Loving Myself More

Thursday, February 12, 2015

I haven’t been a big fan of Valentine’s Day throughout at least part of my life.  I know this is true due in part to my mixed experience of relationships throughout my own life history.  I haven’t spent much time in a Hallmark card section in the last several weeks.  I don’t usually do this anyway.  But I nonetheless do want to find abiding love in my life.  I believe I can make my current and future relationships stronger and more enjoyable than what I have experienced in the past.

I am choosing to love myself more than I ever have by electing to participate in an outpatient treatment program.  The program is offered by Choices Psychotherapy.  The program will require me to give up my mornings four days a week for the next eight weeks.  I am excited by what I might be able to accomplish in the coming weeks.

It’s been nearly twenty months since I began going to weekly individual psychotherapy.  Looking back it is clear to me that my health was not that good prior to my decision to go to psychotherapy.  I can still recall treating the symptoms of my low back pain during my trip to Germany in May, 2013.  And yet I wasn’t really addressing the underlying cause of the pain.  I was also most likely experiencing at least a mild case of dysthymia during my first winter living in Minnesota.  I was probably Vitamin D deficient that entire winter.  A deficiency of this vitamin can have significant consequences for mood.  And of course my early life history of trauma was still clouding my perception of the world.  But I didn’t  know that this was true.  My past was still clouding my perception of the world.

I left behind the thicket of anger and reactivity quite a while ago.  Last summer seems like ancient history now.  The summer of 2013 seems positively prehistoric.  Now I find myself in The Landscape of Sadness.  I want to develop new tools so I can ultimately leave this landscape behind.  I am not sure how long this will take.  But I am willing to commit to the process of improving the quality of my life.

I find myself more apt to well up with tears of sadness when I remember how I previously took care of myself.  My self-care skills were not that great.  But then again I didn’t have great models of self-care as embodied by my biological parents. I want to find the middle ground between ignoring my sadness and wallowing in it. I believe what I embark upon next week may help me to do this.