Three steps forward

They were difficult steps for me to take, requiring me as they did to look closely at some of my inner demons, my failings, my fears...

At my psychotherapy session today we were looking at abandonment and rejection. Puttting it into images was challenging - not because of lacking ideas, just because they were so vivid and real. That was childhood. Then we looked at now - and I had to put my fears into words. We looked at how likely they are to occur (very unlikely). And we looked at my past relationships, at common factors, at there being two in a relationship...

Like I posted before (and shared with my psychotherapist), I look at the world through rejection tinted glasses. I need to change that. I also panic at the earliest sign of potential abandonment. That needs to change too. Both are bad habits that I need to root out. I'm not too sure just how I am going to do that, but ideas we came up with in the session were:
self nurturing - when I fear abandonment I need to do something to care for myself.
distraction - I need to stop thinking in such an unhealthy way.
focusing on my strengths (really hard!) to remind myself I do not deserve rejection.
focusing on positive relationships, the fact that I do have strong and healthy relationships and that these outnumber the negative experiences.
reading - D suggested a book and I have found it is in my local library. Getting hold of it is on tomorrow's "to do" list.

If you have any other ideas, I'd appreciate them.

I felt a spark of focus today. That might be because it involved retail therapy, but... Last week I found a book in the library on scrapbooking your family tree. Given that i enjoy both card making and genealogy, this grabbed my interest. Today I found a "scrapbooker's scrapbook" (ie, not one of those cardboard things we filled in as children) and invested in some supplies to make the spark a reality. I found a really lovely stamp with lots of different frames all nested inside each other, and some peel-off frames as well. As I was shopping I was coming up with thoughts of the different pages I would like to do and the things I will include on them. Tomorrow I am going to clear the "dining room" table (we eat in the kitchen mostly and the dining room is more my craft room than anything else, except at Christmas) and get my supplies down from the attic. The first steps will be the hardest, so I have a couple of ideas for simple first steps to get over that hurdle. I hope my creativity will return...

Tomorrow I see my wonderful GP. We will discuss my return to work. I trust him, but am nervous all the same. How weird is that? I'm trying to focus on the trust not the nerves. I also have a gym trip planned, with a friend as my trainer is away.

Had a great massage today and my back feels a lot better. Hopefully I will manage to sleep more tonight as a result. D treated one very painful trigger point - from the level of sensitivity involved, it must have done some good!

H has not encountered any more comments or questions about my absence at school today. We hope it carries on that way. I need it to carry on that way.

So, three steps forward today. Maybe tomorrow will take a curve, but maybe it will be another step in the right direction.