Having grown up with love wired to a switch, turning on and off without recourse… I’m left vulnerable. I’ve seen this vulnerability in others, what we sometimes call our buttons. Push some of them and we feel angry. Push the right ones and we are incapable of anger at first, instead we just feel our world suddenly come to an end.
The vulnerability in me leaves me open to a deep hurt, a hurt that knocks me off my feet. It hurts like nothing else can.
This morning I came down to join Xavier on the sofa, but he stretched out and told me there was no room. Rejection. In that moment someone reaches inside me and squeezes my heart until it stops beating. However others might interpret this situation… for me this situation is a trigger. It taps straight into some deeply founded and hurtful beliefs I have about myself. In that moment I know with certainty that I am worthless.
Judy taught me to identify such situations as triggers and to recognise that the instant and devastating effect they has on me is to do with the interplay between those horrible automatic thoughts and the feelings they generate. For the moment, the best I can do is to catch automatic thoughts and pass them through a filter. That filter lets me stand back and take a deep breath. ‘Xavier’s three, he is probably just asserting his free will; He is hot and so he wants to stretch out on the sofa alone; He’s still a bit sleepy and feeling a little grumpy.’ These are the alternative explanations that are so obvious to others, but that I am blind to when the quick fists of rejection take me off my feet. They aren’t my first thoughts, as they might be for others, but I can reach them in a rather clumsy way and use them to centre me again. It’s what people like me then refer to as a wobbly moment, as we bring ourselves back to a place where we bury once again the feeling of worthlessness.
I’ll get quicker at recognising negative automatic thoughts and filtering them out. But the wrinkles on my forehead and my slight squint, and the look of tightly wound concentration as you speak to me is a sign that behind the scenes I’m busy multitasking… listening and processing what you are saying… whilst also filtering all those negative thoughts that fall into my head as quickly as rain.
Now, I must end this post here, I’ve just been invited onto the sofa for a cuddle.
Filtering and translating those negative thoughts is so very difficult for me. The alternate observations/explanations are so obvious to John and to my sister but no matter how often they tell me I still struggle with the obvious vs. the habit.
ReplyDeleteYeah Jojesek, it's maddening that they are such obvious interpretations but that they are not the first interpretation we think of when faced with a potential trigger!
ReplyDeleteJudy helped teach me the strategies but then I think its down to me and practice... I'm not there yet, but getting better. I think the understanding I've gained from working with Judy has kept me from reaching my deepest lows this time, and is speeding up my recovery. Have to wait and see I guess.
I started by just taking one or two thoughts with Judy and we wrote down alternative interpretations. We did this again and again and again. Everytime I volunteered a negative interpretation she took me back to the technique until it drove me up the wall! But then I needed to learn how to do it by myself, and to do it more often. Not easy, and I takes a lot more effort when depression is at work.
Have you ever had a Judy to work with?