Divorcebusting.com Forums Open Forums For Newcomers Detachment, anxiety and the end of limbo 2

SH, I am so glad to see your post! I missed it until just now, so we must have both been typing at the same time again yesterday. The site has definitely been having issues.

I am sorry that you are still feeling off right now, and I want you to know that I am still here for you every step of the way. Try not to overthink your feelings too much. You have been through something incredibly traumatic, it is still ongoing, and whatever you are feeling is absolutely normal. I really do hope that you either keep seeing your therapist or find yourself another one who can be of more use to you.

Perhaps you might want to think about grief counseling for yourself. I think that it has helped me a great deal and that I have benefitted a great deal by learning this new set of tools. Look up the grief recovery method and you will come to a link for finding local support. My seven sessions only cost $250, and it was worth every penny and a whole lot more. the price varies by location, but I honestly think that so many people here could benefit from it. Think about it, SparrowHawk. I'm feeling a bit worried about you. It sounds like you really do need a break from going through the motions. I hear that Phoebe's semi-B&B is welcoming guests.

I'm all over the place these days - up, down and sideways, but now I know it's all normal for me, and I will get through it. That is empowering.

Phoebe,

Your support means so much to me. I apologize I have been a bit withdrawn. I am trying to find myself within, and falling into the old habit of hiding within and avoiding the things that can help me. I put my energy into others such as my daughters and people I work with and my friend who is having challenges of his own with his WW.

I know I need to focus on me, but I don't want to feel the pain. Or maybe it is that I fear that I don't have the feelings I should. Not sure. Feelings have been such a confusing thing for me my whole life. I feel like I am in constant turmoil within, but I am accused of showing no emotion.

I feel loss right now, but I don't want WAW back. The anger has started to swell this week to the point I find myself muttering to myself about it. My D17 has noticed it, as it seems to come on absent mindedly.

I probably do need an IC. I am just not sure if that works because I don't trust myself to open up honestly. Don't get me wrong, I try to, but I am so easily distracted in conversations I tend to go down the path of least resistance and solve the easy issues.
Leaving the issue I had a question about.
Why have I come to the state of calm so quickly?
Have I truly accepted what has happened?

My mind fights with itself until I force it to quiet down by looking to the simple problems to solve.
Grrrr.....

I don't want to waste my life struggling within.
I want to enjoy life with family, friends, personal growth, and service to others.

This is my personal struggle each day of late.

Enough about me, this is your thread, and I want to tell you how proud I am to read of your daily progress.

It is amazing to read the efforts you continue to put in no matter what struggle presents itself.

You are an amazing woman with amazing inner strength handling an extraordinary situation.

(((Phoebe)))

Ps I must find a way to get to your neck of the woods and experience your semi open B&B.

SH - that's what an IC will help you with... a good counselor will guide you to the important questions. It's interesting what you share about how you handle difficult emotions - it sounds like how I perceive H.

Hello to Miss Painter! I'm hoping that your stretch of geed days is still in effect. You, my dear, so deserve a break. Be well, my friend.

SH, I am very happy to hear from you and please feel free to say anything you want to on my thread. Whatever works for you works for me. I'm just glad to see you here.

Thank you for the kind words and praise. It means a great deal to me. I still feel like I'm just muddling through, but lately it's been easier.

SparrowHawk, again, try not to overthink the way you feel, wondering if you are too much of this or too little of that - too angry, not angry enough, too numb, too feeling, too detached, not detached enough. You feel the way you feel, and whatever that is at any moment is expected, normal, and appropriate. You are going to swing between all of the emotions, sometimes cycling rapidly.

One thing that you need to be very careful about, however is the urge to bury these feelings. You said that you don't want to feel the pain, that you feel inner turmoil whereas you have been accused of not showing emotions. That pain and those emotions you may be avoiding are still inside you, whether you allow yourself to feel them or not. Pushing them down will hurt you and lead to them hitting you even harder when they do bubble up. Think of the tsunami vs. the ripples in a pond. That tsunami is a killer, but you can keep standing as the ripples pass by. Alternatively, consider a dam in the face of flooding - it's better to open the flood gates for a while than to try to hold it all back and risk catastrophe.

We both know what the tsunami feels like. I think that it is made much worse by bottling up the way we feel, thinking that we need to be strong and stay under control, or simply just because we are trying to avoid dealing with what is happening inside, or denying it altogether. It just doesn't work. We need to feel our way through this, one small little step at a time.

The only way out is through.

We can choose to work our way through a little bit every day, or we can just jump in and fight our way to the light in a rush, but what we cannot do, if we want to emerge from this, is to just sit tight and hope that the exit will present itself to us while we're standing still.

It's time for me to drop a challenge on you, SledgeHammer: get back in the water and start swimming. Don't worry about your form, that you're not doing it quite right. Just keep swimming. Let yourself feel even the small ripples as they come. Start working your way through this hell, because I want you to emerge from this a whole and connected person. You deserve to come out of this intact, connected to your past and your future, and able to enjoy every minute of the present. You deserve to grow.

What does that look like? For one, find a therapist (or perhaps a therapy group) that you trust enough to be vulnerable with, that is comfortable guiding you and not just letting you talk in a directionless manner while avoiding the tough stuff. Find someone who doesn't think you are finished when you are still in the middle of processing what is happening. You are not ready if you are feeling such inner turmoil, yet appear to be outwardly numb. This is what I mean that you need to emerge intact - your outward emotions should reflect the way you feel inside. You should never have to put on a brave face, or pretend to be something you are not. If you are in turmoil, then acknowledge it and find a way through it.

I have a friend that had some very serious issues in childhood, and she found that she needed to see multiple ICs over time. One could help her with a certain aspect of her struggles, and then she needed to find someone else to work on the next challenge she had. Every therapist has their own skill set. It worked for her, and perhaps you may need to do something similar. Your first therapist helped you through a time of absolute crisis, but may not be the person you need now to help you sort through what remains.

Goodness knows that we all want to grow from this experience and come out on the other side in a better position to live the best life we can.

Beyond the therapist, it sounds like you are isolating yourself. Get back out there and meet some people and let yourself have some fun. I know that you have a lot of people depending on you right now, your Ds, and your friend with his own marriage troubles, but you can't always be helping others. You also need to help yourself.

Come here a bit more often. Since you have pulled back into your turtle shell you sound like you are having a harder time processing what has happened/is happening. Keep journaling here! It's more important that you sort through your own stuff than that you support others. That's wonderful, of course, and in doing that we do ourselves much good, but it can be draining sometimes. Consider backing off on the number of threads you follow for a little while so you can recharge your batteries. What you do not need right now is compassion fatigue. You need to hang on to some of that compassion for yourself.

Sorry for the 2x4s, SH. I hope that I have not overstepped. I wish you healing and peace.

So for my own journaling: (yikes - long post!!!)

I had a really good day! Right now I feel genuinely happy, just grooving a bit to music as I type this and feeling that my new life has a lot of potential, despite the challenges. I know I have a lot of work and pain still ahead of me, but I am optimistic, and that is encouraging, particularly compared to the way I felt 6 months ago when I wondered how I'd make it through a day.

I spent the morning with my parents, first at their place, then they came over to mine to work on their garden plots. My chickens have gotten a whole lot of free-range time lately (they're on their own for most of the day), and they're just so darn funny. My chicks are old enough now that I put them out in their very own "baby coop" for the first time today. The older six chicks are 5 weeks old and the younger three are 3 weeks old. It seems impossible that they were ever those tiny balls of fluff that I brought home. They are in such a freaky, easily-agitated stage right now that I needed to recruit my mom to help me catch them! Crazy babies.

In the afternoon I went to my hiking friend's gathering, and had a great time. I got to meet lots of other people who are active in the outdoors, and that was really nice. Many of them knew each other already, but they were very welcoming, and I quite like my new hiking friend. She is just a couple years older than me and shares a lot of my outdoor interests, so I hope that I will see more of her. She's new to the area and is one of those people who is really good at meeting new friends and finding herself a new community wherever she is. She's had a lot of practice, moving many times in her life. It's a good skill, one that I would like to learn for myself. For example, I've never had a get-together at my own home (beyond family), and there she is, just having moved to the area a few months ago and inviting 25 people to her home! I want to be like her when I grow up.

We did some walking around her property and then I stepped outside my comfort zone and actually put on my swimsuit and got in the pool! In fact, in an even more surprising excursion from my comfort zone, I wore SHORTS all day. In PUBLIC, for the first tie in years! I am usually super self-conscious in shorts, but I'm as thin as I will ever be in my adult life, so I figured what the he11? No one is scrutinizing me!

Anyway, I quite enjoyed myself at the party, shorts, swimsuit, and all.

I should mention that last night I was up until 3 am, pulling all of H's stuff out of drawers, closets, etc, and gathering it up so that I can get it the heck out to my life. I'm tired of sharing my space with the Invisible Man. I think that's quite a step forward.

Time for my evening commute! Sweet dreams, everyone.

"Good" days, that is, Painter!

Phoebe,

I am so happy to hear you had a great day!

Phoebe, loved your advice to SH. And as usual, your description of your day.

Glad that you stepped out of your comfort zone! Shorts are my favourites and I don't care if my thighs are wobbly or not.

Just want you to know that you have also inspired to step out ofmy comfort zone- pole dancing class here I come!

Grl. you are wonderful! If you keep on stepping out of that comfort zone it gives me courage to keep doing so myself. Good on you!


(((((Dory Grl)))))

Hi to everyone this fine, way too hazy, hot, and humid day!! I am going to do something entirely dumb and go outside to work. I hiked with a guy that used to say, "If you're gonna be dumb, you gotta be tough!" Well, I'm feeling both today.

I am going to take my tractor out onto my land and do some more work cleaning up an old farm dump. Every farm has them, usually on a hill, and mine has more than a few. It's all the usual stuff, bottles, both broken and intact, but without value, old metal cans, pieces of shoes... I'd guess the one I'm in is from the 70s, when people should have known better, but these folks apparently never cottoned to the idea of healing their land at any point in their tenure here.

I have found a couple neat old things in a couple other spots, just not at this one, beyond a sweet old salt shaker and the top part of a lamp that is probably brass and very art deco and that I may try to find a use for. It' quite handsome.

Last year I found a vaseline glass refrigerator bottle, probably from the 1920s, intact. I don't know if folks here know what vaseline glass is, but it is a strange light green glass, or sometimes yellow glass, that almost seems a bit unreal in color, and that was actually colored with uranium. It's usually regarded as harmless, and is certainly safe to have in your home and to use with food. You just don't want to wear it, so to speak. The cool things about vaseline glass is that it glows very strongly in UV light. I'mm utterly taken with the green pieces. Anyway, look up some images if you're curious. It is gorgeous, and I was pretty psyched to find some here on my property. Genuine history! Some jadeite also has uranium in it.

Anyway, I digress. I'm off to be dumb and tough.

I hope it's a good day for my fellow DBers. Go out and push yourself a bit today, be it physically, mentally, or whatever. Stretch a bit. Have some fun.

I'm going to push myself to sweat and heal some more of my land. I had a fully scheduled week, and it is a "rest" day today (from socializing).

Well, I spent about 4 hours picking up broken glass, metal and other assorted trash, so I'd say that I did pretty well. My land is now a couple hundred pounds lighter, and a small spot is looking a whole lot better. Honestly, I didn't even realize this spot was a midden pile until I brush-hogged the roses growing on top of it. Once I knew it was there, though, I had yet another project.

There is still plenty out there, but it's over 90 humid degrees, and that was enough to be going on with.

I'm reading a book today about runaway husbands. It's like it was written about me and H. Sad that this happens often enough that there is a book devoted to it, but it's also comforting to see that what I've been going through is par for the course. Even some of the language I've used to describe it is the same as that used in the book. It's strange.

My plans for the week are kind of up in the air right now. I only have one thing scheduled all week, as opposed to multiple activities each day last week. I'm sure that I'll find plenty to do. I always do.