started feeling better earlier this year, I was hesitant to start dating again. I feared I would use people to prop myself up and enter the addictive patterns again. And yet, I wanted and needed the contact, physical and emotional, so I decided to go ahead. 

My worst fears did come true: I became hopelessly hooked on people I hardly knew, I had risky sex, I was hurt. But I had awareness, and with that handful of guys and my various experiences with them, I learnt a huge amount about myself. I started to practice making choices: I practised saying 'no' or indeed 'fuck off!" when I felt a lack of respect or something didn't conform to my values. I was delighted when I saw that I could handle the consequences. I saw how at the heart of my addictive behaviour was the belief that I couldn't handle my painful emotions by myself. 

I still felt like i needed a man to make it all better, to make life bearable. You could argue that because of this my time in SLAA was a waste, but I think the contrary: I had to go out into the real world and test it all out, put it into practice. And so I saw that I could face life on my own.

Luckily I bounced back from each bad experience quickly because I knew I was experimenting and could treat myself with compassion. 

When I met my boyfriend, I trusted him instantly (although this is not unusual for me!) and he was attractive, very available and there was a very lovely chemistry. 

At the same time, the pain was overwhelming. I couldn't understand it - it was like I was being dunked in acid, mental torture and I debated ending it. Everything triggered me: him being late, talking about his exes, sex, minor disagreements, the uncertainty of a new relationship, and so on. 

I was already emotionally volatile and being with someone new - who was not abusive! - confronted me with the past and made me constantly process memories. It was not easy. I was also not as far along in my therapy as now (I have had some EMDR since) so things in general were choppier. 

Discussions around my health, therapy and medication dominated everything, and I could see it was beginning to affect him, and me too. We broke up briefly, but when we got back together everything changed for the better. I think it was a combination of my therapy really taking root and some of the things I had learnt on my own and through SLAA sinking in.

My health is still an important topic, but it no longer dictates so much of our lives. My pain is better - less strong, less constant. I am more able to live in the moment with him, and less likely to try to pump him for validation when I am feeling low or needy. 

In those moments, I try to sit with the feeling, the emptiness, the discomfort. I try to open my heart, to stream outwards, rather than seeking a fix from another person or substance. It is just a feeling, it will not kill me. It doesn't always work because sometimes I am just completely overwhelmed. 

I have developed jealousy towards his past and his exes, with whom he is still on good terms. In theory I think that's great, a testament to what a mature and nice person he is. But I struggle with it, I struggle with the fact that he is grown man with a past of his own that is much less dysfunctional than mine. I feel threatened by this, like it will eclipse me. I start imagining I am not attractive enough for him, that all his exes were skinnier, prettier and so on - the usual crap I think, but so eroding nonetheless. 

And when I don't see him for a while, my trust in him starts declining. I become angry with him, for no reason at all. I feel as though he has left me, betrayed me, hurt me, when he has done none of those things. It even goes as far as me feeling that I hate him. 

I find this bizarre because actually I feel immense joy at having him in my life, and have growing feelings for him. And yet there are these shadows of dark and negative feelings snaking around in my body and mind. They put me in a black mood and I feel like I smoked a pack of Marlboro and gargled on whiskey. 

I have not quite figured this out yet. I try to combat the negativity with the same techniques of mindfulness and so on, but I think these feelings must be deeply engrained insecurities and image-problems that are hard to dislodge.

I will keep working on it. 

Motherhood and mental health

When I became pregnant with my son in 2010, I was worried. I thought I was the perfect candidate for post-natal depression. In my early twenties I had struggled with depression and severe anxiety that derailed me for quite some time. It was messy. I dropped out of university for a year, cut off contact with my parents, had an abortion, drank too much alcohol and smoked too much pot and way too much tobacco, was suicidal much of the time, decided to run away to Spain but luckily was talked out of it by friends, and at some stages could barely leave the house to buy a loaf of bread. I was never properly treated, but I managed to turn a corner and regain some ability to function which improved greatly in the years that followed. In the absence of medical help, my saving grace had been the stability provided by my relationship with my now ex-husband. The fact he was controlling and jealous seemed secondary to the benefits of having someone there who I felt loved and cared for me.

The drawback from this set-up was that even after many years had passed from that episode, I had not really recovered, I had merely plugged the leaks, put band aids across the wounds instead of letting them heal. What I had done, as is so clearly described in SLAA, was that I used another human bring to help me cope with my "inadequacies", instead of addressing them head on. I don't blame myself for this - I was so unwell and desperate that I feared I would end up on the street. I did not know what was wrong with me, and the support I received from doctors and counsellors was woefully inadequate. My ex sat with me through panic attacks, he fed me when I was so worn out I could not lift my head to eat, he helped me keep my flat clean and go to my classes. He was there when I felt I had been completely forsaken by my parents and important friends.
It took a few years for the worst symptoms to lessen and sometimes they still flared up, mostly in the form of hopelessness, feelings of emptiness and suicidal thoughts. So as I said, when I becamepregnant, I thought this would be the big trigger, and I would have to be prepared. I did some reading,  and also spoke at length to a good friend who had had a severe case of postnatal depression.

Strangely, even though I was pretty glum and anxious during the pregnancy, I was elated after the birth. I found my baby utterly gorgeous and although I found the slog of looking after a newborn bloody awful (lack of sleep and the monotony is a killer), I had never felt better. Somehow I sidestepped the whole postnatal quagmire, which I can only imagine is an absolute nightmare to contend with, doubly cruel because society drills into us that this is supposed to be the happiest time of our lives and the bond to the child the most wonderful thing ever, the very meaning and purpose of life! How to cope with such an edifice if your feelings and hormones just don't play along?

Anyway, for me the issues with my mental health and motherhood came later, around the time I left my husband and in the time since. Part of his abuse was to make me feel like an incompetent, unreliable mother. At one point he wanted to force me to write a definition of "reliable mother" which he would vet and we would both sign. If I met the criteria by a certain deadline, he would allow me to move out and share care for my son, who was then 18 months old. In the meantime, I was free to leave but I would only be allowed to see my son at his father's house. This was his grand plan anyway. I escaped with my son before he was able to impose this.

Even though I knew my husband was losing the plot, he made me doubt myself, and in part he had a point that I was not giving what a mother should. I had been so heavily triggered by another man (who helped me to realise that I had to leave my husband but who was dishonest and I felt had used me) that I felt I was losing my mind in several fronts. I spent hours each day crying, trying to understand what had occurred. I started therapy with an excellent therapist, who told me that when people have emotional trouble, often the first thing to go is the ability to care for kids. For a few weeks I was totally incapacitated around my son. I made sure he was cared for, I hugged and kissed him but I could barely engage, so obsessed was I with what had happened to me.

That must have been extremely difficult for my ex to deal with, and I understand the impulse of wanting to protect his son. At first he was actually understanding but everything became much worse when he began to use it against me, saying that I was inadequate as a mother. For some reason this is a really sensitive spot in me. I suppose it touches on one of my greatest fears: not being good enough a mother, and that my mental health issues could impact my son. Most of all though, I was afraid my husband would use it against me to take my son away from me.

Anyway, his constant hints or overt threats around this made me instantly crumble. I would become a shivering, shaking wreck, sweating, terrified. And to some extent this fear never left me. I look at other mums and think: surely they play more with their children? Do they get as bored/anxious/impatient as I do? My love for my son is so huge and honestly, most of the time now I know I am a good mother, in my own way. Of course I have my shortcomings, like everyone, and I can laugh about them. But then at other times, I think: Jesus, you are mental. Look at your past, all the things you have done. How are you going to raise a kid? I question how responsible I am, if I am same enough,  disciplined enough to keep is healthy, happy and safe. I know how fast things can spin out of control. So far I have been lucky, I feel. And I mourn for all the mums out there who are separated from their kids because of their mental health problems.

Compassion, not comparing

I want to write about the double-edged sword that is comparing yourself to others, both when applied to mental health issues but also to human suffering in general. I think it can be useful at times, but also a huge obstacle to embarking on recovery.

When my father died after a long illness a few years ago, my mother was devastated. They had been married nearly 45 years, and had loved each other to the end. And yet she constantly repeated to all who tried to console her: "We are so lucky." I found her attitude disturbing because I could see how underneath she was being torn apart by grief and the contrast was a little spooky, but I have to say that I agreed with her at the time, and I still do.

My father lived to 71. He survived more than 12 years after being diagnosed with cancer, having received some of the best treatment out there. His death, in the end, was mercifully quick compared to that of other cancer patients, and from what we know he was unconscious at the time and not in any pain.

At the time of his death, the conflict in Syria was turning darker day by day. The news was filled with images of senseless deaths and destruction, and reports of women and children hiding in cellars in terrible conditions.

Yes, I had lost my father, and my mother had lost her husband, but our lot seemed like a generous gift in comparison to that of so many other human beings. I have no doubt that we are incredibly "lucky" in the grand scheme of things. The question is really what to do with that good fortune, but I will keep that for another post.

However, it was clear from observing my mother and myself in the months after my father's death that this view on things became an obstacle to our grieving process. I felt numb for ages, and to some extent I still do. And I could hear in my mother's voice that she was using this idea of luck as a way to smother her sorrow, to stop it in its tracks. I understand that she was only doing what she could to keep afloat, to survive. She used reason to discount her own emotions, minimised them and ultimately suppressed them. Because of this I don't know whether she has really grieved him properly. She rarely mentions him, even though I am certain he is a huge part of her everyday life and thoughts.

I wish she could have just let herself grieve, without thinking about anyone else, just for a while. Just to let that emotion flow freely inside her without any attempts to block or weaken it. If we learnt to be more accepting of our emotions, if we were not so afraid and more able and willing to bear them, would we be happier overall? We often hear that suppressing our feelings is not good for us, but I don't think this is always true. Sometimes it is a necessity for survival but this does not apply to most of us and our lives, at least not very often.

In retrospect I can see very clearly how this way of coping shaped my upbringing and formation as an adult, and how it led to trouble. I was taught to deny my feelings, that they were ultimately worthless and should be ignored, instead of key to my wellbeing. A huge gulf developed between my reason and my emotions, between my heart and mind. This led to many bad decisions, to self-destructive behaviour and to an inability to do what was in my own best interest. I didn't know what my best interest was, I was divorced from my inner self. I think had I been more accepting and in touch with myself, many things that hurt me would not have  happened.

It was a real turning point for me when early on in my recovery -- and this is thanks to SLAA -- I became able to look at my past and myself as it was, without explicitly comparing or judging myself. The programme and the experience of attending meetings allowed me to develop respect for myself, my experiences and feelings for the first time ever, because I could see that I was no different than anyone else in the fellowship. Of course some people have more traumatic lives behind them than others, but in those rooms I feel an equality and kinship that I have not felt anywhere else. I am not a churchgoer, so this may play a role. Being so humbled by this feeling of togetherness and mutual understanding and empathy, I had a real breakthrough: If I could be so compassionate to others, then I could be compassionate towards myself too.

I no longer had to make myself feel better by dwelling on how much worse things could have been. The numbing effect of that only last a short while, and I don't think it did me much good other than making me seem brave and stoical to other people, while I was drowning and screaming for help on the inside. SLAA allowed me to look at my life and my emotions, own them, take responsibility and be kind to myself while doing so.

Thoughts and comments welcome!

Have a nice day,
R

My love illusion

I have had a challenging week on several fronts. There's trouble with my ex, who has found out I am dating someone (two years after we broke up!), some stress at work, minor but nonetheless hugely triggering issues with my boyfriend, and some other stuff. The first few days were alright - I was still very positive overall and just kept  problem solving and working to stay grounded,  connected to myself, grateful and compassionate. I managed to maintain my mood for a while this way but then, as new challenges kept emerging.  a kind of swing occurred and I began to feel uneasy and troubled all of the time. The  familiar feelings returned: Everythjng became an effort, like wading through treacle, and I began once more to shy away from any films, books, music, social media (Facebook!) that might trigger me.

I was worried that some of the progress I had made had been lost, and that this would negatively affect my relationship, which has really flourished during my recent progress. But this week I had that burning, hollow feeling again, which comes out as a need for affection, kindness from my partner, but which I think in my case is more of a desire to soothe my pain with someone else's touch, to blot out whatever is troubling me. This is the problem which is also addressed in SLAA: We end up using people for this, thinking it is "love" but in fact it is not a genuine exchange of emotion or intimacy, but just one person trying to self-medicate through another human.

I was quite disturbed by myself in recent days, because I really saw this illusion of live brought on by neediness in action, clearly laid out. Whenever I was tempted to pour out affection (impulsive "I love you's" and the like) I could see how this desire actually arose from the need to be soothed and rescued. The wish to say it (and hear something back) wells up from a painful, raw, self-pitying part of me, deep in my chest. It says: "I love you!" But then it is also saying "Please help me, hold me, get me out of this hell, make it stop, come back, don't leave me."

How did I end up this way and why is it important?

I think I was never shown, as a child, pure love for who I was. I was praised for achievements in school or the like, but I was made to believe that I was not really likeable as a person. I had few rights because everything was diminished or dismissed: my emotions, need for privacy, my opinions, my relationships to the outside world. There was seemingly no capacity to accommodate me as a complete human being, only certain bits of me that obeyed and did well.

So to start with, I don't have a model for love and intimacy, respect and boundaries. I guess  I filled that void with all the skewed and misleading information from the media and Hollywood, and I experimented. But the experiments were dangerous and often ended in difficulties. This had repercussions on my mental health and the problems began to grow way over what I was able to comprehend.

Anyway, you could ask why such a seemingly minute detail from my life as me noticing the exact moment where my love illusion can manifest itself is significant. The answer is simple: moments like that used to dictate my life events! I got together with my ex because of it and was with him for years and years. We had a wonderful child but the relationship also ended with me being severely emotionally abused.

I am glad that I have mostly avoided the same trap in my current relationship, that I took the space available to find this out for myself. I have not said "I love you" and I am ok with waiting until it feels right.