Dot points: the low coping and fragile version
My world is quite small at the moment, I'm feeling low and fragile. Maybe it's that recurring surge of burnout? And change. So much change going on, I'm unsure which things were keystones but whatever they are I feel that they've been a bit damaged by the year.
* I'm loving my new job, I'm learning so much and I'm doing work that I'm loving and am interested in developing greater skill in. This and the previous contract are so unlike my previous job experiences. I keep being startled to hear myself introduced sounding so... professional and experienced. What I hear doesn't match my internal view (my internal view has a woeful lack of self confidence).
* I'm practising ways of getting around the feelings of being an impostor. Also that I'm still learning this stuff. Also that I'm doing analysis on unknowns - it will all keep looking like a mess until suddenly it won't. I need to take the time to let it all percolate through my brain, I do keep realising things and they're useful.
* I am actually good at this stuff, I just don't have all my tools developed yet, I've had no training and I have so very little confidence, it will take time. I am trying very hard to be gentle on myself.
* I am lonely. It is a particular kind of lonely and I'm doing what I can around it. But oh it sucks horribly. Must remember gentle loving thoughts. Not squashed ugly ant thoughts.
* I'm still doing some healing work from a toxic relationship involving unhooking some nasty patterns. Namely being anxious about being 'too much', 'too intense' or really having any sort of impact at all on the lives of my loved ones, particularly those I'm romantically involved with.
That's so much the antithesis of what I want to do with my life so as to be boggling... but it is there and so painful right now.
* My experience of it is as wanting much more attention than I would usually need, much more reassurance that I am wanted, belong, am thought of (particularly relating to long distance loves). Also a crushing speechlessness that makes it almost impossible for me make myself say words about what I want or need.
* I know it comes from not feeling entitled, not wanting to impose or take up too much space in people's lives. But it also shows that I am feeling declines much more acutely - and I work so hard for there to be space and freedom there, so I feel ashamed that there's less of it available.
* I am not an inexhaustible well of love/energy, though I seem to expect myself to be this and all of the above corresponds to suggesting that really isn't so.
* I am missing studying, but am also so very glad not to be studying this semester. It feels odd in both directions.
* Last night in struggling with Visio and my desire to redesign my process map my mood crashed hard. It stayed that way and I arrived at my usual Friday night haunt feeling quiet, out of sorts and fragile. It made little things feel bigger and harder to deal with. My energy was fraught and not very available to the others, which I feel bad for.
And then there was this morning...
This morning I woke in a panic, I'd had a dream turn into a nightmare and wakefulness had come in hearing K and Cam discussing something - it was just loud and strong enough in tone, that in my distressed state it triggered me as 'yelling / arguing'. I called out for K distressed and confused but he didn't hear me over the dryer/dog/discussion and it took a while for him to come to me, by which time I was a sobbing mess.
They weren't actually yelling or arguing - they were discussing something and there was a difference of opinion, but it was close enough to ping me.
My nightmare started off involving K and a couple of friends, a balcony, and happiness but then it changed from the happy to my witnessing from the balcony with my camera a mini van of police ram into some people, and in trying to take pictures as a witness I almost fell off the balcony... I'm so 'wtf brain?' over this. Horribleness!
The combination means that I'm weepy and my fragility is close to the surface. I'm planning gentle loving company for some of today and taking things as quietly as possible.
To those of you whom I've seemed distant from or unavailable to recently (say, all this year), please accept my sincere apologies. I've had a horrible year, but usually I'm better at making space and time. Know I've thought of you even if I haven't been able to reach out.
The consistently low coping I'm experiencing at the moment means my 'too hard' point for social events is quite low indeed and I'm not going to a lot of group things, plus organising single one-on-one things outside my routine is often falling away to being quietly tucked up in bed with tea instead.
I'm taking care of myself, and still trying hard to take care of others as much as I can, but I am also at times not feeling taken care of, or able to ask for it. I feel very selfish and conflicted.
What hasn't changed is that I do still feel all of the love and friendship and affection. My expression of it has been patchy though, and I'm sorry.
Stuff is shifting and changing, I'm doing the work and being gentle and stern with myself hopefully in the right order in the right situations. But it all feels *hard* and I just don't have the energy or coping to be better at anything right now.
The good thing about the morning is K's caringness and that I have my warm fluffy dressing gown, snuggly kitties and French Earl Grey tea. Soon I will have
prk hugs. I'm concentrating on those right now.
This entry was originally posted at http://transcendancing.dreamwidth.org/820983.html
* I'm loving my new job, I'm learning so much and I'm doing work that I'm loving and am interested in developing greater skill in. This and the previous contract are so unlike my previous job experiences. I keep being startled to hear myself introduced sounding so... professional and experienced. What I hear doesn't match my internal view (my internal view has a woeful lack of self confidence).
* I'm practising ways of getting around the feelings of being an impostor. Also that I'm still learning this stuff. Also that I'm doing analysis on unknowns - it will all keep looking like a mess until suddenly it won't. I need to take the time to let it all percolate through my brain, I do keep realising things and they're useful.
* I am actually good at this stuff, I just don't have all my tools developed yet, I've had no training and I have so very little confidence, it will take time. I am trying very hard to be gentle on myself.
* I am lonely. It is a particular kind of lonely and I'm doing what I can around it. But oh it sucks horribly. Must remember gentle loving thoughts. Not squashed ugly ant thoughts.
* I'm still doing some healing work from a toxic relationship involving unhooking some nasty patterns. Namely being anxious about being 'too much', 'too intense' or really having any sort of impact at all on the lives of my loved ones, particularly those I'm romantically involved with.
That's so much the antithesis of what I want to do with my life so as to be boggling... but it is there and so painful right now.
* My experience of it is as wanting much more attention than I would usually need, much more reassurance that I am wanted, belong, am thought of (particularly relating to long distance loves). Also a crushing speechlessness that makes it almost impossible for me make myself say words about what I want or need.
* I know it comes from not feeling entitled, not wanting to impose or take up too much space in people's lives. But it also shows that I am feeling declines much more acutely - and I work so hard for there to be space and freedom there, so I feel ashamed that there's less of it available.
* I am not an inexhaustible well of love/energy, though I seem to expect myself to be this and all of the above corresponds to suggesting that really isn't so.
* I am missing studying, but am also so very glad not to be studying this semester. It feels odd in both directions.
* Last night in struggling with Visio and my desire to redesign my process map my mood crashed hard. It stayed that way and I arrived at my usual Friday night haunt feeling quiet, out of sorts and fragile. It made little things feel bigger and harder to deal with. My energy was fraught and not very available to the others, which I feel bad for.
And then there was this morning...
This morning I woke in a panic, I'd had a dream turn into a nightmare and wakefulness had come in hearing K and Cam discussing something - it was just loud and strong enough in tone, that in my distressed state it triggered me as 'yelling / arguing'. I called out for K distressed and confused but he didn't hear me over the dryer/dog/discussion and it took a while for him to come to me, by which time I was a sobbing mess.
They weren't actually yelling or arguing - they were discussing something and there was a difference of opinion, but it was close enough to ping me.
My nightmare started off involving K and a couple of friends, a balcony, and happiness but then it changed from the happy to my witnessing from the balcony with my camera a mini van of police ram into some people, and in trying to take pictures as a witness I almost fell off the balcony... I'm so 'wtf brain?' over this. Horribleness!
The combination means that I'm weepy and my fragility is close to the surface. I'm planning gentle loving company for some of today and taking things as quietly as possible.
To those of you whom I've seemed distant from or unavailable to recently (say, all this year), please accept my sincere apologies. I've had a horrible year, but usually I'm better at making space and time. Know I've thought of you even if I haven't been able to reach out.
The consistently low coping I'm experiencing at the moment means my 'too hard' point for social events is quite low indeed and I'm not going to a lot of group things, plus organising single one-on-one things outside my routine is often falling away to being quietly tucked up in bed with tea instead.
I'm taking care of myself, and still trying hard to take care of others as much as I can, but I am also at times not feeling taken care of, or able to ask for it. I feel very selfish and conflicted.
What hasn't changed is that I do still feel all of the love and friendship and affection. My expression of it has been patchy though, and I'm sorry.
Stuff is shifting and changing, I'm doing the work and being gentle and stern with myself hopefully in the right order in the right situations. But it all feels *hard* and I just don't have the energy or coping to be better at anything right now.
The good thing about the morning is K's caringness and that I have my warm fluffy dressing gown, snuggly kitties and French Earl Grey tea. Soon I will have
prk hugs. I'm concentrating on those right now.
This entry was originally posted at http://transcendancing.dreamwidth.org/820983.html