Riding a wave

[Former-Member]

@Phoenix_Rising I have just emailed you. I know its tough right now, keep riding the wave and floating on the island. 

[CheerBear]

I know you are trying and I know you want help and I know how unhelpful help can be sometimes and how much helpful help can be so inaccessible it is unhelpful to try and get there sometimes also @Phoenix_Rising.

You have the biggest toolkit I've ever seen, even if I haven't actually seen it, and the fact that it is so hard sometimes, shows me how so broken the world can be and is I think.

I can hear how scared you are. I am wrapped up in a blanket because I am scared of making my life harder than it already is by exploding or imploding. So I'm sitting still until I can figure out what to do from here. We can ride it out together but not, like we've done lots before.

I hate that saying, even if I have said it myself sometimes. The things that don't k*ll you can and do all add up until you have a melted snowflake banana head, and surviving is hard, and your tolerance for those things has been worn down so much, days like today happen. It sucks so so much.

I'm here and hearing you and with you but not.

[Shaz51]

I am here for you too @Phoenix_Rising 

[Phoenix_Rising]

I am superly duperly glad we are not-friends @CheerBear. Today is HARD. Staying still is a good plan. At least, I'm not exactly staying still because I am rocking A LOT! My turtle whisperer is going to call later so I am practicing waiting. Knowing she will call sometime is superly duperly helping.

I like that you also don't like that stupid saying. It is definitely not true that what doesn't k*ll us makes us stronger. That saying is the anthesis of all that we know about the effects of trauma on the brain. I know that today's muddle in my world is really not a big muddle at all - it is just the straw that has broken the turtle's already-super-fragile shell. This is the problem now - EVERYTHING sends me into chaos. My "window of tolerence" is about two millimetres wide. I'm guessing you are the same @CheerBear. Things I could have coped with in the past, I can no longer cope with, and it is getting worse at an alarming rate. This is why the whole therapist-shopping thing is so near-impossible now. It infuriates me when people try to tell me "well you've done it before so you can do it again." Er...no!!!! That's like saying "well you ran the first 100 metres at that speed so you can run the rest of the 10km race at the same speed." My brain is FRIED. I feel really really really scared.

@Former-Member I never knew your island could fly this high. We can see all of Forum Land from up here. Look! There is @CheerBear in her nest, and there is @Former-Member in her book pod on the ocean. It feels safe up here with just you right now. Can I please have a turn of steering the island? It's not like I can crash into anything up here...except maybe @Former-Member or@NikNik. Watch out Lunar and NikNik, I'm going to have a turn at flying Lauz's island. What happens if I pull this lever this way Lauz...oh...oopsy...

[Phoenix_Rising]

Hey @CheerBear, since my brain is too puddled to do anything much right now, I am conducting an experiment to try and figure out if I can create a live tag in WordPad. Your job is to let me know if you get a notification for this post.

[CheerBear]

Hi @Phoenix_Rising. After spending my day sitting still while housing buses ran me over (buses, three of them), I think your window words might make more sense than anything else in my life right now. And now my brain is so melted I think the only thing I can manage is this post to say that yes your experiment worked and congratulations on making a live tag in WordPad 🙂

[Phoenix_Rising]

Hi @CheerBear,

I am so super super super mad at the three buses for squishing you! I so very VERY badly wish I could buy you and the LF a house. I am secretly hoping that after you sit with the super giant feelings for today, then tomorrow or the next day or sometime your brain will unmush and you will figure out the next step. But for today we can sit together in the puddled muddled confuddle. My brain must be as puddled and muddled and confuddled as yours because I don't have the slightest idea what you mean by my window words...and that's ok.

Methinks that today has been quite the disaster for both of us CheerBear, but that doesn't mean that tomorrow will be the same. HOORAY for not living on Venus. Just think, if we were only seventeen hours into the day on Venus, we would still have another 5815 hours to go until tomorrow. As it is, we only have seven hours to go. THANK GOODNESS we don't live on Venus!!!!

[CheerBear]

Despite feeling the way I am, I had a tiny bit of a laugh at the idea of the only words that make sense to me, being the ones of yours I understood, but in my round about way of saying that I understood you, I have managed to make it so you didn't understand me @Phoenix_Rising. I think that's pretty funny, and probably a great reflection on how awesomely muddled we are together.

I understand your window of tolerance is 2mm wide and really feel that today myself - is what I meant to say. As the window closes so too does our ability to tolerate the things we once were able to. I'm not sure about you, but for me the saying is more "what doesn't k*ll you, closes the window until it feels like you there is no air left in the room and you might suffocate", today.

My last bus came in too close to the 3 o'clock school hat wearing time, in the form of an unexpected 'let's meet at the end of the week to discuss case closure' type comment which was attached as a passing sentence at the end of an email from my housing CM. It followed confirmation that we were not the lucky 1/120 to get the house I really badly wanted. Big ouch in lots of ways. I want to say a heap of stuff about timing and delivery being pretty important when it comes to giving news, and how not trauma sensitive that kind of practice is, and how consistently soul shattering it is to feel a (should definitely be trauma informed) service show such a lack of trauma informed practice. But I figured you know all of this anyway.

I'm sharing this with you because today I really feel so much of what you share, in ways I wish no-one felt. I feel the fear, the anger, the rage, the pain, the chaos, the struggle to keep on keeping on. I feel beaten up by failed systems and I feel the weight of layers upon layers being added to a heavy load. I feel the amazing talent we both share for finding ourselves smashed around by life.

Tomorrow (or sometime soon), I really hope we both also feel the amazing talent we do have for standing back up even when it feels kind of hopeless to try. You're right, tomorrow is way sooner than it would be if we were on Venus.

I will choose to sit with these feelings tonight also. I might even find myself using this as a great opportunity to practice some skills at the DBT desk, if I can bring myself to thinking of it like that. It feels like a bit of a stretch right now, but it's an option. Options are good.

I hope the practicing waiting is going ok and that the call with your Turtle Whisperer is helpful for you.

I'm going to do the LF thing and then practice sitting some more.

[Phoenix_Rising]

Hi @CheerBear,

I managed to get to yoga tonight and right at the end when I was supposed to be focusing on my breath and just being, the thought suddenly popped into my brain; "oh I know what CheerBear was talking about - the window of tolerance."

I agree that we are completely muddled and puddled and confuddled together but not. Two melted snow flakely banana heads!

The conversation with my turtle whisperer superly duperly helped. She is on a bit of a mission to start compiling a list of backup options in case the potential TTT doesn't work out. Having options will super help me to feel calmer - I know you get that, CheerBear. My turtle whisperer emailed me the list of possibles that she has come up with so far. Yeah...tomorrow I'm going to have to break it to her that the one that looks best on that list based on distance from my home etc. was therapist take eight. Therapist-take-eight was only one of two therapists who I only saw for a single session (the other being therapist-take-eleven). With therapist-take-eight, I was on the floor screaming and SHing within five minutes of walking in the door, and continued that way until she booted me out at the end of the hour. I curled up in my car and continued the chaos for a very long time until I was safe to drive home. And people wonder why the thought of searching for TTT is so completely traumatizing. I am so very VERY grateful that I have my turtle whisperer to help me with this mission. Given that she can't commit to actually doing intensive therapy with me, this is the next best thing. If she can help me to find someone as awesome as she and K are, then I may yet unmuddle my muddled brain. I just have to survive the process of FINDING TTT first!

It is all so wrong, CheerBear. I so badly wish we could educate the whole world on what it means to be trauma sensitive. I don't understand why it is hard to understand...and yet apparently it is. We will HAVE to keep on keeping on CheerBear so that we can change the world...right after we fix our puddled brains.

Hey...do you want to know a secret? @Former-Member and @Zoe7 I want to tell you my secret too. Yesterday I was daydreaming about setting up my own psychology practice. It kind-of came about because of the whole thing with TTT. I am trying to get my head around who exactly has demanded that TTT get paid to speak with my turtle whisperer. Apparently you can have a "practice manager" or a "practice owner" and these aren't necessarily the same person. This got me thinking because you don't need to be a psychologist to own a psychology practice. If I was to own a practice, I couldn't treat clients (because I'm not a psychologist), but I could employ psychologists (and social workers etc) to treat clients. So, I would call all the shots in terms of processes etc and I would choose who I employed. Thus I could truly create a trauma-sensitive practice with a specific focus on treating trauma. Of course given that today I have been in utter crisis, the idea doesn't sound quite as simple as it did yesterday. I think it would have to be in the "not now" box, but I don't think it is in the "never ever" box.

I wonder what @Former-Member @Former-Member @NikNik @Former-Member might think of this idea???

I am going to try and do the first bit of the DBT doing bit tomorrow @CheerBear. I have so much stuff I need to do at the moment and with today being such a write-off, the list just keeps growing. I SUPER hope tomorrow is a brighter day for both of us. Only four hours left of today now - yay!

[Former-Member]

@Phoenix_Rising I think that is one of the most super daydreams ever and I super like that you’re putting it in the ‘not now’ box and not the ‘never ever’ box. 😊