Management – Month 5 summary

(LighterLife Management – Month 5)

So this is my life pre-Geneen. I think all October I’ve been pretending that I’m ok, that life is normal, that I’m just like anybody else. Whether it’s been because I’m so NERVOUS about the workshop (I’m flying today!!) or whether I’m just so nervous IN GENERAL about having to face up to the fact that I’m not ok and I’m not like anybody else. I don’t know.

I’ve been running

I haven’t really kept still enough to listen to any of my inner thoughts… I feel like I’ve just been running, running, running… keeping busy like hell, going out of my comfort zone in many ways but not really seeing things through… I’ve signed up to a dating website, freaked out about having to actually chat to someone, gone on a date which was amusing as encounters go but disasterous as a date. I’ve gone out on a limb and told a new friend about my eating problems, then freaked out about having done so. I’ve really poured myself into work but also filled the rest of my time with all sorts of social events. And I’ve not stopped. Not once.

I’m starting to remember

I’ve finally started reading the 3rd book suggested as pre-workshop reading, called When Food is Love. It’s quite heavy reading but a lot of it rings a bell. A HUGE BELL. I’m recognising patterns, habits, mechanisms, reactions, thoughts that center around trying to avoid intimacy with people. Not just men, people. I’m beginning to remember having had those for a long time.

Triggered by what I’ve been reading, I’ve gone back to a couple of pieces of my own writing – I suppose you could call them poems – that I wrote 2, 4, 6 years ago. I had to really dig to find them. And when I read them again, I almost died from remembering the pain, the despair, the place with no hope. For a flash second I almost fell back in there, into the pit. Then I realised that I’m not there anymore, that I’ve moved on. BUT at the same time, the fundamental issues have not “gone away”. And that I’m quite scared that the workshop will bring them up and force me to deal with them again. The insecurities, the fear of abandonment, the choking inability to get over myself and live.

I’m avoiding myself

This is typical of me. I feel like I SHOULD’VE COULD’VE made a proper effort to prepare for the workshop. I mean I’m flying today !!!!! I’ve been telling myself all month that I will have the 11-hour flight all to myself to think, dwell and cry about my life. Now I’m in the middle of half-hearted packing efforts and I realise I don’t even have a clue over what the weather is like over where I’m going, and I fear that the 11-hour flight will not be enough.

Not enough for what? For processing everything that’s lurking in my head, getting a bit of it out on paper, doing a bit of healthy crying and taking a proper nap before I join 40-50 other women and get to do it all over again in a group!!

Most of all, I’ve been avoiding thinking about what this workshop means to me, what I’m really expecting. Because I’m scared that I’m expecting it to FIX ME in some magical way. And I know it’s not gonna.

I guess I’m in a pretty lonely place at the moment. I’m tired and I’m finding it hard to convince myself I’m ok.

PS: sorry this was written on Oct 27th and meant to be published but something went wrong and I was offline for a whole week so here you go finally – haven’t changed a word!