Keep It
Don’t let it go. I have already let so many things go. Every day my brain tells me that not wanting things is easier than having them. It’s one of the reasons I can’t deal with people who purport to help me be zen. People who imagine that desire is the root of all suffering, and that I can be free of only I learn to give it up. But am an expert at giving things up, and I know what happens if you try to eliminate suffering through loss – ego death. You can give up anything and if you do you will be free. But one of the things you have to give up is yourself, and there are much cheaper ways to reduce suffering. At least on any situation where your suffering isn’t enacted by others and empowered by society. So don’t give it up. Keep it: https://www.reddit.com/r/CPTSD/comments/crkd3u/
There are of course many things you should give up. Some I should too. Like everything else it’s a balance. But it’s one I’m on the wrong side of, and I wish the social things people did for belonging and clam were more inclusive. It’s a thing I could maybe help you with – giving up soemthing you’ve lost (or soemthing you want to lose). I’ve done it a lot and I’m good at it. It’s the same skill people see when they imagine I’m good at survival, or at making decisions in a crisis, or at finding a path back to calm. It’s all just dealing with loss, and being willing to give up things that are important. It’s a thing I can teach you – that I am more than willing to help you with – but it comes with pain. It’s soemthing you should do well when you need to, but not something you should aspire to be good at. At least not the way I did it.
Dating is helping Shanda move through some feels. It seems like you’re finally getting a handle on how future contact with B might work while still letting you protect yourself. And I like the way it gives you perspective on us and other bits of your life. I sort of want you to go on 30 dates with 30 different people just to get your tolerance of new ideas up. You should definitely work in another date before you fill up your schedule with N&S. But you’ve got a good start, and you’re only doing a little bit of mixed feels avoidance.
I think it has helped you be more open to reorganizing other parts of our life, to thinking about what you want, and not recognizing when you’re triggered by me wanting new things. It’s so hard when you yell about how I hurt you by having an idea about what I or we could do, and you’ve been much more receptive to the idea that it happening, even if we’re not yet at a place to do something different. And you’ve finally agreed that sex is one of your primary goals in dating, which I think will make it eaiser for you. It might even let some of our previously seperate sex friends be the same people in the future, which would be fun.
I’ve been doing okay at day job this week. Got through all my daily work but I’m still holding an SR and I still haven’t touched the BZ project. I’m gonna try to kill the SR tonight so I can stop stressing about it. I have been to both noon meetings this week though, and stomped through a bunch of tricky release processes without crying, so moderately good overall.
Gym’d today but felt like shit so I hardly worked. It was still plenty to make me tired. And it made me leave the house and walk without Dog, which is good. The sauna is actually hot today though, and that’s nice.
Dog has been doing pretty well with untethered operations. He’s a little reluctant to go out without supervision but he seems to like the freedom once he gets over the anxiety. And it hasn’t been any trouble to get him back in when we need him. Good job Dog, for trying new things. And good job is for finally fixing the fence.
On my list this week I’ve got some medical billing, yet another trip to the glasses place (and another next week to get them back – I’m annoyed to have to go in just to have them mail things around), and initial setup for the new studio space – maybe getting a chair for it since we’re down one. Plus follow up on cleaning services and any other back to school prep I might be useful for.
I’m gonna make it a point to do HA4H prompts this week. Mostly here I think, but not in this message.
ZiB
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Sent from a phone.
