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I think I am starting to experience the importance of these personal challenges and how meaningful it really is to be able to engage with others and do something that is stretching capacity. I am glad that you are able to put yourself into these situations, even when they are difficult

Thanks, ArbreMonde, Eliseahorse, and birdsong87.

The 'stretching capacity' thing is so difficult. We ended up getting a callback for a character in the show, and now we're an understudy for one of the roles, as well as being in the ensemble. But every single one of these steps comes with so much internal strife.

We go over the things we said and did whenever there was anything less than a very positive reaction from outside people. It's very tied into negative core beliefs, so any mistakes, or non-smiling faces watching us, or say, getting to be the understudy rather than being given the role, "proves" that we're not any good at acting, and never will be, etc.

During the initial rehearsal for the show, each person in the cast had to introduce themselves and say one interesting or fun thing about themselves. We find it so hard to internally agree about what to say! So we ended up saying that it was hard to decide, and that three things people had already said were true for "me" also. it seemed to be ok, but since then we've been going over and over it in our head. We were lying awake for a couple of hours this morning going over what we would want to say in that kind of situation again, and each time we "decide" on the "best answer," someone else changes it.

Also at that rehearsal, we had to do an acting exercise in front of everybody, and the director corrected us a few times and then said "finally!" when she got us to do it the way she wanted us to. Other people got corrected also, for different things, but we're stuck dwelling on what we did wrong, and how everyone was probably judging us, and maybe we fell in the director's estimation, etc. There isn't really any evidence for that, but that doesn't stop the ruminations.

We're going through the "Finding Solid Ground" workbook, slowly, on our own, because we only have the somatic T right now. We're in the section on separating past from present, and I think a lot of these issues have to do with that. We were bullied and judged and disliked in the past, so we expect the same thing to happen now. And it feels like even if we start out being liked, we'll do things that make us be seen as weird, and we'll start to be disliked and excluded. It's very scary to some of the younger parts.

We've also been missing our old T a lot for the past few days. Not sure why. Someone is very tempted to text him, but we really don't want to deal with being in that relationship again. It's doubtful that he'll want to apologize for scheduling someone else into our regular appointment time without checking if we were planning to come that day. He said that the time that he didn't think he did anything wrong. I just realized that it's the anniversary of when we first started seeing him, in 2017, so maybe that's why he's been on our mind lately.

Anyway, the plan for the rest of the day is to make a list of what everyone wants to do, and then start to do those things.

Hope the show goes well, and yeah, it's always hard not to want to go over and over everything to see if you said/did the right thing.

And sorry you're missing your old T.

Take care,
Vi

We've been feeling so rundown and exhausted for the past 10 days or so. Our middle and oldest kids were visiting and both staying in their old bedrooms in our house, plus I have 4-5 hour rehearsals every weeknight.

It was the husband's birthday soon after Father's Day, so there was a dinner out on that Sunday, as well as last Saturday, and then we hosted a party for more than 20 people at our house that same night. I spend time with the visiting kids last Sunday, and then Monday it was back to rehearsals again.

This past Thursday and Friday the rehearsals were especially long and we completely blocked two numbers that we hadn't touched on before.

I've had to cut way back on my daily exercise routine because I've just been too tired to keep up with it. And I'm not getting more than 6 or 7 hours of sleep at night on a good night.

Ugh--everything feels overwhelming, and the littles can't stand that we don't have the time or energy for fun stuff right now. We just miss waking up feeling rested and ready for the day.

Thanks, ArbreMonde. We'll have tomorrow off because it's a holiday here, so that's something. And I did go to ballet class today, even though I have rehearsal tonight. Ballet is so good for my posture and flexibility, and I've missed it for a couple of weeks. But I'm more tired than I ought to be right now for someone who has a 4-hour rehearsal to get through tonight...

If the fatigue continues this week, I'll probably try to see the doctor and maybe get some blood tests done. Some of us are worried that something physical is going on.

The littles are happy that we'll get to see fireworks tomorrow night. Our little area of the city puts on a big display.

The physical fatigue we were having went away, so we were able to get through the final two weeks of rehearsals and then the week and a half of performances without feeling overly exhausted.

The last show was almost 4 weeks ago, and so far we've been to two auditions for other shows and didn't get cast. We have some parts who have a really hard time with the disappointment--especially being turned down yesterday for a part that we thought was pretty much a sure thing. We'll have to be more careful about not counting on anything ahead of time, and we probably need to work on acting skills since that seems to be something that's holding us back.

Other than that, the month has been pretty good, because we traveled for the first two weekends, and then last weekend we had a barbecue one night and a dinner party the next night at our house. On our trips we saw family and old friends, and then last weekend the people who came seemed to have a good time, and we didn't feel overwhelmed by all the people or by having to socialize. The husband did almost all of the cooking and the cleaning up from that, and we got the house and yard ready and put things away afterwards.

Today we were feeling really sad about not getting the part we wanted yesterday, but we were able to talk on the phone to an old friend today, and that helped. Now we're going to focus on preparing for an audition tomorrow morning, and try to be clear with younger parts that we're not expecting to get cast in the show.

Overall, I think our emotional regulation and tolerance has improved a lot over the past 8 months (since leaving our old T). I think we were being constantly destabilized by the intensity of that relationship, even though there were helpful things about it. And I think the ongoing weekly somatic therapy is helping a lot. So, things are going about as well as can be expected I think. We're also staying on top of (nearly) daily exercise, whether it's walking or biking or ballet.

That's all for now--just wanted to update since it's been almost two months since we wrote on this thread.