annyshay draws wisdom from all four elements

[Sciread77]

First of all, I love your challenge in spite of having close to zero knowledge of ATLA. 

 

Sorry to hear about the bad news. It’s understandable if you don’t want to talk about it. 

[annyshay]

2 hours ago, Sciread77 said:

First of all, I love your challenge in spite of having close to zero knowledge of ATLA. 

 

Sorry to hear about the bad news. It’s understandable if you don’t want to talk about it. 

Thanks Sciread, and welcome.

[Emma]

We'll be here when you're ready to talk. And we'll be here if you don't want to talk.

Hugs.

[Tanktimus the Encourager]

1 hour ago, Emma said:

We'll be here when you're ready to talk. And we'll be here if you don't want to talk.

Hugs.

I agree with Emma™

[Elastigirl]

Hugs and praying

[annyshay]

Thursday w1d5

 

Earth - did not walk

Air - rested

Fire - did none of my PT exercises

Water - did not cook

 

Took the day pretty easy after two weeks of being a hostess and the big stuff that happened yesterday. Had some dinner and went to bed early. 

[Mrs Van]

Hi, hi! *waving*

I'm way behind as I've had some internet issues. I'll try to catch up to see how it's going, and pop in whenever I am able to.

[annyshay]

3 hours ago, ElizeElvinFoxRyder said:

Hi, hi! *waving*

I'm way behind as I've had some internet issues. I'll try to catch up to see how it's going, and pop in whenever I am able to.

Glad you're here love!

[annyshay]

Friday w1d6

 

Earth - did not walk

Air - rested

Fire - PT in the morning, I graduated!

Water - did not cook, but got groceries

 

Another kind of blah day after the emotional upheaval mid-week. Went to PT in the morning and found out that I am graduated and don't need to go any more. They gave me exercises to keep working on, but we're doing pretty well. Very exciting. Work was boring, but I tried to get the important things done. Had some notes to do and some meetings. When I got home, I had to run to Walmart to pick up my groceries. Made some dinner. Read some. Went to bed early again.

[Tanktimus the Encourager]

Congrats on graduating PT. I hope the issue stays resolved!

[annyshay]

Saturday w1d7

 

Earth - did not walk

Air - rested

Fire - did some of my PT exercises

Water - did not cook

 

I had a very productive Saturday with doing a lot of cleaning inside my home. Read, meditated, and listened to a bunch of music. Generally had a very good day. 

[annyshay]

Sunday w2d1

 

Earth - did not walk

Air - rested

Fire - did not do my PT exercises

Water - cooked zucchini boats

 

Had another chill day. It's been raining all weekend, which has put a damper on my motivation to go out for walks. Chatted with my friend about my hurt feelings from earlier in the week. I think it was a productive conversation, but we'll see what she does with it. Read, meditated, and generally chilled out quite a bit. 

[annyshay]

So, I think I'm ready to talk about what happened last week. CW - wedding and friend drama.

 

Spoiler

 

One of my best friends is getting married in October, but hasn't come up with final plans for a lot of things. We were chatting about the wedding, and I was helping her decide on a photographer. I need to ask for time off from work, and I'm expecting that I will be involved heavily in the wedding, so I ask if she knows when we're going to be having events. She only tells me about the ones for everyone, nothing about the rehearsal dinner or bachelorette party or anything like that. I ask another casual question about the bridal party. She tells me that I'm not going to be in it. I am devastated. She says something about how she doesn't want any hurt feelings about people not standing up front. I manage to say that it's her wedding, and that I will be there for her whatever she decides. That's the end of the conversation.

 

At the end of work that day, I feel it. I sob for 45 minutes about how she doesn't want me involved in the wedding and we aren't as close as I thought we were. I go from that directly into therapy. By the time I get to therapy. I'm mad. Not like sort of mad. Really really mad. Everything and everybody is bullshit mad. I can't hide it. My therapist tries to convince me that I'm really mad at my mother and that I need to say what I would say to her if I could. That's infuriating in it's own respect. She's not wrong, but it's not helpful in the moment. I realized last night that it was sorta invalidating of my current emotions to say that they were all about something else. 

 

I've since talked with my friend again. I told her how much it hurt to hear that I'm not a bridesmaid. I asked her to be gentle and check in with me if it's ok to talk about the wedding for a while because things are raw. I hope that she can respect that or I worry that our friendship will be over. 

 

I haven't talked with my therapist yet. I'm going to have to write out what I want to say, I think. I hope that the conversation we have can be productive and that I don't need to walk away. We're making good progress, but it hurt to feel invalidated when I was being so vulnerable. 

 

 

Blah. Too many feelings at the end of hosting my mom for two weeks. I'm hoping that I can be more functional today because it's been really hard to get myself to do anything since this all went down. I'm trying to be gentle with myself. We'll see how it all plays out. 

[Emma]

Damn, girl. It is totally okay for you to be angry as fuck about the way you’ve been treated. If you’re giving so much help and not invited to the rehearsal dinner or bachelorette party or to be in the bridal party, she doesn’t deserve your friendship. Sounds like she’s using you as an unpaid event planner. If she truly is your best friend she needs to treat you better.

[Tanktimus the Encourager]

That sucks. Your therapist was out of line.

[annyshay]

Monday w2d2

 

Earth - did not walk

Air - rested

Fire - did not do my PT exercises

Water - ate leftovers

 

Things are slowly getting back to something resembling normal after my mother's visit. I got up early and did my morning routine. Wrote, ate breakfast, and headed in to work between episodes of rain. Spent the morning collecting information and the afternoon seeing patients. Spent a bunch of time chatting with the residents, which was nice. Came home, ate dinner, and fell asleep on the couch. Woke up, did my bedtime routine, and went to bed. 

 

[annyshay]

19 hours ago, Emma said:

Damn, girl. It is totally okay for you to be angry as fuck about the way you’ve been treated. If you’re giving so much help and not invited to the rehearsal dinner or bachelorette party or to be in the bridal party, she doesn’t deserve your friendship. Sounds like she’s using you as an unpaid event planner. If she truly is your best friend she needs to treat you better.

Thanks Emma. I am hoping that she will think about things and find meaningful ways to include me, but it has certainly put a strain on our relationship.

 

16 hours ago, Tanktimus the Encourager said:

That sucks. Your therapist was out of line.

It does suck. 

 

The part about my therapist was so sneaky. If I hadn't thought about it afterwards, I would have assumed as usual that I was the one that was wrong. There's a deep pattern in my life of being told that I am wrong when I have big feelings and of not being heard/seen when I have them. I found myself thinking that I must have been wrong about my feelings and maybe they were all about my mom. Then I realized, wait a minute... this is that pattern again. 

 

So, now I have to figure out how to call my therapist on it. Very much not looking forward to it. 

[Tanktimus the Encourager]

1 hour ago, annyshay said:

The part about my therapist was so sneaky. If I hadn't thought about it afterwards, I would have assumed as usual that I was the one that was wrong. There's a deep pattern in my life of being told that I am wrong when I have big feelings and of not being heard/seen when I have them. I found myself thinking that I must have been wrong about my feelings and maybe they were all about my mom. Then I realized, wait a minute... this is that pattern again. 

 

So, now I have to figure out how to call my therapist on it. Very much not looking forward to it. 

The thought occurs to me that maybe your therapist is good at the EMDR stuff but not so much the non-EMDR parts of therapy, like validating emotions before doing the cognitive part. It sounds like she tried to jump to the cognitive stuff before dealing with the emotions going on. That's not to defend her, but rather validate that she did not take good care of you in that moment.

[annyshay]

1 hour ago, Tanktimus the Encourager said:

The thought occurs to me that maybe your therapist is good at the EMDR stuff but not so much the non-EMDR parts of therapy, like validating emotions before doing the cognitive part. It sounds like she tried to jump to the cognitive stuff before dealing with the emotions going on. That's not to defend her, but rather validate that she did not take good care of you in that moment.

Yeah, I think this is exactly what happened.

[Sciread77]

1.  That absolutely sucks about your friend. One of my best friends didn’t have me in his wedding, and had a a few guys that were jerks to him and his family instead and it hurt a surprisingly large amount. Weddings are fickle things. Little snapshots in time. I’m still friends with him but we haven’t been as close. I don’t blame you a bit for being angry. 
 

2 hours ago, annyshay said:

The part about my therapist was so sneaky. If I hadn't thought about it afterwards, I would have assumed as usual that I was the one that was wrong. There's a deep pattern in my life of being told that I am wrong when I have big feelings and of not being heard/seen when I have them. I found myself thinking that I must have been wrong about my feelings and maybe they were all about my mom. Then I realized, wait a minute... this is that pattern again. 

 

So, now I have to figure out how to call my therapist on it. Very much not looking forward to it. 

1. You definitely should bring it up to your therapist. That’s one place you always expect validation. 
 

Lots of things are magnifiers. I think that’s what a lot of people miss, and it causes invalidation when they do that. Because your emotions here? Absolutely, 100% valid. No question about it. Now, maybe the underlying anger at your mom added to your anger bucket, but it’s a distraction at best at this moment. The way your therapist went about this was not cool at all. 

 

(I mean, what’s the point of working on old simmering emotions and ignoring the hot new ones so they also end up old simmering ones?)

[annyshay]

10 minutes ago, Sciread77 said:

1.  That absolutely sucks about your friend. One of my best friends didn’t have me in his wedding, and had a a few guys that were jerks to him and his family instead and it hurt a surprisingly large amount. Weddings are fickle things. Little snapshots in time. I’m still friends with him but we haven’t been as close. I don’t blame you a bit for being angry.

I'm sorry that you had a similar experience. It blows.

 

11 minutes ago, Sciread77 said:

1. You definitely should bring it up to your therapist. That’s one place you always expect validation. 
 

Lots of things are magnifiers. I think that’s what a lot of people miss, and it causes invalidation when they do that. Because your emotions here? Absolutely, 100% valid. No question about it. Now, maybe the underlying anger at your mom added to your anger bucket, but it’s a distraction at best at this moment. The way your therapist went about this was not cool at all. 

 

(I mean, what’s the point of working on old simmering emotions and ignoring the hot new ones so they also end up old simmering ones?)

Right?! It's not like the old stuff is the only stuff that matters.

[Sciread77]

9 hours ago, annyshay said:

I'm sorry that you had a similar experience. It blows.

 

It does. My heart goes out to anyone experiencing it. I had people I probably shouldn’t have in my wedding party. We had a wedding party of something like 10 or 12 people. 
 

9 hours ago, annyshay said:

 

Right?! It's not like the old stuff is the only stuff that matters.

 

For real. Old stuff might be an influencer, but I don’t think that’s as important to address unless you’re going off on people for picking up the wrong brand of carrots or something else that is small and utterly disproportionate. I think that this is a hurtful thing that sucks. 

[Elastigirl]

Sorry that happened.Proud of how you recognized that the therapist was wrong and also how you were able to communicate your feelings so well with your friend. You are awesome.

[annyshay]

Tuesday w2d3

 

Earth - did not walk

Air - rested

Fire - did not do my PT exercises

Water - ate leftovers

 

Had a really busy day at work yesterday, so I was running around most of the time. I also had to turn around copy edits of my article within a day for the journal that accepted it. Rude. Came home and crashed.

[annyshay]

Wednesday w2d4

 

Earth - did not walk

Air - rested

Fire - did my PT exercises

Water - did not cook

 

Morning went well, and I had plenty of time to work through my morning routine. Headed in to work and spent a bit of time getting ready for the day before launching into the hospital. Saw patients, made plans, etc etc. Had a very busy night with therapy, a call with my health coach, and then gaming for two hours with friends. Crashed into bed.