Being kind to ourselves : today’s reflections

I had the most horrendous night of my life last night. I must have slept for an hour two times during the night, the rest of it the pain in my head and body was immense and the nosebleeds went on and on and on. I had to sleep with a towel over my pillow and woke to see it soaked in blood three times. I was walking around in the back yard for a lot of the night, just to escape the intense ‘barrage’ or inner trauma/PTSD imprints.

So many images and memories were running through my mind and in the midst of it (especially those last painful nights of Mum’s life where she was struggling to stand while the nurse and I tried to help her.) Also I am still receiving messages from ‘Scott’ which is doing my head in. But when I woke from one mini sleep I just realised how my co-dependency drove the impulse I felt to keep helping even when it was hurting me so much. I saw clearly how I would just over ride my own inner signals telling me to push on through the fear and over run my boundaries. Part of me was scared to endure the abandonment feelings again though at no time did he threatened to leave if I didn’t send money, in fact it was the reverse and right now he asked me not to delete the app until he can organise for all my funds to be returned, but I am still not sure if this is a play although he gets very offended when I question and ‘accuse” him. I just keep reminding him that since we never met I have every right to have my doubts and am more than entitled to ask for return of my funds.

Another trigger for yesterday was that I felt so upset from the messages my older nephew sent last week that yesterday morning I transferred a sum of money to his brother who struggles financially and he called me a short time after to check why I had done it (and it was in the midst of this conversation I noticed my nose started to bleed). Hhe said he did not want me to be motivated by guilt and partly it WAS that, for some reason my mother decided my sister and I are to be the major beneficiaries of her inheritance and she left it to me to take care of my older sister’s sons. It’s part of the reason my nephew arked up when he found I had sent a large sum to someone overseas I had not met.

I am still reading up on boundaries. But I see my default is not self care or kindness to myself. If others throw ‘bombs’ at me I try to see where they may be true, rather than realise that a lot of the time they only come out of the other person’s wounds. And people actually transgress a boundary when they call you names, or impute your motives, or project their own pain or issues onto you. Luckily my other nephew and I were able to talk it all out yesterday and see what forces may be driving his brother at the moment to be so cruel. That said my older nephew did make an important point. To send someone I don’t know money was probably not a good use of boundaries really but it is just that at the time I trusted ‘Scott’.

Anyway today I have tried to be kind to myself after not sleeping as much. I have decided to cut out caffeine for a few days too as I was having to have that cup of coffee or second cup of coffee every day and I did feel at times combined with the sugar I take in it, it was hurting my body, by teeth would often ache after the caffeine and my anxiety symptoms were worse. Today I just had a very weak decaf coffee. So that, combined with minimum sleep yesterday seemed to contribute to the problems but even more I feel it was the lack of self care/co dependency issues which were really raising their head over the weekend.

I actually climbed back into bed after eating lunch today, soft rain began to fall around 2 pm and that has softened things here. The heat has been intense over past days and that pressure may have contributed to the nose bleeds. I am trying to stay ‘within’ myself more now and be kind and gentle. I cuddled my frightened inner child in bed today. Her emotions and fears do manifest bodily in anxiety, as does her frustration and inwardly strangled ‘no’ or boundary. Often I sense the boundary I need to set with someone and then watch myself as I collapse it. I did this with ‘Scott’ several times over the past year or so. I did it with Karl back in February. There is some kind of deep seated fear associated with setting boundaries for me, the most I can do right now is be aware of it, while taking all the steps I can to act for self care and self kindness as much as I am sometimes convinced by my inner needy self to put others first. This tendency not to be kind enough to myself is probably a deeply entrenched pattern I wont undo overnight but its one I feel I can make progress with now if I stay awake and alert to it.