I find it stupidly hard to take compliments. I never believe them. If anything I start wondering what they're going to ask me for after they're finished being nice; what favour they want me to do, where they want me to go, what sacrifice I'm going to have to make for them. I never take compliments at face value, I always read between the lines and look for motives, even when there aren't any to look for. Maybe it's just my paranoia, or my terrible self-esteem and self-confidence.
I did an adult ten-week therapy programme from January to March this year that was for 6 hours a week. There were 5 of us (6 at first but one guy left) ranging from the youngest (me) being 18, and the oldest in his 50s. Even though we had varying 'labels' stuck to us, we all found it really hard to take compliments from each other. One of the exercises involved us having to write down something nice about each member of the group. When we read them out to the member of the group we were talking about the guy running the group told us that we had to maintain eye contact, which we also found difficult to do. It helped though. Every session involved us having to say positive things about each other. It's all about having it re-enforced. We may still have had a hard time accepting compliments at the end of the ten weeks, but it was more bearable. We were able to hear it rather than tune it out completely.
For a long time, even now, I believed I was a liar, an attention-seeker, a manipulator; all labels that were placed on me to make out that I was crazy and that I shouldn't be believed about the abuse I went through. It's different now as my little brother has come forward, but getting back to the point.. When you get told something for so long, you start to believe it. For instance, being called a liar for more than two years, even though I knew that what I said was true, started making me question my own sanity.
If you spend your life being told that you're worthless, even though it's very unlikely that you are, then you start to believe it yourself. It doesn't become a possibility, it's a FACT. When it's ingrained in your head for so long, it's hard for something to change your opinion. You don't believe the nice things people say about you. You don't believe you deserve the care and support people give you.
You do deserve love. You deserve support. You deserve to be cared for. You may think negative things about yourself but they're unlikely to be true to other people. The perspective I have of myself is very different to what other people's perspective is. Odds are, your view has been slightly distorted. Start believing the compliments people give you and accept them. You deserve at least that <3.
 "Unless you have been very, very lucky, you have undoubtedly experienced events in your life that have made you cry. So unless you have been very, very lucky, you know that a good, long session of weeping can often make you feel better, even if your circumstances have not changed one bit." ~Lemony Snicket
Tears can be very comforting. Sometimes there's just so much going on that you have no choice but to cry. Tears through laughter is a wonderful emotion, but you will always have times where those tears are not associated with laughter, but instead are associated with grief and some other overwhelming sense of despair.
Consider yourself like a bucket of water standing out in the rain. Each drop adds to the amount of water, but there comes a point where there is so much rain in the bucket that it just starts to overflow. We're the same with our emotions. Each stressful situation or triggering event adds to our bucket of water until there comes a time where we need to let it out.
The healthiest way to let out overwhelming emotion is to cry. Sometimes it's hard to get yourself to cry when you know that you really need to. This can result in resorting to more unhealthy ways of trying to get some water out of your bucket.
I can't cry in front of people as I feel really awkward. I grew up learning to suppress my emotions and now, as an adult, I still can't cry around people unless there's no other choice. I also get awkward around other people crying around me. It's not that I don't care. It could be someone I love and care about, but I just don't know how to handle it. I'm not used to being comforted when I cry. If you haven't experienced that comfort properly, how can you know how to comfort other people?
Crying is natural. You shouldn't be ashamed to cry. If anything, after you've cried it can make you feel a lot better, even if it hasn't changed anything, you've poured out some of that water from the bucket. Inevitably it will fill back up again, but until then..
 You know what they say: "Laughter is the best medicine".
I've always agreed with this phrase. My outlook on life is that you need a sense of humour. My sense of humour is very dark and warped but people who have the same sense of humour have a great time with me. My foster family has that same sense of humour and we can have hilarious conversations about anything, and I mean ANYTHING.
Laughter can be a defence mechanism. It's definitely one of my defences. Even with serious subjects, I'll joke about them. Have you also heard the phrase: "If you don't laugh you cry"? That's my motto. Luckily, I live with people who share the same perspective. We turn even the most serious subjects (e.g. my self-harm) into something funny. It's not that we aren't taking it seriously because we do; as it can get quite dangerous. It's just that sometimes it's best just to laugh about it. If you don't laugh how can you expect to get through any rough patches?
When I did a year of DBT, one of the skills that we learned was 'half-smiling'. Basically, if you're feeling low then you have to look in the mirror and smile at yourself, even if you feel at your worst! I found this helped sometimes, mainly when I was doing the skill with one of my previous CPN's. She was brilliant, and whenever we did half-smiling with each other we couldn't help but start laughing. It's just the look of that strained grimace on our faces that made us crack-up.
Getting back to the point, the half-smiling thing is supposed to trigger something in your brain that releases something or other, I can't remember all the technical shizz. It never worked when I was on my own, but I found it worked when I was with other people. It did cheer me up.
I laugh more when I'm not on my own. Ever watched some comedy and not laughed or not found it very funny when you're on your own? Then you watch the same comedy downstairs with the rest of your family, or with your friends, and you end up laughing so hard that you have tears in your eyes and feel like your ribs are breaking and your lungs are going to collapse?
Like I said, laughter is the best medicine. Not other phrase can contain so much truth.
Learn. Laugh. Live. <3
Another early morning post! ;)
An end to something is always inevitable. Nothing lasts forever, even though you may wish that it would. Good things and positive things never last, they always come to an end. But that's the same with bad and negative things. They may feel like they're going to last forever, but they DO end. At the time they're horrible and you know in your head that it'll never end and you'll feel like this forever. It's just not true. It will end, but you need to fight through it.
The last post was about beginnings. That's exactly what you need to start when the bad things come to an end. Begin again, but with a positive outlook. Endings are going to happen. Sometimes it's good that things end as they may seem positive but in fact have a negative effect on you.
Endings can affect stability. If there's too many cycles of endings and beginnings then your whole head can be twisted into a whole new dimension. Endings and beginnings are good things, but too many of them just impacts you. They're going to happen, but keeping a sense of stability while you're going through those times is important.
Remember that even though something is finishing, it's the perfect chance to have a new beginning, no matter how bad you think things are. Those feelings end. They don't last forever. Fight it. Feel it. Then leave it behind without so much as a backward glance.
 A new beginning is sometimes exactly what it takes to try and make yourself better from a mental illness. I've had a lot of new beginnings, some turning out better than others.
I moved in with my foster family 18 months ago. That was a new beginning. A beginning that was one of the best I could have imagined. Other times when I've decided to turn my life around haven't gone so well. I've made a lot of progress here (although right now it doesn't feel like it..) and I'm glad I had that chance to change and try and get my life back on track.
Do you think beginnings are always necessary? I do. It's the chance to change. It's a chance for a fresh start. It may not begin so well, it may be painful and horrifically hard. In the end though, that first step and that first chance can make everything change for the better. Or for the worse; depending on what situation you're talking about. To me, though, I hope that my beginning has given me the chance to change. I don't think it has right now as I'm currently not doing so well. If you'd asked me a few weeks ago I'd've been insanely positive about the whole ordeal.
We all have our dips and downers, our relapses and mistakes. That's natural. The thing that's important is that you get yourself back up from the ground and begin the process again.
Speaking of that, a new day has begun. Well, it begun two hours ago. So I best be off to my little duvet of magical cloth. Night darlings. <3
 A lot of people have told me that I need to focus on the 'here and now'. I've tried this and I never am able to. I often experience flashbacks and nightmares of things I've been through in the past. It's hard to forget. It's something I will never forget. I know I need to 'put it in the past' but every time I do, it always rears it's ugly head into the present.
I'm currently in the middle of some suicidal thoughts (if anyone reads this, don't panic as I'm getting the right help and support) and have been told I need to focus as much as I can on the present. The problem is, my present situation is mainly based on things that have come back to haunt me from the past; for instance, the court case regarding the person who abused me. That's the present, but it's to do with the past.
I've also been told that my behaviour has manifested itself because of my past. How do you try to avoid the past when everything about your current situation is about things that have happened? I can't work through the past until I'm more stable mentally. But working on the now involves working on the past. It all sounds awfully complicated doesn't it?! I'm hoping some of you have some clue as to what I'm actually trying to say though.. eheh. :)
 Love is an unconditional thing. Family (well, in most cases..) love you unconditionally. Friends? Some of them don't love you, but your true friends love you unconditionally too. Your partner? Same story.
Love can help you through anything. As long as you have the support from friends and family, from the people you care about, there's nothing you can't do.
Sometimes people don't have any love. To tell you the truth, I was in this position before I moved in with my foster family. I had no friends, I had no family, I had nothing left. I had no love. The people that 'cared' about me worked with policies and procedures, they didn't work with 'love'.
After living in institutions, I found it quite difficult moving in with my foster family to begin with. I didn't understand that they wanted to love and support me. After several months I was like, what? They love me? How can someone love ME? But y'anno what, their love is unconditional. No matter what I've done, no matter what I do, no matter how tough a time I'm going through, they're there. That's what unconditional love is.
"Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage." ~Lao Tzu
I hate this word. I mean like, I really hate it. Whenever I'm on Facebook or something like that, people are always posting pictures of models and fit girls from magazines or websites. To them, those models pose to show "perfection".
Realistically, what is perfection in regards to the media? It's not natural women with blemished skin and a healthy weight. It's women who have been air-brushed to within an inch of their life and put on diets that are so restricting that you may as well call them anorexic. But this is what people are viewing as the perfect body.
What is the perfect body? Are they what we see in magazines? No chance. I'd rather see magazines full of natural women that haven't been airbrushed and edited. Yeah, make-up is fine. Plastic surgery? Botox? I don't think so. I totally disagree with it. I understand people wanting to 'perfect' their appearance and heighten their self-esteem, but don't do it.
Take it from me, you're perfect in every way. You're beautiful. You don't need to edit yourself or keep working on yourself. I love you as you are. I think you're perfect AS YOU ARE. And if other people can't see that, screw them!
I don't like crowds. I get all panicky and self-conscious. It's like eating in public. Logically speaking, when you're out in public, no one's going to be staring at you. They're going to be concentrating on their own meal and chatting to whatever company they have. That's not how you look at it though. While you're eating, people are staring at you all the way through your meal. With every mouthful you eat there's a pair of eyes on you.
I prefer my own company. I live with five other people. I don't mind their company at all. If anything, when I'm low, they can keep me distracted. Sometimes it does get a bit crowded if some of them are going out raving for the night and their friends are over getting ready. It makes me feel slightly uncomfortable having so many people around, especially if I hardly know them.
For me, crowds just induce panic. I like knowing the people I'm with and knowing that they won't be judgemental at all. That's why I don't really socialise or leave the house. Not only does it make my anxiety shoot through the roof, but it also makes me feel on edge.
Crowds + me = Big No-No.
That probably wasn't the most helpful post for other people to read but hey-ho. (:
Ever feel that when you're forced to do something that it makes you want to do it so much less than if you were going to do it under your own steam? Or if you are denied something that you want it more than if you weren't told "you can't have it"?
In regards to eating and such, I normally find that I will eat if it's under my own steam. At least then I feel like I'm in control of it. I may not eat as much as I should and I will still eat less than what is considered 'normal', but at least it's something.
However, if someone gets me something to eat and tells me to sit at the table and eat it, I find I'm sat there thinking "Y'anno what, I just won't have anything now". Is that bad? Maybe it's because someone taking away my control makes me stick my heels in the ground and take my control back. I don't like force. It leaves the responsibility and the decision to someone else. I like having the control. Force seems to make things worse.
I've found that in in-patient units and such, even with boundaries and rules, I normally regress because you're forced to follow the rules. If not then you're given ultimatums. 'We'll keep you here longer' 'We won't make any more appointments'. Sound familiar?
I think someone forcing you to do something takes away your control and makes things worse. I've been a hell of a lot better since moving in with my foster family. I'd gotten so institutionalised it was ridiculous. Having the freedom to allow me to make my own choices without being forced has helped me in ways I could never have imagined.
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