Fine

I'm fine, really.

I smile. I laugh. I'm helping out a colleague. I'm going out with the girls. I'm reading the children bedtime stories.

I'm fine, right?

Not so much. Like you, I put on a face of being fine. Happy, even.

I just managed to talk to my therapist about being molested, raped, abandoned, abused, and terrorized, all with nary an eyeblink. I even laughed at a few points. Then, at the end, she (bless her little pea-picking heart), did some relaxation exercises with me and I--guess what?--cried.

I patted my belly and said, "there's a lot of cry stuck in here."

I remember when I used to pat my belly and say, "There's a lot of laugh stuck in here."

But no, not now. Now there's just a whole lotta cry, and I'm afraid to let it out. There's a whole lot of punch and kick and scream, too. And I'm terrified that it will break out.

The past week or so, the synchronicity is this: Self-limitation. I'm writing a little booklet on it right now. Because how many of us fail to try because we've already told ourselves that we can't? Depressed people are LOADED with self-limiting thoughts. "I can't go out because..."
"If I do this, then that might happen..." They also tend to think they're impostors.

Impostor Thinking is real. And it means that you don't believe you're really as good as people say you are, and one day you'll disappoint the whole lot of them. So either you work really, really hard, and live in fear, or you underachieve and adjust their expectations.

I always did the latter.

Many Cognitive Behavioral Therapy worksheets ask what you want, and then what keeps you from doing it. The thought is that, if you blast out your reasons for not doing something, then you'll just go and do it. God, I wish it were that easy. I'm constantly developing new ways to shoot myself in the feet. And all the while, I'll tell you that I'm fine.