Time to Reflect

Tags

growth, kernel, New Year, reflection

I got the email from college to say I had passed my external portfolio. I had to say that I read it four times checking it was addressed to me and that it really did say that I had passed, so much had I assumed that I would have to redo some of it. I half expected to get a corrective email apologising for the wrong communication. I only told a select few until I had confirmation from the awarding body the following week.

So I can now call myself a qualified counsellor. Yay!

It’s an appropriate moment to pause and reflect on how I got here.

My journey towards personal growth started around sixteen years ago when I finally got rid of my abusive ex-partner and became single. I then quit smoking, something he had prevented me from doing as he wasn’t going to do the same. I started putting on weight, which distressed me greatly. Whether it was from quitting smoking, or the natural weight increase from menopause or just a change in stress level I will never no. I still struggle with accepting my size and not wishing to be thinner. I have given consideration to the principles of HAES, Intuitive Eating and the various shades of non-diet mentality and absorbed many of them.

It’s taken me a lot longer, until the past few years to find a mode of exercise that I enjoy and that I can maintain. I’m now in my third year of Pilates with The Balanced Life and enjoy, not just the increase in body strength but also in body awareness. I can see or feel muscles tightening and curves changing shape. I’m aware that I can hold positions better and do some of the more challenging exercised that defeated me on first attempt. There is positive feedback to a small amount of exercise and long may it continue.

Since the first lockdown due to COVID in March 2020 I borrowed my son’s exercise bike and have been doing daily cycles in front of the television, covering some 4,500 km last year, cycling 20km most days.

I spent several years getting counselling from trainees which was a good start for me although the variance in quality led me to quit. A group series on increasing self-confidence prompted me to return to counselling and I found my previous counsellor with whom I worked for almost 4 years. I moved on to my current counsellor where the focus has been on EMDR.

My journey towards becoming a qualified counsellor has taken four years and I am not sure if I would have started had I known how hard it would be. I had not realised how hard I would find the written work and I still haven’t fully understood that. I have learned a lot about myself: I overcame my resistance to creativity to create a mindmap of myself at the beginning of the Diploma which was a valuable and have kept my notes on my personal development essay for further exploration.

What is next? I still have a central kernel, a nugget, a nub, a solid core that is unresolved which is what led me to EMDR. It’s as if I have taken all my insecurities, my feelings of not belonging, of low self-confidence and self-esteem (what is the difference?), of being judged, all the pain, and put them together in this blue mother-of-pearl (or possibly moonstone) and buried it deep inside of me. I have got better at leaving it wrapped up and to one side and getting on with life without looking at it but this has consequences.

I’m not as open as I’d like to be. I still struggle to make friends and fewer people from my course have become friends that I will keep. Job interviews scare the crap out of me. I do not voice my own opinion enough, for fear of having to defend my views. I don’t get angry, or at least not out loud. I never shout. I rarely cry, and never in company. I am warm, loving and open with the people who are close to me but the barriers are still up for everyone else.

I want to do something about this nugget, but it scares me. I’ve taken weeks to get round to writing this and to skim through some of my past writing to connect myself back with all these vulnerable emotions that I try not to dwell on. Dear Mum summarises much of the source of this pain.

I’m also trying to have a break! This is the first time that I have no major pressure on me in 30 years really so I’m trying to relax and that conflicts with doing the work and I am struggling with that conflict.

Three Months Later…

Tags

kernel, qualificaiton, therapy, Universal Credit

It’s not as if I haven’t done any writing. far from it. But all my writing has been for my final assignment, which runs to some forty pages that was finally submitted just before Christmas. It’s been a weight and I’m trying to take this as a short break while waiting for the result to come back. No doubt changes will have to be made as I have no expectation of passing this first time.

Now that Christmas is over and we’re back to just the two of us at home (3son moved northwards before Christmas) I have space to do nothing. Last year when people entered the first lockdown and talked about painting their house, writing their masterpiece or just focusing on fitness, let alone those who just put their feet up and binge-watched every series going, I was trying to finish off my course, like my classmates, and feeling quite resentful that I felt no lifting of pressure.

Having realised that along with half of my peers I wasn’t going to be able to submit my last assignment in July I then took a month or two to relax and really struggled to get back to it and found myself unable to focus on it or anything else much. So the past few months have been a real slog while I’ve forced myself to get on with it. At times I have stared at this screen for hours, writing only a few words here and there. Anyway, it’s done now, and my course is finished, subject to revision and resubmission.

At the beginning of October, when I wrote my last post I was about to speak to a GP. I got a very nice locum who has since disappeared who gave me a sick note for six months and promised to repeat as necessary and anti-anxiety medication. She gave me six months so I had time to finish my coursework and not worry about getting it renewed. That was all lovely. I informed Universal Credit who on request promptly removed the pressure and expectations of 30 hour weekly job search and was sent the Capacity for Work Questionnaire that I had previously filled in for 2son. This is a twenty-odd page document in which you have to detail every incapacity, physical and mental. It is a mind-fuck, as so much of mental wellbeing is considering all the things that I can do and turning that round into considering what do I fail or struggle with under what circumstances is extremely painful and feels like stripping myself naked and parading myself in front of an interview panel. I started off thinking about exaggerating my reality and as I wrote I realised that I wasn’t exaggerating, that I do find anxiety paralysing under some circumstances. It also forced me to consider my physical health, which is something that I pay less attention to as it’s mostly stress based – COPD, high blood pressure, sleep deprivation.

Having sent that in I got an hour’s phone call with someone of dubious qualification who repeated some of the questions on this questionnaire and asked my some others. The only one that flustered me was asking me what my morning routine was. He focused on the physical health as that is easier to quantify, but when I raised this as a query at the end he asked me what I hadn’t mentioned that I felt ought to be included and of course I didn’t know. He then apologised for the length of time it might take for a decision to be made. As UC continue to pay me and not hassle me until a decision is made, the longer the better. I’m still waiting.

The anti-anxiety meds (sertraline) are weird. I had many unpleasant side effects the first week, although they were balanced by solid sleep. My anxiety has reduced but I get disturbed sleep, occasional bad headaches, palpitations that worry me and an internal rise in body temperature that causes the odd hot flush. So when I reviewed it with the GP who was proposing an increase in dose I refused. She said the typical response was to not sleep the first week and then sleep solidly and was not bothered about palpitations. I will have another chat with another GP in a few weeks and get another perspective.

I took a month off therapy over Christmas and am struggling with the idea of returning to it this week.

Lockdowns and my weird way of life in 2020 have meant that I haven’t had to come out of my comfort bubble and therefore anxiety hasn’t hit me (other than when the reality of UC overwhelms me). I even managed to start a third client over the phone without feeling a bundle of nerves. In other words, I am mostly coping with life.

But that kernel of self-doubt is still there. That central core part of me, that feels I don’t belong, that fears judgment, that I am not good enough is there and is undiminished and feels totally untouched. I am just better at pretending that it isn’t there but that isn’t enough. I put in my final assignment that my anxiety over written academic work will prevent me from further academic development unless I resolve it and it is true. It was part of the reason I did a Maths degree and even then I struggled with the small essay based module. Numbers are right or wrong; there is no judgment on quality (not strictly true but close enough). I can set this self-doubt aside most of the time. But when it comes up, or when I think about it, then that pit in my stomach opens up, my body starts to tremble and I feel tears well up (although behind my eyes, not actual tears but pre-tears). I also start to take a step back from my body, to start to disconnect so I don’t feel those emotions quite as intensely as I otherwise would.

I have enjoyed working with my new therapist. We have done some really interesting EMDR, including considering inter-generational trauma. Looking at resources, of supportive people from my past led me to get the old photo albums out of the attic and scan some photos to remind me of the good people in my childhood. I’m just not sure if it’s doing any good.

My previous therapist wondered if she pushed me hard enough. We did at times discuss this. One of my trainee therapists pushed me hard and I’m still not sure whether that was good or not. Is my desire to be pushed about feeling that I “should” be working harder at my therapy, rather than what I need.

Reading through posts from ten years ago shows me how far I’ve come. In terms of understanding connections between now and childhood, how my parents’ stuff affected me and how their parents affected them, I get all that. I understand that it’s mostly about them and not about me. I even forgive. But emotionally that kernel of total doubt is still pristine.

I had hopes of EMDR being a miracle cure which it isn’t. I shall of course discuss this with my therapist and try and plan a way forward. But part of me still feels very lost.

Manifestation of Anxiety

Tags

anxiety, GP, Universal Credit

I have made an appointment to discuss anxiety with yet another GP. Our practice seems to go through them at a rapid rate except for the poor ones who stay forever. He/she will no doubt ask how I’m feeling and I tend to go blank at that so I thought I would prepare. And because preparation reduces anxiety (and because it’s that or go back to essay writing).

I have had poor sleep for something last the last 15 years which has also been affected recently by hypertension medication which turns me into a very light sleeper. Over the summer when stress decreased I went down to only waking up once or twice during the night. Since notification of initial Universal Credit (UC) interview I have been waking 5 or 6 times every night.

I am now continuously feeling nervous and tense, physically trembling, feeling increased heart rate which seems to be pounding, unable to think clearly.

When put under pressure to perform, which can be phoning a GP surgery for an appointment, looking at job sites, simply thinking about the prospect of interviews my general physical symptoms of stress ramp up. In addition my head starts thrumming, I can get ringing in my ears and my vision goes blurry. I start clenching my teeth. I also feel incredibly close to tears and a general desire to collapse into a puddle. I lose the ability to form coherent sentences, the ability to interrupt, to challenge and to ask the questions I need to ask.

I lose the sensation that I have any control over the situation. My coping strategies in the past have been about managing anxieties from a distance, preparing for and if possible deferring the confrontation. I have been supported by tax credits for many years and most of the work I have done whilst a parent I have gained through word of mouth. I have also not had to work full time which means that I have been able to think through things rather than rushing. The last interviews I had were for counselling placement last year and were the first formal interviews I had for 15 years or so. I didn’t enjoy them and didn’t do well at them but I felt more confident because they were part of plan that I was working through.

I work through things that make me anxious by working up to them, considering the probable course of events, preparing for them and never springing into action. I regularly have to phone my cable provider after their notification of an increase in charges. I know that a phone call and a bit of assertiveness will get them to cancel most of their increase. I have done it before. I risk nothing but still it takes me two or three months before I do it.

It usually takes me three or four phone calls to make an appointment with the GP. I just want an appointment, preferably not with certain GPs, yes I do mean today. And yet, while I’m in the phone queue I will lose my nerve and hang up. Afterwards I need to take a moment to calm down, anything from a few minutes to the rest of the day.

It’s about confrontation; it’s about simply putting myself out there, ready for examination and rejection. I’m not good enough, I don’t deserve it; these are the feelings that go through me.

My medical records cite depression and anxiety. I don’t think I have a formal diagnosis of GAD and I certainly don’t of PTSD, complex or otherwise. I have no idea whether I can explain this sufficiently to get support to pass the reduced capacity for work threshold but I think I need to give it a go. Whilst trying to job hunt to tick the UC boxes.

And there’s still the bloody assignment to get on with, a deadline a mere two months away.

Fear is the Killer

Tags

anxiety, employment, fear, future

I am terrified, absolutely terrified. Having filled in the Universal Credit application form a few weeks ago I had my initial interview with them over the phone. I though I better have a look at jobs first to have something to say, to show willing. I don’t really want a job until I’ve finished my bloody diploma but I can’t really say that.

Job sites terrify me. They pick though my confidence and rip them to shreds. I look at jobs, without any firm ideas about what I want, other than part time that aren’t too draining, and think through as follows:

• can I do them? Yes – do I want to? No – plenty of jobs as retail assistants in supermarkets locally. Hard work, bugger all money, and risk of COVID-19
• can I do them? Yes – do I want to? Maybe – there are jobs in the office admin / book keeping type role that I could possibly apply for that are really jobs that I want to get away from. But I know I could do 90% of the job description. The other 10% fills me with fear and inadequacy.
• can I do them? Probably – it is often said that women apply for jobs below their capability and men above. There are jobs that I see that could be really interesting but I doubt my ability to tick the boxes and get through an interview.

Which leads me to the next issue. I hate interviews. I loathe and fear them. If sitting in front of a screen looking at jobs brings on all the symptoms of anxiety such as trembling, brain freeze, butterflies in stomach, then the though of going for an interview is even worse. It’s all about self doubt, stuff that I’ve been trying to address in therapy but it’s massive. Most of the work I’ve found over the past 20 years has been through word of mouth and it was one of the reasons it took me so long to get a counselling placement.

And then we come to the actual interview with UC itself. I’ve said I need two days a week minimum to finish my course so I find myself committing to 20 hours per week job hunting. I can’t do that. I can’t even currently manage 2 hours a week on my last course assignment and I want to get that done. Could I have got away with fewer hours? I have no idea.

Then of course I start to spiral and panic about this last assignment. I’ve done nothing on it over August and September. It’s now October, leaving a little over 2 months before the deadline. The trust that I will somehow get through this is slipping away from me and if I have the added pressure of work coaches telling me I haven’t applied for enough jobs then what chance do I stand.

So I’m mulling over a course of action:

• get an appointment with one of the decent GPs and discuss anxiety (was on hold for ten minutes on Friday before deciding no-one was there). Mental health treatment through the NHS is incredibly poor, slow to happen and ineffectual (but better than nothing). I’ve tried before to get proper help and it’s not there. But if I’m going to struggle thinking about work then I might need medical support. Medication might even help. I’m not depressed, just floundering. Anxiety and depression are on my medical record but not C-PTSD as it’s self diagnosed.
• I can survive for a few more months without any proper income coming in, what with savings and rent from my children. So do I cancel my UC application and just try and focus on my course instead and get that done as a priority. The money dribbling out of savings worries me but not as much as losing my sanity. So why put myself through all this if I can put it off?
• On the other hand, it might force me to look at my CV, send it out a million times and get used to it ending in the bin. And a part time job might come out of it. But can I get through the agony of it and finish my qualification at the same time? I doubt it.
• On top of that I have to address my issue with opening sessions with new clients, which is part and parcel of the same thing. I’m talking to my manager about that this week.

I’ve got another appointment next week with self employment UC person and I’m going to see how that goes.

But my sleeping has gone to pot, my ability to focus is shot and I can’t actually concentrate on anything. The days are closing in which also affects my mood. All the good routines that I have put in place such as Pilates, exercise biking, better cooking and eating, activities to help me relax and the benefits they bring are just going out of the window.

Sticks and Stones

Tags

poem, words

Sticks and stones may break my bones,
But words can also hurt me.
Sticks and stones break only skin,
While words are ghosts that haunt me.

Slant and curved the words-swords fall
To pierce and stick inside me,
bats and bricks may ache through bones,
But words can mortify me.

Pain from words has left its scar
On mind and heart that’s tender.
Cuts and bruises now have healed,
It’s words that I remember.

Coping With Bullying in Schools, Brendan Byrne (1994)

Being Laughed At

Tags

being laughed at, bullying, compassion, immigrant, language, mockery, not belonging, vulnerable

XKCD usually has the truth of it

In EMDR I floated back to my second primary school, where French was the mother tongue and I had about three sentences to start me off. I was subsequently bullied for five years, at that school and the next. I wrote that post in 2011 and another one in 2017 when my father handed over all my school reports.

The reality is that sticks and stones are so much easier to deal with than words. The memories that haunt me are the same ones I’ve written about before. They are often about using the wrong language because it’s not my own. Other times it is straight forward bullying.

If I get laughed at by the class for calling Wales Wales rather than “Pays de Galles” why should I name the river that flows through London when I am sure I will equally get mocked for calling it the Thames rather than “la Tamise”. So I didn’t, and got laughed at for not knowing my capital’s river.

Nowadays teachers and schools are better able to deal with students who don’t speak the language and are supposedly better at dealing with bullying, within the class at least. I don’t remember teachers ever telling off the class for laughing at my French, reminding them that it wasn’t my first language and how many did they speak? I wasn’t protected by the school and I wasn’t protected by my parents. School tried to support me academically but they never offered additional support in learning French (that I am aware of).

I didn’t belong, and every time I thought of my vocabulary, of the grammar I was learning for the first time or the slang that I had to work out for myself I was reminded that this was not my home, that I was not like the others. I hadn’t been born there and I didn’t belong. I was told to go back home.

Considering these memories brought up proper tears for the first time in several years this morning. I stopped feeling the pain because it hurt too much to think of these times, to dwell on these memories that are part of who I am. They still hurt, of course they do, but I am better able to feel compassion for that vulnerable girl who felt so incredibly alone and to feel some anger for the teachers (and head teacher) who should have better handled my situation, my parents inability (“I never had any friends at school and look how I turned out” is my father’s echoing phrase) to do anything useful.

Every time I stand up in public, make a statement, offer an opinion, join in a group, apply for a job, introduce myself to someone new, every single time these same feelings of inadequacy, vulnerability and wanting to curl up and hope that no-one notices me take over. I feel that I am offering myself up for ridicule and judgment every single time.

And that is the basis for the fear I feel for the future that has been bringing me down over the last month as mentioned in my last few posts, fear of meeting new clients, of writing my last assignment, even of signing up for Universal Credit.

However I need to bring it up in order to be able to walk through it.

I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.

Dune, Frank Herbert, p17

Still Fighting for Sanity

Tags

emdr, growth, threads, vulnerability

As I logged in to this blog I looked at the title. It’s been almost ten years since I started writing this and I still feel that I’m fighting for my sanity.

I have spent much of that time working on myself and have achieved a lot, not that I was intending for this to be a retrospective piece. I have turned 4 beautiful bouncing baby boys (how they would hate that description) into civilised human beings with whom I enjoy spending time. None of them have found their own path easy but they are better equipped for life than I ever was.

Reading through the early biographical pieces see the same issues come up for me then as do now. The main difference is that I see these as pieces of a puzzle that all slot into place, as part of that rich tapestry of connections from past to present. Not that you have puzzle pieces in a tapestry of course. For me the overwhelming threads that connect me from past to present, and that make me fear the future are about self-worth.

But the focus has shifted slightly, with it almost being less about my father’s emotional disconnection (which I always knew was him rather than me, despite it still hurting) and more about what my mother modelled for me. Her limited independence, her inability to challenge my father (not that I’m suggesting she didn’t try or that it was an easy thing to do), her inability to protect us from him and lastly the fact that at some point she decided to stop seeing the truth of the situation because she wasn’t going to do anything about it so it was easier to just not see it. She protected herself by burying her self so deep that she lost her self.

And so it’s not just that my father has no or negligible emotional intelligence but that my mother protected herself by passively retreating, diminishing and dissolving, right before my eyes. Hence it is unsurprising that I have been unable to cope with a succession of childhood bullying, sexist harassment, passive-aggressive partners and a wider inability to cope in the workplace and a struggle to socialise.

This I suppose takes me to my present state of mind, where I feel almost overwhelmed by the vulnerability I feel as a trainee counsellor, as a middle-aged woman without an income or any financial security, where my future feels like a number of large question marks. I am trying to accept this vulnerability and acknowledge that a lot of it is emotional churn brought up by the EMDR which will eventually be healing but currently doesn’t feel that way. I am trying to use this time to relax and give space to my thoughts, and to consider getting back on the horse and getting on with my last assignment with a deadline of just under three months. I feel incapable of starting with a new client currently but I have at last achieved my target of 100 hours, despite COVID-19 and college’s best attempts to sabotage me.

I have over the last few years learned so much about myself psychologically; I have got better at taking care of myself physically, with Pilates and lately with 3000km on exercise bike since lockdown. My eating is more intuitive and I managed to refuse a strong suggestion from GP to join their Weight Watch programme. I’m still not good at liking my body but I am more accepting of it, although I don’t suppose I’ll ever not wish to have lost weight. I still find it difficult admitting that I don’t have a rich rewarding career, don’t own my own house or all those other visual trappings of comfort. Part of me doesn’t care and part does. I have got a Certificate in Counselling and am not far off getting the Diploma, with a potential career ahead, even if it will be a slow start for me. I still wonder whether I have the personal capacity to make it as a counsellor. I have friends and a place I am happy to live, even though I have dreams of one day departing for the north east and the sea coast. Just the ability to have that dream is an achievement.

I just feel there is one ridge left to climb before the summit, with the fear that when I do get to the top I’ll discover that it’s a false summit and there’s another climb ahead. But hey, that’s all part of the journey, isn’t it?

September Brings New Beginnings

Tags

beginnings, counselling, coursework, emdr, friends, term

I had a week off, taking my son to college and enjoying the north east coast. This offered both a literal breath of fresh air and a metaphorical one. I felt the cobwebs blow away and my head become clearer. I returned determined to get on with life.

As soon as I came home I felt lethargy and withdrawal settle in. I spent a day energetically hoovering and cleaning some literal cobwebs to try and shake that off and thought about what was going on for me.

I have always pondered about whether I am an introvert or a repressed extrovert and what my natural tendency would be without any repression. Clearly I am a mixture of both but what lockdown has taught me is that I am quite happy and relaxed in my own company as long as I have a certain amount of social interaction. After the first few months I ceased to search for social contact with friends and withdrew further to a point that I was locked in my own head and circling the edge of the rabbit hole that can lead to depression. Luckily I went away and that broke the pattern. I cannot afford to sink back into that.

My priorities are threefold: sign on to Universal Credit, finish my last coursework assignment so I can qualify and get a part time job so I don’t have to stay on UC. That is it and that sounds really quite simple.

Except that my motivation, my self-esteem, my self-confidence and all matters related to self have taken a hammering over the last six months.

I said good-bye to my previous counsellor of three years as she is moving. It was lovely to be able to say good-bye but there was also a sense of a door closing. As I booked my holiday break with my EMDR therapist I talked about the intensity of the session and how long it takes to process (as well as the cost) and she kindly gave me her concessionary rate and suggested we dropped to fortnightly, saying that unlike other counselling, once we’ve established a therapeutic relationship EMDR can often be beneficial fortnightly due to the intensity.

EMDR is incredibly unsettling emotionally and I haven’t got a handle on it. This is because it is dealing with the emotions of early childhood which are embedded deep within me, under all the more recent emotions which are piled on top. It feels like earth tremors that are tiny in force, but because they’re so deep have an impact on a much bigger area than if they were surface tremors. I’m not even sure that captures how it feels but I know that I feel my fundamental core is being rocked. In the long term this will hopefully be a good thing but right now it feels like my foundations are shaky.

I am lucky that I have two continuing clients at my placement who inspire me and remind me this is why I want to be a counsellor. I started a third client who didn’t come back after the initial session and I went straight into self-doubt, wondering whether it was all my fault and that I needed to inject myself with confidence for that opening session. I need to do some work on this and I know I do but piling this on top of shaky foundations is not helping.

And then we come to the course, the cluster fuck that was last term, due to a double-combo of Covid-19 and a badly run college that also was very destructive of my self-confidence. We now have a term’s extension to finish the coursework but the lack of support as well as the poor response has been very destructive. I found the assignments soul-destroying and I felt like I sweated blood to squeeze every single sentence out. Now comes the hardest assignment with no tutorial support (not that it amounted to anything much this last year) and without much peer support as those who have completed have moved on and I hesitate to ask for help of those I could anyway. So I haven’t quite got started since I put my pen down back in July and the thought of picking it up again fills me with dread. It is not easy to simply get started.

There is of course the financial uncertainty at the moment. I’m not actually at risk of losing my home so the threat is not as big as it seems but rather than finishing a qualification and moving serenely into employment (which was never going to be quite that straightforward) I haven’t finished and will need to look for part time work that allows me to continue my placement and give me time to finish the course. That is really why I am looking to sign on UC so that I can focus on coursework rather than job hunting, especially at this time when so many are looking.

On top of all that there is of course the impact of COVID, of lockdown, of sort of emerging from lockdown and wondering whether it’s a good idea. There’s been a mix of valuable quiet to the time but also an opportunity to slide into unhealthy reclusive behaviour. So I’m trying to develop better social habits, both by phone and face to face with friends, as well as trying to simply leave the house more often. I have a couple of peers from college with whom I am trying to maintain a friendship and also for mutual essay writing support. My vocabulary tells me I am spending more time talking to my children than proper adults.

I say proper adults because my children are all now adults. I have really enjoyed the time we have been a household of five over the summer and am now really enjoying the peace of a household of three. I find them sustaining and, at times, exhausting, but never boring or alienating. There’s fair amount of piss-taking going on currently as the youngest are employed and I’m not, but that’s as bad as it gets. I feel valued by them and appreciated, especially as they get older, in contrast to the neediness of younger ages. I wouldn’t be here without them.

All in all then, it’s not as bad as I feel. I need to sign on, get on with my final course-work, and get a job. That’s it. I need to do it with emotional churn and turmoil which is not making it easier but is for my long term benefit. I am capable of being a good counsellor but it will simply take me longer to gain the confidence required to become competent. I need to make sure I see people outside my home. Lastly I need to try and stop worrying about all the rest of it. I am scared of sinking.

Easier said than done, but I feel lifted simply for having written it.

Bodily Functions

Tags

bees, body, pain, periods, sex

Searching through posts for mentions of body bring up several attempts to look at my relationship with my body, which sounds such an awkward if not downright stupid thing to say. I talk about how Pilates has helped me become more body aware and made me consider exercise and how my childhood affect this but not even one post a year on the topic shows how little I think about this, let alone talk or write.

My parents never mentioned bodily functions. Ever.

Let’s start small and mundane. They never farted or belched. How they did that I have no idea. Seriously, how is that possible? Hiccups were permissible, just.

Bodily odours never happened. Deodorant was never mentioned and I had to work out my own need for it. Sweaty armpits didn’t exist and certainly weren’t mentioned. My father wanted us to be “lady-like” in our behaviour with a very Victorian definition of ladies as quiet, decorative and without anything that rendered him uncomfortable.

My father would say “excuse me a minute” or just vanish to the toilet without a word. My mother taught me to go to the toilet before leaving any building so as to not get “caught short” but I think she just talked about going to the toilet, never about needing a wee or anything so crude.

My father would put aside hunger if he was busy and just ignore it. He naturally expected us to do the same. When travelling through France if we daughters cried hunger he’d tell us to shout when we saw a bakery and then tell us we were too slow and to shout quicker next time. He never stopped. Having said that he loved his food but it was always on his terms.

He expected us to not just put aside hunger, but also illness, travel nausea and anything else that might affect his plans, that might acknowledge that we had needs that should be met. If we were cold we needed to jump around, become more active or put another jumper on.

He did pick his nose, very visibly, at the dinner table and then eat it. I think my mother tried mentioning it a few times but I learned to look away. He seemed completely unaware of what he was doing and the effect it had on others. I wonder if he did it at dinners with non-family members.

He was terrified of pain. He was always calm and immobile when confronted by bees until I grew old enough for him to flap his arms around and move away. I must have been at least 14 and I remember the surprise as I watched him and realised the control he had exerted in order to model good behaviour to me. He was also petrified of dentists, something else I didn’t realise until much later. That is not just about pain, but about lack of control. He had to lie there in the chair and take whatever pain was offered without being able to stop it. He could have said something to the dentist as they aren’t actually (for the most part) sadistic, but that would have revealed weakness so he couldn’t

My parents held hands and would kiss each other very chastely in public. Sex is never mentioned. No innuendos, smutty remarks, double-entrendres. My mother once remarked that my father was upset at the sacrifices my sister and I had to go through in order to get pregnant. He still sees us as his little girls who he has to protect.

My mother handed me a pamphlet on puberty and invited me to ask questions. The pamphlet covered the practical essentials and when I told her I knew it already she thought that hilarious and repeated it to all her friends. She was however incredibly aware of how embarrassing periods could be – she was the first in primary school to get them that early and the school had to put sanitary bins and other such features in place. As I remember it she told me about periods only a month or so before mine started. I got practical support from her but no emotional support. I was too embarrassed to tell either of my grandmothers if I bled on the sheets. It was all about shame and embarrassment, never about what periods actually signified. I’m going to come back to this later as I can feel this strongly.

My eldest sister told me that she did talk about sex with my mother when going through puberty. I remember no such discussion with her. Nothing about why, when or with whom. Nothing about what is was like or how to enjoy it, let alone consequences. Given that both my mother and my sister had unplanned pregnancies, you’d think this might be worth discussing, but no.

So we weren’t allowed to be aware of our body, our hunger, nausea, illness. If we got tired on a walk we should just carry on. It was as if our brains are the driving force and the body is an empty puppet to be dragged along that simply obeys commands. Bodily functions, all of them, were to be ignored, kept at bay and only reluctantly acknowledged after having been pushed aside for as long as possible.

It has taken me most of a lifetime to really notice this. I haven’t yet acknowledged it all, let alone got to grips with undoing it. If my body didn’t really exist

Unexpected Pregnancy in the Fifties

Tags

choices, pregnancy

If my mother hadn’t married my father she would have been a young unmarried mother in the late fifties. I have never really understood how hard that decision must have been for her and to what extent she felt like she had a choice.

To recap, my mother was at university when she went on holiday to Paris with my sister’s father. She came back knowing he was an impossible match (and having got to know him, my sister and I would not disagree on that) and pregnant. Not a great combination in any decade.

She regularly visited one of her childhood friends at his university where he happened to be rooming with my father so they naturally got to know each other. My father was emotionally unavailable and hadn’t had a girlfriend. So he offered to sweep away this damsel in distress and not only marry her but adopt my sister. My mother saw this probably as a life saver but did she really know what she was getting into?

The contrast must have been enormous. My mother’s parents may have had their problems but there was romance, compassion, friends, theatre, cinema and life. At the time my mother was close to her brother. My father on the other hand had lost his brother, had a mother who beat him and a father he wasn’t permitted to get close to. She no doubt thought that he would warm up and flourish in his own family without realising how deeply engrained his own hangups were.

[My mother] was 16, she was working for her “O Levels”. [Her mother] heard of a girl of the same age who had a baby. There was nowhere for her to go where she could keep the baby and she was told they would have to separate. [My mother’s mother] decided that she should come to us. A tutor came to prepare her for her exams. Her mother and aunt came once to visit her. She must have stayed for a few months. The man had been imprisoned for “knowing a minor” and did not know about the baby. Late we heard that they had married.

I came across this recently in my mother’s brief memoirs (neither parent has put anything in writing about my mother’s unexpected pregnancy and the decisions that followed) and I wondered what lasting effect this had on my mother. She wasn’t under age when she got pregnant but she surely must have felt the embarrassment if not humiliation of this teenager mother and I wonder if this was at the back of her mind when she made her own decision.

Abortions were illegal then and back street abortions were dangerous. I don’t suppose they had the money for a “safe” one, even if she had wanted it. She could have “gone away” for an extended “holiday” and returned home having given the child up for adoption but I can’t see that happening. Nor did her parents attempt to force her to marry the father in a shot-gun wedding. So even if her parents had been totally supportive and compassionate, did she realistically have any choice but to marry my father?

I don’t think she did although I still struggle to accept that given what I know of her parents. It is important to me as I did become a single mother and it was the appropriate decision for my circumstances and for my children and I have struggled to understand the choices she has made and her ultimate distortion of her truth.

However, the question I am left with is was this the first time my mother felt trapped and unable to exercise free choice or had this been a growing pattern? I ask this because since her marriage my mother has slowly, bit by bit given up her independence, her ability to make free choices and I have always attributed this to her initial pregnancy and then giving in to my father. I can’t ask her this now so it is left as a question to ponder.

Much as I sincerely love my eldest sister and she is the only one in my family with whom I have a good relationship, I always come back to the fact that my mother wouldn’t have married my father if she hadn’t been pregnant and I wouldn’t have been born. And yet, without that pregnancy or with a bit more resilience my mother would have had a different life (possibly better, possibly worse). “What ifs” serve no purpose really, but yet I cannot help wonder.