These last few weeks I\u2019ve been feeling much better.\u00a0 It started with the work with the inner baby and 5-yr-old described in the last post.\u00a0 I feel like I\u2019ve come over a threshold, I feel solid and real and confident.\u00a0 I feel like I\u2019ve been climbing a cliff my whole life, with occasional rests on ledges when I thought I was \u201call better now\u201d, and then on the cliff again when triggered.\u00a0 Now I feel like I\u2019ve gotten to the top, I can walk easily on flat ground and survey the territory.\u00a0 The feeling of strength is quite new, I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever felt strong in quite this way.\u00a0 I don\u2019t feel rigid or armored, I feel flexible.\u00a0 I\u2019ve been fascinated by the flocks of birds that come to the seed on my patio.\u00a0 Something will startle them and a whole group will take flight, moving together fluidly, not rigidly like soldiers on parade.\u00a0 The flock is flexible, it can expand or contract, divide to go around something, perform a tilting turn to the right, land in a tree one by one.\u00a0 I feel like the pieces of me are able to move that coherently now.\u00a0 I\u2019m not always working to hold myself together with tension in my muscles, but can relax, knowing I will stay together.\u00a0 I know that this is the gift of Somatic Experiencing, the ability to be with ALL the pieces, even the ones in terrible pain, to welcome them all into the \u201ccommittee\u201d of me, and not to ask that they change.<\/p>\n
Sometimes you don\u2019t know what you don\u2019t have until you get it.\u00a0 One of the first gifts to me of Somatic Experiencing was the sense of a \u201cfloor\u201d under me, such that if I fell apart, the pieces are caught as in a safety net, the ones on the edge don\u2019t drop into outer darkness.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t know that I was afraid of losing parts of myself, until I became aware that they would be caught.\u00a0 Most of my life I\u2019ve been struggling along, trying to survive and desperately wanting to be out of the pain.\u00a0 I had no idea of what \u201chealth\u201d would feel like.\u00a0 Maybe it would be like a time when I felt confident, or when I felt happy.\u00a0 When I finally got on anti-depressant medication, after several months of building up the dose gradually, I arrived at normal brain chemistry and was completely surprised.\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t remember EVER having felt that way.\u00a0 I also discovered that life was so much EASIER.\u00a0 Being depressed is like carrying an invisible 500 pounds.\u00a0 Nobody knows it\u2019s there and they wonder why you can\u2019t keep up.\u00a0 Maybe you are lazy or don\u2019t really want to.\u00a0 You start to believe these invalidating messages because you can\u2019t see what\u2019s really slowing you down.<\/p>\n
Yet another gift of the trauma work was beginning to reach out to people, make friends, ask for help. When I first got on medication I was surprised to see how easily I could be friendly with the girl at the check-out or the guy at the car wash.\u00a0 I became aware that when I was depressed, I felt like a dark cloud and didn\u2019t want to inflict myself on anyone.\u00a0 When I\u2019m depressed or terrified it\u2019s painful to be with people in any kind of ordinary activity.\u00a0 It just hurts worse to see people having a good time when you can\u2019t.\u00a0 I would feel better when I was by myself and didn\u2019t have to keep up a front.\u00a0 Recently that has changed radically.\u00a0 In the last year or so I\u2019ve been fine being with ordinary people doing ordinary things, and gotten depressed again when they go away.\u00a0 NOW I\u2019m comfortable either way.\u00a0 I hope it stays like this but if it changes I have lots of ways to deal with it.<\/p>\n
One of the things that\u2019s helped this transition has been creating a small group of support. During the last few years, when I realized I needed more help just to keep going, I asked some people I knew if they would be willing to come have cups of tea, and\/or walk the dog, and when they were willing to do that I asked if they would be willing to listen to me read about grief and depression.\u00a0 When they were willing to witness me that way I began to feel much more safe with them.\u00a0 Too often people I think of as friends have said very hurtful things if I speak of being depressed or terrified, and I\u2019ve learned to be very cautious.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
These last few weeks I\u2019ve been feeling much better.\u00a0 It started with the work with the inner baby and 5-yr-old described in the last post.\u00a0 I feel like I\u2019ve come over a threshold, I feel solid and real and confident.\u00a0 … Continue reading