Toxic Survival Syndrome

I've written before about my black dog moments. It took reading a post about the fear of failure for me to clarify what is my biggest issue in moving forward towards what I really want from life.

Toxic Survival Syndrome.

I've no idea if that's a real thing, but it certainly sums up what I need to overcome on a daily basis, just to get through every single day.

My basic personality is one of those "take charge and make it happen" types. It can best be summed up by the Belbin Shaper team role:

Shapers are people who challenge the team to improve. They are dynamic and usually extroverted people who enjoy stimulating others, questioning norms, and finding the best approaches for solving problems. The Shaper is the one who shakes things up to make sure that all possibilities are considered and that the team does not become complacent.

Shapers often see obstacles as exciting challenges and they tend to have the courage to push on when others feel like quitting.

Their potential weaknesses may be that they're argumentative, and that they may offend people's feelings.

Now, other than the "usually extroverted" element - I'm an ambivert - that's pretty close to my childhood behaviour. Like other "argumentative" types, I tend to stand my ground when it matters, although as I got older, I learnt to back off appropriately at times. I've always done my best, within certain parameters, to not offend others. I've been offended, bullied and discriminated against too often to want to do that to others.

There's a problem though - I am at my best when I can feel sufficiently secure and in control of my life. When that doesn't happen, the adrenaline response kicks in and I gallop towards my Toxic Survival mode.

Due to a really bad life choice in my late twenties, I spent 3 years in a relationship ripe with domestic abuse. No control over my life, my finances, my personal appearance, my parenting. No friends. No security, at home or at work. No support from my family. No hope.

I followed the typical pattern in these cases, leaving and returning several times until I finally realised that either I left, or I died. So I left.

The psychological legacy is something I continue to struggle with. Essentially, PTSD symptoms; I have an exaggerated startle reflex over 20 years after the relationship ended, events can still easily trigger the full gamut of insomnia, poor short-term memory, impaired ability to concentrate, panic attacks (something I've worked really hard to overcome), ongoing anxiety and a return to a hypersensitive and hypervigilant state. Needless to say, the low self-esteem, lack of self-confidence, and tendency to avoid potentially threatening human contact is bubbling along under the surface just waiting for a chance to take over.

Bonfire night is not a good night for me. I don't watch gratuitously violent films, either. Zombie movies are avoided completely.

In the early years after that relationship ended, I survived one day at a time. I repeated the mantra "I'm not a victim, I'm a survivor" until it became part of my psychological armour. I buried myself in motherhood and work. I didn't have much time for a social life, and to be honest, I felt safer without one. I work in a male-dominated environment; it's exhausting trying to keep hypervigilance under control when everybody you meet, male or female, poses a potential threat to your wellbeing, but I feel safer around geeks.

There is still one key behaviour I need to overcome,

I find 'phone calls so threatening, just hearing a phone ring sets my adrenaline response off.

Phones are inextricably linked with physical and emotional pain, fear, panic, betrayal and heartbreak. Whilst I can now face down a violent man with equanimity, I can't cope with a phone call. It's almost impossible to pick up a handset to make calls, let alone deal with receiving them.

That's toxic. And it's stopping me from reclaiming my baseline personality.

So, in an attempt to channel my "take charge" personality, I'm setting myself a target of making one call per day for the next 60 days. Time to dial back on Toxic Survival.

Out from Under

(c) Microsoft

2013 was the Year of the Snake. For me and mine, it was more the Year of the Emotional Rollercoaster.

I was dragged back into the world of 9 to 5 at the end of 2012, which in my career is more like the world of 7 to midnight. In the first 12 months, I had barely enough time outside work to take care of my mum's trips to hospital and my family.

My mum's health still seesaws between OK and the threat of emergency dialysis - her latest diagnosis is that she has diabetes, to add to the kidney failure, renal cardiovascular disease, etc. We're convinced we could use her as a maraca in a mariachi band. We still soldier on, one day at a time; I'm in awe of her resilience.

The household went from a family unit of 3 to a family unit of 5 adults, which is seriously overcrowded in a small 3 bedroomed semi. Mind you, I was delighted to have both elder lads back, although I'm now looking for an elastic walled house.... or a Tardis....

But the ultimate low was the loss of my partner's beloved daughter; we are still mourning and her father will never be the same again.

It goes without saying that there's been a lack of time and energy to spend on my Kleeneze business.

Until now.

I'm back - we're on track for making the 10% bonus this month, the first month of rebuilding my business.

I promised myself I wouldn't blog until that happened. Next stop, building a team, starting with 10 active distributors.

If anybody fancies an all-expenses paid holiday this autumn, get in touch. I intend to be on it and I want as many of my team to be on it as possible.

OK, I Can Take A Hint!

Sometimes I need to get kicked in the ankles before I do, though...



My day job has been so intensely busy since June that I've let my future slide. I got caught up in the professional pride of exercising a set of skills that very few people in my company have, buoyed by the acknowledgement of my peers at an IT conference.

Well, pride goes before a fall.

Today, I endured the humiliation of sending an apologetic email to the entire team after the team manager told me to do so. The reason? Because a team member who should have known better chose to take some general advice as a set of explicit instructions, and did something he shouldn't have done. Not only that, but his defence was "I was only doing what Anna told me to do". The fact that I hadn't told him to do it, that he was endangering the stability of mission critical systems and that he wouldn't listen to my concerns, led me to raise my voice in public.

Now, I'm not excusing myself here. I know better than to shout at another person; I should have taken the conversation into a separate meeting room. I didn't because this issue was sprung on me. Not good enough. The team manager was right to criticise my conduct.

Unfortunately, I left the meeting with the team manager knowing that, yet again, my concerns were being ignored. I was threatened with a negative performance review and a block on my applying for other roles if I did not send an apologetic email to the entire team. The fact that I'd already apologised in public to the team member was deemed inadequate.

To say I'm heartbroken is not overstating the case. I'm good at my job; I take pride in my skills and have confidence in my technical abilities that is completely lacking in almost every other area of my life. I feel like I've been staked out in front of a firing squad who have the ability to take potshots at me whenever they feel like it.

I get the sneaky feeling I've added another 50 points to an already dangerous life stress score.

But there's another view I can take on this whole mess.

I originally started my Kleeneze business due to issues with my day job. Since then, I'd forgotten how bad I'd felt about getting passed over for promotion when I knew I had the ability to do an excellent job in the new role. I'd forgotten how much I hated the office politics that sprang up every few weeks whenever certain people saw me as a convenient springboard for their ambition. I'd forgotten the sinking feeling I experienced as I realised that being myself was not good enough; that I was expected to behave like a demure little doll instead of a vibrant, passionate woman.

I can't be something I'm not. I've tried, professionally and personally for over 30 years and all I've got out of it is two divorces, an abusive relationship and day jobs where I'm treated as a doormat when I'm not being vilified for not being girly.

I want a life where I succeed on my own terms, where I am responsible for who and what I am and where I am able to look other people in the eye and say, passionately, I am proud to be me.

Today, the universe gave me a reminder that I'm not there yet. But I will be. Watch me soar.

I Should Be Dead!

Or insane. Or both.

© Lyn Baxter

Since the beginning of July, I've had the following life events to deal with:

• Partner's career change (he's going to university for a year)
• Partner's lack of funding (I need to support him to the tune of an extra £10k)
• Partner's 3 months of indecision re pursuing his master's degree due to his lack of funding
• Partner's daughter and grandson moving back in with dad
• Partner moving half his furniture into my house, due to daughter not liking it
• Partner stressing over daughter moving back in, and there being nowhere in my house for his furniture
• Daughter's split with her partner, who is my granddaughter's dad
• Daughter's house move (mainly performed by me and partner)
• Daughter's ex-partner's house move (95% performed by me and partner)
• Eldest son's change of address (wholly performed by me and partner); it took us 8 weeks!
• Youngest son's psychological reaction to being the only offspring left at home
• Redecorating larger bedroom (including new carpet, new bed, new desk etc.) for youngest son, funded by partner before he realised how limited his financial reserves were
• Needing to pay back best part of £750 to my partner
• Moving some furniture into smaller bedroom, soon to be part office
• Middle son's ongoing battle to show loyalty to his dad, which has led to some seriously hurtful texts, facebook messages and a general air of distrust on his part
• A holiday with partner and my youngest and middle sons (!)
• Mother's ill-health - ulcers
• Mother's ill-health - thrombosis
• Mother's ongoing ill-health, which was a background issue before the extra problems, including heart failure, scarred kidneys, etc.
• Mother got burgled
• Partner's best friend died aged 54 (same age as partner)
• Partner's other best friend dealt with his grief by being so horrible, partner has now refused to have any more to do with the guy, so partner now mourning loss of two friends rather than one
• My day job work responsibilities changing
• My day job's team responsibilities changing
• New day job boss
• New team member, sitting next to me, who twitches whenever he's worried and knuckle-cracks whenever he decides to do some work. He's worried about 95% of the working day, including when he decides to start something new.
• Reshuffle of desks around the office, to suit the new boss's idea of how the team should be structured
• Notification of new team job (tailor-made for me) which I would have to interview for, which has spun off some good quality office politics amongst others who want their preferred candidate to be selected
• Car shunted by woman director in company BMW who refused to provide insurance details
• Car written off
• New car immediately developed the ability to stop the engine whilst driving along in third gear.
• Laptop - with all of my Kleeneze routes on it - spontaneously combusted the day my written off car was due to be collected.
• Had to buy new laptop and am still catching up with recreating my lists a week later.

According to the Holmes & Rahe Life Stress Test, I ought to be extremely ill by now - and the test hasn't kept up with today's stresses - half my stress triggers aren't even on the list. I've had to "best guess" what certain triggers would cost. My stress count for 2010 was around 850, where 300+ is bad news. My stress count in the past 3 months is 437! My partner's reaction when I told him was to point out that he'd got worse stress than me! I'll give you three guesses how that improved my stress levels...

Needless to say, I've had to focus on all of the above instead of building my Kleeneze business. So much so, that I'm effectively starting again from scratch.

I don't see that as a problem. It gives me  a chance to plan properly for the rest of this week, to better make use of the limited time available to me right now whilst making sure I have a decent plan to maximise income.

Any suggestions on how I can do better? Comments are always welcome. I'm just glad to be back!