This is typical of that summer. I’ve just started taking medication and notice that the fear is reduced, but I’m still feeling depressed. From my journal for September 1, 1996
Slept badly. Woke with hot flash & burning pains at about 1:30… Disappointing after taking 1/2 tablet. On the other hand, the fear is greatly reduced.
It seems harder to pray, but perhaps it’s only that the fear pushed me into it with more urgency. I pray to the Indwelling god of love, to the love in my heart. I pray for help and healing for myself and for Lynelle and for Dana. I hardly know what to pray for. I ask for mercy. I say “into Thy hands.” I say “please being me into alignment with your purpose for me.” I ask to live my life in service to love. I pray to feel the love moving through me. I heard again a voice counseling myself to be gentle with myself.
How does one live as though the energy of love were filling one’s life? How to do this when you don’t feel the love, only emptiness or fear — or what is it I feel now? a sort of thick barrier, like sleepiness or unconsciousness, a kind of inertia that drags at my efforts.
The voice that counsels me to “be gentle with myself” is right on, and addressing the fact that the problem is that early trauma has been triggered. The “kind of inertia” is actually the “freeze” response when one can’t fight or flee.