A sign of healing today.

[Gaining Strength]

I was shopping for a few essentials for tomorrow's 6 year old birthday party and I ran into someone who once was a best friend.  (I have had no friends for the past 5 years.)  She and I parted ways years ago when I was first divorced and we have not been in touch for many years.  I saw her a couple of weeks ago in front of her house and I stopped and said hello and we said we should get together.  Today when I ran into her in the village we chatted and then turned to our shopping and when she was finished she came and asked me to have lunch.  It was so much fun, so comfortable and so easy.

This is a true sign that I have opened my doors again.  Regardless of what happens with her I know I am open to friendships again and I am thankful.  This is really what I thought that Law of Attraction was about rather than money or causing bad stuff to happen.  So whether or not the "Law" is real I am chosing to believe that if I open my heart to the world my heart will be filled, if I name and counter the fears their fires will be squelched and my true soul can grow and prosper. 

I do feel as though I am slowly coming to life.  I have hope and I am thankful for this place and these people.  You gave me love and friendship when I feared I was underserving and now that feeling is past.  Thank you all. - Gaining Strength

[Stormchild]

((((((((GS))))))))

[Gaining Strength]

What a remarkable statement by Einstein.  I think I will memorize that to carry forward with me.  Thanks jac - GS

[Gaining Strength]

When I am anxious, lonely and down I come here for solace and voice.  I am a child in need of
comfort and encouragement and Voicelessness is my mother's lap, warm and welcoming.

[seasons]

Thanks for sharing your beautiful post full of hope and joy. I'm so very happy for you.

((seasons))

[Gaining Strength]

Thank you so much Seasons.  I am so glad to have learned that life is lived in the small moments.  The
small have taken on such large significance.  The small are giving me joy and replacing the dark that I
let grow so large for so long.

[Gaining Strength]

So much is flooding up - in my dreams, as I sit playing with my newly 6 year old, as I prepare for the day and event ahead, thoughts, feelings memories from the past are flooding my mind and the feelings are prickles of pins and needles.  I am set on edge and trying to flee myself like a dog running from the itchy fleas on his back.

These wretched feelings are not new but the knowledge and understanding of their source is and so as unpleasant as the feelings and memories are I welcome them because I must process them to move on.

I have a full day ahead after a very full day of birthday celebration yesterday. I had hoped that some of the anxiety would have lefted after the birthday party concluded but other concerns just filled in that gap.  That, sadly, is the nature of anxiety - the bucket never
empties. 

I had a dream last night in which I am sitting in a small utility porch, screened in on the back of an old, country house.  The sink is not working and there are 3 or 4 workmen there.  The porch is too small for us all and 2 of the men are outside the screen door.  One man has just unclogged the sink and has been paid exhorbitantly well for it by my mother.  It is her sink.  But the sink is still not working properly due to yet another problem.  Two of the workmen want to fix it and are asking for the work at another exhobitant rate.  They assume I am wealthy and can pay anything they ask.  I am trapped - physically and mentally.  I am beside the sink against the wall and they are between me and the door.  The is no sense of danger just entrapment by the situation.  I also don't have the money to pay them nor access to my mother or father to find out what they want done and I feel (unreasonably) responsible for the sink still not working. Though the price they are asking is unreasonable I feel obligated to them.  I am stuck.

As I lay half awake I began processing this dream.  It was an accurate reflection of my feelings in so many experiences in life.  But as I began processing the dream I saw a different ending.  I began joking with the men about how the first guy got away with sweet deal and that the sink - working or not - would not be the source of lucre for any others that day.  The entire sense of entrapment and false responsibility were gone and in their stead a humorous take on the whole situation.

I am ready to process all of these memories in the same way - to take dross and make gold.  This is my hope, my path to freedom.  This crazy anxiety passes on for generations is no longer to be mine.  The pain and paralysis are going to lift and I will have a chance to live freely.  I have to battle regret over a life lived in prison and focus on the future of the freedom.  Isn't it odd how difficult that is, how alluring the old misery is like the sirens of mythology the dark past calls me.

[Gaining Strength]

I am struggling to get my child and myself to church today.  I am fighting a huge sense of dread.  Since I last posted (less than an hour ago) i have come full face with part of my lifelong struggle.  I am at a tipping point, a place where I can actually choose between a lifelong pattern of thought and feeling or a new healthier one.  Astonishingly the old one is alluring and difficult to release.  How odd! How astonishingly shocking to me that I am at this point where it appears to be choice and I am drawn back. 

I won't choose to go back.  I choose to go forward and I will but I had not expected what I have encountered.  Perhaps it is like that baby chick who must peck himself out of the shell without help from outside.  The life is given via the struggle.

This place allows me to talk to the universe rather than just to myself and I am deeply thankful for that.  I do not feel so all alone because I can come here where there are people who care.  And I know there will be others who care as I continue to grow.

Reluctantly I am signin off for now but I take this place and you with me for comfort as I go.

[Hopalong]

Dear GS,
I understand the lure of familiar fear.
You are so brave to keep facing it.

I know that medication for anxiety helped me so much...do you have anything? I told my doctor after having anxiety attacks for 15 years, I am tired of being a hero, give me a prescription. I don't abuse it but I am very willing to take it when that cold freefloating anxiety floats through me.

I think you are in that transitional space, and it's a time when we flow back and forth across a threshold like a puddle of snail-goo.

I think there's a great internal pressure to be IN the new life without understanding that every single day is our new life.

Holidays, birthdays, even Sundays are good fodder for triggering a skirmish in the war between the past and present. Just keep gently claiming each new day as your own. You only have to live it for yourself and your son.

Not for parents. Not for plumbers with their palms out.

What a sign it is to me that you found humor...that is definitely a new direction for your own symbols to take. Bravo!

Come back soon, tell us, how was church? Did you find a good space for yourself? I know the crowds are hard, that was always very true for me in the grip of anxiety...a near claustrophobia. It has gradually passed as I have felt over and over that I really am welcome in the community, it is mine, I am part of it, I am not a fraud nor a visitor, it's my place too.

love,
Hops

[gratitude28]

((((((((((((((((((GS))))))))))))))))))))

You are moving forward!!!!!! When I had severe anxiety, it took amny small steps to move out of it. Just the act of making the plan with your friend is HUGE. You can't expect it all to go away suddenly. It will take time, but you have become so strong and so knowledgeable. Kisses to your son.
Love, Beth

[Gaining Strength]

I know that medication for anxiety helped me so much...do you have anything?

I started a medication about a month ago.  With it I have been able to face some of the source of my anxiety.  I already am able to go days without it. I am definitely improving - down to an 8 from 10 on a scale of 10.  I like to view it as an old habit, deeply ingrained in my brain processes that I am rewriting one step at a time.  To have made clear progress in 6-8 weeks on a problem that has been intrenched for decades is great.  Nonetheless I still find part of the healing process is to write about it and get it out on the table.  There I can poke it and prod it and dissect it to learn more about what it is so I can plan my attack.

Come back soon, tell us, how was church? Did you find a good space for yourself? I know the crowds are hard, that was always very true for me in the grip of anxiety...a near claustrophobia.

I didn't get to church but I did go in the afternoon to my sons Lessons and Carols school performance at church.  He goes to a church school and their annual Lessons and Carols is a marvelous event.  I used to go to hear my nephews perform and now it is my son's turn.  I found the crown comforting.  I let the man's beautiful voice behind me soak in and feel like warmth enveloping me.  I used it as a time to let the anxiety drip slowly off and leave it on the floor of the catherdral and let God's healing enter in.  It felt good and warm.  I let my childhood experiences, which were anxiety provoking because my father would cause some row and be angry at something and take it out on us, fall away.  I let my young adult experiences, which were filled with profound saddness of failure and loss and loneliness, drip away and be replace by the sentiments of this day - warmth and comfort.

This is how I hope to replace that old stuff.

I worked on that same principle as I prepared for my son's party.  As I became anxious about an aspect of the party I simply held it in my mind and sort of gave it over to be solved.  For instance, I had a pinata and planned to have it opened by pulling ribbons rather than beaten with a stick.  Friday night before the party I still wasn't sure how I was going to prepare it or where I was going to hang it.  I was quite anxious about it.  So I decided to sit quietly and just focus on the pinata - not my concerns about it but on the pinata itself.  After 3 or 4 minutes I turned the next things and soon afterward went to bed.  When I got up the next morning I knew exactly how to handle the issue and when it was prepared I started looking for the place to hang it and immediately found just the right spot.

I have read about this technique over and over in a myriad of situations.  I am going to commit myself to following through on this in more situations.  It was a great help.

So much of my anxiety comes from a powerful sense of inadequacy that was instilled in my at a very early age by my parents.  They projected their own sense of inadequacy right on me and I took it on.  Because I have a strong personallity and many strengths I hadn't a clue that I felt inadequate but I have asked in prayer for a couple of years to identify what has been at he source of my pain and I finally got the answer and boy did it fit!!!  And a HUGE portion of this inadequacy has to do with financial matters.  I must address this issue - it has a strangle hold on me.

((((((((((((((((((GS))))))))))))))))))))

You are moving forward!!!!!! When I had severe anxiety, it took amny small steps to move out of it. Just the act of making the plan with your friend is HUGE. You can't expect it all

Thanks so much grattitude -

[CB123]

Your last post, GS, was a real help to me.  I am using your method already this a.m. and am feeling calmer.  I feel like I have had some "problem solving" breakthru's as well.  Thanks for sharing that.


CB

[gratitude28]

GS,
You sound so much like I did during my anxious period. As I said, I know it was a good 6 months of little steps before things started being easier. First it was doing one little thing I didn't want to do... then maybe two... Forcing myself to go to an appointment. You are so smart to focus on one task at a time... it makes it so less daunting.
Do you do any sort of relaxation projects???? That was the time I picked up knitting and I think it was good for me. For some reason it relaxed me and I also became quite skilled, which gave me some confidence.
I think you are right... it is that paralyzing lack of confidence. I put myself there with my drinking. But I think I did it on purpose. I needed to dig my way up...
You are doing SO WELL! You sound like a different person!!!!!!!!!!
Thank you so much for the stories and encouragement and letting me see your growth... And letting me see where I came from so I don't go back... It is so easy sometimes to want to give up the fight. But we are strong!!!
((((((((((((((((GS)))))))))))))

[Gaining Strength]

This is why I love this board.  I come here and read CouldBe123 and Grattitude saying things that I needed to hear as a child and never heard and though I am nearing 50 it warms my soul to hear your encouragement as though I was only 15.  I am truly strengthend by you both and by some many here at Voicelessness.  This is a priceless community.  Here I find what I have needed and lacked my whole life.  This place is a true blessing.  Oh it may only be cyber space but it is so real and the love I experience here is so real.  And talk about unconditional.  Noone here expects anything for one another nothing but love and caring.  Four months into being here I still marvel over my experience here and I still give thanks and I know from what happens here that I WILL heal and I WILL begin to function in the way I must and I WILL feel free and happy before too long.  Thank you CouldBe123, Grattitude, Hops, WRITE, Jacmac, Pennyplant, ReallyMe, Teartracks, Mudpuppy, Seasons, Seastorm, Stormchild, Penelope, Mum, October, Dragonsamm, Dreamsinger, Sela, Brigid, Moon, Sovereign + Safe, Kelly, and all the others.  So often at night, just as I lie down I go over your names in my mind and I give thanks, thanks for this place that is so real and so different.  Good night and thank you.

[Hopalong]

(((((((((((((((GS))))))))))))))))))))

You just amaze me. Your perceptiveness. Your letting go in the cathedral.
Your simply sitting with the pinata and choosing to see it. Really see it, so you cleared away the fear and next morning knew what to do.

You are functioning on a very high level right now, imo. I don't think your anxiety or the $paces where you still have steps to take counteracts that at all. This is high learning and you truly inspire me.

I feel as though I'm watching one of those special runners who has triumphed over such a hard challenge going past me, carrying an olympic torch...

I am CHEERING!

Hops