Understanding....

I'm hoping that some clarity has come, after my session with my wonderful counsellor, R (another of the gems to go into my wall, if I ever get round to doing more work on it). Just in talking with her about what's been going on, some things made more sense - and I realised that I had misinterpreted things because of my own (fairly fragile) state. I hope my new understanding is at least more accurate than my previous one, even if I still don't "get it" all.

We set up a plan for self nurturing - a short list of specific things I can choose from, aiming to do at least one a day. There are a couple of things I haven't tried before. It will be interesting to see if they work. One of these is to change clothes when I get home, from work clothes to "lounging around" clothes. I don't know if it will have any effect, but maybe it will. The theory is that it will help me to switch off a bit more, mentally and also to make a bit of a shift towards not being always the responsible one.

We talked too about not understanding, how that is tied up in my past and has all sorts of connotations, and how maybe some things just are incomprehensible. Deep down, that's a bit alien to me - I have the sense that if only I had all the information, or was more intelligent, I woudl understand things. But maybe I wouldn't; maybe, as R said (and as I am sure others have said and I have just not been able to hear) there are things which just cannot be understood. (That possibly doesn't seem a statement of any significance to most of you - but it's quite a shift for me.)

We also talked - a lot - about how hard it is for me to do nice things for myself when I see myself as so worthless. You have made some lovely, kind, thoughtful comments to me, and I appreciate them all - but it is as if you are talking about somebody else, because I don't see those characteristics in myself. That makes it very hard to be nice to myself; I feel I should be punishing myself instead. Working on that one tooo.