Judy2

*i know i'm being mean and this is the vulnerable narcissism or bpd or whatever coming through maybe there'd be smarter ways to handle a challenge like this, but where i'm currently at, time around family is like the worst and also not something i could possibly handle well. it's just way too much. and also maybe i don't want to, and i'm stubborn, but the sheer mass of triggers is just so real and insurmountable. i don't even want to behave healthy around them, cause i know for a fact they do not care about the billions of triggers they send my way every time we interact. so it would be kind of unfair, i think, for me to effortfully force myself to act like it's all fine, and they'll think it's fine, and then they'll care even less about the ways they are hurting me.

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better mood this morning. i felt excited about the hike and the scenery, the little village, all the impressions. we saw two baby marmots and then the first half of the hike was quite nice. i was energetic, walking on my own and feeling cheerful, making up my mind about some things i have planned. the latter half got exhausting and i also started stressing out about the upcoming evening together in the holiday flat. i feel so trapped...so much pressure. food is still a major issue when i'm around family, and that's a bad combo when i'm physically active. i cooked dinner for everybody and then, like usual, made my plate and went to my room to eat in private...which i know is totally weird, but that's like the only setting i can even begin to tolerate. at the table i just wouldn't eat as much as i need, and it's also about how stressful every minute around my parents is....then the one moment when i "let my guards down" i want to make sure they're not around. even eating in my room isn't good enough because sometimes i can still hear them and they just disrespect me and my boundaries. to be fair, i have a very messed up sense of what my boundaries are but it's not like they don't play a part in that. it's not even about the noises they make right in that moment when i try to eat...but about allll the other times throughout the day when they just don't care how much they hurt me, and i can't do a thing about it....so at least when i eat, i gotta have that in check, gotta make sure i'm shielded from them. also, i wouldn't want them thinking that me (the problem) is finally free from all eating problems and they'd be off the hook, cause it was all my delusions and immaturity to begin with....no, they have a part in this. and i keep showing it. i don't even wanna finish dinner now and i just wish i could cut myself, i feel SO much pressure just spending two days with them. just an afternoon's enough, really. being around them without any food involved, without anybody needing to eat is tough enough. no, i do not want to eat around them. i do not want to see their faces or hear their voices when i put food in my body. i want to be left alone and have my peace and quiet.

just when i thought i was all healed and wised up, i'm having to spend the weekend with my family. Switzerland's beautiful, i love my brother so much, but being around my parents is difficult. above all, what's going on here is probably the mother of self-fulfilling prophecies and i'm making it difficult...but yes, it's difficult regardless. i'd only just finished two big exams on Wednesday and Thursday, and then today i had to ride 4 hours on the train and another 6 hours in the car with my family....by the time we arrived in Zermatt, i was at my personal limit and one tiny annoyance was enough to cause some major meltdown. i screamed "i don't wanna be here with you!" a few times and eventually ended up sobbing on the balcony for a couple of minutes. my mind kept trying to make sense of it (the situation and the state i was in), but when i noticed that, i felt that the reasonable thing was to let myself cry a little and let it be okay that i was feeling a lot in that moment. they let me be for a while and eventually my brother came out, gently rubbed my shoulder (never seen him do that before but it was nice) and tried to comfort slash distract me a bit. i do love him very much. now i feel kind of guilty and like i need to be extra warm to everybody to make up for it. it's probably still true that i am quite exhausted and need some rest now.

i'm still scared i could accidentally be doing something problematic by trying to be honest. no idea which one it is. i don't know if this is over the top or inspiring (in the sense that i am being vulnerable and expressing very honestly what is, was, or has been true for me).

i feel the need to emphasise that i am merely using this space to express some thoughts and feelings i have been noticing in my system, and share them as they occur. this is not meant to glamourise any of the things i share here. in fact, i am hoping the ambivalence comes across and it's obvious that there are a lot of nuances to the things i have described. i am able to entertain thoughts without necessarily needing to act on them, but the mere occurrence of some of these thoughts is interesting to me per se. i don't mean for any of this to sound toxic, and i know there can be a fine line between reflecting on and over-identifying with difficult topics, which is why i am trying my best not to do too much of the latter. at the same time, it seems to be important for me to process, feel through and express some things.

◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇ the thing is, i still get off on it. not exactly the same, but a similar pattern, still. sure, i can feel pleasure doing harmless things, too. i can enjoy the sight of some flowers, the feeling of moving my body, going on walks, smelling herbs or lavender, swimming, watching the sun set. but then sometimes my mind just naturally drifts to imagining some kind of situation where i'll bleed out and cry in front of everybody. when i'll finally have a legitimate reason to act out some latent sense of misery and despair. when i'll undergo some serious trauma, receive some dramatic news to finally justify having a public meltdown that will look very concerning to everybody. why do i feel so much relief imagining that? why's it not entirely off-putting, but it feels good? maybe i'm constantly re-creating these thoughts. i have been told before that sometimes i'm creating drama as the only way to experience real connection. but then, i never feel as loved as when there's drama. i can do human connection without the drama, and it's never quite as fun.

@Rishabh Rthe way i understand it, Leo claims that it's Truth and Love that fuel those values you just listed. they may be more specific, but are still a manifestation of Truth and Love. that being said, of course resilience, tranquillity and connection are good values to have - especially if they feel more specific, thus more relatable and implementable to you:) personally, i find truth and love a little abstract at times, too....and then it's labels such as compassion or trust that resonate a lot more.

♥️

...still so confusing. on the one hand, i am glad that i am finally processing this, and it feels promising to be experiencing such a shift. that's cool. on the other hand, the sadness feels very real, and i wasn't prepared for this. maybe i do want to be comforted now, vicariously for my past self, after all. and not just by myself. maybe i want people to know that i'm sad so that they can comfort me. i had to deal with recovery all on my own, i had no real support, didn't want it cause the prospect seemed so triggering. someone could have said one wrong thing and it would have all collapsed. but maybe i don't want to be all alone with the things i feel now, at the very least. maybe i deserve to share that i feel sad.

♡

i remember last year, when i was at the DBT clinic, and i sat at the table crying, because i'd remembered my dissociations that i had around the time frame shown in the pictures. maybe i felt compassion then, too. but it was also very confusing.

"i have a lot of compassion for my past self." i guess this is progress, but it's SO confusing. there we have it. i would have hated myself for saying that a couple years ago. would have thought it sounds so arrogant. now it feels warm, steady. trusting? something like that, i can't think of the right word. it feels like i'm doing the right, gentle thing.

apparently, now i feel sadness or compassion for my past self? which is something i've never felt before. feels very weird, to say i have compassion for my past self. cause i'm here and i could hold myself, but i can't go back and comfort her now. so what do i do with this feeling?

okay, last comment on this topic: i changed my mind. those pics are hard to look at. i guess what sucks is that i survived this, and now i'd expect myself to be doing brilliant in life, which simply isn't the case. that's something i hardly ever hear anyone talk about when it comes to recovery. there's this implicit assumption (that i assume people have), that you only recover when things are good. (it's what actively kept me from attempting recovery for many years - feeling as though people would misunderstand that part, and how hurt i would feel because of that.) usually, it's the opposite. being healthy feels SO much harder than "simply" (not easily, but simply) being ill. because success or happiness are so abstract, so vague, so undefined. it was easy when happiness was (simply) defined as being as ill as possible, weighing as little as possible, eating as little as possible. Life, in all its facets, is so much more complicated, so confusing. it was easy to live in this weird world that i had explicitly defined for myself as "not real life", where i could safely live in dreams and fantasies...and now i'm living life, i knew it would be hard, and it is indeed hard. and i don't know at what point it will start feeling like choosing this was worth it. i have compassion for my past self and who i was back then. i know she felt very, very deeply about things♡ now i'm crying. in a good way, though.

i wore one of my favourite outfits today and felt very good and comfortable because of it: a dark blue skirt with a white shirt tugged in, plus my pearl earrings and my hair down.

yes, i can see that. that's also why i say maybe the label "trauma" ultimately invites confabulation, which may only re-enact the traumatic blueprint (which may be distinct from the confabulated memory) rather than resolve it. there are documented cases of people confabulating stories of abuse in therapy. every memory i have of my childhood is, at this point, probably only a memory of a memory of a memory - with slight alterations happening along the way. so they probably consist of imagination more than real memories, by now. trippy to think about, for sure. i've tried for a long time to recover some big, traumatic memory...and i don't think it's the way to go. i can be at peace, not knowing exactly what happened.....and just accept the mystery. the past is a funny thing, though:) still interesting to think about, and interesting to see how we relate to it in the present. Thank you! i wish you the best, too:)

i've been contemplating the topic of happiness and while there's been an increase in my baseline level of happiness, generally (but also practically) speaking, i still see some obstacles that i would like to discuss with you. i mean, even when life is good or when we see some improvements, we can still worry about the future, what may go wrong, what may be taken away, what may fail....and if we followed through with that logic, it could technically mean that we can never be happy because there is always a chance that something will go wrong. how do you free yourself from this anxiety? just detach completely? but it's also naive to say that our happiness as human beings isn't tied to certain conditions (health, social bonds, etc.).

ok:)

how do you deal with your trauma?

i'm curious about this concept....maybe a little wary of it, though. is your awareness of trauma meant to justify and/or explain present dysfunctions/suffering? how does the awareness of trauma help reduce suffering, in your opinion? or is that not even the goal? just trying to understand:) i have a book on trauma and its impact on attachment styles sitting on my nightstand and plan to read it as soon as i am done with my exams this summer.

i think i've even noticed an increase in happiness over the last couple of weeks - which is why it got me thinking more about those moments that still feel 'off'. parents: i hide vulnerable feelings from them most of the time because showing them can lead to dynamics that only produce more uncomfortable feelings. friends: mixed. sometimes, i feel comfortable expressing both honest joy/excitement and honest fear/frustration/you name it. other times, not so much. maybe it depends on how superficial those emotions are and how safe i feel in that moment. i think it worked a little differently for me, but i see what you mean:)

yes, i remember. i thought of that recently because there's a situation where i considered implementing your advice.

healthy bmi.