Day 10 Giving Pain a Name

Good Morning (depending on where you are) all!

I am posting my progress report per the day 10 part of the structured education program and honestly had a bit of breakthrough yesterday after reading about becoming indifferent to the pain per Dr. Schubiner.

I realized I was taking the pain itself WAY too seriously and decided to give it a personality that I could "talk" to without censure. I decided on Jay from Jay and Silent Bob movies. Mostly because he is irritating, but lovable and harmless. He doesn't intend to hurt anyone and really just wants to have a good time and distract me from "very serious business."

But that good time comes at my expense, so I just have to tell him (good-naturedly) to "fuck off, Jay. I've got shit to do. You can stick around if you want, but I'm doing something here."

I found out "Jay" gets bored pretty quick and moves on to his next adventure. He'll show up again, but he'll get bored again and leave.

It's goofy as hell, but it's working like a charm.

As far as the "question to ponder" section of day 10 about who I hide emotions from...

Everyone. All the time. I am constantly mistrustful that folks won't want to talk to me or be interested in me if I'm too "dramatic." I hide emotions from my best friends, because I "don't want to ruin their good time." I hide emotions from my husband because I feel like I don't deserve his attention. I hid emotions from my parents because they were puniative when I said anything inconvenient. I hide emotions from a server at a restaurant because I remember what it was like to serve tables and how exhausting people could be and I don't want to contribute to that.

I'm getting over this idea slowly but surely, but sometimes I'm certain that my emotions or the expression of them will really hurt someone so badly they won't be able to recover. Funny huh?

Anywho, thank you so much for reading and the wonderful ongoing support. Y'all have absolutely been pivotal to my massive improvement over the past couple of weeks.