Hi Mike,
Thank you for sharing some of how your own past abuse impacted your development. It is really helpful to see it through someone else's experience and the similarities to the challenges my partner faces. Yes, you're right, some skills are overdeveloped and some under (as is the case with myself too, just different). I especially reacted to the whole idea of not having had a childhood and a chance to play or dream -- I can see several ways this impacts my partner's experience of the world today. It's something he has talked about quite a bit, but your description can help me see its direct connection to some things.
I've spent the last 24 hours doing a lot of thinking about this and it seems that the universe is continuing to present me with the challenge of learning to let go of fear and learn to trust. I know this is one of my biggest challenges. One of the ways I learned to function as a result of not being able to manage so much of the stuff that happened to me as a child was becoming an over-planner and over-functioner in many areas as an adult. Well, that paired with its opposite at times, reckless risk-taking -- neither of which have much to do with a calm sense of non-doing and trust that things will unfold just as they should.
As I said in the WIR forum in response to this issue, I think that I believe that if I could neatly check off the box that says "Financially and workwise responsible" next to my partner, I'd stop worrying and could relax. But life is not like that. People are not like that. I am not like that. People aren't a list of check-boxes, and in all of us, we have strengths and weaknesses, and we are a work in progress. The lesson here is definitely about practicing letting go and trusting in the universe.
As to the stress you talked about -- yup, lots of it. As you probably could guess, I need to apply the same learnings about letting go and trust to my own stuff that is on my plate. I cycle a lot between a state of worry, anxiety, planning, action, letting go, trusting all will be alright, and back again. I've been practicing being in the moment more -- trying to meditate regularly (I took a mindfulness mediation course that ended about a month ago) and doing my daily pilates exercises for my back.
Most of this stress is about work. I've never been in a work environment as toxic as my present employment and returning there when my disability is over would be very unhealthy for me, emotionally and physically. (This actually is the same work environment my partner recently left, as have 2 other colleagues recently).
My hope is to have something alternate to go to at that time, but in the same field -- I'm not planning a career change immediately. Rather, I'm beginning the ground work of being able to change careers by starting training, with the understanding it will probably take a couple of years to be able to really put my attention to it full time and give up my current work. I wish I could have had this time off work to only concentrate on my healing without the backdrop of worrying about resumes, talking with headhunters, etc. And sometimes -- in terms of letting go -- I think perhaps I should have put it all aside completely and just hope that when I go back, something will materialize. I'm still struggling with my 'over-planning'.
Thanks again Mike for the input -- it helps.
gf