Self Advocacy and shit...

Finding our footing...that's the theme of this semester. I have been completely overwhelmed with the transition that I have gone through in the last 3 months. So I am in mid fall on a muddy hill.

To use a well trodden phrase, I am holding on with my fingernails and afraid to look down. I really feel that I am in the space where wiley has walked off the cliff and hasn't looked down yet. It's that moment when you anticipate the fall even though it hasn't started yet - making it all the more scary in its inflation by your imagination. I thought that I was just experiencing the regular transition on many levels; feeling overwhelmed with incredible life stressors and changes, feeling mishandled by the administration of the school, feeling out of wack with my field placement and the level of responsibility, and feeling over whelmed at the weight of fatigue on my ability to do what is an incredibly boring but manageable amount of reading.

Technically, I should feel ecstatic. Having fulfilled my main goal of receiving a Honors from my hardest professor - but smooth high of that incredible triumph was soon squashed by mounting concerns in every other part of my life.

That being said, I had my field advisory meeting today. Much to my surprise apparently I am in a crisis stage at my site. I am the only one with my case load level. I am the only one with readings to do at this level. I am the only one who has to do three process recordings, plus session notes on top of the regular work assigned for class. I could go on. Let's just say that there are many people who have yet to get their hands on a client, much do anything besides run recess and do paperwork. Oh.

Oh.

I am not used to people looking at me with pity eyes but that is what happened today. I found it to be extremely amusing, in a terrifying way that the professor goes, as I walk out the door, you need to email me for a meeting immediately. Apparently no one else has two ACS cases on her caseload. Oh 

I realized today the effect of stress for me is that I can't handle tiny stressors. Like the inability to adjust when the schools wifi is not working when I am trying to get my readings printed out. My brain turned to mush and oddly enough my thighs started to feel huge.  I was like, waitawhatthehell? Now I decide to feel fat? It's like all the insecurities that always float around, waiting for their moment, suddenly gain strength and infiltrate your mind. I feel fat and ugly. I feel sad and anxious. (Can you tell I have been working with folks around naming, recognizing, and expressing their emotions?)

I know one thing for certain. I love my job. I love it. Sometimes in between sessions I walk down the hall and actually feel the sun in my chest. The rays ,not the death dealing radiation. Even if I haven't accomplished anything in session, just the interaction and contact with these children light up my day - even if I am being called a caustic agent of the principal. :)

So I feel terrible. I feel triumphant. I feel anxious.

and I'm so over feeling. Really.