All posts by ginaleepalmer

boredom is teh evil

In writing a comment to another threat it occurred to me that boredom is almost as bad as pain for me. The intensity levels are not the same but the feeling of needing to avoid it is similar.

I know boredom means I am not being distracted and distraction is how I deal with pain (and being uncomfortable). Does my fixation (what I use to avoid what I am really scared of) make boredom = pain? Could this be a relationship similar to anger = strength?

The problem with this idea is anger is something of a negative and you don’t want it but strength is a positive that you don’t want. The theory is if you suppress anger, you are also suppressing a large source of strength. To access that strength you need to embrace the anger and learn to deal with it.

Boredom is a mild negative, pain is a big negative. Part of the growth of a 7 is to embrace pain and learn it is not the end of the world. If a 7 were to embrace the threat of pain then boredom is no longer an issue because it is the tool used to avoid the pain.

Embracing boredom for its own sake would put the 7 in the Now which is something that is on the path for a 7 getting more healthy. But I think that is a tool of allowing the possibility of embracing pain. What else is threatening about the Now?

Boredom and Pain could have a relationship to each other that is similar to the relationship between Anger and Strength but I don’t think it is a good thing to deal with the two pairs in a similar way.

wired backwards – falling asleep

I don’t have a problem with someone falling asleep while I am talking. As long as I know it is happening.

I had a boyfriend that would fall asleep while I was talking at night and start to snore. That let me know it was time to stop talking. I appreciated it. Years after we went our separate ways, I was talking to him on the phone and didn’t hear anything from him after I was done. When I called out his name a few times, he answered like nothing was wrong. He had learned to fall asleep quietly in class and act like nothing had happened. It hurt a lot and really put a dent in my trust of just talking to him.

I think it ties into me only talking when people what to hear what I have to say. If someone is falling asleep on me, that means they are more tired than they are interested in what I am saying and I want to stop talking and let them have their sleep. I really do not want to be telling someone something they aren’t interested in. If they really are interested and their body is just taking over, I will suggest they get some sleep and I will tell them later. If people are bored with what I am saying, my throat closes of the words and I stop having anything to say.

up and down and up and down and up

Keeping track like this is a pain but probably good for me in the long run.

Asleep last night around 7pm (due to sugar) up at 1am and eventually able to do things. I ate cold pizza when I woke up. I was able to clean away more of the bed and put things away. I then covered up and played on the internet for awhile. I think I went asleep again around 7 or 8 in the morning.

I am not sure when I awoke again. I didn’t want to write it out so I didn’t. I had my morning shake. I watched 2.5 episodes of SGU and read a bit and played my solitaire games. I did get a little done on the bed because that is when I changed out of what I was wearing. Maybe this is when I did stuff and not before. Or maybe it was in addition to before. This time was getting the laundry basket put away and the chair mostly cleaned out and hanging a few things up. I went back to sleep sometime thinking about the type of things I have available to do and how they provide very little motivation to getting up. I ended up sleeping heavy and having intense dreams, great movies. I started coming awake around 4 or 5-ish maybe. Refused to even consider it until after 7pm. At 8 I got up, started putting food into me.I am eating voraciously. Coconut/no chocolate very good. Last of the sloppy joes and the good bread. I took my meds. I meant to take them when I had my breakfast shake but forgot (I think).

I might have tried to see what I could get done before I took them and then they got forgotten. I believe everything I did do both times was before I took them.

So I have slept three times in a day and a half. I am now getting up at the time I went to sleep yesterday. I have no desire and no intention of leaving the house but don’t feel quite as downtrodden as other times. I might be able to pop open the other computer and deal with UI. Then again, I have just taken my meds and they haven’t kicked in yet. This is so much fun

Swings

I just went from wanting to do damage to myself to anxiety to mad, defensive, ready to fight to sobbing. All in about 10 minutes time. 5 mins more and I seem to have a veneer of calm (and a cup of eggnog and a chill pill). I firmly dislike this emotional shit.

Better but still working on it

Still hurt but doing better. These emotion thingies are a PTA that I wish I didn’t have to deal with. There is a reason I avoided them most of my life. But it appears to be my next step of growth.

I am still feeling somewhat fragile but opening up a little. I am out of the house and in public. I had a therapy appt this morning, stopped by the East Bay Depot to browse and pick up leather scraps for a project, called a friend at 2 like he asked, drove around to find out that Montclair and Oakland libraries are closed this week due to budget cuts and the Berkeley Library is open (I am at West right now).

At the Depot, I ran into someone from years ago and he asked me how things were going and really wanted to know the real scoop. I tried to sum it up and be honest about it and I ended up shaking when I was done. He gave me a coin of woo and it felt really good to receive that and the hug. This part of my life is currently missing and I don’t know how to make it work right now. It seems that I need to go out and get it over and over and over. I am not secure in myself enough to do that more than a few times. I don’t have a large reserve for the woo side of things and I run out of ooph if I don’t get stuff coming back to me. I know I am welcome but I have to create it every time. That isn’t me.

In some ways I am doing well. In other ways I am not doing well at all. One of the listed fixations of the type 7 is to use rationalization to fool themselves into thinking they are ok. Rationalization and reframing are powerful tools in my hands. I totally use them. I don’t know if I over use them. I don’t know if I am fooling myself or if I have an accurate assessment of how I really am doing. I do know I still have more room to fall. I haven’t even got to the point where I have to give up how far I have gotten yet (i.e. I could sacrifice where I live but I will never get a deal like what I have again. When I get back on my feet, I will be much worse off if I let go of my place now).

Problem solved – meds

As of 3pm I felt much much better. I don’t know if the sleeping again had anything to do with it or if it just allowed me pass the time and experience the change from one state to another instead of gradually suffering.

Thinking it through, the feeling like crap was withdrawal from missing my daily dose of meds. I am kicking myself because when I dissolve down to whimpering, it is usually because I have missed my meds. One of the things that disturbs me is that the timing isn’t right. The pattern is that the withdrawal will hit a day and a half (36 hours) after a missed dose. Meaning that I can miss a day and I have a half day to take the next dose or there is hell to pay. This time it seems that hell arrived when the next dose was due (24 hours). This means that I don’t have any buffer room to get attempt to get back on schedule, I best take my missed dose as soon as I remember. Which would be fine except then I risk missing the next dose because I shouldn’t be taking the meds close together and I have a problem remembering them regularly more than once a day.

Edited to add lj cut due to length

migrane

My feeling of ick turned into a migraine and my sure fire cure didn’t work. Normally all I need to do is sleep and it is gone. I know I slept because I had some intense dreams but the headache became a full migraine. It even showed up in my dreams I have slept and woke three times and it is still here. I feel like I am out of sleeping ability.

If don’t move and don’t have any light, sound, touch, smell, taste and if I don’t think, it almost doesn’t hurt. Other times it is my whole world. And I am so hot. And I have no way to distract myself because I can’t have any sensory input.

*whimper*

Mood better but life sucks majorly!!!

pissy mood vs one delight

I am in a pissy mood today. I was in a pissy mode yesterday. The hard part is I know it is all within me to change my mood and I try, it works for moments and then it goes away.

I know that talking with other people would help. I know that getting up and getting something done would help. I know getting out of the house would help. But right now I don’t like other people. I don’t want to get up or go out. I have strong feelings of motivation to curl up in a ball and hide.

edited to add lj cut due to length

Winter solstice lunar eclipse – Reflections of myself

The eclipse happened/is happening. I got there while the last sliver of the moon was disappearing into the shadow and right now it is getting nearer to coming out. I was outside for an hour and a half.

I tried to follow Starhawk’s advice of letting go of what I want rid of and focusing on what I want to become. Every time I listed off something I wanted to stop doing I would end up on what I wanted it to become. Every time I listed what I wanted to become, I would end up with a bunch of things I needed to get rid of. I kept ending up on the opposite of what I was trying to reach.

Since it was only partly cloudy and the moon was getting more blocked than not, I tried to meditate. Focus on my breathing and on the current moment letting other moments take care of themselves. I didn’t get very far. I did have a clear thought of wanting to stop tossing my anchors away from me and pulling myself along and to stop trying to get others to hold onto my anchors and be able to set my anchors inside myself to provide my own stability. I also want to stop going from a dead stop to full speed to collapse, rinse, repeat. I think there is a good chance that fear has got me buried in place, getting me to dwaddle until I am running late and needing something at full speed to get me moving. I don’t feel this fear, I don’t think I can see it but I am betting I am swallowing it and not letting it rise enough to feel it. I think it is why I collapse when I stop running (in addition to being out of energy), why I keep chewing my fingernails down to nubs (it is getting to the point it is the worst it has ever been) and why I shut down and don’t eat and then gulp my food when I get around to having some, including my candy.

I want that fear to rise and be seen. I want to be able to process it and let it go even if that means feeling it and facing it. Right now I can identify a black jelly bean of aaaahhhnnnnn (anxiousness, angst, quiver, uncomfort, disturbed, ick) inside the cavity of my torso. I don’t know if I am suppose to grow that to fill me thereby feeling the fear and process it or to shrink the black jelly bean stripping stuff off of it and I work my way through the process. Right now, I am aware of it and sort of holding it in place. Focusing on it really makes me jittery.

Feeling that way and noticing the cloud cover was pretty full, I decided that I needed to move around some. I hadn’t really done more than move a little around my apartment for the last three days of collapse so I decided to go for a walk in the neighborhoods. I took a hit of water and some Arizona Ice Tea (so the caffeine would speed my body up to how I already felt) and started off. I walked a chunk around the neighborhood going a way I haven’t gone before, maybe 4 blocks out, three blocks down and back.

I was cold and waiting to warm up which wasn’t happening. An idea on how to deal with the closure of the cape I was wearing (I have pondered on that problem for years) and started to work with it. I found that when I was done working out how it might actually work and what I would have to do, I wasn’t cold anymore. The scarf wasn’t on my head and being held down and I wasn’t holding the cape closed any more. Sometimes I am amazed at how much distraction and working on things in your head can take care of body issues. And I want to stop living in my head all the time for WHY? …. Oh yeah, so I can have connection with others, life can be worth living, and I might be able to get rid of this anxiety.

I got back to my place and the clouds really cleared up so I set up my chair in a corner of the courtyard where I could still see the moon and looked. The limited view of the sky made it look completely clear. I noticed the stars near and around the moon and went inside to get my star finder chart. I am not impressed and after writing this out I plan to look up better diagrams of the sky to place the moons location. It was above Orion and between two other constellations. I used to know them all but that knowledge is very rusty now.

I am going to a Solstice gathering tomorrow. I wish it was tonight and included the eclipse. I would have appreciated having people around and even more having a ritual involved. I do not work well on my own. It is hard for me to focus and narrow things down to one thing. By my nature I find many options and lots of ideas and when I am uncomfortable I bounce from one thing to another. Following others allows me to settle and actually do something rather than undermine myself.

I did get the picture of the black jelly bean as something to work on and the idea to bring my fear forward so I can process it. There are so many things I want for myself but I first must deal with the things that are in the way of those positives manifesting themselves. It is sort of like wanting to be thinner but having the habit of overeating when upset. First comes the disconnect of overeating from being upset and dealing with being upset in a positive way and maybe even reducing the upset. Then the getting thinner can happen. Otherwise you are working against yourself and as you put in more effort, you will meet the matching resistance.

There are parts of me from previous versions I want back. I want back the ability I had to be on time and ok with it. I want back the time when I was able to take care of my fingernails and have them be nice. I want my desire to cook back. I want my dependability back. I want back my ability to be functional. I want back the fun enjoyable version of me but not if I have to sacrifice feeling connected for it. I don’t want to lose the important parts of me that I have built. I want to keep my ability to listen, my ability to apologize without needing to defend myself, my ability to see the point of view of others as clearly as I have learned, to softly confront someone so things can get worked out instead of swallowed, to be able to step aside when others hit me with their defenses and to be understanding rather than defend myself, to be able to deal with things rationally and recognize when I am caught in an emotion, to not get upset as easily as I used to, to not need the massive amounts of information I used to require, to not make others feel like they need to walk on egg shells around me, to live in my body and take pleasure out of ordinary things, to be ok with being hurt and in pain and crying maybe even appreciative of it, to be able to continue to work with my mother and father and have the good relationships with them that I have.

I have learned so much and want to keep it and continue to grow. I want to bring back some positive features that I used to have. I have been working on my foundations tearing them apart so I can build better ones. I feel that I am beginning to weave some structure for the new foundations and am building again. There are still holes that I step in and end up flat on my face, but that is to be expected.

I don’t like being required to do something such as reflect and make goals at a particular time of year like birthdays and New Year’s. It occurred to me tonight that I don’t have to set a time for this sort of thing. I can do it at the Winter Solstice this year, my birthday next, New Year’s some year afterwards, in the summer if the mood strikes me. It would be nice to have something like this in something like a yearly pattern but I don’t have to try and promise myself I will do it at X time or that I will even do it again. Things will be different a year from now and that Gina will decide what she wants to do. It may relate to this Gina, it may go somewhere completely different. We are me and I am Change.