Feeling my Feelings

 Well I listened to some good therapy tiktoks this morning but the downside is now I need to do a little introspection. That's hard! I don't wanna! I mean, I do, but I also feel so heavy already. One of them was about letting go of perfectionism, feeling my feelings and trying to be compassionate to myself the way I would to my own children. The other was about dissociation and how the brain kind of gets to a point where it either needs to escape or mentally find a way to be okay with the current situation. 

See, I've talked with my therapist about how it's hard for me to have (what feels like) confrontational/"hard" conversations. And now I'm wondering if it's because I've finally reached that tipping point where I either need to accept it or escape from it, and sometimes I've chose escape, and sometimes I've chosen acceptance. I feel like, based on my emotional reaction to this video, that I'm reaching another tipping point but I'm not sure how to either accept or escape (because I'm not 100% certain what this problem is) and it's a little terrifying. 

Random tangent real quick, we ran out of milk so I hadn't had my coffee this morning, and I decided to try some mixed in with a hot cocoa packet. It was pretty yummy, mmm. I still prefer mine, but it's a nice no-milk/warm coffee solution (I usually have mine iced). 

Okay back to the first video, about healing my inner child. When I first watched Encanto, I'd seen everyone raving about how they identified with the strong sister, how they felt invisible and needed and pressured to do everything. Well, it feels prideful to say this, but I identified with the perfect older sister. I never thought of myself as a perfectionist, but I realized I feel this need to appear to have a certain kind of perfection for my loved ones. I need to be perfectly compassionate. I need to be perfectly gospel-following. I am (mostly) perfect academically - definitely did well enough to be considered "successful" by most standards. And I think the things that stress me out the most are things where I'm not appearing perfect enough - things I'm worried will make me appear neglectful (like my jagged-toothed daughter not getting to the dentist, or the crumbs all over my floor, kids NEEDING to wear dirty clothes even though they often choose to, which doesn't bother me, but when I haven't done laundry in a while suddenly it's a Big Deal). And this therapist on tiktok said that because I'm always holding so much space for this perfectionism and beating myself up for not reaching my standards, I don't have any energy which leads to procrastination and further negative emotions. Ugh. It's just a lot.

But she did say the "cure" was to treat myself in the way a child would need to be treated - compassionately, cared for, not critical, and most of all letting go of the perfectionism. Judging by my lifestyle, I've never really thought of myself as a "perfectionist," but it's clear in some sense I am! So somehow... I need to let go of this core trait. I think that will help a lot with my depression, too, which by the way has been pretty bad today. I wasn't awake very long when my oldest said my middle two got in an argument and the older one "left the house" saying she didn't want to be a part of our family anymore. Poor kid needs some therapy. I guess maybe the move is still affecting me, too, and it seems to be still affecting her. Sad face. So anyway. I've had a lot of feelings and I feel like I'm on the verge of crying, but I guess since I can't accurately assess the emotions (what are they exactly???) I haven't felt safe enough to let them out. So I'm going to try and take a few minutes to comfort myself, I just wanted to write these things down first so I could hopefully recognize and remember them better. 

May the love be with you.