Most people consider thinking and feeling to be two separate things: you think thoughts or you feel emotions. Not me. I tend to mix them up a bit.
If I feel something, I have to analyze it. "I feel sad" — am I sure I feel sad, that it's not depression or a headache; why do I feel sad; what else am I feeling; is this a true feeling or a habitual one. If I can over-think it, I will. I was surprised when a previous therapist informed me that not everyone thinks about their feelings.
Then there are my thoughts. Often, if I have a thought that isn't one of my every-day thoughts (need milk; remember to take clothes from dryer; where is my turquoise ring), then I ask myself how I feel about that thought. "I wonder if I should move?" — do you feel lonely; why would you want to move, I thought you were happy here; it's scary to move; you'll be sad if you move.
Today in therapy, I read my therapy homework that I had managed to pull together this morning. Afterward, my therapist suggested I get back into the routine of writing my homework as a narrative. Doing so will incorporate the emotional aspects better. The last two times I've done this homework, I've presented it as bullet points of events. They've been quite unemotional. If I keep doing my trauma work that way, it won't provide me with any benefits. I don't know if I've been doing the homework like that because it's quick and easy or if I recognized the lack of emotional content in doing it that way and so went with the lesser emotional content path. Because, doing with full emotional content hurts like hell.
One of the problems with therapy, especially therapy that goes for years, is that nothing seems simple. Every thought, feeling, and action has layers and layers of meaning. A banana is not just banana. I'm not sure if I was naturally this self-analytical before I started therapy or if therapy created it in me. Or if I had a tendency toward it (I think I've always thought about my feelings and felt about my thoughts to some extent) and therapy merely enhanced that in me. See? Always questions, seldom answers.
I would like things in my life to be simpler. I'd like to feel an emotion and simply feel it. No questions, no analysis. I'd like to think a thought and if I don't accept the thought as is, then the only thing I want to do to it is think other thoughts about it. No more screaming meemies or greyhounds on hamster wheels or anything else that keeps my mind going and going and keeping me awake or keeping me from simply thinking or feeling or doing in relative silence.
I'd like my mind to simply shut the fuck up already.
It's like learning a new language or taking up a musical instrument... practice, practice, practice. You start with the aknowledgement of the thing you want to change, then you distract from it, the more you do this, the more it works. Really.
ReplyDeleteJulie
(who has never successfully learned a foreign language nor played an instrument with any measure of proficiency, so ya know, grain of salt...)
I've said before that I'm similar to you in this way, so what intrigued me about the book My Stroke of Insight when Julie wrote about it, was that having a chunk of the left side of her brain shut down seemed to shut down a part of that type of thinking. That's when the author experienced the whole "la la laaa at once with the universe so peeeaaaceful" type of mindset that some people experience through meditation.
ReplyDeleteI don't really want to stop being who I am--at times I like thinking a mile a minute. But it made me think: Well, scientifically this kind of "I am at one with the energy of the universe" feeling is real, it's fact, it can take place--it's on the right side of my brain. So possibly I could one day learn how to meditate and access that just a wee bit, and in that way learn to quiet my brain for short periods of time. (Maybe relieve my tension headaches too.)
I haven't moved from the science of the book to any idea on how to achieve this. But knowing that the ability exists, right there on the RIGHT side of my head, is encouraging. ;-)
Also: You did your homework!! Super! I guess for trauma therapy, the purpose is that you relive the experience more vividly, because in retelling it, the therapist helps you actually REWRITE the event in your mind, and it becomes less or non-traumatic. Yes? That's my understanding of it. So I guess I can see why it's important for it to be told in a narrative fashion. And important that you do the homework too. But also, actually doing the homework IS in and of itself traumatic, which explains why it's so frikking hard to do it each week. And then you have to go into the office and relive it AGAIN. My days. Maybe you could write it in bullet point at home, but then retell it in a narrative form in her office. Is that even possible?? Hmmm...