Trying to start up counseling again

I haven't written anything since April...anywhere, or at least I don't remember doing so. I had a good time in Florida, I think. Underneath all the smiles and laughter were other things. I'm not sure which is real. Can both be real at the same time?

I'm supposed to be blogging through Bold Love. I haven't touched it in months. It was too much for me. I guess a self help sort of book that I'm going to be brutally honest with myself as I read it is going to require someone outside of myself to get me to actually do it. Evidently I don't have much self-government when it comes to hard things, I keep running.

Off and on since April I have thought about counseling and some of the stuff I talked about with Dr. A. I stopped seeing her because of that stupid letter she wanted me to write. I couldn't filter out what was pyscho bull and what was valid. I just shoved everything back in boxes until my child was ok and we had basically recovered from the last major rejection of us as a family and me as a person by our then newest friends back in July 2008. That still hurts but it's scabbed over nicely. We have had two major rejections of us since we moved here. I don't handle rejection well. It brings up all kinds of gut reactions and I hate it.

The last few months I keep thinking about going to see Dr C. He's Christian, even if he is baptist. Hopefully he can help, he reminds me of a former counselor I really liked. As long as there is a project or problem to solve then I stay busy and I don't think about things. Right now we are trying to get accepted by a denomination and then get a pastor sent to us. It's really stirring up fear of rejection and I don't like it. And that's on top of things starting to ooze out of my boxes again.

I called tonight and left a voice message for Dr C. I called after hours on purpose. I couldn't talk for real today, but this was a good in between step. If he calls me back then I'll see if he will see me or not. He is not with the counseling group he was with. I can't find him listed anywhere but as a pastor at a SBC church. He may not do any counseling outside his church. I talked to him once already about a year or so ago. He probably won't remember me, but I still can't do the "let's find a counselor" thing. Starting from scratch and having to say things is torture. I can disconnect and be fairly dispassionate about it, yet at some point and at some level I know I'm talking about things I'd rather die than go through again. Shame kicks in and bout drowns me in it's suffocating weight. It's just a matter of when. It could be when I make eye contact, or when I walk out the door, or when I get into my car to leave or sometimes it really gets bad when I come back the next time and have to look at their face before I have the chance to settle in and not look at them; it doesn't really matter because it always comes and I have to remember to breathe and force myself to not care and yet still be able to talk. It's really hard.

Blogging through Bold Love

I started reading Dan Allender's book, Bold Love, last night. I've read the foreword, the introduction and the first two chapters so far. I began to read faster as I saw myself in these pages. I couldn't see the words on the page for the tears in my eyes. I had thought I was handling things ok, but I realized that I'm not. I have either been on the edge of crying or crying for most of the day. It's hard to drive around like that. Casting Crowns has a song called "Stained Glass Masquarade" that fits me so well. I was listening to that and crying. Everything hurts. Whenever I think I can't possibly hurt anymore, something else happens and I find out that I can hurt worse than before. I'm so tired of hurting. I just want it to be over. I dared to reach out today to someone that I end up being around pretty often because of our kids. I think she won't hurt me with the knowledge she now has of our family. I hope not. "Hope" is what hurt and pain is before it happens.

Reading through a book quickly isn't going to be that much of a help. Just because I can check it off some list in my mind of things I've tried doesn't mean that I really tried. So I decided that I'm going to slow down and blog my way through this book. It's cheap counseling. I can't pay someone to listen to or counsel me, but as I write I do eventually think through things well enough to distill it down to more concise questions that I can pose a few at a time here and there to people.

I have the 1992 edition of Bold Love. I think there is a more recent version, but this is the one I picked up somewhere. I will give chapter and page number as I go along.