Colors of my therapy

Today I had a bit of a breakthrough. I normally don't like to share these personal breakthroughs but for some reason this one was big to me. I've been dealing with a LOT of anger. I've been depressed and feeling a lot of anxiety, panic, fear. It's been hard for me to express what this feels like. Normally I can find a way to picture these feelings inside myself but it's been a long time since I've been able to do that, especially since these feelings have been much darker.

Today I found a picture. In my head I pictured a black swirling hole. It's in the middle of my chest. It's painful and I don't like going near it. It doesn't want me near it either. This is very frustrating because more than anything I want to be able to fix this hole. I want to make this hole a bright yellow, light sun. The lightest sun that literally shines rays from inside me. This black hole is HEAVY. I can feel the weight. It holds all of my anger, all of my depression, all of my fear, anxiety. It beats me up. I also learned today that it's protecting me. It's trying to keep me away from things that it thinks will hurt me. It doesn't understand that while it's intentions are good, it's doing me harm. I can't get close enough to it to let it know. It's so complicated.

I couldn't find an image that did my black hole justice, this was the closest I could get:

Just imagine it much, much darker, really no color at all. Black and ominous. Very, very swirly and scary and it's sucking you into yourself almost. 

What I want to replace it is something like this:

It seems so light and there are so many rays that could just shine right out of me. :)

When this all came to me, it was very intimidating. I thought... to get from black to yellow, there are so many colors involved... it will take so much MORE time!

But I was reminded, that doesn't have to be my journey. My journey doesn't have to be through all of those colors. I was grateful for that reminder. I have to keep telling myself that over and over or I panic again. :) I honestly don't know what my journey will be, but I do know that I will get to my light, yellow sunshine. Just the fact that I saw that black hole and I saw that yellow sunshine was a huge step. I need to pat myself on the back, give myself a hug. Shannon, you finally saw this much in yourself! Dealing with this stuff is hard, it's easy to ignore, avoid. I'm choosing the hard path. I'm choosing to deal with the hard emotions, I'm choosing to deal with my issues and try to fix them. I need to remember to congratulate myself for that. :)