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Similar experience here, in that my emotional status is less stable the bigger fraction of my time goes to recovery and healing time.  My T helped me by pointing this out, too.  It's important to balance recovery work and the rest of one's life - working on the old stuff while continuing to build the new stuff.  This is hard time me because, honestly, I feel almost unable to begin anything new at all right now.  I'm at level: macaroni collage in terms of confidence, attention span, and energy level these days.  But she has a point... I can't ONLY be thinking about what happened with my mom and in my childhood; I need, as she called it, behavioral activation to get my brain to start pumping that dopamine and other good stuff that reminds me that I do enjoy some things.  That's I'm, gulp, good at some things.  I hate that that's so hard to type write now.

I recommend the book 'the language of letting go' by melody beattie', not sure if that comes up much on this board.  We talk about it quite a bit on my home board

hugs.

Hi board    this is my first post.  I just introduced myself on OOTF, and this forum was suggested to me... and I can see why! 

It's the 15 year anniversary of making a good change in my life (having to do with my diet and health).  I wrote a mini-essay about how it feels to have hit that mark and posted it on my social networking sites.  As soon as I hit "post" I started feeling WAVE after WAVE of shame, guilt, fear, anxiety HIT me, just slam me down.  'Why did I post that???  Why did I care what anyone knew or thought about my life, my decisions?  Why was I sharing my personal life and decisions with the world - my friends, their friends??  Did it make me more cool, less cool?  DID I PROOFREAD ENOUGH?  Did it sound smart, without being pretentious?  Well worded without being verbose?  WHY do I CARE?  Do I care too much?  What is wrong with me, why am I overthinking this? How much would I be judged for what I said - what parts, for whom, why?  Would I ever get any feedback?  Would I lose friends, gain friends?' Round and round it went.   

I started editing the posted draft - and because it was cross-posted, I had to do so on several sites, and got confused.  My fingers started becoming uncoordinated and my vision started to blur as I become more and more self-conscious - while sitting alone in my living room.  I started breathing in a shallow way.  I wanted to claw my way out.  I was having a fear response - why??  I started looking for ways to numb the sensations artificially. 

I finally forced myself to walk away.  I called a friend, who brought it up - she said she enjoyed reading it.  It's just a few paragraphs on the internet for goodness sake - why am I doing this to myself?  Why did I never go to college?  Why is my mom in my head?  Why did I always have a hard time finishing my homework - was it my fault, was a really a lazy child, or was it that my mom spent too much time in bed and never taught me how to complete tasks - was it because she always blamed other people when she procrastinated and things blew up in her face, and I learned to procrastinate from watching her?  Can I keep blaming other people for my shortcomings?  In a family full of academic success stories, shouldn't I be able to write three articulate paragraphs without faltering and falling into a state of panic?  Will my mother's shame of my academic failure always be my shame? 

I promise my posts aren't always so long.  I just wanted to express gratitude for this website and all the people willing to share their stories.  I'm glad I was pointed here and have this lens through which to see my overwhelm today.  It helped me calm down without doing what I usually do to hide from the pain and panic.  I don't have to be afraid.  I can find better answers.