I'll flag, I'll fall, I'll falter, I'll find my day may be, far and away...

Thursday, 11/01/18, 1:55pm

I don't really know how to start at the moment. I guess I'll first give you a brief update on some things. I had intended to write and upload a post a couple weeks ago. But... something got in the way. I was out of the house for a few hours, and in between a yoga class and PT appointment I was hanging out at a nearby coffee shop typing out a post. I didn't finish but planned to later that day. Well I went home after the appointment and discovered water dripping from the ceiling around the doorway of the study. I realized quickly that our master bathroom is directly above it. The source of the water was from our toilet, which we later discovered was leaking due to some rusted through tank bolts. The toilet had been jostled just enough that morning by the cleaning crew we have come every two weeks. It likely had only been leaking/flooding for 3-4 hours, but it was kinda bad since you know, it was coming from the tank which just keeping refilling. The water leaked down into the study and then down into our basement. A bit of a nightmare really.

Here's our bathroom with toilet room. Of course, it's still carpeted because it's one thing we haven't gotten around to changing and because when the house was built, somebody had this amazing idea that bathrooms should be carpeted. Those are my footsteps in the soaked carpet trying to figure out what was happening.

A lot of water mitigation happened with massive industrial grade fans and dehumidifiers, some tearing up of rooms, some plumbing and insurance stuff (plumbing only to fix the water shutoff to that toilet so we could have water to the rest of the house, not to fix the toilet). And of course quite a bit of disruption to life.

We have a lot to do. We're getting stuff all ready to soon rip up and redo our other upstairs bathroom, since it is looking like that toilet, also original to the house, is having a slow leak going on.

I guess the next project will be our bathroom, then the study (which also needs some evaluation as to damage to the walls and ceiling).

It's "good" since the flooding really only hit rooms we had planned to redo. There's some damage to our cork flooring on the main floor just outside the study but we have some leftover cork in the garage so it should be a reasonably easy fix.

But then of course it just sucks. It sucks. I don't like having to share the kids' shower. I don't like having to go to their bathroom when I wake up needing to pee in the middle of the night. I don't like the smell when I pass by the door to the study. Sigh. I know I'm a spoiled brat, but I'm still rather grumpy about all of this.



So the main reason I picked up my Chromebook to write is that today has been really challenging. I woke up feeling really really bad. I felt feel sadness, lots of shame, self-doubt, and probably even some anger. It all seems silly too, but I am learning from my DBT class to validate my feelings. (I mentioned some about DBT in the last post- I'm about to finish my 5th week of it, going MWF 9am-noon, with additional homework and an hour a week meeting with the individual therapist they assigned to me). I'm not sure I'm even going to go into the whys of my feelings, even though I tend to just share everything. I guess there's some shame happening over why I've been feeling this way.

I've been working really hard all day with lots of DBT skills. I made it to my strength circuit class at the Y, even though I really didn't want to (opposite to emotion action); I did a lot of observing/describing/participating (under the mindfulness module) during the class and tried to do it all "one-mindfully", so paying close attention to my form and breath in each movement; I used the "thoughts" skill (under wise mind ACCEPTS within the distress tolerance module) to count things in the gym like rungs on the upstairs rail around the track and my reps and the cones on the floor and various parts of the walls and floor. I've listened to a lot of music today, favorites and soothing stuff (from the distraction techniques and again, wise mind ACCEPTS). (FYI, I'm only briefly referencing the specific skills because I know you all can read up on things more on your own).

I've been taking a lot of "me time" today. I ate a good lunch and drank a nice latte after exercising, but kept up with the recent tracking food thing I've been doing to help lose some weight, and I even entered each piece of Halloween candy I ate. I read, listened to more music, worked on DBT homework to help me through some of the emotions. Eventually, just before starting this post, I had a big breakdown of sobbing. I'm working hard on the DBT validation of emotions stuff and "riding the emotional wave" stuff to just experience it all and not judge it. It's really really really hard, but AND (dialectics from mindfulness) I think it's helping.

One of the things DBT is teaching me is that doing things that help, even just a little bit, are worth doing. I don't have to try and force my way out of a bad spell by pushing away the feelings and making myself do a full recovery. I think I've put this pressure on myself for a long time that I just need to be "all better". I've never really understood quite what that meant, but I've never been there, and so in my mind I'm a failure. I've also had this expectation of myself that whenever people ask how I'm doing I answer with something along the lines of "I'm doing much better". Because that feels like what everyone wants to hear. I'm still working on a new response to that question.

I don't know that I have anything else to say right now. I guess I just want to say that the DBT stuff is worthwhile, for people struggling with emotions or whatever, and really just for everybody out there.