Fragile

A month later and another jab.

Feeling personally traumatised as heavy sedative meds plus covid, are reminding me of my father's premature death of pneumonia while under medication.

Fortunately this time there was somebody to reach out to irl and online. Grateful for good food to prepare for my family. With most of my previous traumas there was nobody to have responsible conversations with, so grateful. My mamma bear instincts are whirling and pressure on my heart not great. Drove to the beach for self care and looked out on the rain and waves. Seems to be the way I am reacting to my son's depot, each time Will try to get thru next few days without upping my meds.

Hello @Appleblossom

It hurts me to read of such struggles

I have been reading emails randomly

I thought of you with the update on the stolen generation

I do hope that mentionin this causes no additional trauma

I want to offer you and all of your family past and present..those who hold a powerful bond..the greatest of respect..

I am typing with my left hand

I had a serious accident

Literaalyy chaotic mind..distress long term trauma led me to crash sidways on a hard tiled floor

write something on looking after ourselves..read only when and if you have the strength and or energy

do not overload like me..💜

You are in my mind as promised dear @Appleblossom

@Sophia1

Thanks for your timely reply I could not believe it, maybe coincidence you logged on. Oh dear you damaged your right hand. Its hard how one thing leads to another. The gentlest of hugs Sophia. I recently posted on Good Morning thread about a Swiss film short ... where one thing leads to another ... kind of like that.

https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/video/1988771395887/bonobo I will post it here, seeing as it seems to resonate all round ...

Tears. To be seen and heard.

Thank you friend @Emelia8 for your quiet background support when you are carrying so much.

I am going to make plum chicken for dinner.

@Faith-and-Hope Thanks for your support in previous post.

I wondered if you could talk more about your "privacy shield" to me over on this thread. I do not want to bog down @Emelia8 's thread with my issues. She has enough to deal with.

It is just that I am starting something old and new ... study ... and "issues" will be a part of it, but I need to work on how I communicate fo that family privacy and my career privact is respected. I just do not have a natural instinct for it... as there was so much state intervention in my family.

Hi @Appleblossom

Are you familiar with mind-mapping as an exercise ? I presume you are …..

Within my former marriage situation 8 kept having my personal and privacy boundaries violated, something that I can now recognise as gaslighting. I had to find creative ways to block these invasions for my own mental health, and some of that meant pre-empting, which is what you are doing right now.

I would receive a phone call to say, “I am coming over and I will be …… “ and said person just expected me to comply. I mind-mapped within my head and broke their behaviour down from the perspective of what I expected them to do, and the starting point was, that I expected them to call and ask whether I / my child was free, and then put forward a suggestion to do what they wanted to do for the day.

From there I realised that I had the choice whether to be free on that day, and the choice about whether I was willing to allow what they wanted to do, and then developed some strategies.

One of these was to allow all of my phone calls (only had a home phone at that stage) to go through to answer-phone. That gave me time to decide what I wanted to accept or not, and to make other plans before ringing back to say, “I’m sorry, we have other plans.”

The response to that was then to ask what we were doing the next day, and the day after etc, so I began to fill my diary with potential commitments, which meant that I was reducing the playing field, and being careful to provided minimalistic replies about what my alternative “commitments” were, such as a play date with a school friend.

I also tended to pack a bag and go out during the day so I wasn’t at home to answer the phone, giving me another 24 hours to consider whatever I discovered on the answer-phone when I returned. I would do my dinner prep at the park while listening to my children’s reading homework, and take my iron and ironing to a friend’s place to have an ironing / mending day there.

The starting point is probably to work out what you don’t want to happen, and then try to place strategies to achieve what you do want to happen.

There is also nothing wrong with practicing statements such as:

I’m not really comfortable discussing that, but thank you for your interest.

I prefer to keep the details to myself for privacy reasons. Thank you for your understanding.

Thank you for enquiring, but I feel like I am okay.

I have a great friend who I chat with about things like that, so I’m good, but thanks anyway. (“Great friend” might be forum family - whoever is pressing you doesn’t need to know that).

I hope this helps you to start working out your own boundaries, and polite ways to gently but firmly enforce them.

Dropping you in a whole lot of 💚 Apple

@Appleblossom

Totally overwhelmed by technical difficulty re study. Realising how deep my fear of being not worthy and a non person is. And yes it is my birthday today. Hope if pursuing due diligence I will get through to my 5 pm course.

Badly triggered. Wasted 4 hours on it today and more in days leading up to it.

ohhh hugs my @Appleblossom xoxo

Hi @Appleblossom ,

I'm sorry to hear! How stressful it must be, and on your birthday, too!

Is there a way you can contact the person/organisation and ask for tech support?

Surely, not everyone can navigate online course content hassle-free?

I remember it took me a whole trimester to learn to navigate the online learning platforms - there are so many elements and so much to learn....

sigh***

All the best.

Hope you are having a pleasant birthday, otherwise.

tyme

Technical difficulties are ridiculously hard @Appleblossom I hear you!

I'm so sorry, especially on your birthday!

Sending you love for a happier drama free day as well as belated birthday wishes. I hope someone is spoiling you over the weekend 🎂💐💚