So I'm off work on medical disability, but I'll have to go back within the next couple of weeks or I'll starve, even though I don't feel anywhere near ready to go back. I'm in the intensive outpatient program three days a week at the hospital, but can't see my own T during this time.

My problem is I can't seem to work on any one thing. My #1 issue is the anger and hurt from the last few years of a bitter and untrusting marriage, which pushed me toward having an affair. I still have very unresolved feelings for my lover with the conflict between the love and affection I felt for her vs. the hurt from the way she left me. Thinking of her reminds me of our days together when we were still volunteer firefighters, especially one very messy auto accident that was very traumatic for me while she was my rock, right there with me keeping me calm and steady and talking me through it. The memory of the traumatic head injuries to my patient, a girl who later died despite everything we could do, rolls me straight into PTSD flashbacks of numerous other fatalities during my career, especially my last fatal auto accident before I retired. It was a double fatality, and I was the one who found the second victim thrown from the car into a patch of woods with one side of his head missing (sorry).

These are all things I need to deal with, and deal with soon, because I'm going to have to leave the hospital program and go back to work whether I'm ready or not. The problem is that this stuff is all tied together in one big knot, everything connected to everything else. I keep picking at it and picking at it and working around the edges, but I can't get an end loose to really work on anywhere.

Has anyone else had to deal with a tangled up mess like this? How were you able to work on it? Were you able to get the issues separated to work on, or did you have to try to just deal with the whole mess at once? Any help would be appreciated.