Today I’m grateful for feeling…
pretty fucking tired. Got to bed on time but woke up multiple times CERTAIN I was going to puke. Like head in the bowl, doing the spitting and heaving, just for the feeling to suddenly vanish. My conviction that I’m having nightmares of memories has found this enforcing, since there’s a link to one of the ways my father would abuse me and having issues with puking/throat feelings. I keep downplaying it and denying my gut feeling, saying it was what I ate for dinner. Which it couldn’t have been, I ate a normal amount of a food I frequently eat like 5 hours before sleeping. But some strong part of my psyche would rather believe it’s something improbable than an abuse that should have been impossible but wasn’t.
like a broken record as I report that I once again overate at a social function. I’m not even polite about it. There’s a limited number of a food, I’ll go in for seconds, thirds anyway, even if it means someone else doesn’t get it the first time. I didn’t used to be like this. Now I judge myself as harshly as I once judged the others who did it! That’s it’s own lesson I suppose. And I feel so embarrassed because it must be obvious at this point to at least some people and that leaves me feeling so exposed and helpless. But then I think: these people are safe, I could just share my struggle and they’d get it. But I can’t seem to make myself go that far, and let myself down again because a couple months ago I WOULD have shared that if appropriate.
Confused and angry that I can’t seem to get a handle on my eating issues. I’m good at forming habits! I’m good at forming them, course correcting, creating new ones and sticking to them. It’s a big hobby of mine, incrementally improving my life through small pattern changes. I’ve gotten myself out of bad behaviors and into good ones plenty of times, why can’t I seem to get even a semblance of a foothold on this one? It snowballs with my childhood feeling of helplessness in the face of my all-encompassing depression. I feel almost betrayed by this skill of mine, impotent, that I can’t get it to extend to something I really need help on.
scared for my future, for my healing. Okay, I was going to flesh this out then caught myself being anxious where I don’t need to be. I am safe, I am doing the work, I can see great evidence of progress and healing. There’s no need to catastrophize. I thank our practice for being able to reverse my thought direction like this.
Feel-good entries:
- getting a tension release after having a great meeting today: all vulnerable, honest shares and a lot of resonating.
- I love my Friday afternoons. I have 4 hours of alone time to fill with SIA work and house cleaning at whatever pace feels right. No rush, and no deadline, no one else’s emotions/desires/presence to derail me from just showing up for my inner work.
- a stripping of shame regarding my controlling behaviors. One of the SIA Inventories today was about powerlessness growing up and how that shows up in your adult life. When I put together all the ways I was powerless over the trauma happening around me, I found immediate forgiveness for my past behaviors of control. Now to figure out how to move forward with a feeling of safety…
- I’m reading a book on EMDR that went into intergenerational trauma and I felt this flood of empathy for my mom and her life. I had an instinct that it might be safe to end my silence with her, or at least more often safe than unsafe. So I called! We had a good, semi-casual chat and decided to call each other every now and then. Here’s to hoping.
- got some CBD gummies for social situations to see if that helps with the binging. It seemed to tonight but that’s just one case.
- having friends over for Phase II of a board game. There’s one more phase left and I look forward to it.
