Deceived by Fear

Well that week is over. Almost every evening I came home annoyed, anxious, on edge and racing away with my thoughts. Worrying about work at 1 am when I go to bed is not conducive to feeling well and in control.

As I have got older my mood has mainly been better but the fear keeps creeping closer to me. Fear of work, fear of the bank, fear of fire, fear of the estate agent, and fear of pretty much everything I cannot control. Making good decisions and communicating well is never good when that happens. The interpretation and reflection on the world around me is impaired. The tendency to panic keeps coming. Why I do not know.

We work on resilience in therapy. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. That terrible sense of powerlessness and weakness has been with me much of my life. A day on from the terror of running out of money I feel foolish, deceived and ashamed. So many people have told me for so much of my life how clever I am. Well all I feel today is stupidity. How can I not see what the world is really showing rather than what my terrified mind tells me? On days like today I feel I have utterly failed.

Complicating matter is guilt. I'm good at what I do even if it never seems enough. The many calls and messages from outside work for my assistance keep coming. But sometimes I am not able to respond and can let people down. Now with one friend recovering from an overdose so large I cannot see how he survived, and another friend on section 2 that feeling of letting them down weighs heavily on me. What if I had answered Julia's calls? What if I had taken the effort to keep tabs on George? What if, what if?

Ros always tells me to be kind to myself. I say the same thing to all my students. Today though I cannot be kind to myself.

My hope is I can redeem that sense this weekend, tonight with Sarah for the Chinese New Year and tomorrow with slow roast shoulder of local lamb and home made mint sauce. I had a culinary catastrophe on Tuesday but I fought back. Once more unto the kitchen dear friends.

So I will leave you on this grey Saturday afternoon. With luck the fear will dissipate and I can get on with my life day by day, task by task.

I Heard a Voice.