synchronicities

Yesterday in therapy we were talking about my visit to the hospital. I was really nervous and my fears of getting cancer (my whole family on mother’s side passed away due to cancer and parts of my family on father’s side has cancer) were really bad.

My therapist suggested to have a closer look on my feelings, my thoughts, my physical reactions and what I do to relieve the growing anxiety but also to have a look what is at the core of it all. We worked through the whole lot and in the end I realised that deep down inside myself I think that I am not worth anything. That I deserve to be abused, bullied and treated badly because I am a nothing. I do not count.

I am aware since a long time that deep down inside I still feel like that but I never had a close look and to have a close look really left me shaking. I could express that as long as I was in therapy and my therapist was just great. She realised how much it agitated me and she did a guided visualisation to ground myself which really helped.

But this realisation hit my core. In CBT they talk about core believes: Conclusions we drew at a very early age through our experiences. They often are not true but for us they are true as we did not have a chance to question the conclusions when we were young. CBT questions exactly those core believes.

My core believe: “I am worth nothing” seem to be on the bottom of it all and it seems to be logic that an abused child draws this conclusion. My therapist gave me the advice to contact my inner child and be very tender with her and make sure she understands that she is worth everything and just because.

Today I thought that this falls totally in my “forgiving” series because this conclusion is a part where I do not think I deserve to be loved and in a way I have to let go of this feeling. I also have to forgive myself that I have drawn this conclusion but “forgive myself” in the meaning to let go of that conclusion. There is a way with postive affirmations to draw another conclusion now: I am worth!

And strangely I was watching angelsteve41 Angel card reading for today and tomorrow and seemed to fit perfectly:

update

One thought pops up constantly since last weeks CBT-session.

My homework was to register when I start biting myself which I did for a few times. We then went through it to find out which is the underlying core believe. Something I have learned in my childhood but might not be right. What I have learned is that I am vulnerable and people around me are out to get me. We then had a look into how much truth is in it.

Well one thing I learned is that there are many situations when I am really strong and have achieved a lot and I also have people I can trust and be vulnerable with. But the one that pops up constantly is: “I am strong!”

On a mental level I told that myself quite often considering I have survived childhood abuse relatively normal, I managed to immigrate and make a living and am a creative person. But is has not reached that core believe. Which it seems to have now. Well my inner child tries to figure the balance out between allowing myself being vulnerable with the right people and respecting my strength and my strengths. Funnily the Tarot Card which is assigned to myself by birth is “The Strength”.

Thanks for the picture to :en:Fuzzypeg from English Wikipedia  via Ookaboo

update

Well I was quite good with my homework of writing down what I think and feel and when I bite myself for the first two days after last weeks CBT session but then I just let it drop. I still think about it when I catch myself biting but I do not bother to write it down. It seems to me that those underlying fears are very powerful and something stops from having a look.

Lets have  a closer look then: The way CBT thinks about difficult situations is as follows: We are in a Situation, we think about it in a certain way which makes us feel a certain way and that makes us react in a certain way. To find out what makes us react we often have to watch our way backwards. We see what we do, then find out what we feel, think and what makes us do that.

I usually start biting when I do something to relax like reading but I try to block out negative feelings. On Saturday I started reading in the canteen at work just after coming past the ladies from personal. They did not greet me but I did and I thought: “They do not take me serious after I said not to work in the other department”. That made me feel really bad and punished. I went to the table and said to myself:” Don’t feel like that and it is probably not true what you feel about it anyway!” I started reading and tried to block out both thoughts and feelings and started biting.

There are more subconscious feelings that usually are involved:

- feeling punished
- feeling left alone/ignored
- feeling not protected

I knew about those fears before but I have never been aware of how powerful they are in my life. They make me hurt myself, they make me panic and get aggressive. The biggest power probably comes from them being subconscious.

In so far my homework is a good thing to make me be aware of them because then they can not work full power as I can put positive affirmations or other exercises against them.

The thing with “forgiving”

Well I wrote yesterday that I have counselling but it actually is another Cognitive-Behavioural-Therapy just this time face to face. I have decided to work on my self-harming tendencies (biting my lips and the skin on my thumbs) and also on my panik-attacks.

I will write more about my first session later on next week it is just too late today but one thing struck me today. My homework is to be mindful of when I start biting, what I think in this moment and what I feel. Today I had many situations where I did it and at one point I was thinking about the fact that I do not really love my body. It has caused me so much pain and trouble that it is hard to be loving with it.

But I believe in the wholeness of body~mind~soul and that a unhealthy body only causes trouble for mind and soul as well. So I am determined to change my attitude to my body. I also thought that I probably have to forgive my body for reacting in certain ways to the abuse and still reacting. That might be even more difficult than forgiving the abuser.