Is this true? A child's reality - Where did this thought come from?

 It was a hectic week and I felt pretty overwhelmed and by Thursday I was laying in bed not wanting to go to work. This only happens to me when I can't get everything done fast enough or don't know how to solve certain problems my clients. Luckily I love what I do so this is rare.  

I combat this apathy by telling myself I can come home after my floor time or after the meeting. This never happens because once I am engaged with the now instead the fears in my head it isn't so scary. It is funny that I have to trick myself to get past the fear or dread that tries to control me. 

I think of this as the little child in me who says "I don't want to go to school". I then put my big pants on and just get out there and do something.  The mind was built in our childhood the first six years we were taught all the tools we needed to interact with the world around us. 

If this wasn't a stable nurturing time, did anybody get that, our interpretation of what we were taught can be skewed pretty badly from reality. Since I have been writing about my own childhood I can see the message I received was that I was a real problem and that I needed to keep quiet. It was important that I be invisible as much as possible. 

I am sure this wasn't intentional but with my mother sick the grownups were trying to manage the situation at hand. The good news for me is that I have used that talent to stay under the radar and do what I wanted in my life mostly without asking for permission. The drawback is that no one sees just what I have accomplished. I have been conditioned to just do things for my own satisfaction and the satisfaction of the customer now.  

This trait did cost me my career in the mortgage world because I made my job look easy and they thought anyone could do it. I was let go without notice and my job given to a friend of my boss. In the end nobody could do what I had done and they had to sell the whole division.  He did make amends later by giving my name to someone that paid me a ton of money to do that same job from home. This paid for my design degree and more.

What he didn't know is that I had been there from the beginning when there was only three of us. When I left there was 70 and what I did was like breathing to me. I just came in and did my job every day without looking for a pat on the back. It never occurred to me that I needed to promote myself that would seem like bragging but in the corporate world it is necessary. I was too busy doing the work to do that.  

This event changed the course of my life and I ended up in a field doing what I love. We are pretty independent a combination of contractor and employee. It is the perfect combination for me since I am self motivated and happy to do whatever it takes to get the job done.  

I will say that finding out my mother was sick a year earlier than I thought helps me to see that I was shaped more by her illness than I thought. This isn't to wallow in the past but it helps me to understand why I think I am a burden to other people. I can know that this idea is a child's idea and not based on fact. I can see it was just fall out from the my mother's cancer and the people around her trying to cope. 

One final thing in writing here and about my past helps my brain to sort things out. I think this is the mind always working towards healing the parts that feel broken instead of pushing them down. I am always asking myself "is this thought true?" or have I been wrong about this for a long time.  

Powerlessness - Focusing on ourselves

When I first got into the program what I heard most was "focus on yourself."  This wasn't what I wanted or expected to hear at that time in my life.  First I came to the program to fix the alcoholic in my life and second it seemed selfish to put myself before anyone else especially him.  But I was in a lot of pain and felt powerless and really didn't have any place else to go.

My friends sickness has taken me back to those feelings of powerlessness.  Watching someone else struggle and say they are going to do what it takes to get better and then watching them not do it. Having their own ideas about what will fix the problem when everyone can see that there is an obvious solution. For the alcoholic stop drinking in this case eat even if you don't want to even if you feel full.

I know from my illness and depression that you can get stuck emotionally and feel like you will be sick forever. I was stuck in my thoughts and couldn't even consider that it was physical and not emotional and I could be helped. I had been through grief before and thought I would eventually get over it but it had never lasted this long before.  I did eventually get over it but it has taken me almost a decade to feel like life is worth living.  If I had listened to anyone but myself it wouldn't have taken me as long.

We don't get good advice from ourselves all the time. When we are in a crisis we go back to being a child and we resist what is happening to us.  Our thoughts say "why me?" We look around for someone to save us or the very least feel sorry for us. Sometimes we get that but then people want to offer solutions and then this makes the child in us mad and more resistant.  Obviously no one understands what I am going through and there isn't any simple solution. We just want this to stop happening to us right now.

This make those around us "the adults" weary after awhile and eventually everyone moves on.  Leaving us with our childish thoughts and mostly alone.  It is a process that takes as long as it takes.

No one understands this more than I do. I made it easy on everyone and divorced all of my friends at the same time.  Mostly because I didn't want to be a burden and thought that at least I wouldn't have to worry about my obligations to other people. It gave me time to think my way out of it. Not!

I did have one person who stuck with me someone who started out as a casual friend whose soul purpose in life seems to be care taking.  She didn't try to fix me just be there for me making me eat.  She wasn't trying to change me back to the more likable person I had been before. She was just there for me until I got better and when I did she moved on to someone else.

With tragedy growth is inevitable. Grow or suffer..  We can decide to stay stuck or we can get sick and tired of being sick and tired and do something about it. Our child mind is trying to catch up and it is pissed off that once again it has to do the work. We imagine there is a point in life where things will be easy and sometimes it is but we don't appreciate it until we experience the opposite.

We can't save other people they have to save themselves. We can share our experience, strength and hope and just be there. He is a program person and just like me he has the foundation to find his way out of this.  He is also like I was he has a physical component that is skewing his thought process.

It will take longer for him to come back from this without more food.

When I first  came to the program I hated the idea that I was powerless over my husbands drinking and that I needed to focus on my own recovery.  Seriously there was nothing wrong with me if only he would do what he was suppose to do we would both be happy. I can say that about my friend and his fear of food but it isn't true. He will get through it and in the mean time  I have to focus on my own recovery.

We can't help the people closest to us we are perceived as parents and rejected.  I will do my part and offer food and know that it will all work out eventually. Hopefully it won't take a decade like it did for me.