Summary of our Vacation

Morning ... We’re going to try not being too discouraged here. Again, we need to apologize for a poor communication yesterday.  We had been doing pretty well in the morning, but by mid-day, we seemed exhausted in any possible good opinion of ourselves, to the point of being almost downright mean. To make matters worse our son IM’d 20 minutes after we posted the last communication. We had just gotten to the part of laying down. Within moments we were so upset we broke off our chances of meeting him, his family and my younger son over the weekend. We then disconnected and became hysterical for about an hour. The next 3 hours was spent trying to figure out what the hell happened and correcting errors that were made, then the rest of the night was spent absorbing ourselves into PBS TV before finally falling asleep. There were a couple of musical programs.

We know we’d gotten it to a point that we could finally let it go ... talking to a friend and writing to Dr. M. helped, as did communicating with my son better the second time over the first. This morning there are different parts out and we need to try figuring it out once more. We need to condense it to a point our mind can handle it. There are a few reference points to follow-up on. It won’t be an all day project, because on the positive side, arrangements were made with sons and granddaughter to go out for breakfast at 9 or 10. It’s about 10 after 7 now.

WHICH reminds us ... we’ve taken a shower, but haven’t taken morning medicine yet ... Better do that right away. I know I keep inserting that message into the body of my entries, but we really are working on not avoiding the medicine. Seems like when we get upset, the thinking goes, "I don’t care." See this is part of self-destructive thinking. Then all of us reach unstable points. The medicines have that great an affect over us. There are ten of them all told. Unfortunately, there is that rebellion point. *Sigh* for now its just a matter of walking into the kitchen. Maybe better to think, we can take care. Excuse me.

Ok, ok ... got everything lined up ... let’s see what we can do. The first thing is to sit us behind a roaring good fire in the fireplace. It’s a little chilly out there at 37 degrees, cloudy, and winds up to 30 mph.

Ahh, that’s looking better. Let’s try to keep this simple and concise.

Thursday, Thanksgiving 11/25/04 @ 10:30 am

Listening to parade. After some pleasant thoughts, we recalled the day before we had talked to Dr. M. about medical problems and that had triggered a regression to younger parts who were terrified of doctors and being looked at. There were self-destructive thoughts. We became confused and Dr. M. was called, "A witch." We knew this was a projection of how we’d felt about ourselves (and mother) and decided to let it go and lay down.

Thursday, Thanksgiving 11/25/04 @ 7:38 pm

Wrote Dr. M. an email stating we were depressed and for 2 hours were actively self destructive. We felt alone and had started drinking. We were crying and trying not to do something dumb. There had been trouble with sleep the night before. We were conscious of not wanting Dr. M. frustrated with us, to disconnect from us, or call 911. We instead chose again going to bed.

Friday, 11/26/04 @ 9:15 am

Dr. M. wrote back affirming we had had a bad day. He connected that the bad feelings of the day before might be influencing the desire to be self destructive. He was glad we hadn’t acted on those desires. He reminded us that there were people to talk about things at this time and that there were those who would be able to understand and validate the previous experiences. He encouraged spending time with people and confirmed appointment on Monday, 11/29/04 @ 8:00 am.

Friday, 11/26/04 @ 9:18 am

We completed and posted an entry conveying that we were feeling bad, closed down, and cranky. We did not want to be bothered by anything or anybody. We decided to refuse taking morning medications and stated angrily not all our parts enjoyed the holiday. We were angry about an expectation that we be more friendly and discussed crazy people carrying guns and driving over ex-husbands. We didn’t want to be coaxed out of the bad mood because we didn’t want to care. We were angry at Dr. M. forhaving had such a tough session the night before the holiday. We blamed God for our feelings of rejection and abandonment and felt alone until serendipity provided a nice card from a friend, an email from our doctor, and a visit from another friend. We concluded we needed a nap.

Saturday, November 27, 2004 @ 6:03 am

We wrote another entry and was apologetic for having been so angry the day before although confirming the anger had been real. We concluded that we should trust people are available even if not immediately. We were confused as to the boys not having called yet to share a holiday meal and we were embarrassed for being so emotional. We had had a good experience with our friend who had come over, had enjoyed a fun movie and were looking forward to two more days off. We had made a decision to visit journals and be more involved with people.

Saturday, November 27, 2004 @ 12:13 pm

We wrote another entry which was very short. We’d been overcome by negative feelings and had to stop reading journals. We had summarized our journal writing and had decided about 15 terrible things about us and our writing. We were confused over what to do about this without over worrying or panicking. We concluded that we should 1) be nicer to ourselves, 2) encourage thinking other than black and white, and take a nap.

Saturday, November 27, 2004 @ 12:38 pm

Our oldest son IM’d just after we’d laid down. He was looking to confirm a meeting time, but instead met with our anger. What we heard was that he or his brothers had not made us a priority for two and a half holiday days and that he was yet unsure of arrangements. We were also angry that it appeared that we wouldn’t get quality time at my home (within budget), but would be meeting briefly at an expensive restaurant. We had told him we were hurt, without telling him why. We canceled meeting until after the holiday and pretty much implied he and his brothers were driving us crazy. He wanted to let us know he cared, would like to help, and that he and his daughter loved us. But, by that time we’d already started sobbing and had to let go so as not to confuse him further. Parent/child roles were confused.

Saturday, November 27, 2004 @ 1:05 pm

An email was started to Dr. M. We were beside ourselves and sobbing/yelling hysterically. We wanted to know what we had doneto these sons to deserve this kind of anguish. We immediately began having self destructive thoughts again, felt our heart was breaking, and questioned are value to them. We hadn’t wanted to be needy, but was particularly stressed with the younger two boys, one of them who has not allowed contact for over a year. We couldn’t figure out why they were being so distant and mean in our regard.

Saturday, November 27, 2004 @ 1:42 pm

IM’d with a friend who understood the general situation and relationships involved. He was able to help me understand that I was misunderstanding a few key factors. He confirmed we had not been put high on priority list by boys, but they weren’t trying to hurt us or hate us, that their value of us was typical of children their age (young 20's), and that maybe my son didn’t understand the situation because we hadn’t explained it carefully to him.  We were aware of trying not to burden him with the emotional roller coaster we’d been on over the weekend. Hehehe well, he didn’t actually use these words, but I can figure that’s what was in the works. Our friend also played back for us all the nice things son had said and were missed, such as my son did want to help and that he and my granddaughter do love us.

Saturday, November 27, 2004 @ 2:41 pm

IM’d with our older son again. We apologized for over-reacting and explained that I had felt unimportant because neither he or his brothers scheduled us in specifically for a day or time. He said, "sounds good." and although communication was slow (he was on cell phone), arrangements were made for this morning and it was clarified that they weren’t going to be contingent on the other brothers interest or lack there of. We also conveyed that our money was short and we could only pay $40 toward the meal.

Saturday, November 27, 2004 @ 3:10 pm

Started to conclude original email to Dr. M. We explained that our "crises" was over, but that we had questions remaining that we wanted to talk over with him. We didn’t understand why we’d become so emotional and self destructive, or so near to a sense of craziness, particularly since it was on the part of our son and us basically a communication gap. We concluded that we’d walked into a victimization role with our sons in that they were hurting us. This was seen more of a projection and role reversal in that we responded to them as if they were OUR parents and us the child. We were reliving expressions of hysteria, anguish, worthlessness and self destruction. We asked more questions such as: Don’t I mean anything to them? Why are they doing this to me? And, is it ever going to stop? The conclusion was that I introjected the "poor mother’s" psyche projected fro her child screaming inadequacy?

Sunday, 11-28-04 @ 4:56 am

Again, we had an opportunity to talk with one of our friends and we discussed negativity, depression and circular thinking. He had thought the pain felt allowed a certain amount of comfort, where we thought maybe we were just more familiar with pain, not necessarily comfortable with it. We tried to distinguish the differences dependency and trust, thinking the first much closer to vulnerability. The terror we felt in dependency is what made us overwhelmed and vulnerable. We compared ultimate escape to the crazy feelings, hysteria, suicidality, and hospitalization. We didn’t want to accept we were voluntarily working toward frustration, though could admit our strivings could be affected by dependency. We were reminded that the more often the "AHA! Experience" occur the more positive we would become and the knowledge learned would be internalized and guard us against the negative thinking. The awareness would lead us to positive choices that were healthier. Depression was seen as giving into the negative thinking. It was unknown how Casie and Annemarie was being affected by all this.

Sunday 11-28-04 @ 6:17 am

In response to the last entry, we agreed not to pick on or target negatively our previous thoughts. We weren’t ready to believe yet that it was our evaluations that allowed negative thoughts, if this was true, then shame on us, but otherwise thinking (intellectualizing) had served our safety needs in being around others. We accepted the equation of negative circular thinking as equaling enveloping mental pain. We were not taught in childhood how to block negative circular thinking, it would have required some devotion to our thought patterns by family. We switch parts often to avoid confrontations and to receive attention. We don’t seek pain though it is favored as a coping mechanisms rather than lose our sense of control. We would favor trust of other over dependency. We think of being dependent as being vulnerable. Unfortunately, we have in our past been forced to become dependent on abusive people.

Sunday, November 28, 2004 @ 3:21 pm

Breakfast turned out to be fine.  It gave us a chance to be with older son and his family although the time ran short.  We only spent 75% of our allowance and our grand daughter remains adorable.  Afterward we tried to finish up on our thought summaries, so we could more carefully look at it.  This was mixed with the fact we napped in our chair with football in the background.  This summary might not be significant for anything, but the fact that we can be hypervigilant.  *Sigh*