Roll with it

Helplessness is not a feeling I deal with very well.  There have been several times in my life when helplessness became overwhelming (Lightning's birth with transposition of the great arteries and all that entailed being one of them) and I really have to fight not to just curl up into a ball and let the world fade away.  Still haven't pinpointed it (although I'm thinking it had a lot to do with the dolphins celebrating my birthday this year) but something has shifted within me.  Instead of giving in to the helplessness of not being able to do very much about the many things affecting my life right now I'm choosing a different tactic.  I'm going to look at my strengths and do what I can to make small changes in my world.

Having a chronic nerve pain condition along with hypoglycemia has made it difficult for me to do anything physical for long amounts of time anymore.  I can still do a reasonable amount of work, but I can't start a lawn mower.  Accepting that you simply can't do the things you used to be able to do with ease was difficult.  But.  Thanks to my education and my life experience there are lots of other things I can do to help both myself and others.  I've got a plan in works right now that will help a great many people, but I'm making myself wait for it to come together instead of trying to rush it.  The Universe seems to be intent on helping with this, so I'm going to let it come together in its own time.

Another thing I can do to help both myself and others:  There will be a new additional section to my Narcissism Resources post on dealing with a President-Elect who has NPD (that's narcissism personality disorder to any newcomers.)  Quite frankly DT's electoral college win terrified me because I've lived with a person who has NPD in my life and they are just the worst to deal with.  Especially if they're in a position of power.  So...there will be new articles and information available soon in that area.

The kitten we rescued in Hazard, KY ended up being a 2 year old male cat who was so malnourished he looked like a kitten.  Ginger has now been neutered and has his shots (that was a bit of an ordeal, but he was fine when I picked him up) and we're very slowly introducing the two cats.  Calypso is handling it better than I expected her to.  Based on her behaviors now, I'm thinking her previous owner punished her more than praised her.  We're giving her lots of reassurances and attention while letting Ginger get used to being inside the house and so far all is going well.

I'm also going to be doing more tarot readings and posting them here in case anyone else is interested in seeing them.  Part of being an INFJ personality type is getting flashes of crap affecting people and not being able to do a damn thing about it.  It pretty much sucks.  Tarot helps me interpret what some of those flashes are.

Another thing I'm doing more of is EEG neurofeedback at the office where I work.  We have a protcol called Alpha Theta that really helps with PTSD.  Neurofeedback has been helping me cope with some of my PTSD symptoms.  When I do Alpha Theta I will often feel as if I'm making a connection to the Universe that I've been lacking for a very long time.  It's helping me let go of some of the shame and helplessness that CSA instills in children and adults.

That's pretty much it for now.  I'll try to update fairly frequently, but since the Holiday Death Spiral is in full spin don't count on it.  There are cookies to bake, gifts to wrap, and mother in laws not to decapitate.

Surviving Thanksgiving

Okay so Thanksgiving is never super duper fun for me because in the back of my mind there is always but this is about the massacre of an indigenous culture not happy Euro Americans stuffing their faces and it bugs me that other people don't really get that.  But.  This year we decided to go to Donald's aunt and uncle's house for the dreaded Turkey feast.  Cuz it would be less stressful and junk.  For the love of any God somebody please remind me that going somewhere for Thanksgiving is never EVER a good a idea.  Yeah that didn't work so much.

So....it took us six bloody hours to get to the bloody location of the Turkey feast.  Traffic out of Hampton Roads was never this bad when we were hurri-vacing, but it was awful for Thanksgiving.  By the time we finally arrived at our destination we were all too tired to do more than mumble a few words at the relatives and head off to bed.  The next day was the feast itself and we knew that Donald's mother the Sideline Narcissist for anyone who doesn't ever look at all this crap I write  would be there that day.  What we didn't know was that she was staying.  The Entire.  Time.  Really I should have just run into traffic at that point.  The fam would have the insureance money and I'd be out of my holiday misery.  But I digress.  What we also didn't know was that ten other people would be crowding into the house for the roast beast.  Now, anyone who knows anything about Introverts realizes what a problem this is.  We're basically talking Introvert Hell here people.  It was terrible.  Went down into the basement to hide out and breathe for as long as I felt I could without being rude as all get out.  Managed to choke down some of the roast beast and other food type things.  Two hours later when all the extra people had gone away oh look the air really did clear out because I could breathe again I think someone mentioned the N was staying.  This was when I really wanted to walk out into traffic.  I didn't, obviously.  But....the dread and anxiety of the whole visit made the traffic on Sunday really not that bad.

So anyway I did all I could to not be miserable.  Used the SAD light, took the Vitamin D3, and tried to be as social as I could.  Then Bess and I got sick.  Yep.  Stomach bugs are the Devil.

And it was all very uncomfortable as the N would do her passive aggressive thing always when Donald wasn't around and there I was in a house not my own thinking well shit.  If I call her on this crap then I'm going to be starting something with her in their house and they think of her as their sister and aren't I just fucked right now?  So.  Again.  For future reference journeying to a family member's home for celebrating the end of indigenous culture day is just the worst idea ever.

There was an incident with Bess and the N that I didn't realize had happened until later.  Bess found out the N had recorded her after telling her that she wasn't recording her.  So...the N violated her personal boundaries by doing this without her permission.  Bess was very worried that the N would post said video taken very much without consent on Facebook.  So as she's freaking out about that at home she asks if Donald or I should address the issue.  My answer ended up being well she cares more about her relationship with you than with me, and Dad's asleep right now so why don't you just text her?  Tell her what you told me.

So Bess did that and stood up for herself and got the whole mess sorted.  But.  She also now knows that her Grandmother will willingly lie to her.  And I expect will probably lie to her again.  So that relationship is now in the N's hands because Bess won't put up with tactics such as those.  I've taught her over the years that manipulations such as those only hurt her and they're not worth her time.  It will be very interesting to see how that all plays out.

Now if I can just get through this coming weekend when the N is coming out to give the kids their Christmas gifts.  Thankfully I'll have lots of studying to do.  At Starbucks.  

The Suckage of being a Responsible Adult

I've been doing the on/again off/again thing with my blog.  This has been a very trying year so far in that I'm so very, VERY tired of constantly having to explain to Donald why he needs to continue to work on his boundaries with his mother.  It really feels like I'm living in the office all the freaking time.  If I'd wanted to be a counselor 24/7 I'd have gone into mental health rather than marriage & family and looked for an inpatient psychiatric ward.  Ugh.  Not loving it.  At All.

Anyhow, the fabulous Jesse Blayne wrote another of her very insightful blog posts In Good Company which made all kinds of light bulbs go off in my head.  Donald does not discuss his frustration with his mother to the kids.  EVER.  Now, I'm actually fine with him not talking about what bothers him about what she says/does/breathes around him.  What I'm not fine with is that it has never occurred to him to discuss with the kids (or let them discuss) things the MIL has done that bothered them.  Every single visit with the MIL leads to the boys getting upset in some fashion because of her obvious favoritism of Bess.  Has he ever talked to them about this?  No...but that shouldn't really surprise me because he (unlike the INFJ that I am)  doesn't ever see patterns and apply them to his own life.  (Getting off that tangent & going back to the current one...)

So guess what I'm going to start doing?  I'm going to start encouraging the kids to talk about anything that bothers them about the MIL.  Because they deserve to be listened to and to be able to reason things out in their own ways.  (This is something Donald was never allowed as a child so it's a very foreign concept for him.)

Also (this is where the title of the post comes in) had an interesting conversation with Bess about the MIL regarding a nickname the MIL had created for Lightning during a visit at her home.  Lightning apparently was reminding her of her youngest son (who she buts heads with all the time) and so she created the nickname of Gumpy Pants #2 for him & thought it was hilarious.  Because neither I nor Donald was there, Lightning was called this oh so charming name for over a week.  After the kids got home Lightning let me know he didn't like the name.  I talked to Bess about it today and asked her what she thought about it.  Bess said that MIL couldn't have meant anything mean by it because she loved her grand kids and tried not to be mean to them. (Did you catch that - tried NOT to be mean to them.)  So we talked about how making up nicknames that make fun of people aren't very nice and that it wasn't very nice of MIL to make up that name for Lightning.  Yay, right?  Until I realized the same principle applied to my nickname of Borg Queen for the MIL :-/  Which kind of sucked.  A Lot.  *sigh*  So in order to set the good example (even though my kids don't read this, let alone KNOW I have a blog) I'm going to refer to my MIL as either MIL or the N (narcissist for those who don't know) and leave off with Borg Queen.  (At least on the blog...probably not in my head.)

In the Fog

So....I've been having real issues with seasonal depression since about February.  Why February?  Because normally February is the time when Winter starts to sulk away and Spring begins to poke her head around this corner.  But this year Winter has been throwing herself a merry little party & Spring got held up at the gate.  And it has been withering me.  Didn't help that Donald had his tonsils removed in February (talk about a sensory overload for an introvert already fighting off SAD) and that Winter's continued to throw herself a party all through March.  March!  We're supposed to have blue skies, flowers, and birds out by now!  

I'm an INFJ (it's a Myers Briggs personality preference if that seems like another language) and so I pick up on little things that end up making patterns (to me anyway) and eventually explain themselves.  There's been this one website hanging around in my Tabs that for some reason I've not gotten rid of.  The site is called Out of the Fog and is a help aid to those of us who have people with personality disorders in our lives.  For some reason I hadn't let that website go...and then I figured out it was because I WASN'T out of the fog...I was most definitely in its midst.  

Another clue to the depth of the depression I'm currently in was an article I read about a psychologist who served in Iraq who just couldn't escape his own depression and PTSD.  That man was a help to so many and ended up killing himself because he just couldn't get away from the misery.  You can read about this hero here, but what clued me in is that he had many of the same characteristics I have when I'm depressed.  And it hit me that if this Winter continues on much longer, I'd find a way to end it myself.  Which really sucks because I have three kiddos that I love more than my own life so....yeah.  It presents a problem.

So here's my coping strategies:  1 - take the time I need to just be here and not beat myself up over what I'm not getting done.  2 - Read.  When I get really low reading saves my sanity.  3 - Don't worry about my creative writing right now.  The ideas will be here when I'm more able to focus on them and not just getting through day to day.  4 - Spend time with the fam, but don't be afraid to get the introvert time I need.  They'll get plenty of happy me the rest of the year and I need lots of alone time right now.  5 - Embrace the funny.  Laughter is a wonderful balm to almost anything so if I can find it, I'm going to enjoy it.

Speaking of laughter, here's a hilarious piece of a Middle Earth fan playing Gollum as a counselor ;-)  http://www.themarysue.com/gollum-somebody-that-i-used-to-know/