My Friend, the Tums Bottle
We've gotten close lately, Tums and me. (For those that don't like these long-ish posts (or emotional ones, 'cause this one's a doozie), move along. "You don't see ANYthing..." Others, please click to ). I've had my problems with stress over the years. Crying jags in the stairwells at work, a trip to the local church at lunchtime to ask God why I can't handle the opportunities in front of me, Xanax, various antidepressants, migraines, lots and LOTS of counseling/therapy/somebody-else-helping-me-get-my-sh*t-together. The list goes on. But lately, it's gotten a little out of hand. The last several months, I've had every scopy and test and diagnostic procedure possible done on me to try to explain why the hell I've been feeling nauseous all the time, like 5 out of 7 days a week, mostly first thing in the morning (which was scary the first few months), and -surprise- especially strongly on days when I had something big happening.
My last visit with my family doc (wherein she ordered yet *more* tests - yay), she mentioned something that hadn't gotten my attention before. She said it may be stomach acids and that it may be acid reflux or something that I'm misidentifying as "nausea." Hmm... I've never been a heartburn person. I don't feel any burning or "acid-y" type feeling. And as the interwebs so kindly reaffirmed for me, the definition of "nausea" is: "n. 1. A feeling of sickness in the stomach characterized by an urge to vomit." Um, duh! So, yeah, if I feel like I'm about to hurl, I describe what I'm feeling as me feeling nauseous. Seems pretty straightforward to me. Not so in the medical field, apparently. "Nausea" as a symptom is indicative of other issues, namely strong female stuff (which I HAVE had trouble with in the past, so it made sense to check that out - but one diagnostic laparoscopy and transvaginal ultrasound (doesn't THAT sound like fun?) later - and, no dice), colon issues (boy, do we really need to go into what I've had done in order to check out THAT particular body part? I didn't think so - let's just leave it at my colon is just fine, thank you very much), liver, kidneys, general abdominal problems (check, check, check) and other holes, tears, extra bits of tissue (evil or not) all along the various body paths and systems (fine so far). So... all that, and still no answers. *sigh* My faith in the modern world of medicine has waned of late, I have to admit. Well... after my last visit (when she mentioned the acid stuff), I talked with Tom about what she said, and HE suggested I try taking some Tums the next time I felt nauseous, just to see what happened. Maybe the doc was right. Hey, wait. What? THAT never happens. *bang head on desk* Okay, fine.
Well. Um. It worked - eh - sometimes. *sigh* Okay. So, progress. Sort of. As it turns out, even Tums can't topple the nerves and stress which are Cristy's expectations of herself in her world. Yeah. So, not *quite* back to the drawing board, but we might be headed in the right direction. Maybe there's nothing wrong with my body physically; maybe I just have *reactions* to things. Okay. I haven't received the results from the upper GI I did last week (barium, yum!), but it wouldn't surprise me if I've developed ulcers or hernias or something, which of course, even Tums can't battle by itself. We'll see when I see the doc for a follow-up in September.
But, back to the actual issue here. The problem is that this nausea business has gotten worse the last several months (crazily and coincidentally during the same period of time I've been back to work - how about that?). *sigh* I'm guessing my esophagus has just given up trying to keep everything down. Go easy on it - it's had a lot of pressure on it over the years. Between puking every few hours the first day of my period before I got on the pill when I was a teen and not being able to stomach (hee hee) pressure or stress all my adult life, it deserves a break, man, not more work piled on it. Unfortunately, I can't give it that break. I have to soldier on. I HAVE started work, and I DO still have a problem dealing with stress, and it's not a good idea for me to give up on either the work or the working on how to handle stress. Great. And, how fun, both of these are probably going to cause more stomach upset in the process. Neat. Somehow, I need to figure out how to balance them and learn to deal in the meantime. Eeek. I'm seeing a crazy DIY home project involving adding a second story onto a house while trying to pour the foundation at the same time...
Okay, so I'm taking Tums and sucking on cinnamon discs (supposed to help with nausea) and occasionally vomiting anyway, and I'm tackling getting back to work after a week of absolute emotional chaos (not to mention a day spent at the hospital waiting for the above-mentioned (gag!) barium to pass through my system - joy), and... Tom is determined to help me with the whole "I can control my ability to manage stress" thing. Ew. Not a journey I want to go on. I've DONE all the self-help, stress management crap: organized my desktop, gathered all my notes to one sheet instead of endless post-its, take breaks, post "You Can Do It!" signs all over, blah, blah, blah. I don't think I need to do this "exploration of how to manage stress" crap. Done it. Didn't help. Do I have to, mom?? I don't wanna'! Stamp, mumble, complain... *sigh*
Okay, so I picked myself up from the ground last week and asked Tom to go with me to my counseling appointment. I needed him to better explain to my therapist what he thought we could accomplish with this whole "managing stress" thing. I was still fuzzy on how it could actually apply to me, so I needed a translator. He had my back. (Good hubbies are nice that way.) And, my counselor proceeded to tell me all this stuff about:
How the world isn't black and white (Do WHAT?!?)
How the world's expectations of me are not nearly as lofty as those I place on myself (You mean, when they say "Whatever you can do is great, whenever you can come in is fine," they mean... Whatever you can do is great, whenever you can come in is fine? and... all of my blog/facebook/livejournal/twitter/whatever-the-hell-else-I'm-not-keeping-up-with-online buddies aren't all suffering agonizing pain and anxiety and depression and hurt and anger at my lack of posts/updates/comments/evidence-of-any-kind-that-I-still-know-who-they-ares and aren't currently planning a holy war on all of my accounts in protest?)
How my 20 hours a week at my new job (where they KNEW I WAS A STUDENT GOING IN) is not going to make or break the company
How, no, my expecting great things of myself is not an ego thing.
Wait, so what is it? Well... turns out that it's a beat-myself-up-because-that's-what-I-was-taught-to-do-as-a-kid thing. Um... huh. Was NOT expecting that. I just thought I sucked. Hmm... *deep breath* (This gets into some deep stuff here, so if you want to bail, now's the time.)
See, I had a messed up childhood... in a LOT of ways, but one of the bigger ways was that my stepdad (and my mom's refusal to rebuke my stepdad) royally screwed with my sense of right and wrong and rules and punishment. The rule was... whatever he wanted it to be. And, his style of punishment was abuse and twisted logic and "lessons." (First, you should know that I was all of 7 or 8 when he came into our lives, and he didn't leave 'til I'd been out of the house for several years.) I tried SO hard as a kid to figure out what the rules were and how I was "supposed" to act in order to avoid punishment. It didn't help. I never seemed to measure up, and I could never figure out what the hell was right and what was wrong.
And (as I am STILL trying to deal with and believe and figure out), that was HIS fault. HE was the adult. HE was inconsistent. HE was twisted and manipulative and mean. HE confused my poor little girl brain and emotions and tricked me into believing him and his messed up rules. Nothing I did was ever good enough (or so I believed). Now, just to be clear here: I was NOT a problem child. Just the opposite. I was a straight-A, Honor Roll kid, invited to special programs at almost every school I attended even though we moved to a different one every 6-12 months. I was a goody-two-shoes, terrified of getting in trouble, at home and at school. I *never* got sent to the principal's office or got in trouble in class.
But despite all my attempts to "follow the rules," I still got in trouble at home... constantly. I got spanked because it was Sunday... constantly. Why? Because he didn't like church. Oh, he wouldn't say that, and there was no clear connection to the fact. We (us kids) just always knew to watch out on Sundays, and we also knew that, more likely than not, we'd be getting in trouble no matter how careful we were. I got spanked because I fluffed the garbage bag too loudly. Why? Obviously... because he was trying to watch tv. I got "taught" things about sexuality under the guise that "if I did this, that could happen to me" (messed up "lessons" for if I did this because, obviously, him doing it was not punishment, it was teaching) or "here, let me teach you this" (because, obviously, I needed to learn this, and, obviously, he was right person to teach me). Yeah. My stepdad was an ass, a jerk, a child abuser, and I wish he was in prison (he's not) so that what happens to child molesters in prison would happen to him. (As my counselor nowadays so awesomely puts it, he's a fuckhead. I so love that word. I have never in my life used it for anything, but it so perfectly suits him.)
Anyway, at the time, my mom didn't fight him, and as I was a little kid and didn't have a clue, I had no idea his rules were unreasonable or wrong. He was an authority figure in my life, and the only other one in my life at the time (my mom) went along with whatever he said, so I figured my confused feelings (of him possibly being wrong) were bad and wrong and needed to be squelched. So, that's what I did. I squelched them. And I grew up confused and stressed out about following all of the rules (real and imaginary) and always fearing being punished and not knowing why... and never feeling good enough. I obviously wasn't good enough or I wouldn't have gotten punished so much. Right? I didn't hear praise from him, except in a twisted, sexual way that was WAAAY messed up and confused me even more (Yeah, can you see years of promiscuity in the future of that little girl? Yeah, I did, too.). And, I've been trying to figure out what the "rules" are ever since.
Basically, his influence over my development was to make me believe that the standards of acceptance in the world were always too high for me to achieve. I got punished no matter how well I did when I was a kid, so, *obviously*, I still wasn't doing well enough. And, that has been my measuring stick ever since. I'm never good enough. I'm not perfect. I haven't accomplished *every* possible goal in *every* area in my life, QED: I'm a failure.
And, guess what the sick, twisted reverse effect of that understanding has become? Whenever I get close to any kind of success in my life, I back off from it. My stepfather convinced me that not only am I not good enough to succeed, but when I THOUGHT I was succeeding, the reward from him was inappropriate sexual weirdness and abuse and completely unrelated punishment. No, thank you. I'll pass. ... So, I did... and do. I can name so many points in my life that I was *this* close to what I thought would be achieving "success" with something, and it was at that point that I: left, gave up, broke down, became hysterical, panicked, moved, changed jobs, dropped out of a class or out of school or passed on an offer I was interested in.
And THAT is what is going on now. Over the years, his teaching me all of that has morphed into my telling myself that: I'm not good enough, I can't handle it, something bad's gonna' happen if I accept it or do well at it or acknowledge success at it (whatever "it" is). I'm AFRAID of succeeding. I don't know what it's supposed to feel like. My only experience with it has brought me punishment and confusion and grief. His voice in my head has become my own voice, and I'm repeating a mantra that is blocking me from moving forward. When I feel *close*, I shut down, I feel overwhelmed, I panic, I freak out. Surely people don't actually BELIEVE I can do this? Surely you're not counting on ME? Surely *I'm* not allowed to count on me? Surely. Right? I don't know. I get so confused and scared and nervous and overwhelmed. It doesn't matter that the rest of the world doesn't expect me to do all these things I think they do; *I* expect myself to. It doesn't matter that the rest of the world doesn't expect perfection; *I* expect it of myself. I also expect myself to be able to meet every expectation they MAY have. I also expect myself not to make any mistakes, to be able to handle any off days or illness without flinching OR loss of productivity.
So whenever I start succeeding at something, I shut down. I get nauseous. I throw up. I get migraines. I put more "preparing" to-dos on my list than I've had for the last year. And, then BECAUSE of my emotional inability to function, because of my illness, because of my migraines, because of the ridiculous number of to-dos on my pile, I grind to a halt. I don't get anything done. I don't move forward. I collapse into myself in panic and helplessness. I become my own self-fulfilling prophecy. I prove to the world that, SEE, I CAN'T do it. Told you! SEE? I'm a failure. I couldn't do it. I can't handle it. I can't cut it. I'm not good enough.
And, THAT is the demon I'm fighting right now. A self-created demon that I have no proof won't exist if I stop believing in it. A powerful demon that controls me as surely as my stepfather did. He is a fuckhead. And, so is this demon. And, I'm going to fight it. I'm starting right now. I'm admitting it exists and CAN be fought. The demon is not that I'm not good enough. The demon is my BELIEF that I'm not good enough. And, I refuse to let him control me anymore. He does not get to run my life. *I* do. I will. It begins now. You, sir, are going to die.
My last visit with my family doc (wherein she ordered yet *more* tests - yay), she mentioned something that hadn't gotten my attention before. She said it may be stomach acids and that it may be acid reflux or something that I'm misidentifying as "nausea." Hmm... I've never been a heartburn person. I don't feel any burning or "acid-y" type feeling. And as the interwebs so kindly reaffirmed for me, the definition of "nausea" is: "n. 1. A feeling of sickness in the stomach characterized by an urge to vomit." Um, duh! So, yeah, if I feel like I'm about to hurl, I describe what I'm feeling as me feeling nauseous. Seems pretty straightforward to me. Not so in the medical field, apparently. "Nausea" as a symptom is indicative of other issues, namely strong female stuff (which I HAVE had trouble with in the past, so it made sense to check that out - but one diagnostic laparoscopy and transvaginal ultrasound (doesn't THAT sound like fun?) later - and, no dice), colon issues (boy, do we really need to go into what I've had done in order to check out THAT particular body part? I didn't think so - let's just leave it at my colon is just fine, thank you very much), liver, kidneys, general abdominal problems (check, check, check) and other holes, tears, extra bits of tissue (evil or not) all along the various body paths and systems (fine so far). So... all that, and still no answers. *sigh* My faith in the modern world of medicine has waned of late, I have to admit. Well... after my last visit (when she mentioned the acid stuff), I talked with Tom about what she said, and HE suggested I try taking some Tums the next time I felt nauseous, just to see what happened. Maybe the doc was right. Hey, wait. What? THAT never happens. *bang head on desk* Okay, fine.
Well. Um. It worked - eh - sometimes. *sigh* Okay. So, progress. Sort of. As it turns out, even Tums can't topple the nerves and stress which are Cristy's expectations of herself in her world. Yeah. So, not *quite* back to the drawing board, but we might be headed in the right direction. Maybe there's nothing wrong with my body physically; maybe I just have *reactions* to things. Okay. I haven't received the results from the upper GI I did last week (barium, yum!), but it wouldn't surprise me if I've developed ulcers or hernias or something, which of course, even Tums can't battle by itself. We'll see when I see the doc for a follow-up in September.
But, back to the actual issue here. The problem is that this nausea business has gotten worse the last several months (crazily and coincidentally during the same period of time I've been back to work - how about that?). *sigh* I'm guessing my esophagus has just given up trying to keep everything down. Go easy on it - it's had a lot of pressure on it over the years. Between puking every few hours the first day of my period before I got on the pill when I was a teen and not being able to stomach (hee hee) pressure or stress all my adult life, it deserves a break, man, not more work piled on it. Unfortunately, I can't give it that break. I have to soldier on. I HAVE started work, and I DO still have a problem dealing with stress, and it's not a good idea for me to give up on either the work or the working on how to handle stress. Great. And, how fun, both of these are probably going to cause more stomach upset in the process. Neat. Somehow, I need to figure out how to balance them and learn to deal in the meantime. Eeek. I'm seeing a crazy DIY home project involving adding a second story onto a house while trying to pour the foundation at the same time...
Okay, so I'm taking Tums and sucking on cinnamon discs (supposed to help with nausea) and occasionally vomiting anyway, and I'm tackling getting back to work after a week of absolute emotional chaos (not to mention a day spent at the hospital waiting for the above-mentioned (gag!) barium to pass through my system - joy), and... Tom is determined to help me with the whole "I can control my ability to manage stress" thing. Ew. Not a journey I want to go on. I've DONE all the self-help, stress management crap: organized my desktop, gathered all my notes to one sheet instead of endless post-its, take breaks, post "You Can Do It!" signs all over, blah, blah, blah. I don't think I need to do this "exploration of how to manage stress" crap. Done it. Didn't help. Do I have to, mom?? I don't wanna'! Stamp, mumble, complain... *sigh*
Okay, so I picked myself up from the ground last week and asked Tom to go with me to my counseling appointment. I needed him to better explain to my therapist what he thought we could accomplish with this whole "managing stress" thing. I was still fuzzy on how it could actually apply to me, so I needed a translator. He had my back. (Good hubbies are nice that way.) And, my counselor proceeded to tell me all this stuff about:
Wait, so what is it? Well... turns out that it's a beat-myself-up-because-that's-what-I-was-taught-to-do-as-a-kid thing. Um... huh. Was NOT expecting that. I just thought I sucked. Hmm... *deep breath* (This gets into some deep stuff here, so if you want to bail, now's the time.)
See, I had a messed up childhood... in a LOT of ways, but one of the bigger ways was that my stepdad (and my mom's refusal to rebuke my stepdad) royally screwed with my sense of right and wrong and rules and punishment. The rule was... whatever he wanted it to be. And, his style of punishment was abuse and twisted logic and "lessons." (First, you should know that I was all of 7 or 8 when he came into our lives, and he didn't leave 'til I'd been out of the house for several years.) I tried SO hard as a kid to figure out what the rules were and how I was "supposed" to act in order to avoid punishment. It didn't help. I never seemed to measure up, and I could never figure out what the hell was right and what was wrong.
And (as I am STILL trying to deal with and believe and figure out), that was HIS fault. HE was the adult. HE was inconsistent. HE was twisted and manipulative and mean. HE confused my poor little girl brain and emotions and tricked me into believing him and his messed up rules. Nothing I did was ever good enough (or so I believed). Now, just to be clear here: I was NOT a problem child. Just the opposite. I was a straight-A, Honor Roll kid, invited to special programs at almost every school I attended even though we moved to a different one every 6-12 months. I was a goody-two-shoes, terrified of getting in trouble, at home and at school. I *never* got sent to the principal's office or got in trouble in class.
But despite all my attempts to "follow the rules," I still got in trouble at home... constantly. I got spanked because it was Sunday... constantly. Why? Because he didn't like church. Oh, he wouldn't say that, and there was no clear connection to the fact. We (us kids) just always knew to watch out on Sundays, and we also knew that, more likely than not, we'd be getting in trouble no matter how careful we were. I got spanked because I fluffed the garbage bag too loudly. Why? Obviously... because he was trying to watch tv. I got "taught" things about sexuality under the guise that "if I did this, that could happen to me" (messed up "lessons" for if I did this because, obviously, him doing it was not punishment, it was teaching) or "here, let me teach you this" (because, obviously, I needed to learn this, and, obviously, he was right person to teach me). Yeah. My stepdad was an ass, a jerk, a child abuser, and I wish he was in prison (he's not) so that what happens to child molesters in prison would happen to him. (As my counselor nowadays so awesomely puts it, he's a fuckhead. I so love that word. I have never in my life used it for anything, but it so perfectly suits him.)
Anyway, at the time, my mom didn't fight him, and as I was a little kid and didn't have a clue, I had no idea his rules were unreasonable or wrong. He was an authority figure in my life, and the only other one in my life at the time (my mom) went along with whatever he said, so I figured my confused feelings (of him possibly being wrong) were bad and wrong and needed to be squelched. So, that's what I did. I squelched them. And I grew up confused and stressed out about following all of the rules (real and imaginary) and always fearing being punished and not knowing why... and never feeling good enough. I obviously wasn't good enough or I wouldn't have gotten punished so much. Right? I didn't hear praise from him, except in a twisted, sexual way that was WAAAY messed up and confused me even more (Yeah, can you see years of promiscuity in the future of that little girl? Yeah, I did, too.). And, I've been trying to figure out what the "rules" are ever since.
Basically, his influence over my development was to make me believe that the standards of acceptance in the world were always too high for me to achieve. I got punished no matter how well I did when I was a kid, so, *obviously*, I still wasn't doing well enough. And, that has been my measuring stick ever since. I'm never good enough. I'm not perfect. I haven't accomplished *every* possible goal in *every* area in my life, QED: I'm a failure.
And, guess what the sick, twisted reverse effect of that understanding has become? Whenever I get close to any kind of success in my life, I back off from it. My stepfather convinced me that not only am I not good enough to succeed, but when I THOUGHT I was succeeding, the reward from him was inappropriate sexual weirdness and abuse and completely unrelated punishment. No, thank you. I'll pass. ... So, I did... and do. I can name so many points in my life that I was *this* close to what I thought would be achieving "success" with something, and it was at that point that I: left, gave up, broke down, became hysterical, panicked, moved, changed jobs, dropped out of a class or out of school or passed on an offer I was interested in.
And THAT is what is going on now. Over the years, his teaching me all of that has morphed into my telling myself that: I'm not good enough, I can't handle it, something bad's gonna' happen if I accept it or do well at it or acknowledge success at it (whatever "it" is). I'm AFRAID of succeeding. I don't know what it's supposed to feel like. My only experience with it has brought me punishment and confusion and grief. His voice in my head has become my own voice, and I'm repeating a mantra that is blocking me from moving forward. When I feel *close*, I shut down, I feel overwhelmed, I panic, I freak out. Surely people don't actually BELIEVE I can do this? Surely you're not counting on ME? Surely *I'm* not allowed to count on me? Surely. Right? I don't know. I get so confused and scared and nervous and overwhelmed. It doesn't matter that the rest of the world doesn't expect me to do all these things I think they do; *I* expect myself to. It doesn't matter that the rest of the world doesn't expect perfection; *I* expect it of myself. I also expect myself to be able to meet every expectation they MAY have. I also expect myself not to make any mistakes, to be able to handle any off days or illness without flinching OR loss of productivity.
So whenever I start succeeding at something, I shut down. I get nauseous. I throw up. I get migraines. I put more "preparing" to-dos on my list than I've had for the last year. And, then BECAUSE of my emotional inability to function, because of my illness, because of my migraines, because of the ridiculous number of to-dos on my pile, I grind to a halt. I don't get anything done. I don't move forward. I collapse into myself in panic and helplessness. I become my own self-fulfilling prophecy. I prove to the world that, SEE, I CAN'T do it. Told you! SEE? I'm a failure. I couldn't do it. I can't handle it. I can't cut it. I'm not good enough.
And, THAT is the demon I'm fighting right now. A self-created demon that I have no proof won't exist if I stop believing in it. A powerful demon that controls me as surely as my stepfather did. He is a fuckhead. And, so is this demon. And, I'm going to fight it. I'm starting right now. I'm admitting it exists and CAN be fought. The demon is not that I'm not good enough. The demon is my BELIEF that I'm not good enough. And, I refuse to let him control me anymore. He does not get to run my life. *I* do. I will. It begins now. You, sir, are going to die.