It is so weird to feel joy and excitement about life. I thought I would have to settle for contentment since it was better than apathy and much better than depression. My analytical mind is trying to figure out what is different and how can we maintain this level of happiness. This of course takes away from actually enjoying happiness.
I have made a number of changes over the past six months that really helped. First the diet which I already hyped on in my last post also I have changed my routine ever so slightly and it has gotten me out of a rut. I have to admit being off a lot from work really made me look at everything very closely. Once I got over the shock and fear of no business and the question "will I ever have another customer?" I could see the possibilities that free time can give you.
Silly I know but anyone that had a commission based job during the recession understands where I am coming from. I have to admit for a few days I felt gripped with fear but then I remembered that I made it through that time regardless of the situation and that I would be taken care of even though I don't know exactly how at this moment.
Once I got over the fear I could see once again my part in being stuck and where like the program says "If you always do what you have always done then you will always get what you always got." When I was sick with depression and thyroid meltdown I lived in survival mode and got use to just making it. I only had the energy to do what had to be done and was willing to just maintain. I got use to not wanting for more and accepting that feeling okay was really good enough. Bad habits were formed.
This kind of thinking and acting is just a habit and something your mind gets accustomed to and tries to pull you back to in the event you want to make a change. Making changes is not only uncomfortable but also goes against our primal genetic code or lizard brain. So when you are making changes the voice inside is like "I don't like this. I would rather have a bag of tortilla chips." Who can fight that?
For me I just negotiate with that voice - telling it not to worry we will go back to the chips one day if we really want to. Sounds crazy but let's face it the voice is not our friend when we are scared to do something different. The chips in my case represent the millions of good times I have had at Mexican restaurants with friends and it was the first food I bought when I left home a sixteen. Doritos.
What if life will never be as good as those memories? What if the future holds better times than those? I think I have accepted that happiness isn't consistency but finding joy in today knowing that tomorrow we will face whatever comes. We have to do that anyway so why ruin today.
I am back to being busy at work and missing that freedom I found from being caught up and having to use my imagination to fill my days. I had forgotten what that was like and hadn't experience it since I was in school for design and off for the summer. Being busy again I can appreciate both work and the security it gives me and also the ability to have a life outside of work.
If you want to get out of a rut start by changing just one thing. It can be as small as taking a different route to work or eating lunch at a different time. You brain will hate it but you will feel a little inspired. Baby steps at least that is what worked for me.
Monday, January 28, 2019
Thursday, January 24, 2019
Clarity - Change the things I can
The clarity that I am feeling right now is astonishing I can't say that I have ever felt like this before in my adult life. I feel like I have step back and I am taking an inventory of someone else's life. My mind is very clear and I feel a sense of freedom.
I am giving the credit to couple of different things first sadly I have given up sugar and most carbs. I started this the first week in November and have lost about ten pounds. You have to know me to understand I am not into to suffering or restriction of any kind and have not been on a diet since my husband urged me to go to Weight Watchers when I was 27 and weighed 120 pounds.
I weighed a lot less than that after he left me and I wanted to disappear all together. He cooked massive meals for us and was 6' 4" and weighed 170 pounds. He came to bed with milkshakes every night to keep weight on. This was me trying to be perfect so he would continue to love me.
Anyway my point is I don't chase after anyone else's ideas of a quick fix I prefer to start out with small changes and see if I can integrated them into my life. I also think the stars must be aligned to be successful with any change you want to make in your life.
For me this means picking a time when I don't have too many balls in the air already. Starting in November just before the holiday and a visit from my family maybe wasn't great timing but I had been abstaining from sugar and carbs a few weeks before they got here. I ate three Krispy Kreme donuts during their visit but I didn't beat myself up about it.
Krispy Kreme donuts have been a family tradition with me and my sister since she got her drivers licence at 16 and we drove to downtown Atlanta at 11 o'clock at night on a Saturday to get hot donuts. My grandmother in tow begging us not to go and offering us frozen donuts from her freezer. This was the one and only bonding times we had after my mother died. My father was out finding us a new mother.
With clarity today I can see how much my beliefs about myself have shaped my life. I always knew I was too much and how even before my mother died I never felt really comfortable just being myself and I decided that spending time alone was probably best for everyone. When she got sick being invisible was re enforced. I learned to be fully self supporting declining all outside contributions.
I didn't mind really I had a lot ideas and things I wanted to do and not having anyone looking over my shoulder gave me that freedom. I did have friends but my life was chaotic with hospital visits and church meetings and I learned to just manage myself.
When Daddy remarried I thought things would settle down. My sister went off to college at 17 and I was left with a completely new chaos to manage. I conformed to the circumstances I was given wearing the clothes that were chosen for me - eating the food that was fixed for me and spending the weekends with my new cousins. I did everything I could to just blend and not attract any attention but I felt like a target. Things could be going smoothly when my new little sister would call attention to me and start picking at me and before I knew it I was in trouble for something.
I think my point is that I have also worked hard to be invisible and just do what it takes to get the job done without attracting attention. In my relationships and my jobs I have moved mountains that no one really even knew were there and then resented not being appreciated. With my history and being taught to be humble at all times this has made me the invisible woman.
I have realized in just the last few weeks that I need to be a better promoter of myself at work and even in my personal life. I am seeing that being anonymous has shaped my life and maybe doing something different is worth a try.
This post has been all over the place I admit but I think the clarity of my new eating and supplement plan plus the down time I have had this past month has given me clarity. I heard a line in a movie recently "one small adjustment to make our life work." I actually wrote it down because it resonated so strongly with me.
I love that the progam open my eyes to the fact people can change if they want to. We are not stuck with who we are or who other people told us we were this is only in our minds. We can choose to do the work and be who want to be and find happiness and joy.
I am giving the credit to couple of different things first sadly I have given up sugar and most carbs. I started this the first week in November and have lost about ten pounds. You have to know me to understand I am not into to suffering or restriction of any kind and have not been on a diet since my husband urged me to go to Weight Watchers when I was 27 and weighed 120 pounds.
I weighed a lot less than that after he left me and I wanted to disappear all together. He cooked massive meals for us and was 6' 4" and weighed 170 pounds. He came to bed with milkshakes every night to keep weight on. This was me trying to be perfect so he would continue to love me.
Anyway my point is I don't chase after anyone else's ideas of a quick fix I prefer to start out with small changes and see if I can integrated them into my life. I also think the stars must be aligned to be successful with any change you want to make in your life.
For me this means picking a time when I don't have too many balls in the air already. Starting in November just before the holiday and a visit from my family maybe wasn't great timing but I had been abstaining from sugar and carbs a few weeks before they got here. I ate three Krispy Kreme donuts during their visit but I didn't beat myself up about it.
Krispy Kreme donuts have been a family tradition with me and my sister since she got her drivers licence at 16 and we drove to downtown Atlanta at 11 o'clock at night on a Saturday to get hot donuts. My grandmother in tow begging us not to go and offering us frozen donuts from her freezer. This was the one and only bonding times we had after my mother died. My father was out finding us a new mother.
With clarity today I can see how much my beliefs about myself have shaped my life. I always knew I was too much and how even before my mother died I never felt really comfortable just being myself and I decided that spending time alone was probably best for everyone. When she got sick being invisible was re enforced. I learned to be fully self supporting declining all outside contributions.
I didn't mind really I had a lot ideas and things I wanted to do and not having anyone looking over my shoulder gave me that freedom. I did have friends but my life was chaotic with hospital visits and church meetings and I learned to just manage myself.
When Daddy remarried I thought things would settle down. My sister went off to college at 17 and I was left with a completely new chaos to manage. I conformed to the circumstances I was given wearing the clothes that were chosen for me - eating the food that was fixed for me and spending the weekends with my new cousins. I did everything I could to just blend and not attract any attention but I felt like a target. Things could be going smoothly when my new little sister would call attention to me and start picking at me and before I knew it I was in trouble for something.
I think my point is that I have also worked hard to be invisible and just do what it takes to get the job done without attracting attention. In my relationships and my jobs I have moved mountains that no one really even knew were there and then resented not being appreciated. With my history and being taught to be humble at all times this has made me the invisible woman.
I have realized in just the last few weeks that I need to be a better promoter of myself at work and even in my personal life. I am seeing that being anonymous has shaped my life and maybe doing something different is worth a try.
This post has been all over the place I admit but I think the clarity of my new eating and supplement plan plus the down time I have had this past month has given me clarity. I heard a line in a movie recently "one small adjustment to make our life work." I actually wrote it down because it resonated so strongly with me.
I love that the progam open my eyes to the fact people can change if they want to. We are not stuck with who we are or who other people told us we were this is only in our minds. We can choose to do the work and be who want to be and find happiness and joy.
Monday, January 14, 2019
It feels so weird - Seeing for the first time
I never really realized that my life has really been my work until now. Since we haven't been very busy I have had a lot of time to see what it would be like not to work. I will say not to work in a driven fashion even during the recession when there wasn't any work I still spent all my free time trying to get work living at the office scheming on how to bring in more business.
This is different because it isn't a crisis unless I make it one. I am getting an opportunity to work to live instead of live to work. What it would be like to not work 50-60 hours a weeks. My mind at first was very unhappy very restless looking for a crisis of any kind to get it's teeth in. Perusing the past for anything that would make me feel insecure or critical about myself and decisions that got me where I am today. The kind of loop that I can get into easily when I need to fill time and I am restless.
I have been reading Dr. Amen book on healing ADD and the seven types. I could identify with two one with the loop of bad thoughts the other the "I am bored" mantra. He gives examples and then combinations of natural supplements or pharmaceuticals that he has used with success with his patients.
I have started taking a couple of different things. Not really long enough for them to make a difference but I do think that the Keto diet has already geared me toward better nutrition and better mental function. His book does address the alcoholic brain and adult children of alcoholics.
This is beyond belief to me that my emotional patterns are caused by the composition of my brain and that there is something other than talk therapy that can help. Sure meds have been an option for a long time but combinations of diet exercise and amino acids as an option is something different. He said that they doctors are lumping all ADD together and prescribing the same thing for everyone. Which actually make some people worse given the part of the brain affected.
I have avoided medication because the people I know that have been on it don't seem any better and they usually go through a bunch of different ones. I like the idea of using the brain scan to determine what part of the brain has been shows up a problem. We all can't get brain scans but we can see ourselves in the different patients he describes.
It is nice not being a slave to my emotions and really feeling so clear and less fearful. The better I eat the better I feel This might seem logical but when your mind is acting out you don't really make good choices about food or anything else really. For me it seems everything is blown out of proportion and I am just surviving.
I am not sure this will count as related to recovery but it is where I am now. I feel like I am seeing for the first time not just surviving. It feels so weird.
This is different because it isn't a crisis unless I make it one. I am getting an opportunity to work to live instead of live to work. What it would be like to not work 50-60 hours a weeks. My mind at first was very unhappy very restless looking for a crisis of any kind to get it's teeth in. Perusing the past for anything that would make me feel insecure or critical about myself and decisions that got me where I am today. The kind of loop that I can get into easily when I need to fill time and I am restless.
I have been reading Dr. Amen book on healing ADD and the seven types. I could identify with two one with the loop of bad thoughts the other the "I am bored" mantra. He gives examples and then combinations of natural supplements or pharmaceuticals that he has used with success with his patients.
I have started taking a couple of different things. Not really long enough for them to make a difference but I do think that the Keto diet has already geared me toward better nutrition and better mental function. His book does address the alcoholic brain and adult children of alcoholics.
This is beyond belief to me that my emotional patterns are caused by the composition of my brain and that there is something other than talk therapy that can help. Sure meds have been an option for a long time but combinations of diet exercise and amino acids as an option is something different. He said that they doctors are lumping all ADD together and prescribing the same thing for everyone. Which actually make some people worse given the part of the brain affected.
I have avoided medication because the people I know that have been on it don't seem any better and they usually go through a bunch of different ones. I like the idea of using the brain scan to determine what part of the brain has been shows up a problem. We all can't get brain scans but we can see ourselves in the different patients he describes.
It is nice not being a slave to my emotions and really feeling so clear and less fearful. The better I eat the better I feel This might seem logical but when your mind is acting out you don't really make good choices about food or anything else really. For me it seems everything is blown out of proportion and I am just surviving.
I am not sure this will count as related to recovery but it is where I am now. I feel like I am seeing for the first time not just surviving. It feels so weird.
Sunday, January 6, 2019
Mama's head - Making changes
I have always had a love hate relationship with the past and often wonder is the constant reminiscing really helping or hurting me.
When I started my journey first with counseling and then with Al-Anon I constantly spewed my story out to anyone that would listen. I had kept it in for so long I just really wanted to be heard. I also wanted to hear myself. The steps and slogans simplistic as they are helped me to first hear the thoughts in my head and then decide to change them from negative to positive.
The program slowed me down enough to take an inventory of my own beliefs and where those beliefs came from and whether they applied to me now. In my mind this was a total miracle that I could choose who I wanted to be and that I wasn't just saddled with this broken idea of myself. Bad genes.
I could see that I was only a victim in my mind. Sure other people gave me sympathy and love but that also kept me in my story. I knew at the time that was what I needed and it felt really good to have people acknowledge my pain. The truth was that I really just wanted the people that hurt me to acknowledge that my feelings even existed and to say they were sorry.
This deep want has stayed with me forever. It comes from the child in me that is still hurt and is still saying "what about me? don't I matter?" I didn't miss out on this when I was a child it was just that the sickness and death of my mother ended me being the center of the universe rather abruptly. Because I became my own parent I didn't know that this would happen to me eventually even if my mother had lived. I wanted to be seen again and have the loved the way my mother loved me.
I have been writing about my childhood and put together a timeline of the what was happening. All the really great memories - big Easter egg hunt - giant birthday party with 50 kids - MS - Carnival all happened while my mother was sick the MS carnival five months before she died. My mother trying to show me her love and fulfill all my wishes.
Because my Daddy thought if we all had faith and only said positive things God would heal her. She couldn't say "hey you know I might not get better so lets just spend as much time together as possible." My daddy was losing the love of his life and his mind could not accept it so we couldn't acknowledge what was right in front of us.
I understand that now maybe more than ever. While writing about her I am becoming more of an adult about my childhood. I didn't know the dates of those events were the last year she was alive. She was really sick and weighed less than 90 pounds at her death. How desperate she must have been to give us what she thought we wanted.
I had a dream this weekend that I had just her head. Not like a gross horror movie but life in the Wizard of Oz when Dorthy was looking at the glass ball. The head was smiling and talking and I took her to a party with me and everyone freaked out because she didn't have a body. When I woke up I thought "this is my own head" she gave it to me and I can take it wherever I want.
I have always felt like an outsider. Early in Al-Anon I felt like I belonged until I started to feel like talking about our pain and suffering was really keeping us in our story and stuck. The story was a habit that can define us. There has to be a point when we just want joy and we have to put away the idea that without our story we are nothing.
I am not dismissing my story and I am planning on writing a book about it but it doesn't have to define me now. I want to feel free to pursue joy everyday even if being totally open to a new life feels really uncomfortable. My mind is really freaked out and is constantly looking for a familiar distraction. Just like writing here.
I heard a scientific evaluation of this process. This is my version - You have habits and routines that you create and rely on for some period of time. Your brain imprints these routines physically and then when you try to make a change it totally freaks and makes you feel unsettled. We don't like it and are more likely to go back to auto pilot and the thing that we know because it calms us.
I saw this happening today. I have been wanting to visit a church nearby today. The service didn't start until 11 but something in me did not want to do this and I ended up watching TV church like I have been doing lately. Now here I am writing about doing something new instead of doing something new.
I have had a few breakthroughs this holiday season. I have been uncomfortable a lot but I didn't run towards anything instead I just sat with it until I had an awakening. The thing with my mother is a big awakening for me to see that she wanted to grant me any wish I wanted since she knew she would not be there for me. I can appreciate that now.
The moral of the story is that we have the power to change our minds. We can do this both through reasoning things out and by taking care of ourselves physically. These months without carbs and extra sleep have been astounding to me. The clarity I have has been really surprising and motivating to me. Today I am looking for joy.
When I started my journey first with counseling and then with Al-Anon I constantly spewed my story out to anyone that would listen. I had kept it in for so long I just really wanted to be heard. I also wanted to hear myself. The steps and slogans simplistic as they are helped me to first hear the thoughts in my head and then decide to change them from negative to positive.
The program slowed me down enough to take an inventory of my own beliefs and where those beliefs came from and whether they applied to me now. In my mind this was a total miracle that I could choose who I wanted to be and that I wasn't just saddled with this broken idea of myself. Bad genes.
I could see that I was only a victim in my mind. Sure other people gave me sympathy and love but that also kept me in my story. I knew at the time that was what I needed and it felt really good to have people acknowledge my pain. The truth was that I really just wanted the people that hurt me to acknowledge that my feelings even existed and to say they were sorry.
This deep want has stayed with me forever. It comes from the child in me that is still hurt and is still saying "what about me? don't I matter?" I didn't miss out on this when I was a child it was just that the sickness and death of my mother ended me being the center of the universe rather abruptly. Because I became my own parent I didn't know that this would happen to me eventually even if my mother had lived. I wanted to be seen again and have the loved the way my mother loved me.
I have been writing about my childhood and put together a timeline of the what was happening. All the really great memories - big Easter egg hunt - giant birthday party with 50 kids - MS - Carnival all happened while my mother was sick the MS carnival five months before she died. My mother trying to show me her love and fulfill all my wishes.
Because my Daddy thought if we all had faith and only said positive things God would heal her. She couldn't say "hey you know I might not get better so lets just spend as much time together as possible." My daddy was losing the love of his life and his mind could not accept it so we couldn't acknowledge what was right in front of us.
I understand that now maybe more than ever. While writing about her I am becoming more of an adult about my childhood. I didn't know the dates of those events were the last year she was alive. She was really sick and weighed less than 90 pounds at her death. How desperate she must have been to give us what she thought we wanted.
I had a dream this weekend that I had just her head. Not like a gross horror movie but life in the Wizard of Oz when Dorthy was looking at the glass ball. The head was smiling and talking and I took her to a party with me and everyone freaked out because she didn't have a body. When I woke up I thought "this is my own head" she gave it to me and I can take it wherever I want.
I have always felt like an outsider. Early in Al-Anon I felt like I belonged until I started to feel like talking about our pain and suffering was really keeping us in our story and stuck. The story was a habit that can define us. There has to be a point when we just want joy and we have to put away the idea that without our story we are nothing.
I am not dismissing my story and I am planning on writing a book about it but it doesn't have to define me now. I want to feel free to pursue joy everyday even if being totally open to a new life feels really uncomfortable. My mind is really freaked out and is constantly looking for a familiar distraction. Just like writing here.
I heard a scientific evaluation of this process. This is my version - You have habits and routines that you create and rely on for some period of time. Your brain imprints these routines physically and then when you try to make a change it totally freaks and makes you feel unsettled. We don't like it and are more likely to go back to auto pilot and the thing that we know because it calms us.
I saw this happening today. I have been wanting to visit a church nearby today. The service didn't start until 11 but something in me did not want to do this and I ended up watching TV church like I have been doing lately. Now here I am writing about doing something new instead of doing something new.
I have had a few breakthroughs this holiday season. I have been uncomfortable a lot but I didn't run towards anything instead I just sat with it until I had an awakening. The thing with my mother is a big awakening for me to see that she wanted to grant me any wish I wanted since she knew she would not be there for me. I can appreciate that now.
The moral of the story is that we have the power to change our minds. We can do this both through reasoning things out and by taking care of ourselves physically. These months without carbs and extra sleep have been astounding to me. The clarity I have has been really surprising and motivating to me. Today I am looking for joy.
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