Posted by littleone on April 29, 2007, at 16:22:30
In reply to Littleone, you around?, posted by muffled on April 27, 2007, at 14:24:51
Hi muffled,
Sorry I couldn’t talk to you the other day when you needed some help. I usually don’t have internet access over the weekend. I hope you managed to settle down a little and didn’t turn to drinking.
Although it sounds like you thought the urges were more related to wanting to harm yourself – it’s really good that you could recognise this. I think it helps a lot because it can start to allow you to focus on the real problem and find something that will really help. For example, lets say that you wanted to drink so badly because a self destructive part got triggered by feeling abandoned by your T over the weekend (I’m not saying that’s what happened, it’s just an example so I can explain). Just trying to focus on not giving in to the urge to drink would probably be really tear-you-apart tough and would still leave you feeling highly distressed/upset/anxious/angry/whatever because you haven’t addressed the underlying problem. But if you can recognise that the drinking is simply a way to harm yourself, you can start to look at which part is driving this and why you would want to harm yourself. If you then have a way to soothe that part and it’s fears, then I reckon you’d find that a lot more helpful than simply focusing on not drinking.
How are you feeling today?
Do you know what caused your upset? Were fears triggered?
I find weekends really hard. I find it essential to plan my days in advance, otherwise I can get into a very bad state of mind really quickly. Then it’s impossible for me to find things to fill my day.
I’ve found it helps to have a list of things to do for different parts. When I say “things to do” I mean both activities you can do that that part enjoys as well as things you can do to help soothe and comfort and calm that part. Then when you identify which part is upset, you can refer to your list and it’s a lot easier to find something that will help. It takes a lot of thought and trial and error to make up your list/s, but it really does help a lot later on.
Did you manage to find a way to soothe your upset part without harming yourself?
I wish your kid could have come with me on Saturday. I went to some rock pools at the beach. They were so cool! I found these bright green blob things and after a wave had washed over them, they would suddenly squirt water high up into the air. They were funny to watch. And there was this giant snaily/slug thing that had frilly bits on it so it just looked like a piece of junky seaweed. But it wasn’t, that was it’s disguise. It had a big hump on it’s back so it looked like a giant snail, but it wasn’t a shell, that was just how it was. And we saw heaps of bright green crabs. They were big and would all run and hide when they saw you coming. And there were lots of different types of fish. They were fun to watch running around. Well, swimming around cause fish don’t have feet and legs. And at one place there was this really high rocky part and huge massive waves would crash against it. They were so loud and scary. But I stood up on the high rocky part and watched them. One of them got me a bit wet, but that was okay. I took a little bottle with me and collected lots of shells. When I got home I arranged them real nicely in the little bottle and they are so pretty. I need to remember to take them to show my T tomorrow. And I found a few larger shells that I put on a shelf in my safe place at home.
I bet we would have had fun there together. I hope you have something nice planned for today.
Stay safe muffled.
poster:littleone
thread:753986
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20070419/msgs/754485.html