Thittato

Third session of therapy Tuesday: 45 min meditation and third session of therapy. We did a guided regression journey deep into my first memories of abandonment and being alone in this world. Memories of me being left alone as a baby crying for hours without anybody coming to comfort me came up. I'm not sure if I was being "manipulated" into these memories, or if they are actually true, but at least they became powerful images of early abandonment and some truths about life I could have possibly internalized at these moments. So the point of this regression journey was to catch the moments when these "truths" about life where being made, and to gain full access to these feelings and to understand that now I'm a grown up who has the skills to re-parent myself and offer myself regulation and comfort. So naturally this created quite some waves after this of these feelings hitting me pretty hard, but surprisingly I've been able to surf these waves pretty well. I think I have most likely been able to process out a lot of the charge around this already, but it remains to be seen. Wednesday: 45 min sitting in the feelings from yesterday therapy-session. I had quite some panic about being back into therapy again and thinking that there is going to be a really hard job ahead of me now, but surprisingly these feelings where alleviated quite a lot as the day went by and I was really in a nice state of flow throughout the evening, but feeling more vulnerable and probably emotionally accessible instead of in my normal stubborn defensive persona bubble. Thursday: 45 min meditation. Really deep and flowing concentration. Felt magical and down-to-earth at the same time.

Cycling The same thing happens over and over again, and that is that I get into some kind of creative project for a short time, and then totally loose the energy I had on it. I have this phenomena in my life of cycling through various interests. Cycling is defined at dictionary.com as this: a round of years or a recurring period of time, especially one in which certain events or phenomena repeat themselves in the same order and at the same intervals. a sequence of changing states that, upon completion, produces a final state identical to the original one. one of a succession of periodically recurring events. a complete alteration in which a phenomenon attains a maximum and minimum value, returning to a final value equal to the original one. So I started one journal here about my explorations of music, and another one about naturalistic drawing, but now I'm just going to commit to see this all in the light of meditaton, as that is arguably my most important interest. It feels like I have these various sub-personalities that I alternate between, or that somehow if we compare this to computers, I alternate between various software / operating systems. One day I consider myself a musician, and everything is seen through the lens of how a musician would view his role and path in the world, another day I'm an aspiring visual artist and my whole value system revolves around that. And various other things. From a meditative point of view I think I would just view all this as loosing myself in identifications or mental thoughts, as they are just mind, and not really presence. So I think I just have to re-affirm my commitment to meditation and the cultivation of presence and acceptance of where I am right now in my life, in stead of continuing to buy into fantasies like this. Nothing wrong with pursuing any of these activities mentioned, and I probably will continue with them just as before, but in order to not loose myself in the mental fantasies about them the part about re-affirming my commitment to meditation is now made. Whenever I think something is my purpose and get really worked up about it, I always re-gain a moment of clarity when I sit down to meditate and re-discover that my deepest purpose in life is to keep my spiritual practice going. Meditated for 45 min this morning, and the freshness it gives me is really what I need these days. Everything feels so right when I feel this freshness :-) Meditation is really a project of re-generating my own energy from the inside. I'm looking very much forward to write down my thoughts on the meditative process here.

Yesterday: 45 min meditation Today: 1 hour

Yesterday: 45 min of meditation Today: 45 min of meditation. Very nice and deep concentration both days.

Second session of therapy Yesterday: The 45 min of meditation already mentioned, and then second session of therapy. I'm very impressed with this therapist, and I'm very satisfied with this therapeutic work we have already done in only two sessions. Engagement in my job has increased quite a lot. Not only the results from therapy so far, but the sense of safety in knowing I'm in good hands related to my various challenges in life. Since I'm a social worker in a psychiatric hospital I'm working within the therapeutic field myself, and I'm experiencing a lot of the classical dynamics in such a field, even though it is not psychotherapy I'm doing, but still there are a lot of the things like transferrence and counter-transferrence and stuff like that I'm experiencing, so that going to a psychotherapist to clear out a lot of the experiences that can tend to get clogged up inside myself related to this social field I'm operating in - that only makes a lot of sense. Today: 45 min meditation. Very nice and powerful experience.

45 min meditation today as well. Very deep and nice concentration.

No meditation yesterday, just resting after the 4 night shifts. Today: 45 min meditation. Very nice. Super energizing.

Yesterday: 45 min meditation Today: 45 min meditation, and 20 min vinyasa flow yoga. Super-nice. Been working for 4 night-shifts now. The flow has been really good. It helped a lot with that one therapy-session. I'm looking forward to the next one.

45 min meditation today as well. Super-nice :-)

45 min meditation today. Very nice :-)

First therapy-session Aaah. Finally. It was really nice. I had very good chemistry with this woman. I will use therapy as a way to improve my self-esteem while I'm undecided about continuing to stay in this job or not. There is quite some anxiety and self-doubt etc that I can really snowball into when I'm not feeling mastery and when I'm not getting recognition in my job, and since my job changed so much three years ago, I've been really digging myself into this shit. I think I could potentially feel a much greater sense of empowerment in my job if I can turn this negative loop around. Perhaps it would still be a really boring job, but better to leave it with empowerment if I choose to leave. With some engagement in these gestalt therapy-processes it will also be much easier to just see my job and my situation in life as an external mirror for my inner state. It can be really fun to look closer at the social dynamics in my job, and how they trigger me.

Alright, so I've been having it really terrible, but seemingly what happened was that we had a huge influenza-outbreak at my job that was really starting to hit at thursday the 19th, and then, in my manic state after having temporarily conquered my burn-out with meditation, I went on this long cross-country skiing trip on friday the 20th, and I was already frazzled from lack of sleep, burn-out stuff, and some mild cold stuff that has been going on the whole winter which I have never fully recovered from, but by share luck (or unluck) I was finally granted a good night of sleep before this skiing trip, and I pushed my body way too hard, and then when I woke up on Saturday I was totally crushed, and now I've been having the flue since then, and it didn't hit me so hard physically. Some running nose and fever and stuff, but the depression that came along with it hit really, really hard, and of course all these burned-out narratives got really badly mixed into this state. But it does feel like it is depression that comes from a temporary infection. So anyways. Not sure how to proceed with this - but I have finally booked an appointment with a therapist now, and that is way over due. The depression has hit so hard that it has been impossible to meditate, and I have more just been really disgusted by how hard I have to fight myself to keep a flow going by sitting down again and again to meet and breathe with these really, really uncomfortable feelings, but now there is finally some lightness entering so I think I can do a session of meditation. All of this was in many ways a very unfortunate process, but I'm glad it finally pushed me to seek out a therapist again. It is very scary to see how much hubris that can build up when I'm feeling good, and now I'm literary at the point where I'm praying to God for help and guidance.

45 min meditation today as well. I was feeling better today, but as the evening approached the fever combined with the frustrations and dark outlook on life were increasing again. I took paracetamol and ibux, and the combined reacting of this chemistry together with the spiritual process of meditation brought about a pretty nice state of surrender that I was grooving on throughout meditation. If anything there is still an imbalance in my psyche so that when I'm low on energy I feel like a looser, and when I'm high on energy I feel like a winner, almost to the point of having narcissistic tendencies. I hope to ride out these rough edges of highs and lows in my psyche and become a more humble and compassionate person, but there is clearly some deep metabolization of the trauma / dark night energies in me that I'm still in the process of purging.

Second session of 45 min meditation today. Very deep and nice concentration and stillness. Feels like I'm almost back on my feet again. Gosh, this cross-country skiing adventure was a bit crazy to go so hard into when I was almost burned-out before intensifying meditation started to give me energy again. But well, well. Winter is almost over here now, so I hope I can just continue to refuel myself, and then spring will soon add to that, and at least I was getting something out of winter this time as well, and not just darkness and depression. 3 good sessions of cross-country skiing and 3 good sessions of ice-skating. But yeah, work was really challenging. This emotionally draining job is especially hard during winter.

No meditation yesterday, 45 min today. Gosh, I got really sick from the physical exertions of a long cross-country skiing session on friday. Fever and a cold, and pretty heavy depressive thoughts. It seems to lift a little bit now. Hmm........ It wasn't the wisest thing to embark on this skiing project in the middle of the crisis I'm in. Even though nothing has been fixed regarding the structural problems in my life related to work, intensifying my meditation generated a lot of energy, and then I found a channel to pour all that energy into. But all right, this cold is probably mostly over by tomorrow, and I'll keep on meditating and looking for solutions to this crisis I'm in. Neither the doctor, nor the HR-department really had anything for me, except the HR-department said I could go talk with a priest in the hospital I'm working in. It kind of feels like a joke that they don't have tools to take care of their employees who are standing in emotionally draining situations. But yeah, I work in public mental health care, and our services sucks, and I guess it only makes sense that our services towards our own employees also sucks. But I will try out the opportunity to talk with a priest. My main-goal to begin with is just to get some clarity on the situation. But probably I should just seek out a private therapist that is actually providing some real and good therapy.

3rd time cross-country skiing. Longest session so far - 12 km. 45 min meditation yesterday as well. No meditation today. I didn't have time before I was going to go out skiing with a buddy. We drove to a skiing center one hour from where we live, and followed a really beautiful 12 km roundtrip up a beautiful mountain. I'm very happy with having re-discovered cross-country skiing. Now I have skiing in the winter, and kayaking in the summer, and they complement each other perfectly. It is like the older I get the more I discover the everyday joy of all the normal things that the normies are into. There must be some kind of aversion/resistance towards normal life that is gradually getting healed more and more. The need to be special is dissolving more and more, and maybe all the daydream fantasies about living somewhere else in a different more ideal and exotic life - all those fantasies I used to escape into because life was too difficult to deal with when I grew up, I think there is some gradual easing up on these tendencies as well, even though they are deep-rooted.

45 min meditation today as well. Really great.

45 min meditation today as well. Really great session. I've been cross-country skiing for two days in a row as well. Almost seems like this close to burn-out feeling I had is gone. Maybe boosting up on meditation, together with going into cross-country skiing was enough to get me out of some job-related winter-depression. I didn't ice-bathe this winter, which I have usually done to get a kick out of winter, but now cross-country skiing seems like a really cool winter-activity. I was visiting my doctor today, and I explained my situation, but it was impossible to be actually get anything out of him with the positive energy I came to him with, but I think the HR-department is where I'm going to get the counselling I need to better deal with my job-situation, so I guess I'm switching around from a victim of the situation to an empowered individual seeking out proactive ways of improving my job situation, so that is probably a very good thing. Anyways, I'm really impressed by how quickly meditation can improve my energy and state of being.

Yesterday: 1,5 hour of meditation. Today: 45 min of meditation. I woke up feeling really depressed about this job and my situation in life, but meditation really changed that. I think it is very important that I understand the instability I'm facing. I'm battling burn-out, but suddenly get some intense surges in energy thanks to meditation, but that doesn't mean the problem is over, so when I talk to my doctor and the HR-apartment it is important that I don't loose this overview if I go there during one of these surges in energy.

45 min meditation today, and 3 sets of kettlebell snatches. Holy smokes, I've been feeling close to burn-out for about two weeks, and then all it took was that 1,5 hour of meditation yesterday, and now I'm feeling really replenished. Some heavy frustrated and depressive emotional process that was in my body/mind system needed to get metabolized. But anyways, I will still seek out some kind of mentorship regarding how to better thrive in my job.

Professional challenges, close to burn-out, contacting my doctor, the HR-department and increasing my daily meditation. Two sessions of 45 min meditation today. I'm going through a challenging period related to my job, and my mind just keeps wallowing around in drama and the victim-role, so I need to increase my mediation to feel empowered again. I have also contacted my doctor and the HR-department, to see if they can help me with this. Basically the department I'm working in got transferred to a new building and a new role 3 years ago, and nobody is really satisfied with how our job changed, and this new job is burning up our emotional capital like crazy, and none of us have that spark in our eyes that we used to have, and all of this is starting to take its toll on me as well, so now I need to intensify the counter-measures to this situation. Maybe I need to leave this job and find a healthier place to be, but to begin with I hope to find a mentor that can coach me through this situation and make me feel empowered again. It is thanks to two really good sessions of meditation that I can think so clearly about this now, instead of just "I need to get away from this crazy shit!"

45 min meditation this morning. Very nice.

3 sets of kettlebell snatches today. Feels really good. I'm really staying with these kettlebell snatches, and it feels like my body is starting to stabilize into a higher baseline of confidence, strength and fitness. I have found something sustainable.

Yesterday: 3 sets of kettlebell snatches Today: 45 min meditation

45 min meditation yesterday, and 3 sets of kettlebell snatches today. Both were great.