h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

My therapist is starting a new project. It involves importing an approach from the US via Holland. I am to take part in it. She doesn't see me as so plateaued as she did. I have shown myself I am not so plateaued too. When you feel like you are making progress chances are that will make some progress.

I had been thinking to start doing what is called 'permitted work'. I wanted to get more money. The other reason was this plateau I have mentioned before. I didn't see myself ever crossing this plateau. I thought it better to try to do a low skilled job rather than rot on benefits. To embrace my future as the lonely hopeless walking dead and become the working dead with it. I was far from ready to start an access course my only other option. Getting a job and sticking with it would not have been easy for me either. But I have made what progress I have by pushing myself. I think I had just become too dead inside and hopeless through isolation, isolation I didn't push hard enough to avoid.

[You have no friends. You deserve no friends. ou must not impose yourself on others for you can only hurt them and disappoint them and be hurt.]

5 years ago I got isolated and dead inside. I was then devoured by my chaotic and insecure delusions. I was a borderline and codependant and my other disorders.

I can't allow that to happen again.

I mightn't be worth much. But that isn't relevant now, I have suffered for my mistakes and my insecurities and all the wrongs I have done others and ultimately myself.
I have to stop torturing myself.
I don't *want* to suffer anymore. That I deserve to suffer or not is not the point anymore.

If I continue to punish myself for what is past and done then I can only repeat those mistakes again or do worse. If I continue to see myself as worthless and weak and only able to hurt and disappoint I will only become more so those things I hate about myself.
I have to learn from my mistakes not torture myself for them.

When I recall in my mind the sexual abuse I experienced as a child it is the belief that deserved it not the memories that bring out the tears.

Last week I started smoking again. I needed to. I will stop smoking again. I will do that by not buying the cigarettes and thusly being unable to smoke them. It is a not wildly disimilar approach I hope to take to become a less worthless, weak, selfish, ugly and generally terrible, stupid, boring, tedious mess of a person. I have to stop treating myself badly for being those things. I have to stop basing what I allow myself to think and feel and do on the premise that I a these things in order to become something other than those things.

I was agoraphobic. I kept going outside and into the marketplace and survived the panic attacks a hundred yards from the front door.
I had sociophobia and went to the sproutlore and h2g2 meets and selfharmed to cope with being around people I believed resented my existence let alone my presense or daring to speak to them. I am still awkward in company and I have gone from having things to say and being afeared to say them, to not having anything to say though I fear to say it not, that's the isolation that has done that, I'll overcome that as well and I will work to be someone I believe deserves what friends he has.

I selfharmed to control my feelings and to punish myself and for the satisfaction that I had detsroyed a piece of me. Sometimes I still try to punish myself with a knife. Still I have come far.

And there are other achievements. I haven't made my achievements as numerous and as quickly as I would like to have. Some days I dismissive of what have done, because it doesn't seem good enough. But who's judging that?

That sounds very positive and I wish you every luck with it.

>>I had sociophobia and went to the sproutlore and h2g2 meets and selfharmed to cope with being around people I believed resented my existence let alone my presense or daring to speak to them.<<

You know, that would have been a bit of self-fulfilling prophecy if I had known that, because I don't think I'd dared pestering you so much as I did at the last meet if I had known. Not, because you're right, but because I wouldn't have wanted to impose myself on you and make you feel bad or even panicky.

I'm really glad I didn't know.

Lovely positive-minded post, Azathoth.

I'm on permitted work. I've found the people who organise it to be really helpful, understanding, and completely unlike your average DSS administrators. Having some kind of employment has done wonders for my sense of self-worth; for me, the money's just a perk compared to that.

It was good to know there was someone who wanted me there and cared to talk to me.


Yes, it is. I need to remember my own words. I want to do this new programme when it starts early next year. I don't want to have just started work when I begin the programme which is going to be demanding in terms of travel and work done outside of sessions and work done within my normal CBT sessions which would become more focused on challenging my core beliefs which really is hardwork to do.

So, do I push myself to get into work sooner or work on preparing myself for the demands of this programme, such as adopting a more rigid routine and building on the CBT...?

Aye, I am glad that work has done that for you. I hope I can find a job that would do that for me... But I am not confident in myself that I will be doing so sooner rather than later.

I was so happy to read all that! To me it comes back to something I said way too many times: Forgive yourself. And I think you are.

Come back to this journal often, and remember how true it is!

"So, do I push myself to get into work sooner or work on preparing myself for the demands of this programme, such as adopting a more rigid routine and building on the CBT...?"

I recommend arranging a chat with the Jobcentre Plus people about it; you can tell them your fears and concerns and they might be able to suggest ideas for approaching the problem or jobs that won't take it out of you too much. Certainly, my lot were very helpful from that point of view.

I'd also suggest (with the disclaimer that you know your own limits best) easing into work very gradually, maybe one or two days a week to start off with - enough to allow you to socialise, but with time to recover between. This was useful for me way back in my agoraphobic days, when I got a saturday job in a bookshop. The boss probably thought I had a weak bladder, because I kept popping off to the loo to have panic attacks! But it got a whole lot easier as time went on.

The job centre/DEA sent me an application form for a job working 22hours a week running a library in the Brighton area... What was the point of that? I can't do those hours, travel would have been a nightmare and I haven't experience required.

I either find a job in Lindfield or start flipping burgers at Gatwick.

I didn't mean the people who look for the jobs for you. They're as much use as a barrelful of duck. You can do a better job yourself by visiting their jobs website.

Sadly, I was talking about Broker Cymru, a branch of the Jobcentre which you don't have in England. Dammit! They're great. But perhaps you might find there's a similar service in your neck of the woods: they'd be the lot who deal with disability in the workplace.

I think I need to establish a routine that will be appropriate for The Horsham Thing. Start The Horsham Thing. Gain confidence and CBT skills, work to challenge my core beliefs. When I am doing so comfortably start a new and more determined job hunt.

Sounds very sensible.




You sure you're allright?

I ask at the bakery about a part-time job they had in the window. Was swiftly put down for thinking about it.

What did they say, the beggars?

The south asian woman said 'Just for the women!' with a very appalled look on her face and a sharp rising inflection.

Bizarre.

Maybe they only have a women's toliet there.

Toilet, even.

Actually, that's not as daft as it seems. One of the bookshops I worked in was unable to emply men because there was only one toilet and by law, mixed-sex workplaces must have separate toilets for the men and women. Ridiculous, or what, eh?

Interesting... and yes ridiculous.

Argh, I feel so crap.

I often have that effect on people.