Today I had my weekly therapy session and it wore me out. I slept all afternoon and even though it's not even 9 pm I am ready to go to bed. It's not that I was in distress like I would have been 10 months ago. It's more that I am tired out by the concentration required and the depths of feeling that we are tapping into now that I am no longer so highly reactive and frightened.
Lots of disturbing things have already been defused in the past year and my life has improved a lot but now we seem to be going one level deeper, revisiting the same issues but in a calmer, more direct way. We are working our way through a list of difficult or traumatic events, using EMDR. Lots of tapping and breathing.
I am bewildered by the list, which seems strangely exaggerated or distorted to me, even though I know it isn't. I seem unable to take myself seriously enough or to be compassionate enough to really grasp those aspects to my life in its entirety. I suppose it's also a form of denial, of coping. I still consider myself unbelievably lucky and privileged. Of course it would have been better to have a better environment growing up, but doesn't everyone wish for that? Apparently not. I went through a few months where I was accepting and compassionate, and I believe that is when I made the biggest advances in my recovery.
I have run out of sympathy for myself, perhaps. But I know I need to fix this stuff in order to sustain a decent quality of mental health, so I will get on with it.
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