# Therapy Prep — Wed 27 May 2026 (likely session 4, Rhiannon)

## The honest reframe
- Journal went silent on **13 March** — no entries since. The "month of diary patterns" isn't available.
- Substitute signal: **38 daily check-ins (Apr 13 → today)** where you tag your own schema activations + body status, plus the open threads from session 3 (29 Apr).
- Worth naming on its own: journaling stopped right as work blew up (layoffs) and the illness run began.

## Where you left off — session 3 (29 Apr, Nikki boundaries)
Rhiannon will likely open by checking these:
- Hold the boundary: no travelling to Melbourne for Nikki without a genuine invitation. → In May's logs Nikki barely appears. Looks like it held — say so.
- Apply the "mutual perspective-sharing" boundary if she makes contact.
- She asked you to monitor emotional pulls/contact from Nikki and notice whether boundary-setting feels *sustainable*.

## The session-2 homework the month contradicts (the meaty one)
- Homework (1 Apr): "Practice spontaneous play and unstructured time, especially with Smilla — **without tracking or optimizing**."
- What actually happened: the most tracked, optimized, push-through-it month in your data. Surfing hard while sick (21 May "woke sick… surfed hard anyway"; 22 May "extreme overreach, 40min Z4"), crashing recovery repeatedly, WHOOP-vs-body arguments. The opposite of unstructured.
- [pattern: weak signal] reads like Unrelenting Standards / control reasserting under stress, not a failure of intent.

## Dominant pattern this month: push through the body
- ~6 weeks of recurring illness (Apr 15–16, Apr 30, big viral episode May 18–27, "Day 8" on 26 May).
- Repeatedly trained/surfed into it and crashed recovery (69→36 twice).
- Only **today (27 May)** did you choose recovery over surf and call it "good alignment." That's the change worth naming.

## Schema activations you flagged yourself (your words, in the logs)
- 15 May: "watch the validation-seeking pattern."
- 14 May: "fear-of-being-alone hook firing — urge to chase + check phone for Ying."
- 9 May: "watch unrelenting standards / not-good-enough activation."
- 26 Apr: "Unrelenting Standards: trying to do too much."
- Recurring: compulsive WHOOP-checking; "trust the body over the score."

## Relationships in the month
- **Ying** — new; you noticed the chase / check-phone urge (fear-of-being-alone hook).
- **Mica** — 20 May, "present, no neediness, genuinely enjoyed closeness." A towards-move, contrast with the Ying pull.
- **Akemi** — low-grade co-parenting stress (25 May).
- **Smilla** — steady caregiving thread.

## One bright spot (bring it, not just problems)
- Presence stayed high (mostly 8–10) through illness, low energy and stress — the "observe without being consumed" skill from session 1 holding under load.

## 4 things worth raising (your call)
1. The play/optimizing gap — homework was unstructured play; the month was maximal optimizing. Why does control come back hardest when you're depleted?
2. Pushing through illness — what's underneath the inability to rest? (today's "chose recovery, good alignment" is the counter-example).
3. Ying vs Mica — the chase-urge vs the no-neediness presence. What's the difference telling you?
4. You stopped journaling mid-March. What changed?