Really Need Advice...

[our-haven.livejournal.com]

Ok, we've been having a huge problem lately, and it's mostly because of me.

We're a musician at the renaissance festival here, and so saturday and sunday every weekend we spend 12 hours on-site, playing music for 3 of those hours. It's pretty physcally exhausting, what with the heat+humidity, the instrument we play (the hammered dulcimer), and how we dance behind it while we play. It also requires an intense amount of concentration overall (at least one of us has to be really focused.) Since this is so important (this is how we make money!!) and since I'm a bit of a control freak, I usually can't seem to help trying to front all the time while we're playing! Jeremey (the old primary) was the one who first started playing the dulcimer years and years ago, and so he feels an automatic need to be the one playing, which I don't think he can really control, either.

Since there's SO much concentration needed, and since it's so important, I'm almost always conflicting with someone when I try to stay front and focus on playing. I can't seem to let go enough to let anyone else take over, and though I'm pretty sure they could do just as good a job, it absolutely terrifies me when I'm not in control in a situation that important! So, in the end, I wind up trying to front almost the entire day, and I get horribly exhausted and usually deteriorate into an emotional wreck by the end of each day. The part that scares me even more is that my playing starts to deteriorate as I fall apart, too. I have to fall back on all sorts of horrible coping skills to try and stay sane-- which doesn't always work, either-- and towards the end of the weekend all I can think about is "Okay... Just need to make it through today... Then I can fall apart and get shipped of to a ward if I need to."

It. Sucks.

Now, I know the obvious solution to this problem is simply to step back and let someone else take care of things, but like I said I don't seem to be able to. Whenever I'm "back" I'm still usually just under the surface, which really disturbs me since then I sometimes have a hard time sorting out me from everyone else. I still have a hard time dealing with being multiple at all some of the time, so when I'm sort-of co-front because three of us are trying to play the dulcimer at the same time, it really wrecks my mental state.

*sigh*

So what would really help me is if I could just find a way to go back more fully and let go enough to stay that way. My therapist totally agrees with me on that, but she doesn't really have any advice that will realistically help me to do that. So, I guess I'm kind-of stuck here. We had to miss this weekend, too, since I just didn't think I could handle it. I just lost about $300 in tips that we really needed for all sorts of things. That's really something we can't afford to have happen.

Any advice?
~Jem