Better than Ambien…

Almost 16 months ago I walked away from a bad relationship, I’d had enough and left. I’ve taken more lessons and discoveries away from this than anything else in my life. To learn from what you do, good and bad, is so important. And I took a shit load of lessons away.

And as emotion filled as the last few years have been the last four weeks have changed my life in many, many ways. There was the obvious confrontation with my mortality, but there has been so much, much more than that. Things change and I’ve said it before, but I do have an incredible life and I am so lucky to be the person I am.

I say this that not as overstatement, but as the truth. My life is so full of great people.

The last four weeks have been pretty intense and I’ve not been the easiest person to be around at times. One of the things that has been wonderful for me is having a good therapist I can work with. By good I mean someone willing to push me to look deep down inside, partner with me through the hard moments rather than agreeing and telling me everything is going to be fine.

I’ve been seeing him for approaching a year and there have been some very, very powerful moments and there is no question he has made a huge difference in my life. I am a very, very different person to the one I was a year ago, and that’s good I needed to be. I’m stronger and feel I’ve learned from errors I made, errors I will never make again.

The therapy thing, as important as it is, is a hard thing for me to talk about. It’s something that is incredibly personal and very intense. I’ve learned a lot of skills that allow me to deal with what’s going on, from my health through to the cyberstalking and attacks.

I talk about this now because the last week was quite incredible. One of things we’ve been working hard on is for want of a better work finding my centre through meditation. I was rather skeptical, it’s a little new-age, with a little hypnotherapy. If you know me, you get it’s not exactly my comfort zone, but it has been quite incredible.

To call it a happy place is such an over simplification and does not do it justice. It’s a very restful place, but that peace is coupled with complete awareness of where I am. It’s difficult to describe, and that’s primarily down to my personal limitations with English.

It’s a place where the world is stark, broken down to simple, discrete items and nothing is hidden or missing. Naked is one word that I’ve used a couple of times in the post therapy debrief. When I’m there it feels really, really naked, and initially I found that very scary and that being afraid was holding me back. Getting to this place has been very challenging and pushed me hard to look in places most of us don’t like too.

There are a lot of emotions floating around me right now and spending a few minutes meditating and relaxing before going to sleep is every bit as effective as an Ambien, without the side effects.

There was a lot more to say on this, maybe I’ll share. I’m well along to road to being the person I know I can be.