Gatekeeper

Had T Weds night and I went with no particular agenda. As is always the case, Susan asks me to just relax & breathe and see what comes up for me. I've been feeling particularly stressed lately with alot on my plate. It was a rather hectic weekend and the first half of the week wasn't any better.

~
There is a funny thing that happens to me when I relax. Whenever I do my grounded breathing I get a headache. It happens after about a minute when I finally start to let down. If I fight it, the headache is prolonged. If I just breathe through it then it goes away in about a minute and that is how I know I'm really relaxing. I asked Susan what she thinks that could be. She can't say for certain but she believes it's my mind trying to hold onto everything that I intellectualize instead of allowing it to let down and be felt as emotions. It makes sense and goes along with the way I feel it in my head. That is crazy....my mind actually causes itself pain trying not to let me feel pain??

~

Anyway, we talked about my busy-ness and she told me I need to do two things. #1: Be more realistic when making plans or taking on obligations. Did I really NEED to volunteer to bring a salad, an entree AND dessert for the teachers during Provider Appreciation Week?? Could I not have done just ONE thing instead?? I get too wrapped up in things. Sure, I thought about just doing the entree but then, *gasp*, horror-of-horrors....what if the salad someone else made didn't compliment my entree? I chose three simple things but Susan is right, add them all together on a Monday night and no, I wasn't being realistic about what I could do. What ends up happening is that I sacrifice sleep. Now, in the old days.....that was no big deal. An extra cup of java and I'm good to go. But you know....I'm not 22 anymore. I'm going to be 40 in a few weeks and that crap doesn't fly anymore. I woke up with a headache that grew into a migraine until I could not function at work and I ended up having to sleep it off in my car while I should have been working. So I really need to think realistically about my plans and their consequences. That made me scared. I felt fear at the thought of saying no to things.

~

And #2: When I'm in the middle of doing something, be there. Don't be into the next thing in my mind already. While my weekend was very full, it was all fun stuff. But you know, I didn't really have that much fun because in my head, I was stressing about what comes next. Even though I had to be a bit of a clockwatcher all weekend, there is no reason I should not have allowed myself to be present and enjoy the party, the get-together, ice skating, etc.

~

"Being Present" is something that Susan and I discuss often. But we've decided to make it a big time focus in the coming weeks and months. In fact, she said that once I can get a handle on this, it will be good timing to come off my anxiety meds. Anxiety, she said, is caused primarily when one is either storytelling, jumping ahead to the future or clinging to the past. If living in the present and staying grounded, well....unless there is an extreme situation going on, there's not alot to be anxious about.

~

"Speaking of 'clinging to the past'," I say to Susan, "Why can't I get Tom out of my head?" (Tom is XBF who I broke up with over 2 years ago but I saw him recently and he's been on my mind again) I don't love him anymore and I know enough bad stuff about him now that there should be no reason for me to ever think of him!! But you know, I really did truly love that man. He is the first and only man I've ever really loved and I guess that holds a place in my heart. More than that, though, I realized that it's just all the plans we'd made together and that every so often, I get the jab of "this is not where I was supposed to be at this point in my life" Even as I write it now, the threat of tears stings my eyes and I hold it back so hard that my jaw and my head ache. This is what happened in Susan's office, as well. I can understand it now because I'm at work. But why when I was safe in therapy? I tried to breathe into it, I tried to connect to it and release it. But it was NOT going to happen. My body was braced so hard against it. I made an offhand remark to Susan that it was not getting past "the Gatekeeper". Susan told me to address this "gatekeeper" and even suggested I write a letter to it/him/her.

~

When I searched for images of a Gatekeeper, I was pleasantly surprised to find out it's a type of butterfly! That's a nice image. But the image I had in my mind was dark, a faceless, ghoulish figure, hunched over a covered barrel, reaching out with a deformed arm scooping up the bits of emotion that were beginning to escape and shoving them back into the barrel quickly slamming a lid back down on top so no more could get out.

~

At the end of the session, I thought about what we'd discussed. Unable to relax, over extending myself, not allowing myself to enjoy fun things, afraid to be different, holding onto grief and unwilling to let it go. And all I could say was "Man, I'm really determined to torture myself, aren't I?" I *know* that life would be so much better without all this baggage but for the life of me, I don't know how to be different. It's so frustrating when I can see the goal but I can't seem to get there. And the only obstacle is me.