#8 - starting over

[Bach]

I'm glad you have a happy plan for today, san! Sending love and appreciation on this day of Thanksgiving 

[sanmagic7]

tee, thanks, and back atcha!

sweet sceal, thanks so much for that.  i'm holding that in my heart today!

thank you, bach,.  i love and appreciate you, too

[Snowdrop]

I hope you and D are having a lovely day. Sending you love and hugs.

[Tee]

  hope your day turned out great and you have heart warming memories to hold onto for years to come.  Enjoy your movie.

[sanmagic7]

snowdrop and tee - our day was GREAT!  thank you so  for your caring wishes for us.  we had a wonderful time together.   

i'm working on sleeping lately, have been experimenting with my meds to see which and what amounts help or don't.  i think i found a good formula, altho it's not quite what the psychiatrist suggested.  i'll be talking to her in a couple weeks.  we'll see what she says.

i just have to note how different my day goes when i get restful sleep for more than 4-5 hrs. at a time.  i've had a few days in a row of that now (small steps, i know, but each seems like a victory), and i hope to keep it up. it feels like i have to get my system used to the idea of sleeping for a longer period - i've slept in chunks since my 20's - and it's been really difficult to change that pattern.  so, the meds are seeming to force the change, at least that's how it feels in my mind.

at any rate, small steps, day to day, minute to minute sometimes, but so far i'm still here, still alive, still writing and editing - which makes me feel useful and productive in the world - and today feels like a good day.  yay!

[Tee]

That's great! Have a good day!

[Bach]

san, I'm so glad to hear you had that good day feeling recognising your success at taking small steps   It's a good one, isn't it?  I sometimes get really frustrated at not being able to take big steps, but really, the thing that matters is taking steps of whatever size you can manage.  I've started to feel that my measure of a good day is not whether or not I did, but whether or not I tried.  You're doing great!

[Sceal]

Wonderful to read that today was a good day!

Sleep is so important, and I hope you get more of those 5 hour sessions. Perhaps, soon it'll become 6 hours instead.

[sanmagic7]

tee, thank you.  i love your hugs!   

bach, thanks.  i love that you were able to turn that definition of a good day around - it's a wonderful thought.  thanks for sharing it.   

sceal, thank you.  yeah, sleep has become so precious to me, it's a cause of anxiety before bedtime, altho lately, i'm trusting those meds, and they're not letting me down. 6 hrs. is becoming more consistent now, and i love it!   

i've had a few evenings of panic attacks this past week.  i've been going out back of our house, having 1/2 cigarette and a beverage, being with the forest, and i've noticed some major releasing of tension.  like, i'll sit there for 5 min, and will have strongly exhaled at least 3-4 times.  i can feel the tension leaving my body (something i've carried with me for decades. my d wondered if, since i'm getting rid of so much tension that my brain/mind doesn't know how to deal with that, and has gone into panic mode because of it.  perhaps - i wouldn't doubt it, actually.

today during session i worked on some of that tension, feeling like a coiled spring, always on the verge of being ready in case something is going to go wrong. i traced it back to having babies - i slept with a mother's ear alert for any sound from them, brought them to bed with me when they were sick, and when D1 began taking a lot of meds for all the things being out of whack with her, i was up and checking on her after she fell asleep to make sure she was still breathing.

so, to me, being alert to the needs of my girls was life and death - if something bad happened and i wasn't alert enough to take care of it, something even worse would happen. (my ex, their father, didn't concern himself w/ any of that).  it was all my responsibility, in my mind, cuz, while he might be there physically, he was always checked out (he's admitted this to me and our daughters). When i ate or smoked, those were my breaks, that was time for me alone.  'wait till i'm done eating', was a common sentence from me to them when they wanted something from me.  or, i'd find a place by myself to have a smoke.  it was my time.

so, i'm realizing the same dynamic now. walking by myself has always had a spiritual component to it. smoking in back of our house looking into the forest here is like time in a chapel to me. when my d and i watch our shows, that's a time to eat cuz it means work is done.  i've labeled those activities in such a way that, altho i do walk and eat w/ my d, i also usually get an extra walk for myself in the morning, and our eating together signals relaxation time in the evenings.

i think there's another component here, if i can catch it before it slips away - i think it's part of my hyper-vigilance, stemming from when i was a child, always being on the alert for how to please, what to do or say that is 'right',  of course, that followed me into other relationships in my adult life as well, be it friends or romantic.  didn't matter. i had to be on the alert in order to not only take care of the needs and emotions of the other, but stay alert as to changes that might happen.  anticipating - yeah, that would be a hyper-alert scenario.

thinking about this right now, it swam across my mind that i'm not worth it, i don't deserve time to myself, i'm here to serve others.  ouch!  that sucks!  didn't consciously realize that till this minute.  i guess that's a big topic for next session.  not worth my own time.  i've just paused on that one.  i think it's much bigger than i expected.  and, heavier - new discovery.  not conscious of it before.  very ugly.

i want a smoke right now, but i've promised myself to listen to a 7-min. guided relaxation video every day, something soothing just for myself.  i'm going to do that right now. we'll see if i still want the cig afterwards.

[Not Alone]

Lots of layers to the tension that you experience. Guided relaxation is a good idea. I used to do that frequently.

[sanmagic7]

notalone, having you say out loud how many layers are packed into this one issue helped me take a more realistic look at it.  you're absolutely right - there are so many layers, i really wasn't fully aware of how much my tension is all about.  thank you for that.  it's disheartening to realize, but imperative to do so at the same time if i want to unravel all this. 

i began my guided relaxation yesterday - i've really only used it in the past when i was so terribly stressed i didn't know what else to do.  i wasn't as stressed, having felt pretty good after my session, but this time i could only make it about 3/4 of the way thru.  having that realization about not being worth my own time was roaming around my mind, and the intensity of feeling like this is something to do for myself, simply because it's helpful for me, having all the focus on me in a positive (rather than a desperate) way, well, it was just too much.  i got overwhelmed to the point where i had to stop.

thinking about doing it today is now scaring me. just the idea of relaxing, being here for myself, taking this time for me without having to make an excuse for it is just too much to wrap my head around.  i couldn't believe the amount of anxiety that came up and is now encircling me, like vultures waiting to pounce.  what a horrible sensation toward something that is supposed to increase my well-being.  i'm not sure what to do about it.  i want to do the guided relaxation again today, as i promised myself, but it scares the bejeebers out of me to even think of it.  i'm not sure what to do, but the tension is ramping up even as we speak.

[Snowdrop]

 

[Bach]

I can relate so well to the fear over having a strong desire to do something for yourself.  I've been working with my clay a lot for the past few days, and it occurred to me that it has been years since  I've wanted to do something as much as I want to do that.  That was a powerful and very scary thought, and has made me freeze up.  On the one hand I have my big warm happy desire to sculpt faces and on the other my terror at having something mean so much to me.   It's a real quandary. 

A thought about your guided relaxation:  Maybe you are trapped between feeling in one part of you that you should not be taking time for yourself, and feeling in another part that you MUST do it because you promised yourself (and even, perhaps, that you MUST do it RIGHT because you will feel bad or guilty if you take that time for yourself and don't get a good result).  I felt sort of that way about my clay today, really anxious and divided.  So I gave myself permission to take a few minutes to sit down with the clay and see how trying it felt.  I wasn't connecting with it and I felt sad about that, but I was able to tell myself that it was okay and that I can come back later or tomorrow and maybe it will feel better then.  I'm sad that I couldn't get that good feeling today from working with the clay, but I'm not anxious about it anymore.  Might that approach be helpful with your relaxation? 

Good wishes to you, sweet san 

[sanmagic7]

snowdrop, that hug is always welcome.  thank you.

bach, thank you for the words and the wisdom. i haven't gone back to that site again.  just can't do it.

went into a terrible EF today.  watching 'la femme nikita', and she had memories of horrible physical abuse, plus she was shaken, but her mentor/guide told her 'i'll help you get thru this', even tho he didn't know exactly what was wrong. i had a visceral reaction to the whole thing.  while my abuse was almost exclusively emotional,, when she pictured the physical abuse, my mind went directly to the layers of emotional abuse i endured.

she got very hard and cold, and ran away in order to survive what had happened.  and, it struck me that i had done the same thing, in my own way. all i'd ever looked for in a partner was someone who would be with me while i went thru whatever, and try as i might, it just didn't happen.  quite the opposite, as it almost killed me instead.  don't know if this is making sense, but it's in my gut, and i felt deeply disturbed by it.  paralyzed for a while, then hit the xanax and a cig just to stay standing.

i've already told my t that i think i could've dealt with physical abuse easier than the emotional neglect/abuse throughout my life.  it made me hard, raunchy, and rarely did i show emotion, even if i sometimes felt it. this triggered something down to my cells.  i've watched stuff like this before, it's never hit me this hard, to this depth of my being before. i feel awful.  luckily, i'm talking to my t tomorrow.  for today, meds, and food will keep me sane.  it's all i can do.  i just need to make it to tomorrow.

[Snowdrop]

Hang in there, San. There beside you, offering love, hugs and support.