The Twins, Part 1 – Procrastination

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Anna Waldherr, anxiety, approval, avoicereclaimed, chaos, clutter, comfort, grief, loss, love, making sense of, procratination, self-sabotage, survival

Once again Anna, you have given us a clear, compassionate and sensitive view on the ways in which abuse affects the lives of survivors. I don’t personally believe that procrastination affects only those of us who have been abused because it is something that can be present in the lives of everyone to some extent. But here we are talking about how chaos affects those of us who have experienced severe and traumatic abuse and how procrastination manifests itself in a way that makes a survivor’s life even more difficult than it already is.
As Anna Waldherr says: “In the aftermath of emotional abuse, victims may try desperately to be perfect — at home, at school, at work — in the hope of winning the approval denied us as children. Of course, we should not have to “win” love at all. It should be freely given, certainly to children. As for procrastination, the longer we put off a task, the greater the likelihood we will fail to complete it “perfectly”, perhaps fail to complete it at all”.

ANNA WALDHERR A Voice Reclaimed, Surviving Child Abuse

Entwined Geminis, Safavid Dynasty, Persia (c. 1635), Author Unknown, Source pinterest.com (PD)

This post was written in collaboration with Marie Williams whose remarks are highlighted.  Marie blogs at Come Fly with Me, https://mariewilliams53.wordpress.com.

“Most of my life has been spent circling or avoiding important things that I need to do and I get very frustrated with myself.  Sometimes, I find myself trying to locate passports or important papers at the 11^th hour, when I’ve had ample time to deal with matters like this.”

-Marie Williams

Procrastination and perfectionism are patterns of behavior well familiar to abuse victims, twin destructive forces that have deep meaning for those who have suffered abuse.

We invest the necessary (the “shoulds” and “musts” of life) with the power to annihilate us, or at least demolish the fragile image we have of ourselves.  Then we defer, delay, and defer again – certain that we will…

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Ask and you will receive.

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asking, finding, grudges, ignorance, letting go, loss, moral, pettiness, receiving, trivialities, true story

Ask and you will receive

This is just a true story about two people and how we let trivial matters impact our lives, so we miss out on really good things.

Someone (I will call her Jenny)told me about an incident at her place of work and when I thought about the story, I felt I wanted to share it because there was an important lesson here.

Jenny and person (b) whom I shall call Susie were at work and apparently they had some sort of disagreement. It was over something petty: about how many nappies one person had changed for the day, compared to the other person. It wasn’t life-threatening. It wasn’t a betrayal. It was simply one person feeling agrieved over how much work she thought she was doing, compared to another. Jenny thought they had aired their grievances and the matter was done and dusted. She was surprised the next day, when she said “good morning” to Susie and Susie pretended she didn’t hear and ignored her.

Later that day, Susie lost her favourite pen and was searching high and low for it. When she couldn’t locate it, she enlisted the help of some of her other colleagues. She asked everyone in the office, bar Jenny because of course, she wasn’t talking to Jenny because of the incident the previous day.

Nobody had seen Susie’s precious pen apart from Jenny who could see that the pen had rolled under a desk in front of where she was sitting. Susie continued to search and was plainly distressed about her loss, but refused to ask Jenny if she had seen it. So Jenny kept quiet and didn’t tell her where the pen was.

I think this is really sad. Had Susie let yesterday’s altercation go, she would have lost her pen, but it wouldn’t have been lost for long. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you the moral of this story, but doesn’t it echo (quite loudly!) how we should put things into perspective?

Nothing is ever truly lost if you ask for help in the right places!

~ MEW

Purple Tree

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awareness, beauty, compassion, creativity, flowers, harmony, healing, inspire, loss, purple flowers, sadness, tranquility

Pain and loss are an inevitable part of life. Sometimes when we are grieving for the loss of what we see as a valuable part of our lives, we are blinded to the beauty that is the backdrop to circumstances beyond our control. My friend has a tree in her garden which delivers the most beautiful purple flowers in the spring/summer time. These flowers are mesmerising whilst proudly displaying themselves on their branches. You cannot fail to be struck by their beauty. One year, we had a particularly gusty month of May and sadly, the next morning after a very windy night, purple petals lay strewn all around on a carpet of green. I was touched by the loss of the leaves so soon, but could not fail to see the beauty of the pattern the petals had formed on the grass. This led to me see that there is beauty in every situation if we look for it.

Purple Tree

I hope our purple tree
wasn’t too traumatised
by the actions of the Mighty Wind
and the Goddess of the Trees!
A carpet of purple petals sounds very alluring,
and I hope our purple tree recognised
that sometimes losing
its petals maybe painful,
But it can be beautiful
to the beholder’s eye.

~MEW