Refueling Stop

This has been moving at a pretty fast clip, largely because I've been putting words to things that have finally come close enough to the surface for me to articulate. Doing that is a crucial part of the process. It's necessary to deepen my understanding, because it's in verbalizing these things that I'll really come to grips with the subtleties and details.

This is one of the situations in which details definitely matter.

In the last two days I've hit the mother lode, except that it's about equally the father lode. [sorry CZ, couldn't resist]. I'm looking again at FOO patterns, associated with the expression and acting out of anger, what was modeled for me vs. what was expected from me. Am also looking at the cultural matrix, the 'temper of the times' [sorry again CZ] when I was a child, a teen, a young adult, and at workplace cultures I have experienced.

This is jampacked, and it's taking a while to sort out major components.

I still have the strong sense that I'm going to continue to make progress.

I also have a 'token', if you will, of what lies ahead. In the past several days I've had an inordinate number of extremely frustrating, annoying, bothersome things to deal with. Nearly nonstop petty hassles at work, nearly nonstop 'petites miseres' outside of work. Lots of sand in the gears, very little forward motion on things that have to move forward.

Normally I come home from a siege like this, and either spend an hour walking or working out, or a few minutes punching a pillow - to offload the 'fight-or-flight' that accumulates at times like this, so it won't cause problems elsewhere. This stuff 'comes out sideways' if you let it accumulate; that much, I already knew.

Strangely, it hasn't been accumulating.

Even more strangely, I've been watching the 'stuff' as it goes by. Just as with the pity, just as with the 'Karpan Rescue' impulses. Watching and tagging, like some kind of emotional naturalist doing field studies.

Hey, look at that, there goes a Five-Crested Gratuitous Snipe. Look at it preening! Wow, here's a Three-Toed Inconvenient Delay. Poor thing looks like it's asleep on its feet. And there's a Slithering Innuendo. Out there, coming closer, a stampeding herd of Inappropriate Demands... yikes, they're heading straight at me... quick, up the canyon wall, hang on as they thunder past. And if they stop right under me and start milling around, waiting for me to come down, then drop a corral around them quick!

There's a difference; I'm tagging things that are on the outside, which seems to be instrumental in keeping them outside. Which, after all, is where they belong.

Isn't it interesting that appropriate labeling is such a key component of boundary setting -- and isn't it interesting how relentlessly we are taught that we should not label - as an absolute. With no hint that there are times and ways in which it is not only appropriate, but essential. What a nifty way to prevent someone from learning to set boundaries!

And with that, I'm off for a refueling stop. Catch some rest, kick back, then get a cup of coffee and start in again.

Back soon, God willing.