an enduring struggle

Created 09/09/2024

The title says it all really, being positive as someone who has lived with the effects of childhood sexual abuse and post traumatic stress symptoms from this abuse is very tiring, this has affected my mental health.

It is an enduring struggle that continues hour by hour, day by day, month by month and year after year. This level of emotional and mental stress has definitely taken its told on my life in more ways than one. This has been my enduring struggle and affects all areas of my life

How these thoughts and effects control my life

All relationships, old and new have been and are affected. It is a constant struggle for me dealing with everyday life. Some might not get this but even the slightest emotional issue, a few cross words in an argument can cause certain mental health symptoms to develop and cause further issues. These emotional responses control my life. Its not a great way to live but I have no choice. It wasn’t my fault that this happened to me. I was and still am a victim.

The trigger for these symptoms could be anything from my past. There are certain subjects that trigger massive post traumatic stress disorder symptoms that are incredibly hard to control. It seems like every other week there is a report in the news or on social media of a child being hurt or physically abused by an adult that they trusted.

These symptoms include fear, worry, anxiety and depression.

No child deserves to go through what happens to them when they are abused. What happened to me was physical sexual abuse, that’s at the extreme end of the scale but even verbal abuse can cause emotional and mental issues that will affect the sufferer for potentially the rest of their lives.

Detailing my experiences is to hard at the moment

I am not willing to delve deeper into my experiences at the moment. I need to build up the courage. There are to many other factors and people involved.

I have been doing a great amount of reading recently regarding the power of positive thinking. I have mentioned this in some of my previous posts but now I am actively trying to use this to assist with my daily life. It sounds easy to “just be positive” but its not.

Emotionally tiring weekend, trying to stay positive

This weekend has been a bit of an emotional rollercoaster, up/down, up/down and down/down before rising back up again. My health to a dip this weekend, I was quite stressed when I finished work on Friday and my wife was away with the scouts this weekend so left on the Saturday morning and didn’t return until the Sunday afternoon.

My youngest son and his friend joined me at my golf clubs 50th Birthday celebration on Saturday. I had offered my assistance as men’s section vice captain. I had a small area for visitors to practice chipping as a golf skill. My son and his friend spent half an hour doing some chipping which attracted some interest.

Once visitors started showing some interest, I found myself struggling to be approachable and open to talking to the children and parents. I had to tell myself many times to smile, relax, be positive believe in myself and show these people how much I enjoy golf.

I did feel a bit better and happier about myself once I managed to force my fears out of my mind and embraced the event.

Saturday evening is when I started to struggle mentally, my sons friend had gone home, I had feed my youngest son, his elder sibling went out with friends to see a band. My youngest son spent the evening playing online which left me on my own. That’s when I started to dwell on issues, work, my health, even if had I done a good job today?

Anything that I was worried about crept back into my head. I was mentally and emotionally exhausted from todays efforts. I hadn’t eaten anything for my dinner, in fact I hadn’t eaten all day. I did make sure to get my son and his friend lunch and snacks whilst at the golf club.

My mind was racing even though I tried to clear my thoughts.. I struggled to settle and sleep Saturday night,

Not letting my mental health issues affect my family

Sunday morning started with my sons football match. We went with his friend and his dad drove. I wasn’t in a very good mood on Sunday as we got ready to leave and I snapped at my son in response to what I thought was a stupid question. I apologised but the damage had been done. He was subdued during his football match, I shouted encouragement to try an undo what I had previously done.

He seemed happier at the end of the match, he had played well and I gave him a hug. I still felt guilty for the effect of my actions earlier.

I played golf yesterday afternoon, not very well but I had to get out and rid myself of my bad mood and the emotions I as displaying. This did help me feel better, I concentrated reasonably well and tried to enjoy myself.

When I got home my wife was back, my eldest had been looking after his younger brother for one hour before she got back. The mood in the house was slightly subdued, I am guessing they had talked about their respective weekends and discussed how I had acted.

Again I hadn’t eaten enough on Sunday, only managing to have a light snack last night.

What can I take away from this weekend to help me

Since I started writing this today, I have eaten a light lunch and I will eat a full meal tonight. I will complete my press-ups and squats. I have to do this, I cannot let this slip, I wasn’t in a good place over the weekend so I didn’t do it. I have cheated myself.

The kicker to all this is what my wife said to me earlier when she came home from food shopping. She said, “I brought you this as a treat because you don’t seem very happy at the moment.” That really hurt.

I feel very guilty right now for burdening my family with all of my emotions. They get so strong sometimes I cant hide them. I hate the fact that my past and my mental health and ptsd affects them so much. I don’t like myself right now but I am going to try and be happier and positive for my wife and children when they get home.

It must be very tiring for them, I love them all dearly and I will do anything for them. They don’t deserve to have their lives disrupted any further by my mental health issues. Its been going on for too long and needs to stop.

Created 03/09/2024

I finished work early on Friday so my wife suggested taking our sons to a local beach as a way of finishing the English school holidays. This sounded like the perfect way to spend an evening. We would get fish & Chips, eat the on the beach and then spend some time relaxing.

Everything started off fine, we didn’t leave until later than planned but traffic down to the coast wasn’t to bad. It normally takes 30mins but the journey this evening took 45 mins. Fish and chips were bought and we parked in a small side street close to the beach so we didn’t get caught out by car parking charges.

For some reason I already wasnt comfortable with being at the beach. I am still unsure what the kicker was for these feelings but they disappeared so no real drama.

The walk to the beach was uneventful and we got there to find out it was high tide, not a lot of space left to sit on the beach between the water and the land that backs on to the sand but enough.. Alot of people were starting to leave for home as it was already quite late by the time we had found a spot, put out the blanket and settled down to eat our food.

I don’t know if its just me but I am starting to find I have an issue with people not controlling their kids, especially the swearing from them in public. I know I sound grumpy but I cant help the way it bothers me. Guess I am just old fashioned.

Once we had finished our food and the boys had sat long enough to let their dinner settle we allowed our youngest son to go in the sea with his body board. It took a while to get our eldest to go in and join his brother but eventually that happened and it was great to see them playing with each other in the very small waves.

After a short while I started to feel unusually anxious, started getting nervous and couldn’t quite work out what the problem was. My eldest got out of the water and decided to get warm and dressed, couldn’t blame him, the sea wasn’t quite as warm as it could’ve been a few weeks earlier.

Then it hit me, my mind was trying to catastrophize the situation at the beach.. Here we were, a quiet pleasant evening sat on the beach and my mind was trying to play tricks on me. I had already mentioned to my wife that we should get going by a certain time and she pointed out that I should relax and enjoy the evening. Problem was that I could not do that. My mind started visualizing issues, what if my son in the water hurt himself, what if a rouge wave appeared and knocked him over, what if….

To deal with the way my brain was working and trying to control the thoughts and images I had to get up from the blanket and walk towards my youngest son. This helped my feelings and anxieties and helped me to calm down. As I have stated before, my mind does terrible things with the smallest of issue due to living with the effects of childhood abuse. It always runs to the worst possible outcome, even if there is no reason for those types of thoughts to be present.

About half an hour later my youngest son decided it was getting to cold, no more bigger waves were breaking on the beach, these were only caused by passing boats or ships, so we decided to pack up and head home. Luckily it was just light enough to see our way through the wooded area back to the car. They kids both had hot chocolate when they got home.

I woke on Saturday morning to my alarm at 5am, I knew I had not slept well and felt groggy and very lethargic. I had stayed up until midnight watching YouTube golf videos, I couldn’t sleep even with my medication which I had taken about 9pm. I was due to play golf with a friend at 6am so I made coffee, had a cigarette and headed to the golf course.

Long story short is I did not play very well. I wasn’t able to concentrate and see the positives in my game. My friend asked if I was ok and of course I fobbed him off with some excuse but the main take away from that was the effect my thoughts the previous night had on me. I didn’t realise until after our game, sat having a coffee that I was my own thoughts that had dragged me down.

I didn’t do much on Saturday afternoon, I was tired and pissed off at myself for the way I had behaved, I had also hurt my back, trying to chase the good golf of a couple of weeks ago and trying to hit the ball to hard.

Saturday night was quiet, my wife was out on a work event, I picked her and a friend up ,my wife was quite drunk so got her home and in bed. Went to see my youngest sons football match on Sunday morning. It was lovely to see him play and get involved in something he has just started. He didn’t get much time on the pitch. It made me happy to see him getting involved, having a go at new things. I got a boost from seeing his smile and hearing the excitement in his voice afterwards.

Played golf with a friend on Sunday afternoon at his local course, he is a member there so it was easy to get a tee time. We decided fr a bit of fun we would play for a pint. Loser buys the drink after.

This put a friendly but competitive edge on the game and much banter ensued when either of us didn’t score well on a hole. I eventually won but didn’t do myself any favours on a few holes. I did enjoy the pint of cider I had afterwards, victory tasted sweet.

Playing that round of golf has helped me realise, I have said it before I think, but being positive and believing you can do something instead of doubting or convincing yourself you cant is a better way to live.

This will always be an enduring struggle for me but I believe I have started a process that is helping me change the way my brain works. Only time will tell if it will but I am not going to stop. Yes its going to be hard work but I will stick with what I am doing. After so many decades of living with the effects of being a victim of childhood sexual abuse, I really wish I had done this a lot earlier.

Created 28/08/2024

The title explains the situation I find myself in today..

I haven’t been able to keep myself and my thoughts together very well over the last couple of weeks. Work and the reality of finding a new role has weighed heavily on my thoughts and really affected me.

The current work market for contractors in the UK has changed dramatically over the last couple of years and I now find myself struggling to to get any type of role at present but I will keep trying, I have to.

My thoughts have caused me again to shut myself of from family and friends. I don’t know why this happens, I wish I knew and I hope to be able to get my brain to stop thinking this way.

Being positive and being present in every day is something I am going to strive to be good at. Some days are a lot easier than others but for the most part I really struggle to be positive. There is a definite connection between my mental and physical health and my ability to see the world and all it contains positively.

Two weeks ago I grabbed the issue with both hands and decided I would make the necessary changes in my life to gain some control over the affects that my past and childhood abuse has on my daily life and outlook.

It was easy for the first week, I managed to eat 2 – 3 times a day and I started exercising again. Meals were breakfast and dinner or lunch and dinner, on 2 days I even managed to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner. That’s a massive achievement for me. I definitely felt better in myself. Then my thoughts started to drift back to the worries about money and my next job and my appetite dropped of completely. I have been cooking for the family each night but not looked forward to eating.

I also started concentrating on doing more physical exercise, nothing to strenuous, just some press-ups and squats to get the blood flowing. This was going well, I noticed that my strength and endurance had increased and I was enjoying it until I hurt my right shoulder. I don’t know if it was a strain from the press-ups or it was a golf injury but it has definitely been a set back.

I have continued to do the squats over the past few days but I feel guilty for not doing any press-ups. I didn’t know what had caused the pain in my shoulder but pushing and putting pressure through my right arm has been quite painful. There was no issue with turning or extending my arm and shoulder so I did manage to play golf this weekend but it was nothing like the game I had nearly a month ago.

Its still slightly painful but I have told myself that I will be back doing press-ups this evening. It feels ok and I need to push myself physically and mentally to be a better person.

If I don’t push myself to do things then I will never get better mentally. I have been doing a lot of reading lately on the benefits of a positive mental attitude and I cannot let a small issue like this affect the overall journey of gaining some positivity. If I feel better about myself then I will project myself as a better and more positive person to the rest of the world.

It is a constant and enduring struggle to be positive and project myself as a normal person to the world when inside I feel like I have nothing of value to contribute. I have felt this was for nearly forty years. I know I can be the person I want to be, I just don’t know how to do it. Everyone has an opinion, everyone thinks they know the best way to do it.

I don’t, so I am going to start from scratch and see how far over the next few months I can get to being the person I want to be and hopefully a lot less stressed and happier in the process.

Whilst looking back on my past, reliving what happened to me and how this has affected my life and thought processes, a quote popped into my head the other day. It came up thru the mass of other thoughts and emotions from my past. The quote was, “you cannot be physically strong without being mentally strong and vice-versa”.

So I am going to use this as my main thought for the next few weeks and see how this affects my mental state, thoughts, attitude, mood and family life. Something has to change, I have to change and I need to throw myself into it with full commitment. I know I can be better, I know I will get better. I need to be better to enjoy the rest of my life with my wife, children and family.

Otherwise, what’s the point…

Created on 12/08/2024

My thoughts have been all over the place the last few days, trying to make sense of how I feel and how I can get my life back on some kind of positive path.

I have eaten more in the last two days than I have for a while, its strange and I know I will start to fell better if I keep this going but I’m finding it hard. My brain keeps making excuses for me to not eat, i.e, you don’t need to do that right now, you can do it when u feel hungry.. problem is, at the moment I don’t feel hungry

When my anxieties and depression take hold I am starting to realise that I mentally shut down. Things that seem normal everyday tasks are placed to the back of my mind and all I seem to do is worry and stress about things out of my control, rather than concentrating on simple things that I can control

Making breakfast and eating it seems to be a task I cant complete, sometimes, even knowing I’m physically shattered and mentally tired I just cant seem to get the motivation to do so…

After that last paragraph, I went and made myself some breakfast.. 3 boiled eggs and 2 pieces of toast and a fresh black coffee.. And do you know what the strangest things I’ve just noticed are? I was anxious making my breakfast, I didn’t know if I would eat it. But, I took my time eating it, didn’t mind if the last piece of toast was cold and the egg wasn’t soft, I actually enjoyed my breakfast.

So why is that different from how I feel everyday, I don’t know but I am already feeling a bit more positive and brighter about this day. That’s a great thing for me. Normally I don’t feel bright and struggle to be positive. I usually dread most days but not right now.

There’s ever chance that might change but I’m gonna try and not let my mood change now.

I need to start looking after myself or the sake of my wife and kids. It doesn’t matter how I feel, I need to be there for them. I love them dearly and need to make a drastic change..