Stepping Over Our Wounds (via Henri Nouwen)

There is a struggle for those of us who bear the scars of old wounds. Each time a new hurt happens, it can rip open wounds, which remain fresh, because, instead of allowing the pain to fade and heal, in time, I know I have spent too long living with and feeding the underlying hurt by living and reliving the most painful of memories. It's as if I have a belief that I could 'undo' the past by remaining inside the trauma, condemning myself to be held captive in an never-ending 'time loop'.

I have a choice, to remain forever frozen in those moments of pain and so prolong the suffering, or accept that they have happened and will leave me with scars, reminders of what I have survived, but no longer capable of stopping me from moving forward. I found this meditation from Henri Nouwen helpful in explaining that choice and the moment when I can 'step over...' and move beyond the most difficult of experiences. I may be a product of my past but I do not have to be its prisoner:

'Sometimes we have to "step over" our anger, our jealousy, or our feelings of rejection and move on. The temptation is to get stuck in our negative emotions, poking around in them as if we belong there. Then we become the "offended one," "the forgotten one," or the "discarded one." Yes, we can get attached to these negative identities and even take morbid pleasure in them. It might be good to have a look at these dark feelings and explore where they come from, but there comes a moment to step over them, leave them behind and travel on.'

A note of caution if you find this thought of 'stepping over wounds' challenging - acceptance and moving on from the wounds of the distant past is not condoning all of the wrongs done to us, nor does it prevent us, if it is the right time and circumstances for us from seeking justice. What acceptance does is to help us recognise that no person, circumstance, substance or material possession will be able to undo the injustices and pain of the past. Nor does acceptance entirely remove the shadows cast by such traumas. What it allows us to do is accept that we have had the strength and courage to survive the worst. Having recognised that, we then have a choice: to remain trapped in the past, or to build on the strength and courage we have to live whatever life we choose, for ourselves. The prison door is open, but I still need to walk out of it, myself.

Hope - the Double Edged Sword

I have neglected my blog here for the past few weeks, because I have become more involved in different projects, which I hope will lead to paid employment in time. It has been a struggle to balance what I 'think' I 'should be doing and what I can actually achieve while managing to maintain my sense of equilibrium. One of the 'jobs' I've taken on is a role as an Expert by Experience. Through engaging with local Mental Health services from a new perspective I have started to reflect on how I have changed over the past five years. One particular new development is that I am finding myself less fearful of hope than I used to be.

Throughout my life 'Hope' has been a concept/feeling/idea that was a double edged sword. Take the pre-Christmas time of year, for example. Every year I would look forward to the 25th December with absolute hope, faith and optimism that somehow my family would be transformed and that from that Christmas on, our lives would be transformed. It's not that I bought into any of the commercialism consciously, just that everyone tries harder over that period and so, a bit like when families are on show, we all tended to be on our best behaviour. Also the only expression of acceptance and love from our parents was in giving us material gifts. At Christmas there was an abundance, somehow I hoped this would continue into the new year, but every year that hope dissipated in the reality that our parents were effectively disinterested in our lives. Except when they were angry with us.

I learned to fear hope, and to avoid anyone or anything which gave me hope. If I could learn not to be 'deluded' by hope, then the pain and distress I experienced with my life, especially when my hopes were dashed, would be less sharply felt by me. It is easier to accept life in the gutter if I've never even noticed that I can see the stars from there, let alone reach for them.

The problem I have faced is that if I am to find a life worth living, then I need to have something to hope in. That there can be purpose and meaning to every experience in life, both good and bad. For me that has come from a faith in a God who is bigger than me and my life. For others, they find it in family and other relationships. This has helped me primarily to make peace with the worst experiences of my life. I can see the bits of my character that have been shaped not by the harm done to me, but by the resilience which has helped me to survive and build a life that I can enjoy. One of the most critical moments in my treatment was when my therapist told me there was help and therefore hope that my life didn't have to be determined by my emotions or my past experiences anymore.

It is easy to assume that the alternative to hope is despair. I have learned that, that doesn't have to be true. As I have learned more and more about the DBT Skill of Radical Acceptance I have begun to recognise that sometimes, it wasn't hope and its loss which hurt me most. Rather it is the fact that I would hope unrealistically, or give my hope to people who either weren't worthy of it, or capable of fulfilling it. No individual person can fill the emotional void left by childhood and adult trauma. Sometimes the skill lies in recognising when hope is not appropriate. There are circumstances, or relationships, which no matter how hard I hope it wasn't so, will never change. It took me a lifetime to realise that even Christmas couldn't change my parents and the results of their own upbringing. Accepting that and letting go of the hope that by wishing I could effect a change, has freed to me to build a relationship with my parents that no longer reopens wounds from the past - over and over.

Another area I have struggled with is the sense of injustice I feel about how vulnerable people are treated. However much I hope that the injustice of government policies related to welfare and mental health funding will change, I must accept that, however flawed the election process, a majority of MPs are not supportive of such compassionate and corporate policies to help the most vulnerable in our society. Sadly, the majority of those who voted, voted for that kind of government. There is no point in me hoping that will magically change before 2020 when the next Election is due. However, I can look forward to that year and hope that if I can share my ideas and beliefs about a just society across, join with others who share those beliefs, then there may be hope that a change can happen. For now, acceptance is the right alternative to hope.

As I have moved away from being completely overwhelmed by my emotions, I have noticed that my view of hope has become an active practice of wise mind. Hope is an emotion, I feel it in my gut. However, I need to make sure that the facts of any given situation need to confirm that gut feeling for it to be a force which drives me forward. Unfettered hope, hope that is built on a denial of the realities of the situation is a false hope and it is that which hurts. Hope grounded in substantial, realistic understanding of what is going on around me, an awareness of what I and others are capable of, has a better chance of being fulfilled. Naturally, there are still times, because no one can predict the future, when hope is disappointed, but if we can consider the prospect of disappointment ahead of time, then rather than wreaking wholesale emotional devastation as in the past, it is something that we can both survive and build on.

On Elections, Weather & Other things I can't Control

I started writing this post a few days after the Election Results. I broke off as I realised I was wholly in emotion mind and focusing on my emotional response to the whole campaign was not helpful in managing my emotions. Wise mind decision! Since then, I along with most of the country, have been trying to make sense of the re-election of a deeply unpopular government and waking up to the realisation that really so many felt they had no choice - despite being offered a choice of arguably the most varied range of political parties with a realistic prospect of gaining seats in parliament.

I will leave the politics to others who enjoy such things, but I need to make sense of some deeply troubling effects on my mental health from feeling helpless and hopeless about a process which is supposed to make me feel a part of society.

Don't get me wrong, I have encountered many people, including, presumably, those who voted for the current government, who have felt anything but optimistic and happy about the result. For me as someone with BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder), emotions are heightened and extended by the atmosphere around me, in addition to connecting with pre-existing feelings of despair and helplessness based on my life experiences. I am aware that Radical Acceptance is the right skill to use to move forward without becoming bogged down by my own self igniting feelings. Before I am able to do that I need to be able to identify the feelings that are affecting me most deeply.

1) Frustration - It has taken me three weeks, but I recognise that throughout the six weeks of campaigning I was in a near permanent state of frustration at the lack of real debate.

I was brought up in Northern Ireland, where political debate was highly emotive and strongly argued. No matter which political point of view was being represented it was always from the heart. Irish rugby teams are renowned for the 'fire in the belly' and relentless fight until the final whistle. I was weaned on such fight and passion in my politicians, whether I agreed with them or not.

Throughout this year's election campaign I was constantly dismayed by the lack of challenge from opponents of the government. More than that, there seemed to be a lack of real feeling for the impact of decisions on real people. I feel that important issues weren't aired in a truly Northern Irish level of debate - fiery and insulting, yes, but at least giving vent to strongly held opinions as well as based on facts. Another frustration was being well informed on important issues such as Health, Education and Justice and realising that, either by omission or design, the media allowed itself to be sidetracked into unimportant fripperies instead of pressing home on key points with all parties.

I felt no one was hearing my voice - and there in my frustration is where my past has met my present. As someone with BPD who for all my life has believed that I am to blame for every fault in life, either my own or others, the sense that I could not make my voice heard echoed back to the most painful moments of my life.

2) Injustice - because of the lack of real debate many who have suffered greatly in the past five years of austerity politics, again had no voice. All my life I have felt deeply inequality and injustice. As a survivor of CSA (Childhood Sexual Abuse) and in observing the scape-goating of some of our most committed public servants, I feel deeply any sense of injustice. I need to recognise when my own emotional sensitivity builds the sense of injustice to the point of being unbearable. Radical Acceptance seeks to take the sting out of that by acknowledging that actually, I cannot carry the sense of injustice for whole parts of society, on my own. Nor am I the only person who feels that injustice. Hard to hold on to when such a government has been returned to power. However, in seeking to manage the effects of these emotions there is a point where I must stop feeding the rising emotional stress and anxiety about the national situation and allow that I am powerless against it. Without wanting to fall into the cliche of 'Frozen' to 'let it go'.

Some years ago I had the privilege to work with displaced people in Northern Sudan. I don't think it is possible to find a better living example of injustice than the African tribes who were facing systemic genocide, and indeed, still do. As someone on the ground, it was impossible not to feel overwhelmed. Again, my emotional sensitivity meant that I automatically identified and joined my own suffering with the suffering around me. It resulted in me contending with culture shock alongside crippling emotional paralysis. Six weeks in, a colleague working for UNICEF spoke to me about how she coped. I now recognise the wisdom of Radical Acceptance. She said, 'Alma, you cannot change the world, but you can try to change the world for one person.' This along with the relationships built up with some war widows allowed me to see, that even the presence of outside observers able to point out the injustice was a boost to those we were working alongside. In essence the realisation that someone had just noticed there was an injustice, was a relief. I know a little of that from the moments when people have persisted with the message that it was okay to feel that what was done to me as a child was unacceptable. I also know how many times you have to hear it before you accept that it is true.

Back to the injustice apparent in the UK, I have a choice. Remain in my emotional paralysis. Or seek support from others of like mind and join together to make our voice heard. I have considered joining a political party, but I need to be free to vote according to my conscience rather than imposed party political ideas. So, I have decided to keep speaking as I am able about issues that matter to me. When I am stable and when it is unlikely to affect my emotional and mental health.

3) Fear - This week, I have suffered my most disruptive panic attack in months. In reality I have been living with a low level anxiety since the turn of the year. Most of my anxiety connects to my belief that I am worthless, something which has been reinforced by the divisive rhetoric which went on for over two months during the election campaign. At times I felt stabs of fear, as politicians divided human beings into groups of 'them' and 'us'. Having fought my mental illness over my lifetime and only been given a diagnosis which helped me access appropriate help at the age of 42, I have been dependent on state payments for three years now.

Having belonged to the 'hardworking' for most of my life - and paid into the state welfare system through tax and insurance for over 35 years, I now find myself vilified and disregarded by those in power. No major party spoke up for me effectively. At any point, because people in this country believe that the working poor, the disabled and those of us with mental health issues are 'undeserving' I could see the means to keep my head afloat pulled from under me. I am grateful for the provision that has been made for me, although would point out I have paid towards my own needs for many years. I am afraid to let people know that I am in receipt of benefits. I am afraid that I cannot keep up with my house repayments. I am afraid that the best option is for me to regress towards relapse than keep struggling to manage my condition. Having my basic needs provided for allows me space to do that.

The current 'new' government wants to increase the cuts to welfare, so that I don't become 'comfortable' on 'state handouts'. It believes, as do those who have voted for them, that all I need to be well is a job. I had a job for 35 years. I had excellent, well paid jobs for years. Finally, I was a shell of a person, because they did not address my underlying emotional and mental health needs. Because I have struggled to keep up with payments on all bills I have now fallen into fuel poverty. That means that 25% of my income is taken up with maintaining heat and light. Don't get me wrong, I have made major cut backs in an attempt to cut my costs. The fuel company has acknowledged that I have reduced my indebtedness and my annual energy costs are less than a third of those of an average household. Nonetheless the roll over deficit from winter to summer has not been cleared for the past three years, so here I am being told that I am in fuel poverty. That is hard for someone who has pride in self sufficiency to take. Such emotional struggles weary me. I am doing my best to find work that is sustainable and realistic. I cannot at present work five days a week. I am expensive for some employers due to my professional qualifications and work experience. However, the reality of managing my condition means that I need space in between periods of work - spaced out part time hours in order to prevent relapse. I have learned this over a long period of time (nearly 20 years) when I was most unstable.

What hope do I have of being allowed the time and space to fully manage my condition, when people who have terminal illnesses with a longer life expectancy of six months are being required to seek work? (one proposal from our caring government).

Behind these personal, practical fears is another more instinctive fear that as a nation we have moved beyond caring for one another, simply for being fellow human beings. Without being over dramatic I recognise in the dehumanising nature of some rhetoric and the blaming of specific groups for societal ills, historic echoes of the most heinous crimes against humanity from Germany, to Cambodia, to Rwanda. If you consider me as less than you, simply because I belong to a group 'other than' you, then that gives you permission to treat me as you will. It is hardly surprising that I have allowed this fear to grow as it has connected with the fears and realities I have already experienced as a survivor of CSA - a number of people in my life before have considered me as 'less than' and therefore given themselves permission to treat me in ways they would not wish to be treated themselves.

I have worked hard against these fears and against the labels that seek to push me down. In short, I have overcome more than anyone will ever know and I have the strength of recognising that I am more than, that I am precious because I am loved. I am not measured by how much in financial terms I can contribute, but in the person I am, the value I bring to my relationships, whether I have strength to help others less fortunate than me.

Despair - It is easy to despair and I fight against that. I need to relearn the art of hearing the positive in good relationships around me. I need to see the positives in the number of people dissatisfied with the election result. To know there are others close to me and unknown to me who recognise the injustices and the same fears for our nation.

My starting point has to be to accept the situation as it is. Just as I have to live each day in either rain or sunshine, without being able to determine or control either, so my task is to live my day to day as best I can in the society and circumstances I find myself.

When the Fight is too much - Stop Fighting

I'm a fighter. Some would say I'm stubborn, obstinate, belligerent. Others might use words like, determined, resourceful, persistent. Whatever, if I feel strongly about things I will fight.

It is this character trait which more than any other has kept me going - for those of you who are old enough to remember I am an emotional Weeble - for those of you too young - these were little toys which were essentially egg shaped. The most important thing about them was that 'Weebles wobble, but they don't fall down.' No matter how many times they were dropped or fell over or 'wobbled' they would bounce back and right themselves.

It's okay to be a bouncer, backer - it means that I have been able to survive a lot of challenges and trauma I never thought possible. Like many who suffer from mental illness, there is a core of steel within me which means that I keep going, even when the situations I battle against are seemingly overwhelming. Recently, however, I have found myself feeling weary of the fight. I know that this is part of the fluctuations in my emotional, mental and physical strength as I seek to manage my mental health.

Suddenly, the other day whilst bemoaning the ongoing struggles I've had, including the day to day struggle to keep body and soul together, I found myself saying 'I am so sick of fighting'. Since Christmas, which is so often a period after which I need acknowledge the need to rebuild myself in nearly every way, I have been hit with one challenge after another. It is hardly surprising that I have found myself at a low ebb: Illness, family crisis, uncertainty about the future and ongoing daily financial pressure. Yet, I continue to drain my resources by constantly battling against intractable situations that are beyond my control.

In particular, I have found myself emotionally battered by the prospect of another Conservative government, by a fear of the impact on my well being from their continued assault on the most vulnerable on society. Usually, my interest in politics and current affairs is more intellectual than emotional - which is probably the best way to view our democracy. However, the survival instinct in me has meant that I have been using my precious emotional strength in railing against people who are oblivious of my very existence. So, I have had to stop fighting against situations and environments I have absolutely no hope of changing. As I sat helpless watching political debates and interviews on Television, the emotional impact in terms of my anxiety and anger levels was extreme compared to any likely impact I could have on the situation.

It is one example of the numerous times I have fought against situations that are beyond my control or abilities. Having, been overwhelmed by a feeling of weariness and its associated thought, 'I'm so weary of fighting', I focused on the dishes I was washing and came to the conclusion that I should just 'stop fighting'.

Once again, I have learned another aspect of Radical Acceptance and its importance in helping me to manage the emotional impact of the world around me. I cannot stop my elderly parents from declining in health, I cannot control the outcome of the coming election, I cannot even predict whether or not I am likely to be soaked by rain on my daily dog walks. The only things I can do, is care as much as I can for my parents, use my vote in May to make my choice and ensure that when I do go outside I am prepared with the right clothes for the weather in that moment.

Radical Acceptance means that I need to recognise when I should be Weeble-like, when I should and could fight against injustice. Through my involvement as a Mental Health volunteer I have been able in small ways to help in situations where the environment is not too powerful for me to have an effect. Long ago, during a period working alongside displaced people, in refugee camps in Africa I became overwhelmed by the suffering and need around me every day, as well as the relatively short time and few resources we had to make any impact. A very experienced NGO worker talked to me about how you get it in perspective without such suffering overwhelming us. It may sound trite, but in that context it helped me refocus my efforts into an individual, case by case way of seeing my way through an environment which was far and away the most powerful environment I had encountered at that time: 'You may not be able to change the world, but you can try to change the world for one person.'

If I keep seeing my life as a whole campaign of war, rather than separate battles, some of which are behind me, then it follows that I will always feel as if I am fighting. When I feel that I have to sort my whole life out, and, while I'm at it, to stop all the injustices in the world around me, then it is hardly surprising that I often feel overwhelmed.

Radical Acceptance tells me that I can keep banging my fists against the wall, or accept that it is there, is too big for me to batter, but maybe if I stop fighting and take a step back I may be able to see a door or gap in it, which will allow me through. Or, and this is the most radical thought of all, maybe if I stop fighting against its existence, I can find a way to live with it. I think my attitude to BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder) has been like that. For most of my life I applied the weeble principle to my emotional storms. Because storms come and go, this worked for a time. Until, I found myself faced with environments, people and situations that were too powerful for me to overcome.

Let's face it, I am not a superhero, I'm not even a true Weeble. Sometimes I do fall down. That's okay because who wants to have an egg shaped bottom.

To Move Forward, Do I have to Go Back?

TRIGGER WARNING: Discussion of Childhood Trauma including sexual abuse and symptoms of PTSD

It's a vexed question. After all, if your symptoms include intrusions from the past that interfere with your life now, then it stands to reason that you need to go back in order to go forward. Throughout my life I think I spent most of my energy in avoiding any emotional or cognitive acknowledgement of the trauma I had suffered throughout my formative years. All my energy was spent in avoiding any acknowledgement of the fact that I had actually suffered any trauma at all.

And there it is - trauma - a word that I refused to hear from my CPN or any other professional in relation to 'my life'. After all, until I got away from home and started looking around and experiencing life outside my family, I had thought myself relatively well off as I had grown up. We were, materially. I was unaware that the pain and grief I was suffering growing up was not related more to me being 'highly strung' and 'a bit weird' as I was told over and over. The fault always lay in me. For the fact that a grown man thought it was ok to touch me up at the age of 11 because I was 'well developed', for my mother holding my nose and force feeding me at the age of 9 because I wasn't hungry, for the fact that I made my father lose his temper so much that he smashed my head against the wall so hard I felt sick, for the numerous times people decided it was okay to use me sexually. I felt it was my fault for suddenly growing into a 'woman' and therefore causing adult men (and some women) to lose control of themselves.

This is the heart of the shame felt by so many child victims. There has to have been something wrong with me for the people who did those things to me to get away with it. On top of this of course is the fact that there was more than one abuser. So, logic says, it had to have been me who was the common factor. Right? Wrong. However, that, for so many years has been my reasoning and therefore all my behaviours, including self harming behaviours centred on the belief that I was basically flawed, destined to continue the cycles of abuse for my whole life. My overwhelming emotional experience became self hatred and all the secondary emotions associated with it, shame, guilt, anxiety, fear of rejection. It is this set of beliefs which when overlaid with a predisposition to emotional dysfunction has led to the patterns of behaviour, feeling and thinking identified as BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder).

For years I was offered counselling and therapy based on the need for me to disclose in detail my life story. These therapies attempted to get me to connect with the grief process over my childhood which had been short circuited by my attempts to just 'get on with it'. The problem being I couldn't connect myself with any real suffering. I was disconnected not only from feeling any emotional pain, but also from any identification of myself as a victim of trauma. Some approaches tried to get me to go back and relive the experiences - who wants to do that? I've survived it, I know what it felt like, I just need to release the emotional response, to free myself enough to grieve and recognise that I have been traumatised and that my reactions and my grief are understandable. More than once counsellors told me that I didn't want to get better because I could not engage emotionally. They were right, after all if dissociating myself from my experiences had got me this far, what were they offering me other than a painful journey backwards?

I suppose for me, I didn't need to remember the events, some of them were etched on my consciousness and were very much intruding in the here and now, through nightmares, flashbacks and unresolved emotions. Above all, I grappled daily with an ongoing cycle of heightened anxiety and anticipation that seemed to stream in an unbroken flow from the moments of past trauma. Each new experience of abuse throughout my life laid another wave of destructive emotion over previous ones, reinforcing the destruction and distorted emotional experiences of childhood.

One of the most difficult DBT skills to grasp hold of is Radical Acceptance. It is, for me, the most powerful and effective in helping me deal with my past experiences. It taught me that there was no therapy or magic pill which could go back to those traumas and undo them. I had tried for over forty years to manage the emotions from that without having the ability to even acknowledge that I had suffered any trauma. It also helped me to recognise that even though the feelings of trauma were ever present, they actually didn't need to be, as the threat was in the past too. I guess the experience of cycles of abuse and re-victimisation maintain the sense that even though my experience of trauma is in the past, it is inevitable that something equally damaging is going to happen again to me, because that's my life and my lot in life.

Radical Acceptance for me, has meant accepting that I can't predict the future, even if the past tells me that because people have hurt me badly then they WILL hurt me badly again. It is accepting that the past doesn't have to predict my future, or even my present, which is the beginning of saying, 'I can enjoy this moment'. I can take time now to enjoy what I am experiencing, in this moment. Feelings of shame, terror and grief, if unconnected with what is happening in this moment, do not belong here.

Slowly, I have allowed myself to feel the grief and cry - without having to relive the moments of trauma. My mind has blocked some events. Personally, I don't feel a need to seek justice through formal channels, that is my choice. This means that I don't have to recall and recount events from my past over and over again. Slowly, I have learned to accept that what I have lived through has had a part in shaping the person I am today. I don't need to remain in the past, it is done with, I have taken positives from it, at last. The rest needs to relegated to the dustbin of history. I don't need to return again and again to the prison cell to remind me, I have been released. The past, for me, belongs in the past. I have accepted what has happened to me, I have accepted that it has made me stronger than imaginable. I have accepted that I can overcome the worst that I have lived through and I am accepting that I do deserve to enjoy the life I have today. Acceptance is not a moment, it is an ongoing process and I need to practice it every time thoughts and feelings float in from my history - accept them and move on, is what I need to do. An ongoing piece of work, but I am getting better at it.

I have found as I have worked through this process of acceptance, that the symptoms of flashbacks and flooding negative emotions to triggers around me, have faded from my day to day life. Finally, I was able to let my CPN call what had happened to me 'trauma' and in that I accepted that I had suffered events which made sense of some of my emotional and psychological 'quirks'. Ultimately, one of the most freeing things to be told over and over again, was that my behaviour and responses to life were 'understandable given what you have experienced'.

I know that for some, there is a need for ongoing support and therapy to manage more severe symptoms of PTSD based on childhood experiences. I only write from my own experience and say this way has been a way for me to lay the past to rest without having to go ALL the way back.

What is RADICAL About Acceptance?

One of the hardest things to do is to stand still. 'Traffic Lights' and 'Statues' are two childhood games based on the skills needed to do just that, physically. How much harder though is the emotional or psychological need to stop thinking and worrying about things that have either already happened or may never happen?

After years of constant striving to escape my internal struggles, I have found myself living through a hiatus lasting more than two years to date. During this time I have had to learn to be patient, to wait, without any assurance of 'having a plan'. Who said I had to always have a five year plan anyway? Acceptance has become a necessary skill.

I have had to accept a diagnosis that seemed to tell me there was something fundamentally wrong with who I am. I don't think this is what is intended by the professionals who work within the restraints of diagnosing emotionally sensitive people. I think this is because the condition I suffer from is too complex for simple labels. I have a good understanding of what it means to live with BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder), but it seems to be exceptionally difficult to make it understandable to those around me. What I have had to learn to do is to accept regardless of the label placed on it, I struggle with symptoms which mean that I am unable to sustain the levels of achievement I have aspired to all my life. Despite outward appearances to the contrary.

Seen simply I have achieved a lot. Three completed degree courses with the accompanying professional status conferred by them. Trained, qualified and experienced Teacher and Probation Officer. A former successful competitive swimmer. Since the age of 13 until the age of 45 I have had a job. I have even managed to work for considerable numbers of years in challenging careers. On the surface, I have been exceptionally successful within those professional spheres - until my emotional and psychological instability (undiagnosed for over forty years) would cause me to come to a sudden halt. What is not so obvious is the cycles of breakdown and recovery during which I have managed to achieve these things.

I am now learning, in my current period of recovery, to accept, that even though I am capable of achieving a reasonable level of responsibility and income from any job I take on, I need to consider sustainability, given my diagnosis. In other words I need to accept that I am limited not in terms of ability, but in terms of sustainability, if I keep trying to achieve to the extent of my abilities. Instead of stretching myself to my limits, I need to accept that I have to work well within them, if I am to be able to maintain any level of stability in my working life.

Above all, I need to accept that I struggle with things in life that most other people don't have to even consider. It has taken me some time to realise this.

I am an exceptionally determined person, I have needed to be. For a long time when I was introduced to the Radical Acceptance skills in DBT (Dialectical Behaviour Therapy) I believed that to accept the limits of my BPD was to stop fighting it - to give up - to surrender. Given what I have battled all my life, this felt like admitting defeat. However, my way of fighting clearly had not worked over a lifetime of trying. In using acceptance I have been able to stop putting my energy into trying to achieve things that were impossible for me to achieve.

Acceptance means admitting that there are things in life that I am powerless to change or affect. It may seem crystal clear in the cold light of day, that there is nothing I can do to change the past and there is nothing I can do to affect the outcome of the future. However, in my behaviour and what I call 'paralysis of thought', I spent most of my life trying to relive and undo the past, or trying to predict and control the future, in the process, spending any emotional assets I possessed so I was unable to enjoy the present.

What is so radical about this acceptance? I don't know what the clinical explanation of radical acceptance is, but I do know that this level of acceptance of reality is radical in terms of its impact on my mind and feelings. As with all the DBT skills I need to keep coming back again and again to remind myself to stop fighting in the old ways and to become more familiar with using my new skills.

I have been familiar with the story of Don Quixote and the idea of 'tilting at windmills' for a long time. It is only recently that I have realised most of my energies were taken up with battling against things that only I perceived as injustices as well as real, but unwinnable battles against wrongs done to me and others. In learning DBT skills I have been able to refresh my understanding of the Serenity Prayer. It reminds me to accept my limits and learn that life doesn't always have to involve strife to make me feel 'alive'. I can learn to give up battles against unbeatable foes, so that I can begin to enjoy winning the war against my emotions. I used to believe that it was good to struggle, because it showed I was still living - still 'kicking'.

'Kicking against the pricks' is a saying which comes from the fact that in Roman times some harnesses for horses contained sharp pointed pieces called goads or pricks, which were designed to keep the horses in line. When horses kicked against them too much they could cause themselves injury.

Wisdom, for me is knowing when battling, struggling and kicking against the difficulties of life is going cause me too much pain and injury. Acceptance is learning what is wise for me to put my energies into, so that life is less about struggle and more about meaning and purpose. If I can accept that it's ok sometimes to feel pain, it's ok sometimes to be sad, it's ok to be me and it's ok for the moment, not to do anything other than enjoy what can be enjoyed in the here and now, then I am somewhere along the road to living a radically different life to the one I lived before.

How on Earth do you 'Deal with the Past'?

This is a question that used to really vex me. For years, because of a lack of understanding about my underlying emotional sensitivity in many counsellors and practitioners dealing with me, I came across comments like 'you need to get over the past', 'you need to simply acknowledge what was done to you', 'you need to recognise the hurting child inside' - simples, huh? Except no one seemed to be able to recognise that there was something missing in my ability to even recognise my emotional responses to my abusive past.

One rape counsellor, who I think was compassionate and probably usually effective in her work, became frustrated with my lack of ability to acknowledge the trauma I experienced as a child. Firstly, I tended to either describe my remembered experiences without any outward evidence of any emotional attachment or response to the experiences being described. Secondly, because they were my experiences, I did not perceive them in the same way as my hearers, because it was me, I minimised the trauma.

It was around this time that my GP and a Graduate Mental Health worker who was offering me brief CBT for work stress, began to ask if I thought that there was more to my emotional issues than met the eye. So began my journey to discover what my diagnosis was and how that related to my childhood experiences.

I have referred before to the description by Marsha Linehan of people with a Borderline PD diagnosis as having 'emotional third degree burns'. I have always assumed this refers to the unbearable emotional distress experienced by those with BPD. I think to an extent this aspect of the picture is true, although it was when watching a documentary about a burns unit, that I learned more about 3rd degree physical burns, and thereby shed additional light on Linehan's statement. 1st or 2nd degree burns are extremely painful, however the damage done when someone suffers third degree burns is so extensive as to destroy all normal physical sensations, this means that there is a point at which the pain is so severe as to render the wound site numb to all sensation. When I applied this aspect of the original image to my own experience of the emotional impact of my past on my psyche, it made absolute sense.

I have previously described how I was not aware I was experiencing high levels of distress prior to the crisis which prompted me to seek help once and for all for my emotional 'issues'. I was incapable of feeling anything at all, either good or bad. There had been times when the pain of my life was excruciating, but I had passed through first and second degrees to the third degree, in order to survive. Many survivors of childhood abuse recognise this distancing from the experiences they have survived. Dissociating or depersonalising my own experiences helped me to survive the experience of abuse in the past. It causes problems in the here and now because I have been so successful in separating myself from my experiences, that I am unable to connect in any meaningful way with my experience of life as an adult. Either good or bad.

In a very real way for most of my life, emotionally and mentally, I remained trapped in a loop reel, whereby the most traumatic experiences of my life were on constant replay, regardless of how long ago they happened to me.

"In a sense Music, along with the sense of smell tends to be the most powerful of ‘time machines’, usually with a default to the past....Mindfulness training and DBT exercises were focused on bringing me to and keeping me in the moment. However, one of my true pleasures in life was in danger of inadvertently causing me to ‘time travel’ to the past. I didn’t want to lose out on one of my real pleasures in life, just because of my overwhelming emotional responses to it. Not every memory is painful and it’s important to acknowledge that, even before recovery, my life was actually made up of shadows AND light." (from Blog: Music My Own Special TARDIS )

With this never ending stream linking me to the past, even the most seemingly everyday problem or difficulty would connect to the torrent of emotional distress just below the surface, so that terms like 'overreaction', 'out of proportion' and 'drama queen' were applied to me. For those on an emotional 'even keel' it seems almost impossible to imagine the almost physical pain caused when I face disappointments, dilemmas, arguments and problems which are the stuff of everyday life. For the survivor of childhood abuse these experiences are reminders and directly connect to the emotional pain of the abuse perpetrated. Everything seems to rip the scabs from the wounds over and over, so that even the most benign of human relationships becomes a minefield of anticipated terrors to be avoided.

The wrong thing to tell me is 'to just get over it'. Recent exposure of the issues around victims of historical abuse has brought to light the reality that for survivors of abuse, you just don't or can't 'get over it'.

Having survived my abusive life, I continue to be in the process of leaving it behind. I always thought that once I had gained the skills I needed from DBT I would be in a position to finally, 'deal with the past'. I assumed this would mean some form of Trauma counselling. However, I have found that the very practise of mindfulness and the emphasis in DBT on Acceptance of life ('It is what it is'), in this moment seem to be enough for me to feel I have begun to leave my past behind.

This blog post reflects my own journey, it is not a blueprint for dealing with the impact of trauma - my symptoms of trauma are my own and my path through is my own. Hopefully, if you continue to deal with the stream of painful memories and feelings from the past, then this may offer you some hope that there is a way through.

1. I Finally Accepted That I didn't ask for or 'deserve' what happened to me. This means accepting that I am maybe worth better than happened to me - something that was an alien thought even six months ago.

Acceptance is an important group of skills in DBT treatment. The original version of DBT does not offer specific therapy for PTSD. (Recently, however, a specific DBT skills module for PTSD has been developed. I am not sure how widely this is currently available in the UK) The DBT skill of Radical Acceptance, allows me to accept what happened and to begin to leave my experience of trauma in the past. I have accepted that not only have I survived, but I have been strengthened by my survival. The abusers can only have power over me, if I allow myself to remain in the prison cell of the past. I carry the scars of the past and they may have shaped me, but I do not have to remain imprisoned by past experiences.

2. I have learned to trust my experience of the present as I have used mindfulness skills to focus on life as it is in this moment. I am no longer 'absent' - I've stopped 'time travelling' and am able to be 'present' - this means that I don't get bored as often as I used to. Also, it means I am able to give more effectively to those I am engaged with.

3. I have learned to name my feelings and to recognise when anxiety, fear, sadness, guilt etc from the past is distorting my perceptions of the present. I used to distrust pleasant feelings, like hope and happiness because they meant that the darker feelings and moments were more painful in contrast. Now I have learned to enjoy what I am able to enjoy for what it is. It has taken me a long time to say goodbye to the damaged child of yesterday and to reconnect with the adult I am today. That child remains a part of who I am, but her emotional paralysis no longer keeps me frozen in the past.

4. I have decided that the skills I have learned to manage my BPD are enough for me to accept the pain and grief about the past, without having to go back and relive it or do any sustained work on addressing what happened to me. Having denied and minimised it for so many years, the fact that I have been able to accept that I was a victim of abuse has been enough for me to be able to move forward.

It is important for me to emphasise that specific PTSD therapies are helpful for others as the symptoms of PTSD may continue become intrusive following other therapies for complex mental health conditions - each person knows their own needs better than anyone else.

'Dealing with the past' is not something that we can 'do' as a one-off-give me-the-silver-bullet solution. From the moment I first experienced the trauma I have been dealing with it. What I have learned is that at different points in my life I have developed strengths and skills that I have used to deal with the consequences of the past.

"When I finished my DBT therapy, my Therapist reminded me that I had begun the process of healing from the 3rd degree emotional burns, which are at the heart of the BPD experience of life. I have probably managed to develop a thin layer of emotional skin over deep, deep wounds..." (my blog 'Return to the Forbidding Planet:

I am pleased that I am no longer a hostage to a torrent of pain and distress streaming into my day to day life. Looking back I realise this is because of a process and time, along with the moment by moment determination to use my mindfulness skills to keep me focused on life in this moment. I have also permitted myself to enjoy the good things in life, gradually.

How Time Heals - a meditation from Henri Nouwen

I read one of these meditations from Henri Nouwen every day. It is one week to go until my final discharge. So today's meditation I found very apt. Sometimes glib cliches have become glib over time and due to over use. Because my diagnosis only came in my forties I have had a long time without help to manage my condition, not always in the best ways for me. That means that I need to grasp hold of the truth that I need time to let the new skills I have developed through therapy to help me manage my BPD need time to bed in. When there has been a lot of pain and distress in the past, I also need to acknowledge that time passed does not mean those things suddenly cease to hurt. I found these words from Henri Nouwen say it so much better than me:

"How Time Heals

"Time heals," people often say. This is not true when it means that we will eventually forget the wounds inflicted on us and be able to live on as if nothing happened. That is not really healing; it is simply ignoring reality.... "Time heals" implies not passively waiting but actively working with our pain and trusting in the possibility of forgiveness and reconciliation."

I would add that due to the nature of so many past hurts there is only a 'possibility' of forgiveness and reconciliation. Sometimes we need to radically accept that those who have hurt us cannot accept our forgiveness, nor is it possible to reconcile the relationships, simply because usually those relationships were dysfunctional and destructive, and therefore can never, nor should they be, restored.

The Joy of Feeling Small

I love images that remind me of how big and wonderful nature is. This Turner painting is one of my favourites, as it captures the awesome power of wind and waves.

Having experienced sailing, it is always easier to be in the boat as it rides the waves and uses the wind to power it forward. My focus at the helm is to be on the fixed points which show me reliably the safe direction to head. What I have learned from sailing is that the winds and waves come and go unpredictably, I only have control over myself and the ropes and rudder in my hands. What helps me be effective in surfing the waves and using the wind, is my ability to calm myself and observe the wind direction, strength and sense it's rises and falls.

In other words, there is no better example of being truly mindful of your environment than when you are sailing. It is a powerful lesson, in accepting life and circumstances as they are, and making the most of them to propel myself forward in life.

When I look into this painting I don't see a ship in danger, I see a ship that is surviving and managing despite its brokeness to ride the stormy waves.

Acceptance is not Approval

Trigger warning: this blog deals with my personal journey through childhood trauma to forgiveness and may bring up some difficult issues - if this is likely to affect you please give this one a miss

"You know what your problem is? You've never learned to forgive."

For a start, when someone's opening gambit is to tell what your own problem is, you know the conversation is not going to be going anywhere positive. Secondly, the person speaking had never actually talked to me in sufficient depth to know if I had anything to forgive at all, let alone the real story. The reality is that I am learning to accept that I suffered physical, sexual, emotional and psychological abuse from a number of people in my childhood. Because it has been my journey, it has taken me a long time to accept that what I took to be a 'difficult childhood' actually was full of traumatic events. When you are the one living through and surviving trauma, then 'normality' very quickly becomes a distortion of other people's reality.

Forgiveness is a huge subject, for me it is central to my overcoming my past. However, no matter how I have found the process of forgiveness I don't believe that I can prescribe the 'how to' for anyone else, no matter how closely our stories may resemble one another. That is because I have learned that just as my experience of emotional and mental instability is unique to me, so my journey to forgiveness is equally unique.

I would say, though, that forgiveness is a crucial process on the road to recovery from trauma caused by other people's abuses. I do not believe forgiveness to be a single act (or determination) of the will, but it is a long and, often painful, process.

First, I have to acknowledge that I have been the victim of a wrong done to me by someone else. For me, that meant allowing that at the age of 4 or 5 I was not the author of my own physical and emotional scars. I have had to learn to view myself with compassion, often the same compassion I usually reserve for the pain of others. For some traumas this has taken me my whole lifetime, due to the depth and extent of the scarring.

It does not help to compare my wounds with those of others. I do not know what someone else has had to endure or is able to tolerate compared to me. I am not able to feel the physical pain of another person. In the same way with emotional scars and pain, I can never truly say 'I know exactly how you feel'. I may be able to say 'I think I can understand where you've been....' No one has lived my life, or survived what I have survived, so no one can know what I feel I need to forgive. It is only I who can decide who and what to forgive. And only I know when is the right time for me to forgive and 'let go'.

Second no one can decide what Justice means for me. For some, there is a need for retribution, for the validation of going through the full formal justice process. I am not able to tell another victim or survivor of abuse what Justice is for them, I only know what my need for justice is and whether I feel I need to go through a formal court process for me to feel I have achieved it.

A number of years ago I decided that I would not pursue any formal charges against those who had hurt me, because I did not have a need to protect any others at the time from abuse, and because to do so would have caused enormous hurt to others who mattered to me. I believe that there is a natural justice which has meant that I have been able - in time to leave Justice in other hands than my own. This sense of letting go has not been easy, there has been an ongoing process of recognising the wrong, acknowledging I have the power to choose which path to justice I follow and being prepared to leave the wrong doers to God/fate or natural justice, call it what you will.

I have not been able to confront any of my abusers directly and therefore, there has been no restorative process of them asking and then me choosing to forgive them. Rarely, are victims offered this opportunity, simply because of the complexities involved in the relationships between perpetrator and victim. Forgiveness, then becomes an important part of my healing process, which allows me take control and without any reference to the perpetrator, to be able to choose to forgive. This has been necessary in some instances as I have decided to maintain some kind of relationship with some who have abused me. In this process, there has had to be a radical acceptance of the fact that often those who are closest to us, may never be able to acknowledge the wrong they have done to us. Therefore, for me to move forward I have to recognise that I am the one who is capable of recognising the situation as it is and either accept it or change it. Ironically, I have found that in accepting that I can forgive without seeking retribution or justice, I have also changed my attitude to the relationships involved and therefore I have allowed myself to move forward in my own emotional healing.

The most important thing for me to say is that acceptance is not approval. Just because I accept that I was a victim, and that my abusers will never acknowledge the wrong they did to me, does not mean that my forgiveness is some form of tacit approval of the actions which caused the wounds.

Rather, I have accepted that I cannot change the past, I have accepted that there is an inner strength which has been a result of surviving my past and finally, and most importantly I have accepted that those who have hurt me, as well as the wounds from the past do not have to keep me chained up for the rest of my life. Ultimately, forgiveness and acceptance of the past frees me to enjoy the strength of character my life's journey has created in me and to stop those from the past from continuing to hurt me in the present. I am free to be myself, with all my colourful complexity, in the here and now.

Can Success replace Parental Validation?

I was six when I won my first competitive swimming medals. Two golds and one silver. Although very young, this event had a profound impact on my life. What it did for me was let me know that here was a world in which I could be noticed - not only that but it dawned on me that I might be considered valuable, certainly by the coaches and club which 'head-hunted' me, along with my brother, after this auspicious start in schools swimming. So began a determination to work hard at being the best - always in the hopes of my parents noticing - however, unusually for parents of competitive swimmers, they rarely attended our appearances at galas and Championships. We were always the kids who were picked up from training etc by the waiting car.

By the time I had left home aged 18, leaving behind my parents and their casual indifference to any part of me as a person, the only validation I registered was from over-achieving. Ironically, I was so numb to encouragement and praise that I have always considered myself to be a failure - despite being a county level swimmer, despite completing three successful degree courses in my life, despite holding down very responsible jobs for over 25 years.

I didn't notice that my periods of 'instability' had a regular pattern to them, or that there was a link between the emptiness I felt inside and the childhood traumas I had survived. (It has taken three years of hard work and therapy to accept that much of my childhood was indeed traumatic). It was only at the age of 42, when an amazingly compassionate GP (now, alas retired) persevered with a sustained period of emotional instability and considerable time off work, that I was diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder. For the first time people started to make sense of what I thought of as my worst faults: 'och, she's highly strung', or 'she's just oversensitive'. Not to mention my white hot temper and inability to live with myself, let alone, anyone else!

I found giving up work almost impossible because that was where I was most comfortable, where I felt confident, where I had a professional persona which had defined boundaries and rules for dealing with people. I didn't have to divine people's motives about me personally. Although emotionally demanding, my caseload allowed me to ignore my own problems and focus on helping others manage theirs. Problem was that I had shut myself off from all relationships outside work - not that I had no friends, it was just that I had learned it was easier to skate along on the surface of relationships.

In the end, though, I had to acknowledge that I had run out of 'emotional steam' and stopped 'functioning' as my GP so nicely put it. Now, just over a year since I gave up paid employment to focus on attending DBT therapy and recovering, I've realised that feeling successful was the only means of validation I had built into my life. And that obviously didn't work.

Now I'm facing a major shift in my attitude regarding what it means to lead a successful life. Do I return to similar demanding roles as the past? Or do I acknowledge that even Christmas was too much for me to handle, let alone contemplate returning full time? For me it has been a struggle to accept that even without a defined, paid, role I am worth something. If the message from your parents was that you didn't matter, then no amount of achievement (as defined by external values) can help fill the emptiness inside.

What has helped me is to accept that there is a purpose to my life, as it is, regardless of certificates, salary scales or other measures. My belief in God is a starting point - I am taught that He loves me as I am. As with my basic practise of Mindfulness, focusing on truths about myself takes so much time and practice. I am only at the beginning, but I know that reversing the lack of validation in my childhood requires that I dedicate myself to focusing on and accepting myself. Not that I'm advocating self obsessed introspection - no I mean focus on what is enjoyable right now, including what I am able to contribute towards helping others. When I can feel that I have a purpose and root in this world, then I can accept my experience of each moment.

Success for me now is not about replacing something that can never be replaced or changed, because that is in the past, but it has become the ability to knit my experiences from the past into my life as it is now, accepting the strengths and gifts it has given me that have brought me to this moment. In this moment I can accept that success is still being here after everything I have been through, beginning to be able to love and be loved by others. In this context, I don't need to seek a successful career - I just need to be content with my life as it is - right now! That I think is the essence of Radical Acceptance.