I am feeling pretty centered today all things considering.
I did some good reflecting this morning regarding my ground of being connected up to God. My daily ritual right now is to listen to Pray as you Go, do centering prayer and also envision myself being loved by God, either imagining the foot washing story, being part of the Trinity, the breathing in and out of God’s love for me and my love for God.
Jay and I both inherently struggle with feeling like God loves us. I’m not sure there is any other point of religion. If it is just social order, then leave a divine being out of it. If you believe in God, it sure better be a God that loves you, otherwise, what’s the point. That’s what I’m beginning to realize.
I have this quote from a psychiatrist that wrote a letter to the editor The Sun magazine years ago. She was appreciative that the magazine had interviewed a more enlightened priest from the Catholic faith, but she wondered why they even bothered. She said that her single greatest issue facing her clients is that they all feel they are shitbags, primarily people who've heard that from one of the three big religions. They inherently do not feel they have value. She said is she could eliminate that issue in her practice, something like 90% of people’s issues would be solved
This isn’t good news. This isn’t good news for people or society. That means we have a lot of very frozen, unalive wounded people. Apparently, leaders feel people need to be controlled by fear, that left with too much freedom, they won’t select wisely.
People have enough pain and trauma from life to also be told they're worthless without God or salvation. Telling people they're loved and have inherent value won't spoil them. It might give them a chance to stand up to all the shit that goes with living on the planet.
I am connecting more with Jay. Work isn’t great right now. Jay feels really awful. He was wanting to pursue feature design and building new products and people resisted him, mainly the two leaders who already left. I wasn’t helpful in a few places, often siding with the others against Jay, My damage had come from feeling that Jay was an unstable leader in general. I have looked at that and felt my life was a disaster… having to choose whether to unilaterally support him or not. I made several bad choices. I was also under phenomenal stress from all the years of Aspergers craziness.
John working with the business coach has been a great thing. It’s made a big difference. But people were not respecting him, and it was hard to see it all play out.
Now we are essentially a year behind on features due to the complete stall-out of any new dev on the existing products and new products. Jay feels really discouraged about that. We timed everything wrong. We built up a sales team and they are trying to sell products that are incomplete.
My role: I need to be really careful what I do and don’t do. I can swoop in and create chaos and unpredictability. I can assume I know things that I don’t. I want to help Jay and our company succeed. I also need to continue to pursue the writing avenues to whatever end that will take.
So my role at work:
- Sales oversight of some kind
- Culture/wellness
So it feels like things are pretty sucky at work right now. The marketing isn’t bringing in the sales that it should or fast enough. We are missing our target. Jay feels sick that he didn’t pursue doing development last year and listened to the leaders instead. He feels sick about it.
I feel sick as it's all a mess, and now I question what I've done to make things worse, make our marriage worse. The EMDR is helping widen my mind to see other things going on besides the triggered responses I'm having.
So yeah. I’ve thought a lot this week about my own life, what I’ve been thinking about doing and hopes and dreams.
I know I’ve spent a lot of time being ungrateful. I’ve focused on what isn’t working instead of what is.
The challenges of Jay’s Aspergers and my PTSD have been unique and difficult, demanding. It has made it hard to see how things will improve or resolve. The therapy we’ve both been getting has been extremely helpful. Our problems have been real and they’ve affected our business as well as our marriage.
I have been deeply hurt by the life of working with Jay as he’s been and the kind of people we’ve tended to attract which haven’t been healthy. Sort of like us. We’ve hired a lot of unhealthy leaders especially.
It would be really easy for me right now to spiral down pretty hard. I am discouraged in my head and some in my heart about all that’s happening. I think the discouragement in my heart has been worse in the past for other topics, and this is more intellectual and I’m trying to keep from being depressed, not allowing it to happen.
So this is a time to put into practice what I’ve been learning, the basics of life discipline, the basics of gratitude and working hard.
My PTSD has allowed me to live with a victim mentality. I have had so much psychic pain that one way I’ve managed that is to allow myself a lot of freedom and to not force myself to be disciplined. It felt like life was one giant disappointment after another, one giant problem and restriction. Everything has felt restricted and constrained. So adding more discipline to that has felt beyond my capabilities. I had no training in it as a model so it was something new I have tried to do. It is in little things mostly; our house isn’t a mess, etc.
But just under the surface is a lot of sloppiness, a lot of complaining about life and my misfortunes and just a lot of wasting time because I’ve needed to be distracted from the pain and disappointment. Just surviving, working at the business, managing my health and maintaining some of my basic relationships has been all I could do. I then had to be distracted from my own head.
Reading the Scott Peck book has been helpful, esp. the section on discipline. Going through this spiritual work w/ Kay as well as the Trinity conference has helped. On a spiritual level, neither John nor I feel truly loved, it seems. We don’t feel God truly loves us or anyone else. We protect ourselves in dozens of ways to stay safe and keep a distance of some kind from the people who love us the most. It’s pretty crazy.
So what does this look like daily?
1. Do basic morning chores: Drink water, stretch, spiritual exercises, walk/run, plan daily activities
2. Do the basics: Grocery shopping, laundry, bills
3. Career: Write and writing research and my work at the office
4. House projects or other projects that I enjoy such as chores like going to the thrift store, mending, organizing, etc.; these things are not necessities and I shouldn’t do them before writing
5. People: staying connected with people
6. Believe all day long that God loves me and is on my side
7. Be grateful