Tired

 Sunday night. 

I'm kind of exhausted. Didn't get a weekend really because I've been in a training  (5.5 hours fri-sun). A peer in the class said "yeah, you basically have worked 7 days in a row and now you have to go back to work tomorrow. 

I have 5 clients tomorrow and a dentist appointment at 8 am. Not sure what I was thinking. The coming week is giving me anxiety already even though it doesn't seem so bad. A couple of clients who are normally online are coming in person. I have an intake on Thursday. 

I haven't fully prepared though. 

Also just kind of feeling off because I've been going in and out of trauma responses for the last week as I reconnect with my dad for the first time in several months. My tarot reader lady said that this week would be a major healing step, a turning of the page. Maybe. I dunno. I feel exhausted. 

The training was ok. I felt like I didn't really get any new information, but a difference in paradigm. I know a lot of people were saying the training was a lot because it felt like new information. To me it was a synthesis of other stuff I've read... and together during a small group, I acknowledged that to some extent the paradigm shift just feels like buddhism to me. It hadn't really clicked until that moment, but after saying it -it made a lot of sense. Don't follow people into their problems and despair, acknowledge that suffering is suffering and help them find ways to have compassion for their experience -EG lend the qualities of their adult (more enlightened self) to the wounds... Wrap up your baby and hold it. 

So... not entirely a new approach, they're just finding ways to share this paradigm through psychological treatment and calling them anchors. Easy enough.

I spent much of the weekend noticing my experience, noticing the methods of teaching, noticing my desire to participate or not participate. Noticing how I was struggling to connect socially. For the first time in a while it really hit me just how burnt out I feel. Not compassion fatigue, but definitely struggling to relate. 

It didn't help that the trainings started at 8 am in a dimly lit (think mood light) room while its raining. It felt like they were trying to keep us calm or something. Many people joked about nodding off.

So it wasn't really the information,  and not really the social stuff, but eventually during the once a day practice small groups I did connect with some folks. And it was nice, but it also felt a little like we could have just had consult groups for an hour and a hand out. I guess the training so far has reminded me of grad school -sitting in a room with a bunch of folks who haven't done their reading while the teacher goes over it. Not that the instructors are boring -they're great instructors. Which made it sort of fun to watch them -lots of breaking things down experientially, lots of stories, lots of visuals, lots of jokes and interactions. 

But beyond the biology of low light, and some irritability, I've also been processing trauma all week. I spent the last few days writing "bullet points" for my dad. I feel good about it, but I spent hours and hours trying to figure out how to name what I needed to name. He told me he'd respond (like I hear you) but hasn't yet.  I guess while writing it, I realized that I am more traumatized and more mentally shook up than I realized. So now I kind of feel like a wounded animal. 

On and off this week I felt all these old behaviors and thoughts come up, and it just took so much effort to tell myself I am ok. Literally last night when I had sent this list to my dad I felt like throwing up and just cried on the bathroom floor in front of the toilet. Earlier this week I was having these intrusive thoughts of cutting myself. Its shit like this that makes it hard. But I didn't do anything too bad... I did a lot of meditation, and visualization, and ritual, and prayer...  and it was effortful.

This afternoon I was watching insta reels from therapists talking about internal OCD and so much of it seemed like my daily way of keeping myself together... and part of me wondered if I've just been tricking myself into believing I am not as bad off as I thought. Like maybe I am just really good at pretending to be functional... meanwhile I am pushing everyone in my life away and internally just going through obsession/compulsion cycles and not even recognizing it. Like my little lists... like my little routines (which I couldn't do all of this weekend). Anyway... I feel very low and I am entering into a hard week. So that sucks. 

I feel like I was hoping that at this training I might meet someone or something... But I am so not open to that right now. The little tarot reading I heard was basically like  -you're finally free to be you and to connect with people you want to. And I am like... I want to hide from the world and not come out of my cave for a week. 

Gonna do some reading and go to bed.