What does it mean to work on us?

[Harri]

I say this all the time:

I am working on me.
We have to work on us.
The only thing we can do is work on us.

What does it mean to you when you hear someone say work on you or when you say it yourself?  Are the ways you do this healthy or are you, like me, sometimes verbally abusing yourself by calling yourself names?  Does it go beyond validation and self care?  Are you using Mindfulness and sitting with your feelings or trying to feel them?

How do you expect it to feel?

[Woolspinner2000]

Hi Harri, 

This is another one of those personal reflection topics isn't it? Well some of us might say  and others might say   Either way, it's all good. 

Working on me. I think the serenity prayer says it well:

  God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, And wisdom to know the difference.

So true.

So what can I change in myself? What needs to be changed in me? Often I have a situation hit me head on, and I then need to step back and consider how I reacted: was it a healthy reaction or not, and what do I need to do better or differently? I ask my T a lot of these questions, telling him the story of what happened and ask if I was right or wrong. Usually he is wise enough to not say I was wrong, but he points me to a different way by asking me why I think I responded like I did/do. That gets me to thinking and then I can see the deeper issues and where I need to "work on me."

 
Wools

[Harri]

Thanks for joining me Wools.   

This is another one of those personal reflection topics isn't it?

Why would anyone say Oh ?  <--- serious question?  And it's part of what I am curious about.

Do we expect to have to look within at our own learned behaviors, the consequences on us and on others?  How we may see things through our own distorted filters?  Do we expect to look within at our less than productive behaviors (aka dysfunctional behaviors) that are a result of the way we process events in our lives?  Are we prepared to do that?  Are we at that stage yet or are we at the earlier stage of finally looking outside of us and putting blame and responsibility on the parents, family who damaged us?

Look at the Survivors Guide on the right side of the page if it helps...   Where are you?  The Remembering stage (steps 1-7)?  The mourning stage (steps 8-14) the Healing stage (steps 15-21)?

We can be at several place at once, I have some times where I am in the remembering stage and the Healing stage with some Mourning sprinkled in there... .but I am more focused on me and my own behaviors.  I am curious where others are and what they want.

[JNChell]

I really like this topic, Harri. I’ve found how important it is to self reflect.

I am working on me.

I think that there are varying degrees to each question that you asked. It’s important that we ask ourselves these questions and I’m glad that you reminded us of this. Right now, Working on me is realizing what I’ve been through, accepting the consequences and taking the proper steps to sort it all out so that I can finally place it all in it’s final resting place.

We have to work on us.

For me, this can be construed in so many different ways but I’ll try to keep my response on point. I see this statement as a steppingstone to the previous statement. A gradual climb to the self awareness that is needed to realize that we only have control over ourselves. The context that I’m approaching this from is that we might be scared at this point when we see things this way. We’re unsure of letting go of a person or a collective to search ourselves. Individuality has been foreign to us. Enmeshment and being an extension has been the norm. The side affect of that is having a difficult time in moving forward on our own. By ourselves. Alone. Just my take on it.

The only thing we can do is work on us.

As endearing as this statement can be, it has a very high rate of failure. “The only thing I can do is work on myself and allow you to do the same” is what is appropriate. enmeshment comes to mind while responding to your post.

What does it mean to you when you hear someone say work on you or when you say it yourself?  Are the ways you do this healthy or are you, like me, sometimes verbally abusing yourself by calling yourself names?  Does it go beyond validation and self care?  Are you using Mindfulness and sitting with your feelings or trying to feel them?

Like you, I have a habit of cutting myself down at times. I’ve been practicing a lot with mindfulness and sitting with my feelings. I’m still very green at it, but these things are effective and they work.

[Harri]

Wools, I really like your focus on the serenity prayer.  It is a great guide to what needs to happen. 

Wools wrote: 

That gets me to thinking and then I can see the deeper issues and where I need to "work on me."

What sort of issues?  Do you want to share?  What kind of process does your T use?  I know you guys focus a lot on inner child work.  Does that come into play with this?  If so does it go beyond looking at the context of your behavior?

I am so fascinated at the way people process this.

JNChell!  Thanks so much for joining.  I really like your answers. 

We’re unsure of letting go of a person or a collective to search ourselves. Individuality has been foreign to us. Enmeshment and being an extension has been the norm. The side affect of that is having a difficult time in moving forward on our own. By ourselves. Alone. Just my take on it.

Nice.  I never thought of individuality being foreign and scary to me but it was, I just never labeled it.  I wish I had though.  The more knowledge and understanding there is the easier (in some ways) it is to stay the course. 

The only thing we can do is work on us.
As endearing as this statement can be, it has a very high rate of failure. “The only thing I can do is work on myself and allow you to do the same” is what is appropriate. enmeshment comes to mind while responding to your post.

I agree with you.  This was poorly worded on my part.  What I meant was "us" as in Me, we here on the board, not the family member, loved one, or anyone else.  It was a poor choice of wording on my part and you are right, taken at face value it would indicate enmeshment.

I am glad you are able to sit with your feelings and find mindfulness helpful.  another thing is Radical Acceptance.  We have 2 articles on the site, one for family members and one that is more in depth that I really like.  I am not sure why but the second one seems less popular for some reason (just looking at the number of reads).  I think it would be helpful for those of us on this board and especially for those of us with CPTSD:
 
POLL: Radical Acceptance - Marsha Linehan PhD
Radical Acceptance For Family Members (DBT skill)

[Woolspinner2000]

Harri,

Why would anyone say  ?  <--- serious question?  And it's part of what I am curious about.

I think that those who would say this are those who don't want to self reflect. Sometimes I say I'm tired of personal reflection, but it's only for a moment or two because I get tired of the work. Yet on I go. Just when I think I have learned so much, then I find I still have more to learn.

I'll have to get back to you with answers to some of your questions (my daughter and grandkids are visiting this weekend). I will answer about where I find myself on the Survivors Guide. Although I do move around backwards and forwards on occassion, I have been finding myself at #13 & 14 some of the time, but a lot of the time I'm now finding myself at the first few steps of healing portion. When I came here I was at the beginning, #1. My journey of healing from my childhood had expanded to healing in a parallel journey from/in my marriage relationship. As I've begun to see myself more clearly in my childhood, I've also begun to see more clearly in my marriage.

Does that make sense? As the process has worked in one area, it has also worked in another.

 
Wools

[Turkish]

As the only child of a single mother,  I alternated between Scapegoat and Golden Child. O know both my strengths and my deficiencies.   The issue for me is that i tend to disbelieve the former and internalize the latter when compliments and criticisms are presented to me,  respectively.  With my mother I could not reconcile her taking pride publicly of my accomplishments while privately shaming me. As a teen if you had asked me this about myself I would have replied, "which self? How my mom sees me? Confusing. How my peers and safe adults see me? Confusing. How I see myself? Confused." What am I supposed to work on given so many conflicting emotional messages?"

And this was the key: I was decades long too wrapped up in how others viewed me rather then defining myself as an individual entity. 

Most of us here were defined by viewing ourselves through the perspectives of disordered or sick family members. This is like a sick inertia. Choosing to post here is a good first step towards healing, and I think"working on us" is choosing to post and interact here as a good first step. Lurkers here, we welcome you.   

[Hope80]

This is the heart of the matter, and why I finally joined and began posting. This is where I tend to struggle, because I have a strong compulsion to take care of other people. I suspect that it is partly due to my uBPD mother and parentification. One of my bad habits is avoidance especially in stressful or new and awkward situations. Since  I tend to be very analytical,  I am trying to change my habits by assessing the situation and risks involved, then quickly and firmly reminding myself of my abilities, and then proceeding.

My mother is who she is, and I cannot change her or help her manage her emotions better. It’s hard to step back and not rush to her aid. I am setting limits with her. I am lucky that I have more insight than she does and need to commit to my own improvement. I mostly identify with #13 and 14 and a little with #16 & 17.

Thank you, Harri, for starting this thread.

[Notwendy]

I think it helps to have a specific thing to work on. One good one for me was feeling "triggered".  Once I realized that feeling triggered wasn't someone doing this to me- but that the trigger belonged to me- and I could work on it, it felt empowering. Instead of feeling upset at the other person when I felt triggered, I could see it as a learning opportunity. I could look at myself as ask- why do I feel this way, what experience is contributing to this and also- is it true? Some triggers were in the form of accusations- I did something or didn't do something. If it wasn't true, I didn't have to react to it. If it was true, I also didn't have to react to it- but decide what to do about it.

I learned that, if I was feeling triggered or emotional - I had to disengage and to calm down- not continue a conversation. I started with that. Working on triggers took some time but one day, on the phone with BPD Mom, she said something triggering that I used to react to. I didn't feel anything. It was a strange but wonderful feeling.

This didn't happen all at once but the frequency of being triggered diminished. I won't say it never happens that I feel triggered when speaking with her,  but it is much less and this has really helped.

[once removed]

What does it mean to you when you hear someone say work on you or when you say it yourself?  

i guess that for a lot of my life, i thought becoming more self aware was change. i could spend all day in my head, think about how i might have done something differently, how i want to do things in the future, realize things about me. self awareness is only a catalyst for change. identifying stuff is good, but just a start.

me? i need concrete tools, and practice with them. learning is a very necessary part of the process. i need to have an open mind, have my thoughts, feelings, beliefs, challenged by others, and with practice with tools, to over time gravitate in different, healthier directions. make better choices. pat myself on the back when i do.

working on myself means to work to mature, whether in my habits, my views, my interactions with myself, or others.

[Harri]

Wow, I actually felt silly asking these questions!  Thanks so much for jumping in and answering everyone.

Wools, thank you for explaining.  I wasn't seeing what I should have seen.  Yes, I feel that way too sometimes and yes, I just keep plugging away.  I don't see any alternative.  Once enough denial is taken away, it seems impossible for me to go back and when I think about it I don't want to.  That does not mean I am always happy with choosing recovery though.  I used to drag myself kicking and screaming to therapy and sometimes still do my best to bury my head under the covers.  Overall though, I made more good choices than bad now-a-days and I take that as a win.

I am looking forward to the other answers you mentioned.  You may not like these thinking threads, but you have a ton to offer.

Turkish, I was reading earlier that for every bad thing or put down someone gives, 5 positives are needed to counteract it.  I believe it.  Homework for you and all of us:  participate in the positive I statement thread every day for a week even if it feels stupid!   

You talk about how we define ourselves.  I can understand how it was so confusing for you with the conflicting messages from your mom.  Her private words vs her public.  I think a lot of us can relate to that.

Most of us here were defined by viewing ourselves through the perspectives of disordered or sick family members. This is like a sick inertia. Choosing to post here is a good first step towards healing, and I think"working on us" is choosing to post and interact here as a good first step. Lurkers here, we welcome you.

I like that "sick inertia". (heh.  My ex once flipped out when I used the word inertia to describe something remaining in a steady moving state.  Ahhhh, the memories!)  Yes, interacting here is an excellent first step.

Hope80, I am glad you joined and posted.  It is not easy to do but so worth it. 

because I have a strong compulsion to take care of other people.

A lot of us struggle with that here.  One of the benefits of posting here is that it can help you practice with your goals (excellent goals by the way!) of knowing when to step back and when it is appropriate or okay to help.  It sometimes is a lesson in stepping back and just being there with love and support.

I mostly identify with #13 and 14 and a little with #16 & 17.

Good.  When you want to we can take a closer look at these.  Working the steps is working on you so I am glad you identified the stages.

Notwendy!  it is good to have you in this thread. 

I think it helps to have a specific thing to work on. One good one for me was feeling "triggered".  Once I realized that feeling triggered wasn't someone doing this to me- but that the trigger belonged to me- and I could work on it, it felt empowering.

This is an excellent point.  Our triggers are ours to manage no matter how we got them.  Being able to recognize when we are triggered is very difficult though.  I am still working on it.  I have PTSD with a lot of emotional flashbacks and it is so hard to be able to say "I am triggered" and figure my way out of it.  Grieving is vital for healing these.  It is very empowering to take responsibility for our triggers.  No one but us can work them through and as hard as it is and as unpleasant as it is, it can be done.

one day, on the phone with BPD Mom, she said something triggering that I used to react to. I didn't feel anything. It was a strange but wonderful feeling.

    Congratulations Notwendy.  What a victory.  It sounds like you reached a place of peace.

Once removed, good to have you here!  Thanks for stopping in.

i guess that for a lot of my life, i thought becoming more self aware was change. i could spend all day in my head, think about how i might have done something differently, how i want to do things in the future, realize things about me. self awareness is only a catalyst for change. identifying stuff is good, but just a start.

I agree that awareness is just the beginning.  We need more than just identifying what happened and even how it affected us.  To change we need to work it both on a cognitive and an emotional level.  Healing is a dynamic process with it's changes and twists and turns and eventual forward movement. 

me? i need concrete tools, and practice with them. learning is a very necessary part of the process. i need to have an open mind, have my thoughts, feelings, beliefs, challenged by others, and with practice with tools, to over time gravitate in different, healthier directions. make better choices. pat myself on the back when i do.

Which tools have you found most helpful?  I need tools too, but I am still isolated (for both physical and emotional reasons to the latter!) so it is hard to practice them in real time but I do get to do it here and it does carry over. 

working on myself means to work to mature, whether in my habits, my views, my interactions with myself, or others.

Nice.  I never thought of it as maturing but that is a great way to put it.  I do feel very much like a child in some areas of my social development.  Due to living in a very restrictive environment with my family until my mid to late 30's but also, or maybe mostly, due to my own choices... .even if some of them were/are conditioned choices.

[Notwendy]

Harri- I would say relatively more peaceful. I'm not at peace with the state of our relationship, but also feel I have to accept who she is. I don't like that she is elderly and alone. It isn't what I would have wanted for a "mother" at this time. It's not who I am to not be more involved with an elderly parent. On one hand, she doesn't like it either but it is exactly how she has set it up for herself. She needs assistance but she also needs to be in control. This is like having a toddler in control. Autonomy is one thing, but she wants people she can order around. That isn't going to be tolerated in any kind of assisted community situation, so she is alone.

She's completely cold emotionally to me. At some level, I think she feels abandoned by me. Yet when I am around her, I am mostly a useful tool to her and she is emotionally and verbally abusive. I don't think she makes the connection between her behavior and our relationship. She sees herself as a victim.

I told her the other day I was coming to visit and would like to have a nice lunch with her. Her response was to tell me the things she wants me to do when I get there. Not a " looking forward to seeing you" or anything. I have long ago learned to not expect that. The main reason I still see her is that she is elderly and alone and it doesn't seem right to me to not see her. I am not sure if it makes any difference to her or not, but I have to stay centered on my choice to do that. People may attribute her behavior to being elderly. Yes, some people who are elderly can be difficult. Difficult due to being elderly would not bother me. This is how it has always been.

[Woolspinner2000]

Do we expect to have to look within at our own learned behaviors, the consequences on us and on others?  How we may see things through our own distorted filters?  Do we expect to look within at our less than productive behaviors (aka dysfunctional behaviors) that are a result of the way we process events in our lives?  Are we prepared to do that?  Are we at that stage yet or are we at the earlier stage of finally looking outside of us and putting blame and responsibility on the parents, family who damaged us?

I'm going to answer with an example of how I encountered something over this past weekend that I need to work on.

DH asked me to help him with something that he has been very frustrated with. Normally I'm a great helper, but he wanted me to help him with something that is an obsession of his that I want to stay as far away from as I can. I avoid it because it is triggering to me. He also happened to ask me right after a very long day of work, and I was too tired to attempt to help him, and my help would've been out of obligation at that point. When I declined, I reacted to his non verbals, and immediately began stumbling all over myself saying that I could help later if he still needed help. I tried everything to JADE in order to reverse the reaction that I saw in him, and I knew I had disappointed him. I was frustrated with myself that I didn't want to do this, but here I was offering to help anyway. What was wrong with me? Then I realized that I did the exact same thing with my uBPDm for all those years until she died. I would back track as quickly as possible to cover up the slip of offering my own true opinion and sacrifice myself in order to keep the peace. How often I've said that the winds of the past fan the flames of the present!

Yet in spite of all this inner reaction, I was able to see what DH had done. He had set me up to fail in a way, because he told me later he was seeing if I would respond and help him. He knows I don't want to do what he asked me to do, yet in order to be willing to work on our relationship, I would need to go towards him. So do I listen to myself and stay away from the trigger, or do I allow the trigger and kick myself later for falling into the trap? Either way I was going to lose. If I helped him, I would be neglecting the needs of my inner kids to stay safe. If I didn't help him, then I am showing that I have no interest in working on a better relationship. The recognition that he was setting me up was important to me, to see it for what it was. That's progress for me. The other, well, I think I will be having a conversation with my T to see what I can do to not repeat that same pattern over and over again. I'll be working on myself.

Wools

[Fie]

Hello Harri and the others 


Please Harri, don't call yourself silly because you are not ;-)

Working on myself ... .The last few years I have learned how to function better in friendships, as a mum, how to be alone with myself. I have learned how to sit with my feelings, too. I became a lot healthier and I developed boundaries, even quite strong ones.

But then I met someone, and he's turned my world upside down. My feelings are all over the place.  So, right now I am learning how to be in a relationship. Trusting someone, not fearing they will leave ... it's huge for me. I thought I became healthier during the last few years, but o boy do I see myself struggling with this one.

I am trying to open my heart, but it's difficult. All kinds of issues come popping up, and of course most of it is related to my FOO. Luckily he's patient with me (and me with him). I hope one day I will be able to have my heart wide open without fearing constantly it will be crushed.

Take good care of you Harri. I sometimes think about you. xxx