One year!

Here I am, one year later. It seems, now, to have gone by in the blink of an eye. Days and weeks and months that felt like they would never end, that nothing would ever change, that I was enduring hell for absolutely no reason have brought me to this point. And it's incredible. I find myself going about my days sometimes in some form of routine and without much appreciation for what I am able to do now. After even just one full day of “existing” I find myself bored and the one constant that brings me back to really living each moment is feelings/thoughts of gratefulness. Boredom cannot exist when one fosters an absolute wonder at life because each moment is new and different in some form and has so much beauty to offer.

A lot and hardly anything is changing at the same time. On the outside, things seem pretty consistent. I'm drifting easily into my own style and presentation. I have regular activities that I do and people that I engage with and through this - simplly life - the personal growth continues and I can look forward to it continuing for a long time to come.

Many things have become so simple if I allow them their simplicity and stop over-analyzing and picking through absolutely every thought and feeling. Thoughts happen. Feelings happen. And neither are often earth-shattering or ground crumbling. For example, I've had about three consistent days of loneliness. A familiar feeling that was perpetual not so many months ago. The first day I really felt it, my chest ached; I just missed my friends and family back home so much. I didn't really know what to do with it. I reached out and mentioned it to my counsellor and she reassured me that it was “normal” but I had about an hour where I thought, “Now, what am I going to do about this? There has to be a way to fix it because this is highly unpleasant.” It makes me smile now because it was still a bit of a process to get me to a place where I thought, “Actually, I can just feel this and carry on with things and it will eventually go away.” You see, it isn't the kind of loneliness I used to experience – a kind where you miss something or someone or somewhere constantly and there is nothing that alleviates that. This is a completely “normal” loneliness where I have good friends that live far away and who I haven't seen in some time and I miss them. Plus, I live on my own and I do almost everyone on my own and that can feel a little lonely at times to not be sharing life with others as much as I'd like to. Simple things like seeing a bird formation or a magnificent sunset are always lovely for me but can be even more so when experienced with someone else. Previously, I had no ME so of course I was lonely and searching for something/someone. Today I thought as I entered Day 3 of this feeling, “I'd rather be temporarily lonely and be where I need to be and doing what I need to do than rush away to be with people and risk returning to a life of self-hatred.” That was comforting to me, I have the rest of my life to be wherever and with whomever I want to be, this is so transitory and is essential to enabling me to carrying on in the connected fashion I so ultimately desire.

Another very different experience of feelings for me at this point is deciphering what is familiar anxiety and what is healthy intuition. I have grown in my trust of my intuition beyond description. I went through a terrible phase here where I didn't know which end was up, I had to ask about Every. Little. Thing. In the years prior to this that I spent so ill, I also needed someone else to know better most of the time. I was so numbed out to my gut and had lost all faith in myself as I had “proven” to myself that I was an all-around epic failure, that it has taken a lot of work to regain any trust in myself. I remember a post I made about the people on the outside that surrounded me and I wondered how to bring them to a place where they could trust me...as I see it now, maybe their well-person intuition inferred that I wasn't yet solid in myself and maintained a level of protection for me. If that is the case, I appreciate their ability to care for me and keep me safe when, although I soldiered along with my shoulders back and head high and presented as strongly as I could, I was not there yet. However, this is not as finely tuned as I look forward to it being at some point in the future. I lived many years with extreme anxiety. I was fearful of absolutely everything: sleeping, waking, people, activities, answering the phone, opening the door, being alone, being with people, food, fluid, death, life, darkness, light, and on and on. There were valiant attempts by many practitioners to help me cope with this anxiety: drugs, therapy, “tools”; but I had no idea that this state could actually be alleviated. It has been!! It's not something I will cope with forever, it's something I understand now and have healed from. I can't even explain how it happened, it just did. Like with so many things, I might have a deja vu from time to time and remember what I used to do or think at different times that I just don't anymore and have absolutely no need to do.

Going back to the original statement, it is still sometimes a challenge to recognize what is a fear that is habitual and has just existed for a long time in my mind and what is actual intuition that works to keep me appropriately safe. As is my typical style, I sometimes push things and get a little burned while discovering what was a gut feeling I should have honoured rather than pushed the limits of but how else does one learn and grow? More often than not, it's quite fun anyway.

It's been on my mind to write about my idea of how I will be when I'm through with this program. I'm going to return to a world where the common belief is that people with eating disorders maintain a perpetual state of recovery similar to drug addicts and live at risk of relapse. I don't believe that anyone is condemning me to relapse, just that it will remain a risk for a very long time if not for life. In my case, that's not true. I have never viewed eating disorders in relation to addictions and felt a bit stigmatized by others when that correlation was proposed. I always knew that if I was going to get better it was going to be to a place where I could say with confidence that I was recoverED. That's not “in recovery”.  I didn't want to get better if I was going to be living my life always glancing over my metaphorical shoulder and watching to “signs of relapse”. I wanted to get well with no looking back, and that's the philosophy of the program that I have been so fortunate to be a part of. And it's happening.

I will be leaving here whole and without that looming risk of relapse that has been beaten into me over the years in the system. I have been brought to not only my senses but myself. I have developed such a respect for myself, my body, my mind, that I could never go back. I don't have typical "tools to cope". It's simple, I will be (am nearly!) well and a well person couldn't imagine being sick again and would never "need" to be sick.

Yes, one could probably define what I know will enable me to attain and maintain wellness in some clinical fashion but in simple lay man's terms I have: the ability to reach out when I need help; to be aware of what is really good for me; to respect my need to be first sometimes and know that does not make me selfish; to be objective in my interactions and realize that it's not always all about me even when it can appear on the surface as though it is. I am allowed – by myself - every human experience that I allow others – to be scared and angry and sad and lonely as well as happy, excited, proud, silly, etc. My double standards that held me hostage for so many years, those that made me constantly not good enough have been all but eliminated. If I'm not okay, I can say it and not fear being judged and seek out the support I need, I don't need to show it with my body or behaviours.

Even more simply, I like to feel good and I like to look good and those things cannot coexist in a body that is neither too big or too small for who is authentically me. By treating myself with respect and kindness, I am doing my part to become and be what is best for me.

Finally, body image again.

I'm sure people are wondering just how I feel in this body I've “gained” (for lack of a much better word that I'm sure is out there). It's a very interesting experience, this physical recovery. I've known all along basically where I needed to get to weight-wise to have my body function optimally and to respect what is natural for me. I didn't reconcile with this knowledge until very recently. The majority of days are okay as far as body image goes. This has been rapidly improving. I have peaks and valleys for sure but not often worse than any human might experience. There certainly are days where what I see is distorted still. My reflection can change dramatically overnight or even in a moment in a way that I know is not simply fluid retention and is certainly not real weight gain it is just a distortion. Sometimes it can be related to feelings or worries I'm having and other times it's completely out of the blue. Strangely, it comes most often on days where I'm feeling alright about me as a person and the only thing I can think of to explain this is that there's still something in my head that tries to bring me down or wants me to believe that I'm not worthy of feeling good or liking myself. It's not conscious, that's for sure. The thing about this now is that I can recognize when it's a distortion and no, even that awareness doesn't always help, often it's still really difficult to exist in a body that is “so big” compared to what I had become accustomed to and then throw in a day where all mirrors are acting like those carnival funny mirrors?!! It's a challenge but one that is so simple in the grand scheme of things and there is no distortion so great that it would cause me to hurt myself ever again.

I wrote this recently to someone explaining where I'm at with my thoughts about my weight and shape:

“I actually have only weighed myself once since I've been back from Canada and it was purely out of curiosity. I have days where I'm driven to get on a scale but I know that it would just give me a reason to berate myself.  So on those days where I know I might react to the number, I know to avoid places that might enable me to mentally compromise myself.  Most days, I don't even think about the number at all.  I consider how I feel in my body, what my energy level is like, how I've been treating myself in regards to diet, exercise, and sleep, etc.  I have days where I'm extremely uncomfortable with being this size, for sure.  But I have days where I don't even think about it at all and even the occasional day/moment where I like it!  My fear of becoming clinically obese again is decreasing as time goes on and how I see it now is that I have too much respect for myself to let that happen in the same way that respect will keep me from starving myself, binging and purging, excessive exercise, laxatives, etc. to achieve a low weight.”

So yeah, it continues to be quite an adjustment for me as I maintain a weight that is most appropriate for Julia. However, my body is merely as big as I truly am inside and I, my friends, have a presence and a personality that has filled out just like the rest of me!

On that note, I will finally post this. Thank you to everyone for your on-going support, it really means the world to me.

Familiar Unfamiliar

I've been away from writing for a while. It doesn't always flow so easily when I sit down at the keyboard and this month has been busy in all the best ways and I really haven't had or made the time to write.

I'm coming up on one year in treatment. Today marks one year since my final discharge from hospital in Canada. It's odd that as I approached this time, I had a little ache in my chest. It wasn't quite sadness, not anger or regret. It wasn't necessarily a longing but all those feelings give me similar sensations. I thought, if I really analyzed it, maybe it's grief. Recovery and attaining wellness is amazing but it is also a big loss: the loss of something very familiar; a way of being; a me I thought was true.

Some days I say that I miss it. I have to work to remember the 99% of that life that I don't miss. The only thing I ever miss is the predictability of that existence. I always knew what came next. I understood what my ultimate goal was: death – and I just plodded along the path that would get me to that goal. In the meantime, as all those around me tried to wake me up, to save me, I knew what would happen. I would have time by myself in which I would sabotage my health and I would be admitted to hospital in a worse psychological if not physical state than the time before. I didn't do anything spontaneous because that might interrupt what was “supposed” to happen. Of course there were other reasons, larger and more practical reasons that I didn't do much outside of what became my norm however, predictability played a big role.

Anorexia/bulimia gave me an identity. It was my job, my extracurricular activities, maybe even my style or at least my presentation! It was my thoughts and speech. Now, I've happily walked away from that and I am discovering a person who somehow held on and has now been brought out. All the lies that I suffocated myself under have been stripped away and the real me is shining brightly over all things negative. But right there is the loss. Now I have me and nothing else that defines me. I don't seek to define myself through my work or friends or activities completely but those are things that I hope to incorporate into this Self. So when I miss the ED, I know what it is. I miss the familiarity, the predictability, and the identity.

“Real life” is less than predictable and I enjoy all the “normal” things that happen – positive and negative – in my days. I laugh when it rains on the day I have my whites out to dry; I can't help but raise my eyebrows when my washing machine, oven, fan, and dishwasher and internet all choose to stop working on the same day; when I drive the wrong way on a one-way and get honked at, my reaction is almost always, “Hee hee!!! Oops!” and I carry on. I've come leagues from where I was in being alright with others being late for appointments or cancelling and with those same things with myself. I really don't care if things change very last minute as long as it's done respectfully. I don't need to know that menu at a restaurant or every ingredient that's in a meal and have it presented the same way every time or as expected. I created predictability in my life through what was diagnosed as OCD. And then the medical side of the ED was quite predictable. I always knew that x+y would result in z but it didn't mean I could stop.

The most unsettling unpredictable thing about my life right now is actually me. My moods, reactions/responses, feelings, interests, etc. Are ever changing and that's tough! I'm getting to know myself as a becoming well person and it is kind of like meeting a teenager.

So for now, I'm just letting myself feel whatever comes along. I'm not fighting it, I am talking about it a lot, and I'm just letting it be. I really can't change my feelings but I can change how I react to them and what thoughts they lead me to have and eventually, I think, that will change many of the feeling reactions I have. There are still two paths in my head: one of positivity and one of negativity and I need to make an active choice oftentimes to put blinders on to the familiar negative and beat down the path of positivity and what's actually real and make that the new familiar.

There's a song by School of Seven Bells called “Lafaye” that has an amazing line that I could never have imagined I would apply to my life, “the familiar unfamiliar will be the only thing you knew.” So true. I'm becoming familiar with the unfamiliarity of being a well person. So far, I still know a bit of the old ways of being too well but I'm winning over it and making a new familiar unfamiliar.

It's actually a lot less unsettling than it sounds!

Still, all these thoughts don't stop the strange ache for that life I lived but it is less with each day. It's still confusing when I feel like I think I want that again. I hear that when I'm actually, fully well, that will seem even more absurd than it does now and I really look forward to the time when I don't even have a moment of that ache. Like everything at this point, I don't imagine there will be some monumental event where I realize that things have changed and my world shifted. I expect it will be a gradual occurrence that will result in a completely well me looking back and smiling at this time of “bambi legs” in the beginning of wellness.

On that note, this tired girl is heading to bed. I just returned from a whirlwind trip to Lisbon. Now, the focus is all back on me and how to make the next steps forward towards the goal I came here with: eradicating the negative. It's just so possible and so imminent...

11.5 months

I've been meaning to sit down and write for some time but I've actually been busy!  I have nothing earth shattering to report.  The progress continues, sometimes at a snail's pace but never actually coming to a complete halt.

I'm having one of the richest experiences right now in fostering an amazing friendship.  I'm learning a lot about myself but above that I am just feeling so blessed to have this girl in my life.  I have noticed a shift in my "need" of the counsellors here from being incessant to much more occasional.  I enjoy being in touch with them but I dont' have to be as I did just a couple of weeks ago.  I'm confirming what I Knew?  No, I'm experiencing what I hoped in being able to find what I need in the "real" people in my life.  I love my counsellors and I know I will have them in my life forever but it's a great thing to know that there will be a day when I don't even have counsellors, I have friends and that/s what I need.

There is a saying that's something like, "Friends are the best therapists" and it's so true.  Not in that I require them to sort out my convoluted thoughts - that's still my counsellors' role - but that friends know how to reach the Me that's inside and bring her out and how could I want anything more?

So on that note, I apologize for the absence and I will write something in more detail soon.

Those three words

I. Love. You.  What’s the big deal about that sentence?  Why is expression of love so difficult for people?  I might not say it often but it’s a reality for me.  It’s a constant state.  I love and I do so unconditionally when it comes to people.  That’s not hard for me.  Sometimes verbally expressing it can be challenging and a bit awkward and so, more often than not, I choose to show my love and I hope the message is conveyed.  I love to different degrees and I do struggle with telling people but it really is just a fact about who I am. 

What’s so much bigger for me is:  I need you.

I made it “policy” in my head when I was a teenager that I did not need.  Especially not people but it ended up extending to everything which is a simple explanation of my eating disorder.  I certainly didn’t want to need food.  I wanted to be superhuman.  But when it comes to people, I remember the time in my life where I decided that I would be okay alone, that in fact, I was meant to be alone and that was just going to have to be okay.  Now, I need.  I need people, I need things, I need food.

That’s so much more frightening to me than loving.  I can love people and they can choose not to love me back, that’s okay.  I can love people and they can leave me, that’s also okay.  Love for me never has to be reciprocated or necessarily provided.  Perhaps it does need to be provided and it’s just been inescapable for me.  I have no experience of actually not being loved by absolutely anyone and I would venture to say that is a common human experience.  Someone somewhere loves you, loves me.  Need on the other hand for me…if I need you and you leave, I am broken.  If I need you and you cannot provide or choose not to be there for me, I am lost.  And that is something I’m really coming to terms with.

I’ve created my own monster by disallowing myself to even recognize need so by the time I realize that’s what I’m experiencing and I finally ask/reach out, I’m getting closer to a desperate place.  I’m working on that, actively, everyday.

I have the right to need and to have my needs provided for.  I have the right to reach out and ask for help and to need someone to know better, to reassure, to comfort, etc.  Above the right, again, is the need.  I need to reach out.  I need people to be there for me.  I need support.

I. Need.

And I’m scared of needing still but I will always and so, I must accept.  I must try to have my needs filled.  I know I am worthy and I know now that it takes a lot more courage to tell people, to tell the world, that I cannot do this, life, on my own.  I will keep asking for help and reaching out as much as it goes against what I have instructed myself for the greater part of my life.  And one day, I will be okay with it.

Learning

My days right now are confusing.  They say I’m experiencing yet another “pendulum swing.”  I’m becoming more and more aware of when the shifts are going to happen.  I gear up to changes in my thinking these days with less excitement than before when I referred to the changes as “cascades” (picture:  beautiful water fall refreshing my world).  Now, I am tense, I feel resistant, and I get scared.  The changes that occur now are usually about things I thought I knew that have become untrue. 

All through this process this has been the case but on different levels.  From day one, I had to recognize that what I understood throughout my childhood (my interpretation of my experiences) up until the point of manifesting in self-destructive behaviours was wrong and I had to relearn it.  Then, I started getting treatment for an eating disorder and since then, everything that has been beaten into me (such as terms like “in recovery” and “relapse” and developing “tools to cope”) about overcoming an eating disorder has become wrong because it’s not consistent with truly becoming well.  This part has been a joyous experience as my understanding of recovery until this program has basically been that I am doomed to struggle through life and inevitably relapse from time to time and hopefully never sink as low as I did – it’s very different now.  Then, I thought I had been getting to know my true self (after the painful experience of becoming completely blank and undefined) and that was kind of neat.  Now, even those things are changing.  So what I thought I knew - was wrong.  What I was taught and chose to believe –was wrong.  What I thought I had come to know – is also not always true.

Above the learning and relearning, came the unlearning and that is not easy.  However, it is possible.  It really is about creating new pathways.  I know this because I have revisited and evaluated messages I received as a child, recognized the fault in my interpretation, chose to learn how to see it differently, and now, with many memories, I actually don’t know how I believed what I did.  It is so completely different and comfortably so, it feels natural but the process did not feel natural.

I think this might be the most difficult thing I’m dealing with right now.  Just when I thought I knew something…it’s ripped out from under my feet and has to change to fit with the true me that continues to emerge.

One day at a time, I still relish the moments of calm and peace.  I appreciated the good times greatly.  But the rough times….they’re still present in quite the capacity.  It’s still a practice of getting up, walking a few steps, and being slammed to the ground.  And then, it’s about getting up again and taking the next few steps with my new knowledge.  Like I said before, I don’t live a life braced for difficult times, for panic and fear and anxiety and sadness, I just live and with that comes all of those things.  I cannot let those low times overshadow the goodness in my life which is beyond plentiful.  I am now driving, which is amazing.  I have 2 regular squash partners and I’m getting a lot better.  I laugh so hard my face and stomach hurt at least once a week.  I played ping pong until 3am on Saturday night.  It’s 28 degrees right now and 11:30pm.  I stared up at a 400 year old church today and then walked along the Atlantic Ocean while the sunset.  Life is good, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt still.  I’m still learning, unlearning, relearning and it’s hard but gosh, 99% of the time, I wouldn’t change it for the world.

The way I see it, today

The days seem to be getting better.  By that I mean the hours are more often enjoyable than merely bearable.  There are still the beautiful breakdowns but I think they have gone from three/day, to two, and today, none.  There is still a couple of waking hours in my day, however, and I need not jump the gun and pronounce to day panic free yet.  On that thought, I have found a place in my mind where I do not remain braced for the panic or in a constantly expectant state.  I know it might happen.  I know that I can’t, thus far, predict what might set me off, but I cannot waste my time anticipating it.  I have found my voice in a relatively short time and, as painful as it is to use at times, I am working so hard at reaching out in the moment.

Tonight I find myself worrying ever so slightly about the concept of relapse again.  I’ve spent the greater part of the evening researching ideas of what I might like to do with my “real” life when I leave Portugal and it’s been fun.  I got excited about my future for the first time in a long time.  Then along came this hint of doubt.  Like a whisper into a huge cave that echoes and echoes but without much strength.  What if?  Is it possible that this can be real, the changes I’ve made?  I know I’ve learned a lot over the past year, beyond what I had ever imagined!  I have made so much progress in so many ways but has it changed the core of me that I tried to extinguish for so long?  It’s not the big ball of blackness that I used to visualize it as but what if, at the end of the day, I really just don’t like myself?  Why would I not go back to silencing myself through my eating disorder?  It kept me down.  Through my disease, I lost myself but what was a Self that drove me nuts, that I hated, that annoyed me.  Now I’ve been brought back in all aspects.  I recognize my goodness and absolute lack of malice and hate that I believed existed for so long.  I see my potential, I look forward to giving back but there’s still something that’s just not right.  I can’t quite put my finger on it.  Is it perhaps like meeting a new person who is to become a friend?  It’s rarely been my experience that - from day one - a person drops into the bosom buddy category.  Maybe I’m just so new to me that I’m still feeling myself out, getting to know me, assessing and deciding if the good is worth the weaknesses.  I have to hope that it is and that when I do truly befriend myself, I will let the good shine brighter and outweigh the downfalls.  It’s no longer a matter of being perfect.  In fact, I noticed just the other day how rarely that word perfect enters my expression regarding all things about me.  It’s about being the best I can be and hoping that whatever that is, is valuable enough to sustain.

The picture I created in my mind regarding my situation now is this:  Throughout my eating disorder and associated symptoms, I was walking – quite briskly at times – towards a cliff edge.  Just over a year ago I did my best to leap from that cliff but managed to hold on to the edge with my finger nails.  When I came to Portugal, I started strengthening my grip on that edge and ever so slowly pulled myself up.  This was with so much encouragement and belief from those around me but near the edge of this cliff, the ground is so fragile no one could join me and extend their physical hand to me lest the whole thing crumble.  Before my trip to Canada, I’d pulled myself up and maybe even gotten to my feet and I could see safety clearly but I was exhausted from the effort.  My legs hadn’t been used in so long.  That said, my legs are strong and their muscle memory intense and they know what to do.  For a moment, I just stood and looked back/down with fear and ahead with relief but also with a little fear as if I knew the ground beneath me was not solid and if I lost my footing, I would be back holding on with my fingertips.  Since then, I have started the walk towards the world again one baby step at a time.  Any great movements could shatter what holds me up and leave me clinging to the edge of a newly formed cliff.  So regardless of how eager I am to get to the people who cheered me on, to get as far away from the danger that I just overcame, I have to tread gently and slowly.

I hadn’t actually thought that whole image through until I started writing about it and it makes so much sense to me now.  The only reason I might go back is if I rush the work I have to do right now.  It’s easier work (given the strength of my “legs” and their capacity to follow instructions largely from the subconscious).  I can really see what I’m going towards and it’s wonderful!  If I take my time, the distance between me and the cliff’s edge will be so great that I won’t even think to go back.  Maybe now, because I realize I got through it, I survived, it doesn’t seem so bad.  But have you ever done something crazy and adrenaline seeking at one time without fear and then you think you could do it again or might even want to do it again and you realize as you approach the activity that you just can’t do it in that moment?  Perhaps that will happen with me with the eating disorder.  If I tend in the direction of that self-defeating yet adrenaline seeking behaviour again I will hopefully experience a psychological presentation of that funny feeling in my stomach that is a loud indicator that there is something worth avoiding.

This is the image I will head to bed with tonight.  I’m over the edge, I’m on my feet, and I’m moving away from danger but the ground is not solid yet.

Here’s to another night of a number of consecutive, restful, hours of sleep and hoping I rouse refreshed in the morning to see another day with great potential to be panic free.

xoxo

Feelings

What a ride this is!  There is so much going on in my head these days.  I’m battling my familiar demon, anxiety.  I’ve even been reacquainted with panic attacks.  Over the weeks, some members of the team thought that this was caused by my body physically regulating and I’m sure that is a part of all this but in conversation with my main counsellor yesterday, she suggested that perhaps I’m “just” having emotions that I’ve shoved down for too long.  This idea fits for me.  As unpleasant as it is, I realize that for years I’ve numbed myself out in numerous ways.  Going on and coming off medication is an ongoing saga.  I have good drugs available to me if I need them and I have used them, lately, as indicated.  It’s not the first thing I jump to like I used to.  I use all my skills for relaxation and distraction and if I really can’t get a handle on things, then I take medication.  The last time, however, they didn’t help which shows me that there’s more going on than an imbalance that can be regulated with western medicine.  I’ve often fallen back on the pattern of:  identify symptomàdiagnoseàmedicate/treat.  Maybe, just maybe, the distress I’m feeling now isn’t actually diagnosable.  Perhaps it would be if I was back home.  Someone would be keen to help me experience immediate relief and would likely give me whatever I felt I needed to find that.  Here, I’m challenged to realize that I’m having feelings and the more likely perhaps is that my distracting techniques have actually become stuffing. 

Right now, I seem to feel in extremes and it’s scary.  I go from feeling all right to feeling like a failure at life to feeling like I’m on top of the world.  It feels as bipolar as it sounds.  It’s uncomfortable and I want to moderate it but what I’m realizing now is yet another lesson in patience.  If I haven’t felt much in a very long time due to medication, self-harming behaviours, and full on dissociation, how can I expect to feel?  Do I think that overnight, because I’ve decided, my mind is going to switch and offer me tolerable emotions?  You know, I did think that!  I’m stubborn as an ox in a lot of ways.  Usually that’s all right and in this process it has helped quicken my progress and disenabled any chance of giving up.  In that respect, my stubbornness could be referred to as determination.  With this, I need frequent reminding that my emotional self isn’t used to this.  It’s almost like adolescence in my head.  Growing and feeling…and don’t we all remember how adolescence felt?!

The bigger lesson for me today is the importance of being gentle with myself.  I still feel sometimes that if someone would just smack me, I’d get on with things and more often than that, I want to smack myself and get on with things!  I know that sometimes I need a stern approach.  I need to be told to help myself and do what I know helps even if it doesn’t feel good and it’s exhausting and I don’t want to.  I’m usually able to be that stern voice for myself (sometimes far too harsh!).  Here, I have surprised myself by being responsive to gentility.  It’s quite foreign to me.   I respond to the gentle prodding and encouragement of my team.   I have to figure out how to be gentle with myself now.  The approach I take with myself usually is leaving me chasing my tail.  It’s a bitter cycle.  An example was a few days ago I was feeling annoyed over something very little, then I started getting annoyed that I was feeling annoyed.  I saw the snowball I was creating but didn’t know how to interrupt it.  I don’t like feeling annoyed because I associate that feeling (only as it pertains to me) with being bratty, impatient, spoiled, inconsiderate, etc.  So I stopped feeling that towards the external stimulus that had initiated that and became annoyed with myself for having that feeling.  For some reason, that was more acceptable to be annoyed with myself than let myself be annoyed with something that concerned someone else.  In the end when I let myself talk about it, it turned out that my original feeling was justifiable and many people would have felt a bit ticked-off by what I had experienced.  Somehow, though, I made it negative towards myself and chastised myself for having the feeling.  Now that I’m aware of this, I can try next time to just let myself feel the feeling and realize that I’m doing no harm by having a feeling.  I realize now that my feelings don’t always necessitate action and that’s extremely important for me to be aware of.  It’s now finding the balance between what does and what doesn’t because I know if I ignore what does or brush it off, I will land myself back overwhelmed and entering panic mode.

I thought of some little hokey phrase that I can use for myself.  Instead of “Feel the fear and do it anyway”, for me it’s “Feel the fear and feel it anyway!”  It doesn’t feel good!  But I can do it and the more practice I get of having feelings and letting myself have feelings, including those that don’t feel good, the better I can become at moderating and I hope to be free of panic and free of drugs!