About three weeks ago, I was going along pretty well emotionally and then kaboom! Something happened in my life because I started freaking out just going out in the car to do non-routine jobs. I was highly anxious, tense, felt uncomfortable, with unpleasant, internal sensations, and impatient. Later started to have heartburn on and off. Felt decidedly unsure of myself where formerly I had been confident and outgoing.
Didn't know what had triggered this reaction but I started to search back for some 'precipitating event' (pE).
A pE is an occurrence, significant for an individual, in which a critical feeling-experience occurs that is not acknowledged and welcomed.
You know that feeling which is really a lack of feeling? The loss of vitality. Not wanting to get out of bed in the morning. Loss of appetite. Feeling sad and as if you want to cry at times for no reason.
With past depressions, I have almost invariably found that if I can find the precipitating event and then acknowledge the surrounding thoughts and feelings--usually ones I don't want to own for some reason--then the depression gradually subsides.
Well, that's my procedure anyway but none of my candidates which I picked for a pE seemed of any help.
I then talked with my wife about an incident which only indirectly involved her but at which she was present. And slowly, I began to feel relief, knowing that I had hit the right episode.The incident would have been an exciting and joyful one for most others. Not so for me!
For me it was a pE loaded with childhood issues that I've been suffering from all my life. Hence, I have invariably tried to suppress the unpleasant feelings and embarrassing emotions associated with such pEs.
Our feeling-responses, to what is happening in our lives, will not be silenced! We can reason with them until we're blue in the face but they remain waiting for us to recognise their existence as signs of our own pain.
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