A strange feeling...

[jay]

A sweetie of mine today sent me an email. "...since you don't like to ask for help, I thought I'd ask for some as a way to generate ideas."

And she posted a question. And received a warm and supportive response, from her friends, who naturally assumed that it was something of concern to her. And there were, in fact, some useful ideas there for me.

It's a strange feeling watching the difference in responses over there, though, compared to the kinds of responses, or lack thereof, over here when I ask for advice. I can't help but wonder how it would have been different if I'd directly posted exactly the same question in my own journal. Some people would not have replied, certainly. Others I feel would have been less likely to offer their comments or help. And there's a nagging feeling that I would have been somehow "made to be wrong" or criticized if I'd opened myself up in exactly the same way.

Still, this was a loving and supportive act on my sweetie's part, even if I feel a bit sheepish... would these people have been as helpful if they'd known?

Comments

[brian1789.livejournal.com]

You're welcome to go on as long as you like, and in any case it's interesting. As well as gives more details about who you are, what makes you happy, and your coping strategies... that's all useful. Thanks for sharing.

And I know enough to agree fervently that more information is good. Imagined problems are most often worse than the real ones. Although I understand stumbling sometimes while trying to help others, hopefully your situation will improve soon. And if all else fails, I'm happy to help support the logistics.

It strikes me that I don't have much of a sense that I can defend myself, physically -- I was beaten-up frequently in school, a target for abuse. Sometimes it feels like I have to bristle a bit more than is necessary, to scare away would-be predators because I feel helpless in an actual fight.

[compilerbitch.livejournal.com]

I was also very badly bullied at school -- I know exactly what it's like, and I wasn't able to defend myself either.

I have found that learning a martial art has helped me enormously. It works on several levels -- you get used to being kicked, punched and thrown on the floor, and you build up techniques for dealing with that whilst minimizing damage to yourself. You also learn, to put it bluntly, how to hurt people if you have to. It's not nice to think about that, for me -- I am very aware that the techniques I'm learning in ninjutsu are actually really devastating. We basically do everything for-real, working usually in pairs, taking it in turns to attack and defend. I've actually found that ninjutsu works very well for me personally -- it's taught in a very supportive environment, and is *absolutely not* a competitive sport -- it's a true combat martial art with hundreds of years of history. You don't have to be big or strong or particularly fast -- one of our green belts is a tiny Chinese-American woman, who is really brilliant at it. The grand master in Japan is 77 years old and can still totally chuck 15th Dan black belts around like it's nothing.

To start with, I got triggered by the violence quite a bit, but over time it got to the point where it's just basically fun to learn and to practice. Yes, you get a bit bashed about sometimes, but I think that's important because it's worn away my immediate fear/curl up into a ball response. It's also helped a lot with the PTSD flashbacks I had from being attacked by two men on a train in the UK in 1997 -- now, if I get a flashback (it's been quite a while, now), I just basically subvert the script and work through in my head what I would have done knowing what I know now.

It's also been very good for my fitness, and I've lost about 30 pounds in the 6 months or so I've been doing it, so there are definite knock-on benefits.

I'm interested to see how it compares with Impact. Of course, Impact is a far shorter course -- ninjutsu takes years to study, but you nevertheless get taught all the nastiest moves first, so it's useful more or less straight away. If you want to try it, I'm happy to take you along to an intro session.

Had you thought about taking the men's Impact course, by the way?

[brian1789.livejournal.com]

Had thought about it, but the last one was offered while I was up in the Arctic with dangerpudding last summer... they're infrequent.

Getting past PTSD flashbacks... I have a few of those, unfortunately.