Sensorimotor psychotherapy journal

[AnotherUser]

It has been a long time since I have posted on here, but as the evenings draw in and I can feel that I'm entering a new phase of struggle in my life, I thought I would say hello again.

I've been away because, as my last posts indicated last winter, I found a girlfriend. In May we moved in together here in Bucharest, and I am very happy with her - it has been an immense source of well-being and good fortune.

But we still have a lot of challenges together, and I still have a lot of challenges personally to meet. At this time I am making a big attempt to gain remote writing work. It's one of the most savagely contested fields of work in existence, as you can imagine, and the whole experience has been like coming to a new school and learning every damned thing the hard way.

I cut down the number of times a month that I see my therapist. In fact I was going to cut it down to once a month, but when I mentioned this to her we renegotiated a temporary lower fee for a few months. I'll talk about this and other things later.

I needed to get away from here, and from the level of self-examination that I was subjecting myself to, in order to live with my girlfriend for a while and to appreciate the good things that being with her brought me - and to see if it was going to last longer than six months. You know how it is.

Anyway, I will talk more soon.

 

[AnotherUser]

This morning I had a panic attack, for the first time in quite a long time.

To put it into context: for the last two or more months I have been trying to work from home, and in the last week the pressure of being in the same flat with my girlfriend (an architect who also works from home, though she goes out on site more than I am able to) while I am trying to write...I felt as if we were always in front of each other, like two cell mates. I felt that the sheer tonnage of face time we get with each other was starting to suffocate the pleasure of being together -- damaging a relationship which I really love.

So yesterday I resolved that I would start leaving the house to work, and looked into paid co-working spaces. But before that, I asked a local company that I have had a freelance contract with for six months if I could work at one of their many spare desks.

It's not the first time I asked. I also made that enquiry and got an open invite from them to work from there, on any work I might have, any time I like, back in April.

Tellingly, I didn't do it at the time.

Anyway, I got that invitation refreshed yesterday, and this morning went to the big office building in downtown Bucharest. As I was walking up to it, I felt the weight of the place pressing down on me. Already it was hard to even think of going in.

But I went in, signed in at the desk, and got to the lifts (elevators/floating boxes!). I found that the lifts now ask you to key in a number in order to request a floor. Like, I guess, an employee ID number.

I was already so stressed out, that I didn't have any margin for this extra stress. God, these lifts are so over-thought! And I hate lifts. I'm claustrophobic. However I will get into modern office lifts, and I have been in these particular lifts many times.

And there at the top, where the company in question is, are a bunch of nice people who I have had nothing but a positive experience with. So when you think about it, I don't know why I practically ran out of the place at the point that I realised the lifts had become more complicated.

But I did.

I could have gone back to reception, and asked about the numbers on the lifts, and how to use them. But that would have had the added stress of forcing the people there to speak English, and I couldn't take that either, not today.

It was all so simple. I've been lucky enough in the last week to get a lot of writing commissions. I had the offer of a free place to go and write, with people I know are friendly, instead of paying for co-working...but I couldn't take it.

I ran (not literally, but I fled).

I cogitated on the event for two hours afterward, having first a coffee and then a beer in the old town. The first thing I did was gloss it over with the person I know best at the company, saying that something came up just as I arrived, and that I would return Thursday and try again.

I felt it was important to set up today's failed event a second time, because now it has become a 'thing'. I challenge myself to get past this, and to get into that building and to sit down and at least try to work on Thursday. But whether I can work there or not, I charge myself to enter the building successfully and to sit down and either work or just endure.

I don't know what is wrong with me. I only know I need to look into it. Tomorrow I have a session on Skype with my T. It's good timing.

(Wow, I have so much to say. I haven't been here in such a long time!)

I thought about telling my GF what happened; that since she knows I see a therapist, she should know if I have a problem. I would do it for a physical health issue, so why not this? I was resolved to discuss it with her. But when I got home this afternoon, I decided not to.

The truth is, she is not 'neutral'. How can our partners be neutral? They are there to support us, but they also need support from us. They need, at least sometimes, to see us as rocks. And I have my T to talk to about it. And, for sure, this is not my first rodeo.

How did I get to panicking again? I think something negative has happened to me in the last ten months I have been with my girlfriend, amidst all the many positive things. I think I have forgotten how to be alone, and to navigate the world and to decide to do things by myself. I was so busy becoming half of us, I am, to be honest, not entirely sure who I am right now.

I do know that I am frightened, and alarmed at this development; and glad too that I reconnected with this site in the last week. I hae a lot of work to do.