watch myself getting more and more controlled by this fear of mice – I am on standby for any sign of a mouse constantly, ready to get out of here, in a continuous state of overstrained alertness - especially when it’s dark at night: that’s when they are active. But yesterday afternoon the neighbours cat had ‘sneaked in’ and almost immediately started chasing a mouse in the living room, so now I know they are still here during day time. Though I am still not that scared in the day time.
I am actually obsessed by this fear – mind possessed – the fear has taken over, is in control. I see mice everywhere, in the simplest acts like seeing a bottle with juice: in a flash I think ‘is there a mouse in there?‘ With every little noise I sit straight on guard – mouse!? My cat is staring – mouse!? I see movements in the corner of my eyes – mouse!? I see these movements in the corner of my eyes all the time – but now this is linked to mice.
Making dinner in the kitchen – well, it is getting dark by 5 o’clock and so my fear gets more prominent. I really have to put myself to it, the cooking, otherwise I would not make dinner at all. It’s quite funny how I act while cooking: stamping my feet to scare the mice away, making lots of noise, singing, so they know I am here.
After dinner I make sure there are no left overs, no crumbs, get things I probably need like beverage, close the door of the kitchen to not enter again ‘till the next morning.
‘Till 2 nights ago I considered ‘upstairs’ as a safe, mouse-free zone. Then I thought I heard noises in my bedroom, saw movements close to my head, in the corner of my eyes – Mouse alert! Fear, but I did not want to give in, it would mean the end of my safe zone and I would have nowhere else to go in this house to feel safe from mice. It would mean I would not be able to sleep because then this mouse would crawl all over me. And I made very clear pictures of this happening in my head – aaaah! So I had to convince myself I was only fooling myself and there was no mouse at all. Succeeded in that. I call this: numbing – I just refuse to let certain thoughts play out, I just deny so it doesn’t exist. Severe Suppression.
Also: there is no difference in how I handle this fear for mice or all other fears I am allowing to play out in my life.
(I also notice myself wanting to write ‘Destonian correct’, meaning instead of ‘I fear’ I feel I should write ‘I allow myself to fear’ to prevent people commenting and pointing this out to me. I get kind of annoyed with it, because I know all of this, but I do not want to write it down that way when I am not actually experiencing that I am ‘allowing’ myself, but feeling a victim of it. But this is another topic I’ll write about in another post. This point is not just ‘Destonian’ related, it has played out in many other occasions in my life.)
I’ve observed 4 stages, or different parts, playing out:
- fear
- anger
- numbness
- guilt/sadness
Anger
At some point anger comes up. I get nasty and yell at ‘them in the kitchen’ like: ‘if you dare to come in the living room I’ll cut your head off’ and things like that. I throw things, magazines in the direction of the kitchen door. The anger is not self supportive, the anger is towards the mice and destructive, not empowering self (anger can be empowering, when used to state: Stop!) Besides that, I wonder what I would do if at that point a mouse would actually enter the living room lol I doubt I would ‘cut his head off’ for real – most likely I would run.
I prefer the anger though – it makes me feel less of a victim of the mice.
Numbness
Is where I just suppress every thought of mice and convince myself with reasoning, with ‘common sense’, there is no mouse at all. At this stage it is important to me to not actually be confronted with the sight of a mouse – only then I succeed in hushing myself. So I prefer to not actually see the mice for that reason, for me to be able to deny their existence.
Guilt and Sadness
I am kind of ashamed to tell but I did buy poison to kill the mice. And I use it. For the simple reason I can’t allow the mice to take over my house like it happened many many years ago when Dj was still a baby. I was way back then in severe denial of the presence of mice in my apartment – I only allowed myself to know there are 2 maybe 3 mice, not more, while in fact there must have been 40, 50, maybe even more, before I acted. I was already very very scared of mice then.
So now I am using this ‘practical reason’ to not feel the guilt I am actually experiencing by causing the mice to die by poison. I saw one of them lying behind the fridge, dead and I felt so sad. He was such a tiny creature, not as big as I imagined in my ‘scary mind’. Tiny paws, slim tail. I felt sad I had killed him, but also realized I was only able to feel sadness and sympathy for the creature because he was dead, because he couldn’t get up and scare the hell out of me. I feel I am such a hypocrite! With this SilentlyTheySuffer Youtube channel but meanwhile causing these creatures to die by poison…
But I really do not see any other option. I cannot allow so many mice living in my house for obvious reasons. We do have a cat living with us but she is not the least interested in mice. She might take a look for a little while but then she jumps back on the coach, to relax some more. And the mice aren’t scared away by her presence, her smell or the smell of the cats box. So she had no solution to offer.
So - I’ve written out of what is happening, made an overview and arranged all the things playing out in my mind. Have to write some parts out in more detail though. I’ll now continue with the SRAT tools, self forgiveness and practical application.
