Dear Aislynn:

good to read your progress. You describe everything so well! Like I wrote before: you got what it takes!

And since I already went through excellent therapy that helped me so much, I will be glad to share what he taught me with you. The short guided meditations is a good idea, one to start with. Focusing on sight and sound only is excellent. You choose what is comfortable for you, not overwhelm yourself, that would be counter productive. In good psychotherapy, the therapist will not encourage you to overwhelm yourself- that would be silly. He will go at your pace, so choosing your pace is excellent.

You did a great job being mindful of sights and sounds as you described above and of the thoughts you had. You noticed Sounds, Sights and Thoughts. You noticed when you lost focus on the first two, you didn’t (my understanding) beat yourself up for losing focus/ attention (very important) and you returned to sights and sounds. And you felt calm.

Of course, not eternal calm: a thing to remember. It is a matter of time and never is there a “happily ever after/ always calm kind of existence. Good job!

As to the first part of your post, i would like to write about it when I am back to the computer. If you get this post before I am back, can you write about … was it your biological father who bullied you? A bit about that? This is a bit of an Insight thing, different than mindfulness. Mindfulness is most important at this point though. So share IF you wish: remember it is about YOUR pace and you CHOOSE-

anita