"It's All About Me" and All or None Thinking

Saturday morning we got up and loaded the uhaul--SK was heading back to school.  I know it's normal and right and amazing that she was so ready to go back.  I know this is part of letting go, part of the cycle of life, part of growing up--I know all that but...

I WASN'T GOING WITH HER!!!!

Yep--it's all about me.  She was leaving and I couldn't go.  I couldn't help her move in, organize her cabinets, make her bed---sometimes this Sunday job....  (I do love it!)  But Saturday, Saturday I was not happy; Saturday as William, Chris and SK pulled away I sobbed--not just because she was leaving, but because I wasn't going with her.  Saturday after she left I sobbed and I guess you could say I was making it all about me.

I hate that phrase--it triggers me deep in my being. This summer on a couple of occasions it was used towards me and it hurt--it uncovered a beast I was trying to keep at bay.  (Hold that thought; I'll come back to it--right now I'm going to keep making it about me.)

I kept thinking (read obsessing) about how much I wanted to be there.  I felt like the worst mama in the world--sending my baby off and not going.  Every once in awhile a thought would go through my mind about how I took myself to college alone every year except the first. I thought about how much fun my sister and I had hauling a trailer through the mountains by ourselves--how freeing it felt--kind of like Thelma and Louise (minus the crime of course).  But I pushed those thoughts down.  I didn't want to think like that--I wanted to wallow like a pig on a hot summer day.

On Sunday I was talking to some of my parishioners about it.  We laughed about times they had taken their children to college.  Then I went on and on about how my parents didn't go and that's why I wanted to go.  And then my parishioner, my friend, and my very wise 7th grade teacher said, "Mine didn't either.  It was different back then."  (Let's make this clear HIS back then is farther back than mine!)

Yesterday morning as I was running I started thinking about two things.  First he was right--it was different back then.  Yes there were some parents that came and helped move their students in, but most didn't stay and the ones that did we called controlling, enmeshed and just weird.  It is different now--now it seems parents that don't go are considered uninterested and out of touch.  (Perhaps also a bit enmeshed...) I suspect there's a balance between the two, but that's not what really got me running faster.  (In case you wondered, you can't out run your thoughts)

"You're making it all about you."  I can barely even type it.  I feel like I've spent my entire adult life trying to NOT make thing about me.  Trying to escape from the narcissistic childhood of my life. I started thinking I had a ton more work to do with my therapist--I didn't even recognize I was making it about me and as I ran faster and faster trying to escape it suddenly hit me like a car turning a corner without looking.

I started thinking about making things all about me or other people making things all about them. And I started thinking that sometimes maybe, just maybe it's okay to make something about you. Sometimes exploring why you're responding in some way (why I was in a puddle in the newly painted laundry room) is okay.  Sometimes maybe it's even okay to wallow for a little bit. Perhaps the danger in making things all about you is not recognizing it and worse not being able to move on from it.  But perhaps if you're making something all about you it is in fact to move on--it is to recognize your feelings, to own your part and then to let go.  It is a delicate dance.

SK is perfectly capable of moving in by herself.  She can make her own bed; hang her own pictures; make her own coffee (she just texted me she's drinking the first cup right now).  She can do all that alone as a capable adult.  I on the other hand needed to feel needed; I needed--I own that.

As I was cooling down from my run I went back on the dance floor gingerly stepping through my thoughts.  What's the difference?  How do you know when you're making something all about you as a coping mechanism and how do you know when you're diagnosable?  I suppose part of it is recognition, probably a large part of it.  Whew I thought, I am able to do that--not as bad off as I thought, but man why didn't I just stop thinking then?

Why I wondered was I triggered so deeply?  (Okay I know that, but why was I still obsessing once I recognized it.) And it hit me--all or none thinking.  I remembered another lesson my daughter taught me this summer.  "Why," she asked me one night, "Do you have to say 'always'?" Back to MCG I went in my mind to the depression management group I used to run--I saw the list on the board--cognitive distortions.  And "all or none thinking" was flashing like a neon sign in Vegas.

As I walked I thought more and more.  If there are times it's okay to make something about me, is there ever a time all or none thinking is okay?  Yes I thought there is one time.  "God loves everyone no exceptions--all people, all the time."  That's one statement I can hold in my heart--one statement that can direct my life.

The rest, well, I guess I'm going back to my therapist....