Our 5th visit to the Stately Home

[Nabster]

Here we go again.

It makes a lot of sense to me reading the posts about continual stress caused by imagining bad things happening to us or our children.
That it could be because bad things happened in our own homes. It makes me think about when I was small how I would always having the same recurring dream. I would dream that I was walking along the pavement and suddenly the pavement would slide away from me. It would then suddenly be at an angle and I would be helpless as I slipped away.
I think this was the level of stress that I was feeling at the time. There was no safety or comfort for me at that time at home or at school.
I always seem to think about terrible things that might happen to me or dh or the kids. Its awful and I often think of nyself as a bad or odd person for even having such thoughts.

Am a bit behind with the postings- I was replying to what you said earlier;

I feel so mixed up about it as his wife was a prize bitch and would hit me and kick me but he was always nice to me.

Get you now, sorry.

Makes me really really squirm to think that. [sick]

I feel incredibly stressed at the moment. Back when I went to the GP and got diagnosed with PND I had terrible pain in my back and shoulders and was quite shocked that it was caused by stress. I just thought Id strained myself through lifting kids, Bfing etc.
Now it is back again- I have no control over it. I used to get it when I was younger and normally around exam time.
It's really painful and even if I conciously tell myself to relax,,,I cant.
Im trying to work out why it's started again.
It might not be anything to do with past/childhood etc I guess. Then again maybe I am being triggered or more things are coming to the surface again.
I keep thinking its work, and all the old crap that comes up with working.
My confidence, my ineractions with colleagues etc.
I sometimes feel that I just cant cope with being an adult and operating in an adult world. I want to be taken care of and nurtured. I feel angry at DH for not providing this for me.
I know logically it is not his fault, he is a good man and is doing his best, he works hard...he is a brilliant father and husband, but emotionally I dont see it that way.
I really resent not being able to be at home with the children. i also resent having the responsibility of being the stable earner and at times (dh is self employed) breadwinner.
I know it might not seem that there is a link but something tells me deep down there is.
That all my life I have put others needs in front of my own and pretended to be somnething Im not in order to win approval?
i wanted to impress people, but ended up doing something (career wise) that truly makes me miserable.

I have had a really bad pain in my shouldeer blade since abuot 2 today and was wondering how it happened.

Ironically today has been a good day for me.

Maybe we worry more about our children growing up and hating us because we feel negatively about our own parents and can't imagine it being any different because we don't know how it feels for it to be different.

sorry nabster- didnt want to make you squirm. But I do think it makes it ten times worse that his wife was physically/emotionally abusing you as well. Instead of stepping in and protecting you, he took advantage.
It makes me sick to my stomach frankly that both of these people were abusing those that had been put in their trust and care.
That they had put their hands up and offered to help people when their intentions were to abuse the power they were given.

nabs- yes apparently you can have a tendency for certain muscles to tense up under stress. And then if your muscles are tensed up you are more prone to injury anyway.
Mine feel like they are going into spasm atm
Also, I have excema on my scalp and that has flared up terribly lately.
Just wish I could get to the bottom of it all.

Smithfield, I often feel like I'm not capable of being an adult as well. When I read your post I can see that this is probably because we are still looking for that looked after feeling we looked for as children but never found, then never stopped looking even though we became adults.

Smithfield and Nabster, what you say about pain and stress reminds me of something my therapist keeps saying - "take notice of signs in your body, they usually mean something about how you are feeling emotionally".

All the signs of emotional stress are there,
I have even started to 'need' food again and glass (or two) of wine (I had lost a lot of weight recently and not had those cravings for a while)
I dont really know how to access why at the moment.
It 'did' occur to me (strangely it hadnt before) could it be to do with contact?
This has been since I visited my db (second time since I cut contact with my mum/dad). I saw my dad on this occassion as my db invited him over.
I did experience a lot of emotions at the time, but not really afterwards. It only just occurred to me that maybe this is the after affect of that visit.
I keep thinking its work and not wanting to be there because of missing the Lo's.
Now Im not 100% sure. Maybe Ive been supressing emotions from that visit?

Smithfield, I bet you have been suppressing stuff from the visit. I did a visit on Sunday and while I was there it kept registering - that place in that room is where x happened, that is where y happened etc and then I banned it from my mind and concentrated on playing with the children. I feel I'll think about it another day when I feel more able to process it, but then I don't. It seems to come back on me during the days after and I start having mood swings. This time hasn't been as bad as other times though so I must be getting better.

Never really thought that his wife was abusing me too.

They only wanted to foster for the status it would bring the, and the money they could claim.

Reading my file the signs are clear to a 2 year old they shouldn't have been allowed to foster me.

TWO visits to see them then sent there to live.
*

I can believe that body stuff tbh as today has been a bit of a day and I am guessing it is like when my breathing goes funny, it is a way fo it coming out.

I feel I am having my childhood now as i nevr had one.

Very immature in ways, used to buy things with winnie the poooh on for example.

The more I think about it now the worse I am feeling. But Im still not sure.
I was so convinced it was work, and I am sure that partially that has an impact on my stress levels.
How do you cope AN with the after effects? Do you feel better once you realise what it is? How do you process it all?
This has been going on for weeks now, and the visit was just before easter.
Im wondering if I'm in denial about the effect my family have on me because if I did accept it then I would be justified in cutting all ties. Refusing to visit db (he never visits me) in order to keep myself saf and well.
Part of me clearly doesnt want to. Part of me is still playing at happy families.

muffin/nabs- I relate to that- This shocked me but a week ago I was in a shop with dh and we were looking for gifts for lo's and I saw a paddington bear. I wanted him so badly but was too embarrased to admit it to db. I kept hugging him and wishing he was mine.
I've been thinking about that bear since and how much I longed to buy him.

-admit it to DH I mean

Go and buy him

I love my hubby looking after me and treating me like a precious object because no one has ever cared before.

Can't get this out of my head that my mother told my social worker

"I only had to hit her the once today"

Off now.

Take care everyone.

nab/muffin I am so sorry for what you have been through.

What vile people.

Re the squirming etc. I can relate. I feel like this, and often feel absolute dread, you know, where your veins run cold and you feel sick/numb all at once. It is sometimes when a memory comes over me. I feel it if I phone my parents and my father answers. I feel it if my mother phones me and she has been 'punishing me' for some percieved slight. I feel it of I think I have said something to upset someone at a social event. I feel it if all my children are getting upset/overtired/bored. I feel paralysed by it. I fear it happening and this makes me anxious.

Smithfield maybe you should buy the bear.

RE the dreams- I had one very much like yours as a child. I also used to have dreams where I would simply fall over and be unable to move. I would hope for someone to come and pick me up, but this would not happen and eventually I would wake up. Maybe it was the annihilation thing.

Have not felt good today. Saw therapist but he had double booked me so only had half a session and he has had to chnage my day next week. It really threw me. I felt going home that maybe I had upset him and he was trying to get me to stop coming. Realised eventually that this was silly notion.

But have felt very tired and not had a lot of energy for my children. I too worry that they might hate me/fear me. Sometimes I feel quite invisible to them. I think the thing about not having known unconditional love is spot on. DH has had to explain this to me a number of times. That my children love me absolutely, that I am their mother and that makes me their whole world at this age. Then I feel bad becuase I sound needy.

I am feeling A LOT of guilt/dread at the moment.

Sorry to interrupt.

Sorry. Feel as though my problems are so minor I'm just winging on when you guys have reall things to discuss.

pinky- You are more than likely feeling the after effects of standing up to your family. It wont have helped either that your therapist got mixed up and messed you around like that.
In the midst of it all last year I had a mix up with my last therapist and she didnt turn up at all (we'd both got confused about days). That was to be my last session as she'd dropped it on me a few weeks prior that she was leaving.
I went home and cried like a baby that night.
Things like this can be 'huge' setbacks because its like being picked up and flung into the middle of all those childhood feelings which are generally just about to surface anyway.
I felt all the pain of abandonment just as you are probably feeling all the pain of being missed made to feel invisible??
Be kind to yourself pinky- what you are feeling is all part of a process. I know it doesnt make it 'feel' any better but it may just help you to absolve yourself of any guilt for feeling the way you do.

Thank you Smithfield your words have helped a lot.

Smithfield, you asked me some questions in a post ages ago and I rudely didn't answer them - sorry my brain has been a bit 'fuzzy'. Did I talk about DD's birth straight after - well in the days after I felt like I couldn't talk about it, it shocked me too much, I felt like it could all start happening again. Then I managed to talk about it a bit but I put it out of my mind mostly because women are expected to give birth and then just carry on as normal because it is "such a natural and normal thing". I hadn't realised how much it affected me I don't think and was very surprised when I found myself going on about it during the EMDR. It probably helped to set my anxiety off (which got worse after having children). It is the feeling that I was so dependent on others for my baby's and my life and had little control over what was happening that scares me. I want to feel that I can do everything myself just in case I have to, I want to know that I can. I've always felt this but the birth shook my feeling of being in control enough.

It was so important to me to bond with my baby after not having the bond with my own parents and I would feel a failure if I didn't so it scared me that I might not be physically able to look after her. That is why I forced myself to get out of bed. It wasn't me that was soaked in blood it was the bed. Twice in the night, nurses came and changed the sheets from under me. They had been arguing about whether to do a transfusion the night before and didn't. I am probably being melodramatic because surely they would have done it if I was seriously in danger but I felt like I was making myself live through willpower. The thing that scares me most in life is not being able to look after my children for any reason.

Re being in the car, when I'm driving near to where I live I feel ok. When someone else is driving me near to where I live I feel quite anxious. I feel too anxious to drive further away so would rather someone else drove me, but being driven by someone else, away from where I live, where roads are faster is the thing that makes me excessively anxious. You're right, it is about me not feeling in control of what happens. I feel I need to be in control of everything so that I can protect my children fully. I feel that I'm failing when I don't feel in control of everything even though some things are beyond anyone's control. Protecting the children is such a strong thing and I panic if I feel I can't protect them from everything. I know this is similar for all parents but I'm wondering if my instinct to protect has gone out of control as a reaction to not feeling protected myself as a child and experiences making me feel that the world is such an unsafe place.

I've just had a striking thought - I felt if I even talked about the birth the horror of it all would come back. Similarly I feel that if the children get the tiniest 'taste' of anything similar to my bad childhood experiences the whole horror of it will unleash on them. Does this make sense to anyone? I got really scared on some rollercoasters once and from then on, the slightest activity with a bit of sudden or fast movement scared me intensely because I felt it would suddenly get as scary as the scariest rollercoaster. I know it is irrational but I still feel it. I used to go on and on, on here, about how I felt when a small thing reminded me a bit of my childhood I felt an irrational fear that it would all happen again and engulf me and I would be transported into the past. Maybe Therapist is right in doing EMDR - a treatment for PTSD on me then as one of the questions on the 'do you have PTSD quiz' he did on me was do you fear that it might all happen again.

Smithfield, in another post you wrote about your dad lying on top of you and trapping/restraining you because he thought it was funny. I felt horrible feelings reading that, it triggered me a bit about my brother, I don't know how extremely your dad did it but I feel that it was very wrong. It is the thought of you being controlled and trapped and feeling discomfort but not being able to do anything about it and your dad enjoying that - I can't stand it - a person purposefully wanting to dominate someone, not 'unknowingly', not in the heat of the moment, but calmly and calculatedly and unashamedly enjoying it. I feel a person who feels this way is dangerous. And then using the excuse that he was trying to toughen you up! - this is also something my brother said and I do feel it was an excuse for him to do something he wanted to do because it gave him pleasure.

You wrote about still feeling stress after your last family visit being a while ago now. It sounds like there are not just memories being stirred up by it which then fade after a short while but that things are bothering you about the present situation? Your mind can't seem to let it go so perhaps it really needs attending to and something needs changing/fixing about the present as well as coming to terms with the past?

AN - your birth experience sounds very similar to mine. I had a traumatic second stage, with forceps delivery. My DS was taken away immediately and examined. There was no skin to skin.

I too remember feeling powerless. I had a spinal block as they were considering a section, so for a good while after the birth I could not move from the waist down. It also made me feel sick and dizzy. I remember desperately trying to feed him and feeling awkward when the midwifes had to wash me and
keep cleaning all the blood away.

My DH was shell shocked too. I really think it stopped us enjoying the moment and bonding properly with DS. Then when I went home I endured my parents staying with us in a small house and they treated me terribly.

Do you thin the feelings of powerlessness at childbirth triggered feelings from childhood?
The lack of control? There is a birth crisis phoneline on the Sheila Kitzinger website. I have often thought about trying it. I also felt the birth was another thing I had failed at, that my parents could put me down for.

A traumatic birth definately affects us, so you are not alone. It is important you talk about it to your therapist as well.

Haven't been able to post for a while, and now that I've got a very small window, I'm getting overwhelmed again - the longer I go without posting, the more posts there are and discussions are begun, and my anxiety about not responding where I should, about intruding in someone else's debate, about offending people by saying the wrong thing or putting it the wrong way, about missing some really important salient point that someone else's post raised... just grows and grows. And the paralysis kicks in. So I'm having to take a deep breath and plunge in once more. Those of you who have been posting on here for a long time, does it get easier to feel you have the right to say whatever you want to say when you want to say it? I know I haven't been posting on here for very long, so don't know if that's partly why it gets so intense. Or is it - lots of people have talked about anxiety - I guess a lot of us get it one way or another - it's the norm for me I suppose to be anxious, whether I'm aware of it or not, it's always there. Just lately I've had the odd glimpse of moments without anxiety, where I feel for a moment as if I live in a world where something terrible isn't necessarily just around the corner, and doesn't have to be averted at all costs. I would like to live like that. More like that, anyway.

Sakura, thank you for your words about the situation with my niece - yes, you're absolutely right, you do have to be prepared to lose everyone. I came to that conclusion about three years ago, when I really got to the point of cutting out my family, and did cut them out for quite some time (they tried to bounce back in once DS was born, and it has been much harder since then.) I was having a session with my osteopath for a chronic back condition I have, and sort of processing stuff while she worked on me, and I realised then I had to risk sacrificing my relationship with them if that's what it took to become a mother myself. [Because I don't believe I could have had DS if I'd stayed trying to make things work with my old family. We were ttc for three and a half years, and went through a lot on the way; the difference came once I closed that door.] And so I'd kind of psyched myself for things to go off the rails back then, but somehow we managed to keep the relationship on track, even though I was not seeing or speaking to my brother or SIL. For the last three or four years, niece and nephew have visited us under their own steam, and we've just avoided talking about the whole family thing - I tried to protect them from it, as they were too young to have to deal with it. But her 18th birthday was the first real challenge - it was almost like she had to take sides, they did a big party for her and everyone in the family was invited but us. Including second cousins and great uncles she barely knows. I only knew about it cause a cousin told me. And the fact she didn't tell me - didn't say No, a family party for me without Anutie Bop is bullshit - something's gone wrong there. I'm not saying I blame her, I'm not saying she could have done it differntly; but I have been so hugely important in her life and she knows that and they all know that but cousin blah and uncle blah who mean NOTHING to her are there for her party but not us. The paradox is that if we had been invited it would have been awful too because to have gone would obviously have meant seeing them all, so it was a lose-lose situation - but something's happened. The fact is, I amd my niece haven't spoken/texted/emailed for over 2 months now, since her birhtday, and that is unprecedented. I've composed loads of messages to her in my head but can't send any, and she obviously can't either.

I'm sorry, i had no idea i was going to go on and on about this, it - sorry. very late, must go to bed , though i wanted to add in my stuff about pervy father who loves ridiculing, and my own horrible birth story, and so many things that people have siad have moved me so much - AN, I really felt from reading your story how desperately you needed to have that immdediate physical/emotional bond with your DD when she was born, how urgent it was for you because of your being given away by your own BM, and then how traumatic it all was, and it really got to me.

Never enough time, as usual. Smithfield, must just say thank you so much for your lovely and unexpected words to me about my writing, all I can say it that what you said made me cry. And thank you for sharing about your nan, that opened up your story hugely for me and I will have to come back to that another time. I think there is a lot of stuff we have in common around that, somehow, and it's not just mourning for generations, it's healing for generations past too.

Sorry not ignoring everyone else and all the other themes at the moment, just struggling here.