So I got this great idea from my friend Jeanette. She made a list of things to painful to write about, and find that extremely interesting. I don’t know if she intends to write about them. We talked about it and perhaps needing to write through the painful things in our lives but I get the impression that she is not ready. I decided to make my own list like that also but for me these things are not too too painful to write about. I mean I will get around to writing about them just so I can work through some stuff that makes me depressed. I am generally not afraid to deal with my issues.
Some of the things on my list:
Something my counselor noticed about me (pointed out to me), and it surprised me, is how I will cut off my emotions. I never consciously thought about that but on some level I realize that I do that. When I feel emotional pain and I can’t or don’t want to deal with it I will just shut it down. I do this with physical pain also. A big part of it is I don’t like to cry, or show an huge amount of emotion in front of people. I can’t say I never have but I do try to keep it under wraps. I always think that people don’t need to deal with my emotional crap. This begins to be a problem when I have trouble showing affection because of blunted emotions and also when I shut down the emotions (which oddly enough is related to with my creative side) when I have to deal with an issue in counseling – those painful issues. So I cut off the emotion, I put it away until I have time to deal with it, which seems to be never. It is almost like Scarlett O’Hara’s (Gone With The Wind) favorite saying – "I can’t think about that right now. I’ll think about that tomorrow, after all tomorrow is another day."
So does this make me afraid to deal with my issues after all? In a way I think on some level I am because I am afraid to fall into that black hole of depression and not be able to work my way out of it. Another part of my not dealing with some of ‘these things’ is that my issues, my depression stems from stuff that happened to me a long time ago, which some stuff now triggers. Life moves fast and I am doing all I can to keep up with the here and now. I feel I have little time to deal with the stuff from the past. Plus I thought I had dealt with the stuff, I didn’t realize I was just shutting down a lot of the time. Then I think why do I have to deal with this stuff – that is not my life now? Why can’t I just move on (recurring theme with me)? In a lot of ways I have moved on because time has a way of pulling you but in a lot of ways my issues affect me, like with the depression. I feel that stuffing these emotions away has also made me stuff parts of me away, the parts that contain most of my creativity. Creativity is important to me and I don’t want to lose that part of myself. I also don’t want to lose some of the memories connected to the painful issues. I hope that working on this stuff will help me with my creativity and also my energy level in the long run (I find they are connected as well).
Eating! That is a way I stuff some emotions down or away. I never really noticed it fully until just recently. On some level I realize that I eat to lift my mood and self-medicate but for the most part I always told myself I ate to get energy, to stay awake. A lot of my eating is to stay awake but there is a connection to emotional eating also. It is so weird how all that is connected – the depression, the stuffing of emotions, eating, energy. But I digress. A few weeks ago after a difficult session with my counselor (we had been talking about the death of my grandma and how a lot of stuff in my life seemed to go to hell or changed after) I felt really bad but I couldn’t really process it because I had class to go to and other obligations, etc. I decided to go to lunch and went to the buffet on campus. I ate a plate of food and still felt horrible. I was thinking this sucks. I was trying to shut the bad feelings down but it wasn’t working, the counselor had touched on something. I went and got a piece of banana cream pie. I took a bite and that bite, the sweetness, lifted my mood immediately. I felt worlds better. The damn pie helped me stuff my emotions away. Wow, that was the first time I had ever consciously felt that effect.
Another issue is anger. Depression is anger turned inward. What am I so angry about? Am I angry about the things that happened to me? Things for the most part I had little control over? I realize I am angry over the things I had control over but didn’t do much to help myself. I usually don’t have trouble expressing anger, especially when I have a blog to come to and write it away. In some ways the anger eats away at me through negative self talk and negative self image. I made my list of "Things Too Painful To Write About" and a lot of that list deals with the things in me I don’t really like. It is not all about the negative things that happened to me. UGH! I don’t know, just that my issues make me angry, the fact that I can’t get over some stuff makes me angry and I don’t want to be angry or be perceived as an angry person. Truthfully I don’t think I am perceived (except by those who have felt my wrath and only that, ha) that way but I know the anger that exists inside of me and it is not healthy.
So I have my list. I have this insight. I guess I need to get to work writing through my issues. I can’t do it all on here though but as always I don’t mind sharing some of what I am going through in hopes that it will help someone on some level.
Reading this over it is very scattered but writing this all out is a process I have to go through. I will put it all in some kind of order later. It also comes across as if I want people to feel sorry for me. I don’t, that is not what I am looking for. I just am exploring my issues, attempting to get the stuff written so I can work with it, make sense of it.
I always did want to be a private investigator, hehee. Now I just have to write my ass off so I can get some stuff done for school and relax in the evening because my favorite show, Dexter is on later. 
Jacquelyn's Space 