Crucianize

Tag: selective mutism

  • The Selective Mutism Resource Manuel: 2nd Edition and my Thoughts

    So, a couple of days ago I started reading this book because it was suggested in one of my Selective Mutism groups. It’s mostly aimed at parents but I feel like adults who suffer from SM can find it useful as well.

    https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33127004-the-selective-mutism-resource-manual

    I’m not finished reading it yet but I feel like it’s important to write my thoughts on this book as I read. My first impression is “Wow, someone who actually gets it!”, I would be lying if I said I didn’t get emotional reading this. Most people do NOT get Selective Mutism and hearing the name of the condition Selective gets it in their head that I choose to not talk. It was difficult as a child but I’m finding it even harder now as an adult especially living in a new country. There is something I want to talk about right now and I feel like I’ve processed it enough to actually make the appropriate connections in my life and how my SM developed.

    It is “The trigger”, every child’s SM has a trigger or triggers, most people can’t remember the trigger or triggers because it might be something very routine like family visiting who doesn’t usually come over and pressuring the child to talk to them. For years I have never thought about my triggers because frankly, I didn’t remember. Actually sitting and thinking about my childhood there are three events that are possible triggers.

    1. Left at Relative’s House 1988
    2. Hurricane Hugo 1989
    3. Left Behind in Shopping Center 1990
    4. The Boiling Point- Starting School in 1991

    Left at Relative’s House

    I don’t remember this but I’ve heard enough about it to realize that it was very traumatizing. My family went to the US and I was left at an Aunt’s house, an Aunt I didn’t know and this was the first time I had ever been separated from my family. I’m told I cried until my parents came back. This would have probably been the first trigger. I was only 1 year and some months, my mother doesn’t remember how old I was just that my younger brother born in May 1989 wasn’t around yet.

    Hurricane Hugo

    I also don’t remember this event because I was very young but I heard how stressed and anxious everyone else was, I’ve been through my fair share of Hurricanes and a Category 5 would have been very terrifying for a young child, and add in the fact that I’m very sensitive to other’s emotions I would have no doubt been a wreck. I consider this my second trigger. The after-effects were felt for a long time after. I have memories of going to visit our house and it was still without a roof and the grass was very high.

    Left Behind in Shopping Center

    I shouldn’t have any memories of this but I do have some flashes, I can’t remember most of it but I have memories my parents would not have knowledge of, my parents, my baby brother, and I was were in the Shopping Center and I remember we were walking back to the car. My father was holding my hand while my mother held the baby. When we reached the car my father let go of my hand, he had a gold-colored Corolla and the seats have to go forward so anyone could get into the back and he just goes into the car and sent me around to my mother’s side but she was dealing with the baby and sent me back to my father’s side. He is very easily frustrated and he told me to go back around the car. Here is where it gets fuzzy. I don’t know what happened but I heard from my mother that witnesses said I was holding onto my father’s door handle trying to open it as he was driving away and that I fell in the street almost being hit by a truck that was driving behind. One of our neighbors saw the whole thing and ran and picked me up from the middle of the street.

    I honestly don’t remember his face or being pickled up but I remember walking in the stores with him asking me if I want some candy or a doll. I wasn’t crying I think I was in shock. My parents had left me. I probably didn’t think they were coming back for me.

    My mother said they were nearly home when she realized how quiet the car was and when she looked back I wasn’t in the back seat. I can only imagine the anxiety she experienced because the thought of not finding any of my children in the car is one that frequently gives me anxiety. She asked my father where I was and he in his customary gruff voice answered “What do you mean where is Lynnette? She’s in the back.” My mother no doubt screamed back “No, she’s not!” My mother always gets emotional telling me how scared she was and praying that they would not find an ambulance when they returned to the Shopping center. The sense of relief she felt when she found me standing next to the neighbor must have been immense. I consider this my third trigger.

    The Boiling Point – Starting School

    I was four when I started school, not that young considering both my older sisters had also started at four, but I was the only one who couldn’t talk, I wanted to go to school though. I wanted to go with my sisters but this place was not what I was expecting. Here is where my SM came out in full display and where I should have gotten help but Mental health was nonexistent on my Island. This is where I always looked to when thinking of my life with SM, I always maintained that I had no trauma, no abuse in my life to trigger SM but from 1988 right up to 1991 were not good years for me.

    I don’t really know what knowing my triggers accomplishes for me, I guess it allows me to fully understand the source of my anxiety, I knew some of my abandonment issues came about because of being left in the shopping center but I never took into consideration that it was there before that incident.

    I wonder what else I might ruminate over when reading this book?

  • Mute Again: A Poem

    It’s been a good writing day, I believe I’ve spoken about my Wattpad account before where I have three published works, one super short story Vishal and two poetry-based works Tales of An Introverted Expat and The Silence Inside Me.

    I updated the cover of The Silence Inside Me and added a new poem.

    Cover art by Melanie Wasser on Unsplash

    The title of the poem is Mute Again and I’ll share it here with you.

    Mute Again

    I was doing good, I was talking to the world, my words were finally being heard and I could express my every thought, and then…

    Then I moved.

    To another country where they didn’t speak my language and I didn’t speak theirs.

    I was back at square one.

    I studied every day, I watched all the movies, all the videos, I listened to music, I read so many stories.

    And yet…

    Here I am.

    Mute again.

    Another group of people who don’t understand.
    Another group of people who label me, unfriendly, snobby, shy.

    I want to scream, I’m not shy, I’m not unfriendly, I’m not a snob.

    But once again.

    My words fail me, they stay lodged in the back of my throat, they abandon me when I need them the most.

    I just want to be free.

    Free to speak, free to show my emotions, free to be me.

    But here I am again.

    Locked in my own mind.

    Here I am looking for those who know, those who understand, those who feel as I do, those silent people with so much to say.

    My people.

    Hope you enjoyed it and if you’re interested in reading more you can visit my profile LLDove.

  • The Fathers in my Life

    Today is Father’s Day, a day I usually don’t care for because of my own weird relationship with my father, so, today I’m going to talk about the many father figures I’ve had in my life and how they lead me to the father in my children’s lives.

    My Father

    Me and my father 1987-1988

    My father is not an easy man to understand, some days you wonder if he even cares, I’ve spoken a bit about this in The Useless Sibling and the truth is it was so much worse, the other day someone asked me what was the best feature of my father that I looked for in a man and I just couldn’t think of one. Almost everything I thought of was something I didn’t want. I didn’t want to be treated as a mistake in my partner’s life and I sure as hell didn’t want him to view or children as playthings for his public persona. That saying that a father is a girl’s, first love? Not even close to being true for me.

    Two of my most vivid memories are of my parents fighting, one where my mother was going to leave the house and had her keys in her hand and my father grabbed her arm and was pulling it like he was going to break it, I jumped on his back and started pummeling him while I yelled for my brothers, my oldest brother came with a broomstick and my father finally let go of our mother. The second incident I don’t remember as well but I remember my mother bitting into his arm and he was hitting her in the head trying to get her loose.

    These were just two extremes but they fully cemented in my head that I didn’t want a relationship like this. I didn’t want a man like this, I wasn’t even sure I ever wanted to get married, all the marriages in my life save one was toxic, cheating, children on the outside, fighting, just a lot of toxicity.

    Uncle Luis

    Now I’ll talk about that one good marriage in my life, one of my mother’s sisters, Aunty Cathy, married my Uncle Luis, from the very first time I remember meeting him he has always been very nice to me. With my Selective Mutism, I didn’t speak to him, I remember feeling very shy around him for a long time but that didn’t change how he treated me, he would talk to me, show interest in my drawings, try my failed attempts at sodas haha, he did everything my father didn’t. My uncle out of everyone in my life is who I based the ideal mate on. My aunt and uncle lived with us for a while and those were good days, I felt heard and seen, I had a good male figure in my life and he treated my aunt really well.

    The day they moved out was one of the saddest in my life, it meant I would go back to being ignored or yelled at for just existing. Even though he no longer lived with us I never forgot the way my uncle treated me, I would look forward to their visits every time.

    My Husband

    Before I met my husband I wasn’t sure I wanted to get married or have children, I was pretty content in the fact that I would be single Aunty Lynnette, the cool and strict aunt. For whatever reason, my cousins believed I was a traveling girl? Meaning that I had many boyfriends and several sexual encounters. That couldn’t be farther from the truth, I didn’t do much as kiss a guy until my husband.

    I mean sure I had lots of male friends but they were just friends, I also didn’t meet any of them in real life, my mother says I’m pretty unobservant because a lot of them were flirting with me but I never noticed it? I like my friends, they’re good men but not for me, they weren’t like my uncle none of the guys I met were like my uncle so definitely not someone I would be interested in forming a permanent bond with.

    I spoke a bit about how I ended up with my husband in My Truths. Before we even had children I saw how he was with his niece and how he was with my nieces, it reminded me so much of my beloved uncle and they were both tall and wore glasses, if this wasn’t the universe talking to me I don’t know what it was.

    Marvin and Chacha

    One of my nieces was so taken with Marvin that she started calling him Daddy, I routinely call her his first child haha, I have to say that even though I was determined to find a man nothing like my father, Marvin and my father shared several similar tastes and qualities. I somehow found a man that was a balance between my father and my uncle.

    The most notable quality between my father and Marvin? Determination. I swear I’ve never seen two people who would never give up until they have accomplished what they set out to do.

  • My Truths: Learning To Accept My Asexuality

    This is going to be a heavy piece, it will involve speech about molestation, if that’s one of your triggers I’d suggest skipping this post, with that said I’m going to talk about something that I’ve talked a little about before but never in my blog. I want to change that, I want to speak my truth so others can understand certain aspects of my life and how I’ve processed it.

    So, here we go…

    This is a memory that is clear as day in my head even though it happened over twenty years ago.

    Imagine if you will, this thin, small child, five almost six years old, quiet, she doesn’t say a thing. Expressionless the whole day. This vulnerable innocent child was me.

    It was a new school, new people, new everything, I was in first grade and still mute even though they said children are only shy at first. The class was about twenty students maybe more maybe less, the size didn’t important, the children aren’t either, except for two. A boy and a girl.

    I had no interactions with these two, never sat near them, never played with them, but these two affected me in a way nothing else has ever done.

    It was not a normal day, we were not in class, no, we were in the school’s cafeteria. There was an event going on but I can’t remember what it was about, doesn’t matter, I was sitting at a table far away from everyone except for the boy E and the girl K. I can’t remember the names of the other students but I remember these two, I don’t know how I feel about their names, a curious thing, I don’t hate it but I won’t speak it. Ever.

    I don’t know why but K decided to notice me that day, maybe it’s because we were so far apart from everyone else but she was sitting right next to me.

    It’s going to get a bit graphic and I apologize but she stuck her hand under my skirt and fondled me, she pulled her hand out and said: “smell yourself”. I had never had the inappropriate touch talk, no, that came later, so, as you can no don’t tell I was confused and didn’t know what to do. The boy E never touched me but he did not tell her to stop either, instead what he did was laugh and I didn’t understand that either.

    I never told anyone about what happened, not my best friend, not my parents, I think I wanted to forget it ever happened. I buried it so far that I just never thought about it. That is until I was in my early 20s. I was talking to someone about rape and molestation and it was like opening a door. I remembered everything all at once.

    It explained why I had an aversion to being friends with girls, why I never felt comfortable around them, why I felt different from my peers.

    I talked about being The Useless Sibling but now I knew why. I up to this day have trouble accepting hugs and being touched, I still feel a little uncomfortable around women and I honestly don’t feel attraction. I honestly thought I was asexual because I’ve had people I thought were attractive I’ve never envisioned anything other than being friends, I had one or two I’ve called boyfriend but in truth, it was just in name. I have never wanted to be physical with any of them.

    The day I met my husband was like being awakened, it’s corny as hell but I often wondered what it would feel like just to be held. We lived in different countries then so there was no way to find out. The day he asked to visit, I swear I almost fainted, I asked my parents and they were fine. Yes, I still lived at home so when my husband came to visit he met all my family at once.

    That first day was full of nerves, this guy I’d spent two years chatting to was finally here, the first time in my life I felt like a woman and I wanted to explore.

    Demisexual, you don’t feel attraction until you’ve formed a deep connection, I now had an answer for my lack of interest in guys other than being friends.

    On the subject of friends, although I’m still a little uncomfortable, I now have a few women I call friends.

    I won’t allow a girl who was most probably being molested herself to dictate who I can and can’t be friends with.

    Oh, if you’re not following the Facebook page be sure to click the link button below, I had mentioned that I would do a special post for Father’s day so be on the lookout for that.

    Crucianize Facebook

  • The Useless Sibling

    The Useless Sibling

    Hey guys,

    Today I want to talk about something that has always bothered me.

    Ever since I was very young I’ve always viewed myself as the useless sibling. I have two older sisters who were obviously intelligent, they got good grades they were Salutatorian and Valedictorian of their classes, I also have three younger brothers who are also obviously intelligent, graduating with High honors, internship, also Sal/Val of their class, and then there’s me.

    Quiet, can’t speak in school, trouble with bullies, terrible grades, held back twice, nothing really special. I didn’t graduate with honors and I didn’t go to college, I am the useless child. Every parent must have a dud and I always knew it was me.

    When I was younger you could go to Wendy’s for a free meal with your report card and for whatever reason my father always brought me along to see my siblings get their free meals and he would buy nothing for me. I’d sit there and watch them eat and feel out of place.

    He’d also do this with toys, I got nothing while they got something new to play with. I never really blamed my siblings, I blamed myself for being too dumb to understand the work, too dumb to be able to speak.

    My mother probably didn’t know about this and I know if she did she would have bought me something even if it was something small and tiny. She never let me feel useless until that one year she said to me “if you get good grades, I’ll buy you that doll you wanted”, I worked my ass off and I didn’t get that doll, sold out is what she told me.

    I think that was the same year my youngest brother was born and my grandmother, my mother’s mother passed away. I remember not feeling anything really, I didn’t cry, I didn’t understand why others were crying but when I saw my mother break down I felt it, I cried because my mother was crying. I loved my grandmother and I have very fond memories of her but I just don’t feel emotions like other people.

    That was also the very first year I was held back, I stopped trying, I stopped caring, my first experience with depression but nobody noticed. They said I was being difficult and willful. Nobody saw me.

    I used to have a very best friend that I’d eat with hanging out every chance I got and the very next year we stopped hanging out and I’d sit by myself on the stairs in front of my classroom. I didn’t have any friends, I didn’t eat lunch, my thought was not the best and I didn’t know how to change them.

    It’s not to say some of my classmates didn’t try, they did, they invited me to sit with them under a mango tree, they’d share a little of their lunches with me and talk around me. Never to me because everyone knew I didn’t talk. I barely even smiled or showed any emotions.

    For my entire young life, I felt out of place like I couldn’t understand my peers, they were all speaking a language I just didn’t know. I tried to emulate them, I tried to have crushes like the other girls and copy their mannerisms and what I thought their thought patterns might be but it was like playing a part I had no business trying out for.

    In Jr. High my second year of 7th grade after being held back yet again I encountered a teacher that challenged me. According to one of my older sisters, she was in the woman’s class all of one day but this woman would constantly call me by my sister’s name and it chafed because I had my own name. This woman would also make fun of students who did poorly and I was not going to let her make fun of me, she was going to know my name. Mine, not my sister’s but mine.

    I got into honors that year, I spoke for the first time that year, my grandfather, my father’s father passed away that year. My mother was pregnant with my baby sister that year, 9/11 happened that year and my mother lost my baby sister that year.

    It was a catalyst for me and I let everything push me into doing everything I could to get out of school.

    It didn’t matter. My father still didn’t acknowledge what I had accomplished, I was still the child that couldn’t speak and couldn’t make it in the real world because I was filled with so much anxiety I couldn’t do half the things my siblings could.

    It’s amazing how much your parents can hurt you without knowing they did or maybe he knew exactly where to inflict the worst pain.

    He’s such a confusing person, he says these cruel things but then he took me out for my birthday just me and him and he bought me a birthday gift that I never thought he would. We’d go out to the movies together and we argued yes but it seemed like only the two of us did these things. My father was like me.

    He was filled with anxiety and he didn’t know how to express his emotions.

    As I got older I learned more about him just by observing him and I am so much like him not just in looks but in temperament.

    All those times when he’d sit by himself away from others, I understand it now, he looked so cut off from us because he didn’t know how to interact with us.

    When he’d want to leave or not go to a social function, I fully understand it. I hate social functions and how it drains me.

    His special hobbies, his desire for a schedule, I do all of this as well.

    I felt like I was looking for his approval and never got it but I was the only one he’d call to help him, the only one he showed a little attention in, I think my father understood me just a little better than I understood myself back then.

    That saying he kept saying to me? That I’d never go anywhere and be able to survive in the real world?

    I took it to heart and pushed myself, I left home and traveled internationally, I got married and I might still struggle socially but I function on my own level.

    I might not be as academically fortunate as my siblings but I am not the useless sibling, I made my success in personal battles and I accomplished my own great things.

    Thanks for reading a tiny bit of my story.

  • How to handle being an Introvert and have the best day ever

    Hey everyone!

    I just want to talk about yesterday and why it was the best day ever.

    My husband has so many friends that from what I know of my childhood and my family it seems unnatural, we spend a lot of time with them and it wears me out both physically and mentally. Don’t get me wrong I like his friends BUT I need time to myself to unpack all the stress of the week and it seems like I can never get that time because I’m always home with Naveen or at his parents or friends and that’s like being bombarded with even more stress. The talking, the laughing, the music, the smells, everything beats at me until I’m in a deep dark pit crying. To make matters worse we stay at these stressful events for hours and hours and I’m just tired and want to go home but he’s not ready to go home and Naveen is not ready. So there I am month after month being abused mentally.

    Yesterday I decided to stay home by myself and it was wonderful!

    I had the house to myself, it was quiet, I didn’t have to concentrate on anything other than watching one of my favorite movies The Princess Bride. I could feel all the stress leaving my body and my mood lifting.

    If you have Social Anxiety and are also an Introvert like me never feel bad about staying home and watching your favorite movie, your mental health is way more important than being social because society dictates you must be, enjoy your time alone guilt-free, and don’t make it a one-time thing. When you feel yourself slipping engage in some self-care.

    I am ready for the week now and actually thinking about smiling but we’ll see what tomorrow brings huh!

    Until next time!

  • Overcoming my anxiety one step at a time

    Good morning!

    This year in September will make four years since I moved to France and I still don’t have any friends, not really anyway. There’s nobody I feel relaxed enough to send a text message to or call and just sit around talk and laugh almost everyone I know over here is through my husband and your husband’s friends are not always your friends.

    There is one woman who I occasionally share a “Bonjour” with that has no ties to my husband but that’s basically the extent of my French in public, “Bonjour”… I managed a “ça va” today because she and her son were not at school since last week Thursday and I did miss them. I wish so much that I can articulate what I want to say but at that moment I don’t even know what to say. I am honestly content just to walk beside them on our way to school and from school because it’s the loneliest feeling walking your child to school knowing you have nobody.

    I’m trying to change that by taking one step at a time because a giant leap is likely to do some real damage to the progress I’ve made and let’s face it I’m a cautious person and I need to be comfortable talking to someone or it will never happen.

    Moving on to another subject, years back I had another blog that I only used once because I didn’t understand how to use it, I finally merged it to this one so you can see my old blog post here My Hiking Experience. I kind of wish that I had more hikes to post about but we rarely go anywhere anymore. I suppose I could go out to the park when it’s warmer and beg to visit the castle since we haven’t been there since last year. I swear I’m going to be a chatty Cathy until I go to the lake and other nature sites.

    If I do get my way and I probably will I’ll be sure to post pictures so you can enjoy the scenery with us.

    Until next time!

  • Feeling inspired to write more

    Bonjour à tous!

    When in France right?

    For the past two days, I have been inspired to revisit an old story I started working on about two years ago. All my interest in it had fizzled and it just sat there stagnant until Thursday when I was going through my old stuff and saw it. Immediately I felt this need to dust it off and breathe some new life into it. It’s not finished by any means, you can say that it is barely begun so I won’t have a lot of work to dissect and can just start writing whenever I feel like it. I tried to remember just why I never began my story and why it was put into a coma and the only thing I could think of was that I didn’t have the voice to tell it. I firmly believe that if you haven’t connected with your storyline on a deep level it will never get anywhere. A forced storyline is never a good thing and if you have to force it why are you writing it in the first place?

    I read over my files, I keep very detailed records of my storylines whether it’s in old notebooks or digital notebooks on Evernote or Google Docs. I have literally hundreds of half-built worlds and storylines, finished short stories that need good editing. What I do not have is the desire to do what I know needs to be done. It has been so hard for me to push through my depression and get back to what I have always enjoyed but this month I feel like I will be able to accomplish much.

    I do a bit of poetry and have some works in progress on Wattpad that I have been focusing on lately. If you’re interested and registered on the site you can view my profile here at LLDove.

    My pieces are anything but popular but I feel like they fall into very specific niches and they are special to me especially Tales of an Introverted Expat and The Silence Inside Me, both are poetry-based and reference my depression, anxiety, and selective mutism to an extent.

    The piece I am working on now can be typed as a Romantic Comedy, it is called One Night Romeo.

    Gia Joseph was tired of the small town she grew up in where everyone knew her as the recluse, she wanted a fresh start somewhere new and exciting. It was cliche to move to France with the hopes of finding love but what Gia found was an unforgettable one-nightstand. She couldn’t get this guy out of her head and against her better judgment began looking for him hoping that he was looking for her too. The problem with finding someone in a big city is that it’s nearly impossible to run into the same person twice, somehow fate intervened and Gia found her one night Romeo, unfortunately, he didn’t remember who she was!


    Gia spends the entire summer manufacturing coincidental meet-ups with the hopes of reminding her Romeo of who she was and why he should be more than a one night Romeo

    One Night Romeo

    I can’t say when it will be finished but I do plan on working on it until I am satisfied with it.