Expressing a bit more, at least in Gestalt self-talk

Per my previous post, my review of Bessel van der Kolk's "The Body Knows the Score," and related items, I've started doing a bit of self therapy based off group therapy family role playing he mentions in the book.

It's doing something, that I know.

I told images of my mom and dad, from childhood, that I was not just angry in some way, but that I was disgusted, ultimately, with how both of them were not only, or just, self-centered, but either unaware of their being self-centered, or something like that, during my growing up, as far as failure to psychologically nurture me.

Indeed, I then thought for things that aren't specifically emotional abuse, but maybe a constellation of religious abuse, intellectual abuse and similar, that we ought to call this "psychological abuse."

I also told a Gestalt image of my sister, of today, not childhood, that I was kind of angry with her response to me a few weeks ago when I had a PTSD anxiety incident at work that had ripples inside me for a few days.

I'm paraphrasing somewhat, but it came off as being something like "Put your big boy pants on," or "you made your bed." She knows I took this job because I had to, rather than risk staying unemployed after being downsized and over the age of 50.

That said, as I have written here before, I see less and less available at that well. That's just honest.

The Body Knows the Score

The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel A. van der Kolk
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The latest in trauma treatment

Van Der Kolk, a leading researcher, and treater, of PTSD and other mental traumas, summarizes the latest findings on what works to help treat trauma, whether from the clinical lab with examination of the brain, treatment protocols with groups of patients, or actual individual and group therapy sessions.

If you're still struggling, you may have some new ideas here to either bring to a counselor or to try on your self at home if you're in the right conditions. (I see some things that could be adapted for journaling, more conscious self-talk, etc.)


View all my reviews

One idea he talks about is Internal Family Systems Therapy, something I'd never heard of before. Here's a website that's the home for IFS counseling training.

IFS, like Family Systems Therapy, talks about family structures, but in terms of we trauma victims having a "family" inside. This family is made up of one or more of:
Exiles — the hurt ones;
Managers — the ones that present smiley faces not just to the public but to the Exiles to quietly keep them in place; and
Firefighters — the ones that do ANYTHING to shut down an Exile when it's threatening to blow up.

Mix of depression, anxiety, and frustration / anger

Hello, follower friend and any others who read this.

This is updating my "mini-depression" previous post.

It's more than that.

It's the PTSD anxiety about being trapped.

And, more than that, it is frustration that is becoming outright anger.

First? Just one Facebook friend or friend of friends has looked at my LinkedIn profile since I posted it a week ago. And that was my brother-in-law.

My sis has long offered to help, and a decade ago, when I felt more depressed than this and less inured to this level of depression, even came to visit me a few days. But, she has enough on her hands now, among other things, and I've learned to otherwise lower expectations.

This also confirms the limits of networking, IMO.

Since I've gotten into the newspaper biz, every job I've gotten has been primarily, if not entirely, my own effort. Two cases where I had some assistance, that assistance was in the form of pointing out an ad for the opening. The third? It was a friend of a friend, but that also includes a bait-and-switch from the allegedly available job to the actually offered one.

So, from what I see, networking is pretty much bullshit.

If you want to try to prove me wrong, don't "talk." Help me get a job better than what I have now.

Second, the person hired to be managing editor at my current newspaper is less skilled than me and less experienced than me. The only two reasons she likely was hired was being native to this city and, with freelance work running slim, she could be lowballed, if that happened.

Third? A good non-newspaper job for which I am skilled, a university position back where I lived before and missed its previous opening? Hasn't called back in eight days to talk about interview appointments. I assume, whether for ageism, non-locality, or whatever, it's going to screw me.

Fourth, and originally forgotten? The last couple of times I've dropped hints in Lifering's email lists ... nobody's picked up on them.

so

FUCK YOU WORLD!!!!!!!!

oh, and

BITE ME, WORLD

oh, and an hour later, another

FUCK YOU.

Mini-depression coming on?

I don't feel the same degree of anxiety as I did in 2007, but otherwise, feel kind of close to the point I was the last time I went on anti-depressants. And, I don't want to do that. I asked for an older one, a tricyclic, as well as an SSRI, having heard of brain zaps. Turned out that, in part probably due to not tapering enough, had more brain zaps from the old Elavil than from the Lexapro. (I was on a bigger dose of Lexapro, too.)

I've had a lot of work-related stressors in the last six months, even more than a decade ago. I've adjusted better so far, though not perfectly.
1. Laid off
2. Get new job but have to move for it
3. Company gets sold (good for getting health ins., not so good overall in other ways)
4. New editor as a result of that.

More later ... I want to hit the hay.

Good-bye to another sobriety friend

This is five seven sobriety friends or acquaintances I've had die in the last half-dozen years, now, with the passing of Dale Phelps.

And, no, AAer types, this isn't about the disease doing push-ups outside your door. That's a metaphor I reject, and besides ...

This is about sober friends and acquaintances who died that way.

Interestingly, I met none in real life.

Chani was more acquaintance than friend. Still never did hear definitely what killed her. She was about my age. Had some mental health issues, but seemed to be getting beyond them. But she passed in the middle of 2010.

Then came Kishi. I was likely her second-closest friend in Lifering. Though we never met in person, we talked a lot on the phone. A recurrence of her feminine cancer, combined with low reserves from a lifetime battling Crohn's, did it. She was my age, and died in the fall of 2012.

Ray? Ray Smith? Wow. A shining light in secular sobriety of many groups, as well as secular humanism in general. He died, also from cancer, just a little over a year after Kishi, early in 2014.

Then Manya, who surely was Kishi's closet Lifering friend, about a year after that.

And now, Dale.

And, I'd forgotten about two others.

Scott Larsen, with his diabetes catching up to him.

And, Mog — Michael O'Grady — to whom I was more intellectually attuned than any of the others.

Going full circle

I spent extended time at a university town yesterday — and not the first time I'd been to this particular place.

It's about 30-40 miles from where I lived 20 or more years ago, when I first moved to this part of the world, then started my first job in the newspaper business after moving in with my dad.

I'd been here before, when I'd lived up there.

I actually halfway remembered where the town square was. I'd gotten a university library card, while thinking the unversity library looked far different than it did decades ago.

Then, just off the square a block, I saw the city library.

And, THAT was it. Closed by this time on Saturday — a change from decades ago. But, otherwise unchanged, from what I could tell looking through the front door glass.

I still remember how interesting I found it back then that a small town in Texas, in its public library, had a copy of "The Humanist." Yes, being a university town helped, but still. (Since then, I've been in a university town where the town was still a town, not a city, but four times bigger, and the university 20 percent bigger, and the city library didn't have "The Humanist." That said, library funding cutbacks may be an issue in the Internet era.)

A bit of poignancy was in the air. Walking around the university grounds before that probably added to that. At the same time, the present day had me thinking beyond poignancy and deja vu. Something I looked up about my newly-current employer when I got home has me thinking more and more that my current position isn't the right one. One of those intuitive feelings. The question, of course, is how do I change that.

I actually got to thinking that, because there's not "that much" to the university town without the university, it wouldn't be a bad place to retire. Or, get a university PR job before that.

Stay tuned.

The emotions are enough that I think they contributed to a dream during my Sunday afternoon nap.

==

I may be checking in here more in weeks ahead. The stresses of moving, a new job, declining to move a second time to a second new job, while seeing this new job acquired (I think for the good, that's why I stayed) by another company is a fricking boatload of stress. And I face it in a small Religious Right-driven Texas Town.

Unemployed, re-employed, anxious, scared and more

So, since my previous post, I've been offered, and accepted, a new job.

Like a dog returning to its vomit, it's another newspaper job.

And, it's Tuesday-Saturday (for now) hours.

It keeps me employed, so no blank spots on the resume, and no need to have to face age discrimination issues. (As I have before ... albeit, in the newspaper industry.)

It's closer to Dallas, the closest thing to a home in the adult world for me.

And, I'm afraid again of getting trapped. I know the non-media world just doesn't get it when they see lots of movement on a resume. Fuckers.

In fact, I feel the trapped feeling now, as the first full week of work starts. I'll survive, yes. Probably a bit more anxiety-scarred.

And, with another scattershot resume entry that will look like a black mark to non-newspaper job offerers. Yes, I can try to spin "resilience" up somewhere in the objective area, or maybe in a cover letter. But ...

That likely won't help a lot.

And, knowing that won't help me a lot.

More later ...

The shithole of 2016

As noted in a previous post, I had my arm broken for me. (I didn't break it myself, did I?)

I have so far gotten back somewhere around 85-90 percent of normal function, albeit with a degree of stiffness at times.

And, on Dec. 30, I got fired / downsized / shitcanned / newspapersized from my now-former newspaper.

The last time I was unemployed, in 2009, it was for just over two months and the PTSD-related anxiety started chewing on me.

On the plus side, this time, was having even more money saved up toward the future, having more of an idea of networking, having more options for job searching, and being a bit less fearless / anti-selfish in creating alternate resumes and trying to get them to sparkle more.

On the minus side? Being in a small town well away from cities of real size. The PTSD again. Being of an age where in America, one is subject to age discrimination. (Seen it happen before.)

Well, I landed another job. Still in newspapers. Part of it sounds like a dog returning to its vomit. Part of me, though, knows it's "realistic," at least for today's America. That's even as one sobriety friend whom I friended on Facebook, and need to cut out of start seeing such posts, says people should start practicing more "acceptance" of such, not just psychologically but politically.

And, emotionally? Maybe it took this additional "break," pun intended, but ...

I finally cried tonight (other than for 30 seconds before calling my sis on that day) for the first time since I broke that arm, or rather, had it broken for me. It was while I was watching on You Tube a song excerpt from one of my favorite, poignant, musical movies of all time — "Sunrise, Sunset" from "Fiddler on the Roof."

I had said a while back to sobriety friends, and then social media friends, that I still felt like such a thing was coming on, and needed to be coming on.

It's 2 a.m., and time to wrap this one up, as poignant, introspective Rachmaninov now plays.