Messages

hey, chart, thank you so for your uplifting words.  you know how to hit me where i smile, so to speak.  3 tornados in 1?  that's a lot of energy being expended, a lot of unleashed power.  i think of myself in terms of strength rather than power, so it was interesting you brought that up.  i know i'm one of the strongest people i know.  i don't know the concept of power for myself. i do know the power of my traumas, tho. interesting. 

no anxiety last nite, altho i could feel it wanting to bust thru on the edges.  that was good, tho.  any night w/o anxiety is a win.

DF, enjoy your cup of tea, your day of rest, and the idea of being kind to yourself.  we all need this so badly, even when we didn't know it or weren't allowed it.  it's not our fault, i don't think, that we haven't taken care of ourselves well in the past.  we never learned how, we weren't taken care of to show us an example and to give us 'permission' to do so for ourselves.  so much of this, to my mind, is what we weren't given, what wasn't done to or for us. so we're now on a learning curve to figure out how best it works for us.  we'll get there.  love and hugs

hey, PC, i love those big hug emojis - i can feel those a lot more than the smaller ones, even tho i know a hug is a hug and coming from the heart.  thank you for that.  and thank you for the validation about the entangled emotions coming from different places over the years.  what you described is just about right, i think.  and, yeah, no wonder it's so hard to de-tangle, sort thru, address each one, resolve it, grieve what needs to be grieved, and finally feel some sort of resolution.  whew!  tired just writing about it!   

i managed to do some EMDR on myself yesterday, flash technique, and i saw a big brick in my head.  this corresponds to the 'brick' my D 'removed' energy-wise the night before.  apparently it didn't stay removed.  at any rate, so, i did my thing, and as it progressed, the brick began to crack, then a bigger crack, then it began to melt.  i could notice it turn to liquid and run down my spinal cord.  that's where i stopped.

after the fact, last nite i noticed no anxiety whatsoever.  it was wonderful.

the main problem w/ doing this on myself is not being sure when to stop, when to continue.  there is no T to help me navigate what's happening, manage what they might be noticing about me physically.  i stopped when i did cuz i didn't want to push myself too hard, but i wasn't sure if i got rid of everything that was causing the anxiety.  we'll see if it keep working.  i may have to repeat.

i just realized that i don't know the cause of the anxiety - no thoughts or pictures came up, but i imagine that's not really important.  if it was a faulty wiring job from my past, it may have simply needed to be re-wired, and that's what happened, and then the past becomes the past, not the present, and that's basically what i was going for, so i'm ok with that.  besides, flash technique kinda sidesteps emotions - i have too hard a time dealing w/ emotions cuz of my alexithymia (several times during therapy, i felt an emotion for the first time and it wreaked havoc w/ my body, especially causing my legs not to work and me feeling sick-y for a week or 2, so this technique helps bypass all that).

i also burned some incense for a 'clearing out' effect.  whether that helped or not, i don't know, but i liked doing it.

so, we'll see tonite if this sticks or not.  fingers crossed!

DF, i think not having enough time to recover from anything is one of our worst enemies.  when the crapola gets piled on, one after another, no time in between to even breathe (or so it feels), i think that depletes us most of everything that can happen to us.  we get inundated, overwhelmed, try to make sense of something, attempt to grieve (if there's even time for that) and suddenly     we're lost, our system is shorting out, our brains can't work the way we want, our bodies do their thing and become out of whack, and on and on.  we literally lose our way.  i can feel those tears and they're trying their hardest to release, but we don't have time or energy.

in 'through the looking glass' the queen tells alice that to stay in one place she has to run as fast as she can, but to move forward, she has to run even faster.  that's how this stuff feels to me, being expected to do the impossible. 


my heart goes out to you.  i have no doubt you'll make it thru this, but it's the going that's so rough.  i'm by your side, tho - you're not alone. lean on me if it helps.  love and hugs

PC, cheshire cat is one of my favorite characters in all of literature, and i remember that bit of advice - it's so true!  altho i do plenty of 'worrying about tomorrow', it's always about little things, so to speak.  i've been called a vagabond (among other things) cuz i've usually just gone w/ the flow.  but that's my autistic bent, i imagine.  i've never been a dreamer of what i'm shooting for next.  i just get thru the journey, more or less.

i'm not very big on the holidays anymore, my D and i are going to prepare just a couple of our favorites (i'm making deviled eggs, she's making green bean casserole), and have no family, so to speak to gather 'round.  she goes to her F's place tomorrow to have the holiday w/ him, and i stay home and grin and bear it.

my loss at the holidays is my D1, who i haven't heard from in 13 yrs.  that's the hole in my heart.

i'm thankful for you and this forum and everyone here.  love and hugs

DF, your reply rang true for me on so many levels.  thank you for that.  the idea of doing the best we can to stay afloat, just to manage being alive from day to day, is so very true.  too many professionals don't get that.  to go the extra mile and do what we're 'supposed' to do is often way more than is possible.  it's like working so hard to stay afloat while awash in a turbulent sea - how can we maintain a certain expectation to do so in a 'healthy' way?  sometimes it's just not possible.   

thanks for the hug, chart.  love it!

i'm going into a dark place again - haven't been there in a while.  this bedtime anxiety is getting to me in a bad way.  last nite i did extra meds just to calm myself down.  the upside was that i slept really well.  but, trying to figure out where the anxiety is coming from, how it's affected me, and the idea that this may be a whole set of emotions, besides fear, that have layered on over the years and 3 marriages - each of which i usually had to go to bed alone - and which i didn't have access to has brought up the idea that i may have to do emdr on myself, which brought tears to the surface cuz on the whole it means i have to take care of myself - again.  what  a heavy load it feels like i've been carrying.  no wonder my posture is crapola.

ditto what chart said, DF.  it made perfect sense to me, too.  my background had a slightly different bent, but basically it was similar.  severance from a parent meant death, be it physical or emotional.  don't upset/disappoint the parent, and you're ok to live another day.  that pattern became ingrained in us because it was attached to a sense of survival.  very difficult to break, to know we have enough in ourselves to take care of ourselves.  lousy electricians, indeed!  love and hugs

it is, indeed!

thank you for those o so kind words, hope.  i think this stuff can hit me hard cuz of my past and not being able to realize what was going on or how to feel about anything.  i've absorbed all these feelings in my life, so when something comes up, it's often a visceral/physical reaction.  but i'm doing ok now.

chart, that bottle thing was something i did w/ my D when she was little and had a nightmare.  i'd get a bottle, tell her to let the nightmare go into the bottle, sealed it up and put it outdoors, told her it couldn't hurt her anymore.  so, i guess she remembered.  no anxiety last nite.  it's great when a pos. parental teaching comes back to help the parent!

when something grabs me, by the throat, chest, heart, wherever, i guess i just notice it, sit w/ it, wait till it goes away.  in the moment i don't think of anything else, but i know it will eventually leave.  like all EF's, they may take their time, but they wear themselves out after a while.  thank you for caring about me. 

i was able to write some of the answers on the doc form last nite. i just feel scattered cuz they seem so cut and dried - do you take a brisk walk 3 times/week? never, often, yes, no.  i don't know how to answer these black and white questions cuz it depends on how i'm feeling.  i've gone months w/o stepping outdoors, and like the past few days, i've walked normally outdoors about 1/2 mile.  i used to walk 3 mi./day on a regular basis, at one point it was 4 1/2, 5 days/week.  depending on how my body/mind are is what determines if i exercise at all.  it's just frustrating to me cuz i have no schedule like that at all any more.  dang, in my 30's i lifted weights 5 days/week, completely re-sculpted my body.  now, i have little puny 3 lb. weights that i pick up maybe once a month.  any more and my muscles complain, which stresses me, and i go down the tubes.

so, i don't know how to explain what stress does to me, to my system, my mind, my joints (inflammation) - all these physical things that come and go on their own, but at any given point when the inflammation is acting up, i would be diagnosed w/ arthritis or needing a joint replacement!  we'll see if i can get that across to her.  it's the bell curve syndrome - 80% of people are inside the 'bell', and can get treated a certain way, while 20% of us are on either side, and have to be looked at and treated differently than the masses.  in my experience, too many docs don't understand that and it gets frustrating at the least, or i get incorrect treatment and it hurts me rather than helps.

wah wah wah!!!  i just hate how this goes so much!!!

hey, PC, i'm glad you've found some way to explain what's working for you.  i'm not so good at that, can't seem to keep on w/ much of anything on a regular basis.  i'm gonna look up binaural meditations, see if they help, so thanks for posting about them here.   ooops, i just thought about the word 'binaural' and i'm thinking headphones are needed, which i don't have.  we'll see.

at any rate, finding something that works, even if only for a while, i think is helpful.  i hope you can keep it up, and that the intervals between will continue to fill with what you got from your 'flap'.  love and hugs

thank you so much, hope.  it is a big undertaking, and i'm still going thru final proofreading, but this cleaner version can be uploaded any time, so it's not quite as stressful for me.  still, another book in print is always exciting! 

DF, thanks for your support.  i did read what you went thru, and it sounded extremely stressful.  maybe next time you can take Teddy and have that comfort for yourself.   

i've been having terrible anxiety the past 2 nites, anxiety attacks as well, and i think it's pretty much due to this doctor stuff.  my D came into my room last nite, i told her what was going on, asked if she could 'take' some of the gunk from out of my head, and she did.  just a hands-on energy removal of sorts, but she said that whatever she removed felt like a big brick.  then she got a jar for me so i could release more into that, which i did, and she put the cover on and took it outside.  told me that the gunk she removed was one color, what i removed was totally different.  i felt much better afterwards.  amazing how this stuff works.

anyway, i think this is all about the doctor stuff.  i have a questionnaire to fill out before my next appt., and i began looking it over - do i do this, eat veggies, fruit, exercise, how many times/day, to what level, and i had to stop.  i believe it's because of the expectations involved, and now that i think of it, probably sent me into an EF.  just like a kid, parental expectations, not living up to their idea of perfection.  yeah, that's the key word - perfection. 

that grabbed me by the throat.

DF, it is such a good feeling to get recognized!  i can relate to all that nervousness and anxiety about the 'shoulds' - i was going to have my B and his wife come over yesterday for the game, and i 'should' be able to entertain 2 people very close to me and make a simple pasta salad for lunch, but i was freaking out about it in a terrible way.  it's not like i haven't done this a million times in the past.  so simple, it seems.  when they canceled, i was very glad.  what a way to live!

so, yeah.  getting stressed out about things that seem ordinary or simple, but take on proportions of mountains.  i'm glad you got time to yourself and were able to breathe again.  that fear of death thing is very real.  love and hugs

SO, you sound so into you, being w/ you, being you, taking care of you.  i think it's wonderful.  i'm glad you have this opportunity.  love and hugs

bach, i can see how something pos. could feel unsafe. i don't know how many times, throughout my life, such pos. feelings were ripped away by one person or another.  even when i thought i could feel safe w/ my own firstborn, nope. it's now taken years for me to feel safe w/ my D, who i live with, but that's been a process. 

i've always been optimistic, for some reason, (probably cuz of my alexithymia) even when the good feelings were taken from me cuz of someone's behavior, until just recently.  now, i am quick not to trust, be on my guard, wait and see, especially since some of my feelings, like fear, have returned.  i think it's an awful way to live.  i do hope you are able to eventually shed those 'unsafe' feelings and be able to just be you.  love and hugs

thanks, hope.  as a matter of fact, i finished the big load yesterday, now all that's left is a quick read-through for small errors.  the book gets uploaded tomorrow, so we're good to go.  whew!  big relief

going for my ultrasound in a couple hours.  i know the procedure should be no big deal, but i hate it all the same.  plus, the anticipation of the results.  ugh.  my gut is clenching at the thought!