In Now we must trust

(We use plural pronouns)

We are working with New T on sitting with powerful emotions. Feeling hopeless and despair is uncomfortable. We normally dissociate instead of ride it out.

New T had us use bilateral stimulation to activate both sides of brain. Having T with us allowed us to just be in pain for a few seconds and not give up. Feeling gratitude and love for New T.

T-2 has us trying to tuck in Littles (inside us) before bed. We tried last night. Sleep was tentative throughout night. Kept falling. OCD saw orange masses amid the inky black of sleep. Boom! Orange impact opens up sleep like an explosion of mold or popping up of land mass from an earthquake. Doesn’t have to be related to the tuck-in.

Compassion Course is treating pain as a gift: pain provides clues to unmet needs. so that we can take action to make life more wonderful (if we choose). That fits with sitting with difficult emotions.

Needs-based relating (Nonviolent Communication) is trying to save us. We have a lot of distress. Spouse does, too, and doesn’t seem to have room to soothe us. We feel lonelier than usual, forlorn.

Using needs-based relating (NVC), we can see that Spouse feels overwhelmed with Younger Child’s distress, as do we; plus the stress of Covid in a house with mental illness. We can guess that Spouse needs to perform self-care. Also, Spouse has a decades-long long history of compassion toward us. So we need not judge or worry about our relationship.

These are unprecedented times. We can understand Spouse can’t be our Support 24/7. We didn’t ask Spouse to meet a need. We decided to let therapists carry a bigger load for us. We could be more open about our feelings and needs to Spouse. It’s just that We are feeling insecure and needing security.

Maybe we will open back up to Spouse when we are more confident in being Supported. Once we feel more confident in general, we can maybe handle boundaries or hearing, “no.” But not right now.

If we can be present to experience, would we have less worry? We fear the past and the future. It’s just that we have so little practice being present and the present has pain, too. We must try to keep surviving pain in the present. We must try to live at least sometimes in now.

It is snowing out. Flakes are slow in falling, like time is at 80% speed. It’s pretty but fucks with our perceptions and sends us running out of the present

It’s just our experience. It has a context. If we stop judging it, it just is. We switch into someone else and get confused. That’s just how it is right now. Maybe we can try to self-accept. All of our people matter. We are us. So practice being us in the present.

People cannot agree on actions so we are paralyzed from acting but with brain spinning—like a clothes dryer on wheels rolling down the road but in the “off” setting so that the clothes aren’t even drying. Lots of energy to do nothing. Well, what needs to be done? Meditate on feelings, let us notice things with senses. Practice that. Best investment of time possible, since you’re stuck in transactional mind.