Day 4 of 90 day action plan.
I was freaking because this is my weigh in day; and I had a very bad week. Days of uncontrollable eating, hiding, not working out. Over all my anxiety levels were off the charts and I was raving mad-angry all week. Ok I got on the scale: I thought I had gained weight but I had no idea that I had put on 6 pounds in one week. Good grief. I lost 5 pounds last week and gained 6 this week..gif)
I saw the first blush of dawn on the eastern horizon this morning. This day I celebrate living 49 years. Give thanks for the years of life I have been blessed with and face the oncoming with joyous expectation.
I was in the message board at Team Beachbody and one of my friends had offered a big hug, and had commented on attitude. by Byron Katie. There is a phrase in the very front that sums it up. “Suppose you could find a simple way to embrace your life with joy, stop arguing with reality, and achieve serenity in the midst of chaos. That is what Loving What Is offers.” Erica Jong, author of Fear of Flying wrote that in the intro. Loving What Is.
Truthfully I am still exhausted today. Although I don’t think it has anything to do with bonking yesterday. I could be wrong about that though. I woke up around 3:30 this morning with a gastric attack. Frankly I could have done without that. Blown up like a blimp, running to the bathroom over and over. Those attacks always leave me exhausted and not wanting to move.
means it’s around 49 degrees in this hollow, so that snow is melting. Get up and Move!
I hope the 2 apple trees I put out last year bloom this year.
This caught my Eye as I was digging my way through my email. Especially after the way I obsessed over the cold weather that has come through for the past few days. Happily, today it was melting a bit. It is 22 degrees outside now, but that is 40 degrees warmer than it was the other night.
Tips for how to reel in your ruminations and keep your peace in the present moment.
My first step in tackling any obsession: Identify the thought. What is my fear? What is my doubt? I make myself describe it in one sentence, or, if I can, in a few words. For example, when I was released from the hospital’s psych ward the first time, I was paranoid that my co-workers would find out that I’d been there. I obsessed about it and obsessed about it and obsessed some more. Finally, I named the fear: I am afraid that if my co-workers find out that I was hospitalized with severe depression that they won’t respect me anymore, and they won’t assign me any projects. There it is. There’s the beast. Phew. I named it, and by doing so, I can rob it of some of its power over me.
Once I have named the fear or doubt, I try to see if I can file it under any of the forms of distorted thinking that Dr. David Burns describes in his bestseller The Feeling Good Handbook
A while back, when I was especially tormented by some obsessions, my therapist told me to schedule a time of day where I was free to ruminate. That way, she said, when you get an obsession, you can simply tell yourself, “Sorry, it’s not time for that. You’ll have to wait until 8 in the evening, when I give you, My Head, 15 minutes to obsess your heart out.” I remember recording in my journal everything I was dwelling on for 20 minutes every night: that I was a horrible mom, an inadequate writer, that no one liked me, and so on. Eric was reading a book next to me and asked me what I was writing. I handed over my journal and he shrieked, “Yikes and I was just thinking about what to have for breakfast tomorrow!”
Alas, that obsession-journal story brings me to another tool: humor. As I wrote in 9 Ways Humor Heals laughter can make almost any situation tolerable. And you have to admit, there is something a little funny about a broken record in your brain. If I couldn’t laugh at my depression and anxiety and severe ruminations, I would truly go insane. I mean, even more insane than I already am. And that’s pretty darn insane. I have a few people in my life who struggle with obsessions in the same way I do. Whenever it gets so noisy in my brain that I can’t stand it, I call up one of them and say, “They’re baaaaaack…….” And we laugh.
I mean, literally snap out of it. That’s what I did for a few months when I couldn’t take the obsessions. I’d wear a rubber band around my wrist, and every time my thoughts would turn to an obsession, I’d snap the band as a reminder. (Fair warning: by bedtime, my wrists were a tad red. Another behavioral technique you could try is to write out the obsession on a piece of paper. Then crinkle it up and throw it away. That way you have literally thrown out your obsession. Or you could try visualizing a stop sign. When your thoughts go there, remember to stop! Look at the sign!
One of the most helpful visualizations for me has been to imagine that I am driving a car. Every time my thoughts revert back to an obsession, I have to pull over on the shoulder, because my car is misaligned. It’s dragging right. Once I’ve stopped, I ask myself: Do I need to change anything? Can I change anything? Can I amend this situation somehow? Do I have anything I need to do to find peace? I spend a minute asking myself the questions. Then, if I don’t have anything to fix, it’s time for me to get my car back on the road again. This is basically a visualization of the Serenity Prayer. I am trying to decipher between what I can’t change and what I can. Once I have made the distinction, it’s time to start driving again.
I often obsess about my mistakes. I know I messed up, and I’m beating myself over and over again for not doing it right the first time, especially when I have involved other people and hurt them unintentionally. If that’s the case, I will ask myself: What is the lesson here? What have I learned? Just like the first step--naming the obsession--I will describe the lesson that I have absorbed in one sentence or less.
After you take away the lesson, you have to forgive yourself. This is a hard one. Especially for perfectionists. And guess what? Perfectionists are natural ruminators. Julia Cameron writes about this in The Complete Artist's Way: Creativity as a Spiritual Practice
I know this seems wrong--like it would produce even more anxiety. But imagining the worst can actually relieve the fear that’s triggering an obsession. For example, when I was hospitalized the second time for severe depression, I was petrified that I would never be able to work again, to write again, to contribute anything to society. Done. Let me get into my nightgown and bury myself somewhere. I was literally shaking with anxiety I was so scared of what my illness could do to me. I called my friend Mike and rattled off to him all my fears.
Sometimes I start to obsess about a situation for which I don’t have enough information. Example: Awhile back I was worried about a family member in a dangerous situation. I dwelled and dwelled on it, and didn’t know what to do. Then Eric said, “We don’t have all the information yet that we need to make a decision or pursue a plan. So it’s useless to worry.” Therefore I put my obsession “on hold,” like it was a pretty lavender dress at a boutique that I saw and wanted but didn’t have enough money to buy. So it’s there, waiting for me, when I get enough dough—or, in the case of my family member, enough data.
So often the object of the obsession isn’t the real issue. That object or person or situation is masking the deeper issue we’re too afraid to face. A friend of mine obsessed and obsessed about the placement of his fence in his backyard because--unlike his wife’s illness, a problem over which he has no control--he could manage the fence. So he went out with his measuring stick day in and day out until he could finally surrender to his situation. A woman I used to work with fantasized about a colleague whom she was attracted to. It was an especially stressful time for her—she was caring for four young kids plus her mother—and daydreaming about running away with her co-worker gave her the escape she needed. Her obsessions weren’t about her co-worker, however, as much as they were about her need for some fun and relief in her life.
We all know how fast obsessions can take on a life of their own. A slight hitch in a project becomes a massive hurdle, a friendly gesture by a friend turns ugly and threatening, and a minor criticism from a colleague turns into a 150-page dissertation about your flaws and inadequacies--you know, everything that’s bad about you and why you shouldn’t get out of bed in the morning. Granted, buried within any obsession are usually pieces of truth. But other parts are way off in fantasyland—with about as much accuracy as there is in a juicy celebrity tabloid story: “Celine Dion meets ET for drinks.” That’s why you need some good friends that will help you separate fact from fiction. When I call up my friend Mike and tell him my latest obsession, he usually says something like this: “Wow. Reel it in, Therese. Reel it in…You are way out this time.” And then we laugh at how far out I got.
Here’s where a bad habit can come in handy. Are you always interrupting people? Can’t help it? You get curious about a detail in someone’s story, and you want to hear more about that, not the end of the story? That’s how an obsession works in your brain—like a conversation over coffee: “This is why he hates me, and this, too, is why he hates me, and did I mention why he hates me? I’m sure he hates me.” Practice some of your rude manners and interrupt. You don’t even have to say, “Excuse me.” Ask yourself a question or throw out another topic. By doing so, you catch the snowball as it’s accumulating matter, and you throw it back with momentum because, as most of us learned in physics, a body in motion stays in motion. Now your internal conversation goes something like: “These are the reasons he should like me, and this, too, is why he should like me, and did I mention that he probably likes me? I’m sure he likes me.”
I grit my teeth when people tell me this. Because I’m a ruminator and we ruminators operate in past and future. We don’t think NOW. But, this advice is so true. When you are grounded in the moment, you’re not thinking of what bad things can happen to you in the future, or dwelling on the mistakes of your past. To get myself into the present, I start with my senses. I try to hear only the noises that surround me—cars, birds, dogs barking, church bells—because if I give myself the assignment of listening to the actual sounds around me, I can’t obsess on a fear. Likewise, I concentrate on seeing what’s in front of me. At the very moment. Not in the year 2034. If I’m supposed to be playing baseball with David but my mind is on work, I try to bring it back to the baseball game, where it should be.
The last step is surrender, as usual. “Okay, God, I give up! Take the bloody obsession from me!” That’s how I usually phrase it. It’s acknowledging that the last 14 steps haven’t gotten me where I need to be, and so I don’t know what else to do but give my ruminating mind to God and let him deal with it. Obsessions are almost always rooted in our attachments. So if we can think of them as borrowed from God—that God alone is the owner of this thing about which we are obsessing--we tend to become less greedy and possessive with our gifts, material and otherwise. In this way, we are mere stewards of whatever God has graciously given us.
May today there be peace within you.
May you trust God that you are exactly
Where you are meant to be.
I believe that friends are quiet angels
Who lift us to our feet when our wings
Have trouble remembering how to fly.
In Memory Of:
So many Friends and family
have gone on before...
Etta May Owen
Beloved Grandmother homemade
sourcream sugar cookies and
thunderstorms
Eugene Owen
Uncle: known as UNK rode
behind him on his motorcycle
before I could reach the foot rests
Dale Owen
Uncle
Elnore Owen
Aunt
Delbert Owen
Uncle
My Unborn Children
miscarried but not forgotten
Jim Lewis
friend from eternity through
eternity
Nancy Swanson
girlfriend now and forever
Jeff Painter
bright light in a sea of darkness
Stephen Kerr
kind soul
Van Henderson
friend in life lover of dance
Viona Zieghagen
kind soul with a kind word for all
Sadie Goodwill
Grandmother: she had a robot
with blinking eyes
Rich Robbins
My Husband's Father
Jim Owen
Uncle: Small Plane Pilot: stories of
him made me believe I could...
Helen Livingstone
Aunt
Tiny Roberts
Great Aunt: wonderful coffee
Bill Russell
Engineer and Friend
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Not the pelting driving rain of flash floods… not so long past… rains that do as much damage as good… but the gentle caress of a warm fog… shutting out the outside world… wrapping all in its shroud of wet gray freedom…
You can hear them you know… rumbling as they dash about and play in the freedom of the gray… a rumbling roar that echoes through the hills… feel them as the ground vibrates from their antics… no fires today… only play…
There are stories of olde… of dragons at play… dancing and leaping into the sky… red… purple… and yellow of eye… colures shifting as they blink… blink away… into the nether regions of Ire…
Stories of their wing-spans filling the sky… great hordes of dragons in flight… moving the air below from their wings might…
There are fewer now… or so seem to be… never seen one in flight… I’ve heard tell in the minstrels’ delight… seen such woven in the Tapestry’s tale hung in the even glow light…
Now they come only in the fog… happy sounds in the warm summer morn… screeching in pain… in the cold fog of north winters morn…
Its summer now… so a warm fog blesses the hills with the dragons dance… I’m drawn to their sounds as a moth to the flame…
The elders huddle in fear as they hear their morning games… I wonder if their fear is to keep us contained… huddled in houses… free only in name…
I hear the dragons call… almost my name… just over the ridge… am I food … foe… or friend… soon to be seen…
I can see their eyes… they glow in the fog… the edge of a wing… in colures extreme… deep purple… shading to green… reds so brilliant they are hard to behold… golden gleaming… and silver so pure… blues so deep as to be dreaming…
There are others among them… others like me… with the dream to be free… like me but changed… their garb bright and gleaming… unlike the drab colors of the elder folk…
They’re mounting the dragons… as if to ride the skies… many are rider-less… stirring about… a bright golden beast… with eyes shimmering like diamonds in the sun... moving my way…
It seems I’ve been chosen… to ride or be dined upon… which would it be… face my fear …it’s clutching at my heart… the drive to be free overpowering it’s binding grasp… I step forward… towards my chosen fate…
The huge golden beast dips it’s head first to one side then the other… standing still now I am… watching in fascination its graceful approach… moves so lightly for a beast so large… golden scales like feathers ruffling with each move...
Frozen in place now I am… tis fear or fascination …which I am not sure… watching the golden dragon’s dance… her great neck swaying and dipping… bright eyes swirling with colours… wings close… then spread wide… low then raised high… how graceful the steps of this dance…
Am I food … foe… or friend… tis soon to be seen… I can feel her breath on my face… her great eyes so bright… the swirling colours slowing to a deep solid purple… focused on me… still … looking… seeming to judge… am I found to be lacking and as such … merely food… or worthy of life… and as such friend… welcome to fly upon this great beasts back… to blink to Ire and never look back…
Standing still am I…face to face … eye to eye… with this great beast so golden… time seems to stop… in a moment frozen…
A choice is made… a move so quickly as to appear invisible… I am lifted high… yet to know food or friend… but sure in my risk… freedom in the dragons’ dance is truly to be blessed… either way I’m free not bound by elders’ quest...
My seat it seems … tis at the base of this great beast’s neck… as she deposits me… hence the grasp of her razor edged jaws with nary scratch… seems I’m friend rather than food… bonded now with this golden beast…
The warm morning fog is lifting… Skyward we rise… as one in the air… wings rustling as music… so swift is our rise… blinked into Ire…
written by: Mary E. Robbins
July 5 2006
