Posts from — September 2011

As I becoming more sophisticated my relationships with people, I am feeling more able to go through my inboxes and clear out old messages.

You see it used to be that I had all of these different kinds of emotions swirling about that were difficult to manage as I processed my inbox. I am a fan of Getting Things Done and so I do care about “processing my inbox”, thinking through consciously what I am going to do with my e-mail and making decisions. However, I felt like I didn’t always know what to do with the feelings that would emerge from e-mails from some folks. I didn’t trust my feelings. I didn’t know how to cope with the negative feelings I would have about people and I felt obligated to them more than my feelings at times. This left me at a loss of how to be true to myself. I was still caught up in being pleasing to other people more than feeling confident in my ability to please myself and to communicate that.

I am considering how I want to go forward with this emerging desire to clear out my inboxes. I know for sure that I don’t want to just close my eyes and delete everything. I would miss out on the opportunity to get to sort out some of these old, swirling emotions. At the same time I don’t want to sit myself down and make myself do this so that I could have the satisfaction of just being done with this.

Instead I want to know that by Thanksgiving that I will have gone through all of my inboxes. That will give me time to do this but will also give me time to share and discuss with my therapist any noticings I have about how it is to engage with the confusions of the past that these e-mail brought up in me.

In the mean time I will go through my current e-mail daily, slowly and consciously, and perhaps even building the muscle for looking back at the past.