I head back to therapy tomorrow after a two-week, much-needed vacation break.
I try and type up my handwritten therapy notes to get it more cemented in my mind and easier to recall and highlight. In the last few sessions, we focused on PTSD with KT and also my task-oriented life that has given me some balance and meaning when feelings have been unsafe.
Kay said that your left hemisphere is where tasking occurs. When you organize, plan and execute, that's your left hemisphere. When that part of your brain is in charge and not in balance, the ego is in charge and you're not connected to your spiritual self, emotional self, YOURself. It's very easy to be very busy and functional and not be connected at all to who you actually are. You are not just your thoughts and feelings and living a tasky life feels as if you're alive and productive when you might be dying inside.
This concept brings clarity for the first time around my obsession with gift giving. I have always sensed it was out-of-proportion somewhat but didn't know what else to do. When I thought of backing off, I felt anxiety. When I'd let myself think about the anxiety, I absolutely believed I needed to provide some kind of value to people. I couldn't believe people loved me or wanted to be with me just for me.
This fall, our family went to a wedding for one of the girl's close friends from high school. We were getting ready at KT's apartment and I was going to just put my hair in a ponytail. KT said, "No, you're not going to a wedding with your hair in a pony. Come here." She then spent the next 30 minutes or so curling my hair with an iron and then pinning it up in a few places. I just sat there and thought, "My daughter really loves me. She's touching my hair. She's helping me look better and feel better about myself." I ended up saving the bobby pins she put in my hair. I put a little bow around them and have them on my dresser.
So yeah, I have issues with believing people love me. Task-mode keeps me more rigid, less integrated, less healthy.
How do you stay balanced and not so left-brain focused? Contemplation, meditation, bodywork, sensory experiences, relaxation and a billion other things. These are not trivial undertakings. Getting in touch with my body and quieting my noisy ego have been significant, anxiety-producing undertakings. I have resisted these activities and this posture of living in startlingly creative ways. I finally gave in and the changes are slowly coming.
So yeah, the holidays this year continue to surprise me as I reflect back. They were excessively calm. We made changes around gift-giving, food, our schedule, decorating and activities. We all mellowed out, or more likely, I mellowed out and just joined everyone else. Jay reminded me that most of the conversations the three of them have together at Christmas are about how to have this all be less stressful for me. Because I'm the one actually making it all stressful. I think because I backed down, less managing of Mom needed to be done. There were some healthy boundaries set that I should have done years ago around some necessary obligations I always take on myself. But other than that, I was the one that just down-shifted.
I'm not in hardcore recovery mode either after the holidays mainly because we didn't go hog wild on anything so there isn't a ton to put back or readjust to. Mainly we spent time with people and were outside when we could be.
I have written several times now about holidays and I think they are compressed events that help you see where you're at. It feels a bit like a test almost, not in a bad way either. It's a lens into how you handle a lot of things in life, all in a short space of time.
As I go back tomorrow, I think about how this session in November really affected and affirmed my direction for the holiday season. I would say this was dramatically different than last year, not just a little attempt to buy fewer gifts which I say every year. It's affected my overall attitude toward my relationships with friends and family, with myself. It's made me much more cautious about my urges to organize and do tasks over being creative. It's bringing me into a healthier balance that's more of a reflection of who I really am.
For that I'm grateful, and grateful I'm going back for another dose.