Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Support Group
Find support with others who have gone through a traumatic experience. Whether you have chronic or acute PTSD, we are here for you.
This covidic era is still scaring the unholies out of me. I'm still not properly germaphobic, but the politics remain bewildering and illogical to me. Without the three young orphans in need of healing and socialization, I would probably be even more socially distanced and isolated than the age peer friends whom I haven't heard from since mid 2020 when I started reacting badly to reading about their tele-doc and zoom adventures. Sorry, friends, but I need a cup of libation and indecently exposed smiles to listen to those dramas.
The orphans seem to be responding well to the new and long over-due social opportunities. This past 5 day weekend was filled with childish joy, complete with up close and personal child's play and sporting events. Hubs and I are exhausted, but the children fell asleep contented and flashing indecently exposed smiles. It feels likely that they will awake refreshed and ready for unmasked academia when I wake them 45 minutes from now.
I am increasingly able to look past the remaining maskites and set aside my worries of yet another global shutdown, but I'm only setting them aside. They remain a bubbling anxiety cauldron. I still can't look at a mask, much less see "eye smiles" or scowls, but my paranoia imagines there are far more "eye scowls" than smiles floating over those masks. Just psychotically imagining. . . All this covidic exposure therapy has yet to make a dent in my mask phobia.
Today's meditation read from "Hope for Today" resonates loudly in my efforts to protect the children from my strictly personal covidic paranoia by encapsulating and leaving the covidic anxieties withithin my therapy support network so that I can focus on the currently available unmasked Kid World.
Begin quote
When I think of boundaries, it helps if I think of a castle in a lake. Boundaries are the drawbridge connecting the castle with the world. Usually the drawbridge is down and people can walk freely back and forth. However, when danger is sensed, the drawbridge rises to protect the castle. To protect myself from the dangers of my dysfunctional family, I shut down and kept my drawbridge closed to guard my feelings and thoughts. Eventually, my castle grew musty and foul inside. When I reached psychotherapy, I couldn't distinguish between real and imagined threats. By listening to therapy peers share, I learned how to recognize danger signals in the behavior of others and how to respond appropriately.
On occasion, the danger signals are not clear. Sometimes what I perceive as a threat is something I've conjured up in my own mind. If I immediately shut down my feelings in reaction, I usually end u hurting myself or someone else. In the end I mght lose an opportunity to grow or a chance to love and be loved.
With the help of my higher power and the Serenity Prayer, I've learned to distinguish between real and imagined threats. I've learned to respect others' boundaries. I'm also able to discern when it's wiser to remain open to someone I love and trust even when I want to close up out of fear. I remind myself that I can't experience love, joy, and trust, and completely abandon myself to my higher power if I can't risk feeling the other extremes of sadness, hurt and fear.
Thought for the Day
Knowing when to open and when to close my boundaries is a learning experience.
"Boundaries are flexible, changeable, removable, so it's up to me to know how open or closed I'll be at any given time." ~Courage to Change
End quote
Just giving myself the reinforcement of sharing.
For what it's worth, the children don't seem to have been too affected by my mask phobia. They seem to treat strangers in the stores, etc., the same, masked or unmasked. I have yet to be able to join in the mask muffled banter, but I am increasingly able to enjoy their pleasure in the masked encounters.
-
Hey All...I hope that you have a lovely, peaceful beginning of your weekI have a bunch of chores that need doing but may put them off til tomorrow and just hang out with my landlord/roomie todayWhat about you?...Anything special going on?Have a great day and take good care of you!!..Xo
-
Once again I've had a fever today. I'm not going to the hospital because that's a huge waste of time but I did schedule a dr appointment for Wednesday afternoon.
It's comforting, then, for that Courage to Change quote to say boundaries are "flexible, changeable, removable" because mine certainly are anyway. Today I'm glad I let mine down a little so a friend could cry with me over her mom's death from COVID last year before there were any vaccines. I lost my best friend then, too, the same way, so I could relate.
Yea, I might feel less threatened by the covidic politics if I had lost a loved one to The Virus. The only people I lost to the pandemic were over-aged medical miracles who used their generous supply of second chances to make everybody around them miserable. Not feeling the loss. The way non-covidic deaths have been minimized for the last 2 years makes it hard to even give platitudinous sympathy to the covidic headliner deaths. I'll care about yours if you care about mine, masked bandit.
The collateral damage from the opportunistic infections from the covidic politics is still on the rise. Looks like they will be for a long time to come. Can we care about something other than covid now? Not at covidic risk babies are suffering.
We have a lot of young families in my area and I've heard a number of mom's say it's been so long since my child has had a play date or birthday party.... The masks are their normalcy and reality.... It is tragic for all of us
Love your analogy of boundaries ..... They are so important for all of us and sometimes really hard to take a stand on
Big hug.....xo
Now I find myself deeply disturbed by how fast that concept of socialization for children has disappeared, altogether.
Then we get to the mind twist of having decades of therapy for my "child prostitute's social distancing reflexes" invalidated with even more astonishing and extreme speed.
Healing hopes for all. No exceptions.
For our foster kids, we monitor and supervise any and all on-line usage pretty closely. Off-line systems are virtually non-existent these days, so that pretty much means no computers for the kiddos. Hubs is an internet security guru, so he trusts the on-line chaos even less than I do. So far the 5 and 2 year olds are mostly tech illiterate and we plan to keep it that way for as long as possible.
His maternal aunt gave my foster son (8) a cell phone recently. He gets as lost in his cell phone as any grownup. They grow up so fast? So far the on-line gaming is strictly forbidden. Those game rooms are pedophiliac shark tanks.
So far, the phone still stays on his dresser when another kid shows up. We like it when another kid shows up. We are grateful to tears that other kids are starting to show up on occasion. Little League made that possible. The 8 year old has yet to take his phone to a game or practice.
To my senses, the wild west was downright civilized compared to the internet. At least an outlaw has to have you in sight to do the damage. Over the internet, I can rob someone in Russia more easily than I can rob my neighbor. I can pose as whatever is convenient to me over the internet. Buyer beware.
My five year old needs a social activity of her own. I just got back from a Girl Scout orientation. Internet account and apps required. A goodly portion of the orientation was dedicated to setting up those accounts over cell phones. More Appy Day fun. . . I drifted away from the cell lit social and remain uncertain whether I want to join the virtual fun for her sake.
Does "Virtual" still mean, "Almost?"
Hm, yeah, I can see how I'd be uncertain, too, when Girl Scouts might be more cell phone activity than meeting girls face to face. I just retired from college teaching, but my first teaching job was as day care teacher for Virginia Commonwealth University.
As I look back the amount of physical group activity together was wonderful. Dancing as I played the guitar for them, playing tag on the lawn, walking field trips to the planetarium. It was really good for those kids and their pre-K development. I think as a teacher I made a more permanent lifelong mark on those kids' lives than on any college kid I taught.
I just want the Cloudy marketeers, cop and robber games out of my art studio. Give me an off-line studio, please. I don't need cloud storage big enough to hold the ethnic mafias of the world. Nor do I want my graphics library organized for the benefit of selfie kings and queens. Quit trying to force it on me.
I found the GS literature with the specific data notes yesterday. I'm still having Madam and Jane flashbacks when I reach for it to do the do. I keep flashing to the women who dressed me for the sales events (madams) far more than the Janes. The Janes were more confused than cruel. The madams had "secret" traditions rooted in the world's oldest and most *secret* profession. They were far more cruel than any of the men.
The nature of the flashback cycles feels an awful lot like the phenom I have experienced when I have attempted to participate in the all-female sexual abuse support groups. Those groups are chock-full of beaten crazy bitch wolves in sheep's clothing. Yes, madam. Whatever you say, madam.
Get me the fuck out of here. . . NOW! ! !
Still sorting whether that response is pure hyper-vigilance on my part or? ? ?
Sorting. . . Thank you for helping me sort more deeply, Muji.
Your flashbacks to Madams and Janes led me to reflect on which category those in my life might fall into. Methinks my sister is more of a Jane type, confused. The Madam I'd know best would be my mother, I'm afraid. More cruel than confused, not part of the world's oldest profession, but close to it in committing such church fraud as to get deported. That's why I have to consider them my ex-sister and my ex-mother for my own safety lo these last 10 years, because I hear from time to time that they keep at it, most recently just this past May.
Thanks for giving me a way to reflect on all of this with some nuance. It really helps to have new language such as you gave me here for sorting it out.
So far I remain pretty convinced conditions in a kiddie whorehouse don't translate to traditional family roles very well, not even when the players are family members.
My memories of that era remain heavily repressed and unreliable, but I wouldn't put the Janes anywhere inside my birth family dysfunctions. By my unreliable recall, the Janes were most likely lesbians and/or bi-curious who came of age in the 40's and 50's. I didn't much blame them for being even more confused than I was. It was my talent for math and science which made me the kid to handle the Janes. Explain THAT one to me, please?
The hardest part of handling the Janes was the cultural disbelief. Only **men** do that sort of thing. Think again, toots. Many, possibly most of Nature's most formidable predators are female. Humans included. Don't let the sheep's clothing fool ya.
But I am speaking for my strictly personal, beaten crazy bitch wolf herstory. . . Works still in progress at making peace with my own predatorial nature amid the perversions of dysfunctional nurture. Ask a cat and/or dog lover if a predatorial nature is a bad thing when nurtured well.
Metaphoring around allowed for others in their own healing quest.