Apotheosis

I too am terrified of another 5 years of Conservative power, especially unmoderated by a coalition. I am dependent on benefits too and currently attempting to transition from DLA to PIP, so I really do understand your fears because I have them too.

With regards to your other struggles, I can also relate to finding acceptance hard. I keep getting stuck on acceptance meaning it was/is ok, when it wasn't and it still isn't. Perhaps another way of looking at the past and interpreting acceptance is that x,y,z happened, it wasn't ok, but it happened and that can't be undone, but it can be moved on from?

An interesting TED talk I happened to come across yesterday by Andrew Solomon is related to this topic, if you are interested?

Andrew Solomon: How the worst moments in our lives make us who we are | Talk Video | TED.com

For me, what was helpful was to acknowledge the limitations of my parents and to realise that they did the best that they could at the time in a crappy situation. My parents weren't deliberately abusive though, which is probably harder to forgive, but oftentimes a lot of abusive people were themselves abused (which doesn't make what they did ok at all, but can help to explain things). What happened to me wasn't ok, but it happened and my family can't go back and put that right, but I've accepted that it happened and I'm trying to move on from that.

With regards to my present symptoms and disability: again, I struggle to accept that it is ok, because it really does not feel ok but, if I try, I can see how it has made me a better person (more empathetic and open minded etc) and I'm trying to 'forge meaning and build identity' as Soloman said in that talk. I'm trying to learn to like who I am, and a big part of that has been shaped by my experiences over the last 8 years. In an ideal world, I would like to struggle less and I want to work and have a family of my own, but I wouldn't want to unlearn the important lessons in empathy and finding my strength in coping with this crap with very little support from professionals, and in many cases with added abuse from them, and so that helps me think that the mental stuff can't be all bad.

I hope that some of this is helpful. It is very much still a work in progress for me, but I can see the value in forging meaning from all of this. It won't change what happened, but I believe that it will change my attitude to the past, present and future, and better able me to move forward in life in a way that I value.

All the best

*Willow*