Judy2

“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is”.

~

i want to be allowed to be here, as i am, without needing to think about what's wrong with me. nothing's wrong with me. [...i am scared...]

...i notice that i have been quite stressed these past two weeks. making a conscious effort now to reduce that, cause i have a feeling that it might help things quiet down a bit, which is very much needed. i'd very much like to just focus on the essentials for now (including my thesis) and get rid of aaaaall the rest, as that's been putting way too much pressure on me. i'm happy to tackle a handful of things at a time, that's enough and feels so much better than having my energy diffuse in a thousand different directions.

Thoughts to counter-act shame: There are many things about me that are good and pretty and right. I am allowed to be here and I want to be here. I am allowed to show myself and take up space. There is nothing wrong with me or my body. Thoughts to counter-act guilt: It is normal to make mistakes from time to time. The consequences of this situation will be manageable. This won't have to drag me down forever. Soon enough, I will feel better. Thoughts to counter-act self-hatred: I am allowed to be here. I am beautiful and whole. I am intelligent. I do not have to hate myself. I am allowed to love myself and be good to myself. There will be people in my life that will love me. There are already some people in my life that have considered me attractive, beautiful, lovable, caring. Thoughts to counter-act loneliness: Certainly, there are people that have been in similar situations, and that have felt similar emotions because of that. Even though some people cannot relate to my particular struggles, i know that others probably share similar experiences and will be able to help or relate. People can help me and it is possible for me to feel connected, understood, and seen. There have been many moments in the past in which i felt connected, understood, and seen. > make a list Thoughts to counter-act fear: Independent of what happens concerning topic x/y/z - I will survive it and I will still be here. No matter what happens concerning x/y/z, I won't be hurting forever, I will be able to cope with it. Independent of the outcome concerning this particular issue, I will be able to cope, and I will still feel joy in the future. I will be alright. Focus on a/b/c which is a constant source of joy in my life, independent of what happens concerning this thing i am worried about. > make a list, e.g.: walking in the woods and looking at the trees, my favourite tv show, my friends,...

Emotional Regulation this past week, every now and then i have sat down to fill in some worksheets about emotional regulation in my dbt manual. the pattern that i noticed is that a lot of the weight and intensity of negative emotions comes from the fact that i formulate them in such absolute terms. for example: it'll never be okay again, no one will ever love me, EVERYTHING depends on this, i'll never be okay again, it'll hurt forever, EVERYTHING's wrong with me, how can it ever be okay again?, i'll forever have to hate myself, no one will ever find me beautiful, no one understands me, no one is helping me, i will forever be alone, it will never get better,... so part of the opposite action or opposite thoughts technique would probably be to relativise these extremes or absolutes, as to take away some of the weight and intensity of the emotion.

will do - thank you:)

Life is so, so, so weird

i'm so scared of being here. being fully, fully here. it's terrifying. it's also just so awkward, and so weird. to "be me".

it's so scary to be alive. but i don't have much of a choice in that, i'm literally trapped inside a dream, inside my own existence. i can't not exist.

it seems terrifying but i think i might have the power to literally deconstruct that whole self-worth issue of mine. because it literally doesn't make any sense from start to finish. like why would i even need to hate myself? it doesn't make any sense. but it's so scary to let go of it! cause who would i be without that? and maybe i'd be ugly without that... maybe i'll have to hate myself then...

@yetineti(:

i'm incredibly terrified of my own Depth, and my own Greatness.

i still believe it's true that my personal experience with dissociative states speaks to an awareness that all these psychological troubles relate to much deeper, more existential, metaphysical dimensions. and i think psychologists and therapists are not aware of this depth and literally don't believe me. i think they themselves are not aware of the degree to which dissociative states are structurally existential. the doctors i have worked with this year, at least, were very superficial in their psychological, and perhaps physiological contextualisation of these states. they are unaware of the real depth and the real significance, they are unaware that dissociative states introduce and shed light on a whole different dimension that transcends the purely psychological, revealing more existential structures and facets of the self and of experience. *i think for other people undergoing psychological healing, the same existential dimensions need to be active, too, for insights and shifts to occur. it's full BEING, full EXISTENCE, not just one-dimensional psychology. i assume that that's actively at play in other people undergoing psychological change, too. it almost has to be. All the same Being, all the same radical Aliveness. RADICAL. so i'm not special in that by any means. what might be unique about my journey is that i am approaching or underoing these shifts while having a more explicit metaphysical understanding (at least seemingly, at the level of thought-based constructs) than what i assume the average person does. not to sound egotistical, but i know that most people don't get all existential about their mental health - not as explicitly as i do (they might feel it, but probably not think it/notice it)....not sure if i'm making sense here or if it's understandable what i mean. and it's not to say i'm special or anything, i just know that my approach to mental illness and my journey of recovering from mental illness is quite unique. it always gets very messy when the metaphysical and the psychological intermingle and intersect. don't know if anyone understands what i'm trying to say here, but i suppose that's okay.

had a bit of a weird moment just now when i very briefly considered letting that other part of me speak up for a second. the part of me that wants to live, and that's been here all along, the part of me that does not doubt my permission to exist or eat or be or feel or heal. i considered briefly that that's the true me, and the other me was just a fake front and could easily be eradicated. i got a bit confused then, about who i am, if i am not the me that hates myself. then it scared me so much and it seemed like such a trippy change in perspectives that i dissociated for a few seconds and things got awkward. it turned existential again. real existential, experiential - not just psychological. only for a few seconds though...but i haven't had this happen to me in a bit (couple of weeks). very scary. very, very scary world indeed.

Body image i like the natural colour of my hair and the way it contrasts with, but also compliments my skin tone.

When I'm stressed about something, it feels as though my life literally depends on it. Forgetting about it and focussing on something else isn't so easy. But yeah, other than that, what you are saying makes sense:)

In the past two months, I have done extensive research into my topic - probably more than enough, and I could technically start writing now. I have already taken a good 200, maybe 300 pages worth of notes, and the end goal should be 40-50 pages....a coherently formulated 40-50 pages though, which is the main problem right now. There's just so much and I don't know how to organise my ideas or structure them. I've tried to come up with themed chapters and stuff like that, but overall it's still so much and I don't know if I can fit all the things I want to or should say into that structure. Technically, there is no right or wrong and there are literally infinite "right" ways to complete this task....but at the same time, I doubt whether the chapter headings I have selected can properly fit all the things I need to say, and if I say things in the right order.....and there are endless ways to do this, endless ways to arrange specific quotes in different orders...I can spend hours dragging bits of text up or down, but it's not like that would get me anywhere. For some reason, I find it really difficult to write in a structured way about a subject matter that could be analysed from a billion different angles, and there's also a hermeneutics so it does matter what I say first and what next, but in my head it's all a mess and this is so overwhelming.... and the problem is I understand what I want to say, I understand what the academic sources say on the topic (for the most part), but I just can't narrow things down enough to write a coherent essay that explains things in a linear order, because my understanding of the topic is so broad at this point that I see it from so many different angles. If I just write in a new document from scratch, that usually just gives me an extra twenty pages worth of notes that I will then have to copy and integrate into my long document, where I am repeating a lot of things unnecessarily. I have no idea how to solve this or how to make actual progress with the writing process. Another related aspect I am struggling with is the communication with my supervising professor. She is generally kind and open to any questions I have, but I feel like I am being annoying. I am also not sure how open I can be with her about the genuine psychological struggles that writing my thesis entails for me....you might say that writing a thesis is scary for everyone, but I think for me it's probably top-notch and enmeshed with an anxiety disorder and so on. I am not sure how to explain my insecurity surrounding the writing process without making her think I want special treatment or I am exaggerating....maybe I don't even have to explain this, but considering that I am weirdly insecure and making this a lot more complicated for myself than it needs to be, I feel like maybe it could help to talk to her about this. I would really appreciate your advice.

...felt hopeful this morning, but i am still struggling a bit and feeling scared and overall unsteady.

@Adrian colbythank you:)

@UlaxHey:) the phrases look really useful, i might even print out some of them and put them up on my wall for inspiration:) thank you so much! and i don't have a deadline yet, so it's all good

For someone who has been struggling with functional emotional regulation - are there any practical first steps that you can recommend taking, other than building basic emotional awareness and learning to label emotions as they pop up?

Thoughts on Chronic Shame it hasn't been much of an explicit concern of mine these past few weeks - there wasn't even much of a sense of a dilemma or a sense of needing to make a difficult decision regarding this particular issue, my focus was elsewhere - but i suppose it has been working in the background, and this morning it sort of popped up to the surface and has become explicit: i think i am ready to drop that whole discourse of me needing or wanting to be ashamed of myself, having to hide, having to apologise for my existence, my personality, my body. in 10 years, this has never led anywhere, has never led where i had hoped it would. so i'll just drop it now. i'm sure there'll be moments when i'll have some difficulty putting this into practice, but the shift in my general attitude is there now? i think? i don't know, i'm scared. but i suppose this is the only way.

@CARDOZZOyeah:)

@CARDOZZOBachelor's degree lol