I’m really realizing how much I feel on edge and bothered so often and I’m not sure I noticed it before. I’m a fairly successful person. I’m good in school, I have a good job, beautiful children, and friends, but now I’m getting divorced, which has turned my world upside down.

I think I always had these uncomfortable feelings but maybe in the busy of school, work, and parenting I just kept moving and accepted that I felt like that. Now I’m becoming bothered by the way I feel in part because I am occasionally feeling better and free of these feelings and so they are a bit more noticeable.

Often I have a bad feeling and I can’t quite figure out the thought, or I find a potential thought, but I’m not sure it’s exactly right. And it seems that thought is tied to a train of other buried thoughts that contribute just as much to me feeling bad.

For example today I was driving and got stuck behind a car. I felt agitated and impatient. Searching for thoughts I came up with:

I don’t want to wait.
The car in front of me shouldn’t be stopped.
They could go around.

I didn’t take any action. I just sat there in my car waiting for the traffic to clear, which it did in less than a minute, but it was a very uncomfortable minute for me.

C: car in front of me stops
T: I don’t want to be stuck behind this car (and I shouldn’t be)
F: agitated
A: sit in my car, physically I am waiting for the blockage to pass. Internally I am feeling tense and feeling tense about being tense, I think, “I can’t wait to get out from behind this car and truck”
R: I am not happy being where I am (?) I am not feeling joy (?)

Two other examples:
C: I get on Zoom meeting with my boss and it says “this meeting is being recorded”
T: Oh no, I did something wrong and I might lose my job.
F: fear
A: frozen, think about what I might be getting in trouble for and how they likely record difficult conversations.
R: I’m feeling really on edge and not enjoying my time waiting for my boss.

I see the car of the handyman who works for me sometimes parked in our cul-de-sac. Once I realized he is not at my house and is at my neighbor’s house, I feel agitated and bothered. I search for the underlying feeling or thought.

C: Handy person’s car parked outside our house.
T: he is here to help my neighbor, ??? she stole him from me??? Now he’s not available to help me??? People are always stealing things from me (not that she really “stole” him, or that he can even be stolen, but feeling as if she is taking something from me – now he is at her house and not at my house.
F: agitation, fear, not good enough,
A: kind of spin in my mind with thoughts/feelings that I’m struggling to make neat and clean. Feel embarrassed/guilty that I don’t want the handyman to be helping my neighbor. Think of how I could really use help and support and she is taking help and support from me, not offering it.
R: I’m stealing myself from myself (?)

These little things happen all the time. I’m not sure that others can tell. I didn’t say anything to my boss and she was preoccupied with her own issues (and she turned off the recording immediately saying it was a mistake that it turned on), I haven’t said anything to my neighbor or the handyman, and the only person in the car with me when I was driving was my young daughter and I didn’t say anything to her.

Still, I think I’m silent and in my head and not connecting or feeling ease, joy, gratitude, happiness and I’m not sure what to do about this. I see a couple of challenges:

1) I sometimes have a hard time finding the thought when I have this agitated, uneasy feeling.
2) Even when I can do the model – it feels as if there is more than fits in a model.
3) Even with a very clean model, I’m not sure what to do about it. With the traffic, for example, I just felt agitated yet I didn’t even know the thought (and I’m just guessing at it).

Thank you for your help and insight.