Last Summer

Last Summer

The smell of a little cafe where the barista knows your order (“capp, no sugar?”)

Driving to work on a Saturday morning through the deserted streets

Driving home from a different work at midnight on a Tuesday; the streets just as deserted

 Screaming across the kitchen table at your helpless mother how much I fucking hate my life!

Crying yourself not to sleep, but to anxious, sickening wakefulness

Being greeted with a genuine ‘good morning!’ as you walk into work

Going for a job interview when all you want to do is curl up in bed and never venture into the real world again

Feeling physically sick just seeing a place you used to go together

Debating the value of leaving – for real

Reigniting a dormant passion

Realising that some jobs you never expected to take can not only teach you valuable things, but also be thoroughly enjoyable

Walking into work and everybody saying ‘oh my god, what’s wrong?’ (it’s written all over your face)

Getting so drunk the night becomes a blur

Staying in other people’s beds; waking up with the knowledge that that won’t fix it and now you merely hate yourself

Waking up from nightmares not sure whether they were real or not, whether you’d prefer for them to be or not

Rekindling old friendships

Discovering a liking for children, and a sure-fire way of interacting with them

Broadening friendship groups (and then narrowing them again, by choice or default)

Failing

Succeeding

Sobbing through a throat raw from screaming that you can’t deal with this anymore, that you have to see a doctor or a professional or anybody

The realisation that that was probably one of the best decisions you’ve ever made

Seeing him out without you and breaking down completely all over again

And again

…and again

Realising that despite all the help and all the progress that you can’t make a life here, not now

Cutting off contact, re-establishing it and then cutting it off again

Riding your horse in the river on a warm summer’s day, laughing genuinely for the first time in a long while as he paws water high enough that it splashes your face

Wrapping your hands around a warm coffee brewed by your favourite barista as you sit outside and wait for it to be time to go to work

Sipping the same type of coffee as you tell people that you’re leaving

Letting old mentors know that you’re pursuing your dream

The first Christmas without him – painful, raw, agonising

Running to mum’s arms on Christmas Eve when the tears just won’t stop

A taboo relationship with a convenient person that makes you realise that sometimes affection springs out of the most unlikely of places

The disagreement with your best friend; the first actually serious one you’ve had

Writing, re-writing, emailing, researching, applying, paying, researching some more

Taking the leap even though you’re not sure where it’ll take you and even if it’s more flight than adventure at that moment

Making the most of the beach while you can

Reading updates for uni and realising that you don’t even need to worry about that

Feeling excited, and then disenchanted, and then excited all over again

Choosing a date

Booking a flight

Saying goodbye

Arriving…

For a brand new summer on the other side of the world.

“To err is human; to forgive divine.”

I screw up a lot.

I can’t even offer an excuse. It’s just pretty much what I do. I guess an ‘excuse’ could be that I’m generally intoxicated, generally to the point of loss of memory. But it’s me that gets me to that point, me that allows it, so I don’t credit it as a reason for my stuff ups. The reasons for my stuff ups is me; plain and simple.

I’ve been forgiven, a lot. More than I deserve, by some people. Less than I think I deserve, by others. Some people have walked away and left me shattered; some people have walked away and left me cursing their existence.

Right at the moment, I’m fucking angry. Incensed. Fuming, seething, enraged. I have been for nearly two weeks, but right now it’s worse.

Anger’s an interesting emotion. In the book I’m reading at the moment (Brene Brown’s Daring Greatly), I’ve just come across the quote about anger: “[anger] is a secondary emotion, one that only serves as a socially acceptable mask for many of the more difficult underlying emotions we feel”. I’ve honestly be so preoccupied with being angry that it hadn’t occurred to me that it may be hiding other emotions. I didn’t think I needed to feel other emotions. I thought I was pretty much in the right being angry.

My anger – so far I’ve believed – has been stemming from being held up to different standards. Being treated althought I should be better than the rest of the world, and that I have failed at that. As if everything I do I can be blamed for, even if there are multiple other people involved. Like I said, I don’t believe alcohol is an excuse. But I’ve certainly see people excuse behaviour – even my past behaviour – that occurs because of it. And now it’s as if I’ve crossed an arbitrary line that people have set up in their own heads that I have no knowledge of, and I’m being treated as if I should have had knowledge of this line and now I’m being punished for violating a code that I wasn’t aware existed.

I’m not trying to dictate morals to anybody. Even if I think that something’s wrong, the people involved are consenting adults. I’m fucking angry because despite me thinking that, despite me accepting that, despite me having supported that, people are trying to dictate morals to me.

My thinking thus far has been if only people would give me a chance to explain, I’d be able to fucking set them right. At the very least they need to listen to me. At the very least they need to understand the circumstances. Alcohol was involved, yes. But in one case so was the scariest situation I’ve ever been in. In another case so was the loneliness that overwhelms me. In both cases I needed to reach out to somebody, anybody who was there. And since doing that, from doing that – I’ve been abandoned.

So I’m thinking fuck people. I can’t wait until I’m out of this fucking town and they can go on living their precious little lives without me.

Except for my best friend, in regards to which I’m thinking I really hope that she can forgive me if I don’t apologise, because as I’d like to explain to her, I don’t want to apologise for certain things when I don’t count them as ‘wrong’.

That’s so far.

The idea that anger is merely hiding more difficult emotions is interesting, to say the least. Because emotional inhibition is one of my maladaptive schemas, I tend to shy away from sharing emotions, and I certainly don’t lean towards being vulnerable (a huge theme of Brown’s book). I have noticed in the past at times that I want to be vulnerable, that I want to open up to someone, that my friends aren’t necessarily of that type. I’ve cultivated a community that allows me to get away with not saying anything, with hiding fear and shame and love under anger and sarcasm and craziness and far too much alcohol.

I’m not complaining; I’m merely noting. And there are exceptions to that rule. But it does mean that my entire life, I’ve hidden these feelings. And that’s only complemented by my emotional inhibition schema, the tamping down of my emotions for fear that they’ll be wrong, that people will see me as defective, or that they will be taken away.

(“It measures friendship and love by what can be taken away and not what is there; and that is what shame feels like.”)

I have attempted to be vulnerable. I had an epiphany a little while ago about honesty, my values, and cognitive dissonance. I realised that I really need to be more truthful. And I’m trying. It’s positive sabotaged my relationship with my best friend beyond repair. But I was honest.

Every time I try it I seem to suffer. Society doesn’t encourage vulnerability.

But here I am; just flesh, and blood, and weakness. And vulnerability.

The important people probably won’t read this. But it’s out there for them to see.

To those that I’ve hurt or let down,

I am scared. Strike that, I’m terrified. I’m terrified of people not liking me. I’m terrified of rejection. I’m so scared of people thinking that I’m defective or not worthy of them that I try to push them away before they get a chance to do so to me. Just ask my ex.

What that results in is a horrible, unerring tendency to crave affection and attention. Only from certain people, mind you. My family certainly does not count (“they are required to love me”). My best male friend doesn’t count (“he’ll always love me cuz he’s an idiot”). For some arbitrary reason, some guys don’t count (I think this is more of a societal, “they’re tending towards unattractive so they’d be attracted to any girl that smiles at them, and because I crave attention I smile at everybody”). Regardless, these certain, normally unattainable, often dangerous in some facet or another, people drive me to stupid lengths to secure their attention. To validate my worthiness.

When I’m sober it normally manifests in texts or nervous smiles. When I’m drunk, I have absolutely no inhibitions.

I don’t have excuses. Excuses are just a further mask. I am ashamed. This shame means that half the time I’m angry – in which case it’s not my fault and I don’t need to do anything to change it – and the other half I believe that it’s me, that I’m intrinsically defective in some way – in which case I can’t do anything to change it. The small times that I don’t feel defective are when a guy I don’t know pays me some attention. Why has this become my only source of worthiness? I honestly can’t answer that. Perhaps society, perhaps my school experience, perhaps the books I’ve read. Perhaps the websites I visit. Maybe the pain of seeing happy couples.

Whatever it is, it doesn’t matter. All I can say is that that’s what it is. I crave attention of guys to make me feel worthy. I don’t know if anyone pays enough attention to notice that this changes with my happiness; Sarah, I doubt you’re reading this, but you’ll notice my real advances came after I’d seen Daniel at the Gal that night. Wham bam, number one way for me to doubt my worthiness, hate myself, and need to be validated by a guy. I’ve been upset recently because Sarah’s not talking to me. Badabing, badaboom; I’m worthless, I need what some people would classify as random strangers and what I classify as interested guys that I know. There’s been a couple of months in here that I’ve been happy, felt worthy, felt worth something. If you charted it, you’d notice that I am less obsessed with this sort of thing then.

Getting alcohol involved means that something that is somewhat simple becomes complicated and puts people in danger. It destroys relationships. It leads to fractures, cracks, breaks. More than that, it accumulates, so that if I go out, if I drink while I’m still reeling from some stupid act; guess what? More stupid acts.

So that’s it. I’m scared. I love my friends and want to establish awesome relationships with them, but I’m terrified of rejection. And I see myself as utterly unworthy at times, and need the validation of guys. Unfortunately, the guys I have access to are often already tied up in complicated relationships (a small town is incestuous) and it only goes downhill from there.

I’m trying to be vulnerable. Here, and now in life. It’ll take a bit. And I’ll probably shy away from many people.

But you don’t know without trying.

Love, always,

Sondra.

Negative Self-Talk, Maladaptive Schemas, and These Being Embedded in a Relationship with a Particular Person

Negative self-talk can be hard to identify.

Take last night, for instance. I’m (technically) a third year psychology student, I’ve done an internship at a mental health clinic, and I’ve been in therapy for the last six months so I’ve got first-hand experience with dealing with this sort of thing. But last night was difficult. And it was because I was talking to somebody – one person in particular, who just makes these negative thoughts and maladaptive schemas pop up into my head.

A schema is a cognitive shortcut; a blueprint your mind uses so that it doesn’t have to process all information every time something happens (if that was the case, you’d be so overwhelmed with information you’d be unable to comprehend any of it!). An example of a schema might be thinking of travel and automatically having luggage, packing, long drives and aeroplanes come into mind. Instead of having to process all new information, your mind provides information you’ve accumulated over the years so that you have a good idea of what’s going on without having to use all your brainpower on that one thing.

Maladaptive schemas, therefore, are automatic thoughts and blueprints pertaining to negative views of the self. I, for instance, struggle with three in particular; emotional inhibition, defectiveness/shame, and unrelenting standards/hypercriticalness. Last night, it was defectiveness/shame.

I spoke to this person in particular, a person who has been a huge part of my life for the last two and a half years. However I’ve come to realise through therapy that him being a part of my life also concreted these maladaptive schemas into place. For instance, despite the fact we were dating, he very rarely admitted to wanting to spend time with me to his mates – he was always ‘busy’ or ‘doing something else’, never ‘spending time with my girlfriend’. From this, although I didn’t see it as such at the time, I began to develop an idea that there was something wrong with me – that I didn’t have the worth of other people, that something was wrong with me, that I should be hiding myself and who I truly was because obviously it wasn’t good enough, or it was defective. Coupled with other problems I’ve had, I began to slip into assuming I was a failure whenever something didn’t go to plan.

With the breakup and subsequent therapy, I realised the fallacy of such thoughts (and the dangers involved in perfectionism (hypercriticalness) and the way I inhibit and dysregulate certain emotions) and am working hard to interrupt these schemas when they start to pop up. Oftentimes it’s enough to simply realise that they’re there; to step back from my thoughts and say, oh, hey there, maladaptive schema! But then there’s the times I’m talking to Daniel.

For some reason, whenever I speak to him, I slip straight back into these schemas. Automatic, negative thoughts about myself. Assuming that I’m defective – assuming that he doesn’t want his parents around because he’s ashamed of being seen talking to me, when in reality I went out of the house too because I didn’t want my parents to overhear the conversation. Assuming I was worthless because he’s happier now without me. Having no one to talk to afterwards – merely bad luck that they were all busy – and coming to the conclusion that it was obviously because I was hopeless and broken and that I should know that by now, that if someone like Daniel had to pretend the whole relationship then there was clearly something wrong with me and I was obviously a failure (hypercriticalness). I was wallowing, part of my mind piping up that maybe these were these schemas I’ve been working on, but most of my mind crushing it because it was easier to just be depressed.

It took someone saying that it was “negative self-talk” – that exact phrase – to truly shake me out of my funk. Because that’s what it was. It’s a little more complicated for me sometimes, because the schemas are a little more involved, but it basically boils down to automatic thoughts that present the self in a negative light. All I was seeing was that I’d failed, that I’d said the wrong things, that Daniel still didn’t want to be with me, that he’d changed, that he was sorting his life out when part of me really didn’t want him to – the selfish, horrible, I hope he’s a failure cuz it will make me feel like a success part of my brain. Realistically, however, these schemas had activated – full on kicking into gear, in a way they haven’t since early on in my therapy – because I was talking to him. Him, in particular.

Between my therapist and I we’ve concluded that it was a function of the relationship, the way that I related to him and probably at least partly the reason the relationship failed, and we’ve discussed the way that talking to him or even seeing him gets me ‘hooked up’ back into these self-destructive patterns. Last night was the first time I’ve coped with it in an even remotely healthy manner. I did take some pills (prescribed) to make it easier to sleep, but I also used some cognitive techniques to defuse the thoughts, allowing them to surface and then leave but not bother me (too much!).

It’s still upsetting to me that this happens, consistently and pretty much predictably, with this one person. I have, and probably still am, fighting against accepting that as a truth. I want to be able to be friends with this guy, this guy who does have so much potential, who can be amazing when he wants to be. I want to be able to talk with him and laugh with him and not feel like I’m back at the start of my therapy afterwards. And one day, maybe, I’ll have to accept the fact that that’s never going to happen. Maybe one day it will. Right at the moment, after six months of therapy and having experienced last night, I don’t know that it will. And more than anything, that saddens me.

It took me a while to identify that I was plunging back into those schemas last night, that they led to horrible and abusive negative self-talk. And when you’re like me, and those thoughts have become so intrinsically automatic, they can be hard to recognise. I’m fortunate enough to have had therapy and to be able to connect the person and the thoughts, and to have amazing support that can point out to me what I’m doing – people who don’t even realise how much help they’ve been, sometimes. But I know a lot of people don’t have these advantages. So I’m here to say that if you ever hear a voice, your own or someone else’s, saying that you’re worthless or broken or hopeless – take a step back. Question it. Realise what you have achieved – whether it’s something like organising an overseas adventure (one month today!) or as simple as getting out of bed this morning. Notice that you’re still breathing. Smile at a stranger. That simple act means you’re not worthless to them.

And if the voices persist, if every time you aren’t actively focusing on something you hear how worthless or hopeless or awful or defective you are, seriously consider getting help. It’s the best thing I’ve done. I’ve had many appointments and I can pick out maybe two or three, early ones, that have really helped me. The rest have been useful for consolidating the practices, but sometimes it’s as simple as having someone tell you what you’re doing and ways to recognise it when it happens. For me that was key. Recognising that these schemas are coming into play allows me to objectify them and not allow them to affect me. I crumbled last night – I wallowed and I allowed them to play out. That doesn’t make me weak or a failure. Because I’m here today, blogging about it, feeling positive and alive and triumphant. Because I was challenged last night. And you know what? I didn’t give up. I woke up this morning. I won. I succeeded.

And every time that happens, it gives me another arrow in the quiver to use whenever that thought pops up that I’m a failure.

I’m not. You’re not, I can assure you.

This is mostly a muse from me, not necessarily well planned but I think it has a point. So go forth today, and smile when you can. It’s amazing what a difference it can make. 🙂