zenLara's journey

[KB Girl]

Covid definitely made my stuff worse, but it did get better again. I’m so glad you recognise that these thoughts are not true, that’s a good sign. Hopefully your physical recovery goes fast, that should help a lot! You getting more sleep these days?

[Lara]

On 6/30/2022 at 10:36 AM, KB Girl said:

Covid definitely made my stuff worse, but it did get better again. I’m so glad you recognise that these thoughts are not true, that’s a good sign. Hopefully your physical recovery goes fast, that should help a lot! You getting more sleep these days?

I hope I'll feel better soon. We're leaving tomorrow, to the pyrenees, and I hope  we'll have a nice time there. At least, it's a change of environment for the better.

Sleep depends. She has nights when she'll sleep 3 or even 4 hours in a row, and wake up only 2 or 3 times, but then she easily gets back into her 1 hour wake-up pattern and it gets harder every time. I hope she'll get better during the summer, because in september I'm going back to work full time and I'm not sure I will be able to handle it if I keep getting 4-5 hours of sleep at night.

 

Thank you guys, for your words, and your time. It always makes me  feel better when I come and pour everything in here, because you always have a nice gesture.

Enjoy your summer!

[Tanktimus the Encourager]

I love the Pyrenees. I hope you enjoy it and get so me rest.

[WhiteGhost]

I hope you had a good trip and that you have started feeling better.

[Endor]

Hola! Covid messed me up bad too, worse than anyone else I know so your shared misery gives me comfort!! Life goes on, at least for us.  Someone I work with  has got pancreatic cancer out of nowhere, few months to live, that's changed my perspective.  

 

I hope you're enjoying (or enjoyed) the Pyrenees. I'm playing catch up as I've been away so long but hope you're doing well  

[Lara]

I’m still a mess.

 

Holidays were a mixed bag. The day we left, our car broke, and we had to pay first a mechanic, then a tow truck, then again a mechanic. We went back home and called a friend to borrow his car. This car caused some trouble too, while we were in France, and I had to spend more money on another garage. My holidays’ budget went through the roof, and I’m still trying to recover from all those expenses.

 

Holidays themselves were quite good, although I was plagued with terrible anxiety for most of the time we were in France.

 

Then we visited my in-laws and it was awful. We spent 12 days there and it was the worst experience ever. They’ve bought a house that is 500 meters away from a cowshed which basically means that the house smells like cowpat, your clothes smell like cowpat, your hair smells like cowpat, and it doesn’t matter how many times you get to shower, you always smell like cowpat. It didn’t help that my FIL was a perfect asshole.

 

Then we spent a month in my appartment in north Spain, and things began to get better. We all calmed down, made time to go outside and walk in the sun, read, write, play some music… When we arrived home in september I was feeling well, stronger from all the yoga I had done, and eager to start therapy and work.

As soon as work began, my scarce free time disappeared, and I started to feel less and less motivated to do things. I was feeling sad because I was doing “nothing”, but at the same time I was so mentally tired I didn’t want to work on anything when I had some free time. I kept repeating myself that doing yoga, eating healthy, practicing my flute, were things that would make me feel better, but I still refused.

 

I talked about this to my new therapist (I’m happy with this one. I had to wait almost 3 months until she had time for me, but it’s worth it because it seems she can help). She asked me if I wasn’t doing all those self-care activities because I didn’t want to or because I just couldn’t. Her advice was to relax and stop telling myself that I had to do any of those things. In her opinion, I want to control too many things in my life, it’s a mechanism I built long ago because I needed it, but now it looks like I’m tired of using effort and willpower to go through my life. For whatever the reasons, those mechanisms that were useful in the past no longer work, and I have to find a way to build trust and let myself just go with the flow. She asked me to trust myself, the process I’m in, my child, everything. She also pointed out that maybe my perpetual tiredness and sadness are symptoms, attitudes or emotions that are protecting me from deeper fears that might pop up if I face what is ahead of me. She said it would be better for me to stop pushing myself and instead take the time to explore those fears and work on them.

 

What doesn’t fit in there is that I can understand having deep fears regarding my career, or my child, or some other aspects of my life, but I don’t know which fears can surface linked to nourishing myself, exercising, or getting out of the house. She says that for some reason, self-care is on standby and we need to find a way to get back into it. But not by forcing myself to do things.

 

It seemed like something I could try, and the result after more than one month is that I’m still not doing any activity, but I’m feeling less stressed and less worried. I also feel like I have no personal life, though. I go to work, take care of Wolvie, go grocery shopping, cook, tidy up, do laundry, start over. It’s been worse recently, because boyfriend caught a stomach bug and then he hurt his back (he is still in pain), so I’ve had zero help for 2 weeks. I sometimes feel like I need to stop and just cry, but I have literally no time for that, since I’m either at work, or with Wolvie, or doing chores (with her around too). I’ve also arrived to this point when I feel so overwhelmed that I don’t even want to eat, and I skip meals until I feel like shit and then binge on carbs.

 

I hadn’t had an hypoglycemia for 12 years, and I had 2 this year. The last one was yesterday. Not very bad, but enough to make me feel like crap. And when I thought “I’d rather take better care of myself”, the immediate answer was “you are not capable of that”.  This is the answer that I get the most whenever I think about doing anything. And at other times of my life when such thoughts have appeared, my reaction has been to prove myself they were wrong thoughts. Now I just accept them and do nothing.

 

On the brightest side, Wolvie has changed a lot through the summer, like it usually happens with toddlers. She runs, jumps, talks, and I really enjoy my time with her. We’ve found out she loves water, so we got her into swimming lessons and she has the greatest time on every class. Her hair still looks like fire, she's the cutest thing 🤩

[Tanktimus the Encourager]

Sorry the first half of the trip was so difficult. Sounds like you struck gold with that therapist, stick with them.

 

I was thinking of you recently. My Father-In-Law, who was stationed in Spain with the air force in the 80s, has decided to do a Spanish Thanksgiving. He bought a paella kit, a Jamon with all the gear to cut it up, and yesterday made a practice run on tortilla Española.

[KB Girl]

On 11/6/2022 at 2:41 PM, Lara said:

On the brightest side, Wolvie has changed a lot through the summer, like it usually happens with toddlers. She runs, jumps, talks, and I really enjoy my time with her. We’ve found out she loves water, so we got her into swimming lessons and she has the greatest time on every class. Her hair still looks like fire, she's the cutest thing 🤩

This sounds really good

Having kids is also really hard though, having really low expectations for yourself the first 2-3 years is perfectly reasonable. And it will get better! I'm very glad this new therapist was worth the wait, sounds like a good one. 

[Lara]

On 11/6/2022 at 3:19 PM, Tanktimus the Encourager said:

I was thinking of you recently. My Father-In-Law, who was stationed in Spain with the air force in the 80s, has decided to do a Spanish Thanksgiving. He bought a paella kit, a Jamon with all the gear to cut it up, and yesterday made a practice run on tortilla Española.

Let me ask you one of the most controversial questions in Spain: the tortilla, with or without onion?

I'm sure you will have the best thanksgiving of your lives! Good cooking!

 

On 11/7/2022 at 9:09 PM, KB Girl said:

Having kids is also really hard though, having really low expectations for yourself the first 2-3 years is perfectly reasonable

At least we're sleeping better. She made a huge change in august. From barely talking to having conversations,  grew a few cm, and began to look less like a baby and more like a child. And right afterwards she began to wake up less and less, and now it is not unusual that she sleeps the whole night or wakes up only once. It seems unbelievable after all we've been through with her sleep. I can't believe I'm back to 7 hours a day.

How are yours going? The older must be 5 now, am I right?

[Tanktimus the Encourager]

He used onion but not enough 

[WhiteGhost]

So glad to hear you finally found a therapist that works for you.  I hope she is able to help you out 

[Lara]

Hey, guys, how is it going? It seems like forever since I've been here.

 

I’ve been making some progress these last months and I'm in a slightly better place.

 

I started therapy in october, and at the same time I began microdosing. Both things have made effect. Therapy has helped me focus on what are my priorities and needs, and explore thoughts and feelings, while microdosing has diminished sadness, anxiety and mental rumination.

 

I had a really dark end of the year, when I had this revelation that my actual problem was that I wanted to die. It came just like that, a strong thought, full of awful and intense emotions. I spent a few weeks trying to go through that. It certainly explained how I was feeling and acting (no self-care, despondency, anhedonia...). After a few days, my adult part took command and said “well, you want to die, you’re tired of fighting with yourself, you’re tired of aching, you’re tired of life, but the truth is that, unless some unlikely accident, death is not going to happen soon, and you have no control over it. So, you better find a way to work through these feelings and make the changes you need”. And I started to feel better. Therapist said I felt better because I had accepted and surrendered to the truth behind all of my problems. So we started to work on the need to rest, to take care of myself, to be self-compassionate, to stop the fighting with my critic side, and allowing myself to do as I wanted or needed instead of forcing me to do things that I didn’t want to do (eat healthy, move, play the flute…).

 

I slowly began to notice changes in my life. Changes that were unintended and in the weirdest areas. Like, I always hated flossing, and one day I just began doing it twice a day. For no reason. Then I began to do some neck and shoulders stretching every morning. Then I stopped eating crap. Just like that, from one day to the other. One day I began doing knee push-ups after my neck stretches. Another day I sat down and planned the whole way towards getting rid of my mortgage in 7-8 years, so I can enjoy more of my money instead of paying debt. Then I began to pay attention to my chronic rhinitis, and stopped eating wheat, which makes it worst. I took up drawing, which calms my anxiety and makes me happy. None of these things was actually in my head or was I planning to do any of them. They just happened. And I began to feel more optimistic about getting better.

 

But. I’m tired. The whole time. And I feel cold. I’ve lost more weight. I weight 8 kg less than before pregnancy (I weigh 44 now, and I’m 164 cm tall, so you can guess how I look). I don’t want to exercise (aside from the stretching/push-up routine). I don’t want to go out. I don’t want to play the flute. My professional life is totally on hold. I don’t even know if I want to be a musician anymore. Some days I miss my old beautiful sound, and I want to invest in a new headjoint or in a suscription to BigGuy’s website. Other days I look at my flute and I just close the case in disgust. I can spend weeks without even blowing a note. I've been also having trouble at work, which doesn't help.

 

I’ve had a full blood test done, given my tiredness is so persistent. Doctor found everything is all right (cholesterol, thyroid, vitamins, iron, everything's fine) and that I should look for a “multifactorial fatigue”. Boyfriend says it’s all lack of movement and strength, since I’m eating and sleeping quite well. But I just don’t want to. All my arguments to exercise are based on fear of illness and aging and not on fun or excitement, so I just can’t.

 

And, well, that's where I am now.

[WhiteGhost]

Hi, so great to see you back and in a better place.   I was thinking about you the other day after I did the guild survey and it brought to mind all of the great folks from the guild I haven't heard from in a while.   

[Lara]

13 hours ago, WhiteGhost said:

Hi, so great to see you back and in a better place.   I was thinking about you the other day after I did the guild survey and it brought to mind all of the great folks from the guild I haven't heard from in a while.   

Hey, how are you doing?

Thank you for passing by and saying hi. It's nice:)

I've been taking a look at who's here and who left, and quite a few people I used to hang out with haven't been here for about a year or more I

I see that you, Tank, KBgirl and Deffie are still here. I'll take a look at your threads to know how have you been.

[Lara]

I've been re-reading some of my old threads. I miss the person I was. How I faced my fears, how combative I was. Now I feel beaten, defeated.

 

There was this one thread that caught my attention. There was this time, back in 2018, when I was feeling down and didn't want to do anything, and I made a small table that contained actions, time, and feelings. For everything I did, I counted the time I devoted to it, and how I felt doing it and afterwards. It gave me a good view of how much me-time I was having (way more than I thought) and the reflection on feelings reinforced the desire to keep going. I think it could be something to try and see, it could help right now.

[WhiteGhost]

I remember that challenge, specifically thinking at the time that it would be great way to meditate and process feelings & emotions.  I have learned a couple of things from @Tanktimus the Encourager that I think bear repeating

 

1. It is ok to feel negative emptions, and trying to avoid them or smother them often leads to bigger problems.  

 

2. you are never beaten until you give up

[Tanktimus the Encourager]

I'm so proud of you for confronting the truth and accepting it.

On 4/15/2023 at 12:36 PM, Lara said:

I slowly began to notice changes in my life. Changes that were unintended and in the weirdest areas. Like, I always hated flossing, and one day I just began doing it twice a day. For no reason. Then I began to do some neck and shoulders stretching every morning. Then I stopped eating crap. Just like that, from one day to the other. One day I began doing knee push-ups after my neck stretches. Another day I sat down and planned the whole way towards getting rid of my mortgage in 7-8 years, so I can enjoy more of my money instead of paying debt. Then I began to pay attention to my chronic rhinitis, and stopped eating wheat, which makes it worst. I took up drawing, which calms my anxiety and makes me happy. None of these things was actually in my head or was I planning to do any of them. They just happened. And I began to feel more optimistic about getting better.

 

This is the fun part of the healing process.

On 4/15/2023 at 12:36 PM, Lara said:

But. I’m tired. The whole time. And I feel cold. I’ve lost more weight. I weight 8 kg less than before pregnancy (I weigh 44 now, and I’m 164 cm tall, so you can guess how I look). I don’t want to exercise (aside from the stretching/push-up routine). I don’t want to go out. I don’t want to play the flute. My professional life is totally on hold. I don’t even know if I want to be a musician anymore. Some days I miss my old beautiful sound, and I want to invest in a new headjoint or in a suscription to BigGuy’s website. Other days I look at my flute and I just close the case in disgust. I can spend weeks without even blowing a note. I've been also having trouble at work, which doesn't help.

This is the hard part. 

Just cause you've started to work through the depression doesn't mean it all goes away at once. It's a slow processes to healing. You're doing good things. 

[Lara]

16 hours ago, WhiteGhost said:

you are never beaten until you give up

The thing is, sometimes I think I have given up. I don't want to make any more efforts, I just want to be left alone and do nothing. My boyfriend has been telling me for months that I do look and act like I've thrown in the towel. Other days are better, but since I always feel so tired, it's like I just drag through my days.

 

13 hours ago, Tanktimus the Encourager said:

I'm so proud of you for confronting the truth and accepting it.

Hey, Tank. Nice to have you here. How nice of you to write a few words, they're always appreciated

It was a weird period. I wasn't suicidal at all, there were no fantasies about "I'll just jump off a cliff" or anything of the sort. It was more like "I've just had enough, I have no strength to keep going, let's just stop". I read about indirect suicide, when people engage in harmful or neglectful behaviours that shorten their life span, and it was clear what I was doing. These are not conscious behaviours, but it's obvious now what was I doing.

 

13 hours ago, Tanktimus the Encourager said:

This is the fun part of the healing process.

I like how these behaviours just pop up, without any need for willpower or conscious decisions. Seems like they come from deep down, from a place where my priorities are far more clear than in my conscious mind. Therapist says this is the important part, because it's not what we do in our lives, but the place we do things from what really counts and what heals us.

 

13 hours ago, Tanktimus the Encourager said:

This is the hard part. 

Just cause you've started to work through the depression doesn't mean it all goes away at once. It's a slow processes to healing.

This is tough to accept. It's not that I want to just be recovered right now, but sometimes I have doubts that maybe I'm not walking the right path.  Or feels like there is no progress at all.

[Lara]

Well, let's give it a try.

I thought of opening a challenge thread, but it felt weird, I don't think I can right now. I couldn't even write an introduction and it seemed a bit too much to keep a thread, so maybe is better for me to stay here for a while.

The last 3 listed items are not activities I'm doing right now, but I'm giving them a thought on how would it feel to add them, not necessarily in a daily basis. I have a strong resistance towards 2 of them, and I simply not feel physically ready for the last one.

 

Monday, april 17

ACTION	TIME	RESISTANCE	FEELINGS AND SENSATIONS
NECK&SHOULDERS	I didn't count, probably 5 or 6 minutes.	Not at all. I just do it without thought.	Happy that I've been doing this for a couple of months now. My neck bothers me less and feels stronger (I don't get headaches when I'm sick and cough).
PUSH-UPS
YOGA	25 minutes	Not much, because I enjoy the feeling I have when it ends.	It was a nice video. I'm working on a totally beginner level. I was a bit impatient at some point, like "when is this going to end", but I love the feeling at the end: my mind is clear and my body in peace and rested.
SKETCH	Didn't count	None. It's fun.	I always have this joyful sensation "look at  what I did!" I don't care if it's a nice sketch or it went "wrong", I enjoy both the process and the result anyway.
WALKING OUTSIDE
MUSIC	5 minutes	A lot. I anticipate negatively, sometimes with reason (it's hard to play on a weak body), sometimes I just pile on on what I've felt before, mainly that it will be tedious.	The whole time I'm playing I think of how bad it sounds and how much physical effort I need to do right now. Frustration, boredom.
MEDITATION
BAR HANG
WH

[Lara]

Tuesday, april 18

ACTION	TIME	RESISTANCE	FEELINGS
NECK&SHOULDERS	Around 7-8 minutes.	None. It's a habit now.	A bit of worry because my right side still bothers me.
PUSH-UPS	A few seconds.	None. I just do them when I finish stretching my neck.	Good. I'm at 5 knee push-ups. I started at 2, had a peak of 8, then went down, but it doesn't bother me because the goal is doing them, not matter how many.
YOGA
SKETCH	15 minutes	No resistance	It's fun. I bought a pentel pocket brush pen and I'd love to learn to use it better.
WALKING OUTSIDE	40 minutes	It felt like my body would appreciate a bit of walking after doing yoga yesterday, so I had this thought and went for it.	I began to chicken out the moment I was on the front door. I thought I coul not do it. The walk itself didn't feel nice. It was windy, not too much, but it annoyed me. My feet hurt with every little stone (I wasn't barefoot, though), the light was too bright, and my overall feeling was "I want to go back home". It seems I'm just not used anymore to be outside. Makes me feel sad.
MUSIC
MEDITATION
BAR HANG
WH

[Lara]

Yesterday was therapy day, meaning all my free/me-time gets invested in it.

We talked about music and it was good. I have been refusing to talk about it, and the few occasions I was willing, my feeling was " why are we even talking about this, if I don't care about it anymore". Yesterday she helped me unravel some of my deep beliefs on this, and while it didn't feel relieving, when I took my flute to work in the afternoon, there was a nice feeling, which is quite a progress given the state I'm currently in regarding this.

Woke up with the thought I wouldn't be able to go through the day, although it wasn't that bad in the end. Today woke up to worse feelings, and just wanted to crawl back in bed. I feel like I need a vacation (I just had 1 week recently, though), that I somehow need everything to stop so I can regain strength, but there seems to be no choice but to keep on going.

[Lara]

Thursday, april 20

ACTION	TIME	RESISTANCE	FEELINGS
NECK&SHOULDERS	7 minutes	None	Nice.
PUSH-UPS	A few seconds	None	They are hard, but I feel ok about it.  5 knee push-ups.
YOGA	10 minutes	Strong	I didn’t want to do it, but pushed myself thinking if I didn’t do some exercise I was “losing my time”. As soon as I began it was a big no, so I only did the streching parts and not the positions asking for strength or any effort. I think it was a good decision. I haven’t got that release feeling I get when I go through the whole video, though.
SKETCH	10 minutes	None.	I’m always eager to sit and draw. Swifts arrived yesterday, and I today decided to do a few sketches of them with the brush pen. A challenge, but rewarding. It made me smile when I finished.   I finished my sketchbook today. I'm happy I've been able to keep sketching as an everyday habit for about a month and a half.
WALKING OUTSIDE
MUSIC
MEDITATION
BAR HANG
WH

[Lara]

The “no way I can do this” was even stronger this morning. I began to cry in the kitchen while thinking I could just not prepare our breakfast. I decided to do just one little thing: put some olives in a plate. Then I could clean a few strawberries. From there it was easier to make a mackerel omelette and chop some hazelnuts to go with it that Wolvie had asked for. I decided I would not clean the kitchen afterwards. I don’t know when I’ll do it, but not right after breakfast (as I usually do).

 

Now I’ve been writing a bit, these past days I’ve been trying to sum up what we’ve been working on during therapy sessions these past couple of months, to have a clearer picture. Apparently:

 

-          I am not enough

-          I don’t deserve --------- (fill in the gap with whatever, because apparently I don’t deserve almost anything in life)

-          I must please everybody around

 

These beliefs come from endless criticism during my childhood and teen years said by plenty of different people around me (yeah, my beginnings were quite shitty), and which I have never questioned. The consequences are fear, insecurity and confusion. The mechanism to go through life without living in a constant panic attack has been using control. But it is a trap, because you can never actually control almost anything. So it’s never enough, so hence the loop reinforcing the need for more control.

Fear --> Need of control --> I can’t control things --> More fear --> More need of control

 

Getting out of this loop would need of me to trust life, to be confident, to just let go. I don’t know how to do that yet.

 

 

Regarding music practice, these beliefs play out in an interesting way:

 

I (unconsciously) value effort over results and success in a wicked way --> Therapist said “if you succeeded and get what you want (playing nicely and relaxed, being confident of my playing, letting music flow, etc.), there would be no need for effort, hence, you can’t allow yourself to succeed, because then there would be no reason to keep pushing, and you can’t just let go of it”. She called this “a driving belief” (I don’t know whether this is the right expression in english), everything I do concerning music goes through this belief. It was an eye-opener. It explains a lot about my relationship with music practice.

An example. When musicians don’t practice, they lose technique level, but when you’ve been practicing at your top for years and years, you might not lose that much. You will play and feel uncomfortable, but probably no one will notice because anyway you have a solid technique and knowledge of the repertoire. In my case, I’ve never understood why when I don’t practice, even for a little while, I have a huge drop, like I can’t play well even the easiest pieces. Therapist said “because if you’re not practicing, you’re not in control. You need control, daily practice, effort, otherwise, you just can’t play”.

I have also discovered that under all my insecurities with the instrument itself there is one concise and heartbreaking thought: “you don’t know how to play the flute”.

I have no clue about how to get out of all this shit.

 

 

Now, a really interesting bit.

There have been a few moments in my life, when things have went exactly the other way around. Deep down, I have some absolutely crashing faith in myself, an odd mechanism I apparently have no conscious control of and that shows up in what appear to be random moments. I’ll give some examples here (therapist recommended to make a list of those moments, and try to focus on recalling my feeligs back then, so I can use them in an exercise we will do next week):

 

-  When I was 12 years old, there was this mathematics olympics at school. I never was too good at maths, but oddly enough, I won the thing. Apparently because it was a challenge? I don’t know.

-  When I was 13 I got a 10 (grades here go from 0 to 10) in chemistry. I was utterly  surprised. There would be a total of 5 chemistry exams and after seeing that 10, I had the immediate thought: I’ll get a 10 in each of them. And I just did (I didn’t make a study plan or put any effort on them, I just did it somehow).

-   I played at a concert to win a special prize at the end of my middle music studies (I don’t even know how to translate that) and I played really well. I was given the prize. I was told by several people that I had been the best one on that day. There were a couple of guys there, a pianist and a percussionist, that were very strong players, and yet I was better than them on that day, because of this mechanism I don’t know how to consciously use.

-  When I was doing an audition for this young orchestra, I played so wonderfully that I ended up getting the first position, even when there were 3 stronger players there. They also got positions in the orchestra, so I had the chance to play with them, and they were better than me by far.

-  When I attended the presentation for my public exams to be a flute teacher, I remember entering the room and someone saying to me “there are X candidates, and there are X vacancies”, and I had this thought “ok, then one vacancy is mine”. We hadn’t even began the exams, and it was certainly a difficult thing to go through, but I had this inner feeling things could not be otherwise.

Therapist found this extremely interesting. We’re on our way to build a path to connect better to that part of myself. Because the part of myself that is usually present at challenge or decisive moments is the controlling-scared one…

 

 

[Tanktimus the Encourager]

You are doing very good work and that therapist sounds very helpful and confident. 

[WhiteGhost]

16 hours ago, Lara said:

Deep down, I have some absolutely crashing faith in myself

This sounds like the Wolverine you have been channeling off and on over the years