I’ve been finding lots of alternatives to use when I wake up with a strong fear or difficult emotion. I recently reexperienced my perfectionist anxiety which is a very regular visitor. I can daily walk a tightrope. A fear that I will in some way fail in doing something perfectly, and then will fall down into the abyss (of rejection or abandonment). It is doubly complicated by the additional anxiety that if I do something TOO well I will trigger jealousy and dislike in another person (hello mum!) and again I’m in the abyss. So I came up with a good downgraded alternative: I’m choosing to walk on the pavement, not a tightrope. On that pavement I might tread in dog poo or broken glass, trip up, everyone makes mistakes, right, it happens. But if I do, I can just wipe my shoes or get rid of the glass and keep moving on, there is no need for the abyss.
Along those lines, I found an old photo in one of the albums. It is a happy photo taken before Dad left. I’ve stuck it up on the wall. I regularily re-identify with that child and aim to live as her a lot of the time. I get dark moments on a regular basis but now I identify them, accept them, then downgrade them. Then I try to return to being that cheerful little girl, in a parallel life, grown up.
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