Group Orientations
Peer Support Groups are the only place I've managed to overcome my social anxiety far enough for long-term group membership. Even there, I hop like a butterfly on a nectar gathering mission, gathering nectar from a variety of flowers rather than drinking deeply from a single flower. I claim membership in the world-wide peer support network far more than any single node. It isnae likely I would be able to count how many different individual groups I have belonged to for a while before one yaddah or another triggered my frequent flier psychosis. I left some of those groups for circumstantial reasons, such as a geophysical move, but the majority I left because . . . Well. . . The causes, or at least what I tell myself are the reasons, are quite diverse.
First the Bi-polar forum, then the PTSD forum here on DS are my most recent gyrations down this line. I consider the reasons for leaving the BP forum to be circumstantial. With the rise of med therapy for BP, it has been a long while since I have encountered a BP approach which doesnae require med compliance. Is the piss handling industry testing for compliance more often than illegal drugs yet? I donae care to do *that* research. Where's my Swiss Flag? Suffice it to say that I amnae terribly interested in the generalized med discussions. I havenae a thing to contribute. It isnae mine to sort. Not this week, at least.
I'm still wondering about the PTSD forum, though. What's my psychopation there? This morning finds me wondering if the group orientation is currently focused on problems more than solutions, with the exception of several saviour wannabe's. Sorting. . .
The Alanon sponsors who taught me to see peer support as a network are echoing in my head with, "Why ask why? Let the healing mysteries guide." Their echoes are mere whispers. Think I'll listen to their quiet voices and let the mystery be.
It is a chill, rainy day here on the Southern Great Plains. Too wet for finishing the exterior of the honey barn. Too chill for my zone 8 conditioned blood. I'm too restless for rest to be restful. Looks like a piddle day for me. I have plenty of odds and ends to piddle on. Think I start with caulking and touchups on the patches on the extraction room ceiling.
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I am here by reason of being. It is way to easy for me to retreat still. I think [problems are a seasonal thing in some respects. There is nothing like a good dose of cabin fever to magnify what is in front of you. I see some posts and may feel what they are trying to say, I hope getting it out for discussion helps all. But...my emotions get triggered, the helplessness gets triggered and barriers I thought I have overcome just had another layer of mortar laid on them. Can I strip that mortar before it sets? Sometimes I just can't reach for the keys.
I miss you even knowing you are here. I have been watching that jet stream and it is dipping deep for this time of year? Maybe or maybe I am just more aware of it.
Coffee?
There is so much I can relate to about your post Arfie, and as usual you have articulated what I often fail to find an explanation of a feeling I have but not the presence of coherent thought to put together.
Like Jewells1 said so well “But... my emotions get triggered...,” also hits a very strong cord for me. It is why for a while now I’ve avoided the groups. The past few months just the news feeds alone send me into “trigger happy” mode.
I’m sure there are lessons and advice within these groups still I can benefit from but my current struggles have been to exhausting to risk the triggers lying in ambush.
Hugs & support to both of you, Arfie & Jewells1.
I have heard/read quite allot of stories about cabin fever. I don't believe I've retrieved enough of my childhood memories to make those stories real to me, though it has been suggested that my trauma tales *are* childhood memories of cabin fever. The big for sure is that I have spent most of my adult life in the sub-tropics and have zero adult experience with that phenom.
One of you is in Wisconsin, the other in Michigan. Take the shiver right out of the timbers of my belly aching over the foggy chill of the 46F outside my door, it do. Ya both got me wondering if I need to experience a real winter at least once in my adult life. I'm not sure the River Region qualifies as a real winter. It isn't too much colder than the Southern Great Plains.
Anyhoo. . .
Proof unavailable, but I believe my support group hopping helps me in sorting the trigger from the trauma. With the severity of my amnesia, it often takes me a very long time to reach the repressed memories and emotions which are being triggered. Detaching a bit from the trigger often helps calm the process. At least, that's my theory and I'm sticking to it for at least the next 10 minutes.
(((Arfie))))
When you wrote about ‘hop like a butterfly ‘ I feel like that too.
I’ve been on again off again many groups, due to lots different circumstances.....moving into new areas like a nomad, anxiety stuff, (physical limitations sometimes), hypervigalence problems, dissociation stuff , ‘Missy stuff’ .... (feeling like I don’t belong anywhere sometimes) ect. ect.
I’ve been on again off again NA meetings, AA meetings, online meetings ect.
heck I’ve even convinced myself AA meetings were a cult & stopped going only to go back months down the road to random meetings to see if I maybe could hear something random that the universe wanted me to hear
Lol sorry if maybe everything I just wrote sounded crazy or made no sense ^
I hope you end up having a good day today mi amiga
Big hug <3
My high temp will be a sweltering 36. It's almost grilling weather. By Sundays expected 49, even if it is raining I am sure to catch a whiff of burgers on the grill. In 1990 I left and had to sleep often in my car whether it was in driveways, parking lots of small buildings. They were the safest places I could be. I also got very sick during that time. How I made it is one of those mysteries. Though so also is how I made it long enough to leave. I do believe the cosmos steps too hard on me at times. Yet time after time I find myself still here.
I hop with softest of slippers now so as not to startle or even be noticed at times.
Hugs and always support to you both.
J.
Missy,
Your experience with support groups makes no sense, whatsoever, but it resonates with herstorical accuracy. Inside my own skin, I have given up trying to make sense of that mystery and *just* work with it. I am what I am, whether I make sense, or knot. My biggest for sure is that I want a life bigger than the pain that keeps refusing to go away just 'cause I don't like it.
I don't see my early attempts or my on-going attempts as "Failures." Healing takes what it takes and its mysteries are profound.
Jewells,
With your balmy 36 degrees, the melting snow has begun its annual migration to the Gulf Coast. I feel like I should be scouting the river banks in preparation for the Crest Parties. Where's my Crest Report link?
https://water.weather.gov/ahps/forecasts.php
?
It places a near flooding dot on my area, with rain expected on Sunday to add to melting. There are many places rain is still obstructed by ice. This is a false Spring in my book. Then there is all those grey dots that say no forecast? or out of service.
lol The forecast changed again! Life in the mitten. Winter will visit and drop bags in the mid week. Fun times with buckets and heaters.
((Vitava)) your weather is usually 4=5 hours ahead of mine and slightly chillier. I have a shoreline friend that is so ready to be over the shoveling and ice.
Thank you for the hot link, Jewells. There's enough meat on that bone to keep me chewing for a while.
My River Rat Role Model worked for the Army Corps of Engineers when I encountered him in the works between the Old River Control Station and Vicksburg. His job was plying bandaids to the flood controls that backfired shortly after Hurricane Katrina passed through the Gulf in 2005, causing the New Orleans flood. He was the undercover math nerd who alerted me to the annual snow crest predictions. Most years, by the time that snow crest reaches the Lower Mississippi River Valley withing my beloved River Region, it is a quiet force to be reckoned with.
Trivia question for you, my Mittener. . . Is your mitten the only inland peninsula in the world?
We may be the only double peninsula state., but not the only inland peninsula. That may be closer to The little cabin in the river region. A peninsula is a body of land surrounded on 3 sides by water. For that description there are a few.