I have given myself an “either/or” mindset about emotions and my intellect. Part of that really manifested during my church time. There was a separation between the logical mind and the “spiritual” (emotional) mind. They are not allowed to fuse in many Christian theologies I experienced. My opinion is that you have to be a segregated person in order to be part of those groups. I do not think you have to be that way, I do believe that people tend to polarize in this area and are ok with being one way in a building and another way at home. I am not and I cannot seem to be ok with separating my logic and spiritual ideas. I have not figured it out yet, but I am not a healthy person being polarized in one or the other. Then, there are certain core things that are just unmovable opinions (factual claims) that have caused me doubt and confusion as well.

I am able to be gray in my thinking when it comes to certain topics.

I have a clear understanding that certain situations or important life decisions are not simple and do not have one answer to them based on limited biblical knowledge these groups had, customs, and cultures of the past that were not understood or even considered. I am not ok, with accepting that we are to decide the morals of others. I am not going into that though, this line of thinking has caused me to think negative thoughts about myself. I have felt confused, wrong for having feelings/thoughts that go against the group, and even questioned my own intelligence because I was not allowed to use it.

These things fed into my already self-condemning mind.

I am not blaming people or churches, I am prone to self-destruct, but having people who tell me that God is also condemning me for all of the “sin” that is in my life does not set me free, it puts me in more self-hating, guilt, and condemnation. That is not what God ever intended and in the past seven months I have dealt with guilt about my feelings, emotions, and thoughts. I can sit here confidently and say that: “I am not wrong for any of those things or any feelings that I have, and I am not a horrible person.” People who are close to me know what a huge thing that is for me to say and believe. I have been very aware of how I speak about myself since the children have gotten older.

I have worked very hard at not speaking negatively about my appearance or my feelings of inadequacy out loud.

Negative talk was a huge influence in my life by both parents, enhanced by being ridiculed for my looks, my birthmark, my weight (being told that I needed to lose weight by a boyfriend over and over when it wasn’t true), being called stupid at times when I could not speak because I was confused or overloaded. The thoughts became me and I have been working on separating those from my real self for several months now. I am sure it will be a long process in some areas, but I know that I do have control over them now. I want to gain myself back of course, but I truly want to work at helping my kids not to go through this. Part of that is being a good example.

Ariel and I talked yesterday and it woke me up.

For some reason her and Joshua like watching Toddlers & Tiaras. I have a very hard time watching the show, it upsets me at times. It’s on Netflix so I can fast forward or skip to another one. However, I use it as a social tool. We talk about the parents who are positive and what is good about them and same with the parents who are not so good and why. We do the same thing with the children, but they both have said on multiple occasions that the “mommy’s made them like that”. Some of that is true, we discuss personalities as well. The show does have a lot of social dynamics and cultural issues that we talk about at their level. Anyway, Ariel asked me about a little girl who said: “I am beautiful! My face is so pretty.”

It was said in a way that was obnoxious and condescending.

Ariel picked up on it and then shared with me that she feels: “shy” when she says the words beautiful, pretty, kiss, love, being smart, and other things like that. I asked her if she knew that she was beautiful and smart and she said that she did. She said it in a healthy 7 year old way. It just made her feel awkward. I wondered if that was what my issue was as well. I have such a hard time taking compliments and I normally combat with them something negative. I do not do it on purpose I just do not know how to accept someone seeing good in me or in something that I do. I believe this was learned by my parents. I also have the feeling that I am not allowed to have compliments, like I do not deserve them or something.

My main goal has been to not do this in front of the kids for a while, but the thoughts still pop in my head.

I do not want Ariel to feel this or take on that behavior. The boys do not seem to have this or maybe it manifests differently through them. Ariel does have confidence in herself and her abilities, this is where it can be very confusing to other people. I too am confident in my abilities and things that I have a special interest in. I do not concern myself with feeling unattractive or unintelligent until someone or something brings it to my attention. Either through compliment or ridicule. I am just being me. I am overall a confident person, but social confusion, confusing situations, or misunderstood comments can make me seem very insecure. I do need to learn how to accept compliments and also positive criticism. I do not do too badly with criticism as long as I know that the person is trying to help me and not be destructive. I am always open to learning and bettering myself.

All of this has been very good and will help me go through my loop drafts with more understanding.

I am very happy that Ariel calls herself a scientist and she even told me that if she was in a pageant she thinks that she would get queen. The reason she gave: “I would just be myself, with a little bit of lipstick (blah) and my hair done a little, maybe…but I can dance and think I would win.” (blah was a direct quote) Good for her, I wish that were true though, I would have to find a “natural” pageant I think.   I asked her how she would feel if she lost. She said: “Well, I would be ok with that and I would be happy for the girls who won.” Ariel is so awesome! I know I am biased. I am not sure I could be a pageant mom. 8-d

Here are some links that I found very helpful.

Negative Automatic Thoughts

15 Common Cognitive Distortions

Negative Automatic Thoughts w/ Examples

The study is a bit long, but it was interesting.

Evaluation of the Automatic Thoughts Questionnaire:
Negative Cognitive Processes and Depression Among Children

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The other day I watched a video that is completely unrelated to this post so I will not put it up, but it did mention something that I had never heard of before. It was Negative Automatic Thoughts, it jumped at me because I had already looked up cognitive distortions either the day before or a few days before. I did not see anything mentioned about Negative Automatic Thoughts in my reading. When I looked it up, to be honest I have no idea what I felt or thought.

I have always had a subconscious understanding that I do this.

All my life I have tried not to have these thoughts flood my mind. I think there is another whole aspect to the Aspie mind, anxiety, depression, and the thought patterns. The added component of intense sensory ingraining and reliving negative events have very strong parallels to PTSD. I do not have a diagnosis for these, but I know that I do seem to line up with the criteria. Gaining this understanding has helped me to acknowledge, understand, and work toward becoming more balanced and truly take control over my thoughts and my world. I do not think at this point it matters if I have a diagnosis for some of the things I feel I may have, other than Asperger’s, I would like to get a diagnosis for that for multiple reasons. I am working on that.

After reading about the negative automatic thoughts, I had a huge revelation.

It is like the chicken and the egg issue, I do not know which came first, the thoughts or the depression/anxiety. I believe my anxiety came first because my mom says that I have always been anxiety ridden and what I believe I did was start creating negative thoughts based on my automatic black-and-white thinking and confusion. It really doesn’t matter because I have been working on trying to stop these thoughts for years, but also questioned myself and would believe that they came from outside sources. Which meant that I had no control over them. They seemed so overwhelming and unstoppable, it is hard to believe they can stop when you have had them your whole life.

I have been overcoming some of them little by little.

In the recent months part of me putting my poetry out there, my stories, and sharing art or myself more has been me trying to combat the negatives. The more I put out there the more I feel confident and less seeking the approval of others (not approval in “normal” sense it is hard to explain), or using other people’s perceptions to tell me who I am. I hope that others relate, enjoy, and get something out of what I share, it is my healing that I am sharing. It makes me feel very exposed and unsure. It also makes me say: “I can do this.”

It is part of my acceptance of myself, all of me not just parts.

When I went through a list of common negative automatic thoughts I knew many of them. Some of them I do not do or at least it does not seem the same that could be my motives are completely different or that it seems to cross a fine line between Aspie traits, and is hard to differentiate. Or is it the anxiety disorder? Is it the social confusion that links into the anxiety that causes me to relive past negative experiences or think that every situation will be like the “one” that ended negatively? At some point I just have to let that go, and focus on being productive with the information I have gained.

My brain is hard-wired to think literally, in black-and-white, and be confused with social situations.

Not that I cannot work on that, but I do accept it about myself and will focus on what I can change. Currently, it does not seem like those things can change, I can become more aware. I can control my confusion, anxiety, and fears, by speaking about it and asking people to be honest and clear with me. I can explain that I do not understand and hope they will be kind and explain it to me. I do have control over how I allow my reactions toward certain thinking patterns affect me, but I am not sure they will ever stop. Actually I am not sure I want them to in some ways they are very beneficial and help me gain certain insight that otherwise I may not have.

I am extremely happy to have a concrete list to look at, examine, and use as a guide to help my process.

After reading about this, it helped release me from certain guilt patterns that I tend to put on myself. I will condemn myself for having negative thoughts, which is not helpful at all. The negative thoughts have caused me confusion and is a big factor in some of my loops. As I went through and read each thing I was able to look at some of my current loops and recognize them as negative automatic thoughts. They just come when I am in a similar situation and I have made one event or person into the ALL. “It will always end up the way it had that one time.” I have been telling myself through writing to accept the gray that this “always/every” is not true. Rationally I know it is not true, this where I have an additional issue and battle in my mind.

My emotional self and logical self fight.

 Second half here. 

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Guess what? I have broken open a flood inside my heart. After writing out all of these issues that I have been working through I have discovered something, the cage surrounding my feelings has been opened. I seem to have locked away a lot of my emotions over the years so that I would force myself not to feel. I have repeatedly told David that I feel like a robot. I am not a robot. He has always challenged me in these words of mine because he sees me. I have a strange way of not seeing things in myself but seeing them clearly in others. David, my mom, and close friends have repeatedly told me that I am a loving, caring and generous person.

I haven’t seen it.

Or if I have seen it then words from various voices have popped up and said “Now you are just being prideful”. I do not do nice things or show how I care for others because I want or expect something, I just do it. After I wrote the last two posts dealing with fear of abandonment, something seemed to just leave me. A foreboding dark cloud of some sort just up and left. The lie that lingered has started to fly away and I see the sun shining down. I know that I will have other things to work through in my lifetime but once I “get” something, I get it. There is no need for me to return. I am able to see the error in my thinking and move on. I have no guilt or shame about it, it is what it is and it’s a done feeling.

I realized this with the word “soon”.

I got so angry with myself for being afraid of a simple word. But see, it wasn’t the word, it was the not knowing hidden in that word. It represented something that I did not want to face – it represented that I do not have certainty about this life. Like many of my anxious feelings, I am afraid of the unknown or the uncertainty of something. There is something truly manifesting in my thought process about these phantom fears of mine. They are smoke screens of what I am truly fearful of: I get afraid of being hurt or being in a state of confusion. Confusion causes me much pain. In my mind, I have taken these phantom fears and placed tangible fears in their place so I could hold on to something because a fear of something is far better than not knowing.

Yikes!

I can apply this to many of my fears. I have created fears or reasons so that I would no longer be in a state of confusion. Confusion makes me ill. It causes me to not be able to eat, sleep, think, and live, basically. It just puts me in a state of depression so in order for me to be able to function, I created faces to my fears to help me be able to put them away. This has caused me to have many inaccurate feelings and ideas. It has also caused me to shut down my emotions throughout the years. I do not know if others are able to do this as well, but I have to ability to turn off certain feelings so that I will not feel it anymore. But they are still stored and documented and they manifest through other means.

Anger is one that I dealt with over the last two years.

I did not allow myself to feel angry for a long time because I interpreted anger as a wrong emotion. I felt like I was judging people or that I had misunderstood them when the anger would arise. Partly this was due to me having meltdowns and freakouts throughout my life and people telling me how wrong I was for doing so. I admit that my temper was out of control in many cases, but it was mostly due to lack of understanding, and most of the time, I knew that I was being treated badly but did not know how to express it. Hence, hold it in, hold it in, hold it in, BLOW!! I experienced full-blown rage with the church people that continued to tell me that I had done something to cause Daniel’s autism. When he was not accepted, most people didn’t even acknowledge him, or me when he was with me. It made me angry and confused.

Rage stirred in my belly when I continued to see people used and abused in the name of serving the Lord.

I had seen it too often, I had seen too many people have their voices squelched, their identities destroyed for the sake of leaders’ desires, the words of the bible used to manipulate and control others. If you haven’t witnessed this in your religious (or other forms of institution) circles, great! I mean really, I think that is a wonderful thing, but it does happen and people get hurt and people become dependent on leaders and no longer rely on their instincts or the true biblical understandings. It happens and the truths of humanity in the bible become caricatures of the opinions and views of leaders. It burned rage in me that I forced down because I thought I was wrong. The rage, however, was left in me. I was unable to see clearly what had happened to me in churches but I could see it in others.

I could recognize it and call it out for others but not for myself.

I do this with a lot of things. I dealt with a lot of that rage in the last two years. I wrote about it, I thought about it, I finally saw it in my life and I dealt with it. I can finally hear a sermon and not get angry, though I get annoyed sometimes, I no longer get angry. I dealt with my triggers and allowed myself to feel that anger. I reposted something a while ago about my feelings about church and after that it was done. I thought there was a lot more, but there wasn’t. I had already typed out so much in my personal journals that I had actually been helping myself heal without knowing it. I got settled with people and I got settled with God on the topic and have since moved on into a new journey of understanding my personal experiences with God, this world and spirituality.

The same thing is happening now with love.

I had said before that I had only felt love once. It is true but evaluating it I see why it was so impactful. It was the first time I gave myself freely and didn’t work on trying to hide until I became confused. The relationship exposed things in me that I had a choice to deal with or stifle. I chose to deal with many things that it exposed in me but then out of fear, I stopped it. I began to hide away parts of me that had started to manifest, I only allowed “safe” invisible parts of me out, ones that I knew would not hurt too badly. I already started to build walls around my heart and soul, so when I met David, I had actually spent an entire year forcing myself not to feel for myself but only feel for others. I could control my feelings but not the feelings that I was overwhelmed with by others.

In a way, I had been so vulnerable that I felt I had to protect myself from feeling.

I can walk in a room and be consumed by people’s feelings, emotions, thoughts, vibrations, I don’t know how to explain it – I just feel them. If I allowed myself to feel what I felt also, it was too much. For the past two years, I have been in a safe place to deal with me. I have not allowed myself to feel love through me in a very long time. I know that it started when I had a miscarriage over 10 years ago. I was terribly hurt by people, their words and my own inability to be able to grieve properly. It started a shutdown process. I started to eliminate the shutdown, but quickly had to go back into shutdown mode for various reasons, such as being ostracized by my church, an (ex) husband who was being a complete jerk, I got laid off from my job, I lost a friendship that meant a lot to me, and started a new church. That was a few…there is a lot more. All of this happened one after another, things just piled up and I was incredibly confused by a lot of this stuff.

I had to stop feeling.

All of this awakening has been incredibly painful but SO worth it. I am discovering how much I do love. I love people, I do. I have convinced myself for years that I don’t. I like the fact that I can find good in people, even though I need to be cautious with that. I would rather see the potential and possibly motivate them to get there. Those who are mean or nasty can help change me for the better. I have a choice to be bitter and angry or not allow their issues to be mine. That is an entirely different thing than righteous indignation or standing up against injustices in the world.

I love life.

There is so much treasure in this world. There are so many great things to ponder and experience, a lifetime is not enough. I know there are terrible, horrible things that happen in this world but I also see so many triumph over the tragedy in their lives. What was meant to destroy or break a person made them stronger and a powerful voice to encourage others. My prayer for people in those detestable, wretched situations would be that they come out with their voice loud and powerful, that their hearts would not be formed into bitterness or fear but that they would see their strength, value and fearlessness in them that they survived.

They are there to talk about it and help others.

I am just writing run on sentence after run on sentence. My mind is but a whirlwind of thought and I am not sure what I am trying to say. I feel the power of loving one another today. I feel the sensation of oneness with our world and with creation. I feel something that I have not allowed myself to feel in a very long time. I feel the light of the world that does not allow darkness to consume. I feel balance. I feel, I feel! I have no idea what tomorrow holds but I am not afraid of it. I do not know how anything will play out and in a way I comforted in that thought. I actually feel the peace of not knowing. If for a moment, I felt it.

I would rather have that moment of feeling than never know of its existence.

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Yes, an ex-boyfriend said that to me. I remember every detail of that night. I remember after it was said to me I shut down because I did not know how to respond to it. I frequently got in trouble with significant others because of my questions and conversations that I would start while out and about socializing. I am intrigued by people and I enjoy hearing their stories, what they think, what they are all about, and how they got to that exact moment in which our worlds interacted. I ask a lot of questions and I probe.

I find this enjoyable, while others just want to go out and have a “good time”.

I had three long-term boyfriend relationships starting at around the age of 14. This first relationship is in part the reason for my obsessive behaviors I discussed in my last two posts. It is a fragile time in a person’s life anyway but this is when you begin to really start looking for answers to who you are and what you are going to be. I entered into an abusive relationship for 3 years and didn’t even know it. What he did to me caused so much confusion and loss of identity that it forced me to be in search of the “real” me.

I never thought I was being abused because I never felt like a victim.

In all three relationships, they manipulated me, not all were physically abusive but they were verbally with saying many things similar to what I titled this post. The thing is that I stood up for myself. The normal pattern was for me to shut down because I was confused, then I would be hurt and then that would manifest through rage. I was sharp with my tongue and my wit. This would make them even more angry. In my mind I figured if I could stand up for myself than I was not really being abused. I was so hard for them to control because on the one hand I seemed very fragile and insecure but on the other hand I was strong and independent.

I felt victimized but never a victim.

I still feel this way. I see people take on the “victim” identity and I think that it is a shame to be settled in such a title when we have been equipped with the ability to not stay victims. Then again I do not like to see those take the ‘warrior” mentality either because then you can never show weakness. Part of being a true warrior is recognizing limitations, not hiding from them but embracing them to make you stronger. What I am sharing now has always been me. I lost these things about myself at one point. I had people in my life many times try to not allow me to use my brain.

Not just in relationships but also in other settings, such as work and church.

My obsessive behaviors did ease as I grew older and I found that if I was not in a relationship I was much better at being myself. I may have felt alone but I was comfortable with being alone with myself. I still however, had a desire for someone to be in my life so I searched on. By the time I met my first husband I had been alone for quite some time and I was pretty confident in me in a lot of ways. I liked him because he was intelligent, loved music and had a dry sense of humor that I got. But we really were just friends, I never felt anything more than a friendship with him. Plus I was entering into a new era of my life and started going to church which changed our dynamic.

We had many differences in our beliefs and I was evolving into someone new.

By the time I met my second husband I was fully emerged into church life and being a Christian. I felt I had no idea who would make a good husband for me so I trusted my friends instead of listening to my gut. He too just wanted me to sit and be pretty. This brings me to what triggered this post and why I felt I needed to get this out. Last night I had been thinking about all of this, my life playing like a movie. I had some feelings of regret but I think regret is good and I wrote a poem about that as well. Anyway, I looked at David and I was staring at him awkwardly, with no emotion on my face, this creeps him out, (I have a gift of being able to do that when I am thinking and creep people out. lol) and I said “Thank you for loving my brain.”

He looked at me and said “I do not know how to respond to that.”

I do that often too, I say strange things that he doesn’t know how to respond to. Hee hee It was at that moment that I realized why David has helped me so much. He has allowed me to use my brain. He has encouraged it. He has even gone to great lengths to tell me that “If you didn’t use your brain, I could not respect you and I would not be able to stay with you.” I shared with him what I meant by loving my brain. He was the first person to allow me to ask my questions, listen to my rants, let me cycle and rage, laugh and cry, whatever I needed to do, to be able to let my true nature come out.

He used to get hurt or frustrated with things I would say.

Like when I called him a cry baby, I wasn’t being mean in my mind I thought I was helping him. I see the error of my ways now. I can say harsh things but not mean them in a harsh way at all. As we discussed all of this he told me that “He would rather me clear a room, making people uncomfortable and deal with the things they will not face, rather than sit and be a wallflower.” He doesn’t mean for me to be rude but to ask the questions that are hard and driven for answers. He told me that he hasn’t really done anything except encourage me to let the things that he sees in me to come out. Not let them hide but let them out freely. I think this is a reason I had no obsessive behaviors with David. I didn’t feel like I had to hide anything or try to keep parts of me hidden.

One dear person that I worked with said to me once “Angel, you need to find someone who loves you for your brain.”.

I remember that day in every detail too. My second husband had left, we were separated, when that friend (thank you, Jim) said those words, I had a flash of the entire relationship. The whole time I had been railing against the unspoken words “Just sit there and be pretty”. My relationships, many of my friends and my church that I was in, had all been telling me the same thing. Don’t use your mind, sit there and do what you are told, stop thinking for yourself. And I couldn’t do it, no matter how hard I tried.

I could never and will never be able to “Just sit there and be pretty.”

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I lived kind of dual life with church people. Dual in that I didn’t share about how I didn’t agree with some of their views and I stopped questioning them about how some of the language seemed very judgmental and non-loving. I still stay quiet, it’s just easier. I wasn’t hiding sin, I was trying so hard to live a “holy” life that I became obsessed with my “wrong doing”. I studied people in church and tried to become who I thought I was supposed to be. People and their behavior was very confusing, it never fit. I acknowledge that I made up rules for me to follow but I took all of their words literally. I really lost any sense of self I had during that time. Now I am at a point where the pieces are slowly coming together and I am discovering some parts of me that have always been there but I have hidden.

I am also finding the pieces of me that are new as I grow older.

When I met David I had already come to a point where I was not going to change to find a partner. I was settled on not finding one. I was fine with being me, the me I knew at that point. It was good to start a relationship like that, it wasn’t founded on insecurity because I wasn’t being someone I thought he wanted. I couldn’t accept that someone would want me for me, until I met David. First of all in the past anytime my true self would be exposed it usually wasn’t good, so I learned to only give people little doses of me. I would give the appropriate dose for the appropriate people mixed in with who I thought they wanted.

Secondly, I really didn’t know who I was.

How can you find yourself or even know who you are when you are trying so hard to fit in? When you have had others tell you who you are or should be? The things people would label me with were so confusing at times. When I would obsess about certain people, it would cause me to get sidetracked and fixated on becoming someone who was “right”. I would obsess to try to find myself. If I could figure out what they saw in me and I brought that forth, possibly that was who I was. As my mind would wander thinking about them, I would begin to have anxiety because I knew that I wasn’t completely who they thought I was. I would then feel the need to know what they were doing, when I would see them, why they were not calling when they said they would, would they stop talking to me?

Just all kinds of things.

I did this because I felt like I was losing self, I was creating my identity through their image of me. I wanted those people to live with me, so I could discover who I was. I wanted to be consumed by them so I could know what was right. This is not unique behavior, it is actually what many NT’s do as well, they take on identity of the group and the group moderates what is right and what is wrong. Since I did not naturally do this it felt odd, individualized and my obsessive behaviors seemed extreme. People who are able to adapt to a social situation are able to see what type of people are there and adjust their personality accordingly. I recognize that this does not make them liars, as I thought. I can read people’s true selves, this is different from reading people. A true self is what is actually going on inside, I have discernment for that. I do not have discernment for people’s social self.

I see things in people that are good or bad.

And here lies one of the main reasons why I have such social/relationship confusion. When what I feel/see doesn’t match with what I see/hear it causes me to doubt myself. I doubt my ability to discern motives and people. Because of this doubt I have ended up in controlling relationships and trusting wrong people at times. I have had people tell me over and over again that I was wrong about a certain person, only to discover that their own motives were completely wrong. They were trying to steer my doubts to conform with the group so they could feel “right”. My obsessive behavior and the feeling of needing to be around people stemmed from the fact that I did not feel confident in my ability to know how they felt about me. I would be confused by what I saw and their actions/words were toward me a lot of the time.

I think this has to do with my inability to know who is my friend.

When I care for someone I try to give them everything, this would be one reason why I have had so few cohering relationships. I would try to be completely translucent but I couldn’t because I felt if I was truly exposed that they would leave. It takes a lot of energy to try to find yourself. But it takes huge amounts of energy to expose yourself while trying to keep an identity of being who you think people want. Anytime I stepped out I would see how they did not want the “real me” they wanted the shell of me. My shell had all the great qualities but never showed the bad. When I realized that they only wanted the shell, it brought to life just how fragile that shell was and I would feel like a failure. I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t just be that and I felt like I had done something wrong. I hadn’t taken on the “right” identity.

I would feel that I wasn’t good enough to satisfy the relationship.

The whole purpose of my people consumption was to control my life. People were too unpredictable, they kept things from me, they changed or I would discover things that I never knew about them and it would throw me into a panic. I wasn’t psychotic – I just wanted my life to be predictable and I needed to know who they thought I was. It required me to know the people in my life deeply and regularly, not to manipulate and control them but to help me not have anxiety and panic attacks.

My fitting in method didn’t work.

I could fake it but I was still isolated and alone in my thoughts. I caused people to feel suffocated because of my need to know where they were and what they were doing. I seemed quite insecure and needy which is the opposite of who I am. It’s ironic as I look back that people who made me feel suffocated made me angry. I didn’t want anything to do with “needy and clingy” people. I liked my freedom and being alone. It’s funny how I did similar things but I thought that it was different because my motives were not to control them, unlike those who tried to control me. All these years of trying to fit in haven’t really helped at all. I am more comfortable now with not fitting in. The more I discover about myself the more I see that I cannot fit in without sacrificing and losing myself.

It’s baffling being able to live as a person who is confident in a lot of ways, yet full of anxiety.

For many years I the used the wrong words to describe my feelings. I am feeling released being able to find my words now. I used the wrong scripts to express myself or to try to mix with the group. I felt wrong for liking being alone and I felt wrong for thinking all of my random thoughts. The truth is I still do feel these things. I still feel the sting of rejection. I still feel the isolation as I go out into social settings. The difference now is that I am truly starting to feel alright with it. Does it come with age? Does it come with answers? Does it come with acceptance? I am sure they all play a role in this. I think a lot of it has to do with me realizing that no one ever rejected me. They couldn’t have, they didn’t know me well enough. Really no one can reject us, they can only reject parts and if that is the case what does it matter?

Those who truly care will accept us as a whole.

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I am in a documentary cycle again. I tend to read then go searching for documentaries on the topics of interest and flood my mind with as much information as I can. The last time I shared my documentary flicks was in September 2010 and I was basically on a food rant. Those can be seen here Need To Download! If you are not up to reading my rant just go to the bottom of the post and you can see the documentaries I have listed. I know a lot of them from that post and this post are from PBS but I enjoy them.

So here are the current documentaries that I have watched.

Frontline: God In America

I felt that God in America, gave a rich history of America and faith. I learned a lot and it triggered me to do more research.

Frontline: The Medicated Child

I found this interesting, I am not sure exactly how I feel but it gave me things to think about and research.

History Channel: The Dark Ages

I love history and I used to watch a lot of history documentaries but I haven’t been able to in recent years. (My other special interests took presidence.) I did manage to watch this one and enjoyed it very much. I learned some new things and it gave more things to research.

National Geographic: The Gospel of Judas

Hmm…What to say about this one? I did find it very interesting but I don’t know, I can’t put my finger on it but it seemed to be missing something.

National Geographic: The Gospel of Judas Link

Documentaries I am in the middle of watching.

This Emotional Life

This documentary has proven to be very beneficial so far. I am on the second episode, and it too has given me resources and tools that can help me a lot with emotions. There is so much in each one that I will need to re-watch them.

The Calling

I really like this one so far because it goes through people of different faiths and their journey of feeling a call from God.

Documentaries in my queue to watch (Netflix queue)

Turning Points in the Physical Sciences

Frontline: Growing Up Online

Frontline: Sick Around America

PBS: The New Medicine

PBS: The Greeks: Crucible of Civilization

PBS: Empires: The Medici, Godfathers of the Renaissance

PBS: The Buddha

Let The Church Say Amen

The Bible According to Hollywood

Single: A Documentary Film

Nursery University

Escape From Suburbia

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I was doing so well, ok, pretty well but now I am overwhelmed and anxiety ridden. Off and on Daniel has done a lot better but now I am feeling the aftermath in my own body and mind. I haven’t been able to accomplish much because I can’t think and I am so tired. I get angry with myself because I feel like I have no reason to be tired but I am and it is very hard to force myself to do anything. I decided to rearrange our front room which is part of our school room, along with our bedroom.

I have been wanting new bookshelves for a long time.

I have had my books stacked on top of each other, hidden behind each other, placed on any given space possible so they are not on the floor. Also the shelves that I have been using for storing school materials, craft items and manipulatives, basically collapsed. David has had it since 1997. Some of the other bookshelves we have had since 2004 and they are cheap ply wood types but they have held their own.

Anyway, we found some new ones for $16 and decided to get them.

I did some spring cleaning and wanting to get rid of a bunch of books but I am having a very hard time with that. I am in class today at church. On Weds. David and I are going to an autism symposium. In two weeks one of my sisters and her daughter are coming to visit, we haven’t seen them in about four years, I think. My birthday is at the end of the month. All of these things are good to me but yet I am ridden with dizzy head, fuzzy thoughts, starting to lose my appetite and I can barely read anything. Reading is what calms me, that and writing and both of them I am having a very hard time with. I am not sure what to do about church for our future there and I am just full of anxiety about going this morning. I don’t like this at all.

Part of this is that I just can’t think.

My sister has been emailing me and calling me often and sporadically. I do not mind her calling it just throws me and I do not do well on the phone anyway. She said “I know you are not a phone person and I will not keep you.” but we ended up being on the phone for over an hour because she asked me about Daniel and how do I explain any of this over the phone? I sent her a link that is geared toward children to help them understand what autism is but they really will not understand until they get here. PLUS Daniel is so good at being a sweet little guy when others are around that people think I am making things up. Of course there are certain things that he does and those will be clear but they will not understand his sensory overload or they may not even notice is hand flapping, silly noises or constant spinning. Others don’t seem to notice.

And it’s not that I am just not a phone person.

When I get off the phone, depending on the person it can take me days to recover. I get very excited and anxious. While on the phone even with people I am comfortable with, I shake, my hands start to shake and I can feel the adrenaline pulsing through me. My heart rate sky rockets and afterwards I have to tell David every detail of the conversation so that I can make sure I didn’t say anything wrong or to see if I understood them correctly. It is some serious stuff. I don’t want to do it, I can’t stop it. In the past I tried and I would tell myself how ridiculous I was being, it’s just a phone, goodness! Deep breath. I am just overwhelmed and tired and frazzled.

At least I am not having negative thoughts, I think.

I am doing ok on that part but I am exhausted and then I find myself trying to escape through my special interests. The problem is that when I read things my brain is connecting a billion other things and then it gets all jumbled together in a mass of confusion. I have been trying to read blog posts and I want to write comments but then I think it is too long, doesn’t make any sense or I cannot get a single thought to come together. I am just fuzzy brain. Maybe I will do better and feel a lot better after being in class with the kids today. Our kids are staying home with David, Ariel had a random fever on Friday and it was gone by Sat. but we do not want to take any chances with them getting sick. Also Daniel is just walking on the fence of sensory overload, so church would not be a good thing for him today.

I guess I am done…maybe a little more.

I am not sure the purpose of this post other than to try to get myself to calm down and be able to function a little better. I always feel like I am overreacting with this stuff. I feel like I should be fine, other people are able to get excited and have happy thoughts about having family come, going to church, going to a symposium! I seem to fall into a trap thinking that since I now know what my problems are than I shouldn’t have the issues any more. I know this isn’t true but how do I convince my mind of that? Sorry for my word meltdown, I know I have written a chaotic post but I just had to get something out.

Well I am off to get ready and praying for a clear mind and a not so anxious heart.

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We have been contemplating for over a year now whether to stay at our current church. We really have limited options where we live. We have tried to participate with our current church as best as we can, but it just isn’t working. We can’t do many of the things that they do because of diet restrictions or sensory issues, I am not even going into the social anxiety. We have gone to some events but then it takes at least three days for all of us to be back to our “normal”. No one is doing anything wrong and we feel welcomed but we don’t fit.

I have been observing changes in our kids for the past several months.

They no longer want to go. At first it was good for them and they liked it. I have been confused by their behavior when they are in class, when we leave, and by them not wanting to go as often as they used to. A couple of weeks ago I was in children’s class, Ariel and Joshua did not want to go, Daniel did and went with me. He was trying so hard to participate and play with kids. However, we are in a movie theater, the elementary students are on the next level in the same theater and it is LOUD! He got past the toys all dumped out on the floor in piles, the noise, the other kids, the TV on, the elementary kids playing X-Box and went to go sing songs. When the video came on he went into panic and asked “Why is it that songs?”

They changed the DVD that they had been using for the past six months.

They had seemed to have lost it, Daniel couldn’t stay, it was the last straw. Even though he knew those songs they were not the ones that I was playing in the car on the way there, they were not the ones that they have been using every week for the past um…forever in his mind and he was done. I took him out in the hallway and asked him if he could go back in after the songs, he said “No, I can’t. It’s too loud.” My mom took him to her house until I was finished with class. After that I decided to wait for the best opportunity to ask Ariel and Joshua why they did not want to go to church anymore. I discovered from Ariel that all of the toys dumped out makes her dizzy. There are certain toys that are too loud that make her stomach hurt. All of the kids talking at once makes her stomach hurt and her head hurt.

She wants to play with the other kids but she can’t because now she gets a stomach ache even before we go.

Joshua agreed with everything she said and they added that the music is too loud so when they get home they are overloaded and act all wild. It’s true they do act all wild and I didn’t really know why. I thought it was those things but I kept thinking in the back of my mind the more exposure they have the better it will get. This is not the case for my guys, they seem to be getting anxiety about all the sensory issues they will have before even going. I still was thinking that maybe if they just kept going that it will all be better but today I read this Including Persons with Autism in the Life of Church . As I read the section  “Develop a User-Friendly Classroom”, I realized that everything they have mentioned to do, is how we have our home set up and it is the exact opposite at church. Everything they suggest our church does the opposite. It is not their fault, being limited in time and space causes the situation to be enhanced.

A movie theater really isn’t the best option for those on the spectrum anyway.

It worked in the beginning, it was actually great. I couldn’t figure out why we were starting to have problems but now I get it. Before they had limited toys, clutter, kids and noise. Now that the church has grown, the piles of toys have grown, the number of children have grown, the different teachers have grown, the sound level has increased and it has become a sensory nightmare. I should know this because every time I serve in there, even though I enjoy it, I am unable to function when I get home. I have to just sit and watch TV because I can’t really do anything else. It takes everything I have to make lunch and dinner so the kids and I have to make it a movie day. If they go with me than they are usually doing their own stim.

Now we are left with having to make a decision.

I have thought about bringing them after music time, when all of the toys are cleaned up and they do the story and craft but I am not sure it will work. They are all pretty set on the script and if they are not there for the beginning then that could turn into another whole anxiety issue. I don’t know, I am torn. Part of me feels like we have to keep going, part of me knows that it is just not going to work, part of me thinks it really doesn’t matter either way because we haven’t really connected to people and at this point in time we are not going to, but then I feel guilty.

None of the kids will wear ear plugs or head phones.

We have tried the weighted vest in class, I’ve tried a sensory diet in the morning before going, going over the schedule, speaking to the children’s pastor, sending a detailed email about his behaviors to help him if he is having problems. I didn’t realize that Ariel and Joshua were being affected just as much. The teachers are not able to help Daniel during class in that short of time, how can they help our other two kids?

I am just feeling quite discouraged and frustrated, at this point I don’t know what is the best thing to do.

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In my previous post I spoke about how David and I met and what we felt called to do in our new life together. We moved across country to start a coffee shop ministry. The vision for the ministry was to bring all Christian denominations together through the arts. We felt like it should be a place that ministered to both believers and non-believers. Through means of music, art, poetry, woodwork, sculpting, films and guest speakers, those were some of the outlets. We had to live with David’s mom and step-dad for the first several months we were there. That was an interesting time that truly brought us closer together in a very short period. We lived in a bedroom with both of my cats, his mom had two cats and three dogs, we had to keep my cats locked up because they still had claws and were not too friendly with others.

That was interesting to say the least.

For a long period of time we were unable to find work, David was still working on his thesis and we were networking for the coffee shop ministry. We got connected with many great people who saw the vision and supported us, not financially because we never felt that we were supposed to receive an income from the ministry. However, the owners of several local coffee shops opened their doors to us and gave us free rein on the weekends to have people come in and share their art. It was a win-win for both parties because the coffee shop would gain new customers/business and the artists would gain exposure/business. There were times that it was very frustrating having churches tell us that they did not want it to be a mix of denominations. Then there was the business of trying to “sell” us to congregations.

One pastor of a megachurch told us that he could have his 1300 young adults there every Sat., all we had to do was join a small group.

We did not feel comfortable in that church or with the proposal so we just let it drop. It was mainly how the pastor made it clear that he could influence his people to go wherever he said. Scary. So many churches loved the idea but wanted us to be under their umbrella. We felt like it was not supposed to be a part of a specific church. Finally, we got involved with an internet ministry and became a parachurch ministry under them. They brought us on to write articles for them dealing with many different topics. We met different people and were exposed to a lot of different ministries. David eventually got an adjunct position at a Christian University and we had really warmed out our welcome at his parents house. They had their own financial burdens.

It was time for us to leave but we had no money and no place to go.

Many of the people we had met stepped up and rallied around us through prayer and funds. We were able to get a horrible apartment for $200 a month with David cleaning the grounds to help with rent. We felt like it was a palace! We didn’t care about the location or the black mold it was ours and it was huge compared to the room we had been in.   We finally managed to start the coffee shop ministry and had many different artists come through. We had paintings, photography, indie Christian films that would offend a lot of Christians but the messages were great because they were painful and challenging, poets, musicians, and some speakers. It didn’t last long though, we got pregnant and I started to get very sick from the mold and the pregnancy.

David had to find more work and I was in bed the first few months of the pregnancy.

From the beginning we felt like we were supposed to start it and others were to take over. After we got pregnant I just couldn’t keep up with getting artists to come and David had to get as much work as possible. Again people rallied around us and helped us get into a much nicer apartment. We had a great experience while we did the coffee shop, we met many believers who felt like they just couldn’t step into a church building ever again and they enjoyed the freedom of being themselves. There were artists who felt like their talent was wasting away because there was no outlet for them in the Body of Christ but the ministry was giving them the outlet they longed for. There was freedom of beliefs and freedom of expression. If ever I felt the power of God it was in the moments that the artists were operating freely in their gifting and expressing themselves before man and God.

I loved when people would say things like “I never knew Christians were creative.”

Doesn’t that seem wrong? I know not everyone is a Christian but the sheer belief that we are supposed to believe in the Creator, wouldn’t it seem like we would be VERY creative? Whatever our creative outlet may be, it is not limited to the arts but what we are gifted at. Wouldn’t our inspiration come from working with the Creator and knowing Him? I am not being a snot here I am being serious. It is a question that I have thought about a lot. I digress. The owners of the coffee shop did keep it going for a while and the owners franchised to several other Christians who did keep it going in their own way. Some of the churches we met with started their own version in their buildings. I liked how for a time it brought unity to people who ordinarily would not come together, I liked how it wasn’t about one church or artist but about a community trying to express the love of Christ through their gifting and sharing it with others through love.

David and I have been church vagabonds pretty much from the beginning.

Even before I met David I would frequent various churches throughout town, I liked being exposed to different churches and people. Though I was devoted to both of my home churches while I went to them, I still was visiting friends churches as well. When we moved we never felt like we found a church home, we went to many different churches from Denominational to Pentecostal to Messianic we were all over the place. We liked it like that. After the twins were born though our life changed drastically and we ended up in seclusion for a long time. We tried to go to church on several occasions but it just didn’t work, especially since we never belonged to a church there. This would lead to the path of us going to a church here that caused so much confusion and pain.

I completely lost my identity after the kids were born, ministry had become who I was.

I really lost any sense of self trying to understand what was going on with Daniel and taking care of the babies by myself. David had to work and I had no family, no friends and no help. We lost touch with all of the connections we had before and I was starting to get very depressed. I loved being a mom but I was so tired, lonely, and would be locked up in the house all the time. Where we lived it was cold! I do not do well with cold and snow anyway but the last year we were there we had been trapped in our house several times because of blizzards. I couldn’t drive the car we had and the city we lived in kept me in constant anxiety. I had no contact with people for long periods of time. When we moved here I was desperate for any social contact.

Because of my vulnerable state, I didn’t use very good judgment.

I am naive and gullible about people’s motives anyway, but I have been especially that way in church because I thought that all Christians (actually most people) were good and nice and would never do anything mean. I still do, mostly. I felt like if there were problems than it had to be my fault. I have written about this church enough, basically I had my guard down, I was tired, lonely and desperate because of that I fell for some twisted thinking and wrong doctrine. David was trying to be as supportive as possible and had hoped that I would see for myself what was taking place.

They used scriptures to control and manipulate, not for what they are truly for.

It didn’t take long but it was long enough for me to experience spiritual abuse and to feel like I was loosing my mind. The good thing is I learned a lot, I have forgiveness and no bitterness any longer. I know that my priority in life now is to take care of my kids and just love people as best as I can. We have never been evangelists or  apologetists (I think I made that word up.) but we have always wanted to share the love of Christ and the acceptance that community is supposed to be about no matter where people are on their spiritual or non-spiritual journey. :- ) We see and experience God through the gifts and freedom to share them with others. The goodness that comes from serving one another without seeking something for ourselves, that brings us great joy. For us that is what Jesus reflects, love, acceptance and building up people to be who God intended them to be.

We do not feel obligated or guilted in sharing the message of Jesus, we just try to live it out.

(And now this movie is done, on to the next one. )

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After having two failed marriages, I had finally decided that relationships were not for me. I devoted my time to my new church. I felt like I was perfectly happy with just me, my cats and Jesus. My goal was to go into full-time ministry. I was drawn to people who were not the “usual” church goers. I went out on the streets and to bars praying and just hanging out with people. People would ask to buy me a drink and I would tell them I only drank water, an occasional diet coke if I really wanted to get loopy.   There was a group of us from church who would meet at a local bar and discuss current events. I liked to discuss spiritual matters, not convince people of things.

Alexa and Felix

The more I got involved in church leadership, the more I was convinced that I was destined to be single.

I was really settled on the matter, except I still felt this urge to pray for my future husband. There was the possibility of being reconciled with my ex, very slim but possible.  I did feel like someone was missing. I would feel led to pray and would even start out my prayer journals with “Lord I do not know why I am even praying about this but I feel like I should pray for my future husband.”  My life was full of work, leadership classes, serving, small group, small group training, prayer ministry, outreach, and my cats. I was pretty content mentally with my church life but my work life was sucking life right out of me. I think with all of the social situations between work and church it was just too much. But I would get energized by helping people. I got wired and excited from learning and training. I was exhausted and excited. I truly thought I could be a single woman pastor. Though my leaders said that it may be quite a challenge, they never hindered me.

By the time I was getting pretty settled with being alone and felt fully recovered from my failed marriages, David appeared.

The first time I saw him, I had no idea who he was but he was at his car, it was a cold winter night and I caught a glimpse of him out of  the corner of my eye. I could only see him from a distance and I felt like I was supposed to pray for him to go inside. Where? I had no idea just to go inside and so I prayed. I then went on my way to small group, within a few minutes there was a knock on the door and it was him. I didn’t like that at all, what was that all about? He was new to the group and I was not expecting anyone new. One of the girls invited him and everyone was interested in what he had to say. I didn’t have a bad feeling about him I was just confused by the whole thing and thrown because he was new. As he talked he shared about being in graduate school and how he was going to work in The Netherlands after his dissertation and I don’t know it all went “wah wah wah wah wah” in my head because I felt like I was supposed to ask him “Is that the plan God has for you?”.

There was no way I was going to ask this stranger a question like that.

Instead I rudely blurted out “What brought you to this church anyway?” Everyone looked at me funny and he just stared for a moment and then said “Well, I felt like I was supposed to go there and just wait.” He shared his story which was scarily similar to mine. By this time I was confused by him and he thought I was too aggressive I guess is a good word, he didn’t know what to think of me. But he has referred to me as “the interrogator” and tells people how I interrogated him the first night I met him. The next week the group was supposed to meet at my apartment, he called to tell me that he was going out-of-town and wouldn’t make it. We were having a good conversation and I realized that I was still talking to him, then abruptly said “Ok, I have to go, hope you have a good trip.” and I got off the phone.

While he was away I felt that I was supposed to pray for him several times.

He was visiting his mom and he had been around several different Christian places and people. It was more of a charismatic kind of feel and he was what is called “prophesied over“. One of the men prophesied about his wife to be. He gave some pretty detailed information and then later said “I think you know her already”. David didn’t have a clue to what he was talking about, I didn’t even cross his mind. When he came back I felt like I was supposed to talk to him, so after service one evening I went over, very reluctantly to talk to him. He ended up asking me to go for coffee and I said yes because I knew that I was supposed to ask him the original question that I DID NOT want to ask. I didn’t think it was a date or anything and either did he, but it was funny that I got a water instead of coffee. I had to work the next morning so I couldn’t have coffee, I confused him.

Finally, we were talking and I knew that first I had to tell him that I was still married so he would not get the wrong impression.

I told him and he was confused. I had been separated for over a year but I still did not feel like I was supposed to date anyone, until the divorce was final. If I was to date at all. I never really “dated” anyway, I found someone and stuck with them. During the year of my separation, my ex had said that he was filing for divorce, then he dragged it on and messed with me, then he had no contact with me for several months. I didn’t pursue anything because I had no desire to, it didn’t matter. Anyway David was understanding and said  he didn’t know what to think so we could just be friends and see what this is all about. I finally blurted out the question “So is it God’s plan for you to go to The Netherlands?”. He facepalmed and said “I don’t know.” Apparently he had been contemplating a lot the last few months before I met him.

We continued to be friends and hang out.

Neither of us knew what “we” were all about but we just felt right together. I prayed for God to do something if David and I were truly  meant to be together. I was seriously going to stop seeing him, even as friends. After several months of no contact with my ex, he left me a message on my phone and said “Yeah, it’s been long enough let’s get this taken care of, what do we need to do?” By the end of the next week we were divorced. David and I felt like we were supposed to be together. We discovered that we only lived three minutes away from each, in the same apartment complex. We would both stare up at the sky at night talking to God and asking about the phantom space in our heart that we wanted to go away. (Not even knowing that we were right around the corner from each other.) If we were not meant to be with anyone then please take it away, was our prayer.

David finally had to make a decision about The Netherlands.

I would have gone with him but he did not feel like that was what he was supposed to do. He gave up a pretty incredible research position with a top scientist in The Netherlands. Both of us have had our moments of questioning whether or not that was the right thing to do. We always conclude that it was for him. We felt led to pack up our stuff and move to another state to start a coffee shop ministry. With in a few months we packed up, moved out across country and were married. It started us on a journey that has been exciting, scary, challenging, complete bliss, joyful, and full of all kinds of adventures ever since. We are always growing and ever learning from each other and about each other.

We really enjoy the fact that we are together all the time but we also have our own space.

There was a lot that we dealt with in the beginning of our marriage but we have always laughed. We make each other laugh and we are just plain silly a lot of the times which saves us from taking ourselves seriously. For me the biggest thing is that I genuinely enjoy David’s company. There are very rare moments when I just want to be left alone now and that says a lot for him. In past relationships I just would get to a point of wanting them to go away. The way they would eat, talk, smell, act whatever would just make me so upset but I have not had that with David. We have been honest with each other from the beginning. David is David and if there is one thing I can say about him it is that he will be brutally honest with you. You never have to question his integrity. Those are some pretty important factors to me in a relationship. We were also both in a place in our lives where we didn’t place priority on a relationship. David is divorced too and we both were not wanting to go through a bad relationship again.

I am very thankful that we found each other and I do thank God for orchestrating the events.

Next I will be writing about our ministry life the good, the not so good, but mainly the good! (I have all of these posts in chronological order in my head and I have to write them because it is like a movie playing over and over that I need to get out.)

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