I had an interesting session with my therapist last week. We talked about all of the things that I blogged about and then some. Once we worked through a bunch of that, he asked specifically what was going on in my day-to-day life that precipitated my “breakdown.” He believes that my biggest problem was not taking care of myself. He said that he thinks my “gas tank” reached empty and that there was simply nothing left to keep going.
Looking back over my calendar from the last three months, I think he is right. From January through mid-March, I had a pretty balanced schedule. I rarely worked more than four hours a day, and I was going to the gym and doing yoga/meditation daily. That balance abruptly ended when I started training for my new part-time job in mid-March. I was not given a “heads up” that I needed to set aside 15 to 20 hours a week during training (in addition to the four-hour training sessions each Sunday afternoon), so I had not cleared my calendar of other obligations. That put me working pretty much a full-time schedule with no advanced planning.
After training ended, the close to full-time schedule continued as I prepared to teach my first class for the new job. Then, I did 3.5 weeks of tutoring at a close to a full-time schedule. That was mid-March through the beginning of June on a close to full-time schedule without letting go of other obligations (blogging, leading a Bible study, etc.)
I kept telling myself that I only had to get through X number of weeks, and then I could rest. Tutoring ended, but then I was slammed with “last week of school” and other scheduling issues. My kid had a doctor’s appointment and ball practice on Monday. I led Bible Study on Wednesday. I had to go to my kid’s school for an awards presentation at 10:00 a.m. on Thursday, and then school was out for the summer after that, which meant I was taking care of my kid and not resting on Thursday and Friday. My kid had an ear infection, so I had to take him to the doctor on Friday.
Hub pulled me out of bed in the middle of the night having a full-fledged panic attack. He has been depressed and anxious ever since, constantly talking about how miserable he is and how he thinks the stress is going to kill him.
I thought I could finally rest the next week (first week of summer while my son went to summer camp). Instead, I babysat a friend’s very difficult kid on Monday, went to a retirement party on Tuesday that I found out about at the last minute, and had Bible study on Wednesday. I planned a “rest” day on Thursday, but my kid’s ear was still bothering him too much to go to camp on Thursday – goodbye “rest” day.”
Also during this week, things blew up at part-time job #1 with students not having reliable access to the online classroom. These are all entry-level students with three weeks of college under their belt, so I was fielding panicked phone calls and emails for four days until the connectivity issues were resolved.
Add to that having several friends in crisis during the same week. One found out that her child was being cyberbullied. Another was freaking out about a college project. A third was “losing it” over issues with her kids. I told the third that we needed a “mental health” day on Friday so we should go to the movies. While I enjoyed the movie and chit chat, the outing came at the expense of rest.
By Friday, I could barely move my body and feared that I had contracted mono. I canceled my Saturday morning plans, fearing that I was sick. I hosted Book Club on Saturday night and had to spend a lot of time on Friday and Saturday preparing (cooking and cleaning) as well as ran my son to the doctor’s office again for the same ear infection.
Sunday was Father’s Day, so I had to be “on” to make it about hub, who ended the day by saying that it had not been a “good” Father’s Day despite all that I had done. I thought that, if I could just make it to Monday, I could rest. My plan was to drop my kid off at camp, work out at the gym, do yoga/meditation, and then do whatever I felt like doing for the day. Then, the camp would not take my kid’s medications at the bus drop-off point: I had to drive all the way out to Timbuktu to hand-deliver the medications, so my “me” time was replaced with an 80-minute round trip drive to this camp in the middle of nowhere.
That’s when I snapped. I kept holding it together until a later date when I could rest. My “rest” day kept being taken away, and I was completely spent with nurturing everyone else. Then, when all I needed was five minutes of nurturing from someone else and couldn’t get it, the bottom fell out.
Photo credit: Lynda Bernhardt
Hi Faith,
I could not help but notice that you post did not mention all the processing of trauma that you did.
I am simplifying here.
This is how it worked for me. When I was a teenager the trauma ended for the most part as I had moved and was a very strong teenager not something any cults want to deal with. Every year after that I would get sick in the fall and the spring. or go on a fugue. I understand now that this is because my trauma was somewhat based on the academic year. When I say sick I mean out of it for a min of three days very very sick. It mimicked mono or CFS.
I was caught in two loops which is how I see time as related to days, months and years.
Every time I took care of myself which included meditation, good exercise, recreation, eating well ect I would crash and then the crashes turned into processing.as the crash was really caused by not processing. .
When I entered psychoanalysis with a therapist who did not believe in DID the loops changed. They were all over the place on the calendar I then ended up in the dealing with the now therapy which hoped that the past magically does not effect me and strong meds. A horror in itself.
In a real way those with positive experiences assume I had the same experiences. With extreme trauma all experiences are tainted. If things are going well I know that sooner or later there will be the horror of processing better than the horror of the trauma, it is always there. I was not really safe unless once considers flashbacks a place of safety which is not my experience.
When I entered competent psychoanalysis and started process the trauma the loops still followed a do real well take care of myself and then crash thing. I rejected that the solution was to treat me and my body as if I did not have CPTS.
As I processed I found this body never learned to rest or sleep. My body’s baseline of rested and sleep deprived was not the same as a person who did not have my experiences starting at birth. My body developed to handle trauma and was good at it. When I was “taking care” of myself as if I had a different body my body would start to process the trauma, every time, I did not know how to process as my body never had because of my rested sleep deprived baseline.which was for a CPTS body.
In a real way when I “normally” rested and slept by body was both telling me I needed to process and not to as it was bad for us. A conflict that was overwhelming until I accepted I was going to process the trauma no matter what. It still got overwhelming at times.
The loops of time moved and became many. The summer solstice might be in the middle of the winter etc. Each loop had a beginning and and end. Both ends of the loop had periods of doing well the middle was the trauma. I was stuck in these many loops within loops.
The more I slept and rested the more memories came.
Relating it to multiplicity some of us were kept awake by the trauma and so the others would exhaust this body so the body could sleep and they never did. if the did sleep it was flashbacks etc so we avoided it.
Between the loops I was either trying to avoid the loops or recovering from being in them., I thought as the world did that it was all about between the loops. All I had to do was take care of myself better between the loops and that was as good as it got.
I came to find that it is in the loops where the healing happens, that between the loops always got better if I stayed in the loops. I as most of the world does had it backwards.
I do not know you and only know what you write. Seems to me from the outside and far far away you stayed with the loop of the summer solstice as much as you could and that was not only amazing staying in the loop was the main cause of the exhaustion. What you described above was between the loops of the summer solstice.
It is difficult to see [for me] when I need nurturing myself. And even more difficult to ask for it.
Im sorry you are running on empty
I hope that now that you have become aware of that you will be able to make some time for yourself and/or ask to get your needs met.
take gentle care
Makes sense. I know if I have not had time to take care of myself, or if I am in a place where too much is coming at me, I will not be able to take care of things as they arise from the inside. The issues seems to remain that wasn’t it your “breakdown” is what lead to a “break through.” In all that non-self care, Annie demanded to be heard. So do we have to get to a point of being sapped of our resources so we don’t have the energy to shove down the voices that want to be attended to. I know most high functioning people tend to keep pushing things aside so they can deal with the “task at hand.” -But sometimes the “task at hand” ends up diverting us into areas that really aren’t the most important priority.
“So do we have to get to a point of being sapped of our resources so we don’t have the energy to shove down the voices that want to be attended to.”
No. In my experience, if our ‘Annies’ are being taken care of well, along with the whole of us, their voice can be heard clearly, whether it speaks in pain or not and however much energy listening can take. It’s when we are living unhealthily and running on empty that we try, as you say, to ‘shove down’ the inner voice. Maybe by analogy like a therapist who is tired or distracted and lacking in great support from their clinical supervisor, will only feign listening to the client?
That’s not healthy and this repression/ lack of attentiveness will only backfire; a crisis will inevitably occur.
Yea, I don’t think I meant my question as a literal “do we have to,” but more of a “do we tend to.” It is more the issue of how our bodies and minds tend to keep us honest. Like if we don’t attend to all parts of ourselves and their needs, it seems like those needs will get our attention in some way to “keep us honest.” Some of us overdo because of demands on us externally. Some of us overdo because of demands on us internally. Some of us run from any possibility of hearing the internal “voices” because we don’t want to listen. Eventually it will all come back to bite us. But I guess from my perspective, even that is a gift because it does at least make us stop to attend to those unmet needs. My mom does this physically. She is 83 years old and extremely healthy, but she runs circles around everyone else and is wonder woman, then she crashes and gets bronchitis. I’ve watched this repeatedly over the years. I think this only started changing when she retired at age 81.
Elaine
Don’t take this the wrong way, but I think your posts here are often made up of generalisations, platitudes, formulas etc. You do not give the impression of somebody who is at all committed to personal healing, either yours or anyone else’s. I’m not judging you however I agree strongly with Michael that you would potentially do harm to any client with SA/RA abuse issues as a therapist needs to be able to confront their own pain. This is one place you could genuinely do that instead of putting out so many generalisations, platitudes, formulaic expressions about human behaviour instead of engaging.
Hey Faith- that was a lot to deal with. I felt a bit stressed out just reading it.
I’m looking forward to hearing more about the steps you take to ensure you get more time to rest- I can always use more insight and inspiration in that area!
That sounds like a really powerful realization & framework for understanding what you’ve been going through. No wonder you reacted so strongly to having your needs not met–they’d been on the back burner for a very long time. Like Michael, I’m curious as to how you relate this insight to the trauma processing you’ve discussed in recent posts. Sometimes I feel like a collapse or meltdown, even if it’s brought on partly by external triggers, can sort of “open space” for me to process deeper stuff. Your post made me wonder if something similar went on for you.
For years I didn’t know how to take care of my needs or even know what they were. Then I learned but I would have lapses of forgetting that I needed to take care of myself too. Last Nov.-Dec., I got pneumonia for the first time ever. I think it was my body’s way of telling me to stop and to pay attention to it. Believe the pneumonia got my attention. I hope to never be that sick again. I have to take care of my body or it will rebel to get my attention. Hope you are better soon.
I’ll be honest Faith in that I posted a while back how did you manage to sustain this level of healing and focus on your past whilst doing all the other things you do? For me, it definitely would not be possible.
As mcr said, it’s no wonder you ‘crashed’ given everything you were going through. Thank you so much for writing about this and sharing it. I hope that you’re finally getting some of the rest and recuperation you so badly needed.
In spite of all the pressures on you that never seemed to let up, it sounds like you have been given a very powerful gift in the person of your therapist. One that you were wise enough to call on when you really needed it, and strong enough to hold on for until he was available. I’m glad you were able to perservere and get through to such a significant place of change and healing.
Re: what you’ve written about how your husband is coping (or not as the case may be – I’m sure there is more there to write about): I have a resource that has helped my husband and me immensely, that I thought I’d pass on – just in case it may be of any help: “Back From the Brink: A Family Guide to Overcoming Traumatic Stress”, by Don R. Catherall, Ph.D.
It’s a very old book – so old that it’s out of print. But the author has generously made it available online. It was written more for the older definitions of trauma – mainly single incident trauma, so may seem to not apply to most people here. But it has sections written specifically for the partners/family members of trauma victims, that acknowledges and validates their own difficulties as a result of their partner’s trauma, and gives them tools for both coping and helping. And it does it in a way that never diminishes the trauma survivor’s own pain. The author’s tone is extremely supportive and compassionate. We’ve used it like a bible in our household; for months at a time my husband slept with it on his bedside table. I really think in many ways it saved my marriage.
It’s available online here: http://www.emotionalsafety.net/development/families_trauma.htm
I hope you are well. May God bless you and keep you safe.
Birdfeeder, that recommendation is awesome! Thanks so much for posting the link. I’m reading through Chapter 6 right now and I can see it’s going to be so helpful.
And I’m thinking of you, too, Faith. I can’t imagine the toll all of that must have taken. I hope you get a bit of a break now, or soon at least.
Hi Faith,
) time and nurture yourself in the coming weeks. Your insiders need you, too, and you need them in a way.
It is a powerful realization that you made indeed. Please do take your “me” (or “we”
I am sorry your husband is depressed and anxious. But please remember it is not your responsibility to make him happy. That may sound harsh, but when someone is depressed, sometimes no matter what someone else does it will not go away. That is not your fault, and it isn’t your husband’s fault – it’s the depression/anxiety. But it is your husband’s responsibility to take charge of his thoughts and feelings and to take good care of himself. Maybe you could even suggest he see a counselor himself. Just my thoughts. Don’t mean to poke around in your family life.
I really do hope you get better soon. It is in a way good, as has been said, that you ended up at this low point, because here you have to listen to Annie and take care of her. But still I do hope you feel less exhausted soon, and at the same time don’t forget wha tyou realized now.
Hi Faith,
I can relate sooo well…a few weeks ago my therapist stated that “I always present so well” and that if he hadn’t known me for more than a year already, he would not have thought that I was struggling so much. When we tried to figure out what I needed, we both realized that my psychiatrist ‘didn’t get it’ – not for lack of trying, but because I just couldn’t communicate my needs. My therapist helped me write a letter to the psychiatrist. After he got it, I was in the hospital within the day!! (apparently he ‘got it’ in both a literal and a figurative way!) I’ve now had more than two weeks of rest and finally begin to feel like my-/ourselves again…
I am glad you were able to meet your therapist, I just so appreciate those who are really dedicated in their work, for all their patience and empathy in trying to help us figure out who we are and what we need – and then help us make sure we get the needed help!
I hope for you and me, that the upcoming summer vacation will be a time to re-think schedules and responsibilities so that we can get to a point where we won’t ‘crash and burn’ and only notice when it is almost too late!
Thank you so much for all you share on this blog.
On the road together!
[...] Therapist Thinks My Issue was Sheer Emotional Exhaustion (faithallen.wordpress.com) [...]
Ax- I came here to listen and to learn. I sometimes mentioned my own pain, but I do not process it here. That is because I know the things that are painful for me are minimal compared to what others go through. What I learn here by listening to others, I take into my personal processing which I do with others. Sometimes I do talk in “generalities” or the way I think “reflections” in what I post here. I have always been invested in my clients- passionately invested. It is my passion that has often left me hurt because in a lot of the environments that I have worked such as community mental health centers, the agenda is to do assembly line therapy, and I can’t do it that way. I do more. I want to give the time and attention it takes. I love clients with a passion and put their right to get better above all else. I have been hurt for this. I have been rejected by the people by powerful people I have stood up for on behalf of clients. These were clients that were being discounted and given no voice because the had a long history of “mental illness. It makes me angry. I know that religious images are triggers for some, so this may be a trigger issue. But I think of Jesus, and him going to the “maginalized” -those who are rejected and discounted for whatever reason. And he just loved them. My heart is drawn to the same place. I am deeply hurt and angered by anyone who disrespects and invalidates others for any reason. I probably would never have become this way if I had not gone through the deeply unjuring things that happened in my life 30 years ago- at least they started 30 years ago, but it was a chronic situation. After this I found myself to be one of the “outsiders” who was marginalized, and then I became “aware” and developed my passion for walking a path with others on painful paths that have left them marginalized and excluded. I have had over 20 years of my own therapy for PTSD, I continue on constant practices of healing and supervision. I am in therapy now. I have left jobs because organizations I worked at wanted to continue policies or ignore issues that were very hurtful to certain clients. I tried to speak up in those organizations before Those leaving but found out that mostly people were just satisfied with the status quo. I run into the internally painful dilemma of do I stay so I have a way to support myself and somehow try to ignore that I am seeing happening, or do I leave and risk all. In many situations where it is only be being hurt, I stay. But when it is already vulnerable and hurting clients being hurt, I do my best to advocate and if nothing changes, I end up leaving. I am not skilled in addressing higher ups in systems. I have believed that if I just talk to them rationally about what I am seeing- speaking up for my clients, that they will be interested in doing what is best for the clients, but that is not what it is about in these places. There it is about assembly line therapy, and the bottom line- bring as much money as much money as you can for the company. They don’t care about the clients or the employees. Everyone is just an interchangeable part. When I have left these places, my clients have chosen to leave with me. When I had no way of billing insurance for them, I would see them for free.
I have stood up to medical directors of a psychiatric unit where a DID client of mine was being put for short term stabilization. I wanted him to understand what led up to her hospitalization, and what her triggers were, and how to best manage the situation so the hospitalization was helpful to her. I wasn’t telling him based on thinking I just “knew best.” I just listened to my client and told him what she had told me. But he just followed standard protocol and wouldn’t allow any emotional expression from patients on the unit because it was important that everyone stay calm. If there were any emotions shows patients were given Haldol to shut them down. When this client had grown up being punished for any expressions of emotion this was just reinforcement of the old rule to “not feel.” She had only just gotten in touch with her feelings. She was there to try to process some very strong ones, but the psychiatric unit had to enforce “protocol” that everyone remain calm. It was so retraumatizing to her that she tried to hang herself in the hospital. The doctor over reacted and assumed she did this because of already being profoundly suicidal (which she hadn’t been before she came to the hospital) so he loaded her up on way too much medication and she developed Seratonin Syndrome and nearly died. I tried and tried to advocate, but my voice didn’t matter any more than hers.
My pain runs deep and I am constantly working on my own healing. I have a few clients right now, but not many because I left the workforce to heal from all I had been through and the disappointment in working in the mental health world- not with the clients, but with the institutions. This has never been a job to me. It is a ministry. It is the passion of who I am. My degrees are ministry degrees. Now don’t misunderstand it is not “churchy” religious stuff. The degrees are a Master of Divinity specializing in counseling, and a Doctorate in Pastoral Care and Counseling. this isn’t some “Bible based- preachy stuff”- it is a very long path to becoming a therapist which focuses on psychodynamic and psychoanalytic. It is holistic, not religious. So it has been an absolute passion of my life. It makes me “different” than many other therapists who are usually social workers. This is nothing negative about social workers, but my training and my investment and my theoretical frame work are much different. I do not “see” clients. I “walk with” clients.
I could have had a nice cushy career if I didn’t have the passion because I wouldn’t have become such a strong advocate. I would have just “minded my business and done my work.” But for me “my work” is the welfare of my clients. If I could submit letters of reference here, you would read on and on about people saying how I go above and beyond, my tireless passion, even my sense of humor that keeps everyone upbeat.
So it often feels that I have no place to fit. I have a series of clients who “love me” for my compassion and passion, but I am very injured because I am unemployed and feel like there is no where to fit. Again I am one of the marginalized. Beyond that I had a client who I worked with tirelessly (actually the one I referred to above) who i worked with for years in an amazing work of healing. She and God did the healing, I was just there as a witness. But she attempted an integration (her choice- not mine), and instead there was just a rearrangement of the internal system, and one alter who had been “exiled” from the system because of his destructiveness somehow became a manager of the system, and his task is to keep me away. The keeping me away is find, but he has also set out to destroy me by spreading false paranoid ideas like that I know their social security number and am stealing their money from their bank account, etc. and calling the police on me to report crap like that.
So I have been very injured in so many ways, but different from all of you. Michael mentioned that it is different than being physically assaulted. I have had that too. -Attempted strangling, attempted stabbing, punched and raped. But that is not what my pain right now is about. Those things in me are healed.
Having invested so much in my life into the passion for walking a path with those who are hurting, and others consider as “throw away” people, and being left with nothing is my pain now. It is like my soul cries, “where is my God that I sought so hard to serve.”
My having nothing means that I am unemployed, uninsured. I try to see a few clients on my own to bring in a little money, but I don’t see many, or anyone very complicated right now because I am attending to my own healing. Since I have no income, my 83 year old mother is trying to support me until I can get on my feet again.
So OK, now you have heard my pain. I have not done this before for many reason. I have learned what showing vulnerability gets me. I get killed. I was naive enough to start this using my real name which increases my vulnerability. My journey is different than all of yours because I was not an abused child, so I do not feel “worthy” to act as though my pain really matters here. Also my understanding is that this is Faith’s blog where she tells her story, and we just comment. So I have not wanted to distract from her agenda.
And because i have referred this blog site to several of my clients, so just on the odd chance that they read it, I have felt I needed to be careful what I share.
But I am pissed and hurt to have been interpreted and judged by my choosing not to share deeply. It is that incredulous factor of being judged by those who don’t even know me. It is true that I have not let myself be known there, but lack of information is never a valid reason to impose judgments.
I have always been a listener, and a processor. I take what I hear into my own experience so it has a synergistic quality. So being “part of the blog” has been helpful to me from the position of assimilation. I thought maybe when I offered support to others it had some meaning for them. But this has not been my format for sharing my pain for all the above reasons. I do that elsewhere.
As an addendum- As far as not working with RA or SA clients. I really haven’t had the opportunity to work with RA clients, but SA clients have always been an area of my greatest strength because of my ability to listen and to hear. They get better. Not because I do anything magic, but because I am present to allow them to heal. When working in big mental health centers, I was always the one who was given the clients no one else wanted or seemed to hard. I was always hearing office staff say “well here’s one for Elaine.” that was there joking way of saying that this client was too “weird” or would take too much work.
So goddamn anyone who wants to try to interpret or judge me without knowing me. That is not aimed at you Ax, but as a general statement.
I am now going to go spend time with dogs and cats and horses because they just simply love. That is also why i am currently in the process of becoming a Reiki Master/Teacher. I want to offer that kind of healing mode to animals. At least when a horse kicks you its not personal.
I could say so much more about how I feel right now. But I will just share this quote from a movie.
“Our integrities ask for so little, but that is all we really have- they are the last inch of us, but in that last inch we are free.” -from the movie V for Vendetta
Now I have no interest in vendettas, that line of thinking is totally alien to me, but the part about our integrities is what I live by. There is nothing above ethics and integrity for me, and whether I ever have anything else or not, it is truly the one place where I know I am free.
I am way too angry to stop now. I am going to finish what I have to say and then be done. I probably didn’t specifically mention the 15 years of “cult like” involvement- that is what I had to have all the therapy for. it wasn’t sexual abuse, but it was more mind control. It is where I got my “heart” for the work I later went into. I got very well, and was very strong. -Until I got beaten down by my naivete and the blindness of certain systems. Then I needed to try healing again. One of the few things I had was knowing what I could do well- reaching out, and being with another in their pain, and simply accompanying them in their pain. Then suddenly through this blog and through external communications from another in this blog I am told that I cannot do the one thing that I know I do well. I pursued the communication for 4 days trying to make it something productive. It hurt terribly all during that time. I ended up having to cry in the arms of both my therapist and my supervisor. I told the person who kept trying to evaluate me as a therapist that he did not know me, and a little of my story. I asked him to please stop because this was very hurtful to me, but he did not stop, and then said he was not concerned about my healing. That is when I stopped communication. I suspect some of you have been in situations where someone has been hurting you and you have said “stop- this is hurting me.” But they do not stop and then let you know they do not care. It does not matter if someone does understand HOW they are hurting you, when you say “stop” that is a boundary.
I came to this blog because I know experientially the dynamics of violation.
I came to this blog because I have chosen to work with others who know the dynamic of violation. This blog had felt like home to me.
My mentioning that I was a therapist was only to explain some of the more recent places I had experienced hurt. I did not know I had signed on to be a therapist on this blog or to be evaluated as one on this blog. I was just me. I feel like I was caught in a no-win situation. If i would share deeply my hurts I would take us off topic. If I don’t share, I am being shallow. If I don’t attend deeply to what others are saying as I would with a client, then I am judged for not knowing how to interact with clients with deep hurts. If I had come in trying to BE a therapist on this blog it would have been uninvited (violating) and insulting to all of you that I would place myself in this position.
Now if anyone wants to actually be my client, I am pretty damn good at it. But that was never the role I took on here. Someone should have let me in on the agenda that I was supposed to be interacting like a therapist here.
I have fought so many fights to help people receive effective treatment and to reduce incompetent treatment. And the people I have fought for have been people like you- and like me. Then when I am hurting because of my injuries from the fight, i am judged without being known.
God damn it all to hell. I am sorry for those of you who are receiving this without knowing what has gone on, and what I am writing (believe it or not) is not directed at anyone in particular. What it is is me doing self care, by doing a bit of self definition around all of this.
I am now gone from this blog. I wish you all well. I will continue in my own healing with the people who have always been there for me rather than from a bunch of strangers who I believed were friends.
I have found this technique called Transcendental Meditation A recent study showed that it reduced the symptoms of PTSD by 50%. You might want to check it out