Wars and rumor of wars

I come on here to write sometimes because what I really want is someone to talk to. Someone who understands, someone who cares. 

The problem with people, facilities, institutions, and organizations handling certain types of countertransference the way they do is that they absolutely reinforce all of the rejections and negative perceptions we have about ourselves built on foundations that are often created by the negligent and/or selfish treatment of others who have debased and degraded us in so many different ways in the first place.

"I am not worthy of love and acceptance," is the message I keep receiving... and I can't seem to pull out of the external cycles that keep reinforcing those internal messages...

My safe place, my home rejecting me, when I was most vulnerable, to never again let me in.  

"Please don't shut the door on me completely," I plead, "or I'll just keep coming back trying to kick it down."

It was not a threat. It was not what I wanted or planned to do. It was not anything consciously intended at all. It was a response from my body, mind, soul and all parts of me telling him that I needed the safe place that he was for me while I was in the midst of the turmoil outside of his fortress. It was pure self-preserving instinct speaking. 

To better explain, imagine a child in a war torn dangerous place who happens to stumble across a rescue mission, a fortress surrounded by protective walls. The child is let in, made to feel safe and protected and given food or some other form of sustenance or protection to bring back to their own family. Family who is actively engaged in the wars that the child is yearning to escape. As the war becomes more intense, as it moves closer to the child's home and family, the child begins to understand that they don't want the war, they want to be part of the safety and peace that the mission is professing and claiming to be. The mission that had taken him in and offered the assistance and protection the child so desperately yearned for. 

When the war is at the child's door, ready to claim the life and liberties of the child the child flees and returns to the mission only to find the door shut tight, their previous saviors locked tight inside refusing to respond to the knocking, then pounding, of the frightened child whose life and safety is now in immediate danger. 

The child is not kicking and pounding at the door because they intend to hurt the mission, they are kicking and screaming because they are pleading for their life and begging for the help and protection that they know lies on the other side of that door as their assassins close in from all sides...

...Somehow I managed to survive on the outside; amidst so many warring forces. I had to negotiate, pretend, agree, fight, hide, and do whatever I had to in order to survive, one foot in both camps, at home and a fraud at all times -all while knowing this fortress exists but simply didn't want me anymore. 

How long can that last? How long can I survive in this warring world that does not want me either? 

Alone, running and hiding while somehow trying to connect and create a new space for myself that mimics the lie I once believed to be true: that I was worthy of love, appreciation, acceptance, help and protection, and even that I had value so significant it was scary to those who could utilize it best for the benefit of themselves and others amidst the tumultuous times....

A lie. A heart breaking and devastating lie? Or is it the truth and those on the other side of the wall, hiding behind their fortress walls, are simply cowards? Maybe cowards who don't really care to accomplish the mission they profess to be working at and toward and collecting money for? 

Tired. Sad. Brain stumbling again. Relationships impossible to navigate anymore because I am not worth saving and that impacts every aspect of your life. Others will believe it too, when they know that you have been rejected by the mission that claims to be the protector of your exact kind. They make you wrong to ease their own fears that maybe our worshipped gods of Dr's and PhD's might not be gods after all. Then, once labeled, by those same perceived gods, confirmation biases becomes the oppression used to control. -

...Now that'd be a good study, "How are confirmation biasses used to oppress marginalized populations?"

Maybe those on the other side of the wall are actually the warlords creating the wars while claiming to be the safe places and sanctuaries for the refugees of their own destructions. 

Tired and sad. 

sleep to reset. Maybe that is all that I need...

and inside me I hear and I am reminded, "he doesn't care, he's not going to read it, he's embarrassed by you and ashamed." 

move on. move on. please feet keep working. Please keep me moving on... don't try to go back to the lies. 

 

Turn Around Bright Eyes

 When I rolled the 300K mile Jetta with my kids in carseats in the back, I had a clairvoyant moment in which I understand completely the concept of faith, as the car floated over and landed softly topside down. 

I crawled out the window of my car and with the help of a shaken passer by we retrieved my two children who were hanging upside down in their carseats. My daughter hung a bit longer than my son since she was retrieved second. I suspect that is why she had a slight red mark on her shoulder where the carseat belt held her securely upside down. Aside from that the only other injury between the three of us was a small cut on my left pointer finger. 

That cut healed a little slower than expected, and left a rather bulging scar that was slightly tender, but it seemed to be all the way healed. Then months later a strange thing happened, a small shard of glass worked its way out of the old injury and the bulging scar. The bulk disappeared and now the scar is hard to find.

Injuries can be very interesting and it is fascinating how differently our bodies can respond to foreign objects that become embedded in them. Like slivers. You can get a tiny to large sliver from any number of things and they can range from unnoticeable to quite painful. Some have to be pulled out but others will actually work themselves out on their own. Sometimes the skin will heal over and the body will hardly care it is there while other times the tiniest sliver can quickly turn into a nasty infection. Some slivers, especially if it is from certain species of plants and/or animals can actually work their way deeper into your tissues, like porcupine quills. This is why we usually try to get the buggers out even if they are not bothering us in ways that cause pain.

Glass shards. They can be slivers and they can embed and do the same thing. 

But what about the pieces and shards of people left in our hearts as they splinter and pull away from us? 

What do you do about those? How do you remove those? Is it better to remove it or let it work is way out? Or will they work themselves deeper inward if ignored and left to their own devices? Which is more likely to destroy the tender heart of the person whose heart was pierced; pull the shards out or leave them be? Do we need to become like Ironman and develop some fancy sophisticated mechanism that keeps the potentially deadly shard from breaking our heart completely by keeping them from going either in or out?

... a few days ago I blogged out some of my anger and frustration. The name of Dr. He making its way out on this published blog again. He who should not be named. 

Was it a mistake to name him? Could that cause me more harm? Could it harm him? Determined to quite believing in the ideals that may at times imbalance my ability and choices in acting, I chose again to leave that name up; an effort to stop protecting a person who may be causing similar harm to others...

...But a few shards of him are still left in my heart and since not all the pieces had worked themselves out something was activated... and I am again reminded of the good and ideals that I still want to believe...

What is this? What does it me? And what to do about it? 

I think of my friend far away who understands the betraying countertransference creature... I am confident she would understand, better than any, my blogging of these last few days. And I reflect on the power I seem to be giving by renaming that which I want benign. 

Some shards have worked themselves out and that progress I do not want to undo or reverse. But also some pieces of me I don't want to loose, so I decide it is a mistake and I unpublished his name. 

Unnamed he is much more benign and so am I to his good works and positive potential that -in spite of it all, I still know that he has some. My hope that he might help more than he hurts. 

Such a strange place to be... But it's also faith in me, that I might help more than I hurt as well. 

He said he'll never have anything to do with me outside of therapy, and he doesn't believe in forever anymore. But I do believe in forever, and I don't believe in never -Now what is to be done about that?

I don't know.

but I do know that mistakes are often correctable and I am allowed to make them too. 

However I'd like to remain the type of person that will try not to make them at the expense of others and I will correct them whenever I can.  

It's a motto and a hope that others might live by those standards -so often proclaimed declarations of their professions. Declarations and professional standards that too often get swept under the rug and hidden with skeletons in closets that fill up too quickly with a lot of easily correctable and reversible mistakes. It's baggage that does not need to be denied, hidden and held onto by those to whom it does not belong. You need to understand that taking my baggage, hiding it, and lying about it does not lighten my load or yours  at all. Even if you leave some of your own baggage with me. 

 

 

Yesterday

 "Love was such an easy game to play. Now I need a place to hide away."

Oh, do I believe in yesterday?

hmm. Yesterday. I was angry and posted it. Today I am angry and blurry. My brain is struggling to stay ahead of the negligent and intentional "inflictions of emotional distress." 

And the ringing in my ear keeps on nagging. Reminding me that I have permanent and lasting damage... reminding me that these struggles are further compounded by that... and the ringing keeps nagging

... but this time it is also a gentle reminder. A comforting ringing that reminds me that I am here, I am present, and I am STRONG enough to fight and keep fighting. 

Renee says I don't have to fight. And she is right. But she is also not quite right. I think I know and understand what she means, but it's still and truly a fight that I don't think it quite right to deny at this particular moment in time. 

Which I suppose is why I am here right now. Because I am choosing to fight it. Or maybe a more correct phrasing is to handle it; I am choosing to handle it. Not to ignore it, not to pretend, not to allow, not to suppress, and not to accept the oppression, bad treatment, dehumanizing, degrading, and violations of my rights.

Yesterday. I was mad and I named the name of he who should not be named because I do not wish to keep protecting him. It is a foolish thing to do considering he would have rather I died than admit he made a mistake. Or, again, he really was up to no good and there were no mistakes but intentional abuses of power, position, and influence. alas.. who cares, he's a schmuck and we know it. It is sad and I wish it to not be so and admittedly I still cling to the notion that it might not be true, but alas, that has done no good; so I leave the post up as evidence and testimony to my efforts to let go of those notions and words that the reality of actions have disproven.

still cares, more true than who cares, which is a part of me that is worth embracing. 

truth, justice, concern for others, forgiving, determined, intelligent...

I am on here now to turn myself around. Change my perspective again and let go of the darkness that is trying to pull me now, trying to destroy me again. 

It's pretty amazing how dark the world and people can be and how little regard they can hold for others. It's shocking to me... 

Still shocking. and sad. And I think that is how I would like to stay. I do not want to join their dark deprives and I will not let there bigotry destroy me.

Proud. I can be. I am allowed. Proud because I can pull myself out IN SPITE of the added challenges pulling me down.

To the grave.

I will not go. Not now, not yet, I have too much still left to do. 

Turning around is starting to work and I am feeling lighter, freer, and happier again. 

Now for an anecdote of gained understanding, empathy and compassion that I'd never have been able to understand otherwise: The discrimination I have faced is quite real and incredibly frustrating ESPECIALLY when it comes from the industry in which I perceive so much potential for good; that being the field of psychology. It has caused me to reflect on issues of racism and other forms of prejudice, bigotry and discrimination. I think of how blacks were not allowed to participate in sports just because they were black even though so many of them are so naturally and biologically athletically gifted. An area where they had so much potential and yet they were not allowed to participate, and dismissed, ignored, degraded and even vilified, when they tried... You have no idea, until you have lived it, just how demoralizing and dehumanizing, degrading, and how unequivocally unfair this really is... 

Then to be vilified for trying and criminalized when someone else tries to stand up and speak out for you and at times and without your knowledge of it even happening... We, as a society, a country, as individuals and institutions still have such a long way to go. 

So I fight. Not just for me but for all minorities and marginalized people. I will fight alone if I have to and harder when I need to. I will keep fighting; being the pain in the ass I am accused of being, until the asses quit sitting on people and crushing their hopes, dreams and potential for good in this world. It is quite demoralizing and dehumanizing to be sat on; so if you'd like your pains in the ass to stop being that then maybe you should sit your ass by our sides and try listening to the pains you are determined to squelch. 

To those we hate to have loved (and trusted).

"my life is very complex right now," says the man who was screwing with my brain when he was supposed to be my champion.

You have no f*@% idea.

that word is coming out...

Which means I am struggling more than I care to let on in realtime.

I am angry. I am tired of being treated with so little regard. I am tired of knowing too much and having to fight for the most minimal of fair treatment. I am tired of being ignored and unheard. I am tired of being expected to be what everyone else needs me to be. 

I am angry that people at Utah State University are being as stupid, disrespectful, bigoted as they are. I am shocked by the police chief, captain, and officers there. Shocked. I understand now why people want to defund the police. 

I am angry for injustices others have suffered. I want to scream until I am heard.

And those damned images just keep coming back, a symptom of rejection, and what society is feeding.

Trapped.

I feel trapped and I am so damn mad at Dr He. The creator of my demise. 

I have a million times changed my perspective and come at it all from different angles. I went to school with high hopes, faith, and the most confidence I could muster only to have it turn into the shit that it has.

Bad people. USU, Cache county, has a lot of bad people. 

too many...

I used to think that people were basically good... But now I know otherwise. They are corrupt, ignorant, unkind, deceitful, and lemming like. A witch hunt. A a band wagon. That is what they resort to, excited by the prospect of drama, but not real drama, only one families trauma, that they deep down know is safe to attack so they can pretend to be hero's by bullying... Utah State University, what a great school (that is sarcasm, in case you did not pick up on that). 

tired.

not broken...

but entirely broken.

hurt

angry

lonely,

sad

denied

rejected

reduced

I hate you Dr. He, because you made my life so much more complex than it needed to be and when it already was. Are you proud? of how you screwed up my brain, of how you had more control than I ever allowed you to have and in spite of my resistance? Are you happy to know that I still struggle to keep you out of my head and that piercing shards of you still remain in my heart? Or are you disappointed that I did not die for you and/or because of you?  

Dr. He, the most deceitful person I have ever let into my heart, Are you proud? 

I am more than you ever deserved and more than you will ever know. Someday you will cease to exist and I will no longer long or wish for resolve of the lies you told, planted and nourished. I will, someday, break free of this and your name will be as benign and obsolete as it is to the rest of the world... Some day...

and what a sad thing, your existence as obsolete, insignificant, and unimportant as you have made me to be. 

So Happy Birthday and Merry Christmas, Someday I will break free. 

and Same to you USU, the University of Bigotry 

 *7/25/21- update: Name changed... refer to blog entry from today 7/25/21

The Little Red Hen and other fairly common tails of bigotry.

 Blog it out. That is what I feel like doing in this moment. Instead of closing my eyes again.

"Who will help me...?" Asked the Little Red Hen.

"Not I."

"Not I." 

"Not I."

"Then I will do it myself," said the Little Red Hen. And she did.

That is how I feel right now. There are laws, there are rules, there are constitutions that should have and should still be protecting myself and my son who made that pesky phone call. There are... but trying to have your rights protected when those in power have decided yours don't count, is very difficult. 

But that is my job now. It is a big part of why I wanted to get that master's or PhD in psychology, to help end such blatant and damaging discrimination and bigotry... To walk away from this fight I give up my rights and agree to the devaluing, degrading, and damaging not just of myself but of my son and of others who have similar disabilities or that have been discriminated against in similar ways. 

It is not okay. It is not Okay for me to be criminally charged because a professor was treating me bad enough to trigger PTSD and to upset a kid enough that the kid felt he needed to fight back. 

The culture of victim shaming and blaming being fully supported and upheld by Utah State University and Cache County prosecuting attorneys -who actually did not even have jurisdiction over the situation. It should have gone to the Juvenile Courts and the Utah Legal Code: "(2) The Legislature finds it is necessary to provide child victims and child witnesses with additional consideration and different treatment than that usually afforded to adults. The treatment should ensure that children's participation in the criminal justice process be conducted in the most effective and least traumatic, intrusive, or intimidating manner."
https://le.utah.gov/xcode/Title77/Chapter37/C77-37_1800010118000101.pdf

Utah State University's false allegations of me made my son a victim and he was clearly a witness. Wad he treated according to Utah Code? No, this clearly did not happen. 

At all. Instead the pursued the most intrusive, intimidation and traumatic for both the kid and his family. 

And that is just one violation by Utah State University and the Utah State University Police. 

It is mind boggling to me that they would proceed in such a way as to cause irreversible damage to me when they knew it was not me that made the call and that it was a kid. It is weird to me that people would suspect that I put the kid up to it, especially if you look at and consider the circumstances and how I was handling the situation. 

But bigotry and prejudices create a lot of weird misconceptions about people. 

Yesterday I read, in the APA journal, about how the field of psychology prides itself in being scientific and its scientific research, but that psychology in the US is to US oriented and thus cannot be generalized to the broader world population.

...Big Sigh...

Maybe the real problem is the way we look at and approach scientific research and how we use it to overgeneralize. 

"anomaly" 

"outlier"

"You present well"

 I don't fit the generalized findings of research.... Of course I don't. I don't want to. I am human and an individual. Not a number, not the summery of generalized and overgeneralized findings. 

Science and the scientific approach psychologists value so much according to the APA demand discrimination, yet discrimination destroys individuals, communities, etc. and we know this

Jumping again now my brain is wanting to scream about the whole "mental illness" label. It's a condescending and degrading term that does not apply to people who are carefully, conscientiously, and successfully managing their psychological and physiological mental differences. It's why I am slightly angry with the gays; because they abandoned the rest of us with this degrading term and doing so has actually increased the overgeneralized condescension of the term...

Sigh... sigh...

Maybe I will go close my eyes again... because they are starting to leek. 

Extending tolerance and compassion

Not many reads for determined little weeds

but that's just how it is for us 

when we are perceived as nothing more than weeds.

And that's not what I came on to write but I'm a bit discouraged by the numbers that stay so very low... even though

I keep fighting to get and stay ahead

of my broken head

that is discriminated against and held against me

by the very people who should know better and are in the positions to create positive change. 

Yet, the harder I try the more it is used against me. Sometimes it really seems that people have no idea and are so very ignorant about how harsh, intolerant and mistreating they really are. Sometimes I do wish my "disabilities" were more visible and better understood. I wish they were part of the trendy disadvantages, like certain (and only certain) races and and physiological problems are.

But they are not. So moving one

Brazil man. I told the story about him and what I learned to a small group the other day. I admitted that I felt guilt and shame for my own personal biases and prejudices, my misunderstanding, misconceptions and even discrimination of him. "Don't beat your self up," on of the group members tell me. 

I don't. My referencing guilt and shame is what has this group member and others concerned when I tell them I felt it. Anyone that knows me knows that I was not likely as unkind or unfair as many others would be. But that does not matter, I was not as kind and fair as I like to be and feel I should have and could have been. But the bigger concern I have in this moment with that group is the misunderstanding of guilt and shame. So I explain:

Guilt and shame have there place and that was an appropriate time for me to feel it. I am glad that I did.  I am glad that I felt it because it means I was aware and that I have a conscience. Feeling it caused me to reflect on the situation. It let me know that I did something wrong or that went against my core values and beliefs. It caused me to analyze the situation and by doing so I was able to recognize how deeply entrenched the biases, misconceptions, prejudices and discriminations are in the societies and cultures I come from and how deeply entrenched they were in me. It helped me see some of the harmful errors in our USA ways. It helped me to confront my own biases and discriminating actions against not only this man but others and even against my own self. 

This situation helped me to make a choice, then and there and multiple times since, about how I perceive and treat others who are labeled as "crazy," about how I treat myself, and about how and what I do to help bring about changes... 

which I suppose is ultimately why I am sad about the low numbers and the losses of opportunities that have come as a result of those exact problems with our USA culture -because of those those deeply engrained and deeply entrenched biases, prejudices,  misunderstandings, misconceptions, stigmas and discriminating practices.

Sometimes this burden makes my head heavy and tired and my eyes taught with sight blurring liquid. The burden actually exacerbating symptoms of the disability that I have... and I often find myself wishing that Pride month extended to all of us who have had to carry those labels of "mentally ill" and that have been discriminated against and ostracized for those conditions that kind of set us apart.   

For the record, I am no more or less "ill" than a homosexual. The difference is that my conditions are still labeled, officially and otherwise, as "mental illness," and I am still perceived to be, labeled as such, and heavily discriminated against for it, much like gays were just a few years ago. 

But I am not alone in this. I am speaking for many kind and valuable people who are silenced more than you care to know and are used, abused, ostracized, stigmatized, overgeneralized about and lumped into categories that we do not belong in.... so many heartbreaking and devastating stories I know but that are not mine to share. So I share mine and give you permission to share mine as well. Not because I am "self promoting" but because I want to help people and I want deep and meaningful changes to happen on individual and societal and cultural levels. 

So this month as you challenge your views and perceptions of others who may have different ideas, values, beliefs about sexuality and gender please consider challenging your views and others about people with very real physiological conditions and disadvantages that are still labeled as "mental illnesses" and still significantly misrepresented, misunderstood and heavily discriminated against when they are trying to work through their conditions and learning how to adapt and live with them. It's not easy and we also need love, acceptance, tolerance and compassion. 

Thank you for taking the time to read. 

Determined little weeds

I want to blog about these pretty little things. 

Like this short sweet little guy found in my yard

  And these unusually tall versions found in the shady and plant crowded foothills of the mountains by me. 

Look close, there are a few, and they are very tall. 

 I especially loved the tenacity, determination and resilience shown by this particular sweetie as it stretched and reached anyway it possibly could to reach sunlight; a resource it needs to survive. 

That is what I wanted to blog about. And it does fit but something more is haunting again... and it is so, literally, exhausting. I had dreams about dreams and hauntings of the He who would not let me be what I really was but instead turned me into a perceived liability... 

Hauntings. Dream disturbances. Dreams of dreams and trying to figure out in my dreams which experiences were real and which were previous dreams... I lived a lot of lives in those days but some were merely dreams. Waking up already depleted and defeated again. Dr. She says that is PTSD. 

Okay. 

But why? Why must I be made out to be a bad guy when I was/am trying my hardest to #1 get the help I need, and #2 trying to help bring about positive changes for others so they can get the help they need. 

And there is a #3 to it to that hurts due to how ignored and discredited I have been for it, #3 trying to help and protect even those that caused the harm to me. 

PTSD... It's weird.

So is mania

and TBI

and the lasting effects those have on yourself and your relationships.

But today I am not as sad as my dreams want me to feel. I am happy, strong and confident because that is what I am determined to be. It's just a matter of stretching and reaching for the sunlight and resources I need. 

...but... it's still hard. and it still hurts... Especially when I have to go through all of those messy records to try and get the resources I actually am supposed to be "entitled" to. 

Stretch and reach. Stretch and reach. I have done it before and I can do it again.