Acceptance

Accepting that toxic love is not love to hold onto is where I found relief from pain.

It acceptance feels like being bathed in balm, so peaceful and calm and serene to no longer be clinging tight to pain. Letting go is terrifying, but the freefall of freedom and uncertainty can also feel like flying with the wind brushing past you.

Buddhism books:

ACT – Acceptance & Commitment Therapy: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapy-types/acceptance-and-commitment-therapy

The Serenity Prayer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serenity_Prayer

Death by a thousand cuts

Trigger warning – In case the title isn’t warning enough.

Originally it was a form of torture.

It’s now also a metaphor for emotional pain.

Similar to: the straw that broke the camel’s back.

I keep coming up with different metaphors and descriptions.

One was that I’ve been walking around my whole life with my arms across my stomach holding my guts in and hiding my wounds. And I recently realized it’s not my fault I have this deep, disgusting, excruciating wound and I don’t have to protect others from knowing it exists. So now I’m walking around and my guts are hanging out (see my post on CSA – The Hidden Epidemic) but my back is straight and my arms are free.

Other times I feel like I’m walking around with all my skin flayed off and just oozing a seeping layer of blood. If people could see it, they’d ask “how are you alive?!” and “why are you not getting care and treatment?!”

I was thinking about how I’d much rather be stabbed through the heart with a sword than suffer death by a thousand cuts. Having experienced both emotionally in relationships, the latter is way worse.

It starts with a few cuts that flay off some skin. No more painful than a bad papercut or a rug burn. But they continue faster than the old ones can heal, but slow enough you can adjust to them and learn to tolerate this new baseline of pain. Especially if you’ve grown up with a massive wound overshadowing all others. Until one day you suddenly realize you’ve been flayed alive, have no skin left and have been living in pain so long you can’t recall what not being in pain was like. And then it continues only now since your skin is gone, flesh is being cut away. Until again you realize you’re one seeping walking wound head to toe. And suddenly now that you realize it, you can’t bear it anymore and scream out or collapse. And finally someone notices – but you’ll die if you don’t stop the bleeding, so they have to cauterize every inch of you. And no anesthetic exists or works. And so you have to suffer even worse pain for the sake of survival. And you have to hold still and be quiet while they cauterize the wounds or you’ll disrupt them and the scarring and residual pain will be worse.

And then when someone bumps into you and you cry because it’s just that bit too much to tolerate and they get mad that you’re overreacting or that you got blood on their shirt where they bumped you…. And you know they don’t understand. But you’re just trying to survive and don’t have the energy to educate them.

The way you survive pain like this is focusing on one step at a time, or the goal. But sometimes you need to pause and remember the whole.

Geez. No wonder I’m so tired. I guess self compassion requires a little introspection. I was forgetting my self. And the whole is overwhelming, sometimes I need to put that awareness away to function. But putting away isn’t the same as denying it exists, which is what I tried to do for a long time.

I’m sorry self, I embrace and accept you as you are.

Scheduling grief

I didn’t think to share this on my own, one of my wonderful friends suggested it.

I was reading a book in a waiting room and got triggered and was about to break down crying.

I took a deep breath and asked myself if I could wait until a better time. I thought through the day and figured out a time when I’d have more privacy and promised myself I would come back to this and allow myself to properly grieve and that I would do it today and not forget about it or stuff it down trying to ignore it. It was just a temporary pause for a better time.

And it worked, I was calm the rest of the day and when I sat down outside the library before my next appointment when I had about 20 minutes to spare, I asked myself what had triggered that moment originally. I remembered and was right back in it but this time I just curled over my knees and cried and let it out. I think I only cried for 5 or 10 minutes so I even had time to recover afterwards before walking to my appointment.

I’m sure this trick won’t always work, and it requires you trusting yourself (or your systems – like to do lists or alarms).

And when I say I ask myself, it’s more like I ask my inner parts. Something like “Hey gang, can we hold onto this until later today? I promise I won’t forget and just stuff it down.” That’ll be fore another post on IFS – Internal Family Systems.

Schemas or Distortions

Stub

Homework assignment, identify my maladaptive schemas/cognitive distortions

All or nothing thinking. Perfectionist – if not perfect then why bother

Black & white thinking. – using extremes, always, never, ever, completely

Mind reading

10 common cognitive distortions – mental shortcuts or assumptions about how the world works that helped you survive but are no longer supportive

18 maladaptive schemas – thought structures that helped you in one or some situations but are now harming or restricting you.

18 Early Schemas Defined (schematherapy.com)