Me too, Yaku...glad to hear you are trying to get grounded and take care of yourself. I love the playdough idea, or even slime...have you ever made slime with your kids you watch? It's fun and easy... here's a link to a webiste that has some great recipes for this stuff, most of it you can find around the house, if not, not worries it is just an idea..

http://www.easy-kids-recipes.c...y-dough-recipes.html

Or you could do finger painting with them...just get good and messy! You can make finger paints with cornstarch h20 and food color...

((((Yaku, I hear you desperately needing connection...it is so hard to be home alone with the kids all day with no other adults around- and especially when we feel like we are needing someone to talk to us and take care of *us.* It's really painful, and you are doing a great job handling this difficult place. hang in there and keep posting here to get you through it, in between times.

hugs,

BB

I made them lunch, ate with them, then we played with stickers, as Boo is recently obsessed with cowboy/cowgirl stuff (I'm not sure where it came from) and received a bunch of cowboy stickers the other day. Now, they have run off to do their own thing again. It will be OK. I am feeling a little bit better, thanks. I'm not scared anymore, but just kind of fuzzy.

Yaku, that wave of terror sounds a lot like what I experience a lot in therapy. It's definitely from the past and has only been accompanied by images a couple times so it leaves me wondering where the heck it's coming from. I'm really sorry you are experiencing that...it's not fun at all and very bewildering. ((((((Yaku))))))

(((kashley))) Thanks. Have had another memory surface very suddenly today, which although not directly related in the way I would have thought, shows how intensely something small like feeling "wrong" can translate into my "little" mind that I am very bad and going to be hurt for it. If this particular memory is what was making me so freaked out, I'm feeling pretty lame, though.

Yaku,

Keep in mind that what seems HUGE to a small child might not seem that big to an adult because we have life experience and a more developed mind to rationalize and understand more.

I've had that vague terror that you describe, but didn't know what it meant or why. I've learned to not ask why because I often find out that I really didn't want to know. For me, those feelings are usually leaking through from other parts and then I later get more info. It can be really scary and hard to deal with in the meantime.

OK, well, it's pretty lame still.

Basically, I was around three-years-old, I think. We went down to Southern California to visit Disneyland, Universal, etc. At Universal, I got to go in the "Knight Rider" car and talk to it. It asked me a bunch of questions, including where I lived. I said the city where I lived at the time. It asked if that city was near San Francisco. I froze, because I thought it was, but I wasn't sure, so I said, "I don't know." When I got out, my dad and my grandma (his mom, the one I was very attached to) scolded me for it, "You know that! We go to the museum in San Francisco all the time. Why did you say you didn't know?" It was like they were ashamed of me for getting it wrong or something. I feel like...I was embarrassed and ashamed for being wrong and I felt so stupid and hated myself for it.

Now, Boo will be three in September, so as a parent, I'm like, "WTF?! You expected that of your kid and made her feel bad she didn't know?" However, this is the same kid who understood the irony of tricking my mom by pretending like I thought she was being literal by singing "Hit Me with Your Best Shot" (she's a pianist) and whacked her with a belt, thinking she would see me as "clever" for pretending like that's what she really meant. I pretty regularly got mistaken for kids at least two years older, because I was bigger and advanced. I was reading at three, reading in Spanish by five, pronunciation only, no meaning. So, yeah, I guess I should have known. I'm thinking my feeling "wrong" yesterday was just very triggering in this way, but it feels stupid that I got THAT terrified about it. I have other of memories where being wrong about something little made me pretty much hate my existence, even at a very young age 3-12). So, I guess there must have been some sort of pattern reinforcing my having to be perfect to be accepted. Well...at least it got me into Stanford. <----- Avoidance through humor.