Self care.

Long baths and chocolate? 

No, self care is seeking to find ways to automatically face the unfacable, accept the unacceptable and then to just float past it all. 

So far the tools that have helped me are, Gendlin's focusing technique, and Eckhart Tolle's dropping thought, letting past and future go, and focusing on now.

They are far from automatic, they are not natural or simple, but they are powerful. 

An example. 

I see him once a week for a meal. 

Today he asked me if I miss him! 

So nothing triggering there right? 

Latter I asked him the same. 

He snorted! 

I couldn't even evaluate the snort, was it a don't be stupid, if I tell you the truth you will cry and make a scene and I hate that "? 

Well that is my interpretation. Right or wrong, no way to know. 

Gendlin's focusing is about asking myself questions. Feeling the subtle textures and images of my emotions, giving them words and then playing the words back to myself, listening for that click, when the word fits the feeling. 

Strangely enough, this really does release the tightness and pain. More than that it provides suggestions about possible courses of action. 

Well all I wanted to do was to ask about his plans. Am I included in his future, is our marriage important to him? 

If I did ask, this would not be good.

From focusing I see that expressing a need to know makes me feel like I'm on an icy ledge a lethal distance above ground about to ask the person who shoved me out to die, for mercy! 

I expect him to throw me the ledge if he just so much as sees me!

My feelings say that this man feels entitled to crush need in whatever form he finds it. 

That is the 'felt sense' of my situation...

Knowing the felt sense made it much easier to just let go my question and all interpretation. It did not mean I was at peace and happy to stow my need to know. It just meant that I was able to avoid getting really hurt... 

Asking questions shouldn't be like this, but it is. 

There are other ways to ask... Or not.

Self care for me is to really attend to what I am experiencing and to guide myself out of the underground, flesh ripping grinders.

A bath and chocolate would hurt.. because everything hurts.. But focusing really does make me feel more myself.. And I'm not in pain.