blogging my crazy: 2

I have been (unintentionally) rather quiet about my recent visit to Iman and, as the next one is tomorrow, this is a quickish summary.

I spent a fair bit of time in the session chatting in a meandering way about various things: about how a single small incident or thought can make me worry disproportionately – and then I brood and brood (and generally harsh on myself) and end up in a terribly unhappy state; about how I feel everything has to be ordered and perfect, otherwise I am a worthless and bad person (for that special bit of craziness I hold my dead-to-me mother solely responsible) and generally about me being a hyper-perfectionist. I expressed my extreme frustration that intellectually I know these things are completely ridiculous, but emotionally I just can’t seem to stop the deluge of negative thoughts.

We talked about how my internal (and external!) dialogue is super-negative and judgey and how I might stop myself going into these awful downward spirals (as opposed the awesome downward spiral).

At the end of the session, I got some photocopies of 23 year old exercises about mindfulness and self-talk to read (hopefully not do, because I haven’t done them) and three homework tasks(!).

Task 1: I must leave a corner of my work desk disordered
Task 2: I must not rush into the kitchen and tidy up after the babies tidy up after dinner
Task 3: I must let some housework slide

Then I had to sit with the discomfort and emotions, which was … discomforting (but not quite so hellish as I had anticipated). Although I did have to kind of organise the workspace into slightly less disorder, as I couldn’t find anything I needed – so to compensate, I put my stationery in disorganised places.

I also was tasked with improving my self-talk – which has actually been not too difficult and quite pleasant.

So, I’ve had a quite mentally healthy two weeks. Worrying things did happen and my thoughts did not devolve into the whole “you are a bad person” thing. Yay!

What has really made a difference (apart from the above) is seeing quite dreadful things happen to various people on the periphery of my life, ranging from the nightmare-ish to the depressing – which sounds a bit deranged and evil, but it is more of a “Fuck, life is so fleeting and short, why the hell am I wasting my energies thinking so badly of myself?”.

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4 thoughts on “blogging my crazy: 2

  1. I am so impressed, you've been brave to confront everything – I hope you know how awesome you are!
    Do you want a kitty? the kitty I catnapped (did I tell you about that??) 2.5 years ago just had 5 babies last night .. she got outside for all of 3 minutes at a Very Bad Time and got herself knocked up .. we are so vigilant with our cats and the doors, this is insane! We actually ha no clue she was With Kitten(s) until a couple of weeks ago when her tummy ballooned and she grew Udders.

  2. I do indeed remember the catnapped kitty!

    Oh goodness! I would love a kitty or three, if only Don weren't terribly allergic (and if the real estate agent would let us).

    Can you put them in an express post bag? Perhaps I can say that I “found” them.

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