Breathing
It's been a mentally draining day. It didn't start out that way. This morning, I read a post on a message board and it really hit me. I'm not sure why, but I felt compelled to start my own thread, with a different perspective on the topic....and managed to upset myself quite a bit, talking about my childhood and, in part, about my relationship with the stranger's son.
The next thing I did compounded the emotions I was already feeling. I was replying to a job ad and wanted to refer back to a letter I'd written previously. I have a tendency to read job ads at home and send them to myself at work so I have time to think about them before I respond. I don't put subjects in them so if anybody snoops, they can't tell what the email is about. So, I was scrolling through these emails and came across one of the nicest, sweetest emails T had sent me. It wasn't written that long ago and it's hard for me to think he doesn't still feel that sentiment. I may never know the answer to that. I know I'm still the same person he was talking about.
Something more from the book I'm reading...
The True Message of Anxiety: focus, take care, learn more, increase ability to cope.
Next to resentment, anxiety may be the most misunderstood of all emotions. It's a feeling that something bad might happen and that you will not be able or willing to cope. Misinterpretting the true message of anxiety keeps you walking on eggshells.
Actually, anxiety is an important, useful emotion.... It's a response to a real, imagined, or anticipated change in the environment. It tells you to focus, to figure out how to deal with the change. Mental focus means shutting out all information processing except that which is immediately useful to solving the problem. .... Anxiety becomes a problem if it stimulates an underlying feeling of incompetence, caused by core hurts of powerlessness and inadequacy. In other words, you don't know what to do, and your brain doesn't know what to focus on. So it begins to scan, which means it takes in a lot more surface information a lot more rapidly, with little discernment for what is relevant. Your thoughts race forward like a runaway freight train. The scanning process itself raises the anxiety as the problem seems more and more unsolvable in the flurry of possibilities, most of which are unrelated and improbable. ...
Appreciating your Competence
...Competent people are able to do tasks that are important to them reasonably well. "Important to them" is the key. People simply do not perform unimportant tasks as well as they perform tasks that are important to them. ...Whenever you are thoughtful, solution-oriented, smart and self regulating, you reinforce your sense of competence. The following seven tips can help you appreciate it more:
1. Take responsibility for everything you do, think and feel. Always take responsibility for solutions to your problems. Taking responsibility only for solutions (rather than blame for causes) gives you power.
2. Focus on what you can control - your ability to improve, appreciate, connect, or protect - rather than what you cannot control, such as the opinions and behaviours of your [partner].
3. Think in terms of solutions rather than problems. Be flexible, think multiple solutions - there's almost always more than one.
4. Realise genuine confidence - if you make a mistake, you can fix it. (Research shows that once you give yourself permission to make mistakes, you'll make fewer.)
5. Step back and see things in wider contexts, observing the complexity of issues.
6. Stand or sit up straight and take up as much room as possible.
7. Smile as often as you can.
The next thing I did compounded the emotions I was already feeling. I was replying to a job ad and wanted to refer back to a letter I'd written previously. I have a tendency to read job ads at home and send them to myself at work so I have time to think about them before I respond. I don't put subjects in them so if anybody snoops, they can't tell what the email is about. So, I was scrolling through these emails and came across one of the nicest, sweetest emails T had sent me. It wasn't written that long ago and it's hard for me to think he doesn't still feel that sentiment. I may never know the answer to that. I know I'm still the same person he was talking about.
Something more from the book I'm reading...
The True Message of Anxiety: focus, take care, learn more, increase ability to cope.
Next to resentment, anxiety may be the most misunderstood of all emotions. It's a feeling that something bad might happen and that you will not be able or willing to cope. Misinterpretting the true message of anxiety keeps you walking on eggshells.
Actually, anxiety is an important, useful emotion.... It's a response to a real, imagined, or anticipated change in the environment. It tells you to focus, to figure out how to deal with the change. Mental focus means shutting out all information processing except that which is immediately useful to solving the problem. .... Anxiety becomes a problem if it stimulates an underlying feeling of incompetence, caused by core hurts of powerlessness and inadequacy. In other words, you don't know what to do, and your brain doesn't know what to focus on. So it begins to scan, which means it takes in a lot more surface information a lot more rapidly, with little discernment for what is relevant. Your thoughts race forward like a runaway freight train. The scanning process itself raises the anxiety as the problem seems more and more unsolvable in the flurry of possibilities, most of which are unrelated and improbable. ...
Appreciating your Competence
...Competent people are able to do tasks that are important to them reasonably well. "Important to them" is the key. People simply do not perform unimportant tasks as well as they perform tasks that are important to them. ...Whenever you are thoughtful, solution-oriented, smart and self regulating, you reinforce your sense of competence. The following seven tips can help you appreciate it more:
1. Take responsibility for everything you do, think and feel. Always take responsibility for solutions to your problems. Taking responsibility only for solutions (rather than blame for causes) gives you power.
2. Focus on what you can control - your ability to improve, appreciate, connect, or protect - rather than what you cannot control, such as the opinions and behaviours of your [partner].
3. Think in terms of solutions rather than problems. Be flexible, think multiple solutions - there's almost always more than one.
4. Realise genuine confidence - if you make a mistake, you can fix it. (Research shows that once you give yourself permission to make mistakes, you'll make fewer.)
5. Step back and see things in wider contexts, observing the complexity of issues.
6. Stand or sit up straight and take up as much room as possible.
7. Smile as often as you can.
posted by E in Oz at 5:31 pm
these thoughts escaped my brain at 5:31 pm
5 Comments:
((((((((((E))))))))))))
Keep breathing, dearheart.
Know that your genuineness is a true and wondrous asset--
And know what's good and true doesn't change with the wind when one is genuine and real. That's what makes it an exquisite asset--one to be treasured.
And I like the book's seven tips LOTS.
(((((((((((E))))))))))))
You're torturing yourself, Eve. Put everything he ever wrote, gave and sent you away in a box, archive it, get it out of sight. Don't destry them, just remove them from any possibility you will look at them. One day you'll be able to. Until then you'll make yourself look, and torture yourself.
Thanks Mel. :-)
SJ, that's the thing...most of the stuff he sent me is separate from all my other stuff. The email I opened was just in the wrong folder. You're right, in general, but I'm having more trouble dealing with 'situations' than 'things' at the moment. Time, I guess....
Anxiety. I'm thinking I operate with a good dose of that through my days.
As I read from your book, I thought "that's not MY anxiety". . . until I got to this part:
So it begins to scan, which means it takes in a lot more surface information a lot more rapidly, with little discernment for what is relevant. Your thoughts race forward like a runaway freight train. The scanning process itself raises the anxiety as the problem seems more and more unsolvable in the flurry of possibilities, most of which are unrelated and improbable.
Maybe we should concentrate on 1 through 7 instead, yes?
xo
Anxiety.... I dread it if it comes back again.
I don't know if you're like me- but every time I get past the weeks/months/etc. I think I've cured it for good- but then something brings it back again.
Seems to me that we've had about enough of it, eh?
Wish I had good advice for you on that- but I haven't quite figured it out myself. I'm just lucky that anxiety hasn't visited me lately.
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