Just a journal. Who am I trying to protect? This is a question my IC asked me a while back, and I've been thinking about it alot. In fact this morning, just as I was waking up it popped into my head again. Further, as I was out on my walk this morning a couple things occurred to me:

I tried to put remember when this downhill 'slide' started, and as closely as I can figure it was after a serious discussion I had with H; about mid-July. A couple weeks after getting back from holidays. In this discussion, H was relating to me some serious concerns he had about a non-M issue. I'd known about this previous, but he hadn't shared the extent to which he'd been struggling, up til this discussion. After this talk, I felt horrible for him, guilty for 'rocking the boat', sad for all the distance we'd both caused in our M, and desperate - yes that's the word - desperate - to fix. I immediately felt responsible for finding a resolution to this situation. I think it was then that I started shutting down again; not sharing my feelings or needs in an open and mutually respectful way.

And then I was remembering a time back when I was young. A very sad time in which I believed I had to care for the people around me, who were in such pain themselves, that they could not care for me. In my child-brain, I felt their needs and pain were so much greater than my own, that I could not even acknowledge my own hurt, nor see that I needed to be cared for. And it made me wonder. Is this what my IC was getting at? Whenever I feel like I have to protect the people I love from pain, do I shut down? Do I stop caring for myself, in favor of protecting and caring for those around me?

I cannot complain for not receiving from others, that which I've never asked them for.