Hello, I am a daily reader and extremely rare poster. Just wanted to respond about the desire to be taken care of. I longed for someone to take care of me all of my life and boy was I let down in that department! I learned after a few years of therapy that I need to take care of me. Family, holidays, just life in general can be overwhelming and if I allow it, all of these things will suck the life right out of me.I am thankful that I am now able to set boundaries without guilt. I am thankful that I have learned to be kind to myself and do stuff that is relaxing and enjoyable to me. This makes me a better person to me amd others. I would encourage you all to keep snuggling up with a good book and anything else that makes you smile and brings peace to your life. The wisdom and encouragement I get from lurking this site is one of my greatest treasures.

Hi Summer, hi Tuesdays - thanks for your responses.

I am struggling at the moment, doing lots of rallying and then plummeting, rallying then plummeting. I've been thinking about this urge to be looked after and about my last session with my T. I think it's partly the desire for someone else to take over that gets me into this really resistant frame of mind sometimes - I don't want to do the work, I want HER to do it and to give me a chance to stop trying, to be a kid (or maybe more specifically, a brat!).

Plus anger... she keeps pointing out my anger to me but I scoot away from it, because I guess I don't trust her with it - I don't believe she would really be able to help me with the full force of it or to change anything, so what is the point in going there? I don't want to be left hyper-aware of it and having to deal with it myself, it's too scary. Yet I think I've been acting out anger in some ways through my resistance - not looking at her, shifting the topic around, not responding to certain things, not telling her stuff that I know to be true and relevant.

But I hate how I felt coming away from that appointment after doing all that, how isolating it feels not to have connected, when I have glimmers of how good it feels when we do connect. And I'm so sick of how stuck I feel in my life. I want to work WITH her... I want to move things forward as fast as I can, I want to let her in so I can at least find out if she can help me or not.

It feels really challenging to do this at the moment because it seems like we have 'battles' open on several fronts - grief stuff, anger stuff, work stuff, father stuff, me & her stuff - and I'm at this place of resistance & can't-go-further with ALL of them!

Well, I'm going to try. I'm going to do my homework, and try to trust that she can guide me through the confusion of dealing with all this stuff at once. Trying has to at least be better than the head in the sand, right?

take care, all. sorry for the giant rave - it just helps a lot to be able to share it.

Jones

P.S. Summer, I'm really sorry about your friend and your own loss at this time of year. I am practicing staying with my own panic about my sick friend, trying to find a calm place in it so that I can share that with her when we connect. I hope you can find that place too.

Tuesday, it's really nice to hear that you have got to the place where you can be kind to yourself and set boundaries freely. It's REALLY encouraging.

Thank you so much, HB. Your message has been a great comfort. For me that confusion occurs as seven-feelings-at-once, and I have lots of trouble staying with them - I flick through them like file cards and veer from being overwhelmed to feeling nothing, on or off. It's hard to slow down and be where I'm at.

The thought that now someone else is beside me to help me do the slowing down is really special.

Thanks for hearing what I'm saying about the anger, it feels so potent and I'm getting the sense that the anger itself doesn't want to be dispersed or diminished - it just wants to hold court and RAGE! Uh, time for more laps at the pool, I think.

Summer, the advice about not procrastinating is timely and encouraging. At the moment I feel resolved to go in there this week with everything I can and give myself to the process. As your experience points out, we don't necessarily have time to draw everything out...

take care.

J

ugh, I'm not doing so well...

I don't understand how I can be going along just fine, making progress with stuff, feeling great about where I'm at, and then within a couple of hours I can fall into the black hole.

Right now everything feels terrible, I can't stand myself and my failures and limitations and my situation in life. And everything I look at goes bad... this morning I was really looking forward to seeing my T on Thursday and then suddenly I think of everything she's said in a different light, all wrong, I feel angry, don't want to share anything with her.

I've just caused a terrible argument with my husband and now we both feel horrible. And the worst part is I can feel myself start to come up again, was I really angry about those things or just taking it out on him? I know I was hating myself violently before I started to feel angry at him, but I also feel desperate that the sources of my anger and the things I was trying to say were real, valid....

Exhausted now.... I know I will just put one foot in front of the other and start to feel okay again, but how can it just sneak up and smack me like that?

Blah, yucky.

J

Hiya Jones. I think the Depression Ninja has attacked you. Stupid ninja.

I'm so sorry- the coming and going and ups and downs of this crap is really frustrating. And often, the ones closest to us catch the wrath of our changing emotions. I know what you mean about genuinely being bothered by something a loved one does- and having a real issue- but addressing it in the heat of the moment or when you're overreacting to something else... Kinda like bringing something up while you're experiencing PMS doesn't negate that there is a REAL issue... it just so happens that you're a little more irritable than normal!

Anyway, I hope the one foot in front of the other method is working out okay... it's often all I can muster. And I often feel resentful when I start to feel better because the emotions of feeling crappy were so intense and I almost WANT to be pissed of. I have no idea why this happens and have no real advice for you... I just wanted to validate your experience and hope that you don't feel alone.

How are you feeling now? Have the waves subsided at all? I hope things are a little smoother, and if not, I hope you come here to write about it.

-CT

Hi CT, thanks for the really nice message.

I do so many extreme swings in a week & it wears me out. I guess they are not so extreme on the grand scale of things, I can still get up, work, and so on but for me when the anxiety kicks in everything feels so total. I make myself keep going but inside I'm just racing and racing. Then when we fight I get these flashes of really violent images in my head, not memories, just images, and that scares me.

One of the things I find hard about the mood swings is the sense that the different states feel so disconnected and senseless. But I had a good session with my T today where I was able to talk about all the swings in the week and connect them together! Like, in a narrative and everything!

I'm always scared and a bit angry before my sessions because it feels like there is TOO much to get through and we'll never cover it. But my T is amazing at managing all the stuff and touching all the bases.... I feel lucky.

Thanks again. Hope you are going okay with the very difficult end of year, I know you said it is rough for you.

Take care,
Jones