Hello again lovely travelers,

You all are such voice of support. I thought about posting this for a couple of days, and now I'm just going to charge ahead.

I'm having a good week. Like, weird, eerie good. At the start of therapy, I hit this weird 3 week cycle where the first week I had 1 good day, then next week 2, then next week 3 days together. But since then I haven't been able (or lucky enough, if it's not in my control) to have a string of good days put back to back.

A good day, for me, is that I feel less anxious, I feel less needy/afraid of the DW, I'm not swinging between needy/avoidant, I feel... steadier, I feel safer. Instead of spending most of my day worried, anxious, and panicky, with seconds of feeling "wait, I'm ok", it's the other way around. Feeling mostly in my adult headspace, with flashes of feeling worried, but a pretty easy return to solid ground. I'm not burying the scared feelings, they just kinda flash, and then recede, and I feel okay.

It's totally typical that I have a good Monday. It's a palpable difference. Both I and the DW can feel it. I think the weekends, with lots of family time and few distractions, are rough for me and I end up doing lots of processing with the DW. Lots of crying, lots of talking, lots of internal and couple's work, I guess. Then Monday, we get back to real life, I'm benefitting from being more distracted, as well as riding the day with more energy from the resting weekend and lots of my "stuff" has been "cleared through."

But usually, by Friday, I start to kinda fall apart. I'm more agitated, I start to gear up for the weekend and feeling a bit more avoidant (like, "don't look at me, don't see that I'm upset"). I'm exhausted, etc.

So this past Monday, I had a good Monday. But it just sorta went all week long. I had a good week, and then a good Friday (strange). I had a good weekend (very strange). And now we're back to Monday, and I'm still in this rather.. solid place.

And I'm totally obsessing about it. What am I doing right? Or wrong? What if I'm dissociating? What if I'm avoidant? What if I'm numbing?? How would I know?

I have to say that we just got back from vacation, which might be functioning as one really long weekend. I got lots of rest, lots of help with the kids, and we did lots of processing. Maybe this is the afterglow?

I don't know. I can feel very easily that I'm sad (it's usually that I feel anxious, and if I process down, I get to the sadness). And I'm attending to the sadness, tuning towards it, writing and crying if I need to. I'm not scared to talk to the DW (which is what avoidant would usually look like). I can feel feelings rolling around inside, pretty typical. It doesn't feel like dissociated (when I feel like a zombie, off line, mouth kinda slack and glazey eyes).

But there are lots of things going on this week that should be freaking me the f* out. I should be feeling all those trauma/panic deep down feelings that usually wash over me in a really scary way. And instead, I'm kinda crying about things, talking about things, but it doesn't feel as deeply painful, these things aren't making me feel unsafe. It feels more surfacey, more in control, like... like what I'm having are only grown-up girl feelings with little flashes of the kids in there, but not crazy-much.

I'm just worried, I guess. Ha. Worried about how good I feel. Scared it's because of something bad. Scared that I can't control it, don't know how to keep it, don't know when it's going to end and I'm going to be back to those terrible feelings of the last 7 months.

It feels like a switch has been flipped. I was terrified, now I'm not. This did happen once before in the last few months - I felt a switch get flipped, a new understanding, I felt much more dialed-down, and it did stick, with some temporary "steps back" or re-surfacing of the old feelings. But I had what T talks about - such strong body/mind memories of having felt so much better that those little steps back didn't freak me out - I knew they weren't true, weren't permanent. I knew the more solid feeling would come back, and it did.

Am I making any sense at all? Why am I feeling so... stable? So safe? I don't know, I feel..weird.