by Juno » Mon Jul 26, 2004 7:35 pm
Hi Kathleen
Thank you! Means a lot ...!
Hi Witchqueen
I think it's kind of like this. For me, now med-free and feeling better, I have to change my thinking - to survive. Literally. To survive in the short-term, the medium term and the long-term. I can "feel" how easy it would be to slip back into depression thinking styles because, for me, they've been a lifetime habit. And for the vast majority of my life, I thought those thinking styles were OK, because I know I am a kind, caring person with good integrity.
Reading the Learning Path was a real eye-opener. It really started me thinking. I have to say, though, that it came at a great time for me. I was very "ready" to read it and "get" all that it was saying. It answered just so many questions for me - questions no-one else (professional) had ever been able to answer for me.
However, I wondered if I would have been able to "get" it, if I had still been in the darkest depths. I'm not sure. Maybe. There's a thought that I like a lot, about information falling on fertile ears - that is, when we're ready to hear it.
I do intend to see a psychologist (I've actually got some minor surgery coming up - minor in that it is removal of small suspicious skin things, but kind of major in that they will be tested for melanoma, my second six-monthly check after two malignant melanomas last year. That's happening on Monday, some recovery, hopefully not more surgery to follow!) in the near future but I realise I have to change my thinking right now. I have to start as I mean to go on.
Writing to you, Witchqueen, has helped me to clarify my thoughts. I want so much to help you and in trying to do so, it has really helped me.
In the short-term, I honestly think it's worth looking at other people. Try and think of someone you admire - the way they live their life, their levels of happiness etc. I found myself doing that yesterday. Thought of a lot of people I've known like that. And you know what? They had one glaring thing in common - they don't CARE as much as I do. They are caring people, but only to a point. A healthy point, I suspect. If they make a mistake, they fix it and move on. If they offend someone, they might apologise (or not) and not worry about it. If they have a bad day, they have a bad day - it's not the beginning of the end for them. If they get angry, they don't tie themselves up in knots with guilt. And they say what they think. They don't worry, they never over-analyse - but they're not really superficial either.
So I'm going to use the thought of those people as my role models. Just like the theory of role models is supposed to work, I'm going to emulate the way those people are, until I get the hang of it myself. And I'm going to remember that we only ever practise, we never get it perfect. It's taken me my whole life to admit that I was wrong in my thinking - I thought being deep and meaningful, caring to the point of destruction for myself, always looking out for others etc was the right way to be. And it's not.
Witchqueen - re how do you stop or cope with those feelings - how do you deal with them, what do you do with them etc. For the past seven nightmare years (and probably before) I thought that if I didn't constantly review the feelings and think about them and try to deal with them (which I couldn't, kept just going in the same angry or overwhelmingly sad circles, which always led to "what's the point, I'd rather be dead") then I somehow wasn't taking it seriously, I wasn't working hard enough to fix things, I wasn't being responsible enough. I also thought that if I managed to push them away then I might be "in denial" and they'd just come back to bite me later.
Now, every single thought and feeling that I had is still there in its negative form. Because they're memories. They're grooves of well-established patterns. But I don't have to travel those grooves anymore. I can make new ones. I AM making new ones. And the more I practise the new ones, the deeper those new grooves will become.
Witchqueen, you mention "digging up all sorts of thoughts from my past that I thought were long gone". Maybe you could try to accept that they are just memories - not actually relevant thoughts in the present time. You had moved on from them - it makes sense to believe that you still have, it's just the after-effects of the surgery and anaesthetic (which I have heard can take weeks and weeks to fully leave your system) which have literally "stirred" things up.
I don't think you DO deal with them - you just try to stop yourself from the destructive spiral of thinking. A few weeks ago, I was angry about a particular person and situation and found myself going in those mental circles. It was driving me mad, I knew I had to stop it, but didn't know how. I found something - probably in the LP, honestly not sure - but I wrote it down on a piece of paper:
"STOP! These thoughts are not helpful and I have decided to think differently."
I literally carried the piece of paper around with me for a couple of days, read it and repeated it out loud every time the negative spiral thoughts came back. And it worked! I had to literally "shout down" the negative thoughts with what was on the piece of paper, but after a couple of days, they didn't come back. Stopping the negative thoughts and using the words "decided to" gave me back my power. And I was able to figure out a strategy for changing what was bothering me about the situation and the person.
I do hope some of this is helpful. And I'm sure you'll feel better in a few weeks, when the surgery effects have gone.
Juno