I slept mostly through last night. Feeling a bit better/less overwhelmed exhausted today, but the pain is still pretty bad. I'm wondering if part of it is the weather because all my old broken bones from the past are aching on top of everything else. :wtf: When you're a person like me, you question every ache and pain. Is it "real" in the physical sense, or is it psychosomatic? At least I know my injured finger is "real". It is swollen and black and blue. Sigh.
I need to keep processing what happened yesterday because it really was a mirror to me of what happens in my own psyche when bad things happen. I pretty much watched the whole thing...the whole day...from outside of myself. Every time I became aware of it, I pulled my energy back into my body, though. This is good...just being aware that I was not in my body. There are a few other things that happened too, things that are giving me a pretty clear window into some of my issues.
I know that I get hyper-focused in a crisis. Part of this is my first aid/lifeguard training, but part is just...well, a part. A part that takes over and does what needs to be done to make sure everyone is as okay as they can be. This part seems to have a sort of peripheral psychic vision...so it can focus on the most urgent of needs but is also highly conscious of the needs of all the others at the time and is plotting how to meet everyone's needs. It is very disconnected from my body except to use it as a vehicle to help other people. This is why I was able to move the car, notice the old lady's untied shoes and emotional state, and, etc. that I mentioned above. Usually this part is pretty effective, but when it can't fix everything for everyone, another part comes in to excoriate it for not working hard enough. This is mostly the mode I have lived in my whole life. And it is that part that relives the crisis moment again and again...what else should I have done? Not surprising, I rarely give myself credit for what I actually did do. I am consciously changing those thoughts as best I can...giving myself some credit for yesterday.
The third thing is the empath thing:
The accident was an accident. Could have happened to anyone. I have backed into another car before. So has my husband. The accident was clearly not my fault. And yet, all I can think about is the poor woman who hit us. And that if I had not asked the girls to get the chairs out of the car... and if I had not been so worried about my birth mother who doesn't walk well, so I had pulled up close to the beach instead of parking... and if and if. I KNOW this is not good thinking, but I'm thinking it anyway.
This is pretty key for me to understand. It is at the core of my responses to stress. When difficult times happen, I go out of my body. I experience things from several other points of view--not my own. I watch myself...I mean I know I am there...that my body is doing things to help the situation--I suppose I am in a "part"...but it is as if it is in the faded background and my energy is divided among all the other people involved in the situation. I usually don't remember much of what I did, or when I do it is very blurry and dreamlike. I suppose this is what they call dissociation in one form. But even after the stressful event is over, it continues on with me...it is as if my energy goes off with all the other people involved and I forget me. In this situation, I'm still feeling and experiencing it through multiple perspectives...bouncing from one to the other...aware of all the conflicting needs but unable to do anything about any of them except my daughter's. It is exhausting. But it seems to be the way I function. Or don't function. It is why I have to be extraordinarily careful of what I read or see...because the crises do not have to be immediate in my actual life for this process to happen. It can kick off with a picture in the Times (this has happened many times) and it can take months before the stress responses fade.
The reactions to non-personal crises and suffering are different though. They exist more in my head and heart. The reactions to personal crises whether physical or emotional are more stuck in my body. That doesn't make a lot of sense really but there it is. It is a different experience. Maybe because I see my own body as part of the scene even if it doesn't seem like me.
It is such a strange thing to be me. I'm sure now that I am not the only one who experiences life this way. I know the fact that I am becoming aware of it is really good and will help me progress toward integrating things better.
The key is that I need to reign in my energy and thoughts back into my body and allow myself to FEEL my own embodied responses to what has happened/is happening so that it can get processed the right way. I have been able to do this once or twice with smaller issues. I am attempting to do it with this one...to not just think about what happened, but to allow my embodied self to respond to it and feel the feelings that go along with it.
Damn, I wish Yoda weren't on vacation. I could really use his support and guidance right now. But I suppose I'm meant to do this on my own. Clue into how I feel about birth family. Clue into how I feel about what happened yesterday and all the other past crisis :poop: that it brought up in me. I think I need about a dozen brains and bodies to untangle it all.
My kids are freaked out that my birth mother looks just like me except shorter and heavier. And that they are referring to themselves as grandmother, aunt, and cousin. It is making all of us pretty confused. But we're doing okay with it.
My birth family are very invested in being "family." It is freaking me out, but not as much as it would have twenty years ago when I ended the contact because I was freaked out.
I have found my birth father on facebook. I think. It must be him. Unusual name. Right age. Right university.
I have discovered that chronic pain and thyroid problems and autoimmune stuff are an issue for my birth family. I suppose I will need to consult with my doctor about this.
I have discovered that my birth mother basically experienced the american equivalent of the film Philomena.
