[Lexi232]

It took me this long to realize it, I mean i've kinda noticed by certain fimliarities that I saw by either someone else acting almost like a PA (or tech) and me as a patient, or watching others in this situation which made me realize i missed a part of what I used to have in the hospitals...
I certainly don't miss a lot of what went on, and contraband stuff and not having my pets, or my say in much of anything. But I do miss a lot of the things that came with the territory.
It took me years to realize this.. I wonder if i'm just some werid wacky person for actually missing a state hospital! i told my closest friend and she didn't see why on earth anyone would miss such a place.. but.. i do..
And I FINALLY realized this, today when I was doing appartment shopping and it was in a city where I used to live in a state hospital. I even got to get out and ride the busses there so i knew the city well! And back then i was looking for appartments too... but the fimliarity of the previous appartments i looked into of me coming across brought back a fimlair feeling... Then I went to explaining to my parents pretty much how i can't wait to move and if i get my own place i can live and don't have to worry about the approvals of having health care workers coming in to the home during the day (mental and physical), and then i could go to groups and volunteer and all this other stuff that would keep me from having the problem i get when I ever even attempt to live alone. And then i started crying.. I didn't know why at first.. I even told my closest friend that. and I wasn't sure why i was crying, and even if it were happy tears or sad tears. and that i was so confused. Then I got to realizing that it was a little of both... this ideal place i have in my head for my own place, and outside activities and such would mimic a lot of what i liked about the hospitals, and i also missed that. And I pretty much grew up in temporary and full stay mental hospitals since I was about 7yr... so i figure that has something to do with it too.
Has anyone else felt this way? and found a good way to deal with it?

[Open Eyes]

I think that what your dealing with is that in a hospital enviornment you felt safe, had the attention you needed and there was a structure to it. I think that is why you feel like you want to go back to that environment and have a desire to replicate it in other ways.

You were very young in the hospital and it brought care and comfort, was clean, structured, that is what all children love. All children try to produce whatever they learn as a safe environment. And all humans do that we are designed to do that for survival.

The tears are most likely a little bit stress, a little bit thinking your going to find what you feel is a comforting safe lifestyle existance.

Open Eyes

[Lexi232]

thanks
I believe your right.

[missbelle]

There's the good, and the bad.......just like a bad relationship...you still remember the good times even if the the whole relationship was bad...there is always good, and we remember..we always will!!!

[Lexi232]

Yup that's true too! lol, like i miss it, but even the thought of going back and living in a hospital makes me cringe and sick to my stomach, and my whole body and mind is like "nuh-uh! no way! we stay on the outside!". .... i guess its kinda like living with my parents. but only "like it" in a very distant relation. There were lots of bad before, and yet i convinced myself its diffrent, just because that's WHAT I WANTED to believe, because i missed the fact of it was one weird little comfort zone, even tho it was a very bad comfort zone, there were still things in it, that i missed. And wasn't getting anywhere else.. Only, that was distorted in what i was thinking and remembering too. I had forgotten quite a large number of things that played into the factor... Then i also convinced myself it would be diffrent this time because I was diffrent. and tho that IS true... just because I am diffrent than before, I didn't realize others had to be diffrent too, for things to have really been changed as i had wanted them to be.

[Perna]

It is hard, if not impossible, to wholly change our past experiences, to feel and act a "different" way. It takes time in a new situation to have its experiences tip the scale; if you spent most of your life in situation A, then it makes sense that it will take a similar amount of time in situation B to make B the dominant one?

For those of us who have had difficult childhoods, that's basically 20 years of our lives and it can take another 20 years of work moving forward as well as healing the past to get to a "different" state of being.