no clever titles today just a brain dump
A page in the diary ""
Written by keller 8. Feb 2008 03:39 PM
I am really distressed about how this DBT group is making me think well no…feel.
Last week we started on emotional regulation and I don’t get it I just fluster around with the activities and the information but it’s like they are talking another language. When I participate (and it is never by choice) I find that I am unable to find the words to say what it is, what I feel and the extent to which I feel certain emotions.
I just feel really scared now, I am noticing my anxiety so much and survived the last week after the group but was so anxious going there this week that I was almost sick….this is not me, I am not an anxious person. My sleep is disturbed, I find I am sitting for hours and doing nothing not even thinking just like in a void.
I found at a meeting last night that I was completely unable to be in the moment, but it wasn’t like I was distracted by my own thinking again it was just a numbness.
Things at home are going reasonably well. I tried to tell hubby about the group and managed to talk for quite a while about what it was and this must be a good thing. He told me I have been more withdrawn over the last few weeks and this upset me because I am trying really hard to be connected with him and the boys, I am measuring my own interpretation of it every day, maybe what is happening is my perspective has shifted. .
I guess I am putting things in place, I feel stronger than I have before in terms of my own resolve but these levels of panic and anxiet seem high, too high given the meds I am taking.
Whilst I was listening to some music and thrashing out notes for my son to play on his sax a memory from yesterdays group has come back to …it was in the morning session and the story turned to how parents treated us as kids, and one of the group members was talking about being held/cuddles. And then we started talking about the need for this, I threw in attachment theory to the mix and one of the therapist expanded on this. But…..what went through my own head that I didn’t share was that I can not remember being held or cuddled. Obviously this has changed in my adult life and hubby is very affectionate towards me, and we have friends who are big huggers and I try I really do but it always feels not quite right. I have to remind myself each and everyday because it is not quite natural anymore. But I have awareness and I am taking action.
I also thought that it is highly likely that the lack of attachment may apply to me. I was in hospital for the first 8 weeks of my life and then I was not bottle or breast fed but was fed via a tube (due to my cleft pallate and other structural mouth swalling things). I have a photo of me at 6 months with this happening, and I am lying on a bed or floor or whatever with the tube and a drip bottle or bag being fed in. I wonder if I had a lack of attachment …guess it seems likely doesn’t it. I don’t have many photos of me as a kid and neither do my brother or sister.
My brother and sisteer and I do not hug each other its often a peck on the cheek, yet I have always felt some closeness to them particularly my brother.
I am just trying to understand all this information that is swirling in my head when it is, and its not as it was before its more I can contain it.
Now it’s the anxiety. I don’t like to be scard no one does. I am scared of the group and I am scared at thought of seeing the psych but I don’t know what this is about. I feel that I have given my psych an enormous amount of my trust, proably still not wholly but none the less a lot and want to be constructive when I go and see her but…I feel quite terrified. I want the sessions to be working well and I want to feel right and live a life worth living. Through my own endevours, her guidance and the DBT group. And I sort of think it will get there. But I am so scared now.
I cant make sense of these feeling I try and observe and describe but I cant get past the stomach ache/emptiness and chest pounding and teeth clenching, but its so uncomfortable.
I don’t know the purpose of this note, it just is what it is. And I know there are no magic cures just keep doing what I am doing. Maybe I just wanted to whinge that it is really hard and at times I want to stop it all, but I don’t sensible Liz comes in and says no just get on with it.