(Written in November 2008)
\nA couple of painful conversations with Eleanor.\u00a0 She asked about staying here more and I wasn\u2019t able to say it would be OK.\u00a0 My dismay clearly showed on my face, and she called and left a long message about not wanting to stay here if it wasn\u2019t good for me.\u00a0 She understood that the difficulty of her life would be hard on me, would weigh on me, and of course that\u2019s the major difficulty.\u00a0 I told her so last night.\u00a0 The reality is that her life is unrelentingly painful.\u00a0 I want to be able to listen to her, to witness for her, I don\u2019t want her to feel that she can\u2019t tell me about her life because it will upset me \u2014 but it\u2019s also true that the conditions of her life weigh on me, bring up feelings of sadness, anger, despair and helplessness.\u00a0 I\u2019m not strong enough, generous enough, loving enough to really be there for her, to be able to help contain all the difficulty and pain.\u00a0 I feel sad about that.\u00a0 Though maybe it\u2019s an unfair judgement \u2014 it\u2019s really deep unhealed wounds of my own that make it difficult to be there for her.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve uncovered a core belief that\u2019s possibly the main piece in all this.\u00a0 It\u2019s where the fear that I could be poisonous to babies comes from.\u00a0 The belief that just my presence can injure other people, that if I take care of myself, that injures others, that if I say \u201cno\u201d to someone, that injures them.\u00a0 Most of the time it doesn\u2019t operate \u2014 at least recently, in the wake of this last round of PTSD, I\u2019ve gotten much more comfortable saying NO and doing what I need to for myself.\u00a0 It\u2019s become abundantly clear, as a practical not a moral issue, that I absolutely have to take care of myself first.\u00a0 But for whatever reason, that doesn\u2019t work with Eleanor.\u00a0 I realize that every time I look at the little boombox I bought for her \u2014 the radio works but the CD player stopped working, I feel guilty that I haven\u2019t replaced it.\u00a0 Eleanor hasn\u2019t asked me to, she doesn\u2019t expect me to, but I expect myself to do it, and feel guilty that I haven\u2019t.<\/p>\n
More thoughts: when there was the Deupree family reunion in Washington DC I didn\u2019t go because of my health.\u00a0 But Mother told Susan I didn\u2019t come because she was there \u2014 the implication being that I wanted to hurt her.\u00a0 Susan told me about it, also telling me she didn\u2019t believe Mom.\u00a0 But that was typical.\u00a0 I\u2019m sure she said many things like that over the years, implying that I hurt her when I did things for other reasons.\u00a0 And the stuff with the insurance.\u00a0 I realized that unintentionally making Kayla\u2019s life more difficult, and her anger and upset about it, was the final straw that knocked me into major PTSD.\u00a0 It triggered the belief that if I do something to fulfill my own needs, it will hurt someone else and that means I\u2019m evil, wicked, worthless, and should be dead.\u00a0 No wonder I lost it completely at that point.<\/p>\n
The other belief that gets triggered is the one that if I don\u2019t do what they want, I don\u2019t care about them.\u00a0 Then I get angry at myself for not caring, and someone in me knows that I really do care and is angered at being invalidated, and the conflict makes me feel so sad and angry and ashamed and of course when I\u2019m in that state I can\u2019t possibly feel my caring, and I don\u2019t trust my intellectual knowing of my caring. And it\u2019s just a mess.\u00a0 I\u2019ve been fighting this damn belief since early in my marriage with Dana when I accused him of \u201cnot caring\u201d and he reacted with anger.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
(Written in November 2008) A couple of painful conversations with Eleanor.\u00a0 She asked about staying here more and I wasn\u2019t able to say it would be OK.\u00a0 My dismay clearly showed on my face, and she called and left a … Continue reading