Trust

Your so brave!
Your doing so well!
You've come a long way!

Keep going!

People often say these things, but what they don't know is that inside there is very little feeling. Days are some times broken down into moments or hours, and hours into minutes. Process and patterns are the slides which keep you moving. Process and patterns become the tried and tested formulas for being 'appropriate'.  If a situation or an event occurs once the correct pattern of behaviour / speech is found and matched, it is then employed and that apparently means you are doing well?

Sometimes the formulas let you down and you miss what is meant or a trigger can send you spiralling into uncontrolled panic. Then there's the fall back position of frozen silence. Silence is something very few understand but silence has been my friend since I can remember.  Silence is always filled by other people as people like filling the gap.

"Your so brave, look how far you've come"

"I'm actually a lot further behind than you see my friend"

What it's actually about is trust. Trust is being able to let your guard down and know that your safe. I get scared at the reality of how little trust their is inside me. But my real goal is not to be what looks right to others; my real aim is to feel trust. 

Sometimes I look at my children and I hurt inside as they have trust naturally there. I look at people around me and they have this beautiful 'trust'. I can't remember anyone that I had to trust until I was in my mid twenties and  it has taken me until now (aged 39) to realise that my trusting is still only functioning at about 30% (but at least its now there). I'm not ashamed of this or even care what happens next. Maybe 30% will be all it ever gets to but at least I know know what it is.

From eight to nine

I've not blogged for a while, not because I haven't wanted to but because I've been learning. For those of you that know me, I love to learn. Sadly however I have had to come to a realisation that no matter how much you "know" or can understand whats "happening" knowledge itself will only get you so far. It can give meaning, help you express and communicate, it can even give you confidence, but there are some things knowledge can't do.

It can't stop your over wrought nervous system shaking when something spontaneous happens, it can't get rid of emotional pain trapped inside you, it can't help explain fear even if the logical explanation might help comfort "it" a little.

So as those of you who read my last post have realised, I have got to a stage where I am ready to introduce my mind to my body. "What?" you may ask "your attached to your body, what on earth do you mean?".

Regulation

I asked a friend last night to write a blog as she hadn't in a long time and now take my own advice. As I'm sure the whole country knows, we have just had the summer holidays. Now I enjoy my kids being off,  enjoy being able to travel, love seeing friends and sitting in the sun. I relish experiencing new things as the kids get older and this year we have reached a stage where we can all ride a bike on the road.

But as someone who also struggles with my brain the summer holidays present another challenge. My therapist is on holiday to which means the ability to upload offload discuss how situations can or are being handled is not there. I usually see this as a chance to put into practise all the things I have  learnt over the previous months, I see it as a marker as to how well me myself and my others are getting on and co operating with each other. I like to see how well we can remain in the present and not be swallowed by past flashbacks or future anxiety.

Frog Face

1991 aged 14 and 'frog face' started to follow me. I did not get away until 1997 then aged 20.

Frog face would wait for my school bus and lurk in the roads opposite. Frog face would watch me through the door to the sweet shop I worked in. Frog face would call, send letters and sit on the other side of the road watching our house. Frog face could appear at any point, at any time of day. I could not shake Frog face.

You may think that Frog face was a figment of my imagination, unfortunately that was not the case. For almost 6 years I was stalked.

As previously discussed I have a complex history. Frog face was just part of what has made that thick strong 'C' in the word complex.

Already fairly damaged in my world view, I found myself having to learn to live being disempowered daily. By the 'fear' of the 'ifs, maybes' by the potential of Frog face appearing without my control. I would stand on one side of my front door not knowing, would there be another note on the other-side. I jumped if ever the letter box clanged, or the phone rang.

For reasons I cant go into in this blog, I was unable to tell any one about my situation. All I will say is that Frog face was an adult who held a secret over me. To endure those days at the time, I believed outweighed the shame of anyone finding out. (As I said my perspective was already damaged).

So why write this? if I don't want to write about what happened and why?

Well I love brains, I love how they cope and how they protect themselves. During those years I found my brain doing just that. Protecting me in the best and most honest way it could. You see my brain was my greatest friend. We argued, we fought, we had stand offs! we did all the things together that BFFs do. But it has only been in the last three years that my best friend 'brain' has aloud me/us to share our friendships with others.

Over those long years my identity went from singular to plural. It still remains that way today, I am not an 'I' I am 'we'. At first I split myself in half. The day belonged to Frog face but the night was mine. During the day hyper vigilant, my whole focus was on avoiding and planning ways of out witting Frog face. At night I sewed a hidden pocket into my jeans. In it I tucked a protective knife 'we/I' would go out walking with the families fat springer spaniel. I'd walk in freedom owning my world and revelling in the sense of safety.

Pretty quickly I realised another split was needed if I was going to avoid anyone  knowing what was happening.  At school I created another split in another world as although bullied, it was at least 'seen'.

This splitting carried on until I was nine different people / personalities.  I jumped between these personalities daily depending on the environments encountered.

Soon we were all defined enough to speak for ourselves. We made an internal community. We had all our answers, we did not need anyone. Having lived through this process quite naturally and at the time logically. I have nothing but respect for grey matter.

I met Zippy and so started the great clamp down on the now completely dysfunctional set of people living in my head.  The greater the safety I could trust, the greater the need to want to quiet everything down into something less confusing. As Zippy says 'Carwen nothing directly bad has happened to you now for 13 years'. Today my personalities have been whittled down to bare shadows. Only their voices remain with me. I have learnt to accept them and accept us all living and chatting in my cortex. On good days we are friends, on bad days we are enemies  (especially when I'm tired), there is sometimes just complete overwhelm. But as my strap line says. I am Colourful Carwen, a crowded brain learing to be at peace with itself and its inhabitants!.

My Creative Twin

Been wanting to write about this for a long time, finally there seems to be enough meaning.

As you may or may not know I am creative , having what I almost term as a relationship with it (creativity). I would describe it as yet another split in my personality (me and it /  it and me).

Last year I joined an art group in fear and trembling knowing it was time to meet my nemesis. Prior to this I had only allowed myself to only make crafty things, no paint or unstructured elements permitted.

But I have a twin, an untamed sibling, and we are joined at the shoulder. She has her own head and neck and I have mine. We battle as to who's eyes to look through and whose ears to hear with; she works alone and only in isolation; she can not communicate but she is dominate.

From 2000 till 2012 I kept her hidden and insisted on my vision only. I explained to her that her ways of doing things was impossible! I explained to her that I needed connection and relationship, unwilling to cope with what she produced I feared dying myself if it carried on. We share a body but constantly fought and argued and she won to often.

Tourettes friends and family weekend

Family & Friends weekend 2013

May 2013 -  The whole family are all helping to put together a holiday weekend for people and families affected by Tourettes.

Back then having only showed or talked about the inner workings of my world with a handful of people. Back then it was to much of a risk, not only was it probable that there would be a melting internally but I was scared and covered in shame. Still at what seemed like the mercy of my physical self and unsure / unaware of why my body reacted the way it did.

As our fellow campers arrived, we watched from our camp. The dodge (our beloved converted camper-van) was placed away from the majority in the corner of the field. This placing of distance was a standard for me and Zippy as partly it meant a place for me to retreat to. A place I could complete my rituals to calm down and not being seen by others but there was a huge surprise to this normality!

Finally being able to explain

I can write this now because since going on pills instead of being swallowed into blackness, which is undefinable, I seem to be able to still think instead of being engulfed into my body.

 This is the first time in my life I have ever felt enough logic to be able to describe any of it. As my confidence grows, I learn I will not be swallowed into silence which takes days to get out of. But now I am able from a distance to  put words to it / them / us / me.

The speed at which new subjects or voices come and go are to quick to explain or hold, most are paranoid and threatening 'if u don't do this this that will happen' (driven by panic some will get stuck and reoccur).   'She walked from Leeds to Chester' repeated over and over in a sing song rhyming way or 'Rose will die if u don't say what's in your minds eye'.

 These thoughts will mercilessly haunt me until absorption somewhere else is found or I put music into my ears. 

   Some times, if too many physical places are visited in the day then the present place becomes the whole day and everything else is like yesterday. So although today I have been to Tesco, dropped kids at school, dropped Zippy at work, been at home, and cleaned the computer desk; each of these moments I struggle to recall because I'm on a dog walk.

Wading through suggestions and voices consumed, although now I have remembered each episode so as to write this, they seem so unreal, as if they may not have happened. Remembering putting them in sequence is exhausting as it means going back in thought a million thoughts previously.

 For example the thought of Rose killing herself unless I text Primrose, this I put down to me being hungry this morning. But even now as I've written it I have awakened it again, and now know it will have to be processed and gone through all or got over again.

   How wil I process this I don't want to face it all again I don't have time. I will do it by picking kids up from school, a physical state change that will mean I forget all this. It will become yesterday and I will be shocked if I remember to read this note so much in one day in one hour.  

It's the  crippling realisation that it's been so hard to try and explain, This evil twin/intrusions have kept me from communicating.

  It's a bit like trying to explain an all consuming explosion. But only being given a split second of that explosion to do it in, before it rumbles it's  way into the physical, resulting in body shock. Brain rendered useless and void. 

  A state change, or safe bedroom and routine are the only way to try and keep going, calm down. This maintenance in its self is exhausting and constant.....Apologies I circle...

 I rely on my clothes for comfort they don't change. 

Smiling as I write and reread this I wonder what more words will be put to use, to explain what's always seemed impossible.