Defense Mechanisms

I’ve been kind of quiet this week…mainly doing a lot of processing in my head of frustrating feelings that don’t seem to make sense. Major anxiety…restlessness…really teary…a lot of the “I’m tired and don’t want to do this anymore”. But why?? It’s been a good week!

And that right there is the “problem”. I don’t trust it. I’m on high alert waiting for something bad to happen and take away my happy. I don’t trust my happy feelings because I’ve been faking being okay and being fine for so many years…I don’t know what’s real anymore…so I overthink it…analyze every nuance of it. And it’s fucking exhausting and frustrating as hell.

I talked about this a lot with my therapist yesterday. Apparently it is a pretty common defense mechanism in people who have gone through significant trauma in their lives…so I guess I’m “normal”…ha! The world (people in general) hasn’t…for the most part…given me any feeling of safety and security in the past few years…so as I’m trying to venture out more and more…all of my defense mechanisms are kicking in…even when I’m really okay. She said the key is to keep grounding myself in feelings that I do trust…and for me those are pretty simple things…the sound of water…the sun on my face…trail under my feet…wind in my hair…my kids…my tribe

I’m spending my weekend at a cabin on a lake…so hopefully I’ll be able to get lots of those grounding moments in. I feel a huge need to sit in a patch of sunlight and gaze at the water. Listen to the birds and the water lapping at the shore.