“You know the great thing though, is that change can be so constant that you don’t even feel the difference, until there is one. It can be so slow, that you don’t know that your life is better or worse, until it is. Or it can just blow you away, make you something different in an instant. It happened to me.” – Sam Monroe – Life as a House (2001)

Piece by piece, block by block, I can feel my executive function improving ever so slowly. So I have these moments of high energy and then I am completely and utterly zapped. I have been passing out for about 2 hours each day for nearly a week. I do spend my mornings uber critical of myself. I think maybe that is the anxiety. I get myself into such a tizzy that I need to eat a lot and nap. From my Tools for Trauma class, these are indicators I am in Freeze mode again. Those high energy periods are new though. I am transitioning into the person I want to be. I am happy with my progress, irrespective of what my Inner Critic convinces me of in the mornings.

Today was a lazy day. I hung out with a friend and watched movies and ate. I felt so guilty when 5 o’clock rolled around. My friend was suffering from jet lag and went to bed at 6pm. I was left to my own devices. I was sad and critical for about half an hour. Then I got up, cleaned the kitchen, took stock of what ideas we needed from the store, grocery shopped, came home and unpacked. My plan for today was to clean my office up. I moved in to see what I had to do and it was all over in 20 minutes. I couldn’t believe it only took me 20 minutes. When I am on, I am very on. Also, when I am off, I am very off. I cannot wait for this recalibration to take place. I might actually be able to operate like a normal person.

I guess the part of this story I am missing is in the 30 minute of moping. I went outside for a Mapacho (Peruvian traditional tobacco – it’s not smoking btw. I’ll try explain another time). I had been asking for help from the plant medicine. Mainly asking for strength. I am at that point in my healing where I am not sure what I need exactly. This level of healing is way above my pay grade. It is my act of surrendering, though I don’t think I am doing a very good job with it. So outside, asking for strength, and then all of a sudden I start to cry. There aren’t any tears with these cries though. I heard from a friend that crying without tears is your soul crying. I said ‘thank you’ to my Mapacho, put it out and went back inside. I laid on the couch and put one hand to my chest and one to my head. Reason for this is I am working on reacquainting my mind-body connection. Up until recently they have been like two teenage siblings fighting to no end. Maybe they have heard my calls, my pleads, my requests. Maybe it really is my soul crying, for which I am very grateful. So here I am crying on the couch, trying to get my Thinking Self and my Pusher Down of Feelings Self to step out of the way and let Little Kate talk, and asking myself questions to try and get to the bottom of the feelings. I am a complete novice with all of this, so it was rusty AF. It basically came out that the tears and lack of tears are because ‘it’s too much’. Too much of what? I assume it’s too much bottled up feelings. Maybe also too much on my Things to Avoid List.

So this high energy action tonight in the office came from feeling like I am letting down part of me. Which part of me was speaking? I don’t know yet. I have therapy tomorrow morning. Maybe I will have more clues then. Will report back.

I am having such a good time looking after myself recently. I feel the value of my efforts being repaid in my inner world, if that makes sense. I am reaping the rewards from making these choices and taking these small actions. I am becoming a new person. Piece by piece, block by block, day by day.

Just coz I don’t see the huge superstar firework results, doesn’t mean it’s not happening.

I also realised in that experience on the couch today that I am not proud of myself. I *say* and *write* that I am proud of myself nearly on the daily, but I realised today that my words are empty. Or maybe they are not empty, but the part of me where I get the dopamine hit from being proud of myself is not activating. Is that even how the brain and pride work? Something to Google.

Oh, and one more thing. I am trying really hard to cut down on my phone usage. Okay, checking today’s screen I am at 3 hours for two days in a now. This might be shocking, but I am down 50% from last week. I can definitely do better too. So my idea to help with this is that I am always thinking of random questions that I need to look up straight away. To counter this, I am going to use one of my notepads to write down my questions all in one place. Then I can make a project out of it when I have time. I can do it on the computer. See if there are patterns or whatever. Not sure how it’s going down.

My first and only question for today:

Does the guy who wrote Wheel of Time hate women? TBD

Also, I found it funny that when I started this task, all the little questions that usually run around in my head all disappeared. Interested to see how tomorrow goes.

Lots of love,

Kate