Mentalness - C'est Super

I am having a lot of feelings at the moment. Some might say, too many. My last session of therapy was really powerful. After it, I felt like I could punch a hole in the sky I had so much energy. I fizzed for about twenty-four hours afterwards. I was pretty sure I could do anything. Then I nose-dived and spent the rest of the week feeling like I could do absolutely nothing. In no particular order I have been tired, overwhelmed, stressed, deeply sad and wildly confused.

When I start stirring around in my metaphysical stuff, I tend to express it by feeling physically crappy. It’s a bit like I imagine I would feel if I went on one of those juice fasts, e.g. miserable. All the toxic shit comes out. In the last two weeks I have had a cyst on my tear duct, a cluster of migraines and now I am starting with a cold. I have also been experiencing issues with my vision and spent most of Tuesday afternoon trapped in a small room with an optometrist after having a terrifying experience of not being able to see very well while driving in the dark last week. I’m sure it’s a metaphor for how things are going. I probably need to turn inwards and feel my way towards clarity. I’d still rather not crash my car though.

The annoying thing is that all this is probably really good, right? Therapy isn’t an easy option. I have years of bottled up trauma and just plain galloping about unleashed trauma to deal with that have been compressed into the last few years into some kind of archipelago of crap that I need to navigate. It’s normal to feel all the feelings about it. Except that when I didn’t immediately sit down and reel off a brilliant novel or at least a passable essay about it, or figure out a way to elegantly kintsugi my broken brain I decided I had failed at therapy. I’ve been doing it for three weeks. I’m a smart woman. Why haven’t I conquered it yet? Whatever ‘it’ is.

Evidence, if further evidence were needed, that I am not even remotely done with therapy yet.

One thing I did learn is that I have started to comfort eat as a way of coping, which has taken the place of comfort spending. I don’t diet because I have a beloved daughter who taught me hard and valuable lessons through her struggles with that toxic crap. I don’t love my body. I don’t even have body neutrality. Mostly I ignore my body, which is probably another reason why it's making its presence felt at the moment in various ways. I just noticed that I had started eating things for reasons that were not just hunger, and that I had started eating things I didn’t really want or like. I am attempting to deal with this in a non insane way.

I clearly need a stress outlet and it’s no good stopping spending and comfort eating only to take up crack cocaine, so I have turned to Duolingo in my hour of need. I can’t see that learning French is going to do me much harm while I figure out a less crazy way of existing.