Eyebrows

I’ve talked a good deal about secrets and some about how the need for them limits options for expression. But I gave an example yesterday that surprised Shanda, which suggests I haven’t made the context clear. So here’s an example of how I had to keep all things secret at all times. When I was 12 – around the time Mother identified my dislike for being mistreated¹She understands this as me “changing” and “not loving her”, though in a broader perspective she should link those events to me being 4 not 12 because that’s when she actually start to feel separate from me. Realistically it coincides with my ability to be practically independent and to protect myself from some of her abuses, which she … Continue reading and started punishing me for it – she suggested that I write in a private journal. A journal she then read, told me she “wasn’t proud of” reading, but then proceeded to go through the thing with me point by point to explain how worried she was about each of my thoughts, and why I was wrong for having them. Afterward I was required to keep writing in the journal for some time, because she liked how that interaction went. So to protect myself it of course had to be filled with lies, and good enough ones that she could get her punishment reward out of it when she attacked me with it again, while hopefully still protecting me a bit.

She should have been concerned about what was in that journal because at the time my anxiety was so bad I had at panic attacks more than once a week and was clearly suicidal. But her concern of course was the way I wrote about her, or things she perceived as being about her, not about me. Her concerns was that my private thoughts didn’t provide her with enough adulation, and that was the reason that she felt like I wasn’t living up to my obligations as a child in providing her joy on demand and protection from all forms of pain.

That’s far from the only time I was betrayed or spied on and is obviously the reason secrets are so important to me, and so carefully studied by me. But it’s also the reason I have this disconnect between my interest in things like fashion or non-technical art and my actual involvement in them. It’s why I can be interested and educated and even participate in such things with others but can’t attach them to myself. I’m not afraid of how others will react, that they might not appreciate my expression in the way that I hope for. I’m afraid that someone I need will specifically punish me for it. That I create such punishment by allowing myself access to such outlets, and that I can be protected from it by keeping it separate from myself. That the punishment comes because my direct interactions with the thing are harmful to other people²Though I know that punishments don’t work and are themselves harmful they are widely accepted in society — often even demanded — and so I’ve trained myself to believe that the people issuing them at least think it they’re doing good. This is a useful belief to avoid feeling like other people are acting maliciously all the time, but it … Continue reading, and so I should protect everyone by only being involved second-hand.

On the topic of punishment and sharing: eyebrows. When we were getting a dog I tried to communicate to Shanda the importance of eyebrows. You acknowledged that I cared but I could not convince you that it was important to you directly. Yesterday you finally talked about Dog’s eyebrows in the way I hoped you always would, and I’m so glad you finally see it. It makes me happy that I can share them with you, and that we’ll be able to get good dog eyebrows in the future. I like Dog’s because they’re high-contrast — white on black — and because he has adorable flyaway whiskers on them and because they’re big enough to be seen from a long way away. I also hope you can better appreciate the way eyebrows are important for human feelings, and for communicating with both dogs and people³“When she wears sunglasses I can’t see her emotions”. The circumstances that created this exclamation were totally outside my control, but I’m so happy it happened because it’s so precisely the emotion I want to share with you sometimes and you yelled it at me in your own context.. I talk to Dog with my eyebrows all the time. It’s a skill I learned when I was trying to silently and without moving force toddlers to being quiet, because I needed them to be quiet to keep us all from getting hurt. At the time I thought I was doing the right thing — at the time I maybe was doing the right thing — but I see now I was trying to terrify a toddler into being quiet, not helping them learn to be calm. It’s slightly less dramatic, but it’s uncomfortably close to the way you might smother a crying infant to protect everyone else your hiding place while from discovery and death. Today I know how to use my eyebrows to communicate actual safety and not just terror, but I sometimes wish I just wasn’t trained in these skills to begin with. It’s the sort of “strong” that other people congratulate you for not because they want to emulate you but because they’re glad you did it instead of them.

Had a short intro session with a new therapist today. They did better in the one aspect I think I know how to evaluate — incremental improvement of their understanding. They improved their responses to topics that came up more than once, and synthesized new, accurate information based on separate but related pieces. It could be a fluke — or it might be that’s an irrelevant indication — but it’s a thing I decided would help me feel better understood, and that was happening at least in this first 20 minutes. They’re also a lot cheaper than the last one, and will process directly to my insurance, and supports (even promotes) video sessions, all of which work well for me in a logistical way. I’m a little nervous about the way they want to integrate body work because I have such a weird relationship with my body. In some ways I’m very good at it — I have spent a lot of time thinking about how each bit of my body feels and reacts to a variety of torturous circumstances and I do lots of things to regulate it that work well. I carry very muscle little tension, for example, even though that’s a common coincident issue with anxiety. But also I learned to regulate my muscle tension because otherwise I would have died when I was 11, particularly since I have such an aversion to touch and therefore cannot be easily helped with it by other people.

I’m worried that I won’t be able to latch onto the bits that are supposed to train me to be better, or that I won’t be able to convince them that I’m doing it right, or that I won’t be able to do it right and will inaccurately convince myself that’s because there aren’t any results to be had. I guess that’s just the physical version of the same problem I worry about making lots of therapists not match, which is that I don’t know that I’ll be able to get them up-to-speed on which parts I need help with and which parts I have superpowers about and that impedance mismatch makes communication so hard. I’m so broken about sharing that the concept of choosing a shirt color from my pile of identical polo shirts feels dangerously indulgent but so good at it that I can help other people with sharing hard things just by yelling at them across the Internet. I’m so terrible at body that I cannot react to it being cold even insofar as putting on a jacket or adjusting the thermostat, and I dissociate easily when in pain to avoid being traumatized by it, but I’m also hyper-aware of all of my physical sensations and able to monitor and manage them to be in accurate control of many capabilities even when in great distress. In any case I’m going to talk to them again next week. We’ll see if it goes better or worse and then presumably have a whole new set of worries, or at least a renewed version of this set.

I feel like I’m not going to get any of my chores in Seattle done before I have to leave again. Which I guess is just another way of saying “I’m anxious about traveling” or “it’s hard running 2 households” because I’m only going for a few days and it doesn’t really matter if any of them get done this week or 2 weeks from now. Many of them are things I already haven’t done for months, and some of them are things I hadn’t done for months even before I moved to Cleveland. I also feel like I’m not getting M’s telephone chores done; some of that is my avoidance, some of that is legit obligations, and the time difference doesn’t help. Also the lack of a specific piece of information makes the one I’m most nervous about strictly impossible, so that one is sort of just smoldering on my anxiety plate while I try to ignore it the right amount. I’m also worried that I won’t get to see Shanda the right amount or in the right way while I’m here. You’re busy with things in addition to work every day I’m here, and have a full weekend planned without me, so even though I’ve got 4 days off I won’t be able to see you much. Again I know my next trip is only for a few days, but it still feels like I’m doing this week wrong somehow. That I should have planned it better to get all the parts we’ve been missing in, and like I’m going to blow it by choosing the wrong activities or non-activities while I’m here. Definitely that “I want you to be gone for a few more weeks” discussion we had, whether you now stand by that request or not, contributes to the feeling that I have to earn my right to be here, or treat my few days around as extremely precious because doing the wrong might mean I don’t get more later.

I should get into the office though, and see if maybe my new computer is ready, and get seen at the noon meeting one time before I leave town again. Maybe even plan my week off so I can talk about being gone while I’m physically present, to help keep my boss from getting too nervous. And so I can avoid being too nervous about never being in the office; something I don’t worry about at all in Cleveland, and only worried about a little earlier this year, but that seems super important and potentially dangerous when I’m only here for a week (and taking 2 of those days off).

ZiB