New ways to deal

9/7/11
  
So after a few appointments, I got out some of my story to my therapist. I must say I cried alot. She suggested I journal everyday. I did. It would help me to sort out my feelings. I sometimes read over some of the things I wrote. It can be interesting to see how I have grown over the last few months. I really didn't think I would be able to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Now I have a different outlook. I had to deal with the 8 year anniversary this past May. I usually have a very hard time. Nightmares creep up a couple of weeks prior. And I can become very edgy. This year was a little bit better. The bad dreams were less frequent. I only had a few. I didn't have as many flashbacks. I mean they were there but I could deal with it. I had learned to bring myself back from that moment in time. It's something my therapist said was important for coping. I have to remember that I'm not there now. I have to come back from that place and remember where I am. It's so I don't stay locked in that bad memory. I have to try to replace the bad with some good. So I try to do that. It's not always easy. You have to use your wise mind. It's more work than your emotional mind. When you are in the emotional mind you have trouble being reasonable. Thats becuase your thoughts are being driven by those emotions. The wise mind is making a conscious decision to be present. It's part reason and part emotion. It's balancing the two. It's being able to step back and look at the situation from a greater perspective. It takes work. But it is very helpful. I always acted out of emotion. Hence the reason I blew up all the time. I have still had a couple of blow up moments, but they are few and far between. Also for the anniversary I had to do something I thought was a little ridiculous. I had to write down some things about the trauma I wanted to bury. It was my anger, my guilt, the nightmares, my helplessness, and my 1st husband's voice. So I wrote those down and put it in a box. I took two days to write letters to all of my family that past away. Mike and I got up early one morning and found a spot in the backyard. We dug a hole, I read my letters to each person out loud. I cried alot!! Then I placed all of that in the box and buried it. It might sound silly, but it helped. I was surprised by how much lighter I felt. The heavy weight on my shoulders was now lighter. I could breathe a little bit better. This was done in time for the anniversary. I was able to express out loud all of my feelings. And by burying the box it was done. There was some closure for me in that. It was amazing. I had to somehow put to rest all of those emotions, in order to move forward with the rest of my life. And for the first time I felt like I was moving past all of the things that were holding me back. There was still alot of work to do. But this was a good start. My therapist gave me some visuals to remember my kids in a good way. And that has helped me a whole lot. It gives me a positive focus when I remember them. And I will tell you about that in my next post.