Projecting III

A little cry. I find that makes me more present.

I am pleased with wiping the shortcuts to Solitaire on my computer. I have grown addicted, I got wired on it, and I want to stop. I had a good weekend with friends. The trouble with this Behavioural Activation is that I don’t have anything I want to activate.

-What about looking for a job?
No. I don’t actually want to. I know I have to.

I hated that last job, and the one before I hated so much I walked out with the immediate intention of taking all my sleeping pills. Oh, various things. I started in the October, and then saw that they had had targets for the September but had been too sluggish to recruit me on time; and then the Enhanced Criminal Records Check did not come through until February, so one Children’s Centre refused to work with me until then. This gets a rueful smile from her. As a front line worker I am sure she has similar experiences of Management.

I start to tell her of a particular fouled up encounter, and cry. I feel I want to express anger, but this is difficult. I must explain to her that I am still in enough control not to get violent, I must check that she is not distressed by it. Weeping is OK, I can weep about it.

I realise I am projecting. This is my own stuff around my anger, part of the problem I have with feeling it is feeling unable to express it. And then I realise that it is a genuine prediction or understanding of how other people think and will respond- just not a very accurate one. It is one I created in childhood. Why is it that I can “put away childish things” in so many aspects of life, but have retained them in this?

She thinks I would be better with counselling. I could talk about relationships.
-You talked about that lady.
Oh! I had not thought of her today at all. Hmp.

Nicola needs rid of me. I am irritated that I should just be wound up and sent off. She goes for her next client, who has been kept waiting, and I stand looking through the glass in the fire exit, at the tree, trying to calm down a bit. Then I go to Tesco.

In the afternoon, I would like to walk along the river, but it is as high as in my header photograph. It has been higher, that is river mud on the concrete by the lock. Still it flows over the bank to create a marsh, and the overflow from the lake floods down the bridleway. It is as bright and beautiful as earlier this month, not a cloud, but much colder and wading is not a good option.

Could I think differently of that last job? I did not achieve what I was paid to achieve, because it was not thought out. And all that time the possibility of thinking positively rather than negatively percolated in me, and three months after I finished I committed to being positive. I hated that job. Can I think differently of it now?