Detachment, anxiety and the end of limbo 2

[Phoebe]

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.