Day 5 Activities Enjoyed and Past Experience Journaling

Today the focus was on journaling about one of the past experiences on the TMS list form. I sat down thinking maybe I could "try" to write about something for at least 5 of the 15-20 recommended and then ended up writing about it for over 20! It was something I'd stored deep inside because it was so traumatic from teenage years, that I didn't even really realize it was in there. The journaling was a good opportunity to really look and see how F'd up the experience was and there is still a lot in there, but it was certainly interesting that the way the situation made me feel then is very similar to how I feel now at this point in my life. Helpful to see it all and the patterns of fear and such and turn the spotlight on to what is doing rather than it being left continually to run in the background shadow for so long!

And, the other prompt to "ponder" today was to think about activities I enjoy doing.
This... this is an interesting one, because all of the things I used to enjoy don't seem to interest me in the same way or they somehow feel tainted by the fact that I was doing some of these things when the storm of symptoms came in. So, they somehow got entangled in that and I suppose conditioned response to not want to do them. Even my specific meditation practice (which I had done daily for years), feels like it got immeshed in a way that there is a response that is very visceral -- actually kind of fascinating to observe, but also means for time maybe exploring some new forms of mindfulness or at least a different way of approaching calming nervous system (eg. maybe going to a different space to try to meditate) might be best. I think somehow with meditation, my mind is like, "look what happened when you relaxed last time and were not on guard..." or something like that! Of course, it's just another trick it's playing to keep things "safe," but knowing that and feeling it... well, maybe that will just take more experiences to show it.

I do still very much enjoy connecting with others and I realize that symptoms have kept me from doing that for so many reasons. I definitely look forward to continuing to find ways to do that. I will keep taking steps to do that every day EVEN with the symptoms on board.

Another thing that occurs to me in regard to this prompt is that I do still love discovering things - fascinating information, lost wisdom, extraordinary capabilities - all of that and such! And, maybe this is a great way to view some of this work, from the standpoint of discovery!

Onward I gooooo.

 

Thanks @JanAtheCPA!

This is such a great reminder for my brain. I've survived 100% of the worst days yet!