Turn Around and Walk Forward

Caution: A long post with complex sentence structure, complicated punctuation, and many, many different metaphors. Not for the faint-hearted.

The best path isn't always the straightest

That's my motto for the year. The last post was all about traumas of the past and how they have affected me and my life. Within the gentle and supportive comments ran a particular thread: perhaps I need to simply accept my past and look to the present and future.

This is not the first time this concept has been suggested to me. A previous therapist became quite frustrated with me for continuing to talk about the past. A couple of friends have suggested that I cling to the past — suggested with increasing frustration and decreasing gentleness. I appreciate the gentle directness of my commenters.

It's true: I do cling to and look to the past. When I was talking to my therapist on Tuesday of this week, I had this vivid flash of me walking backward, taking my cues on which way to turn from what I saw before my eyes. That way leads to missteps and even falling off cliffs. It was a powerful and stirring image. I resolved right then to turn around and use my present, and my visions and desires, to guide me into the future.

Of course, I asked Michele her opinion of, well, everything. What I said in the blog. The idea that I cling to and pay too much attention to the past. Some other stuff. It frustrated me that she didn't respond directly and completely refrained from answering my questions. I'm probably going to push her on that next week.

However, it is ultimately me who has the choice and power to turn around and move forward. I chose the term "walk forward" to indicate activity; I have been almost completely motionless since Mom died, and that was almost three and a half years ago; I wonder how many years that has taken off my life? So "walk forward" tells me to move my body and to participate in my life much more actively than I have been. "Look forward" would have been way too passive.

The Powers of Choice

Had a therapy-by-phone session with my therapist this week and the main topic was "choice". I acknowledged that I have been choosing avoidance, distraction, and motionlessness rather than living fully, actively, and with purpose. I have been choosing naps over doing the things I need — and want! — to do.

Choice has many powers. Making a choice is powerful because it is an action and action is powerful. But when you make choice to be passive and powerless, that too is powerful because it increases the passivity and powerlessness, as well as any mental health issues associated with them, such as depression and anxiety such as I have. So I am in effect choosing to give my power over to oppression.

I truly do want to be more active and doing the things on my list and that I need and want to do: I can feel it! I feel urges toward movement and activity; I feel desires to walk and do exercises. But I squash them with the choices I make away from them. It's like choosing to kill the better part of yourself. I feel as if I've been killing the better part of myself for decades, now that I acknowledge that I have had choices. But for a long time, I didn't realize I could choose or that I had options. I felt powerless against my feelings. Now I know differently.

But changing the choices I make is not as easy as snapping my fingers and saying "Hey! I can make different choices!" It's going to require effort on my part due to the inertia involved and the habit involved and the weight of many years of making the other choices. I keep making the mistake of thinking that making changes will be easy, causing me to fall prey to falling back into what is easy. I haven't yet embraced the feeling of power that comes with doing what is difficult yet right.

I think I need to return to using contingent activities and rewards. I have better rewards now! I have a whole library of books to choose from here at the house (inhabited by two book-lovers, one of whom is a librarian). I have a niece and nephew who want to spend time with me and do the things I want to do as I re-explore Seattle and surroundings and re-experience my favorite things. I also need to again enlist select friends to nudge me along my way to making the habit of choosing the better options.

And I need to work some more on my thinking. I have my rubber band to remind me to think of the cognitive-behavioral tools I have (my housemate left me one in the bathroom we share the morning after he read my blog!). My therapist and I decided that the next major step in my therapy would probably be working on "growing up": i.e., self-actualization, letting go of the need for parental approval and validation (especially given that my last remaining one is now gone), strengthening my sense of self, however you want to define it. It's a process I haven't finished and I need to in order to be a fully functioning adult human. So time to dig in and find my next therapist. I now have a few names offered to me by my former practitioner in this area; next week will involve calling them and seeing if any are taking new patients. (I've heard that finding a mental health practitioner in this area is very difficult these days; must be a whole lot of over-stressed and "crazy" people around here; I blame the coffee!)

So making choices seems to be my next step, and one that I very strongly want to take. I can't wait for the blog post where I tell you all about how well it is going!

Victim Thinking

One of my more persistent issues is that of victim thinking. When  that is the way I am thinking, I feel powerless and hopeless. For example, when I feel tired, I generally don't do anything, feeling "too tired to do anything" and like my only option is to give up and do nothing. Or when I am approaching a problem or a project in a certain way and it's not working for me, I feel like I have no other options. Victim thinking makes me feel like I have no choices.

My therapist can basically tell when I'm caught in victim thinking just by my body posture and my voice. (Yeah, not going to take up professional poker any time soon.) Then we talk about how there are other ways to approach a situation differently, that I do have choices and options other than what I feel stuck with. That's powerful, active thinking. It's definitely the kind of thinking that uses the cognitive therapy techniques I've been working on.

The problem is that I've engaged in victim thinking for such a long time that it tends to be my default way of thinking and I still too-easily forget my cognitive techniques. One reason why I still need a therapist: to help me remember to use these techniques and to detect when I am engaged in victim thinking.

I've been caught up in victim thinking for a while since I've been in Seattle. I've grown more and more tired and sleepy since arriving here, so I sleep and don't accomplish the things on my to-do list. I haven't started looking for work and I've been here for a month and a half! I've been feeling unwell off and on and my fibromyalgia has flared up. So I've been thinking things like "I'm too tired to start an online job search right now; I'll take a nap first" and "I don't feel well enough to take a walk" and "My body hurts; I'll unpack later." So I haven't unpacked or started job searches or taken many walks. Then I feel stuck and tired and overwhelmed and ashamed, which thoughts just tend to spiral in on themselves.

I do have moments of powerful thinking. I wrote about them in my last post. I know what to do, what I need to do, what I want to do. But I let my old pattern of victim thinking and non-activity rule me, thus I don't do these things. This is not how to create the life I want. This is not how to be happy and contented.

I need to continually remind myself to check in on my thinking and self-talk. To do this, I need to have an easy way to remind myself. Wearing a rubber band on my wrist has worked in the past; I don't even need to snap it to encourage behavior/thinking modification. Just wearing it works. But I'm not sure where the ones I had back in Houston are right now. Of course, if I unpacked a few things, I might find them. Or I could ask my housemates if they have any large, wide rubber bands (I like them to be a little bit loose). *grin*

Catching Up

Movement and power

It's been a while since I blogged, I know. I just haven't felt like blogging and haven't had much in mind other than moving. I even run out of things to say in therapy that aren't about moving. But my therapist, brilliant as she is, can tease knowledge and learning out of any aspect of my life.

For example, for several weeks, I went in to therapy feeling overwhelmed and stuck, not getting much done and not feeling as if I could get anything done. My therapist pointed out I was feeling like a victim of my feelings and my circumstance and feeling powerless. That I needed to remember I had other options for how to feel and what to do, that I indeed had power over my situation and myself. Then I started to accomplish a few things, and that started me feeling more powerful and like I could get even more done.

My friend Deb has taken on the task of "nudging" me daily to see what I plan to do and what I've done. I seldom do everything on my list, and I continue to take naps that disrupt my day and my flow of activity, but I am accomplishing things and Deb's nudging helps a great deal.

I had my organizer back to help me organize things for the move: pack a few things, sort a lot of things, and get rid of a lot of things to charity. That helped me so much that I can now see how my friend Sierra and I will be able to pack the whole place when she gets here this week to help me (yay!). And I still have things to take to donate; I don't want to take the time to try to sell them. At this point, I'll just wait until Sierra can help me.

Melting the Ice

When I get stressed in my personal life, I don't fight or fly — I freeze. This is why I've had to struggle so to accomplish things during very stressful times in my life, such as right now as I prepare to move. It's very odd because when work becomes ordinarily stressful — deadlines looming or changing completely, new features being added to projects at the last minute — I fight and win. It's only in my personal life that I come to a standstill.

"So what is that about?" my therapist and I were asking this week. It comes down to fear. It's like when I don't leave my home because if I stay inside, nothing bad can happen. Well, if I don't move off the couch and do things, then nothing bad can happen either. Talk about distorted thinking! My therapist called it "trauma survival thinking." Everyone has different survival mechanisms they've developed over their lives, some in response to trauma, some simply in response to everyday living. And the thing about many survival mechanisms is that they make you think that they are helping you to survive (and perhaps they did at one point in time), but they do not help you to live.

Simple survival generally eschews taking any kind of risk, yet to live fully you have to take risks: learn to ride a bike or drive a car; speak to that person you find attractive; apply for that job; move halfway across the country. So my survival mechanism of freezing is definitely getting in the way of my living a rich and fulfilling life. It's getting in the way of being my authentic self. Hell, it's getting in the way of my cleaning the apartment!

So what do you do with a survival mechanism that you no longer need or that simply isn't working for you but against you? You have to use those cognitive therapy skills to learn to think differently in the situation that causes the mechanism to function. When I get stressed and start to freeze, I have to remind myself that freezing is getting in the way of my living the life I want to live, that I don't need that survival mechanism, and that I want to act instead of freeze.

This process isn't going to be immediate; I've had this mechanism since I can remember. When I was a child, I would occasionally wake in the night, filled with terror over a specific imaginary situation and I was certain that if I moved, I would die a horrible death. Therefore, I would hold myself as still as possible, even to the extent of breathing very shallowly, until I fell asleep (or maybe passed out from a lack of oxygen). This freezing has accompanied various stressful situations off and on throughout my life and only as I became older and found myself feeling helpless during times of great stress and/or depression did it become overwhelming and go on for long periods of time. I am tired of it and more than ready to be rid of it. I am very motivated to do the cognitive work needed to be rid of it.

I invite you to help me come up with a better and more succinct way of phrasing my anti-freezing statements. It would be nice to put them into a form that is easy to remember and say. But even if I don't come up with something more succinct, I am going to state them because I truly do want to act rather than freeze. I want to be powerful rather than helpless. And I want to begin to truly live my life.

Okay, But Still Struggling, Plus a Self Pep-Talk

Hey, just want you all to know that I am okay. Yeah, it's been a while since I posted and I didn't do that The Versatile Blogger thing that JudyX3 nominated me for. 

I'm still finding it a struggle to do my tasks. Or much of anything. Even though getting this stuff done will get me to Seattle, and will also decrease my stress. It's not logical. Hell, I even had a really great session with my therapist yesterday, and my friends are holding me accountable or reminding me of what I've done in the past, etc. Yet today I didn't change out of my pjs and I watched videos all day instead of doing the simple things I have on my list. And I really need to do laundry and clean the kitchen and do the dishes, too. I mean, really really.

So what's it about? Don't know. Don't want to think about it, don't want to talk about it, don't want to talk to anyone. So I'm avoiding and I'm withdrawing. I'm scared and feeling helpless. Maybe I'm afraid that moving to Seattle is a mistake. 

Okay self, listen up! Moving to Seattle is a great thing for you! You have close friends there. You will probably find a job there quite quickly because your background is almost entirely high-tech and that's certainly a high-tech center. And you will be okay because your friends will help you and take care of you and keep you from falling. Moving to Seattle is probably the best thing you can do for yourself right now. 

And you've moved so often, that you could teach classes on how to do it. All the tasks you have to do are fairly easy and not onerous. You don't even have to spend all day any day doing them! Just spend part of your day getting them done, then you can spend the rest of the day watching videos if you want. It's okay.

You want this. You are going back to things you have missed. There is truly nothing to be afraid of. You will be just fine. Allow yourself to use those wonderful cognitive skills you've learned. Allow yourself to act. Allow yourself to regain all that good feeling you had only a couple of months ago.

Stumbling Again

I spent most of last week in my pjs, without showering, watching Phineas and Ferb cartoons on Netflix. I felt anxious and overwhelmed and failing and all I wanted to do was escape and distract myself. So I did.

Then I had therapy. I had great difficulty even articulating my thoughts and feelings to my wonderful therapist. She was bewildered by the fact that I was succumbing in ways I haven't in months, seeming to have lost the progress she's seen me make.

I really wasn't feeling good.

But my therapist and I talked about how I have moved many times, always successfully. We talked about how I have the skills to overcome this feeling of being a victim of my emotions and thoughts, and of feeling smaller than my circumstances.

In addition, Deb and Sierra are participating by holding me accountable and checking in with me every day or two. And giving me pep talks and suggestions. My BFF says he'll help remind me that I can do this and have done it many times. 

I basically need all the cheerleading I can get because my confidence collapsed big time, another thing that baffled my therapist. But I think I know partially why. This is my first move where there wasn't this background safety net of my mother, and the first where there is literally no one here to come help me from time to time. So until I get Sierra down here near the end to help me with the final major packing, it's all on me. I'm still not strong in the "depend upon only myself" department. I suppose that this move will help me with that.

Wrestling with the Demons

Since making the decision to move back to Seattle, the anxieties, insecurities, and depression have gone into overdrive. Perhaps they would have done so if I'd chosen Houston, but I can't know. I just know that I have been struggling with my personal demons and they have been taking up all my time.

For much of the last week, I've been in a state of constantly clenching various muscle groups and having to consciously unclench them. It's been making me very uncomfortable in some areas; I have been dealing with the added stress of feeling a greater frequency and urgency to urinate.

So after a couple of days of these feelings and actions running rampant, I began practicing my cognitive skills again, as well as deep breathing and muscle relaxation. I began reminding myself that I've done scarier or riskier things, such as loading up my car and heading off for an unknown destination; or selling my car, taking out a loan, and going back to school while working part time — and having to basically find new work each quarter through my first year back at school. I once bought a house that needed major rehabilitation and I acted as the general contractor for the project, as well as doing all the tile work myself, as well as some of the flooring with friends and much of the painting with my mom. 

I have done major things before and succeeded. I have been out of work before and found new work. While I've gone through a great deal of money the past five years, I have survived being mostly unemployed for four years (the first one of the five was on purpose). So I can easily move back to a place I've lived before where I have a significant support network. I can re-embrace those things I liked about Seattle and reframe those things I didn't like. And I can find a job working in the industry I worked in for most of my professional career.

It's talk like this that has helped me come back, little by little this weekend, to a place where I am actually feeling better. I'm still clenching my muscles, but I can eat again. I didn't do anything much beyond do a little laundry and watch videos on Netflix, but my levels of anxiety and depression have decreased so that I have a smile on my face and even a little smile in my heart.

Cognitive Slips, Mozambique Epiphanies, and My Nose

It's been a rather full week here in Skye World. I'm currently sitting on the couch with bandages on my nose and behind my ear and with thoughts buzzing and whirling around in my head like so many hummingbirds and butterflies.

On Monday, my therapist and I talked about my last post, about having the blues and just being down. She said my "cognitive slip" was showing. Basically, the tone of my post was one of powerlessness, as if I had no options but to feel depressed and oppressed and anxious. I wasn't using my cognitive skills to look at my situation differently or to see options. For example, instead of being depressed and staying depressed over the darkness of the weather and feeling like I was living in a cave, I could have acknowledged that I felt low but that I could then change it. I could have watched funny movies on Netflix. I could have taken on a project (and I have plenty of those) to turn my mind in a different direction. I could have blessed the rain for helping Houston against the drought. So I need to work more on my cognitive skills.

Then I was stressing about the decision whether to stay in Houston or move back to Seattle. There are pluses and minuses on both sides. I've gotten a lot of input from a variety of people about it. Then I was offered a full-time job by the people I did work for at the end of 2011 and the beginning of 2012. Right then I realized that I'd rather move to Seattle. Then I was offered a contract from that company to work on a job that would require me to work and live in Mozambique for 28 days, then leave and let another writer be there for 28 days, then I'd go back and so on for 6 months or more, and I could live in Seattle if I wanted. I even said yes because it seemed ideal.

Then the anxiety set in. And the stress. I was already still stressing from my cognitive slip and from my upcoming skin cancer surgery. Did I really want to travel to and from Africa and live there for a month at a time? Was it safe? Could I handle it? My cognitive slip got worse. But some of my friends talked to me and gave me their opinions and advice, which actually helped me focus on what was causing me so much anxiety. I realized that I'm not yet to a level where I could handle something like the Mozambique job, for a whole lot of reasons. But I can handle finding work in Seattle and moving there. Mozambique helped me see where I am with my mental health work and how much I still need to do. Luckily for me, the company was very understanding when I told them I didn't want that job, and they are even going to keep me in mind for projects I could do while I'm looking for work in Seattle.

On Making Friends

Today in therapy, we were congratulating me on the strides I've made in my cognitive therapy: developing my center and a sense of home in myself; becoming comfortable and content with the way my life is, even though I would rather it be less solitary; basically developing more of an internal locus of control rather than external.

Then I asked my therapist, "What next? Go back and do some trauma work?" She was curious why I felt I need trauma work rather than to continue with cognitive work. 

"Where in your life do you feel that past traumas are holding you back?"

That was a good question. We talked about that for a bit, then I came up with my problems with making connections: both friendship and romantic. Since I've lived in Houston, I've had two friendships go ballistic on me (and had to go to other friends to get reality checks to make sure I wasn't the crazy one in each situation), one dropped off the radar, and one has had very good reasons to be scarce. But in my past, I've watched as other people made workplace friendships that developed past the workplace and I saw people make love matches that eluded me. I've developed the expectation, I told my therapist, that either I won't make any connections or the ones I do make will end very badly. (I have one good friend I made via work and who has remained a good friend for over 25 years.) I feel I'm so poor at making friends I might as well start making them out of Sculpy.

There is good reason for me to think that traumas have affected my ability to make intimate and lasting connections. But it's also possible that my expectations, based as they are upon experience, have twisted my beliefs and self-talk about friendships and romantic relationships. So far, we are doing quite well with the cognitive stuff, so why not keep going on that, my therapist suggested. 

Thinking On My Center

The last part in my getting centered discussion with my therapist is the part that cognitive therapy has played, which is significant. As we discussed, I have tended to make other people or situations my center, my anchor, and my home, rather than making me be those things for myself.

On the cognitive side, I developed an external locus of control. I didn't learn young how to depend upon myself in a good way; I only learned the ways I couldn't depend upon others. Yet they still remained the loci from which all things came to me. But my therapist reminded me that we had in discussions come across things I have done in the past and present that showed me growing more independent from my family and standing on my own two feet. So her question to me was: what have I accomplished that proves to me that I am self-reliant and independent?

Being self-reliant and independent gives a person a center, an internal locus of control, and a firm place to ground themselves. Proving to myself that I have those qualities would go a long way toward helping me see that I have a center inside myself, just that it's been hidden and it may be undeveloped. It would prove that I am grounded at least a bit, no matter how high above the ground my feet feel.

So what have I done that proves self-reliance and independence? Well, for one thing, I left my family and moved halfway across the country. Part of my moving was to find work and a warm place to live. The other part was to cut the ties that had come to bind me to my family more closely than I was comfortable with. (I still feel guilty about that, as if I rejected my mom and grandma. I hope that goes away.) I relied upon myself to make the trip and find a new home successfully. I visited some other friends and family but didn't rely upon them for anything more than some company and a place to stay while I visited them. And I eventually found a warm place to live. The work part, not so much yet, but I continue to hope and to work on it. I kept driving until I found a reasonable place to look for work, even though I was ready to stop moving along at three weeks (it was five weeks before I stopped in Houston and another week before I decided to stay). I made these decisions alone.

Paying Attention

So I wrote in my last post about how I was doing a set of exercises Every Day, even when I didn't feel like it. And basically, that is true. Until today.

Today wasn't the same as the "I don't feel like it" mornings. I woke up achey and sore and very, very fatigued. I argued with myself about whether or not it was the fibromyalgia and should I give myself a break or not. I finally decided it was probably the fibro and gave myself the day off from everything. 

I rested. I read. I napped, which I have not been doing every day anymore. And I don't hurt now except for a small headache (possibly from reading a long novel on my iPhone). I don't feel fatigued. I feel better. So I can look forward to the exercises tomorrow. Already some places on my body are more toned and stronger. Of course, to get rid of my belly, I'm going to have to eat better and get some more cardio, both of which are things I'm going to be doing in the near future.

I don't look at today's exercise break as a fail. I look at it as just what my body told me it needed. I can't forget that I have physical limitations, even mild ones, or I will think I'm failing every time I take care of those physical needs. Listening to my body is a behavior that is just as essential to my well-being as listening to my self-talk is, so I look at doing so, and not beating myself up about it, as a win.

Paying attention to myself and my needs is what I'm going to therapy and reading books to learn. It seems to be working.  :)

You Probably Want to Know

"So," you've probably been thinking. "How is Skye doing on her new program?"

Well, I'll tell you. I started out strong last week then completely stopped it when my period started and I just wasn't going to exercise. I don't exercise during "that time of the month" because it makes everything worse: heavier, more crampy, more bleah. I did accomplish my Tuesday task so was able to watch Castle, and I accomplished my next two tasks and watched both Project Runway and MythBusters. But the exercise went to hell.

Now I am back on with the exercise as of this morning, plus I walked in the park this afternoon. I have a task to do tomorrow and I have, thanks to the creative spark from Deb, created a chart with tasks prioritized and sorted, with different sets of contingents/rewards attached to each priority, and color-coded and printed so I can keep track without having to open the spreadsheet any time I need a reminder. 

The tasks I have to do for any given contingent or reward (yes, I put ice cream on there a couple of times, and yarn) are not difficult or even terribly time-consuming. Later, as I get better at this and am able to sustain greater efforts using self-discipline (or being less self-indulgent), I can pursue bigger tasks or sets of tasks.

My BFF commented on the previous post that it would be better to do these tasks due to rational cause-and-effect or cost-benefit analyses, but I'm not up to that level yet. I'm kind of at toddler or young child level when it comes to personal self-discipline (I'm still fine with professional self-discipline), so I have to start with what works. 

Self-Discipline, But Not the Fun Kind

You know how I mentioned that I need to become more active, get more exercise, and engage in the behavioral change part of cognitive-behavioral therapy? Well, this is me committing to these things and letting you all know you can call me to be accountable for these commitments.

I blame my therapist, but maybe I should blame my friend Deb. Both of them suggested using a reward system. Deb actually suggested I use what my therapist refers to as a contingency: that I have to accomplish a particular task before I can join in our TV-watching/chatroom get-together tomorrow night. So my therapist and I, unable to come up with rewards that didn't involve food or spending money, decided I need to go with the contingency model, where being able to do one thing is contingent upon my doing another, less-desirable, thing first. And as there is no one to monitor my behavior and either allow or not allow me to do the more-desirable thing, I have to use self-discipline to stick to the plan.

I may have to paddle myself just for going along with this idea!

So that I can be held accountable, I need to let someone (or more than one someone) know what I'm accountable for. Therefore, I'm giving you all the basics. I expect only a few people to engage in this, but that will be enough.

I love to read "my" blogs, which I do every morning. Under the new rules, I cannot read any blogs until I've done my entire set of morning exercises, which includes sit-ups, push-ups, squats, lunges, toe lifts, a plank, and my foot exercises. Then I can read HALF of my blogs.

Bad Habit: Sleeping the Day Away

Bad habits are like kudzu or English ivy: easy to start and extremely difficult to get rid of. When having a flare up of the depression or anxiety, bad habits multiply for me like fruit flies on rotten fruit.

One of my current bad habits is that of taking a nap to circumvent part of the day. Sometimes I just see hours stretched out before me and nothing I feel I want to do with them and they look difficult to endure, so I take one of my hours-long naps and wallah! Afternoon is gone. (And I've allowed my emotions ("I don't feel like it") to manage me rather than the other way around.)

Also gone are the opportunities to work on my novel, to clean something, to draw, to read, to look for a good basic starter yoga routine, to exercise, and to do any number of other useful things, or things I enjoy doing or want to do.

While I am making progress and I am learning to manage my emotions, or at least learning to learn how to do so, I am still in difficult territory, surrounded by alligators and fish with sharp teeth and gigantic mosquitoes and roaches (I'm being metaphorical here, although it looks literal, given that I'm in Houston). I still have habits to beat into submission and mental routines to reroute. I can't just give in to bad habits, especially the one that makes me unconscious for 3 or 4 hours at a time.

In cognitive-behavioral therapy, we substitute rational language and thinking for that which is broken. For example, irrational and broken thinking and self-talk might be "I shouldn't be unemployed. I hate it! It's horrible! What am I going to do?" And then it just ramps up from there. Rational substitutions could be "I don't like be unemployed. I want to work. It's uncomfortable and I feel afraid. I'm going to go look for work now."