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What Does the Passing of a Year Sound Like?


Tomorrow is my birthday.  I will be 47 (egads) and will have to update my profile for the blog.  

So while I will update my age, I think the rest of the profile stays the same.  A year into this blog and I am still working on building that strong foundation--the part that will hold me up on the days when it feels like everything is crumbling around me or times when my wrecking ball mentality has me swinging blindly at invisible foe.

I still struggle with reading, and so finding some of Brene Brown, her Daring Greatly, on audiobook has allowed me to continue reinforcing what I believe will help me. 

The messages I hear are the same from everyone ---my adult day treatment program, the mood and anxiety group, books, blogs, videos and visits with my therapist and doctor.  And sometimes when I write about them I feel like I am actually living them.  When I speak the words --shame, fear, guilt, resiliency, wholehearted living, Inner Wisdom, Inner Mean Girl, self-compassion, I can feel them running through my veins bringing me strength.  

But there are also blue days, and weeks, and these I did not expect and can still catch me by surprise.  The last week or so has felt like that.  I cancelled some plans, I felt awkward and disconnected around people who have always been warm and supportive and I constantly wrestled an old fashioned temper tantrum that occasionally got away from me.   I felt whiny and crazy and stupid and weak and like everything I had done had amounted to nothing because I was not in control of my feelings.  Ah---control----I still crave it.

Cognitive behavior therapy --- how your thoughts create your feelings, and how to rewire your thinking process.  Simple enough to read about...yet so much harder to do because some days---some weeks---it takes you being present--even in the pain and fear and inadequacies--while you work your way through what message your brain is sending to  your body.  Anxiety, tingles, tight chest, tense muscles, nerve pain, headache, exhaustion, anger, headache, tears---all possibilities.  Mental illness is not just in your head; it lives in your body and manifests itself in physical illness all too often.  You spiral....out of control of your thoughts and then your body...and it all blurs so you don't know or care what went wrong first--you just want it to all go away---which feels impossible.

I still have a few big roadblocks I haven't even tackled yet.  To have a fighting chance at staying well, I need to get at them---which feels horrible to say because they are the same things I identified as problems over a year ago.  And here I am.  

So while the 46 silently flips to 47 tomorrow, a lot of things have not changed.

I am, as always, a Work in Progress. 

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