coming to terms with the thing that imprison me

have you ever noticed the spinning cycles of depression which seem to be there whether in cycle or not? I surely have.

sadness leads to sadness which leads to even more sadness. sadness seems to become an all encompassing self-fulfilling struggle.

fear leads to fear which leads to even more fear. fear seems to become an all encompassing self-fulfilling struggle.

losing control- why it happens, what happens and and regaining it

what do auto accidents, breaking up with a girlfriend/boyfriend, feelings of frustration, loss of a job, loss of a bet, dealing with a fire, depression, medical conditions, breaking and arm, spraining an ankle and the list goes on and on all have in common? at some level, they all to some degree represent a loss of control.

utopia…only if

office setback

I have made some progress on bringing some semblance of order to my officew. i have no doubt that this will take time; years of crap doesn’t get cleaned up in one day or two.

jimmy’s lost, but only in my dreams

well, if you want to call it a dream, more like a nightmare.

Mary and i came home to jimmy not being home. in a dream, mind you. thankfully, this time, unlike last time,  it wasn’t my fault. he had been gone 2-3 days.

Mary, not unexpectedly and justifiably, acted hysterical. I tried to calm her down just enough to lay out a plan of how we would go about, hopefully getting him back. I woke up.

it’s 3:00 am. the dream felt so real, it broke the dream wake barrier. the knot of fear resides in my gut. it’s a tight and persistent one. it’s not real, it’s not real, i try to convince myself to no avail.

i decided to make life real. jimmy had set up residence on the floor last night. i went and got him, returned to bed. “see, it’s not real, it’s not real,” trying yet again to convince myself. i tried to be logical with myself, “how could he be lost and you are holding him?” the fear continued to grip me.

next, i turned to acceptance. “this is fear. it’s not a monster. it’s just trying to tell me that i fear a life without jimmy since he is the best dog in the world! it’s just fear, it’s just fear. don’t be afraid of it, don’t run from it,” i say trying to convince myself. the knot shows it first sign of loosening, but it still has a dead grip on my night.

it is now 7:00 am. jimmy lays next to me with his head resting on my thigh. Mary lay on the other side of jimmy checking out facebook. sherlock rests on the floor next to the bed.* me? I still feel the knot of fear in my gut. i almost got it to loosen enough to get back to sleep, but that didn’t happen. the day lays in front of me, a guess with a little less sleep. hopefully the knot of fear will let got; it isn’t real.

* no, it’s not an injustice that jimmy can come on the bed and sherlock can’t. sherlock had a bad back, a mind of his own, and needs to change position every half hour or so. maybe he’ll jump down one of those times and hurt his back. then the entire family feels miserable, hoping that we are able to convalesce him back to health.

birthday blues

the sunday support group I attend ends on an up note where everyone gets the opportunity to find something good going on in their life. i said tomorrow was my birthday. I said that with utmost sincerity since i really felt joy about celebrating my birthday. this would be the first one in three years that i hadn’t found myself in a living hell. I went to bed with those same feelings.

act-ion

a number of weeks back, screwed up and kitt introduced me to a kelly mongolical tedtalk on making stress your friend. someone makes stress their friend by accepting they are stressed, recognizing what is going on in their body and moving on. when done correctly, stress, the freight train that often times runs me over, woshes by. I talked about making stress your friend here and here.

update-sisterly love

people who have been with me long enough will remember my run-in with my sister.she got upset when i suggested some ways she could help me while countering yet another suggestion for mindfulness. I have nothing against mindfulness, but i offered up other options that I thought would be more helpful and had been working to lift my mood. after brooding over it for a couple of weeks, i ran head-on to the thought of acceptance. almost immediately I got over the butt-headed response she gave.

tying together some seemingly random strings

a little while ago, i did a poll about if people feel emotions deeply. 6 answer definitely doesn’t qualify as statistically significant, but the results did not surprise me. 1 person experienced both pick-me-up emotions and bring-me-down emotions deeply, the other 5 people only experienced bring-me-down emotions deeply.

acceptance

recently happenings have reaffirmed some ideas and made clear other ideas. i find to be part of the discovery process called life.

i’ve  been talking about what happened with my sister for some two weeks now. some may say, “get over it.”, or “move on.” to which i say i haven’t reached a point where i can move on. and why not?

i feel emotions deeply. with what happened with my sister, others may feel mad or or upset; i feel infuriated. i mask it well from the years and years of living in the household in which i grew up. feelings were not allowed. not being allowed to feel emotions lead to them being stuffed or masked. that process also hinders the recovery process; it’s harder to recover from a elusive beast that keeps hiding. to top in off, the emotions are directed towards a member of my dysfunctional family. that makes it even harder to express emotions to her because of a familial patterns.

i often consider feeling deeply a blessing and a curse. here’s the curse. since i feel emotions so deeply, when i experience them, it creates a deep emotional chasm. the ravine that gets created has great depth and steep walls. the sheer nature of the chasm makes the travel out of it long and laborious. creating great struggles and strains along the way. sometimes it feels like scaling a tall peak where oxygen is rare, causing me to gasp for every breath i take. on the other hand, the recovery from a indentation created by a shallow emotional reaction can be exited effortlessly. the process can happen with little trial or tribulation, like a sunday stroll through the park.

in talking to my therapist the other day, i asked, “how do i recover from this a feeling like infuriation?” i felt more than a little bit disappointed when he answered, “i really don’t know since i only regularly recover from anger and seldom from deeper emotion like infuriation.” growl.

lacking an acceptable answer, my brain went to spinning; what does it take to recover from a deep emotional wound? my first thought went to what support could i use to recover? comfort came to mind. but, let’s face it, comforting is just another way to help someone be accepting of who they are and where they are. and anyone who a spent more than two weeks of reading my posts, i call this an acknowledgement. she shows her supportive head again

what does feeling acknowledged and supported really buy? how does it help? my mind spun again. in a moment of inspiration, it quickly dawned me. the real answer for recovery lay in acceptance.

the acknowledgement says, you find yourself inn a crappy place and that’s ok. and with that the process of acceptance starts. if you can’t at least notice the four ugly walls that surround you. how do you have a chance to make changes. the acknowledgement serves as a reminder of the ugly walls and hopefully creates enough strength for a further journey.

quickly, i realized the key to just about any recovery from emotional wounds can find its roots in acceptance. whether mad or infuriated, acceptance offers one way out.

as an example, i had a friend with whom i worked weekly on bettering our life. this went on for over ten years, doing activities like reading books and working through workbooks. we drifted. eventually, he decided he wasn’t getting out of it what he wanted. our weekly visits ended. i felt sad and disappointed. notice, those two emotions don’t qualify as deep, more shallow. sure, i struggled with the emotional wound of abandonment, feelings of being left alone. but, not being a deep wound, recovery happened relatively quickly.acceptance could easily be reached.

i am thankful for this discovery. the recognition of acceptance as one key to emotions recovery has already paid dividends. the energy surrounding the recent events with my sister has greatly dissipated. the trip out of the emotional chasm has seen significant progress.

life continues to school me. it has again shown me the beneficial nature of acknowledgments. being a student of life, i have also learned that one way to work on the healing of emotional wounds, no matter how deep, can be greatly aided through the process of acceptance. i feel overjoyed to add this tool to my emotional first aid kit. it’s not a cure all, there is still work to be done, but at least i can recognize one more tool to help me heal my emotional wounds.