Thursday, June 30, 2022

 Thursday, June 30, 2022

I woke up early after a good deep sleep. Since I couldn’t go back to sleep, I lay in bed and meditated. I experienced surges of shock. Hated it. I only experienced this when meditating while lying down. If I meditate sitting up, I don’t feel those shock waves. I’d never named them before. Today, I identified them as how I felt whenever my mother called my name after years and years of attacks. I could allow the feeling to sink deeper into my body—a little progress.

  At nine am, I had my telephone session with Shelly. I went to the back lanai because Scott was within earshot. I knew I had nothing bad to say about him, Yvette, and Josh. On the contrary, things have been getting much better. I had only good things to say about all three of them. It would feel differently if I knew he would hear what I had to say about myself. I worked on those shock waves.  

     I started by releasing anything negative about my hatred for these sensations. There wasn’t much response. Then I released anything negative about my love for these sensations. That led me to my fear of being without them. The surges are energizing. The opposite is a numbness, a passivity that frightens me. I imagine standing in the middle of the road while a truck barrels toward me. Scary. It was somewhat the way I felt on the hydrocodone after the surgery. I described the state of mind as passively suicidal. I didn’t actively want to die. I had no thoughts of killing myself. I didn’t care about anything. I was happy to lie there. If I died, I died. That would be okay too. I concluded I had to make my peace with that passive state before I could let go of what was left of the fear state. 

      Damon called. I had sent him a copy of an email between me and someone I had a legal relationship with. It was all good news. While I was on, I told him about the work I did three weeks ago, which released a historic level of fear and immediately impacted my speaking voice. He said, yes, I sounded calmer. I don’t know how much calmer I was, but my voice no longer held that lingering level of fear. Yay! It only took me sixty years of therapy to arrive at this point. Better late than never. Now, to finish off the job. My goal is not to clear all the shock waves; I just get to the point where I don’t respond negatively. I was at that point with the hot flashes I still suffered from. I barely noticed them. When they first started, that was not the case. They felt like anxiety attacks.

   At 10:30, I had the M & W sisters. Both wanted to work on the Gating Game. The difference in their work is striking. Going-into-second grade M makes wild guesses. Her choices often make no sense semantically or syntactically. She would even ignore that information if cued with the first letter and the number of letters in the word. I used a story she had written to ensure a degree of familiarity with the text. Whatever her problems, she liked the activity. I suspected it would make a difference in her comprehension as she became more skilled at using context to figure out the next word.  

  Going-into-sixth grade W was a horse of a different color. She liked the activity because “it makes me think.” Wow! I had fun working with both of them using this exercise. I would set it up as they get better, so I have to figure out the next word while they give the clues.

  For now, the exercise was good for me because it was challenging my auditory recall. I had to remember the sentence as I guided M & W through it. Giving cues is mentally demanding. It was hard for me to hold on to the exact words of the sentence simultaneously. I developed memory tricks. I repeated the sentence to myself, touching a finger for each word. It helped to cue me. While the trick helped, I still wasn’t confident in my memory.    

   I contacted  Mama K, reminding her to set up a five-minute session for Twin E. She was out at the time. I told her to call when she was in. She never did.   

     I had an appointment with Jana. We talked a bit about her student. He was making toilet references, and she lectured him on its inappropriateness. I thought it was great until I discovered he wasn’t using it to enhance his learning but to upset her. That’s a horse of a different color. That’s just plain nasty. Now the kid is six. We can cut him some slack. However, this is something he does with others regularly. This isn’t just bad for those he irritates; it’s not good for him. This is not a good personality character to cultivate.

  Yvette came up in the late evening with two pairs of support hose from Long’s, one large and one extra-large. She measured my calf and tried the large. She couldn’t get that on for love nor money. She got the extra-large on. Scott assured me he would keep his phone ringer on all night in case the socks bothered me. I wouldn’t have been able to get them off myself. I still couldn’t reach my feet. I couldn’t before the surgery. So far, my progress has been a tie-draw. I was no worse off, but I wasn’t better off either.

    I finally watched The Bad Guys, Damon’s movie. He wanted me to watch It on the biggest screen available. I had to figure out how to hook up my computer to the TV in the library. Scott had the right cord for the TV and my computer.