If the answer is no; let it go!
I like to drive fast; it’s fun. Five hours of traffic court last year instantly
fixed the problem of my failure to monitor exactly how fast I am driving but I still
tend to automatically go at least 4 miles over the posted speed limit at all
times, just because. There is a section
of back country road on my daily commute that is 55 mph but unfortunately the
road is an uneven bumpy mess, peppered with potholes and cracks, making it
virtually impossible to maintain even the posted speed. This week I realized that this road
represents my journey so far. There’s
a speed you can go; there’s a faster speed you want to go but there’s the
reality of the much slower speed that you are actually only able to go. Healing isn’t a smooth road; it’s messy, it’s bumpy and you sometimes hit potholes along the way. I know that as long as I keep driving I’ll eventually
hit the smooth road around the bend and then it’s a straight shot home.
The downside to no longer using food to change the way I
feel is that I’m starting to feel things.
Strange as that may sound, I realized that I am suddenly on a bumpy ride
of letting things get to me and I’m stressing about stuff that never would have
bothered me. I realized I’m experiencing
a lot more anxiety than ever before. I
thought I was going crazy trying to figure out why I’m suddenly overly
sensitive about what appears to be little minor things. I find myself worrying about stuff I said or
didn’t say or mistakes I made. This week
I set out to find ways of dealing with this anxiety of feeling my feelings since
I no longer can rely on my standby of massive amounts of chocolate therapy.
Applying
the same approach I used for finding out why I eat when I’m not hungry, I
started to log each day when these feelings would happen and I would fill with anxiety. I won’t
bore you with the rambling tedious log of my thoughts because you may determine
I’m clinically insane and perhaps a bit bipolar. I can assure you that it’s highly possible
but I am also a middle aged woman during that time of the month so finding
coping mechanisms now is the most critical step to my success on this journey! Surprisingly
enough I discovered that feeling the feeling, and not trying to ignore it, was
the first step in feeling better. I
acknowledged when I was starting to worry about something and acknowledge the
wave of emotion that would follow. I
would then determine if there was some action I could take. What part of this can I control? Is this the irrational crazy train taking
over emotion town? How much of what I’m
freaking out about is really true or an exaggeration of my internal crazy talking?
After consulting my resident medical and physiological expert in these matters named Google, I was left with a long list of all sorts things that included meditation and positive affirmations. Meditation attempts didn't cut it for me, not even a little bit. Positive affirmations, although they are good, seemed cliché and just made me roll my eyes as I continued to obsess about the issue of the moment. I told myself that we need to get real, really real. I needed to figure out what actually worked and make a difference for me. I'm the expert for me so I had to find what worked. Google was of little help. I had to take a step back and figure something out. I started to see a pattern of what was working over the course of several days this week. In order to get a grip in the moment I needed to form a new relationship with my thoughts and feelings. This past week a message kept coming to me in various forms that I saw as a sign to pay attention to.
Before getting upset always ask yourself: Will this even matter in six months, in a year, or in five years? If the answer is no, just let it go.
That seems straight forward but it’s not always easy. I struggled with being able to let it go. Perhaps a cold wise Disney Princess is onto something. It clearly was easy to determine if something would matter in the future but not so easy to simply let it go. How do you just let something go? I worked on ways each day to help me do just that. Eventually I saw a pattern that seemed to actually work. I now call them my 4 T's.
1. Time Out
2. Take a Deep Breath
3. Turn it over to God
4. Talk to Someone
Clearly I have a past of internalizing my feelings which is easy when you stuff them down with food. How often do we say "nothing" when asked if something is wrong? I often would say "I'm fine" even when I knew something was wrong but didn't really know exactly what or how to articulate it since I wasn't in touch with my feelings at all. This journey is helping me figure out what is wrong. Consciously getting myself out of my own head and just being aware helps me to get a grip. Physically taking a deep breath helps to change my state. The action of turning it over to God helps me feel I'm not alone and He's got my back. Talking to someone gets it off my chest and helps me to rationalize the situation. Talk therapy is much healthier than chocolate therapy! This seems simple but the solutions to our problems often are.
On a side note, this week I went to the swimming pool. That's not a big deal. What is a big deal, a huge deal actually, is that I went to the pool, I wore my swimsuit and not once did I feel self-conscious about my thigh action. Now just to be clear, I'm not in denial about the thigh situation. I'm well aware but at the same time I know I'm a work in process and I'm making progress, as slow as it may be. But on this day I enjoyed the pool and I enjoyed the sun. I enjoyed spending time with my sweet neighbor girls playing in the water. Not once did I have evil thoughts about the peril of the thighs. This is huge - this has never happened before. Never! God has a way of blessing you at the most perfect time. Right before I left the pool a neighbor stopped to tell me how much she loved reading one of my blog posts and that it really touched her. I felt so blessed.
I'll always want to drive fast. This road to recovery is under construction and is anything but fast or smooth. Just like my commute home, the longer I drive it I'm able to navigate the potholes and cracks. It gets just a little bit easier with each passing day. It doesn’t matter how slow you go as long as you don’t stop.
Comments