@brandifleury Hey,
I’m sorry for my delayed response- this week has been wacky. I’ve adopted an up all night & asleep all day sleeping schedule over the past few days and have been dealing with a little depression, too. It’s kind of a hard thing to fix but I’m working on it.
I think it’s normal and healthy for you to not be in a good place so soon after losing someone so important. In fact, if life were great for you right now, I’d be a little concerned. Sadly, it takes a lot of time and energy to grieve and heal and move on, but it’s essential that you allow yourself to take the time you need, and that you don’t judge yourself on how you’re doing, what you’re thinking, and what you’re feeling. “Should” statement are never good (e.g. “I should be more past this by now”,) and those types of comparisons are a great way to make anyone feel awful.
I’m familiar with a helpful grief analogy of the ball in the box with the button. Have you heard of it? I looked it up online to with the intention of checking that I word it correctly here, but the entire page I found it on is wonderful! I think reading through the whole page, (including the stuff after the analogy) would be helpful for you. I especially liked the pages’ suggestion of journaling.
https://psychcentral.com/blog/coping-with-grief-ball-and-box-analogy
I’d be interested to hear your thoughts. =]
Your paragraph beginning “I just don’t know how to do that. It seems too far away from me, like it’s something I can’t achieve and don’t deserve” I’m guessing is in response to my advice to be more of a friend to yourself and to treat yourself more gently. If I’m correct, I completely understand. I have a lot of emotional healing left to do myself, and for the longest time believing I had any worth was almost laughably ridiculous. It really comes down to deeply-rooted core beliefs. There is an exercises for determining what your negative core beliefs are, but I’m going to hold off on explaining this “downwards arrow” exercise because I think it’s better done with a therapist who can guide you through it. Two exercises you can do, however, are: 1. List out (literally on paper) a positive statement toward yourself and then list some reasons why you feel you don’t believe it or believe it shouldn’t apply to you. Then do another statement and some reasons you don’t believe that. This should be a challenging but revealing process. The other exercise you could do is the self-esteem pie. List out (literally on paper) all the good things that add value to your life and make you who you are. You’re looking for all the positive traits that you possess; things that can contribute to your self-esteem. Then make a pie graph with these values and illustrate it. These traits, for example, could be things like:
*Smart
*Caring
*Compassionate
*Strong at writing
*Helpful/ giving
*Loving
*Kind to animals
*Lover of cooking
*Amazing at painting/ sketching
*Selfless
*Hilarious and witty
*Strong morals
*Good at playing piano
You get the idea. Try to focus on these aspects of your life and enhance their presence in your day-to-day life. This should be helpful and will also take your mind of things for a while both while you make the list and also as you work on the implementation of your traits. =]
As for believing that OCD is what’s going on and not letting it hurt you: telling yourself that “this is OCD/ ROCD” is actually not recommended. Truly embracing uncertainty is. Labeling thoughts as OCD is actually a compulsion (as it’s meant to bring relief from the tough thoughts) and should be avoided. Acknowledging that they may be true, may not be true, and sitting with the feelings that come with that, is the best way forward.
I’m very happy to respond and continue talking to you as I’m genuinely enjoying it. It’s really nice to converse with someone who actually has some similar struggles and maybe try to be of some help, as well as to be able to share some of my struggles. My only worry is that all the people who originally liked or even commented on Rebecca’s post, as well as Rebecca herself, are now continuing to get notifications of our ongoing chat. xDD (Oops! And sorry!)
Maybe they’re silently following along and enjoying reading it, maybe they’re getting ticked. #Uncertainty. ;)
Hope you’re doing well. I had a bit of a tougher night tonight with some dwelling and comparing at the supermarket. I notice when we’re out, I tend to spend A LOT of time looking around at other people, and checking and comparing, even if I’m not consciously doing it. My goal is to work on this in the near future, as well as to continue to work on moving towards my values. =]