Anger.

I have among other things been boosting my recovery & self awareness by attending some counselling sessions which have brought about a wonderful epiphany.

I found it difficult to get into initially; being on the other side of the therapeutic relationship is a hard thing to fathom, but the lady I've seen is skilled & warm & I soon stopped looking out for technique, got myself to trust the process & let myself go.

After the second session I had said a lot of things out loud that I'd only ever said in my head & immediately suppressed, buried & banished away for good. I felt a burden lift. In the third session I was carefully & considerately coaxed into discussing these again. It was difficult. I didn't want to say them once, let alone twice. I'm glad I did.

Since then I have come to realise that my fear of anger has made me bottle up & suppress all of my own anger & rage. This is my epiphany. I haven't allowed myself an outburst for 10 years, or rather I thought I hadn't. I can see & acknowledge now that little bits of it have been shooting out all over the place without me being aware or in control of it.

I fear the damage, judgement, power, strength & force of my anger. I naturally have a long fuse but when it blows it tends to blow big. When I used to let anger out it was only ever when under the influence of booze or pills & powders so it came out wrong anyway. With this realisation I can see that I haven't been able to grieve properly for things I've lost; my beloved Dorian, my job, my health, relationships, clothes (I'm so sentimental about my suits...) I have not allowed myself to experience the anger resulting from their loss so I haven't completed the grieving process.

So now I have a task. I have to learn how to be angry productively & handle it without the altered mental states I used to habitually seek. I have to trust myself enough to know that I'll let the anger out in a constructive way. I have to experience the fear of my own anger & express it anyway. 

Another step. It feels like a big one. Expect rants.

Happyish Newish Yearish...

New year & Christmas always seem to amplify feelings be they joyful or utterly disastrous. Since my last post I have been party to both but some interesting things have been happening around them.

Unpleasantness beyond my control on New Years Day drove me into a panic the like of which I've not had the displeasure of experiencing for months. It's still not satisfactorily resolved but due to some hard work I've been doing over the past year it did not result in a retreat to the bedroom to hide & weep. Instead it created an improvement in communication & planning, learning a way to prevent a similarly disastrous occurrence in the future, hopefully. It has also created a war of attrition in my mind, a constant battle of wills & words between the annoying self defeating talk of the chatterbox & the looking on the brightside, positive, hopeful, calm & loving voice of the higher self. Higher continues to win battles but the war is not over. All of this comes after a day spent on New Years Eve brimming over with positivity, love, creativity & joy. I felt completely in the zone. I experienced a day full of moments of true happiness. So the resolve is to get back up there, deal with the set backs & get another day like that, hell I might even manage a week full of that but it feels far off at the moment. With that aim, I've referred myself back into mental health services to get some more therapy. Reflecting on it now, the signals have been flashing at me for a while. 

Physically, a re-jig of the inhalers has brought about improvements with my breathy sacks & I'm no longer constantly reaching for the ventolin. I went for another chest x-ray... I wonder if this one will reveal any previously hidden causes of my ills. And a new thing started. I have had the most agonising ear pain all through the holidays. I would have thought this impossible due to all the painkillers I'm already chugging down but no... And I have gone completely deaf on one side. Apart from the incessant ringing... One GP could see nothing wrong. The next GP could see nothing wrong because my ears were jammed full with wax & arranged an appointment to have them all cleared out by a nursey with an ear douche. I was looking forward to being all pain free & fully aurally functional again yesterday but the nursey had a look & was pleased to see that I had managed to shift whatever was gumming up my ear holes with the bicarb solution I had been pouring in there frequently. So now it's back to the GP on Monday & strapping a hot water bottle to my head for the weekend as that's the only thing that provides any relief. The most frustrating thing about this is it's really affecting my ability to meditate. I keep trying to get past it but it feels difficult. Listening to guided meditations is frustrating due to my deafness. So rant over. Let it go until Monday...

Superb things that have happened...

I got some lovely books for Christmas.

With the vouchers I'd saved from my birthday & those I got for Christmas I scored a wonderful Skopes waistcoat in the sales & had enough left over for some posh socks too. Abundance!

My giddy day of higher self positivity & joy led to some really lovely interactions with people during the day, some known & some not. A couple I hope will lead to fortuitous things & I need to return some compliments.

I have been  affirming & practicing manifesting which I can see has done some good.

I sold another hand made tie.

I went to a meeting with a lady to get some business advice & she listened to me without once looking at me like I was mad, didn't try to talk me out of it & gave me some really positive tips & advice. She said good things about what I'd done so far & we meet again later this month.

I have started to write down the parts of a story that I've had bouncing around in my head for a long time. It will go along with some of the photographs I've been taking.

I am still here & I am still trying, which is the best thing of all.

And here's a bonus gargoyle that I used to make some experimental birthday cards that turned out really well.

So back to planning, positive thinking, affirming & balancing a hot water bottle on my shoulder while sorting out the laundry.

If you've managed to read this far I wish you a 2014 filled full of dreams come true, successful schemes, plans made good & more abundance & joy than you can cope with.

Jx