Hey again

Glad to hear that you're surviving pretty well without coffee, or the other stuff. Sounds like things may be in a potentially level place at the moment. Hope it keeps moving that direction.

The question you asked about thoughts or physical sensation coming first is a really good one. I had to think about that for a while! Honestly, it was like a loop for me, where one fed into the other and then back again. As uncomfortable as the physical sensations were, the thoughts were more distressing and therefore worse for me. Initially, I focused on quieting the thoughts, and when they calmed down quite a bit, the physical sensations seemed odd. Like out of place and without direction. After a while, with the thoughts calmed, it began to seem like the physical sensations were just my nervous system being overactive and shooting off wildly. Without the thoughts to fuel it on further, and accepting that the physical sensations were nothing more than physical sensations, they burned themselves out over time. That doctor who I quote all the time likened it to the ringing of a bell. Where you can continue to hear the humming resonance for a while after the bell has been rung. It fades away in time.

That's not to say that the anxiety doesn't still happen from time to time, but the CBT taught me how to deactivate it more quickly. Like now I can generally reregulate in about 15 minutes and get on with the day, rather than loop around and around endlessly. Sometimes, when things are rough around here, I may have to reregulate a few times in a day. So, it's not being anxiety free, but rather learning how to manage it quickly when it comes up- and not allow it to build back to that really bad place.

Hope that makes some sense....

Ditto about enjoying the company

You are so right- it can be very hard to find that balance between how much you should do for someone else versus how much you need to do for yourself. I've learned a lot about strong boundaries and healthy selfishness the last couple of years.

Is game developing what you do for work? If so, that sounds very interesting.

Glad to hear you are enjoying Hyrule and all that it has to offer. It's an amazing and beautiful world. One of my favorite things is when DD generates twenty heart Wolf Link with an amiibo nfc tag. Wolf Link runs around with Link, which is really cute, though he often does himself in pretty quickly by attacking wildlife or monsters (once he's gone, he can't come back until the next day). I picked up a tag on Etsy for like $5, but if you can make your own nfc tags, you can sometimes find the files online. Oh, and if you're having trouble honing in on something with your sensor, Wolf Link will sometimes guide you right to what you're looking for. He's a great virtual dog

Hope it's been a good week.