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Are you a Winter or a Summer person?

Winter people are late risers. They are buried in their beds as one day they will be buried in their coffins. Teenagers too are late risers, their roots buried in the ground as they seek the transformative to spring into life with a new, changed, adult body - flowering into their summer self after a winter of discontent.

Winter people are the old, dying plants of yesteryear as children are Spring, leaping into simple, joyful action rather than crushed by the complexity of age. They change like tadpoles or butterflies but not so drastically in form. Like in the film An American Werewolf in London, their bodies are wrenched and stretched into new shapes as their internal chemistry and physique alter and their roles in life swap from the cared for to the caring, children to adults.

The old are like zombies in worn out bodies - slow, forgetful, smelly and falling to bits. They say the old are wise because they have survived the impetuosity of youth but this might be down to good luck as opposed to the bad luck of poor choices.

Winter is like an air raid that leads us to shelter from the savagery of bad weather; the icy tongues that whip us with cold winds or grips us with frosty fingers, slowing our tread with slippery ice and deep snow. Winter is a time for hoarding and sheltering as summer is when we come out of hiding and share what we have. This is analogous to any misfortune or luck in our personal life or the world's (natural or man made disasters).

This is a time of abandonment and neglect, where we retreat into ourselves in a state of hibernation, when everything slows down to a halt or carrying out the least possible activities, in order to stay alive. It leads to avoidance of action or alternatively rushing things to get them over as quickly as possible. Our senses dull and our attention turns inwards in silent rumination as life lays buried and hidden, in a stilled world, prodded back into action by necessity alone.

Come Spring and like bulbs we burst through the crust of hardship and into the light of a new day, a new hope as every year, clearing away the damage of the past. Sight, sound, smell, taste and touch resurface too as life extroverts our attention once more, in response to the warmth of the giving sun and the lengthening daylight, which like a searchlight delineates all hidden in the dark of winter’s night and inhospitability..

Winter is a time for reflection (looking back on the past) as summer is a time to get moving again (music and (e)motion). Winter people skulk in their memories of yesterday and it's bitter failures. Summer people are only interested in future hopes , future dreams not past despair. They pursue new possibilities because they have a healthy optimism. They don't cling on to a certain past in fear of losing it but risk each day, in the chance of a better but uncertain tomorrow. They have burnt their boats behind them, instead of clinging on to the floating debris of what was, in the hope it will save them. Winter’s seeds, the concentrated self, gives way to the flowering self that disperses all it is and has, in generous release.

They won't retreat into ivory towers or hide in castle dungeons, afraid of the changing world around them, holding onto memories of past glories. Instead they are willing to leave behind the relics of the bygone era, throwing off the armour of protection and advancing into the unknown future, naked and afraid but having the courage to trust in a new tomorrow and their imagination that will build it.

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#CognitiveBehavioralTheory

Our Thoughts predetermine our Feelings - Our Feelings predetermine our Behaviors - Our Behaviors reinforce our Thoughts

So when we come from a place of severe Trauma; Abuse; Neglect; we tend to have Negative, and Reactive Thought processes. This tends to present itself in Negative Trauma Response to our CURRENT situation, regardless of whether we are still experiencing the Trauma...

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy helps to retrain the Mind back to more Positive Thoughts, which leads to Positive Feelings, and helps us to have more Positive Interactions and Behavior patterns... It takes time to learn and develop the Proper COPING SKILLS to overcome years of Abuse... The Patterns become so ingrained that we are unaware of our Responses or how we are Affecting those around us...

#AutismSpectrum #ADD #Anxiety #behavioralhealth #BorderlinePersonalityDisorder #CPTSD #Dyslexia #EmotionalDysregulation #Guilt_Shame #intensemoodswings #MajorDepressiveDisorder #Selfharm #SuicideSurvivor

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Ideation and devaluation of my fiance

Hi there,

I was recently diagnosed with ADHD (as a woman in my late 30's) and it's been overwhelming. I believe I have co-ocurring BPD as well, and I'm kinda freaking out about it. It's most evident in my relationship with my fiance. I have periods where I am completely in love with him and "know" he's "right for me," and then periods where I don't like him, maybe even hate him, and want to flee and be single again and am convinced he's terrible for me. It's fucking exhausting. He was recently diagnosed with Autism and we both share a pretty substantial history of childhood trauma (my mom has BPD, my dad has Autism, his dad was an abusive alcoholic and likely autistic, and his mom has BPD traits | i.e. abuse, neglect, etc). You could say we won the lottery lol. Anyhooo, I'm new to engaging in any BPD support and really don't want to keep swinging between ideation and devaluation of my partner my entire life. Again, I'm exhausted. Thanks for reading

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Maybe you need to read this too?

If you suffer from CEN (Childhood Emotional Neglect), you may have internalized these 10 false lessons. If you have, you need to hear the truth! And it's shared in this article.

I have read it several times now. And have the 10 points on my phone. I really need to remember the truth!

#MightyTogether
#Support
#MentalHealth
#BorderlinePersonalityDisorder
#AvoidantPersonalityDisorder
#Depression
#Anxiety
#Burnout
#HighlysensitivePerson

10 False Lessons Childhood Emotional Neglect Teaches You

10 False Lessons Childhood Emotional Neglect Teaches You

What you learn about your emotions and how they work sets up later problems.
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The Lost Child

Hello, how are you today?

Today, I want to share a little bit about my experience as a lost child. This was the role assigned to me by my dysfunctional family: the lost/invisible child. At times, it felt like I didn't have the right to exist in that space. I was incredibly alone and emotionally neglected. Nobody in my family knew, and still doesn't know, who I am. This had numerous consequences for me, some of them quite severe. Today, I am grieving for what was taken away from that beautiful, bright, amazing child I once was. While I feel deep sadness, I am also amazed by the resilience that child demonstrated to survive. We are remarkably resourceful.

Can anyone relate to this story?

Thanks for listening. 🌼#ComplexPosttraumaticStressDisorder #ADHD #Trauma #Depression #neglect image: Jay Castor on Unsplash

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What did I do?

Another night of nightmares. motional flashbacks. Panic attacks in my sleep. Just spent another hour walking the house in circles in the dark.

Sadly, the question that kept coming up while exfoliating my mind in my panic/meditation walk was 'what did I do?'.

We all have asked that question over and over again. Why did this happen to me? Tonight I found myself asking this question again. Not in anger. Not in rage. Not with my entire insides threatening to fall out. This time it's much more calm. It's knowing the answer but still having to ask the question. Nothing. I did nothing that caused me to have a lifetime of nightmares and living nightmares. I wasn't born under an unlucky star. I'm not paying for sins of another or my own in another lifetime. I came to be in a family of two mentally ill parents. Who passed their sickness onto their children. Who all passed their sickness onto me unrelenting day after day after day. I've paid for that unrelentingly my entire life.

I guess my point here is to figure, once more, that it is important to ask 'what did I do' over and over again. As many times as it takes to understand that we did nothing to deserve this. Not the horrors of the trauma, abuse and neglect and not the years and decades of what these things did to us.

I feel so bad so often about my failure to connect to others. The fear, the loathing of the fear, the looking at other people's eyes and seeing the distaste, the listening to the words and their distaste. I know at least some of its my BPD. I have always lacked social skills. It's the affect of the trauma, abuse and neglect.

The answer to that question includes that it wasn't my fault. I have 58 years trauma, abuse and neglect. 58 years of pain, suffering, nightmares, panic attacks, flashbacks, triggers, etc... that I struggled heroically against trying to make a semblance of my life. I think that I just don't deserve respect for being survivor. I deserve to be me. With all my flaws that aren't my fault. I did nothing to deserve my nightmare of a childhood. Or the life that came from it. I have struggled at my utmost capacity just trying to pretend a semblance of normalcy. It wasn't my fault. I didn't deserve it or any of this.

Once more, going through this process.

#ComplexPosttraumaticStressDisorder
#BorderlinePersonalityDisorder
#DissociativeIdentityDisorder

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CPTSD, INNER CHILDREN + MIGRAINES

In this I'm not saying anything about other people's migraines. Just my own.

I have CPTSD. it has caused me a host of problems throughout my life that I am finally getting a grasp on what it did to me and what it has cost me after several years of therapy of trauma therapy. I'm finally reaching a stage where I've recovered enough memories of what happened to grasp what it really meant to have gone through that.

I've done a lot work with my inner children. Those of us with CPTSD understand that the traumas done to us in early childhood not only leave us with an event that is stuck and isolated in the moment of the trauma but it also has an imprint of ourselves at that age. To us it feels like a little child still struggling in that event. In pain. Lost. Confused.

I have so many dozens of them. I lost count.

A few of them were so badly traumatized that the world ended. One time I died. One time I ended up catatonic in existential terror so bad that when my mind came back on line I didn't know what I was. My first thought was me questioning if I was a tree. But each time I found I had survived had prompted an eternal scream. I have three inner children who scream constantly. And the last time prompted an identity that hates life, the world and universe. This is what my family did to me.

I've been doing really good in my therapy. I've made great and substantial progress. About a week ago in one of sessions with my inner children when going to bed I told them that they were free to move about as they please. I was feeling so good that I felt ready for them to 'move about the cabin' freely. The thought was to get them feeling safe. If they feel safe they can grow and heal.
Immediately I got some pushback. Some are a bit afraid of me. Some are afraid of some of my other identities. But they settled down.

What I did not expect, but I am in no way unhappy about, was that part of me that took over in my sleep a couple of nights later. I said they were free to move about and this one did. It was the one that literally hates life, the world and the universe. If you knew what my family did to me you would understand why my mind created this identity.
I woke up that morning with a terrible migraine. I would not breath. Not that I couldn't breath. I wouldn't. I had to force myself to take a breath. If I stopped consciously breathing I returned immediately to not breathing. My body would not literally breath autonomously. I had to get up and walk around the house to force myself back into breathing. The part of me that my family tortured into existence was finally out in force. I spent that day in intense physical and emotional pain. With panic welling up in my chest spontaneously. Late in the day I was finally able to find some relief with coaxing and talking to this part. But sadly it happened again that night. But thankfully not so bad. The migraine and emotional pain was less. And it didn't last as long as the first day. And it happened again on the third night. But each symptom was even less. Maybe half of what it on the first day. Though the feelings of panic in my chest lasted several days.

But good news on the fourth day. I went to bed talking to my inner children about the previous three nights. How I respect and validate their pain and how I hope we can work through this. How what brought this on is gone. How there is no need to be afraid. How I'm their foster parent and I will take care of them. When suddenly all kinds of memories I had long forgot came rushing back. Good stuff. Modes of thought. And though very special but not to undermine the rest, imagination came back. A lot of my imagination got locked away because of the abuse. Most of my life it took effort to image or play with my imagination. I had to go to a deep place in my mind to access it. And suddenly it was working so well. Well, you can understand what you can get with imagination and a tortured mind. So you understand why I had to shut it down. Like with emotions. But finally it was working again. It was wonderful to get it back. I kept thanking that part of me that finally healed enough to allow this to come back.

I'm still working with them running free and I really hope I don't have to deal with days of that much pain again but I am really glad I am letting them foam freely. I can't say I'm done dealing with the part that hates living, but I know we at least made some progress at healing.

Please keep trying. No one can gage their pain or progress against another. Mine is not worse than yours. All I know is mine is really bad. I've spent the past several years going through so many painful healing processes. Processes that are not linear or predictable or able to plan out in any way. A process that often males me feel lost until I'm face to face with the next step forced to adapt, process and heal as best as I can. It's not fair we have to face so much, suffer so much, work so hard because of something horrible done to us. But it is only us who can do it. So please keep trying.

I know this all sounds so strange but that is the affect of trauma, abuse and neglect on children especially before five. The mind is still developing. The damage can be extensive. And sadly it is lifelong. The goal is heal it as much as possible and make most of the damage just memory.

I wish everyone reading this the best of luck and perseverance. It does get better will help and effort.

#PTSD
#DissociativeIdentityDisorder
#BorderlinePersonalityDisorder
#Anxiety
#Depression
#ComplexPosttraumaticStressDisorder

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Echoes Through Time: The Unyielding Strength of a Fractured Soul

In a world that often seemed devoid of constants, my life began under the watchful eye of an aged father whom was 80 years old at my and a troubled mother. My father, a man whose years spanned eight decades, brought me into a life that was anything but ordinary. My mother, a woman battling her own demons, set the stage for a childhood rife with turmoil and confusion.

The early years were a chaotic tapestry, woven with threads of my mother’s alcoholism and erratic behavior. Memories of being mocked and exposed as a toddler during her drunken states are etched deeply in my psyche, leaving behind a trail of emotional scars. My siblings, entangled in their own struggles with drugs, legal issues, and the aftermath of a dysfunctional upbringing, offered little refuge from the storm.

My father, the pillar of faith and a beacon of hope, left us too soon and to my eyewitness. His passing in 2007 was a silent thunderclap, echoing through the void he left behind. His absence was a harbinger of even darker days, as my mother’s addiction spiraled out of control. I found myself repeatedly on the phone with emergency services, trying to save her from herself, a role reversal no child should ever have to face. I grew up quick. No time to be a child, these people need me to intervene to save them.

Unfortunately, the misfit parents launched me into

The foster system, where I sought sanctuary, only perpetuated the cycle of abuse and neglect. It was in these moments of despair that I learned the harshest truths about trust and betrayal.

Beaten in the foster homes, and physical and verbal abuse continued. I got back to my regular home after my mother managed to get it together long enough to fool the interviews and got us back. My father was too old to care for us they said, but, little did they know placed me into an more dangerous place furthering my trauma. When I arrived back after 6 months, That is when my father passed. I knew i would do anything to save my mother after witnessing my father's passing at 9. As I reflect, I was lied too, manipulated, verbally abused, and the actual scapegoat of everyone. Yet, I still chose kindness too each and every person. I remained in the environment with the choice to leave to a better future, having an insight that my time with my mother would be short-lived.

But it was in her final days that my mother uttered a truth that pierced through the years of deceit and manipulation. As we prepared to say our final goodbyes, she confessed with a sincerity and fear I had never heard before, "I will never drink again." Her words, laden with a tragic irony, were the only true ones she ever spoke, as she passed away the very next day. This moment, a twisted lesson from the universe, became a catalyst for my own vow to renounce alcohol forever.

Emerging from the shadow of my mother’s legacy, I ventured into a relationship that mirrored the only love I knew – chaotic and tumultuous. Yet, after six tumultuous years, I found the resolve to step away, to seek a healthier path. I did so, and we are back together with a better understanding of behaviors that will not be tolerated. We are happy, and nothing but positive interactions since then. I hope it stays that way, but I am strong enough to leave at moment. A choice is all we have. My choice today was to share my story with you guys.

After 20 years of hell, my life is getting better at the age of 27.

I have accomplished the following:

Within one year of joining the workforce, I was promoted to Front Office Manager. During my time, I set records that nobody has hit before. 2 years later, I was promoted to assistant general manager.

I was selected among my peers as an emerging leader, and I just graduated in December my companies year long emerging leaders program. During this program, I gave a presentation on recognition, and offered perspective on peoples escape from traumatic homes into what we as leaders have the power to create a loving positive atmosphere, and how each leader in this room has the power to make or shape someones life in a good or bad way. Some people work to escape. Some people have never been taught to cope. That person who works hard everyday smiling you did not know that he just lost everything and is struggling to keep it together and stay alive, and that good job you told him kept him going that day.

People won't remember what you did for them, but they will remember how you made them feel. I will never let anyone under my watch undergo what I did, and I will be a voice for the voiceless, and an spotlight for the wicked. I will continue to do good and treat people kindly despite a world cruel and seemingly twisted. I had a friend reach out to me, and say he was extremely sorry for how he treated me growing up. I just thought it was normal to be treated as such in friendships. I forgive him. Society has a way of making you do things you don't want to do for fun or enjoyment. I hold no ill feelings towards anyone who has done me wrong, for they have contributed to the being i am today. Interactions good or bad. I forgive all, and may they find happiness in their life as I seek today.

As I reflect on these accomplishments these past five years even in the face of losing my mother, I have never once told myself good job and instead I focused on what's next. As I pause and reflect, I think, What am i doing this for? Who am I trying to impress? If I fail, its only me that sees. The feeling to call your mother or father when you accomplish something is part to do as to why I feel like an empty shell of a being after this life has tossed and twisted me. My mothers sudden passing, well, she got it easy. She didn't have to deal with any of the consequences of her actions upon me. While the hardships have ended, the ability to form simple relationships and not feel paranoid that they are using MLB or that people are out to get me, has not faded. But you know what? It didn't get the best of me. And so the battle of hardship has completed, now begins a journey of healing. Undoing years of this. I figure i won't be fully healed for another ten years. Its ok to not be a normal contributor some days.

I feel like I don't have much time to actually relish on the happy moments. C-PTSD has caused me to rush to fulfill a full life and get old and pass away. I need to be in the moment. My ability to form relationships with full trust has been compromised, but, I'm trying each day. My mental illness makes my leadership more complicated and riskier to the corporate structure, but I'll tell you what I lead with more empathy and understanding then those I lead can ever know the grasp of.

The emptiness I feel each day, I will try to fill with the positive impact I create. While I can't fix the people my mother's wrath created, I can however stop the cycle and be so kind to a world so cruel that it makes an actual impact.

Heres to filling our stomachs back up.

thank you for reading, and may you find happiness and joy today. Fill your stomachs back up one glass at a time.

-tb

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Dr. Lucinda Bateman of Mayo Clinic and now, also, the Open Medicine Foundation, is a leading M.E. specialist. Here's a great video...

...wherein she lays out the current diagnostic criteria for clinicians.

It's six and a half minutes long and easy enough for even the most addle-brained physician to understand.

All good wishes to everyone else with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis who's fighting to stay alive and live the healthiest life possible and, of course, the medical neglect and abuse that swarm this illness like flies on a picnic table. We got through another day and that's something.

Dr. Lucinda Bateman, one of the good ones:

www.youtube.com/watch

Day 30 of 365

#MyalgicEncephalomyelitis #ChronicFatigueSyndrome #cfsisamisnomer #ChronicIllness #Disability #drlucindabateman

(edited)

Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/ Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

Dr. Lucinda Bateman, an Internal Medicine Physician from Salt Lake City, UT, reviews this consensus statement appearing online early and in the November 2021...
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