Huey, Duey and Louise

L-R: Winston, Weilan, Rosie

Dogs.  They drive you nuts, they keep you sane.

Howling into the ether

Bluntly, it has been a tiring, difficult time. The ME/CFS has decided to go co-morbid with fibromyalgia. Strains in marriage from poor coping mechanisms learned in childhood (on both sides. Couples counselling and concerted efforts and we're back on track - but still...). Stresses from work. Dementia crumbling down my mother-in-law and the huge stress that has put on all her children.  An unexpected trigger that pushed me into panic attacks, minor self-harm, obsessive thinking and a period of severe depression - probably as bad as I've ever had.

Depression has been sitting heavily on me and there has been medication, time off work and EMDR sessions with the psychologist. Nothing quite like sitting with your very worst emotional memories.

Fuseli's The Nightmare, via Wikipedia

Exhausting and emotionally draining. Bibiliotherapy in the form of different texts (some extremely confronting, possible only in small doses with my head in the right place - else I spiral downwards yet again), and also much fiction. Because I keep coming back to the fact that all writing is about the human condition, and I'm driven by the need to understand, so I'm going through stories that deal with abandonment, with not feeling good enough despite all evidence to the contrary, with learning how to interact with others, with redemption, with change, with growth.  So I am (painfully and) slowly teasing out past and present behaviours and patterns in the hope that next time depression bites (and it will), it will not be as savage, nor take as long to dislodge.

Shifting (EMDR)

The transformation takes time.

It’s not smooth, or simple, or logical,

rather,

turbulence as memories (forms) are consciously revisited

examined

felt.

Then awareness of a slow settling

(changing sinews and muscles)

as basic structures re-form.

No shape shifts without structural change.