I am numb. I have been numb for a couple of days. I went to my therapy session on Saturday. We talked about my marriage. He asked me not to make any decisions without consulting him and my Bishop. I promised I wouldn't. He mentioned that I was in a different mood than I have been in a very long time. I started a new medication, it is supposed to bring me out of this funk. I want to get out of this funk but then there are some things that I don't want to feel. It is not good for me to be numb. This causes me to self injure so I feel something, even pain is better than feeling numb.
My boss has been riding me and he has noticed my lack of emotion. It bothers him. I told him once that I was trying. He keeps telling me that "trying" is not good enough. In DBT we learn that we are doing our best, so if I am doing my best, then nothing I do is good enough. I don't understand! If trying is not good enough, and doing my best is not good enough, then what in the HELL am I doing.
Mary, dispute your emotional mind; I do and so would many others. Your best is certainly good enough but not everyone in the world holds to that DBT assumption. The point is that you can only do what you do and it is the best possible at that time. Your best is relative to the day, the weather, your breakfast, lots of factors but it will always be your best. The only thing that changes that is what your thoughts say. Remember, your thoughts are not usually a good indicator of reality. I know that disputing and disregarding the bad is hard to accept, which is where willingness comes. And, I know that you are very willing and that everything that is happening is so difficult and has so much power, which makes it even tougher.
ReplyDeleteI hope that you can remember that thoughts that harm you, criticize you, accuse you, judge you and lead you to pain and flashbacks come from Satan. They are dark thoughts and if you embrace them they become yours. Instead, realize that they are dark thoughts and therefore they are not of your heart, God, the light inside you that you were born with.
It is that light, which first encourages us to hold up our head. Inside, you might have heard, “You can do it baby, lift a little more and you’ll be able to see far and wide.” It is that light, which prompted you to rollover for the first time and time and time again. Think about this—watching a baby learn to walk-- when they fall—they get right back up and try again. If babies could talk, you would never hear them after a fall say, “You stupid weakling! Don’t get up you might fall again. You’re a failure. You will never be good enough to walk.” That is the darkness I’m talking about. And it begins when we first begin to disregard our own inner light- our heart.
Choose and own thoughts that come from your light. It is a very deliberate (and often difficult) choice because sometimes feeling the pain is better than feeling nothing. But really it is not. Start by becoming aware of the light inside you. It has been snuffed out to but a few embers; but the embers are there. Each time you choose thoughts of love, joy, peace etc., those embers will multiply and become flames and your light will become brighter. One day its brightness will be brighter than your darkest darkness. My love, thoughts and prayers are with you every day.