Toolbox 3: Suggested internal responses to common critic attacks

 Perfectionism attacks:

1. Perfectionism. My perfectionism arose as an attempt to gain safety and support in my dangerous family. Perfection is a self-persecutory myth. I do not have to be perfect to be safe or loved in the present. I’m letting go of relationships that require perfection. I have a right to make mistakes. Mistakes do not make me a mistake. Every mistake or mishap is an opportunity for me to practice loving myself in places I have never been loved. 

2. All or none and black-and-white thinking. I reject extreme or over-generalized descriptions, judgments, or criticisms. Statements that describe me as always or never this or that are typically grossly inaccurate.

3; Self-hate and self-disgust and toxic shame. I commit to myself. I am on my side. I am a good enough person. I refuse to trash myself. I turn shame back into blame and disgust and externalize it to anyone who shames my normal feelings and foibles. As long as I’m not hurting anyone, I refused to be shamed for normal, emotional responses like anger, sadness, fear and depression. I especially refuse to attack myself for how hard it is to completely eliminate this self-hate habit.

4. Micromanagement, worrying, obsessing, looping, over-futurizing. I will not repetitively examine details over and over. I will not endlessly second guess myself. I cannot change the past. I forgive all my past mistakes. I cannot make the future perfectly safe. I will stop hunting for what could go wrong. I will not try to control the uncontrollable. I will not micromanage myself or others. I work in a way that is good enough and I accept the existential fact that my efforts sometimes bring desired results, and sometimes they do not. Universe, grant me this serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

5. Unfair devaluing comparisons to others or to your most perfect moments. I refuse to compare myself unfavorably to others. I will not compare my insides to their outsides. I will not judge myself for not being  at peak performance all the time. In a society that pressures us into acting happy all the time, I will not get down on myself for feeling bad. 

6. Guilt. Feeling guilty does not mean I am guilty. I refuse to make my decisions and choices out of guilt. Sometimes I need to feel the guilt and do it anyway. In the inevitable instance when I inadvertently hurt someone, I will apologize, make amends, and let go of my guilt. I will not apologize over and over. I am no longer a victim. I will not accept unfair blame. Guilt is sometimes camouflaged fear. I am afraid but I and not guilty or in danger. 

7. Shoulding. I will substitute the words “want to” for “should” and only follow this imperative if it feels like I want to unless I am under legal, ethical or moral obligation. 

8. Over productivity. Workaholism. Busyholism. I am a human being, not a human doing. I will not choose to be perpetually productive. I am more productive in the long run when I balance work with play and relaxation. I will not try to perform at 100% all the time. I subscribe to the normalcy of vacillating along the continuum of efficiency. 

9. Harsh judgments of self and others. Name calling. I will not let the bullies and critics of my early life win by joining and agreeing with them. I refuse to attack myself or abuse others. I will not displace the criticism blame that rightfully belongs to my original critics onto myself or current people in my life. I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself.— Jane Eyre.  

10. Endangerment attacks. Drasticising, catastrophizing, hypochondriacizing. I feel afraid, but I’m not in danger. I am not in trouble with my parents. I refuse to scare myself with thoughts and pictures of my life deteriorating. No more homemade horror movies and disaster flicks. No more turning tiny ailments into tales of dying. 

11. Negative focus. I will stop anxiously looking for over noticing and dwelling on what might go wrong or what might be wrong with me or life around me. Right now I will notice, visualize and enumerate my accomplishments, talents, and qualities, as well as the many gifts life offers me, like music, film, food, beauty, color, books, nature, friends, etc.

12. Time urgency. I am not in danger. I do not need to rush. I will not hurry unless it’s a true emergency. I am learning to enjoy doing my daily activities at a relaxed pace. 

13. Disabling performance anxiety. I am reducing procrastination by reminding myself not to accept unfair criticism or perfectionist expectations from anyone. Even when afraid, I will defend myself from unfair criticism. I won’t let fear make my decisions. 

14. Perseverating about being attacked. Unless there are clear signs of danger, I will thought stop my projections of past bullies, critics onto others. The majority of my fellow human beings are peaceful people. I have legal authority to aid them my protection if threatened by the few who aren’t. I invoke thoughts and images of my friends’ love and support. 

Toolbox 2: Human Bill of Rights

1. I have the right to be treated with respect.

2. I have the right to say no.

3. I have the right to make mistakes.

4. I have the right to reject unsolicited advice or feedback.

5. I have the right to negotiate for change.

6. I have the right to change my mind or my plans.

7. I have the right to change my circumstances or course of actions.

8. I have the right to have my own feelings, beliefs, opinions, preferences, etc.

9. I have the right to protest sarcasm, destructive criticism, or unfair treatment.

10. I have the right to feel angry and express it non-abusively.

11. I have the right to refuse to take any responsibility for anyone else’s problems.

12. I have a right to take any responsibility for anyone’s bad behavior.

13. I have a right to be ambivalent and occasionally be inconsistent.

14. I have a right to play, waste time, and not always be productive.

15. I have a right to occasionally be child-like and immature.

16. I have a right to complain about life’s unfairness and injustices. 

17. I have a right to occasionally be irrational in safe ways.

18. I have a right to seek healthy and mutually supportive relationships. 

19. I have a right to ask friends for a modicum of help and emotional support. 

20. I have a right to complain and verbally ventilate in moderation.

21. I have a right to grow, evolve, and prosper.

Pete Walker CPTSD

About loving feelings

It comes and goes, doesn’t it?

Sometimes related to people and how theytreat us, and sometimes not.

Sometimes related to the moon, to personal finances, to the questions of life, to nothingness, to everything, to the seasons, the time, to the food we ate, to….

It would appear as if the art of loving is not whether you love or not (we all do in our present way) but whether you trust that when love leaves,

it has a reason and it will return again.

Always. 

We humans are instruments for love by design. 

(So is the whole universe!)

When love blows across us, naturally we sing a love song

And when there is no love wind to blow, though it leaves us strange and willow-like, love has gone to an empty field where it fills its wind sails again

so that it might return and blow across our all too hungering instruments one more time. 

What shall we do while we wait? 

We shall weep of course — something as lovely as love leaves a gaping hole when gone. 

We shall remember love in our hearts and wait with ourselves as we wonder in question and doubt until we remember, “Love always returns.” 

~Carol Ruth (The Hide and Seek Game of Love)

Toolbox 1: Suggested Intentions for Recovery

1. I want to develop a more constantly loving and accepting relationship with myself. I want to increase the capacity for self-acceptance.

2. I want to learn to become the best possible friend of myself. 

3. I want to attract into my life relationships that are based on love, respect, fairness, and mutual support.

4. I want to uncover a full, uninhibited self-expression.

5. I want to attain the best possible physical health.

6. I want to cultivate a balance of vitality and peace.

7. I want to attract to myself love friends and community. 

8. I want increasing freedom from toxic shame.

9. I want increasing freedom from unnecessary fear.

10. I want rewarding and fulfilling work.

11. I want a fair amount of peace of mind, spirit, soul and body.

12. I want to increase my capacity to play and have fun.

13. I want to make plenty of room for beauty and nature in my life.

14. I want sufficient physical and monetary resources.

15. I want a fair amount of help, self, human or divine to get what I need.

16. I want the Universe’s love, grace and blessing.

17. I want a balance of work, rest, and play.

18. I want a balance of stability and change.

19. I want a balance of loving interaction and healthy self-sufficiency.

20. I want full emotional expression with a balance of laughter and tears.

21. I want a sense of meaningfulness and fulfillment.

22. I want to find an effective and non-abusive way to deal with anger.

23. I want all these for each and every other being.

Preparing for my next EMDR

 So I will have my next EMDR session on Friday from Sapporo. I’ve decided that I am going to work on my abandonment in romantic relationships. My last session was on abandonment in my very early childhood and as I met with Eric on Sunday and talked to him again last night, I am working through these feelings and I find them very relevant.

Last night I cried in my shower as I recalled the day when Angel proposed to me. I don’t even remember the exact date because it just didn’t mean that much to me. How ironic. I used to be such a romantic and never bothered to remember the day he proposed, our first date, and the day we got legally married. I was 29, absolutely beautiful and lonely. I was defeated by all the failed relationships I had. I went to his apartment to replace his bedsheet, because he had been using a really beat up one provided by his landlord and I got a new one so that it could fit better. It was the day before he had to leave for a work trip to KL and I just wanted to see him. When he saw that I changed his bedsheet, he proposed to me. A part of me sank that my proposal just happened like that—it was a result of me performing and taking care of him, not that he wanted to give something to me. But I still said yes, because I believed at that point in my life no one else would choose me. If I wanted to stop being alone I’d have to say yes. After the proposal, I cried a bit, but it wasn’t because I was going to marry the man of my dreams, but because I was finally not alone.

In my 2-hour phone call with Eric last night, I told him that the abandonment with my husband became much more constant after I was pregnant with my second child. There were times when I was verbally attacked by a total stranger, sometimes even out of racism or sexism, he would do nothing, say nothing even when he was there at the moment, and nothing after the incident as well. Then Eric told me that’s when he felt that my husband should have no place in this world. He told me that whenever someone mistreats his wife, he’d confront them to a point where his wife actually would get angry at him for being so confrontational. When I heard this, I can’t remember if I had said it out loud but I wanted to say that no one in this world has done that for me. It made me feel that I am just not worth protecting and it’s probably just my destiny that I cannot change. And it just broke me. The following day I felt pretty depressed mostly because of this and didn’t want to do much in Sapporo. I walked past a Louis Vuitton store and I just couldn’t resist the urge to buy another LV bag and spend some big bucks on myself. Yes, I bought it.

When I was 19, I had an online relationship with a guy from Kansas. He was 21, a high school drop out, totally broke, but really smart. We didn’t meet on some dating website or anything like that. I had a blog online and he came across my blog and we started our conversation like that. Even though we had never met in person, but we really loved each other. He was in so much denial and he kept telling me how fucked up our situation was and that I should be dating and hooking up with men in my life. I wanted to go visit him in Kansas but he wouldn’t let me. I did date other men and made out with other men in my life and eventually fell for one unavailable man after another. This guy from Kansas and I almost met when I was about to study in the City of Power. At that point we were only 80 miles away from each other. And yet, he dropped all contact with me again because he thought I was depressed. Eventually when we reconnected again in 2012, he told me he really did love me back then but our distance made it too painful for him to admit that. Then we had a pledge to marry each other by the time we turned 30 if we were still single. He said he’d move to wherever I was living, even if it was somewhere as expensive as San Francisco. 

I had dated many men before I got married, but I never had penetrated sex until I started dating Angel, because he was safe. Before Angel, I only had one “official” boyfriend from 2008 to 2009, but even with him we didn’t end up having penetrated sex because for some reason, I always knew he wasn’t 100% mine. He was in touch with a girl from his hometown who he later married after we broke up. All other men I dated were never committed; we kissed and made out and had oral sex but all of them left. I may have been the one leaving only with two of them; the other couple dozens of men all left on their own. They ghosted me.

Of all the men I’ve been with, the one that hurt me the most was Ken. Our thing dragged on for about two to three years, and yet when I thought we’d finally kiss for the first time and it’d be the most magical thing in the world, he got me almost completely naked without kissing me once. We spent the night together in each other’s arms but he just couldn’t allow himself to be vulnerable. Eventually he married a woman that had all the credentials he asked for. That made me feel that the only reason he could not be intimate with me was that I had no money and my family was broke. Seeing him marrying her made me believe that I should also just marry something who’s checked the financial box and a part of my dignity is associated with money. That’s why whenever I feel bad I’d look at how much money I have and buy something. 

 Last night Eric and I talked for two hours on the phone. He was in KL still jetlagging. There are some highlights that I want to journal about.

1. He told me that when we had our last hug in my car, he felt a sensation in his head. He said it felt like an electric current instead of from head to toe, it was from left to right. It felt so good that it made him wanna do it again. He asked me if I felt any physical sensation when we were hugging, I said of course but it feels a bit different each time. In that hug my physical sensation felt more like I was melting.

2. So I told him if he wants to do it again he should come to Hokkaido. He said he doesn’t want to incinerate his marriage. I said I don’t think anything sexual would happen. I said that before we first met up in June, he also said that we should meet when the timing is right. And when we did meet, nothing happened. He said that’s because he made sure nothing could happen. He said that when we took the Ferris wheel it was already somewhat dangerous because so many people would make out in the Ferris wheel. I said but we took the Ferris wheel to see the lightening and to look at the buildings in the neighborhood. He said, “sure we took the Ferris wheel to do an aerial survey.” He also said that my trip in Hokkaido is for myself so if he was here then I wouldn’t be able to think about a lot of things.

3. We talked about relationships, therapies, neurodivergence and life. He said when he was back home in MN, his mom’s short term memory is declining very quickly. It makes him realize we all go into decline eventually and nothing is permanent. You’d never know when you’re gonna die the next day so the best thing you can do is to cherish the beauty in every present moment. I said we finally have something to agree on. When I heard this, there’s some confusion in me. If I were the beauty in his life, would he cherish me? Or would he just keep me in the friend zone and keep me far away still?

4. From our recent conversations and our meet up, I still feel that he was keeping me in the friend zone. I cried at the end of our last meetup on Sunday. I told him the more you talk the more I wanna cry. He asked me why I was crying. I said I don’t know when we’d see each other again and he’s so funny. He held my hand and said, I’m sorry that there are things that happened in your life that made you think I’d abandon you, even after all the things I’ve told you. He also said the City of Rain is really close to M. It’s probably the closest city to M and it’s much closer than the City of Palace (where his wife is from). Or we can meet in a third country. 

5. We talked about emotional attunement in relationships. He thinks there’s no perfect emotional attunement and I agree. He thinks perfect attunement would require at least one person to change their priorities in life and that’s self erasure, and I agree. But I said I think it also depends on the inner work of the two people, whether the two people are growing their inner selves together. He gave an example from Gottman’s book—the husband wants to go bowling with his friends tonight but the wife is really mad about a broken faucet at home. The husband went bowling anyway and said he’d fix it when he comes back, but the wife just isn’t happy that it wasn’t fixed right away. I said in this case, first they can simply hire a repairman to do that. If money can solve the problem then just do it. If they don’t have the money, the wife needs to do some inner work. Why does it trigger her so much that the broken faucet has to be fixed right away? Is there some unresolved trauma that causes her emotional flashback?

6. I said in my marriage I was willing to give up my social life, my career to make things feel safe for my husband because my priority was to make it work. Erik said that’s why I feel so much resentment now that he didn’t do the same for me. I said no, it wasn’t exactly that. Our relationship was still alive before I conceived the second child. All the abandonment started to happen after I got pregnant with the second one. There have been times when I was verbally attacked by strangers for racism, sexism. Even though he was there, he did nothing said nothing and even nothing afterwards. That’s when I felt truly abandoned.

7. He said that’s the part he couldn’t accept. He said if someone mistreats his wife, he’d get so confrontational that his wife would get angry for how confrontational he’d get. This is the part that triggers me most emotionally. In my whole life, no one, not a single man has ever stood up for me once when I’ve been mistreated. It makes me feel that his wife is so lucky and I just don’t deserve that in my destiny. It also makes me feel that he’s gonna stay with wife forever and what he and i have is gonna die. Hearing this makes me feel that I am so unimportant to everyone.

First meal in Sapporo

 My first meal in Sapporo was Yakiniku Like. I was really craving yakiniku and it was indeed delicious. This restaurant wasn’t even rated more than 4 stars on Google but it is awesome. The interesting thing about yakiniku is that you have to play with fire to get your food. Cooking with fire was the whole reason why humans evolved into who we are today—before humans learned to use fire, their diet was so limited and they couldn’t eat meat. Without protein human spine could not be upright. And yet look at the civilization today; we don’t let children play with fire anymore and most kitchens in the world do not have a gas stove. IH heaters have replaced most fire stoves.

I remember playing with the fire a lot when I was a kid. I learned to use a lighter before I was in the first grade and I could cook leaves with a candle. I once set the floor on fire in my mom’s office and quickly put it out on my own. These experiences definitely shaped my vigilance and life skills, but kids these days simply can’t have access to these experiences. I don’t even know if they could learn to eat yakiniku. 

There are many tourists in Sapporo. Most of them travel in pairs. Some are just BFFs and some are romantic couples. I was once one of them, but now I don’t feel jealous looking at those couples—I now know that nothing can be guaranteed forever. Maybe what I see is just a transient moment in their lives where they are traveling with someone but it doesn’t mean they will forever be like that. Maybe they look happen on the outside, but that might just be because they’re with someone just so that they can avoid being lonely. I have been through all of those things. On the other hand I still want to believe in a happily ever after. Maybe some of the couples are really happily ever after. I saw a couple in their 60s shopping in Tanuki Koji. The wife found the second hand store and excitedly pointed it out to her husband, and the husband excitedly joined her. That kind of emotional attunement is exactly what I hope to have in life. I wonder if they have kids.

Sapporo 1

 I have just landed in Sapporo. While I was on the plane, I kept repeating the last few chapters of Pete Walker’s CPTSD audiobook. I cried a lot, and napped some. I barely had sleep last night. I went to bed at midnight and automatically woke up before 5am. I originally planned to wake up at 6:10am and drive myself to the airport at 6:30am. Oh yes, it was my first time driving myself to this particular airport for international travels. Interestingly I was alert enough to drive myself there safely.

While I was waiting in line for immigration, there was a family of three—a dad, mom, and a child who seemed to be mentally disabled with scars on his head and a brace on his arm. While they were waiting for the immigration officer to check their passports, this child was curious and wanted to check what the officer was doing, and his mom stopped him a few times with warnings. This child seemed to be 8 to 10 years old but he was scrawny. Upon seeing that the tears just rolled down my face. 

Even though the mom warned her child a few times, she wasn’t really scared or angry. She was smiling a bit. Everytime when Little O is disturbing other people, I get really triggered in fear and then feel angry. I get terrified by his behavior because I’m afraid someone else would get so triggered and become violent with him. But now I know from Pete Walker’s book that it’s an emotional flashback. This kind of paranoia is not necessary. When I saw that disabled kid’s mom being so gentle with his behavior, it just made me cry. 

The dad is also a small guy, but he was leading his family, standing in the front. He was paying attention to his wife and his kid. I wonder if they’re happy together. I think they are because if they weren’t, the mom wouldn’t be so emotionally stable. Maybe the dad can be emotionally attuned to the mom so they can raise this challenging kid together with fulfillment.