A Hard Christmas Season for RA/MC Survivors

 

I have heard from way more than one RA/MC survivor that the 2022 Solstice/Yule/Christmas/New Year’s season has been harder than usual.

It was for me. I have been spoiled by the last two years. To my amazement, I sailed through all the holidays just as if I were not an RA survivor. I still was aware of memories and feelings about my family of origin – dislike of holiday feasts and other forms of jollity and deep disappointment in presents. Of course, all my childhood memories of holidays were tainted by cult experiences. Many gifts were triggers (like taxidermy baby chicks at Easter) or chosen to make me feel fat, stupid, unacceptable, unheard, misunderstood, and unloved.

This year, I was caught unawares around the middle of December. Suddenly, my senses were dulled and it was extremely difficult to enjoy anything whatsoever. Not my friends, not the cat, not even coffee or chocolate. I felt unconnected to others and to everything inside and outside myself. 

For about two weeks, I felt like a half-ghost, floating through the days, not thinking about what was coming. Not connected to much of anything, certainly not to my fear. I was in flashback, a feelings-flashback, a flashback to childhood dissociation.

I told myself I would get my energy back after the first of the year, but I woke up on the 28th feeling “normal.” I have more energy and I once more care about my friends and my projects. I have no idea why there was a two-week flashback this year and not last year or the year before. I have no idea if I will greet all the holidays in 2023 with flashbacks or whether I will once again shrug them off.

But I do know that whatever happens, I will cope. 

On Comparing Myself to Others

I subscribe to Anu Garg’s “A.Word.A.Day,” along with almost 4,000,000 other people. You can subscribe here: http://wordsmith.org/.  Archives are here https://wordsmith.org/words/today.html. It’s free.

Today’s email starts with these words:

“I’m such an underachiever.

“I don’t have a single world record to my name. Not only that, I have not even attempted one.

“Make it, underachiever and unambitious.

“I was reminded of this when I read about a man named Ashrita Furman. (https://www.ashrita.com/) He has made more than 700 world records. Imagine when the number of records you have made needs to be rounded. To the nearest hundreds!

“Furman has another record I had not even thought about: Having made the largest number of world records.

“That makes me: underachiever, unambitious, and unimaginative.

“…. well, I sit here in my corner of the world, playing with words.

“This week we introduce you to five words that make a record of sorts, let’s call them word records.”

I love this guy, who gives me a word every morning for six days and on the seventh gives me readers’ comments, limericks, and puns on the week’s words. 

Today’s word is eunoia, the shortest word in English with all five vowels. (A word record!) It means “a feeling of goodwill” and has inspired a really odd book. https://www.amazon.com/dp/1552452255/ws00-20. Peek inside: you will be amazed.

At the moment, I am not ashamed to say I am an underachiever, unambitious, and unimaginative. Everybody I know is. I may have met a few people in Ashrita Furman’s league, but I can’t recall who or when. And yet I keep scolding myself for not being perfect…yet.

One of my core beliefs is that I am incompetent, not good enough. No matter how hard I try, I will never be good enough. Unless I am the best in the world, I am second-rate. 

With standards that high, it is a self-fulfilling prophecy. How would I even know I was the best in the world at something? If somebody told me I was, I would assume it was a trick and they were lying so they could laugh at me when I believed them. And even if it were true, and I knew for sure it was true, I would also know that somebody better than me would come along, and I would once again be second-rate. One little moment of success, snatched away almost immediately.

Looking at this situation with a jaundiced eye, I conclude that it is ridiculous to compare myself to others. It’s a no-win situation, a waste of time and energy, and a drain on my life force. I’ll never be the prettiest, the smartest, the best educated, the most accomplished, the most original thinker, the best dancer. If that is to be my life’s goal, I will fail dismally. It is better to be content with being mediocre.

It’s no secret how I came to believe I was doomed to fail over and over. In the cult, children were set up to fail and then blamed and shamed for not succeeding. We were placed in double binds, and whatever path we took, we were punished for taking the wrong one. Stripped of all self-confidence, our minds were ready to unquestionably obey any order given. We were trained to obey without thought or resistance.

At home, the methods were different, but the message was the same. My mother had a beautiful, accomplished older sister, and, on a good day, she felt second-best. I was supposed to have the life she should have had – or rather, her sister’s life. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. My genetic makeup was different and I was not born in 1895.

There was less pressure at school – until I got to college. I had chosen an Ivy League co-ed school with a ratio of ten boys to every girl. Standards were high, and competition was fierce. Girls didn’t shine in that atmosphere.

Over the years, I learned to let go of perfectionism. If a job was worth doing, it was still worthwhile, even if it had errors. A typo was not the end of the world. It was good enough, and good enough was good enough for me.

Now that I have lowered my standards, I find I am far less anxious. Instead of being mortified by everything I do, I can take pleasure in it. I enjoy the process and care much less about the finished product. And the finished product seems better to me because it is created in a calm atmosphere, not an anxious, chaotic rush.

And guess what? Now that I don’t compete with others, I enjoy them a lot more. I appreciate who they are and am happy for their success. I like myself more, and I like other people more, too.

Spencer’s News

In the olden days, I would blame myself for neglecting my cat. If I only paid enough attention to him, he wouldn’t be invisible most of the time. Now I enjoy discovering his personality in the few moments he makes a guest appearance. 

He comes up to me while I am at the computer, stands up on his hind legs, puts his front paws on my knees, and waits for me to scratch his chin. Today, for the first time, he jumped up on my lap. He stayed only long enough to jump down off the other side. I took that as a great compliment.

Some nights he comes and licks my neck for a moment. Now and then, he adds love bites. Last night, he crawled under the covers and settled next to me with one paw on my arm. He didn’t stay long, and he was completely invisible under the covers, but it made me happy.

My timid, invisible cat with soft shiny fur and pale yellow eyes is showing more and more affection. It’s slow-going, but that’s good enough. Actually, it’s great.

Beltane Blues

I took care of Beltane by trying my best to forget it. That’s why I didn’t mention it last month! Didn’t make it go away, however. Rats.

Here’s some e-mail correspondence on that subject between me and GhostWolf, an old friend.

So I wrote:

F U C K

Once again, I thought Beltane was a month away. But that is Memorial Day. I was wondering why I was spacey and all over the place. Why can’t I get that right, after all these years????

Jean

And he answered:

Heya Jean;

Well, maybe it’s because your life is so full of other things and that the triggering events are so far in the past now that they don’t come up every. damned. day. like they did when they were recent?

That’s true for me; I too get spacey around some of the significant dates and realize why afterwards with 20/20 hindsight.  Heck, it’s gotten to where I’m so involved in just living and the day to day stuff that I’ve forgotten my own birthday more than once. 🙂

I actually like that; because at least for me, it tells me my consciousness and day to day life are no longer influenced by those events – that’s encouraging to me.  The subconscious and body, though, remember, and that drives the spaciness as best as I can tell and from what I’ve observed over the years experientially and with what others have shared.

When it does happen, i don’t have a care in the world other than wondering why I’m such a klutz, and considering what could happen (and has happened in the past), that’s actually pretty doggoned good.  Occasonally, I have to clamp down on myself for denigrating myself for the klutziness; it IS the outward expression of real horrors that occurred.  PTSD anyone?

“Getting it right” though.  Ummmm, no – sorry, Jean.  We were injured, severely, and that leaves wounds.  Yeah, wounds heal, and the common approach is, “Yeah, it’s over, it’s done, get on with life.”

I call bullshit on that.

Why?

My burn scars are an example.  That happened a little over 60 years ago.  I don’t even think about it most of the time.  I get reminded though when something happens to irritate the scars, or someone sees them and asks about them.  I could get the scars dermal-abraded so that they were not so obvious; but they’d still be there.  NOTHING can take away the fact of the original damage, and no miracle of modern medicine can remove the traces of that. Period.

Same thing with the mental and emotional side of injuries – even if those are “just” mental injuries.  Nothing can remove the injury; nothing can remove the traces of the injury.  Those traces remain with us all of our lives.

To this day, some of those traces suddenly get in my face.

Out of control fire, films (Hollywood or otherwise) of people burning, news of the same) – yeah.  I shake and get sick to my stomach.  News of any kind of abuse, I get physically ill.

Another example? Things suddenly put in front of me by well-intentioned people who want me to see a pic on their phone or read something in a magazine.  Instant Draw Back on my part accompanied by intense defensive/aggressive posture.   It hurts people deeply because it appears that I am intensely angry for something about which they had no idea, AND it appears to them – because of my body stance and facial expressions – that I am about to strike them, which is NOT something I would ever do.  They have no way of knowing that, based on their experiences with others.

“Get it right?”  Resolve the issue?  No. That trigger is still there, but being aware of it, I can and do clamp down on it.  NO ONE can ever “get it right” – that would take absolute perfection, absolute 24/7 control – and no one is capable of that.  So why do we hold ourselves to a very unrealistic goal that only results in our feeling like a failure, with consequential pain, guilt, self-denigration, and lowering of self-esteem?

Because we are “supposed to.” That’s what all cultures teach; we are “supposed to” overcome our failings, our weaknesses; the goal is all-important, and failure is not an option if we want to be an accepted member of society.

Bullshit.

Who died and made society gawd, anyways?

The real goal, in my not so humble opinion, is simply to recognize the trigger when it occurs, figure out (and that can take a while and THAT IS OK) what causes it, and figure out how to handle it when it fires off again.

The goal – PERFECTION – is unattainable, period.  Getting damned close to that goal IS attainable, and you know what?  That’s pretty doggoned good 🙂

We survivors need to accept each other, warts, imperfections and all (unlike mainstream society.) We help each other by sharing experiences, sharing perspectives, sharing insights.  No one of us can realize and see ALL experiences, perspectives, insights, and that in part is why we share.

Simply said, friendships last for years because we do not hold each other to that unrealistic standard of perfection.  Far from it; we hold each other to be ourselves, warts and all, and give each other the room to grow.

Wolf

Perfectionism and Procrastination — Two Sides of the Coin

These two traits go hand-in-hand for me.  It has to be perfect. But I am afraid it won’t be perfect. So I stall. If I never start, I can’t say I tried my hardest and it still wasn’t very good. I can pretend that once I get started I will whiz through it and it will turn out . . . perfect.

Unfortunately, I don’t quite believe this. If I had only taken pre-med courses, I would have gotten straights A’s, been admitted to the top medical schools, once again gotten straight A’s, and by now would be beloved by thousands of grateful patients and adoring students, right? I sorta doubt it. And I know for sure it’s not true that if I hadn’t dropped piano lessons after three weeks I would now be a famous concert pianist. I dropped them for a sensible reason: I couldn’t tell which note was higher than another. Glenn Gould didn’t have to overcome that handicap, but I did, and more besides, like little sense of rhythm and uncoordinated fingers.

So even though I know better, I continue to procrastinate because, “I don’t know how to do it.” “I might make a mistake.” “It’s so hard, and I will feel stupid.” And then I feel stupid and defective for procrastinating. That’s a lose-lose situation.

I have a running to-do list. Every day (or two or three) I check off “do the dishes.” And the next day I add “do the dishes.” Every week I check off “water plants on Sunday” and immediately add it back to the list.

You would think I’d feel like I never get anything done, but it is so much fun to check off items that I actually feel quite accomplished. As a matter of fact, I’m tempted to list doing the dishes this way:
dishes
glasses
forks
knives
spoons
pots
pans
Then I would get seven things done instead of just one.

Oh, what sophisticated tricks I play with myself!

In an attempt to tackle this problem in a more serious way, I thought up two little mottos and put them at the beginning of the list. I used a large fancy type face and green for one motto and purple for the other. I never check off my mottos, as they are guidelines, not tasks. I don’t want to tell myself, “Well, I did that today, so it is done, and I don’t have to do it again tomorrow.”

Better to do a half-assed job than not to do it at all
Better now than later

This means that it doesn’t have to be perfect, it just has to be better than nothing at all. And if something is better than nothing, I can wash one dish, and it will be better than washing none. Under these circumstances, it is hard to fail miserably.

But maybe I can figure out a way to follow the guidelines and still fail . . . if I just try hard enough.