Who deserves help? (Or: "You've just tried to braise a pork chop in the toaster")

The other day I came home from my session with my alcohol counsellor with a fair bit to think about. After a bit of mulling it over, I decided to ask a group of people what the term "coping" means to them. I got a large number of answers, but only one that I was really looking for - but it didn't match my definition of it, either. The question (and the answers) sparked a different conversation with a good friend, about who deserves help and when -- on, of course, a more personal note.

Some of the things that came up for me in this discussion were some issues/concerns and some beliefs I hold that I've been challenging without fully recognising:
I think coping is equal to feeling like there's a reason to keep living/fighting, not struggling all the time emotionally, and I think I believe that the only people who 'deserve' help are those who aren't coping.
I am scared that Mental Health are right and that if I just tried hard enough, I'd be able to pull myself together and build a life worth living in a much shorter time frame than I'm currently managing.
I get upset when my counsellor says I'm coping well because I don't fit my own definition of what coping is, and I use that definition as my "proof" that I can check on to see if I'm allowed to ask for help (such as by seeing a counsellor).

I decided the bigger part of the discussion stands pretty well on its own merit in the form it's already in, with a few edits for clarity, conciseness or just punctuation/grammar (not even sharing of IRC logs allows for completely rubbish grammar on my blog!). That said, I should probably warn you - don't read on an empty stomach! Someone was clearly hungry! ;)


F(riend): Let's say you and I are taking a cooking class. It's the final test, they've told us to cook this outrageously complicated meal and we have two hours. I'm buzzing along, I know exactly what I'm doing, I'm doing it all right, but I'm a bit slow. You suck. You can't tell your ass from your apples and you've just tried to braise a pork chop in the toaster. When the chef comes along, who should get more help?

M(e): Me. Or someone should take me out of the running!

F: Yes. I'm doing alright on my own and would benefit from some assistance and if I want it, I should get it, but you aren't doing well at all. You're so confused and overwhelmed that not only will you not get your braised pork chops with apples and onions out on time, you will probably deliver - late - grilled cheese. And have absolutely no idea how you did it.

(This is, truthfully, almost how I cook for real! Analogy and reality crossover!)

F: Clearly you didn't get the skills you needed in Chef school so you should probably go back and try again. Both of us, however, are better off than the third chef who has all her ingredients, all her pans and spoons and things prepared, plenty of help and plenty of time... and is sitting there filing her nails instead. She does not deserve help, in my opinion.

F: This analogy carries over. Anyone with any interest at all in improving, no matter where they're starting - from "almost an expert but needs a nudge" to "ass over breakfast", deserves to have assistance. Some of us need more than others, some of us GET more than others but it comes in the form of a troupe of angry 6 year olds who think they're gourmet Chefs - not very helpful and a bit baffling as to how they can manage to hurt your feelings so much they're just tetchy little midgets, but that's what happens when they send you to the primary school for cooking lessons.

F: It's not like you went in there incompetent and came out incompetent. You went in unable to even open the bag of bread for peanut butter and jelly, and now you're making French toast. But there's only so much you can learn from idiots.

F: It's unfortunate that you happened to be in a place where the help they offered you was provided by baboons in diapers, but
a) you did learn many, many things from them... you took what you were given and you made something useful, which says not much about them but hours and hours of things about you, and
b) they've treated you pretty poorly, which is unfortunate, and I wish I knew why, but it doesn't really matter. What they have to offer, you have gotten. Until they learn the right way to put the sausage in the pan, they can hardly teach you to make the rest of breakfast.


Ignoring the somewhat hostile (but quite amusing!) view she has of the mental health professionals that have been involved in the main part of my care, she made some very important points:
It doesn't matter what "level" you're at, if you need the help, you deserve it. I was able to learn things, and that's good, but not having learned everything there is to know about how to build a better life for myself doesn't mean I need to be beating myself up for it.



Challenges & Cheerleading:
Just because I fit my counsellor's definition of coping doesn't mean I don't deserve to ask for help.
It's okay to not be perfect.
I have equal worth to others.



What does coping mean to you? Does your definition change if you apply it universally (as opposed to self-application only)? What defines "need" in terms of asking for or receiving help? What are your thoughts on the analogy and the message behind it?

Take care of yourselves until next time, and may we all find our own small fences along the way.

I Guess Sometimes Running Isn't The Answer

Here I am, doing the same thing I have always done, hoping for a better outcome without changing the direction of the flooding tide. There are heavy decisions hanging over my head that I am avoiding in hopes that they will make themselves; if I wait long enough, they might... but having them hanging is not making each day easier.

Avoidance. Escape. I want them; I feel as though I need them.

I know that avoidance as a coping mechanism almost all of the time falls short of "helpful" or "healthy"; and yet... It has been more than a week since I sat at my stepmother's table and shared a meal with them. I have tried to push away the thoughts, the emotions, the ideas. I have worked to build ladders against the walls of paranoia so that I can pretend they don't exist. I have built dams and wells and thrown into them the sadness, the guilt, the fear, the anger, the shame, the disgust. They continue to bubble up, bubble out and flood my brain the way the Brisbane river flooded Southbank last week. I have alternately reached out and retreated; struck out and struck in; fought and loved and hidden. And what I have done more than anything else is run. In any way I can, I have taken off running and not stopped until that panicked feeling went down a little again.

I need to find a way to control this crisis, because this became one far too quickly and far too strongly. I am in serious distress and I need to level it out enough that my skills have some impact.

I've been thinking about this all day, and I think I know how I'm going to do that. I think I know the right way to handle this, but I'm not absolutely sure. I might make it worse - but at least I will have tried... and if I don't do anything, it's still going to keep getting worse on its own.

Don't get me wrong; as much as I have avoided, I have also been trying to do what I need to, in tiny ways. I wrote a journal; I wasted about four thousand words avoiding and then I wrote a thousand words about the visit. I have mentioned that I'm struggling. And tiny ways at trying this are great, but they're not enough. if I want to keep my head above water, I need to make bigger steps.

I need to actually stop running. I need to start looking at this for what it was, and that's going to mean learning how to accept it. It's going to mean talking about it and writing about it and actually being honest about it. It's going to be uncomfortable.

But how do I voice this tangle of emotions? How do I extricate myself from the guilt, shame and disgust long enough to allow any of the other emotions a look in; or for long enough to allow anyone else in? I need to figure it out and soon.

I need to trust in my own beliefs, I need to trust in my own self; I need to let go enough to trust in the pockets of safety that there are here where the waters aren't so rough and I can rest a little.

When you are swept off your feet and carried away on the tide, how do you regain your equilibrium?

The Butterfly Does Not Make The Caterpillar A Lie

Today I made a discovery. In all my years in and out of therapy, in all my time spent working on "this, that or the other" issue, something went unseen, unrecognised and uncorrected. Let me back up a few steps with a story that is fairly vivid in my mind. It's not an especially distressing memory, nor is it particularly unusual for my life, but for some reason, it's something that has remained quite clear.

I am thirteen years old, it's just after school and I've missed my bus. I know my stepmother's going to be angry with me, but I haven't any other choice, so I walk to the office and I call her. That conversation is lost to the 27 year old I am now, but I do remember knowing she wasn't happy she'd have to fetch me. She doesn't ask why I have missed the bus and I don't volunteer. By the time we are home and she wants to know, I cannot for the life of me remember. This is nothing unusual as I often forget things or share things that don't "tally" with what someone else thinks has happened. I am used to it, as is my stepmother. Unfortunately, as much as she is used to it, she despises it. She fires questions at me, shoots accusations that are baseless and unlikely: I didn't forget, I had a detention and didn't want to admit to it. I was down the back kissing a boy. I was in a fist fight. I was redoing an exam. I was caught breaking school rules and having a chat to the principal. In the midst of these accusations, I suddenly remember what I had been doing, why I had missed the bus. A friend who had been having a hard time had asked me for support in doing something. We'd both expected I had plenty of time, but over or under estimated somewhere. Why I couldn't remember this earlier, I don't know. But I did remember it now, and as my stepmother threw her ideas of where I'd been at me, I tell her it wasn't any of those things. Her lip twists into a sneer and she tells me I wouldn't know, since I can't remember, and I tell her, "I do remember, now" and she doesn't believe me. She tells me that I can't 'not remember' before and remember now.

I learn that if the situation changes, the past is a lie.

That is not the first time I received that message, and it wasn't the last, and in 27 years, nobody's ever thought to tell me any different. I didn't challenge it because I didn't see it as anything but simple fact... until today.

Just as the butterfly who emerges from her cocoon does not make the caterpillar a lie in fact, nor does it do so in metaphor. If who I am changes, if I adjust my coping mechanisms; if I move beyond my past, that does not make the past a lie. Future change does not make now-me a lie or a liar!

I can use this on so many levels.



Today's cheer-leading statements:
I don't have to take on my family's judgements about me.
I am not a bad person.
Change does not make the past a lie!
Avoidance doesn't make the problem go away.
I have the tools and the strength to handle anything that comes my way.



Take care of yourselves until next time, and may we all find our own small fences along the way.

Learning To Fly

For a long time, I wasn't ready to fly. I didn't have the tools. I didn't know how to use the tools. I was afraid. I had reason after reason, and sometimes I believed that I didn't even want to fly. In DBT, I was given a harness and a parachute. They taught me how to operate them; which levers to pull, which buttons to press, which skills to use at which point. We did trial runs which sometimes were nothing more than bunny hops along the ground.

And then we walked, together, to that cliff. We stood there, us and our instructors, and we looked over the edge. I backed away. I wasn't ready. I was still afraid. "It's okay," they told me. "It's normal to be afraid." I wore my parachute and harness as I climbed down the ladder and fell to the ground. I had told myself I wasn't ready. I practiced more. Little jumps with soft landings.

As we climbed that ladder over and over, I watched as more and more of my peers took that step. I watched them swoop and fly. Their laughter drifted back through the wind, and I stood closer to the edge. One by one, my peers took that step I couldn't manage, and I watched them fly. Sometimes they stood where they had landed for a while, sometimes they climbed the ladder again for another dive. "Give it a go," they'd tell me. "It's the most wonderful feeling in the world." "I'm afraid," I'd reply, and they'd show me again how they did it. "You've got all of us to catch you," they'd tell me, "but you won't need us. You can do it!" And still, I wasn't ready.

I watched and I took small steps closer and closer to the edge, but never would I take the one step that would leave the cliff behind me.

I imagine my instructors despaired of me, at times. This wasn't a cliff they could push me off, to prove to me that I could do it. I had to take the step myself, but I wasn't ready. I had the equipment, now. I had the knowledge. I had some practice. But I didn't believe I could do it. I watched my peers do it, and it taught me that it could be done... but I still didn't believe that I could do it. They couldn't force me to take the step, all they could do was remind me time and again that they believed in me, remind me that even when I bit the dust on a bunny hop, I could get up and try again.

I didn't believe I could do it. I was still too afraid. I still believed, too often, that I didn't really want to fly; that I didn't need to fly.

Eventually, my instructors moved on. "This is as far as we can take you," I was told. "The rest is up to you. Either you'll step off and fly, or you won't, but we can't do it for you." Still, I wasn't ready.

My instructors left and in my sadness, I failed to notice the ladder they had left. At the top of the cliff, I tiptoed to the edge and looked over. I could see my peers in the air below, circling and waving, and their support echoed in the air. "I'm not ready," I wept. "I can't do this on my own." In my desperation, I clung to my parachute, to my harness; so tight that they began to rub and fray, so I removed them. The earth shook around me and I lost my footing. Without the parachute, without the harness, I began to fall and I landed, hard, upon a ledge I hadn't been able to see. My landing knocked the breath out of me, and I lay winded for a while, but I had learnt something valuable - I didn't die.

When I got breath back, I put my harness and parachute back on, and I stepped over the ledge.

My flight is errant. I stop off at a lot of ledges along the way, and sometimes I forget what flying feels like. Sometimes I forget what wanting to fly feels like. My parachute is still frayed, my harness chafes and I sometimes take them off for a little while until I remember again how much I want to fly.

My peers have their own flight patterns. Sometimes their flights are errant as well. From here, their flight seems so much smoother, but whether it is or not, I can't judge, and it doesn't matter. All that matters is that I'm finally ready to start flying. It's okay that my flight is errant. It's okay that it took me longer to take that step. It's okay that I'm still practicing. Maybe I'll always be practicing, and maybe I'll never really fly with the freedom others have, that's okay. I'm finally ready to fly, and I'll fly at the pace that is right for me.



Today's cheer-leading statements:
I made a mistake - so what? I don't have to punish myself forever for one bit of bad judgement.
Just because something is right for someone else doesn't mean it's right for me.
I am choosing to make healthier choices for myself.
It's important to take time to look at the positive things, but that doesn't have to mean pretending that there are no negatives.
Just because I caused my wounds myself doesn't mean I don't deserve proper medical treatment for them.



Take care of yourselves until next time, and may we all find our own small fences along the way.