Being empathic, is not easy or pleasant. But, it’s okay to show emotions to people in pain.

Being someone who feels other people’s pain, is not easy, or pleasant. It means you feel the pain others are feeling. I am pretty good at managing emotions these days, but there are times when it becomes more than I can handle.

Today, I was in tears, when a friend was upset and in a lot of pain. I felt her pain with her, because I can put myself in her shoes and imagine how painful it will feel. I ended up in tears with her. Which I was annoyed at myself for at the time, because I want to be able to manage my emotions better.

However, on reflection, I think it is okay to show emotions when someone is so upset. It shows you are human and you care enough for them, to be emotional for them. It shows you are not disconnected from your own emotions.

After writing about how mental health professionals being ‘clinical’ and emotionally detached while discussing highly emotion issues, I see that my capacity to be in tears for another person in pain, is not wrong.

The never ending cycle… and the ongoing wish I could be dead.

It had been a few okay days, but as normal it never lasts. The reality of my life, always catches up and refuses to be avoided for long.

My family are sat eating dinner and I can’t eat. I will vomit if I try to eat.

It’s been a really bad day. So much anxiety and pain, the continual realisation of having no adults in my life who care about me. Knowing I need a very different type of husband and counsellor. Knowing I am never ‘good enough’ to have the basic needs in life – love, someone who considers my needs, some one who cares enough to say what I need to hear to help me about my past. Someone I can trust. One person who actually cares about me.

Having no-one, is a wound that keeps bleeding.

A painful wound that oozes suffering, along with all the other wounds, that keep me within this state of fear, grieving, shame and depression.

Starting hydrotherapy style swimming, this week.

My back pain and stiffening muscles/joints, are continually worsening, so I have to do something. I’m aware hydrotherapy, in heated water is meant to help for anyone suffering FMS, CFS, ME, RA etc.

I can’t afford classes for hydrotherapy, so I’ll go along to the local public pool that has a pool heated to 32 degrees and just swim.

I’ve googled some of the exercises they do for people with pain and mobility issues and I’ll do those too.

Two quotes I struggle with, but need to remember. No judgment required.

I am aware I suck at these.

They are advice I give to others…. I shared them today on my page…….because my mind knows they are true……… but I definitely do not feel them all the time.

I am aware there are also very valid reasons why I do struggle with these, and I don’t judge myself anymore for it.

What I feel, is what I feel.

No judgment required.

Felt too unwell to do volunteering today…. and I have to be okay with that.

I feel guilty when I can’t keep to my obligations. Not that volunteering is a commitment I have to adhere to every single Wednesday and Thursday. I did go yesterday and help with all the sorting and packing of the boxes.

This morning, I woke so sore and in pain in my back and legs and it was enough to stop me attending volunteering. I knew I had to stay home and rest. I had no choice.

So I have that internal dialogue going on, that it ‘is okay’ to not always be able to attend, and that I need to be okay with that. If I’m unwell, I’m unwell and as much as I hate that, it is my reality.

Trying really hard not to hate myself.

All my life, I have turned intense emotions about other people hurting me, inwards and hated myself. As I was taught to do in the first 20 years of my life.

Trying really hard not to do this right now, and I can feel that inner pain of self hatred rising up, those lifelong messages of how I am not worthy of anyone treating me appropriately…..how I must deserve people hurting me. Those deep and intense emotions of betrayal and abandonment fear and abandonment depression setting in.

I think it’s actually easier to hate myself, than accept the full reality of the hurt other people choose to inflict. I have to acknowledge betrayal and how the person didn’t care about me. If I hate myself, I can avoid that. But, I have insight now into what I do and I am aware of this and how I should not hate myself. As I know now, that is self harming.

I want to go to the person concerned and just cry and beg her not to do this to me. And I can’t and it wouldn’t make any difference if I did. It would just humiliate myself. And it wouldn’t undo the damage already done.

All day I have been emotionally numb, as is my norm currently – and it takes one email rubbing salt in the already painful wound, and those intense emotions are there, demanding to be felt. 

Getting drunk.

Kids and husband are in bed.

I am getting drunk, so I can get rid of these vile memories and thoughts out of my head.

Headphones on, music cranked up, alcohol going down very easily.

Poem  – She Drinks

.

Pain to be obliterated

Not feel it anymore

Never ending fucked up life

Burns to the very core

 

Numbed out. Robot mode.

Another realisation hit earlier….and my old and trusty friend dissociation comes to keep me safe, when the depth of the pain threatens to be far more than I can handle.

Sometimes I wonder when I will ever finish peeling through the layers of harm, revealing further and deeper levels of devastation people have caused me through my life.

Each and every realisation, comes with searing pain, and cruel emotional suffering.

Every time I wonder how much more I can possibly endure.

Intense pain earlier.

Numb now.

Empathic anger, empathy distress….all part of real empathy.

I have the capacity for deep empathy and I do for people’s suffering. I don’t believe that having empathy is about being all nicey nicey, lovely lovely…

I believe real empathy, involved empathic anger at the way people are treated, the way society often treats people already so badly hurt and in pain.

I love humanity…I desperately don’t want any suffering.

But, I don’t like society, most of it.

The selfishness, the increasing narcissism I see so clearly, the increasing abuse not many seem bothered about.

I don’t like all the apathy, all the egocentricity. I don’t like all the push for outer success, outer happiness. I don’t like all the shaming that goes on, in society and within religion. I don’t like people enjoying seeing others getting hurt.