My new Everest

This week I felt ready to start on my next several months worth of counseling. Every several months I decide I'm ready to handle some new topic. Then it usually takes me a few weeks to be ready to start talking. After that it's what we talk about until either I have a handle on it or I've had too much and need a break. Usually breaks are one or two weeks long, although I suppose the last one really is on-going in a way. By the time I was ready to even begin to think about what had gotten to be too much I had someone gotten a lot more comfortable with it and didn't need to talk more. So we didn't go back to it an all has been well.

Anyway, the new topic is one of the things I struggle with more than anything: trust. I have a tendency to not want to trust anyone, but then I also trust people overly much far too often. I seem to have some kind of all or nothing thing going with trust, and who is where doesn't make a ton of sense. I struggle to trust people who I have every reason to trust, but I'll blindly trust random people on the basis of they were nice to me once. I also tend to know that since I struggle to trust people that often I need to relax when I'm not trusting. There was once that still scares me and it happened 10 years ago. I was in grad school, a period of time I had very little trust in anyone. I am and especially was very afraid of men. I knew this and I knew I tended to overreact so I tried to compensate but talking myself out of overreacting. I was in a large Walmart-ish store called Meijers that is a Michigan-based and amazing place. (As far as I can tell Meijers has everything. It is what I miss most about Michigan.) I liked to go there and wander around when I needed a break from grad work. Since I didn't sleep in grad school I would wind up there late at night sometimes. One night this very creepy man started following me. At first I thought it was a coincidence, but no matter where I went there he was. And he started bumping into me repeatedly. I was scared but afraid to cause trouble. Besides I kept telling myself I was overreacting since this was a man. So instead of getting help I kept moving, into areas of the store I thought I could lose him, but which were more and more deserted. It was not until someone told me I should have been doing anything to get help and that I shouldn't have left the store without security knowing and going with me that I realized I'd forced myself to trust someone who easily could have assaulted me. Yet I get panicky if a man stands what I deem is too close to me in a line.

So I have a lot of work to do. At this stage I just want it to be Thursday so I can talk more and feel more comfortable with this project.