Epiphany

Had an appointment with my therapist last night. That's my therapist Janet, not the one Pooch and I go to together. The crux of it is this...... (sit up straight folks, this is the big one.)

I get depressed because I withdraw from emotional situations and don't open up to people. I won't let people look after me or show emotion to me because it freaks me out. I avoid any situation that couold get emotional.

Now when I say emotional I don't mean *any* emotion. There's a sliding scale. Emotions I can't stand are things like compassion and sympathy that is being directed towards me. I'm fine doling it out to others but witnessing others receiving it or god forbid it coming my way is a big no no. There are other emotions as well but those are the obvious ones. So anyway. This explains a whole heap of stuff. The next steps are to

1. Recognise how I have avoided emotion in the past.
2. Recognise the situations I avoid in order not to have to be uncomfortable
3. Start exposing myself to these situations.

That's going to be the hard part because it literally makes my skin crawl when I feel what are really perfectly normal things. If you are talking to me and you see me wrinkle my nose I'm either about to sneeze or the skin on my face is (almost) literally trying to move to the back of my head. It is quite uncanny.

SOOooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.....................

Enough of all that. Let's just say things are looking up and for the first time I really feel like there might be some tiny pinprick of light far away there in the distance at the end of the tunnel.