Thread: I am a mess?
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Old Dec 18, 2010, 01:24 AM
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bpd2 bpd2 is offline
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Member Since: Nov 2010
Location: Oregon
Posts: 797
Nope. Not a mess. Just in a messy place.
What you do so very well is be a part of community. It's a dance. And omg does it have some tough moves. Talk about Break dancing! Ai-yi-yi.....

I am so sorry you are in a confusing and frightening place. What might help is to make a narrative of what you are writing. What I mean is, that the above is expression, it is feeling. Narrative would tell the story of what you were doing, hearing seeing, feeling, touching as these times came upon you. You do this for two reasons: it makes you slow down (and this is very hard to do, I know), and it makes you realize that real things are happening--it's not all in your head. There is a third step, but this narrative step is going to take you awhile. I promise it will help. It might take a couple of hours. It probably should take a couple of hours. My experience, when I do this, when I am this way and this my skill to practice, is that it takes me a long time to even be able to stick to the task. I get up, slam my hand on the table, pull on my hair, blah, blah, until I can take deep enough breaths to stay still and LOOK at the page (puter or paper) in front of me. Then I'm stuck at WHERE DO I BEGIN??? and then I get a vivid flash of some moment, and I start there, with that moment. It's OK to express along the way, but the goal is to turn your cries into coherent thoughts so that you can follow the threads of thought instead of getting all tangled up in them--which is what has happened. DO NOT try to make a "spider-map" or balloon outline instead. (If those terms aren't familiar to you, skip it...) Those don't help...they just reinforce that everything is connected to everything else (duh), and there you are, back at the screaming meemies all over again. Don't do that. Instead, work at narrating your experience. DO NOT go over into the next step if you can help it...and the next step is going to be a kind of analysis. SAVE that for tomorrow or even the next day. It may take awhile to calm down, and it's time to give yourself that space and time.

Please do this.

I am sore and tired tonight, and I need to go to bed to get some energy and bounce back for tomorrow. I'll check the thread as soon as I wake up in the morning. I very much want to hear how this goes for you.