anotherdayonthevine

[anotherdayonthevine]

TRIGGER WARNING SEXUAL ASSAULT

Let's talk about hard things. I doubt anyone will actually end up on here reading about my life, but I wanted to write something public and get a chance to have the feeling of “getting it off my chest”. 

I questioned how to start this post because I want to share experiences and situations I have had to process and overcome and thinking of them collaboratively can be retraumatizing. The reason I chose to make this one post is because it has been hanging around my neck like an anchor and when I put the trauma into a group it seems to make more sense to me to process.

So here I go....

As I write this I am writing it more in a conversational tone so that I can help myself process along the way and also feel heard by talking myself through it.

The time it happened I was in high school. I remember drinking with friends on a couch and the next thing I knew I was passed out. I remember someone taking off my underwear and being on top of me and someone opening the door. I remember the light coming in and shadows of people watching. I closed my eyes and went back to being passed out. I wasn’t sure if I was imagining it or if this was actually happening to me. My ex boyfriend had been at the party so maybe we were drunk and hooking up? Nope. It was one of my best friend’s love interests. I woke up in the bed next to him and didn’t remember the incident until weeks later. The only reason I knew I had been raped was because my underwear were inside out and backwards. I walked home 3 miles in the rain the next day. I was disowned by my friends for “intentionally” hooking up with the guy. I was portrayed as a “slut” and internalized what had happened to me. I was feeling so disgusting and guilty that I had sex with this guy that I actually dated him afterwards. I didn’t want people to think that I just get drunk at parties and fuck people. I got drunk at a party and was RAPED. This story is far too common at the high school I went to. 2012 was the year, I was a sophomore in high school. I have had people come up to me as an adult and tell me that they are sorry for what I went through and they knew of what had happened. EVERYONE KNEW I WAS RAPED and I didn’t know anyone knew. So have you ever been the only one not in on the joke? because that was me, I was made a joke. I was raped and then dated the guy who did it because I didn’t want to seem like the bad guy or like I was just sleeping around. 

I went into a deep depression after this and became almost anorexic. I overexercised and would go home to an apartment I lived in alone. My dad worked out of town so I would just come home and cry and cut myself. I self harmed from 13-19 and had over 5 suicide attempts during that time. 

I have always been complimented on my smile and how “resilient “ I am. It pains me how that is such a compliment. That going through dark times is something that people congratulate you on. I tried to give up so many times and yes I am still here and I am grateful for that. But, a lot of what I have been through were incidents of others taking advantage of ME. Taking from ME. HURTING ME. I always yearned to be loved because I lacked it most of my childhood. I never asked for any of this to happen to me and for someone to say that I “deserved this” makes me sick to my stomach. I never ever ever wanted to sit with this feeling and traumatizing event replaying in my mind on such a regular basis. It makes me sick.

I want to tell you this was the only time. I wish I could say this was the last. But I have been sexually assaulted brutally many times. I have filed reports, I have gotten confessions with detectives help. NOTHING EVER HAPPENS. THE DA IN Santa Cruz TOLD ME “HE HAS A FUTURE SINCE HE GOES TO CAL POLY”. WHAT ABOUT MY FUTURE?! WHAT ABOUT MY LIFE AND WELLBEING AND FEAR OF IT HAPPENING AGAIN. Not only to me but to ANYONE ELSE!!

I am writing about heavy topics here because I am trying to heal still. I probably will continue to heal for the rest of my life. The flashbacks haven’t stopped and it’s been 10 years.

[anotherdayonthevine]

Welcome!!

As I write this first post on my new blog (I am revamping my page here), I am trying to make this as real and raw as I possibly can. I have hidden my mental health struggles for years and have also equally been very open and forthcoming about how to cope with depression and anxiety. I have fallen into patterns and have learned unhealthy ways to cope and have had to unlearn and practice healthy ways to keep myself afloat since I was a child. I am 25 years old and every day I try to think of what my purpose is for just the day. If I think more existential it actually scares me. I have practiced self love and ways to learn how to escape the negative thoughts that constantly swirl in my mind. If you are on this page to learn more about me and grow with me as an individual I welcome you. If you are on this page to judge, gossip, make fun of me, I also welcome you. Because no matter what lead you to this page I hope that you at least take one thing away. I am human, you are human and we are all just living on earth and trying to survive each day. I welcome you to learn and grow with me as we go on the journey of life together through this screen and words that I type here.

[anotherdayonthevine]

… You move on when your heart finally understands that there is no turning back.

J.R.R. Tolkien (via i-am-strong-all-on-my-own)

[anotherdayonthevine]

Some words to use when writing things:

winking

clenching

pulsing

fluttering

contracting

twitching

sucking

quivering

pulsating

throbbing

beating

thumping

thudding

pounding

humming

palpitate

vibrate

grinding

crushing

hammering

lashing

knocking

driving

thrusting

pushing

force

injecting

filling

dilate

stretching

lingering

expanding

bouncing

reaming

elongate

enlarge

unfolding

yielding

sternly

firmly

tightly 

harshly

thoroughly

consistently

precision

accuracy

carefully

demanding

strictly

restriction

meticulously

scrupulously

rigorously

rim

edge

lip

circle

band

encircling

enclosing

surrounding

piercing

curl

lock

twist

coil

spiral

whorl

dip

wet

soak

madly

wildly

noisily

rowdily

rambunctiously

decadent

degenerate

immoral

indulgent

accept

take

invite

nook

indentation

niche

depression

indent

depress

delay

tossing

writhing

flailing

squirming

rolling

wriggling

wiggling

thrashing

struggling

grappling

striving

straining

[anotherdayonthevine]

When my therapist says suicide won’t actually fix any of my problems

Me: 

Her:

[anotherdayonthevine]

The dangers of making people feel safe

There are skills you can learn, that fairly reliably cause a large percentage of people to feel safe around you. These skills are important in a lot of roles, and they’re also dangerous.

The skills a lot have to do with affect, body language, tone of voice, and putting pauses in the right places. And a whole lot of other things.

I’m not going to describe these skills in detail in this post, except to say that they’re explicitly taught to therapists, social workers, chaplains, most clergy in non-fundamentalist seminaries, and others in counseling roles. Making people feel safe is a core professional skill. You can’t do your job without it.

The problem is, learning to make people feel safe and being trustworthy are different skills. Knowing how to make people feel safe gives you a lot of power over them; it does not in and of itself make you someone who can be trusted with that kind of people. It makes people more likely to trust you, whether or not you are trustworthy. It makes people more likely to believe you, whether or not you are right. It makes people more likely to tell you private information, whether or not you can be trusted to respond appropriately or to maintain confidentiality.

Making people feel safe makes them vulnerable. If you are going to learn how to make people vulnerable, then you have a responsibility to learn how to trustworthy.

Trustworthiness skills do not happen automatically. No one is born with them. It takes more than being a good person with good intentions, and it takes more than caring about others. Learning how to make people feel safe does not automatically teach you the skills you need to be trustworthy. If you want to develop ethical practice, you have to actively work on both skillsets.

Learning to be trustworthy is at least as hard as learning how to get people to trust you. In some ways, it’s harder. If your affective skills aren’t effective at getting people to trust you, that tends to be obvious. When you’re not good at making people feel safe with you, it’s harder to get people to cooperate, and it gets easier as you get better at it. It’s much harder to tell whether people *are* safe with you.

If people feel safe with you when they shouldn’t, they’re much more likely to be cooperative. They’re much more likely to do things that are validating and feel really good. They may listen more attentively, follow your advice, say that your insights are really helpful to them, or any number of things. It can be hard to tell from the outside whether or not someone’s trust in you is warranted. (Although it does help to remember that immediate unbounded trust is never a good thing.)

tl;dr If you learn to make people feel safe, then you also have to learn how to be trustworthy. This is particularly true if you have high-level professional skill at making people feel safe. If you can reliably make people feel safe, then you also have to work on making sure that people actually *are* safe with you. Trustworthiness is a complicated skill set, and it doesn’t happen automatically. Being trustworthy takes ongoing education, creativity, and effort.

[anotherdayonthevine]

The start of most therapy sessions.

[anotherdayonthevine]

If you want to succeed in your life, remember this phrase. The past does not equal the future. Because you failed yesterday; or all day today, or a moment ago, or for the last six months; the last 16 years, or the last fifty years of life doesn’t mean anything…all that matters is what are you going to do, right now.

Anthony Robbins (via onlinecounsellingcollege)

[anotherdayonthevine]

[anotherdayonthevine]

How to Gain Control of your Emotions

Controlling your emotions doesn’t mean ignoring them. It means you recognize them and act on them when you deem it appropriate, not randomly and uncontrollably.

1. Know your emotions. There are a million different ways you can feel, but scientists have classified human emotions into a few basics that everyone can recognize: joy, acceptance, fear, surprise, sadness, disgust, anger, and anticipation. Jealousy, for example, is a manifestation of fear - fear that you’re not “as good” as something else, fear of being abandoned because you’re not “perfect” or “the best”.

2.Recognize that emotions don’t just appear mysteriously out of nowhere. Many times, we’re at the mercy of our emotions on a subconscious level. By recognizing your emotions on a conscious level, you’re better able to control them. It’s also good to recognize an emotion from the moment it materializes, as opposed to letting it build up and intensify. The last thing you want to do is ignore or repress your feelings, because if you’re reading this, you probably know that when you do that, they tend to get worse and erupt later. Ask yourself throughout the day: “How am I feeling right now?” If you can, keep a journal.

3. Notice what was going through your mind when the emotion appeared. Stop and analyze what you were thinking about, until you find what thought was causing that emotion. Your boss may not have made eye contact with you at lunch, for example; and without even being aware of it, the thought may have been in the back of your mind, “He’s getting ready to fire me!”

4. Write down the evidence which supports the thought that produced the emotion or against that thought. When you begin to think about it, you might realize that since nobody gets along well with this particular boss, he can’t afford to actually fire anyone, because the department is too short-staffed. For example, you may have let slip something that you should not have said which angered him, but which it is too late to retract.

5. Ask yourself, “What is another way to look at the situation that is more rational and more balanced than the way I was looking at it before?” Taking this new evidence into account, you may conclude that your job is safe, regardless of your boss’s petty annoyances, and you’re relieved of the emotion that was troubling you. If this doesn’t work, however, continue to the next step.

6. Consider your options. Now that you know what emotion you’re dealing with, think of at least two different ways you can respond. Your emotions control you when you assume there’s only one way to react, but you always have a choice. For example, if someone insults you, and you experience anger, your immediate response might be to insult them back. But no matter what the emotion, there are always at least two alternatives, and you can probably think of more: (i) Don’t react; do nothing. (ii) Do the opposite of what you would normally do.

7. Make a choice. When deciding what to do, it’s important to make sure it’s a conscious choice, not a reaction to another, competing emotion. For example, if someone insults you and you do nothing, is it your decision, or is it a response to your fear of confrontation? Here are some good reasons to act upon:

a) Principles - Who do you want to be? What are your moral principles? What do you want the outcome of this situation to be? Ultimately, which is the decision you’d be most proud of? This is where religious guidance comes into play for many people.

b) Logic - Which course of action is the most likely to result in the outcome you desire? For example, if you’re being confronted with a street fight, and you want to take the pacifist route, you can walk away—but, there’s a good chance that burly drunk will be insulted if you turn your back. Maybe it’s better to apologize and keep him talking until he calms down.

Source: http://www.wikihow.com/Gain-Control-of-Your-Emotions

[anotherdayonthevine]

[anotherdayonthevine]

I don’t like the phrase “A cry for help.” I just don’t like how it sounds. When somebody says to me, “I’m thinking about suicide, I have a plan; I just need a reason not to do it,” the last thing I see is helplessness. I think: Your depression has been beating you up for years. It’s called you ugly, and stupid, and pathetic, and a failure, for so long that you’ve forgotten that it’s wrong. You don’t see good in yourself, and you don’t have any hope. But still, here you are; you’ve come over to me, banged on my door, and said, “HEY! Staying alive is REALLY HARD right now! Just give me something to fight with! I don’t care if it’s a stick! Give me a stick and I can stay alive!” How is that helpless? I think that’s incredible. You’re like a marine: Trapped for years behind enemy lines, your gun has been taken away, you’re out of ammo, you’re malnourished, and you’ve probably caught some kind of jungle virus that’s making you hallucinate giant spiders. And you’re still just going “Give me a stick! I’m not dying out here!” “A cry for help” Makes it sound like I’m supposed to take pity on you. But you don’t need my pity. This isn’t pathetic. This is the will to survive. This is how humans lived long enough to become the dominant species. With NO hope, running on NOTHING, you’re ready to cut through a hundred miles of hostile jungle with nothing but a stick, if that’s what it takes to get to safety. All I’m doing is handing out sticks. You’re the one staying alive. [Taken From A Therapist’s Wall]

(via quotspot)

[anotherdayonthevine]

[anotherdayonthevine]

Some words to use when writing things:

winking

clenching

pulsing

fluttering

contracting

twitching

sucking

quivering

pulsating

throbbing

beating

thumping

thudding

pounding

humming

palpitate

vibrate

grinding

crushing

hammering

lashing

knocking

driving

thrusting

pushing

force

injecting

filling

dilate

stretching

lingering

expanding

bouncing

reaming

elongate

enlarge

unfolding

yielding

sternly

firmly

tightly 

harshly

thoroughly

consistently

precision

accuracy

carefully

demanding

strictly

restriction

meticulously

scrupulously

rigorously

rim

edge

lip

circle

band

encircling

enclosing

surrounding

piercing

curl

lock

twist

coil

spiral

whorl

dip

wet

soak

madly

wildly

noisily

rowdily

rambunctiously

decadent

degenerate

immoral

indulgent

accept

take

invite

nook

indentation

niche

depression

indent

depress

delay

tossing

writhing

flailing

squirming

rolling

wriggling

wiggling

thrashing

struggling

grappling

striving

straining

[anotherdayonthevine]

[anotherdayonthevine]

With the right music, you either forget everything or you remember everything.

(via hopeful-melancholy)