I am feeling quite remarkably stressed this evening. I sat down an hour ago to do a piece of work that's needed by the end of the week and got exactly nowhere with it. So then I figured I'd go ahead and reorganise my google drive (what better form of procrastination?!) and happened across some writing I did when I was in hospital that I have literally zero memory of doing. I shouldn't have read it. In fact, I stopped half way through because it was so upsetting. And now? Now I'm sitting here staring at the walls with about 19 knots in my stomach, fixating on all of the things that are challenging right now that I can do absolutely nothing to change. Chief among them is financial stress, but I'm not prepared to go there right now. Instead I'll just leave it to the knots and hope that sleeping on it will make me feel better. I swear to god, since some point this afternoon I've actually felt like there's something caught in my throat I'm so stressed. That's not awesome. I'm sure yesterday's session is having something of a knock on effect. Therapist's parting words to me were to go home and mammy myself - I cannot begin to describe how desperately I want someone to do that for me.
Here's something else. There's a conversation going on over on my page at the moment in response to something I posted earlier - 'I wonder if I stopped listening to music that *exactly* matches my mood (intense, emotive etc etc) would I feel better?'
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| Love this movie. Love it. |
The general consensus is that yes, if I were to listen to something more upbeat it might turn things around for me. There's a dbt trick known as opposite action, ie, do the exact opposite of whatever it is you feel like doing, that's supposed to help. But here's the thing - another dbt trick is self validation, which I understand (and I may be very wrong in this) to mean allowing myself to feel whatever it is I'm feeling, and not try and push it away. So how do opposite action and self validation work together? Surely one negates the other? Also, when I'm feeling as scattered and stretched as I do today, lots of noise makes things worse, so loud, upbeat music might not necessarily help. It might actually tip me over the edge altogether.......
Ok, I'm very aware that this post has turned into something of a stream of consciousness type rant which is never a good sign, so I'm thinking I should just stop now and go to bed. Tomorrow is another day, right?Labels: agitation, anxiety, challenges