I find it extremely difficult to co-exist with all of this stuff going on, with work, friends, family and life. I know this is a ridiculous statement to make as i am more than aware life/feelings/emotions just don't work like this, but i just want to box up all the healing stuff and NOT have it impact on the rest of my life, but you know, it doesn't really give a shit about anything else in my life, it just jumps in two feet forst and stamps all over everything.

I want to make a deal with life - i will deal with all the abuse stuff and properly IF i can have some of my old life back and i can work on them side by side. If you have read the book The secret - Rhonda Byrne you will know what i mean when i say i keep sending these thoughts out there - something tells me these are the wrong thoughts to be sending out though.

I was chatting to my friend about the power differentials between children and adults and also learning disabled adults and my friend said "you know this".
I want to shake myself upside down and bounce off every wall. Of course i know this, i know it inside and out, i live it, i do it everyday, i train others, i remind staff off their approaches and vocabulary daily, just having the staff - client relationship is already enough "power and control" and can be abused, it already puts the clients at a massive disadvantage,. I'm not going to go into a three hour lecture here and start reeling out facts and data and links, but you get my drift?

But there is a massive block, the positive thing i guess is today at least i can acknowledge it is there, i just can't relate any of what i know to myself. It's  like it doesn't match, it doesn't fit, i cant see it, i cant relate to it, the rules apply to everyone but not me. The big wobble here is: If i absolutely believed in all this, then surely i could apply it to me, am i the person i think i am, are my beliefs what i think they are, am i the right person to be doing the job i do, am i worthy of being a trusted advocate.

So i start to question my chosen career path - working with people, whether it be in crisis situations, vulnerable adults, direct care, predominately health, children services, education, probation, social work etc. People dont choose these career's because they don't know what else to do, they do it because they care, because it matters, it matters a whole fucking lot that people have the liberty to be able to make choices about themselves, informed choices, have the basic right to be treated as an individual, with respect, with dignity, to have goals and dreams, to be able to love and be loved. Its a massive cultural mountian to climb to educate people on that adults with learning difficulties want sexual relationships too you know, they like you and I have desires. Try having that discussion with parent/ carers!

I have done ALOT of work in the last 8 or so years with learning disabled adults on sex and relationships - much too much to go into here, but what led me to this was the most heart breaking (not just heart breaking but made me quite angry too!) video i watched on learning disabilities and sexual relationships - well - it was, but it was around why adults with a LD are not emotionally and intelectually able to have sexual relationships - lets cut it short, basically the sex ed was so crap in this "educational" video that this couple were shown how to put a condom on a banana (The banana being the penis). They practised a few times and got the hang of it. Fast forward to the bedroom scene where intercourse was going to take place (no education here on other types of sex, actual intercourse being only 1 type of many, no mention of foreplay, arousal, feeling good/positive, trust, other parts of the body, thats it's ok if it doesn't feel good, that you can say no, that you can state clearly what feels ok and what doesn't, that the point of sex IS NOT orgasm but a deeply emotional connection with 2 or more people who are both involved and wantedly making choces).

So the bedroom scene, straight to penis/vagina intercourse, the guy puts the condom on the banana, chucks the banana with condom on, under the bed and proceeds to have intercourse....No body else in the room got it, this murmur around the room of yes, quite right, they dont understand etc crap and bollocks etc. Hang on as fuckin minute, no one actually told them it had to go on the penis, no one actually told them what the condom was for, no one explained pregnancy, STI. What they were asked in a matter of fact way was "do you think you could get up in the night to feed a hungy baby" to which they replied "no", the educator tells them "well you need a condom then". WTF.

Apologies here, went way off track!

Back to my wobble, i am so not sure if i able/capable to be doing my job right now. I know if there is a safeguarding situation i am not going to be able to lead on it, if there are video diclosures to be done i cant be the approved adult. I have learning courses to deliver to 16 teams in the next 4 months on safeguarding, being the alerter, preserving evidence etc. I CAN'T DO IT.

I don't know how i managed it before, i think maybe i had worked throughthe abuse issues in my own way and kind of desentisized my self to it, maybe thats why i delived it so well according to my colleagues, i don't know Jack apart from i cant do it anymore. I can't seem to be able to take an objective view on anything, i stumble over making decisions that i take often - that s not to say these are easy decisions but i am normally confident in making them, know every policy and procedure, know my clients rights and know what services/options are available. But i am stumbling over them, doubting myself, even this morning refering one to another manager because i just don't fucking know anymore.

I can still manage the operational side of running these services, but everything esle is what i love so much about my job. I always said i never wanted to be a manager, they don't have a fuckin clue what goes on at grass roots. Well this manager does, i make it my job to know, and why did i take the job, because i realised i could make more of a difference, have more autonomy with the bigger more complex issues, manage teams how i feel they should be managed - a manager doesn't have to walk round all suited and booted, not know their staff and be adrift of everything - it's ok you know to go to work in jeans and sweater, to know your staff, to know what happens in their lives, to be part of the jokes and to be the butt of jokes, to know that there wil be decisions that you makes that won't be popular, to know that not everyone will like you. A manager is only as good as the rest of the team and i am a massive believer that if you trainn/coach your team members, with good value based practises, develop them, trust them, give them some autonomy everyone wins.

But for now, i just keep looking at my phone, its been ringing on and off all morning, i keep telling myself they only want advice, some reassurance over an issue and i doubt my judgement so much that i can't answer.

So i'm sitting doing grunt work = needs to be done but it aint that essential right now. Wondering if tomorrow i can get some confidence back or do i hand over some responsibilities. I know its okay to state your limitations, i have a couple which i can be quite clear on with my manager and with the senior staff with in the teams - never had an issue with that, we cant all be good at everything and most of us have some limits especially when your life has been somewhat dysfunctional in more than one arena. But there is a difference between having some limitations and not being able to do your job.


Its a Bank Holiday today, normally i would be chillin, doing my own thang, and i know you can't focus on any particular meaning of any day - it is just a day after all, but i somewhat feel deprived of my life as i know it. This isn't a "poor me" situation, i guess its more about having some awareness today as although i'm feeling rather crappy i'm not completely in the soup - feeling of how far down i have come, with what appears to be no end in sight, no quick fix, no easy answer, and no relief from it.

Spending time with friends/family is so so difficult, i can manage about and hour or so then i cant manage any more, its like i just need to be on my own to process everything that is in my head, my mind doesn't switch off, and nothing distracts me for long enough. I am supporting some friends through a court case and do most of the correspondence for them, normally i sit with them, take copious notes, type away until we get a draft that they are happy with, not right now, i just cant do it. I cant spend time on points of law, referencing, quoting, and using word play. All i can do right now is write basic English in pure layman terms.

I have given up on two volunteer projects in the last couple of weeks, just couldn't handle them, couldn't give them the time they deserved. At the time it was what i needed to do, now i just feel shit about it, but that said, lets feel some more shit as i am about to give up another one. I know this is the right thing to do, i know it, i know it, i know it but it makes me feel like i have failed, that i am a failure, my friend would tell that that this is self care and its a good thing that i can  acknowledge my limits - doesn't feel like it, just feels shit.

One last thing, i have my counseling appt next week and i'm already getting wound up about it, not massively because there is no space left in my head for other stuff, but around trust issues, around being vulnerable, around not wanting to tell someone some of the things that happened, around what i should or shouldn't tell them, what is safe to and what isn't, what should i hold back, what if i don't like them balh blah blah. I mean, where do you start with talking about stuff, i also know that in a face to face discussion i will minimize stuff, why? because it means i don't have to hear myself say the words, its not as real and i won't feel that the pure shame that comes with it. But, thats just tricking oneself, i need to get this sorted and worked through, i need to be able to live again and i know that i have to give myself a fighting chance, it feels like and it is my last chance. Maybe i will tell the counselor that this is what i can do sometimes if i feel overwhelmed with stuff, i don't know.

As per flashbacks, it would be daft of me not to mention them, for my own personal record as they are such a big part of everything at the moment. They are still there, having amix of the what i call "emotional" ones, where its mainly just me, its still these ones that i find the most difficult in terms of emotionally triggering. The other flashbacks are still there, mostly around specific situations, sometimes they will be full on and knock me sideways, sometimes they gradually build until i see the whole picture, sometimes i feel kind of pissed off with them, it like, yeah i know that happened, so why am i needing to see it again, its not anything that i feel is  "up there" with the most painful or difficult of times so i dont need to talk about it, sure don't need to see it and i am fully aware of it, so fuck off.

Also been having a few where my mind is tricking me, like i know they didn't happen as i don't remember them - and i remember near enough everything, i dont always remember how i felt at the time, or there are some bits that i had sort of forgot and when the flashback occurs i then rememeber them, i dont remember every occasion of being plainly sexually abused as in straight forward sexual acts, the same i guess as not remembering every meal i ate, it just kind of becomes the norm, but i would have remembered these other situations so i know they are not what happened but more of my mind tricking me.

Lastly, i saw that there was a comment of one of the previous posts, to be totally honest i haven't read it. I know this is on a public forum and more than happy for peope to read or share as it is anonymous and also comment on but i find it exceptionally difficult to read/hear support. If i was blogging about some piece of work i had achieved etc i would happily read any comments, but this is so, so different.

I actually don't want to write this journal today, but i also know that that the last few days have been some what difficult and i need to get some of it down for reflection.

I've developed a new panic symptom! I am actually laughing while i say this because it feels like "what next" - is it not enough to be having vivid flashbacks, some more emotional flashbacks, the insomnia, the knotted stomach and generally just UGH - obviously not. You know, i'm not sure if i would have this new sympton if i just gave in to it all and let it have complete control over my life.

So, just getting so fucked off with these newer more emotional flashbacks (what is strange is that they don't completely screw me up where i feel i need to tell someone what is going on - when i do with the vivid ones it helps so much, i get into a state but it helps to just get it out - but these new ones leave me feeling more emotionally drained rather than panic.) that i decided i needed to concentrate more on any given task and be so fully involved with it that there was no room to be thinking anything else, and being in the soup so much i kind of forgot how to do that, so i dipped into my Everyday Zen, Charlotte Joko Beck book and reminded myself of the core principles of the teachings and it helped me to focus more.

So, being fully in a task, no other influences - its hard - its hard to work towards that achievement and state of being when you are not living how i currently am, let alone now, but i managed it for small periods of time and it was like i had been given a gift - little pockets of 15 min slots of just me and whatever i was doing - so all great until BOOM, ultimately one of the scariest panic attacks happens, where it was like because i was totally at one with a task and my concentration slipped, all the current feelings of being in the soup hit me ten fold and i just need to run, literally, flee away from me, from life and my thoughts were so rapid and i have to be honest here, were just about dying, that seemed the only solution to stop the panic. (Just a reminder to self here, the scariest panic situation was a couple of weeks ago when i really did lose my shit whilst at work, cant really remember hardly anything of it but i know i was in a bad place emotionally. )

These happened for a few times on 2 consecutive days and it was driving me nuts, with all of that it seemed for those two days the whole world either wanted to visit, phone or invite me somewhere whichis really nice and i love all the people in my life but it wasn't something i could deal with - so i left home (!) for 3 nights, drove to the coast and spent time just trying to work this new issue out and trying my best to stay safe. Easier said than done with how i was feeling and there were a few times when it was incredibily difficult to give myself reasons to work it through.

I deliberately put myself in some knowing trigger situations just to see if i could handle it, thankfully this was onthe last day when i was feeling much more settled and in control - and i managed it because i am still here. The vacation did what it needed to do, i came back much more in control of my thoughts and i'm sure i even sang along to some tunes in the car. A good buddy of mine, he used to descibe me as being full of coiled up energy while driving, i strum away on the steering wheel in the car, or tap away, singing along, extra mega observant with everything, i absorb it all, he used to laugh and say i used to burn up more energy driving than i did going for a bike ride, happy days and yesterday i felt just the smallest insight into feeling like that, it felt so good.

So i'm back, and felt the best i had in a few weeks, a few yucky messages waiting for me, including my counseling appt that i should have been at today was cancelled and my sister - who i love so so much (was diagnosed with cancer last year and has being given a life span of six to ten years depending on how well treatment goes and/or if she can get a bone marrow transplant - any my marrow, yup, doesn't match hers so its about 3 million to 1 ) got called by the hospital for the results of her second scan in three weeks and two of the tumours have turned aggressive and they need to operate today. I'm not going to say its not hard to be dealing with this amount of emotional pain, it is, but i can hold it and process it - genuinely.

So, end of today, i had to go to work hitting the floor running, you fall so behind just not being around for a few days - i actually went out to my work bases and did some on site work (which i do quite often but around 50% of the time i work from home). I picked my sister up from hospital and settled her at home, got a take out for the boys and generally played nurse role (which the boys thought was hilarious).

I'm shattered, because i have been out for 15 hours, supported my sister and boys with some tough emotions, and because i have had to be strong and hold all my shit together for the day to enable my sister to be fully supported. That said, it has been another more positive day, i'm not comparing it to yesterday because everyday is unique and can't be compared.

17th December 2009

Just a quick post - really weird and unusual flashbacks today.

My normal flashbacks are either snippets of events or a full bown vivid and sensory account of a specific assault.
Today - just weird - keep having kind of immediate post assult flashbacks where i am either nursing injuries, looking for my clothes or just looking confused. This is completely new and the normal terror feelings straight after a flashback are not there, just an overwhelming desire to grab the kid and take her out of the situation and even to kind of tell her to stay strong. One particular flashback was of me trying to ride home on my bike and not being able to - these are really confusing, i look too vulnerable and its way too deep and i could nearly cry for the kid and its as if i want to talk to her.

What is just way to strange as well is i have been trying to read a book - The courage to heal - Ellen Bass & Laura Davis - and not really getting as much from it as i hoped (i want a sort of car maintainance book where it tells you to unsrew the parts, lift out the gasket and replace, job done and you are fixed!) but anyhow, it talks about the "child within" and getting in touch with it - kind of doesn't do it for me but i guess this might come close to it. Doesn't kind of sit right though so lets hope these flashbacks pass through pretty quick.

I had all the tunes on my computer on random play today and This came on - i normally associate this with the day my nan died last year - it was on the car stereo just after i heard she had passed away and its kind of always stuck with me, but today when i heard it, in the middle of flashback city it kind of made me think of mini me and how i was looking in the flashbacks.

15th December 2009 First Entry

I woke up this morning with one goal: To keep my self alive and to finish the day back in bed knowing i had acomplished what i set out to do.

I am not a writer or artist and don't have any creational flare in me at all - i have lived in my house for nearly 13 years and my sofa is still on the same wall as it was from day one. I decorated my lounge at the beginning of this year with ALOT of help from friends with choosing colour schemes and i chose the most daring colour of all, magnolia! Yep, thats about as creational and inspired as i get when it comes to anything like this :)

This journal: There is no right or wrong, the thoughts are just my thoughts, just my opinions and my view on life. Its a kind of personal journey that i want to record so one day i can look back and see where i started from, the hell that is now, the feelings and thoughts that i have that i may not remember very well in years to come, hell, i'm struggling to remember what happened two weeks ago.

What is this all about? I will keep it brief as i am pretty confident that as the journal entries evolve, you will learn about my life as i start to learn more about it too.

I was sexually abused as a child for a couple of years - i say a couple of years because it feels better than saying i had just turned nine and it stopped the day before my 12th Birthday. The abusers where initially unknown to me, apart from the main ring leader who was "just a face i had seen around". The primary abusers were two men and a woman around their middle twenties - there were over the years others, who stopped by for a while, or others who i was *on loan* to for a period of time.

I had a few hellish years in my middle to late teens and did recieve some excellent counseling in my early 20's. I say that because i'm quite sure i did as i wouldn't have stuck with it, but my memories are really vague and fuzzy of this period of time. I kind of limped through the next few years but started to deal with my shit and things were looking better. I had a job that i really valued, i got a motgage for my house - in general i was more settled than i had ever been - then one day it all came crashing down.

When i say crashing down i just mean total shut down, i have no idea what happened and as far as i can work out it had nothing to do with the abusive past. Now i say that it all honesty because it can be easy to blame every hiccup in life on being abused - that is not something i do because i can normally find the reason behind why i feel or think something. So my melt down happened fast, pretty much with in a day - by the end of day one, i had telephoned in sick to work for a week (told a few non truth's in the weeks to come about where my sick line was), i locked the front door and lay down and waited.

Now i'm not sure here what i thought was going to happen - as i said, i have very little memory of it, and the memory that i do have is so fuzzy its pretty hard to get timescales right. I basically lay on my sofa for a three weeks and didn't move, didn't eat, drink, smoke or wash. I cant remember really thinking anything either, apart from one glimpse of trying to sip water and not being able to swallow, i also know that towards the end i didn't even have to visit the toilet, there was nothing in me.

Somehow and i honestly can't remmeber how/what prompted me/why but i decided i was going to join the land of the living again - like you do! It basically took me another couple of weeks to return to eating small meals, feeling strong enough physically to move about etc. I lost 2 stone and i honestly would not recommend it. I guess looking back it was like a breakdown and maybe if i had seena medical professional i more than likely would have been sectioned - who knows.

Moving on, the next 8/9 years of my life were pretty good, and i say that with feeling. i finally felt like i had *healed* from the abuse stuff, it would always be a work in progree if yoy like but it no longer dominated by days or haunted my nights, it was just a part of me that i lived in harmony with. I put all my energy into work, doing 60+ hours a week and lovin every minute of it. I received a few promotions and i worked my butt off for every one of them. i enjoyed life, had many hobbies, loved sport, riding my bike, looove playing squash and found my absolute love for power kiting and more recently kite landboarding. I have a few really good friends and lots of friends. My career, well lets say its busy, i manage several different services all delivering a various services to predomintantly Adults with learning Disabilities. I have lots of other strings to my bow so to speak, i do some advocacy work, i volunteer on 3 different projects and mostly still do 60+ hours a week - thats not a moan, i am absolutley committed to it and do need to remind myself every now and again that i actually do need some time out. Reminder to self: Try to stick to 1 whole day off a week :)

Current situation. I've crashed and burned big time. I had what are called ( i can learn even though i've crashed - amazing eh) a few triggers, and i triggered big time. If i dig really deep here, i was maybe a little under the weather so to speak before these triggers, but nothing to be overly concerned about, i guess i had neglected a few things and pushing away some thoughts and feelings that i really ought to have been dealing with - but that's life.

So i triggered badly and fell deep into the abyss of the hell that is flashbacks, being constantly anxious, the knotted stomach, i cant concentrate for any lenght of time, thoughts of the abuse are in my head 24/7. i can't sleep, when i do i have nightmares. If you have never been to this place, you have to believe me when i say it is hell, it is the absolute pits, it takes over your life and you become it - if that makes sense?

Everything has suffered as a result, work, friends, family, social life, hobbies and of course, the housework!

So i'm three months into the dark dark place where i currently live - there have been a few days here or there that have been brighter but then i seem to slip back even further until i reached the point i did a couple of days ago. i don't want to live life like this anymore and i have other options available to me, i have never actually been at this point before in my life - i may have come near it years ago but it was so different this time - it was actually a comfort knowing i had the options and saying thanks, but no thanks.

I don't really need to go into any details here, it wasn't a pretty sight, my meltdown. About twenty fours of sheer hell to be precise and a decision to be made. I didn't actually make the conscious decision myself in a sense of, you know kiddo give it another try - it wasn't like that, BUT something did happen, and i think maybe i had to get to the point of being so absolute rock bottom for me to realize something i had denied for all these years, and i think what has predominately hindered my healing tothe point of i get so far and then i drop back again. I admitted to myself that the abuse actually hurt me, and the abusers, they knew that their acts hurt me, and i realised that for near on thrity years i had denied myself that feeling and that acknowledgement. You have to trust me on this one, that is a fucking biggie. I also think that not acknowledging the pain at the time of the abuse also saved me and it was this *shut down* of emotions that actually allowed me to survive the abuse. This one is going to need a lot of working on, it slike undoing thrity years of something and kind of allowing yourself to feel it now.

There has been one positive thing come out of all this ugly horrible soul destroying shit - and it amazes me sometimes how life throws you a little lifeline. Going back about four weeks in one of my darkest moments, i found a website - i don't know how i came across it, i dont know what i was thinking when i registered on the site, and i must have been losing my sanity to post a topic saying i was struggling with a sexual abuse issue (of course, not knowing me you wouldn't know that it's not something i do!). So i sends this post saying i was having a bit of a shit time and talked a bit about what had triggered me - and i got a response from a person who not just listened, she understood, she *got* where i was coming from, she heard what i was saying, she educated me, challenged me and my thoughts, she put similar shoes on different feet (sorry, personal joke there but it made me think :) ) and the most scary unheard of thing happened, i learnt to trust her, in such a small space of time. Years and years of not trusting anyone to hold my shit and she crashes all the walls down with in days. Now there are still days - most days actually when i don't think its fair for this person to hold my shit, but you know, she does and she tells me she's ok with that.

Moving on, so its been two days since i made my decision to live, i am raw, scared and vulnerable - but at least it means i am feeling something. I have taken a massive step of contacting a local rape crisis centre - this is not just massive in terms of OMG i've actually got to talk about stuff now and really got to say how i feel and be vulnerable in front of someone, but also because i'm so stubborn with i can do this by myself and i dont need anyone else' help thankyou very much!

This first post is way longer than i intended it to be, as our most my mails the person i mentioned earlier, it just kind of happens and i need to get better with saying what i need to say in fewer words!

So, my intention, but no promises, is to keep the journal updated kind of weekly after my counseling sessions, there may of course be other entries as and when needed. I write this as though other people are reading it and maybe no one will ever come across it and read it, will be scary as hell if anyone ever did.

So back to the first paragraph, goal of the day = achieved, my bed awaits me.