Self-Care Tip #127 – Because feelings can be confusing during self-care, keep connected to someone(s) objective.
A colleague told me the other day about his patient. Of course he didn’t name him, but I’ll call him Brent. Struggling with melancholic depression for many years, Brent started medication therapy. He began feeling better emotionally. But at the same time, he started to believe that he didn’t love his wife any more and started a dialogue with her about possible divorce.
It’s tempting to judge Brent. Easy to say, “What the…!?” Still, because we don’t know the full story, nor his thoughts, nor consider ourselves his Judge, we won’t.
Self-care can be a tricky road. It’s not all ah-ha moments and nirvana. Have you been there? Confused by your feelings as you heal?
A common reaction to improving is associating the things in our “ill” life – when we were feeling terrible – with other elements that may not have had anything to do with our bad feelings. Perhaps Brent’s wife was guilty by association and at some level he may have connected her to the dark emotions he so desperately never wants to feel again. Bits of this idea are also in a previous post about panic disorder and grief. For example, someone may change her profession because she believes her previous work is causally linked to the way she felt when ill. Maybe Brent wanted a change in spouses for the same reason.
When we are going through the healing that self-care brings, we might not find our new emotional baseline for a while. During that time, and because feelings are often not trustworthy, stay connected to the support network, confidants, the trusted few who can be our third-party advisors.
Although taking action on for our own health involves lifestyle changes, knowing when and how to get feedback is key.
Question: What has confused you about your healing and self-care journey? Please tell me your story.
i think to get better you first have to get worse and you have to see yourself at the bottom the real bottom a black hole maybe once your at the bottom get everything out try and get the really bad things out thats happened it doesnt hurt that mutch next time this way you can then heal and come back up again the only way so far ive managed to do that is ending up in E.R or resus but so far im doing well not been in hospital since july and im still going strong i am very mutch self careing at the moment till the doctors get up to date with me im gunna keep on fighting and the feeling i have that are bad i tell my friends it doesnt heal it but it helps to controll some of the feeling that i cant cope with myself
awesome! you said this so well Kevin. I’m also really happy for you. your success and personal joys are healing for the rest of us too. you matter. keep on!
thankyou if what i say helps one person that helps me also great deal
My mother abandoned me, emotionally. That was the way I interpreted what I learned early on in therapy. I think, now, that she just had no idea how to love anyone. My way of handling that information was to decide that, since I had chosen (with my then finance) my wedding ring (and engagement ring) to be made up in white gold because my mother’s rings were white gold, maybe I could get back at her by changing my rings to yellow gold. I was so sick then that my husband would do anything to make me feel better, so he bought me a new set of rings. I loved them. I was happy. And then I got well and decided the whole ring thing was a stupid idea and hadn’t helped at all. I missed my old rings. However, it’s been years since I made the change and I can’t find them. I probably threw them out. (The diamond had been put in the yellow gold ring.) What’s sad is that my husband never mentioned, until I started looking for the old set, that he was sorry we couldn’t find them because he’d had them engraved before we got married. I never thought of him or his part in the rings or his feelings about them.
My self care confusion hurt the one who has loved me and stood by me through sixteen years of healing. Good blog, dear Sana. I wish I had had the advice many years ago. I’m glad to have it now. Thank you.
wow Nancy. your story gave me goose-pimples! thank you for sharing. big hug to the manly man! keep on.
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Tough call, could it be Brent and his wife had some kind of co-dependency thing going? I don’t know enough to even start thinking of this one.
yes we can’t know. thanks for reading, you!