A break in the clouds

Last night I had a session with Diana, and it provided me with some much needed time to reprogram my self-talk, destress, and get back on some kind of positive track. When I got to her office at 7:50pm, I was a total mess. Just before I left home, Galen had snuck out and left a message saying he would be back to watch Tess. I got extremely upset, thinking that he had left to intentionally stress me out. And of course, I have already been majorly stressed out from his behavior and poor attendance/performance at school. Adding to my frustration was the fact that I had gone into work early so I could leave early and take him to his first counselling appt (which went very well, btw). So there was a thought (almost said feeling - getting back to the ABC's - more about that in a minute) of "I go out of my way to take him to his appt, but he can't stick around to watch Tessi for mine". Of course, anger followed that thought.

And that, right there, is the root of the issues I am facing, and indeed, the root of most of my anger, depression and misery : the thoughts I have, the stories I tell myself about situations, and the resulting feelings that those thoughts generate. Some time ago in my work with Diana, I did some work with the ABC's of emotions - work that was specifically targeted to address this very issue - jumping to an emotional response without even 'seeing', or being aware of the thoughts I was having/stories I was telling myself about the event(s).

So last night, Diana encouraged me to start doing my ABC's again, and I am going to do just that. She has caught me several times lately, and I have caught myself, saying "I feel like I am not appreciated, I feel like no one cares, I feel.....", when in reality, the truth is "I think that I am not appreciated, I think that no one cares," and those thoughts then create emotions. I have been falling back into my old behavior of just mislabelling thoughts as emotions and skipping the critical link between them. And that is where I can actually take some action to counteract the negative emotions - by looking at those thoughts/stories, and determining whether or not they are true/rational, and then, if they are irrational, replacing them with rational ones : rational emotive behavioral therapy at it's finest.

And so I am breaking out my ABC worksheets and going to get back to it tonight. Honestly, part of me really doesn't want to - just seems like more 'work' to do. Then again, another part of me is somewhat fascinated with the science of it all, and interested to "experiment" on myself to see what happens. I am definitely a challenging case if ever there was one. And though I get extremely depressed at times, and just want to give up, to throw in the towel, or worse yet, to just die - I always seem to come to the surface again to take another gasp of air and keep swimming. And as long as that keeps happening, I will keep trying to do something to stop the cycle of self abuse. That is what I am calling it now, because at this point, there is no one abusing me - no one outside of myself. It is the 'internal abuser' I need to focus on healing and reprogramming, and so that is what I am doing. I have to keep trying - what else is there?