Work it out or write me off

One of the hardest parts of recovering from a head injury is dealing with "irrational" emotions.
But irrational emotions are not an exclusive problem to head injuries.
Irrational emotions are also a problem when we are going through stressful life events.
Irrational emotions can be part attributed to puberty also.
They are a part of our basic human nature.
Sometimes our primal instincts are irrational.
Whether they are actually nature or nurture many of our "instinctive" reactions are irrational, like in snowboarding, if you understand the physics of it you know that you have to overcome the instinctive fear that causes leaning back and lean forward with the snowboard in order to have and stay in control.

But with head injury, emotional regulation becomes difficult and changed personalities are a common "problem" associated with head injuries.
I was 12 when my brain was damaged. 12; the middle of seventh grade, the beginning of all those exciting changes that throw your emotions all over the place anyway.
Anger.
That is the worst of the new and intense emotions in my opinion. That was the worst one to deal with and regulate as it could take over so quickly and cause harm so quickly.
My parents had their own difficult to extremely difficult issue's so anger was no stranger to our home.
I hated anger. I still do.
As a little little I was not an angry child. I was empathetic, shy but fun, and pretty laid back. I remember going through some elementary experiences that may have made me "mad" in some way, but I don't remember being "mad" about them. I would stand up for people or myself but I was never angry.
At least not like what I would experience later.
Immediately after my youthful head injury I don't remember anger then either. I was too tired to feel much of anything. But as my tired fog lifted new personality traits seemed to come out of the woodworks and there were times when I was very angry. Intensely angry. Instantly angry. Stewing plotting angry. Many forms of angry. It is a good thing I was surrounded by so many good people and it is a good thing I was really an empath. But you better believe being an empath with so much anger was a very difficult form to live in.
Other emotions and emotional reactions could be irrational also. But that anger, that most likely stemmed from head injury, and was an alien to my core may now prove to be my redeeming grace. Because some of these emotions caused me so much discomfort I was determined to figure them out and learn to control/manage them. I have worked long and hard for many years learning to self-regulate. I know that at times we can not trust ourselves because of our emotions and how they are effecting our thinking. I have learned to recognize so many symptoms that I can vocalize and tell people when I am irrational and my thoughts may not be so trust worthy.
I believe that many people reach some level of this as they learn to say "no, I am sorry that is too much for me right now." and that is a good thing.
However, while many people identify this in themselves, few are comfortable with being honest about it. I often have felt being honest is the best way and maybe I took the example of the man who was hearing bad Jesus to heart a bit too much ...I do have a tendency to do that, I'll take you to heart so unless you want to be trusted, appreciated and loved you probably better not try to help me...
But that is not what is usually understood.
Often in life we are so much more lemming-like than we ever care to realize as we follow all the rules, cliches, stereotypes and trends in thinking if a person admits they have had issues with other people we will hold it against them. We will be guarded and say "well this problem or thing that is making me uncomfortable must be them because they have struggled with others too." It is so much easier to write someone off and stay guarded in ourselves than to work things out and try to truly understand each other. At other times we do not want to face our own insecurities or maybe we made a mistake we don't want to face so instead of examining for ourselves we easily blame the obvious problem and let the more honest one take the fall for all.
It is an easy trap to fall into. I have myself plenty.
But I am also so keenly aware of our dual natures that it is both a strength and a weakness to me and I often make the "mistake" of trusting others to see what I so easily see but instead they will blame me.
So I have struggled some lately in knowing who I can trust, and who I should trust. The people who were supposed to help me decided that I am to blame for whatever went awry. Well they are right, if it is me that is the problem than I am to blame, but if that is why I went to them and their job was to help me fix the problem then... Obviously the agreement was to help me fix me, so blaming me for trusting them when it was their "professional" fires that burned me down or up just doesn't make sense. I don't understand their games, I don't know their rules, I have tried to learn them and I have tried to be honest about what I don't know and when I know I am in an irrational place and I was trusting them to be the professionals.. But somehow, I keep messing things up...?
Who do I trust? Can I ever really trust anyone after this?
Yes, I can trust myself. I know this because I am so keenly aware of when I cannot entirely trust myself and/or my emotions and I will ask for help. I wonder if they know how easily we can turn what we fear into the very thing that we fear when we are too heavily focused on our fear..
One of my realizations in reprocessing (and I have realized this before) is that I take way more responsibility and blame myself for way too much at times. I am the perfect scapegoat because I make myself one.
In these defining moments of my life, will I continue to be that or do I stand up for myself even if it makes people uncomfortable?
...and how far do I take that?
I'd rather be forgiving and work things out. I'd rather be forgiven and understood.

This writing did not go the way I thought. I am struggling to get my thoughts out the way I am thinking them so I hope it makes sense... but maybe that is okay, maybe this is for someone else or maybe it is for me to look at later, but it feels important so I will leave it.

Best Regards

So I have had some very interesting conversations these past few months and plenty these past few days.
I have been very open and honest about who I am and how I am doing. I have asked for opinions and advice, I have shared probably way more than I "should" with way too many people. But truth is, I don't actually feel that way. I am okay with what I have shared and when I have shared it because I understand why. Maybe the other person or people do not and they have not appreciated it (I have not felt that often, but have felt it) and that is okay too. I don't think they need to appreciate it. I do hope to respect peoples boundaries though.
That is a hard thing.
To be clear about our boundaries.
I think my boundaries are not always clear to people because they are very different. I am very comfortable outside of the box and I have found that life is more satisfying and interesting when I step outside my comfort zones so I have come to live there a bit more than many people are comfortable with. However this does not mean that I do not have boundaries or that I do not know my own boundaries, in fact I think the opposite is true. Like a rancher would needs to test his fence to be sure his boundaries are secure, my testing of my boundaries helps me know my boundaries and keep me safely in them.
Going back to sharing too much- I hope that people will realize that some of their doubts and or insecurities with me may be more reflective of their own doubts and insecurities than actual problems with me. I am not you nor you I and I can never truly understand the world or your perceptions from your perspective just as you cannot from mine. And that is what makes communication so difficult.
Communication really is manipulation.
Humans are manipulation.
We are constantly manipulating. Everything around us, everything that we are, it is all manipulated ...by so many forces.
So why would I be upset about being manipulated? It's a judgement thing. Is it a "good" manipulation or is it a "bad" manipulation?
boundaries, manipulation, interpretation... Life
Life it is an adventure and I want to enjoy the adventure everyday. I do most days and even on days that I don't I still do.
But our adventures are not alone. We are all in this together. which is why I have been okay with so liberally sharing who I really am whatever that may look like in the moment and I have been so glad for people sharing who they are and their moments with me. Things may not always work out as planned and that is okay. I am not really minding because I am learning to be okay with me and I am okay with things being what they are when they are.
This post is proving to be... disjointed feeling? and definitely different. I wonder how easy or difficult this free flow style may be to follow?
But staying true to letting things be what they are when they are I'll keep this and add
my disclaimer.
The disclaimer I have shared with people I have told about my blog: This blog is a therapeutic and artistic outlet I am utilizing to help me process my thoughts, feelings, emotions and circumstances. It is not, however, reflective of me as a whole and individual entries are reflective of where I was in that moment and may or may not be reflective of how I am currently or permanently feeling or thinking.

I am glad that I have learned and grown as much as I have over the years. I am glad for my self-awareness, I mostly love my crazy little world, and I am eternally grateful for the new me... Which brings me to a very important point: Forgiveness. I can easily look back and see how damaging and careless mistakes were made. I have documented enough and am intelligent enough to see, looking back, that it is possible there was/is a darker side to my ex-therapist and I could easily paint the picture of a diabolical scheme. But as I have been navigating and working through the new and buried, crazy and unstable territories of my broken brain I know that my ex-therapist has helped me immensely despite his shortcoming and mistakes. He is a talented and brilliant neuropsychologist and I really admire him. Yes, he hurt me deeply, and his defensive actions almost destroyed me... but only as much as his faith and confidence in me built me up.
I remember having a distinct impression of Yin and Yang while fighting so hard for a compromise with him. There was no compromise. He and his staff had decided how it would be with me and that I was no longer allowed to meet with him when I so desperately needed his followthrough. But I also know that even if their reasons were wrong and they caused harm that I still have the power to restore the balance, at least for me. I cannot simply forget and walk away but I can forgive. I can recognize both the "good" and the "bad" for me and see that all the colors in addition to those two black and white judgements has been a really interesting, educational and a worthwhile life changing adventure. I will be okay. I will be better than okay. and I am glad to have that be a part of me.
So in a more straightforward nutshell I feel I am coming to terms and I feel I am making my peace with things and though I may be a pain in the ass at times I am okay with who I am and who I have been and I do not feel malice toward or wish to harm the man or the business that I know is so desperately needed. Though I do hope they will also learn from the mistakes they made with me because, honestly, ex-therapist is good at what he does and what he knows, but so am I.
I am the other side of their profession and I have been working in it since I was 12.  

Do No Harm aka The Code of Bullshit

Do no harm. But he did. You cannot play with those kinds of emotions and feelings, those powerful of words, in that environment, with a person you know is broken AND manic and then entirely abandon a person and think that you are doing "no harm."
I am calling bullshit.
Policy/administrators people who justify abrupt termination despite a persons dramatically compromised mental state because "we don't really deal with that here" cannot claim that they are following ethical rules to "do no harm" when they are a business of licensed psychologists dealing with broken brains as a profession.
I am calling bullshit.
Lately I am feeling really annoyed with a whole lot of people in the whole industry who just seem to want to cash in on the auto-insurance than to actually help people heal.
I'm calling bullshit on all ya' all

... which may be what was the inspiration behind this answer I gave on Quora.com https://www.quora.com/How-can-I-overcome-a-crippling-phobia-of-being-predictable-obvious-expected-and-average/answer/

But at least, yesterday as I left my meeting with the facility administrator with nothing resolved I was able to walk out holding my head up proud knowing I was really there to try and help me and not to cause harm intentionally or unintentionally because I know their bullshit is just a cover up for their own crazy.
And I'd rather have my crazy :)

Destructive Defaults

I am afraid of the silence.
I have tried to write about this and my writings are scrambled and nonsensical. So I will be straight and blunt.
I am afraid of the silence because that is when images of guns releasing the pressure in my head or bottles worth of pills sliding down my throat start to invade. They are not invited quests and I do not entertain them but somehow they are my default again. It has been so many years...
It is different with age and experience. I used to see my self falling and landing into freedom from everything as my body broke apart. Still there is something romantic about that image.
At one point in my life I would find myself fighting sudden urges to self destruct, like the desire to turn my wheel sharply sending my car crashing into the cement barrier while traveling high speeds on the freeway. I am not sure when or why that phase was but I am glad it was not too intense and did not last too terribly long... Oh, yeah I am pretty sure that was the phase when we had no insurance but this symptom was concerning enough I decided to be a lab rat in a depression medication related study. I liked the psychiatrist. He said he would have liked to have been a fly on the wall of my home. I think that would probably be pretty boring, really one would need to be a fly on the wall of my brain. That is where it would be interesting. I'd like to be the fly on the wall of other peoples brains. How fascinating would that be!
Sometimes my husband tries to convince me that most people aren't nearly as... interesting... but I am not convinced.
I digress. which is fine, because that is often how I steer away from that default of destruction.
I don't know why it is.
Why I had a suicidal default.
But I was able to recognize those thoughts as imposters and symptoms. It is a tell tell sing and a symptom of something being terribly off. Maybe it is a way that deep mental and emotional pains manifest themselves? I don't know. I am not sure that I care to know. I have gotten to the bottom of it before and I will again, but some off the pain one has to feel to get out of it is the same pain that gives it power. I am not quite sure I am ready to handle that pain in all of its glory so I am not sure that I want to get to the bottom of it just yet.
I can say that on the day that I thought I was doing well to have let things go and not think or try to solve was the day that those thoughts started gaining momentum fast. It was frustrating and annoying. I had to go to bed to get it to stop.
But I see that I cannot let go just yet. I am not in an entirely safe place yet.

Church

I have a lot more drafts lately.
That is reflective of the insecurities that come with "sanity"
hah
I like the image of me walking across a no trespassing marked snow-covered field in my skirt and slightly heeled knee-high boots and then walking through the neighborhood with my jacket hanging half-down and my right-foot now calked sideways as I awkwardly limp home better than I like the image of me sitting in church with a constant stream of tears running down my cheeks.
It took a bit of courage to leave, as I knew this would draw some attention, but I could not get the tears to stop, no matter my thoughts of the good people I loved there.
I tried to go to church today to be a supportive member of my family. Maybe I also had some thoughts of returning to "normalcy."
But as I entered the chapel the tears came without my consent. Not even sure why. I did not want to grapple with the why so I tried to just let it be whatever it was, without paying it much mind, but they just came more.
I don't want to be a god.
I don't want to feel like my value only lies in my being a wife and mother.
But those weren't what seemed to be causing these tears.
These good people were reflective of the good people that put me in a sled and bounced me across the snow covered field back to a car parked in the middle of a nice neighborhood, with plenty of nice people, with phones. Then drove me home. They likely did more damage.
These good people are reflective of my parents that had so much going on with our large family and their own personal plights, that wanted to believe in miraculous recoveries so much that head injury was the overlooked element in my own struggles, though they were the units who held all of the power to get me medically guided help me and to help me understand how this may have been a contributing factor to my own struggles.
I see that they didn't understand. That they were both very broken in their own ways. And I have no malice.
But ...this place of worship causes me confusion and pain.

These were not my thoughts there. I was trying to focus on the good there, to live in the moment, to do the things that would stop the tears. but they just kept coming

I feel the need to listen to my body
to my intuition
and to forces outside of myself that are greater than I am
I am trying to find that balance
I am not finding it there (at church)
It is not a safe place for me right now
Maybe I needed that confirmed. I am okay to not go.

The tears stopped and I was able to even laugh about my plight as I walked home, limping on my ankle that was injured in the same car accident that caused the concussion which has brought so much of this past life to light again.
The ankle is getting progressively worse as I try to return more and more to my valued ways of living.
It was an injury that was overlooked due to the more pressing matters of my head. It is now the injury that is holding me back from some of the things I need most; Structure, routine exercise, a regular job, my snowboarding job and even sleep on occasions...
It is holding me back because to be rid of the pain it will require surgery or me settling for a different lifestyle and the irony or paradox of it is, had the injury been addressed initially it very well could have healed with minimal intervention -without surgery.
So many connections
and so many parallels

Projection and Reflection... And maybe some deflection

so hold on tight you might be in for a long ride as I try to explain
all that is in my brain
right now.
Just so you know. I did actually sleep pretty well last night. I only woke once around the 3 am mark and my head was full but I was able to go back to sleep and not wake again until after 6 am so I am really happy with the progress of sleep I am making. I am starting to feel more "normal."
Which is nice in many ways but also a bit sad because the euphoric states of being become harder to access and I settle too easily into repeat patterns that over so many years had buried me so deep.
Yet as I look back I am embarrassed at much of my "irrational" and "fantastic" behaviors. This time not as much because I understand it better but there are some things I said that I am like "What the hell, you know better, people don't speak that language and of course they are going to take it the wrong way."
In anger I can be real weird, though my anger was not so intense in feeling this time, just the weirdly worded and out of character thoughtless-ness of it.
Another way I speak different is
I get real generous with my love and use the word a bit to casually.
That is a confession.
I honestly wish that my use and understanding of it in my euphoric states of survival were the more universally accepted form, but it is not, and I am powerless to change those perceptions.
With that bit of understanding lets tackle the hard stuff.
Projection and Reflection
I have been thinking on this for awhile. How others have projected their insecurities onto me and I have reflected them back only to be avoided because it was likely that confused reflecting that was feeding their insecurity or frightening them in some other way.
I have thought about how I also project my insecurities on other people and then when they reflect them back I take it as confirmation of my short coming.
 It is an easy thing to see looking back and I am very aware of how I have sabotaged myself many times through this process.
But it also can be a positive.
I am trying to figure out how to capitalize on that.
Okay not capitalize but how to change my directions so I am projecting and reflecting the positives.
Now we move to the really tricky nitty gritty of the reality of my situation with the therapist I fell in love with (remember that term has different meaning to me. I fall in love all the time, it's not a sexual thing or a romantic sort of a thing -okay maybe a bit romantic but, again, not in the sense that we are so used to; not to say that it couldn't be but that is not where my mind wanders by itself and it is only a possibility if I am open to it, which I rarely, RARELY am)
Sometimes I think the intensity of me coupled with some of these projections and reflections is a bit overwhelming for people. Add to that my intuitions and sage observations and... well... people often find I am not sitting well within their boundaries of conformity so they deflect.
It doesn't always happen.
But it happens enough that I have tried to bury that and conform and be more of what people want or expect.
What is it they say about to thine own self be true?
Oh I digress
It's avoidance you know
I am here to get out the truly painful stuff and I am myself deflecting and avoiding my own plight.
or fight... its flight
I can go on like this forever you know. and it makes me laugh at myself
but it does not get to the bottom of it
so though I have visited this before I am now processing from the more rational emotionally stable and safer place, hopefully safely out of defensive cycles. So I think I shall wander into and try to keep redirecting my random thoughts back to the task on hand of facing it, admitting it, and confronting it... with my lonely little self. And I'll take that path because that is what I am already doing ;)
... I warned you this would be long. And I am still doing it, avoiding, as I type out every single thought as it comes into my head.. shush-redirect my friend- oh that was nice self talk- good job me!
I think I am funny by-the-way
But I have had a hard time believing I am attractive enough to be a threat to anyone. Why? don't know don't care right now. -Not entirely true, a lot of it has to do with mainstream media messages and my determination to be "real" and "honest" with myself amidst rather critical family dynamics ...and some deeper more painful reasons that I care not to address or re-address at this point in my life or ever if I don't need to- but no matter, that firm held belief would keep me from believing that dear therapist could really develop any kind of therapy compromising feelings for me.
The strange thing is though, that somehow he is a wizard. For the last two months I have looked different to myself. I actually would look in the mirror and look and feel actually physically beautiful. It is starting to fade and it makes me a bit sad. I actually saw a movie that made so much sense to me in this regard; "I Feel Pretty" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVx9EFK3DWE. It doesn't have the best reviews but I found it pretty honest and funny. Maybe it was more funny to me flying home from Italy, a bit run down and, though out of the full blown manic survival phase, aware of how I was still somewhat under the spell of a very powerful wizard.
As I tell myself "I am beautiful when I believe I am" I hope at least that part and other parts of his magic might stick more permanently but it is hard to loose access to that kind of magic and the farther we get from the source the more easy it is to become lost, or distorted.
am I digressing or entirely on track? ...probably somewhere in the middle. which is probably where I need to be anyway.
I have explored recently the idea of masterminded manipulation, a diabolical dabbling in the dark arts of psychology . And really that picture is not hard to paint. He is extremely intelligent and I struggle to believe
that he could be so naive.
I don't like the idea of it (diabolical mastermind) and if it is true then I'd need to reprocess from a new place. a new kind of pain. But to be perfectly honest, that is the easier answer to me. It makes more sense and is strangely less painful. To me it makes more sense from a logical perspective especially since I struggle to believe that I am, myself, powerful enough to trip up such a wizard...
But alas. In reality, I am not, had he not been in a fragile state himself it'd have likely turned out very differently I am sure.
It is a matter of bad timing and coincidence maybe. and maybe my karma is off enough to have deserved the branding and abandoning. The confusion and the pain. Maybe that is my safe less painful place to process from. I don't know it is all very painful really. No matter what route my head chooses to take.
and I am derailed again as I try to let bygones be bygones and move on.
The tricky thing is (the thing that people don't understand) is that I liked the progress I was making. I liked the me he was helping me find and guiding me into. Before he got spooked and dumped me I cried one night as I explained to my husband that it was hard because it felt like he authentically cared and he was helping me so much but I knew it was going to have to end. My husband knew before I had, that I was getting attached. It was then that I recognized that I was and I tried to rush the finish, but then somehow he did, which broke me to into bits and pieces and empowered me at the same time.
We hear of people having super human strength in the face of danger, lifting cars off of people, that sort of thing. That was me for two weeks. Super human strength to keep my confused mind and breaking heart together. Super human strength  and heightened senses. I enjoyed snowboarding being almost orgasmic and  other the worldly floating in a pool at night under a full moon. I liked the signs and symbols that were appearing regularly. The clarity of thought and temper. I could be somewhere else and entirely present in the moment at the same time.  My energy was fantastic and running was a thrill again.
...But it was all just to hold my breaking heart  and mind together.
For the first time I had found someone who understood well enough how my brain worked to help me manage myself. Though on occasion I sensed a very subtle frustration with me he always managed to redirect constructively and he seemed to genuinely care. We connected. And though I did not and could not admit it to myself I sensed some attraction but I always steered away from this and avoided myself talking on subjects that I sensed might draw him into me.  But that very act of resistance is what may have been the nail in the coffin. It was for me. The fact that he could stay grounded in his values, in spite of the intensity of emotion both impressed me and killed me. If he had not, then I'd have been turned off to him immediately, yet  his holding to what he felt was most important, what he needed to do for his family and his livelihood took him from casually attractive to irresistable to me. But it was forbidden.
... and he did not feel the same way. He confessed that he "could" potentially feel more deeply for me but he also let me know more that I was not worth the risk or his time. That is not exactly how he said it but that is what he meant and though I get it, I understand, it hurts so deeply.
so deeply that I had to fight for myself even if it wasn't productive. I had to fight to wake up my survival instincts or it would have destroyed me.
That compounded with his professional help that, remember, had and has helped me more than I  anticipated when I sought out his particular expertise. And I know that I would still authentically, physically and mentally, benefit greatly from his guidance and experience. And based on his own researched philosophies of treatment I know that he stopped short with me. These things make it very difficult to simply move on.
Not to mention the very things that give me strength right now are the things he taught and the strengths helped me establish and re-establish... the transference that happened, and needed to happen, was me learning to love myself. I was able to love myself through him because of what I saw in him that was reflective of me. If you are not starting to see how complicated this really is to try and separate yourself from, on a dime mind you, than you are the crazy one and not I.
So
I am at a crossroads. I can go back (to old me), but I do not wish to. The thought of it makes me cry. And I cannot move forward because that path was barred, so after having been built up and then abandoned for all the reasons that brought me there in the first place, I am left looking for an entirely new path in the middle of some very wild, neglected and overgrown woods. I am not sure how to proceed. I have tools but they are not trued.
Maybe they are.
I suppose I blaze my own trail now and push through the briars that I have once again fallen into. (true story, I very literally once did, alone on an exploratory jaunt while on backpacking trip, blazing my own trail, fell right into thorny bushes, in my running shorts and a tank, came out with scratches and gashes criss-crossing over every inch of my exposed appendages)
In the briars. Not sure how to get out, knowing its going to be painful no matter what way I go and I am just not dressed for the occasion. Silly girl. When will you ever learn?

...Never.
I will never learn to stop exploring
Even if it means I might get hurt.
That is something I like about myself
SO though this blog entry still went light on the heavy and I trailed off into directions I did not anticipate I will let it be what it is and leave it with my story.

my scarlet letter

Today I got a letter to inform me that I have been discharged as a patient from Dr. Cherri. (name changed).
Umm... Okay
why the games?
I don't understand this.
Do you remember the movie Zootopia?
It's about stereotyping and the damages of it. It's also about the futile battle that many of us have in attempting to live outside of what we are being pigeonholed as. Unfortunately when you are in that place, anything you do will count against you as confirmation that you are what they suspected.
It is sad and exhausting and most people just give up and live within the confines of what they are being told they are.
I thought I'd had found the help I needed to find my way out. I thought I was making progress.
But suddenly it was decided that I was too much of a liability.
I don't think I was or am.
But I see how in my tired and frustrated moments I proved them right.
I see how in my intensity of concern I sabotaged myself yet again.

It would be nice if life were like the movies and we all had a happy ending.
Or even like all the true success stories we are so keen to eat up.
But rarely is there a success story that comes from a person who really had all the odds stacked against them. Rarely do our big box heroes come from the odds of most of us and if they do we only know about them because someone of higher status or wealth is exploiting them.

It is a strange world we live in and sometimes I would like to leave it.

...Which is why I choose to laugh instead.
To laugh at the craziness of humans and their silly egos
To laugh at my own plight and stupidity
To laugh at the sad things that break my heart in such beautiful ways.

My scarlet letter is an L
and this is funny because I need not be a liability
but I likely will be if you treat me as such
because this fire is wild and free and will maintain the forest ecosystems if you allow it and work with it
but it will burn down the world if you think to control it by ignoring it or demanding it to conform to the rules that are ethical only for squirrels.

And I think that analogy is really stupid
so it makes me laugh
and I'll leave it
because why the hell not