Being held

Modern times can be so fragmenting. There is so much coming at us and sometimes we lose touch with our breath, we get so busy in our heads our bodies almost scream to be known held and loved.. So it is we must look for places and people with whom our souls can feel truly held, seen, cherished, and noticed. It is far too triggering for those of us with embedded issues of Complex PTSD to be consistently diminished or obliterated again by fracturing external forces and not have that severely impede our physical, emotional, mental and spiritual health.

When the bank locked my accounts yesterday I had a huge panic at first, after numerous calls they said they would unlock it but then the woman shamed me for taking a passport photo sent to me by ‘Jackson’ as an authentic document, this triggered me and I tried to tell her I felt diminished by her judgement and as she refused to listen and then accused me of not listening, being triggered I raised my voice, she then threatened to lock the account again and hung up.. I have just been on the phone to crisis support this morning trying to unpack the feelings of powerlessness this triggered in me, as well as the ongoing issue of not feeling heard or ‘held’. I think it is a lie to say we do not need this kind of holding from others at times, especially when we suffer from a profound neurological cocktail of past Complex PTSD trauma.. I have a hard enough time with my own inner critic to be honest that having to take on board this kind of criticism often really gets under my skin. After all I have never seen a US passport and this one looked legitimate. I am so vulnerable right now that is the truth that to be spoken to like a naughty child was pretty shattering..

Never mind the passport or bank issue.. I can still use my cash card I just cannot log onto online banking which really is only a current way of doing business. I will never again have the facility to send monies to third parties via the internet which is fine since I am over helping anyone again after the complete palavar that Jackson has put me through after 4 or more years of similar things going on with ‘Scott.’ The need for boundaries is one I have to keep working on or trying to work on.. Often I find it so very very hard to hold onto a strong ‘No’ with others, I always feel if I can, with others I will try to ‘go the extra mile’. Maybe it comes out of my own past abandonment feelings as I know those can be hard to hold through and yet, if we wish to recover to be functioning adults we need to find the way to do this.. A good therapist can help here as can good friends but in the end it really is up to find ways to hold on and not undermine ourselves in the ways we may have been consistently or inconsistently as children.

I spoke about half an hour to the crisis support team.. I got a call from the hospital after getting home from a very emotional chiropractic appointment to say my sister was waiting to be collected following her ECT and that my nephew was not there even though he was only running 5 minutes late.. He later called me to tell me this but I still panicked. Even if I felt in no condition to drive there to get her, thinking of my sister sitting there all shocked around with no one to collect her was really triggering.. This is when I noticed my thoughts got a bit spun before her son called me back and I then had a chance to debrief about it with the crisis support counsellor.

Anyway there are things i can do about the bank. I can talk to customer service and make formal complaint about my treatment.. Even if it does not change anything knowing I could speak up will help me in some small way.. There is always something we can do when we hit the wall with the tough stuff and even when we feel those global feelings of being shattered or obliterated by another’s cricticism or lack of empathy there are ways and people we can find who may help us to come back together after it all, at least that is what I am beginning to understand. So often in this increasingly technological and digital age the lines of reality can surely be foggy or blurred, until we meet a person how ‘real’ can we know they are? And when emotional feelings drive us with long tendrils reaching back into far earlier attachment wounds from childhood it can be tough to hold onto a more rational and realistic view of it, to find a way to stay solidly grounded in ‘wise mind’ or that sense of a strong boundary that helps us to define exactly where it is our sense of responsibility to our own needs and the needs of others lays.