#yay being rewarded for being lazy about our IT chores

[ardeawritten]

My workplace, which became a Crowdstrike client all of three weeks ago, is now down to one bricked desktop in a nonessential location. Did I spend all Friday morning in our IT dept teams chat and typing in bitlocker codes? Why yes I did.

I know very little about computers and even less about programming, but I have been using most windows operating systems for long enough that if someone gives me basic directions I can follow them pretty well. I'm the on-site IT person by process of elimination - everyone else here knows even less.

Because my company is incredibly chill and non-corporate, for all its corporate trappings, things like this are mostly an excuse to chatter on a Teams channel for a few hours while waiting for the bitlocker codes to be dolled out, because the guys I'm talking with are also married to friends of mine but everyone lives across the country from me (and right now in a different country.) I can in fact just give everyone the admin logins and know this is fine to do - I cannot imagine what solving this was like in a workplace that didn't have this level of mutual trust and cooperation and coworkers willing to get up at 3 AM on a Friday to start pulling codes.

[one-abuse-survivor]

hi, i was wondering if you had any advice. i moved out of my terrible situation (yay!) & now my days are lighter & so much easier. i have actually seen an improvement in my behaviour & attitude & even self esteem. but i realised i have been avoiding anything trauma-related out of fear of all those ugly emotions. my nightmares have gotten more frequent & i’ve started having flashbacks (which are not what i thought & definitely not fun). i want to see a therapist but can’t at the moment. (1)

i’m aware i’m still an overflowing fountain of unhealthy coping mechanisms and unresolved trauma but once i start thinking abt those things it’s hard to put it ‘back in the box’ and carry on. i know work has to be put into recovery & that it’s hard & awkward & messy, but i can’t do it alone & i know it’ll just fester if i shove it away and ignore it. i’m quite literally between a rock and a hard place. literally any words at all (even just acknowledgement lmao) will be appreciated, ty 💓😌 (2)

–

Hi, nonnie! First of all, I’m so proud of you for getting out of that situation and for all the improvement you’ve made, and you should be hella proud too 😊

Yeah, recovery is… hard, to say the very least. I’ve been on it for one and a half years now, and there are certain things that I still battle with everyday, things that I must have brought up to my therapist a thousand times, and things I haven’t brought up yet at all because I’m so scared I’ll have to face them if I do. But I can tell you a few things that I’ve learnt!

- Go step by step, one step at a time. When I first brought up a thousand different PTSD symptoms and unhealthy coping mechanisms to my therapist, the first thing she told me is, we can’t possibly fix this all at once, so let’s start with the most pressing issue – you can’t keep skipping meals. Which was a thing I did. So we started there; literally just with me telling myself I can’t keep skipping meals anymore every time I wanted to. This doesn’t mean I haven’t skipped a meal in one and a half years because of my PTSD, but it does mean that the days I do skip meals are now catalogued as bad days. Recovery has bad days, and during those, sometimes I still skip a meal, but now all of these days are separate from every other single day. I’m not a person who skips meals anymore. I’m a person who sometimes has bad days and struggles a bit more to eat. 

- And that applies to every other one of your symptoms. They’re not going to magically disappear one by one, but they can stop being a part of you and become just a part of the bad days you have sometimes, separate from the rest of your life. 

- How to achieve this?

- I don’t understand/remember every single step I’ve taken in my recovery process, but one thing I can tell you is that it’s okay not to think about it. It’s okay not to want to go back to all those ugly emotions. Right now, if I started making a mental list of instances where my mother abused me, I would have an anxiety attack. So I don’t. I’ve talked about this with my therapist, a while ago when I asked her what she thought of exposure therapy methods, and she told me that we already torture ourselves enough with our memories for her to put us back in that situation. It’s okay not to want to go back to those feelings. It’s okay to keep on living your life, create a routine for yourself, make friends and lead a lifestyle that doesn’t include your past trauma. You’re not avoiding anything by moving on! And if you’re worried that you’re burying things that you should probably face, I’m here to say that, in my experience, this is something that you’ll need a therapist’s help with. So there’s no shame in not knowing how to start to face these tings by yourself! As you said, you can’t do it alone!

- Which brings me to my next point: you need people in your life. When you go through trauma it’s normal to isolate yourself, to lose people along the way and lose opportunities to meet new people and to avoid social interation with the people you do know because of anxiety, fear, feeling different, not having experience… During recovery, it’s important that you slowly expose yourself to these tiny life events. Just, the next time a classmate or co-worker or a friend asks you to go for a coffee, or to watch a movie sometime, and you feel like you’d say yes if it wasn’t for fear/lack of experience/anxiety… say yes. (Don’t say yes out of obligation, though, or to do things that you don’t enjoy with people you dislike! This is about you being more and more comfortable having a normal life, not about you pushing yourself to do things/be around people that make you uncomfortable). So even if you don’t face all these giant things that are turning and turning in your mind… do face the tiny things that you feel are like small walls separating you from the rest of the world. Start with the walls that feel easiest to climb. (THIS is the kind of exposure therapy my therapist advocates for! Slowly daring to face things in life that our first insticts tell us we should avoid).

- Reward yourself when you do well, and be kind to yourself when you don’t do so well. Try to train all the voices that say bad things about you to instead say things like “today I did that chore that I’d been postponing! Yay me! I deserve some chocolate.” “Today I couldn’t do this chore! It’s not because I’m lazy; there is a reason behind my struggle. It means I’m not feeling my best right now. I’m going to rest/distract myself/do an easier chore/shower/do whatever I need to do to take care of myself right now (yes, that includes eating that chocolate too) and I’ll try again tomorrow.”

- Try not to spend too much time alone with your thoughts. Read, go out with friends, watch shows you like… fill your day and your mind with things that don’t leave you with hours ahead for you to dwell on your thoughts. Basically this takes me back to that previous point; create a routine, find things and people you like, try new things from time to time. My therapist said spending too much time alone with my thoughts only serves to trigger myself when I could be using that time to do something fun or something I need to do instead!

- It usually takes me from one to two days to completely recover from a flashback. Luckily they don’t happen so often now, because one can’t keep taking days off when they’re continuous. That being said… when you have a flashback, be kind with yourself. Drink water. Take the day slowly. Write “rest” on your to-do list so that literally one of the things for you to do that day is to just rest. Just lie in bed with your phone for a few hours. Ta-da! A to-do thing completed. Sleep plenty. Also, you know when you’re crying and people ask you if you want to talk, or if you want to go somewhere else, and instinctively you know if the answer is ‘yes’ or ‘no’? This happens to me at least; when I’m in pain, it’s like instinct takes over and I don’t need to wonder what I need–my body just tells me. Similarly, when I have a flashback, both during and after it happens it’s like my body is just asking me for things I need. Cover your face, don’t let anyone touch you, stop every noise around you are some of the common ones. And afterwards, it’s usually more like be home alone, lay in bed in the dark, don’t go out, drink water. My advice is to listen to your body. Yes, even if our trauma tells us to stay home it’s important that we jump the small walls; but having a flashback leaves you very vulnerable, and things that are usually tolerable and even enjoyable can turn into a living nightmare; from sounds and lights to having to sit through three hours of lectures to having to talk to people. So when you have a flashback, for a day, avoiding these things if you feel like it’s the best option is okay. 

That’s all I can think of right now! I hope some of this helps you at least a little bit and I hope that you are having a good day today 💗 And please, remember that your comfort and safety always come before my advice; if something I said doesn’t feel right, don’t feel like you have to do it. I’m just one person with one experience, after all! (Also if anyone reading this has their own advice, you’re more than welcome to add it to the post 😊) 

Sending you a big big hug and lots of encouragement!