One small step at a time - progress!

This morning the cat woke me up from my slumbers demanding to be fed and I was abruptly jetpropelled from the land of dreaming to the real world. I was dreaming. Not a nightmare, but a dream. Some paper had been blown off my desk in the breeze and Shirley ('Sheila', the school nurse in my book) picked it up and read it. I was busy explaining to her that, although not brilliant, this was the first piece of creative writing that I'd been able to put together for MONTHS, if not YEARS, and that it had been really difficult to write, yet easy in a way, as that part of my brain felt as if it was thawing from the ice of numbness, dissociation and general deer-in-the-headlights inability to do very much except knit.


Just as the regular nightmares stay with me once I'm awake, this dream stayed with me too. The fact that my brain, in sleep, was aware that I'd made a definite change - a step forward - and it felt good.

Yes it 'felt' good. Remember feeling anything at all has been tricky for some time.

The other day, I wrote a couple of blog posts for the first time in ages. Today I am writing this. Yesterday a wonderful dear friend responded to my 'cry for help' with a questionnaire which she'd put together. The aim, as I gathered from going through it, was to get me thinking and to attempt to extract positives from what I am doing now as opposed to when I was completely anaesthetised by this PTSD.

To see current actions and thoughts in a positive light. To turn them from negative into positives.

I found myself responding to her carefully worded questions quite fluently.

I could write. For a while the 'deer in the headlights' had gone.

And, although it's not a Quick Fix, I do believe her help helped me quite dramatically and I would like to say a massive Thank You to her (you know who you are, dear friend!)

It was almost like tricking my brain into feeling and doing stuff without actually realising I was doing it - and to embed the realisation that I'd been doing certain positive things for quite some time.

When I was convinced that I was the 'deer stuck in front of the headlights', I didn't actually realise that, at the same time, I had been making tiny positive steps.

Like making the decision to write my blog the other day.

Like accepting the invitation to meet up with another dear friend this afternoon. And another in December who I meet up with two or three times a year. Both are fellow mums who have battled to get their children through an eating disorder and with whom I have established firm friendships over the years.

So these steps are Good. And a massive Thank You to those wonderful people that have got in touch with me whether via my Facebook page, this blog, text or email to try and help.