We had an open house at the new office this evening.
I didn’t know how many people to invite and how many friends. I added old and new friends and mixed it up. I wish I’d asked more people but Jay says I’m too hard on myself.
Mostly I feel tired from the years of not being balanced.
I worked too hard to help too many people. If I’d pulled back and saved some for me, it would have been better.
So tonight, I felt no desire or interest in helping w/ food, plates, details, etc. We hired people to do that, and I was grateful.
We talked later and Jay says I’m too hard on myself, too hard on us. I always see the negative and he’s right. I wonder if he’ll ever get so tired of me that he’ll leave. I don’t think so, but I’m motivated to get more serious about my attitude.
I was driving today and had similar thoughts. I can be thankful for all I have or just continue to wallow.
What I am slowly realizing is that everyone has stuff. So, so many people have things going on. So, I have stuff that’s been going on and it’s been sucky. But I’m still alive. I’m still here. I’m still getting to experience all this.
It really somehow has turned my thinking around.
I don’t know why it was different about it this time around, the idea of shifting your focus and being more positive. It’s something I’ve been trying to come at from different angles for a long time.
I guess somehow it’s this idea that it really all can be grist for the mill, that a lot of it all is about my attitude.
Somehow as well, focusing on the good that happened in the mix neutralizes the stuff that’s been bad.
Our brains want to fixate on the bad. It drowns out the good until you feel like, wow, I’ve had a really, really shitty life.
I’m tired of my brain and my soul I guess orienting this way.
I truly want to start enjoying and appreciating my life during and after, like permanently.
I have angst about not being artistic and about avoiding that part of myself.
So there’s an aspect to this that’s real and unfolding, that needs to be honored by me. There is a deep restlessness about what I do with my time that Kay addressed the other day, mainly that I don’t know how to relax. But aside from that, art and writing and beauty. I need those.
With all that, gratefulness moves me toward wholeness. It replaces the bad with the better and with the good.
I’ve avoided this mainly because my anger was what I held on to to not feel crazy.
It was somehow my way of saying to the world and myself, “What’s happening to me right now is NOT OKAY.”
I realize now that when I was powerless, it’s sort of all I had. It was my way of resisting. It was my way as a child of protecting myself. Sometimes I’d explode. That was also my way of resisting and saying this is unacceptable. It’s all I had as a kid.
As I got older, it seemed I continued to get into situations where I was needed to deny myself and help others out that were struggling. I was making the choices but somehow, it felt very much the same: I need to put my own interests aside and help a lot of other people that are struggling.
This went on for decades.
So now, I’m dismantling a well-built system of self-protection that slowly became a prison. It might have helped me survive as a kid, but it’s lousy for a free and open life as an adult.
It’s made me prickly and too reactive to people. It’s made it hard to flow easily with a wide range of folks though I can feel it getting better.
So this is the work of healing, the work of change, the work to adjust how I view the world.
There are tools for how to get there, and they are different for everyone. For me, body work like meditation and yoga help me connect to my body. I finally just disassociated and now, I’m coming back home. Being in nature right now is about all I want to do. I’ve been out of balance, so I’m probably going to overcorrect a bit. I feel myself pulling away from people and wanting to be alone, with Jay or just a few friends and their kids. The kids are in Seattle and I find myself even not having energy to make more regular visits over like we’ve been doing for almost ten years.
It seems that it’s all going to be okay though. These feel like natural shifts, and I’m overdue. I feel like I’m coming back to a healthier state, healthier than I’ve ever been. Sometimes I look at photos, and it’s weird to see me in those places or situations and remembering my emotions.
So I guess right now, this feels like a time to finally heal and get more stable. Once that happens, my hope is that I’ll be able to work and focus more and just sort of move on from here.
This was a season of massive productivity. I had to help keep our family together as a kid starting when I was about ten. I made it through college and got married young quickly followed by kids. I helped start a church and ran a small community group out of that for twenty years. We started a business.
I look at that, and I guess it’s impressive? It seems normal to me in some ways, in others no.
I just know that now, it’s time for me to heal and keep moving forward toward a healthier life that’s more energetic and engaged. It feels like it’s coming.
I continue to have pelvic pain that will be ongoing but hopefully, will diminish or be much more manageable.
So takeaways… time to be more engaged, more focused, more appreciative and curious and thankful about the life I’ve created.
Oh and lastly, the realization that for all my gifts and strengths, I haven’t a clue at all - A CLUE - how my life could have been better.
That’s like saying I literally wish my life from the time I was a little kid was completely different.
Yes, in some alternate universe where that’s possible, sure, go ahead and wish for a perfect life.
It feels pretty precious to say I can’t be happy, because of the things that have happened to me.
Really think about that. REALLY THINK ABOUT IT.
I’m healing and my PTSD is diminishing.
Alot of my life ahead w/ a healthier, less reactive brain will then be up to me.
I can stay in this state of unhappiness forever. I am pretty sure I’ll wake up in 30 years and feel sick that I didn’t relax and live in the moment.
So to all of you in therapy right now, here’s your warning: you can overthink this. You can be waiting to not have any pain anymore and then you’ll start being happy. You can wait and demand and search and sift and much of what’s good in life is available to you today if you choose it.
I can say this because I know what it’s like to have your brain and your body not take care of you well, not allow you to be happy or positive. I get it okay ya’ll. I get it.
I can say that I’ve invested thousands of dollars in therapy, and I’m functional and more stable as a result. I needed all that work, I needed to spend all that money, to get here.
But going forward, listen to me now, it’s up to me. I’m stable. I’m not sleeping all day. So now what then. How to go from stable and less PTSD to wholeness. This is the stage I’m at now and this now goes into more the wisdom teachings from all over the world across time.
It’s up to me on how I will forever look at all this mess I just went through.
This is NOT the same as saying you need to be happy about it, like it, think some crazy ass shit like it’s from God or ordained.
What’s different is seeing that it happened and now you’re moving on. You’re moving on. You’re done. That’s not you anymore.
And the best way I literally know how to do that is to replace those thoughts and ideas and behaviors with something else that’s good even if you’re not feeling it particularly in the moment. Attunement heals our nervous system. New experiences heal our nervous system.
So my desire and goals to experience new things maybe with new people even, this is healing. It’s what is drawing me right now. The lake is drawing me. New eating places is drawing me. What’s not drawing me is protecting and circling the wagons of history and tradition. I’m about the new.
And when I do things that are new and beautiful and amazing, can I do them with just rest and thankfulness in the moment? Does it have to have a callback to my past that wasn’t full of fun and interesting things? Does the rest of my life have to be a reference for what wasn’t ideal?
And if I do have moments of sadness, grieve for that then move on. Just get the pain out right away then move on.
It’s in the past, literally. I’m healed and healing. I survived. I’m here to talk about it. I’ve gotten through. I can stop being angry, because I won. I’m now taking care of myself and not just having to do whatever it takes to make things right for everyone but me. I don’t do that anymore. I can stop.
So that’s the circle.
I goes back to what I heard waking up last week: you can’t go forward without getting this thing about the present and the past.
I sense these thoughts are God being gracious to me on the part of his/her angels or whomever that must think I’m too slow on the uptake. Whatever it is, it’s welcome.