Hi Angie... I too have a very difficult time filling out the challenge sheets. I get very tangled up in the questions. One thing that has helped me is that I fill out the form 3 times.... first time is very sketchy... the bare minimum I can stand to acknowledge. I'll take a break and come back and fill it out two more times. This way it takes the pressure off to do it perfectly the first time. By the third time the answers are completely different but tend to be right on target. It sounds weird. I know....
Tiana.... Yes, I do need to talk to my doctor and therapist about the depression. Unfortunately, my appointment with my therapist has been rescheduled several times, so I have not seen her in over a month and a half. It's rescheduled for next Thursday, so I do hope it doesn't have to change again. My primary care physician left town and now I have to find another doc... which I keep putting off because it's just too.... overwhelming.... I keep dragging my feet.
Sometimes I get so caught up in the negative thoughts I just can't see anywhere to go except follow the downward spiral. What Davit and Hugs wrote made sense and they made me laugh at myself which really truncated the whole beat down session. I just get to taking myself way too seriously sometimes, so it was good to be called on it. Actually, it was good to experience the sudden total despair.... and then be able to stop it ... dust myself off and move forward. I've pretty much always just given in to it, because fighting it is nearly impossible. Today, the experience was more of the guys helping me to step aside and let it pass on by which is so much easier than fighting it and way more effective.
I don't know that I've explained this well. It is the first time I've experienced this almost instant relief of total despair. Just by .... calling my own bluff ??? I'm not sure. The turn around was pretty amazing.
Today I posted my very first original Zentangle art. I'm so excited. Tomorrow I'll probably be embarrassed and tempted to change it, but today it feels really great. Plus, I figured out how to scan and resize and upload the darn thing. I'm too cool for school! LOL
OMG! I have not seen the news all day.... babysitting and messing around with my Zentangle. I just watched the pictures of the quake and sunami in Japan. I was goofing off while people were dieing. Will I never learn? Logically, I know this has absolutely nothing to do with me. Nothing. And, yet I feel so guilty and fear the nightmares returning to night.... probably ensuring that they will. I'm not sure how to handle this.
Samantha... thank you. I just keep repeating what you wrote. It helped soothe the guilt and challenge my response until it was more "normal" ... realistic. Sad for the people but not guilty for surviving "my" earthquake. dh wanted to talk over the details of the disaster in Japan and I started to leave.... I didn't need anymore help feeling anxious. Instead... I stopped myself and went back in until he had talked it through. I maybe didn't hear everything he was saying because I was concentrating so hard on being present, but I did stay and breathed my way through. This is truly unusual for me to remain present in the face of great anxiety. I did not have a recurrence of the earthquake dreams.
Yay Juanita!!!! It is VERY inspiring to hear how much progress you have made and continue to enjoy. Enjoy... wow... enjoying life. I'm so excited for you that hubby is coming home for a rest. He is going to be very pleasantly surprised at the changes you have made.
Thank you for the compliments and encouragement. Tangling is very therapeutic.... meditative. Juanita is right... it really is just doodling but while we were engaged in surviving our illness someone else came up with the clever name and copyrighted the process. LOL! Of course it isn't quite that simple but still....
The Zentangle process is helping me with the CBT process. In Zentangle the point is to break designs down to their smallest element... often only a dot or small stroke of pen. (Like breaking my goals down to the smallest step possible). Then you practice the individual steps over and over and over until it comes naturally. You put the steps together to make a design element. The individual elements look really simple... until you try to do it and then realize it takes care and patience to learn (just like those CBT goals). There are many examples of Zentangles on the internet and they are truly beautiful pieces of art.
In the beginning I was impatient for the final product (again, so like my approach to the CBT) and tried doing a whole tangled picture incorporating the different elements into it. Oh my! What a mess. Ugly. Infuriating. Had to calm down and take it one stroke at a time. I spend about an hour every evening practicing the different "official" tangles. I have tried copying a few tangles done by other people and the results were OK but not great and not me.
I hope this makes sense. To learn more just do an internet search and you can find really good explanations (and examples) of the process. Anyway, I guess the important point for me is that it has helped me to slow down and really take my time with each step (Zentangle & CBT) before I try putting it all together. Practice, practice, practice !!!
Being on these forums is no escape. It is hard work. Hard to read, hard to feel, hard to be called on my avoidances and misconceptions, hard to be "seen and heard"... scary... very scary. Coming here is no escape for me... at all. Despite that, it is worth it for the moments of insight.... the moments of someone understanding exactly what I'm going through, the clarity that is shared here... getting to be privy to other ppls honesty, strength, courage and vulnerabilities. No, it's work. A lot of work.... but so very worth it. What a privilege to watch ppl struggle and question and grow and change. Exhausting sometimes. No, I would not call being here an escape.... nope. (from someone else who has lived a lot .. )
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great insight!