Tag: #thehighlysensitiveperson

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A great journey can occur in only a couple of hours. It’s the depth that matters.

It’s Sunday morning. Well afternoon now. What do you do when you feel like there’s no possible way to capture the journey you took (in the span of one morning for only a couple of hours), in one blog post? I guess I need to find or develop more skills in terms of summarizing and organizing. This morning I took an emotional journey. I journeyed miles through feelings physical and emotional. The most important aspect of this I think is that at the finish line I was able to lay in my person’s arms and just cry. I cried for so many things. Initially she was concerned, and because of my work I was able to tell her I was crying because I needed the release.

I needed to let all of it out. To allow all of my feelings with no judgment and just to share them. I told her she was my safe space. She is my safe space. I told her how new this feeling is for me. I used to push down tears and my own experiences in exchange for the stiff upper lip that felt at the time like it helped me to survive. This worked UNTIL I had kept my side that had needs alone for so long, that it could no longer take it. It needed air. And because I didn’t know how to meet it’s needs I struggled in anger. I was angry at my disease, at my pain, at myself, at so much more….  and it came out on others for awhile. I couldn’t access my calm and understanding parts, especially when I needed them the most. My basic natural tendency was to be tough, and we are not always nice when we are so tough. I couldn’t access the parts of myself that could help me have compassion and understanding for others, and I knew I would need that if I were to survive as a Counselor. I knew that I could not help other people find a way to allow their process and meet their needs if I hadn’t first climbed that mountain myself. I wish I could say it’s one mountain. It’s not. It is a series of mountains, with peaks and valleys, gorgeous views, and also dark and seemingly endless nights.

Two times since we have gotten together I have broken into a heap in my partner’s arms. I am always welcome to share my full spectrum of emotions with her, and that safety is irreplaceable. But these two times I was at my limit and I allowed myself to not worry about being a burden, about being over-sensitive, that she would shy away from my pain. She is a warrior…. a warrior behind her service to the Army (which I still need to post about). She is a warrior for myself and my children. She is the best kind of warrior. The kind who constantly faces up against her fears and continues on inspite of. It is because of her I have learned the importance of being gentle and sometimes succumbing to our sense of overwhelm and fears, and that this is OK. She doesn’t try to fix my pain, nor does she shy from it. She doesn’t try to compete with it or put it on a scale of comparison. She doesn’t squirm uncomfortably trying to change the subject, or invalidate it in any way “like telling me to look on the bright side”. She doesn’t become so upset herself that there is no room left and I feel I must zip myself back up quickly so as not to harm her. She just offers her presence, and it turns out that’s all I need.

I began my day today with my beloved bath, my books, and my writing. My favorite way to begin a day. I also began it with severe abdominal pain, gut wrenching pain, frustrating nausea, and symptoms that are quite unpleasant and leave a lot of fear in their wake. I am grateful I had the perfect arms of her, and the words of Glennon Doyle Melton in Carry On Warrior to compliment. As always I had everything I needed. Now that list also includes compassion and understanding for MYSELF. This was the missing piece that has made life so much different.

I write my best when I write to her. It is how we fell in love. So I am going to share a personal letter, because aren’t those the best kind? A letter that came on the wings of inspiration while I was having my struggle this morning.

Here it is: A quick note about it. She is a Veteran of the United States Army. She did two tours over seas. She often struggles with identifying with this experience or remembering it for ways she could be hard on herself about it. Since she doesn’t fit the traditional role of what someone would think of as a Veteran she at times struggles with owning her bravery and power. Last night we ate at Texas Roadhouse and came across other Veterans who banded with her and helped us celebrate. It was random and it was beautiful. I know in my heart that one of our greatest gifts in this life will be bearing witness to one another’s journey.

*I feel very vulnerable about sharing this letter. My thoughts are should I? Do I need to? Does someone need to hear all the parts when particularly some of the letter and the way it flows will only make sense to her. I think to Glennon’s book where her Dad say’s to her “don’t you think you should take some of these things to the grave Glennon.” Her reply is how I found the courage to share this part of myself today. “I thought hard for a moment and said, no I really don’t. That sounds horrible to me. I don’t want to take anything to the grave. I want to die used up, and emptied out. I don’t want to carry around anything that I don’t have to. I want to travel light.”

The letter:

“I’m writing you to distract myself from the discomfort I’m currently in. I keep getting out of the tub because I have to use the toilet, and each time this happens I am cold and shivery and soaking the bathroom floor 🙁

I wanted to focus on and tell you how cool last night was. It was so lovely seeing you get to honor yourself with others. You sat with it and owned it and didn’t reduce or dismiss and I’m beyond words proud and happy for you, with you… all of it. I feel so lucky to have shared that with you. I also feel lovely that I’m able to move through momentary petty emotions without them ruling my life anymore. This has changed my whole world. What I mean by this is for a few minutes there I felt so anxious and overwhelmed, and then loud people coming over, and you being super into whether you’re going to text this guy who may or may not want to get close in any way possible with my baby,…. and I was nauseated and hot. For a few moments I felt horrific. And because of that most likely and not because you did anything wrong I almost got cranky with you. Almost let my mind tell me that this wasn’t how I saw our night and you weren’t paying attention to me. Like a baby…. lets modify that to be kind. Like someone not feeling well getting caught in a wave of panic induced negativity.
and then as you so often do you read my mind, I had also worked through it myself, but it’s so refreshing that our intuition does that.

My ex was intuitive too, we scanned one another for flaws and the world so we could be hyper-vigilant and flip out at shadows. You read my mind which said without me having to get upset you noticed. You said out loud that you were present…And in reflection I would have regretted it terribly if I had made those lovely moments about me, whether I didn’t feel well or not. Actually where I took my mind to was how I felt the day I did the Crohns walk, and how important it was for me to take that day to be about me and honoring my experience, and people give that to me, have helped me find my way to it. So I’m so glad I kept my initial feelings at bay because I would have missed out on irreplaceable moments of witnessing you honoring an important part of your life. I also enjoy so much seeing you blossom and open up and share you with others. I have to remember to not get jealous and crazy because I just love you so much, and because it isn’t healthy. I have had to learn this security, it doesn’t come easy.

Today I woke up short of breath with abdominal pain…. terrible bloating and some bleeding actually :/ waves of nausea and terrible joint aching. And it’s so tempting to be taken over by anger and frustration at my body. To beat myself up or make our whole experience that I shouldn’t have gone or any other thing. To lash out at the world, great pain makes us lash out at the world, and those around us. It makes us claw and bite and bargain and deny. When really our only choice is to feel it until it passes, it will pass. It passes easier with someone like you by my side.

So when I tell you how grateful I am know that it includes this: that I am just sitting here smiling, even as I cry in pain and frustration…. because I loved logging that experience last night and I wouldn’t trade it. And if I’m going to have this devil disease it’s so nice to have it near to you…. I could be alone. Someone else could still have you right now. So when I take account of my life I feel like I have a fortune in the bank and houses all over 😉 rich beyond my wildest dreams.

I feel grateful for less panic. Somehow your steadfast gaze and warmth helps me panic less. Our love. I know it’s just a superstition of sorts that nothing terrible can happen because our love is so good. But it feels better to choose safe and calm waters while I can, since we have no control over some storms anyway.

I’ve gone to the bathroom enough that I can finally breathe a little better. Boy is it an unpleasant feeling to have so much air built you can’t even breathe and to not know whether to take an ant-acid or my inhaler :p

I love you with everything that I am. I am the best possible version of myself when I am with you. You make everything worthwhile.

I see you. You seem so much less hard on yourself. I know that will still be a natural default tendency for awhile and Rome wasn’t built in a day.  But I see changes and I’m so grateful for your strength. To be able to live my life next to someone who sees things and gets them and then puts action into those things to make changes that benefit all of us as a whole. Amazing. That makes you a true warrior even, with now an invisible uniform. We now have a teammate in this pursuit. No longer having our resources sucked out of us by being misunderstood and misunderstanding. What an amazing feeling.

Ok back to my morning pages, maybe a little reading and soaking my sore bum in this bathtub. So grateful to be able to breathe a little better.

All of my love darling….”

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On feeling like a fraud….

Thank you Dave !!

 

I’m having a lot of emotions open up for me recently. It is occupying a lot of my energy and therefore the lines have been silent for a bit.

I haven’t talked with many people outside my immediate few about my experience with deploying with The Red Cross for Disaster Mental Health Relief to Texas.

This morning I recieved a Houston Strong T-shirt and a special pin from a cherised person whom I look up to in the counseling field. My reaction was unexpected even to myself. I cried big ugly crocodile tears, and I am here sitting in these emotions. I wish I could say I cried because of the generosity of the gesture and how it feels to be seen and appreciated, for all the depth of that. This is my desired wish. The truth is I cried because I felt like I didn’t deserve it. I felt, as I have many times throughout my life… like a fraud.

My first idea to become a Red Cross Volunteer came when in my graduate degree program I met Professor and Red Cross Extraordinaire, Dave Denino. He was teaching a Crisis course at SCSU. He showed us a video of relief effort for Hurricane Katrina and I immediately felt as if I wanted to give in such a way as well. I looked up to Dr. Denino. He had a warm and kind presence and his work to improve the lives of others in a variety of ways is deeply inspiring. He is the type of figure I would have wished to have for a Father. I am grateful that he is seen and believed in me, and in that way he became somewhat of a figure of that nature, someone I wanted to model myself after. I have always decided I want to work to become that which I admire. I work tirelessly on those efforts, but what people don’t see is how often I have struggled and at times failed in these pursuits.

In this case people could see my effort, and my fancy Red Cross garb and my big smile headed to Texas, but what they didn’t see as they thanked me for my service was the internal battle that ended up happening.

All my life I have struggled with biting off more than I can chew, my enthusiasm larger always than my pool of resources. I am beginning to see also the beauty in this and not just the beast, but it’s been quite the journey. The truth about a Red Cross deployment is I have wanted to be that person, the warm and comforting one, since the day I realized that was a possibility, but my life has not afforded it being that option. I knew if I didn’t decide quickly to go on this and just make it happen, like many other things in my life, it would not come to pass. It is perhaps just how I work. But in my situation I have many other people to consider, and the fact that I have a disease. Both of these things came into play with my deployment in ways that I didn’t anticipate. My heart was in the right place, but as always with life when we see what we think something will be like, and what it is actually like can be a world of difference. I am a famous “romanticizer”.

What actually happened is that my partner whom I adore is a 911 dispatcher and she ended up being held over for 16 hour shifts the majority of while I was gone. I could tell and hear in her voice that she was desperate for me to come home. What actually happened is that the travel and stress on  my body made my Crohn’s symptoms come to life in ways that I did not anticipate, that I could not have known, but still feel like a hack and a fraud for wasting resources and going if I had to come back early. What actually happend was is that I rushed to the scene wanting to be a hero, and the version of myself I ended up meeting was someone cranky when things didn’t look that way. A full frontal view of my own humanity was laid out before me, and I did not like for awhile what I saw.

I realized this morning that this entire experience as a whole has important lessons for me. This is what I do with most of the experiment that is my life. I attempt to learn from it, and only in this second half of my life am I learning to do that without being AS hard on myself as I used to be. What actually happened was that I spent the first 4-5 days of my deployment not particpating in much because the operation wasn’t organized yet. Outside the situation that is very understandable and I would not fault the organization, but inside I was impatient and frustrated since it was a big sacrifice on my part to not be earning income for that 2 weeks. I recognize now that I couldn’t skip past this being a learning experience. I now know so much more about what to expect from myself and from the organization, and to make fully sure my home situation is secured before doing such a thing. My enthusiasm is like a giant lab puppy dragging my responsible self across the world.

I wanted to show up better, with more patience. I expect myself to have a positive attitude and to bring it with me. I had more moments on that deployment than I would have liked where I did not feel that way. And on top I feel guilty about that. Because I know if I am not part of a solution then I am part of the problem.

So now the entire experience became this source of shame and discomfort, and once that happened I somehow forgot all that I did contribute during my time, and that my heart was in the right place. My heart is always in the right place, I just make mistakes and have shortcomings like everyone else <3

So for everyone out there that feels like a fraud. Your feelings often can lie to you, and this is also a normal part of being a human being. To take the time to work through it and give yourself the understanding and compassion you would give another is essential.

Thank you Dave. What you don’t know is how this gesture actually became a piece of my healing, because it showed me where the hurt resides and then with some support I can find relief. I can’t tell you how much it means to have a role model like you to be able to watch and learn from. How much it means that you have believed in me. I hope to be that for my Client’s, my Family, and my Friends. A role model that they are proud to call theirs and to learn from.

This post has inspired me to spend some time soon writing a blog post about what I did accomplish in Houston and about my experience there.