1 Week In
When I wrote the admission post, I did not know what I was going to do from then on; I just knew I had to do something different.
Owning it myself was hard enough but admitting it to others, accepting that fear that I had tried to avoid for decades was tougher still.
In this past week, a rollercoaster of emotions, self-reflection, self-loathing and actions have happened: panic attacks, eating nothing and getting to silly levels of drunk, wanting to sleep all the time just to block it out.
Normally, I write notes in Obsidian but these findings, reflections and lessons also felt like something that should be as open as the first post. A journey that I need to go on but one that I can throw into the void. Maybe others with a similar issue would read this or maybe those affected by my actions could gain some closure.
What I have read
- The emotional regulation crash course
- Dealing with negative emotions
- Managing Negative Emotions
What I have learned
54321 Grounding
When feeling a bunch of things, doing the 54321 grounding can be essential
- 5 things you can see
- 4 things you can hear
- 3 things you can touch
- 2 things you can smell
- 1 thing you can taste
This works as like a reset and, while it is frustrating to keep doing it, it is like a mini superpower and has helped tens of time this week
90 second reactions
All these things I have done, I have always seen them as subconscious and that I have no control. An excuse, I knew, but having the research to back it is a nice arsenal of evidence to use against myself.
When a thing happens, an external event or a feeling comes up, your parasympathetic nervous system has control for 90 seconds; that makes you flinch or scream or run. After that, it is all you.
This is not only important for ownership, but also to understand that, when you want to do something quickly, you likely need to wait 90 seconds to think clearly. “Slow is smooth and smooth is fast”, it seems, and the grounding technique above is a good 90 second killer.
Feelings have a physical sign
Discomfort. I feel it. Physically. Often. I do not often know what I am feeling, it is hard for me to connect brain and body and identify emotions. Sometimes it feels like being in a shoe store and I am asking the shop worker what I am feeling and they go out the back to check. Sometimes they will come back with the item or they may stay in the back for hours and come back much later.
Studies have been done where people were shown black and white images of people next to emotions and they were able to link the images with an emotion.
I did not know this! Now I do not need to ask the shop worker and I just make a best effort guess based on what I physically feel and try and identify if there is a trigger that might be causing that.
What I need to do better
Lying
I want people to like me, all people do. Maybe it is because off the autism or feeling like I cannot read people but I need them to like me. To continue to like me, to see good things in me, to not leave me. Enough therapy has me aware that the fear of leaving comes from my father passing away due to a brain tumour but this behaviour existed before this.
This fear, “you need to do things to make them like you, dont show the bad things, dont need them or they will go”, does not just cause the negative behaviours and outlets that I look for in relationships but they impact my communications daily.
Lying? No, I would never call it lying. I am a good person. I do not lie. My brain (once called “the director” by a therapist) does these things. I do not want to do them. I do not know that I do them. Yet I do them. I tell a person that I love them and then I use these outlets to deal with that fear that comes from loving them, wanting them. To show myself I do not need them, that I can handle it if they leave.
Let's call it what it is: lying. It permeates every layer of my life. I filter my speech for what the other person wants to hear. No, what I think the other person wants to hear. Not just a partner, a random colleague or friend. This needs to be struck from my life. I need to gain self-respect, gain a sense of identity and accept that honesty is the only option.
Validation
I still want it. And I still do not know how to give it to myself. What is worse, I want it from the very person that I was too afraid to seek it from. I still find myself messaging them, going to message them and to tell them of all the work I am doing, of all the new things I have learned. I want them back but I made this situation. And the work is for me. For my lessons learned. They may move on, without me, and that is my doing. I did that.
Fears and Reliance
Love doing things for people. Love it. Feels amazing. The opposite? Not so true. It hurts and creates such discomfort that the urges to do shitty things grow exponentially. I have done the work in therapy and I know the things. I know it can be equal and I know that someone doing a thing for me is a good feeling for both parties. But the fear of “owing them” or not being seen as capable of doing it for myself or that I am not worth those things being done for me is so great that I do not know how to sit with it, let alone process it.
But I will. I have to master these things. To live consciously and actively. To take charge and stop blaming my brain/the director/my fears for my actions.