when we are stressed, that’s like, prime time for old habits to make themselves known again. in times of trouble, we fall back on to the familiar.
when i am stressed, my body hurts all over. i am exhausted. i lay in bed as much as i can and try to ignore whatever exists outside of me. i fall back into where i was at the lowest point of my me/cfs. i stop trying as hard to get out of it.
this week i had my first therapy session in awhile. after my last one, i did some neurocognitive testing and it told on me.
basically, i am INCREDIBLY hard on myself. there’s a rather large gap between my perception of my abilities and my actual abilities. my memory isn’t as bad as i thought. my grammatical reasoning and forecasting skills are highly developed.
anxiety and depressive disorders are just about resolved. my perceived stress is pretty high (like, have you seen the world?) and i’m the picture in the DSM beside PTSD, but my anxiety is pretty low.
i’ve learned to cope with the world burning down and as a result i am MUCH more highly functional. who would have guessed?
when i started learning how to coach, the first person i started practicing on was myself. i figured i didn’t have much hope to facilitate healing and changes in other people if i wasn’t really self aware of my own internal bull shit. it was a lot of work, and tbh it kinda sucked. but the results of that testing… that’s data. that’s proof, to me, that what i am doing fucking works.
beginners practice until they get it right. mastery is achieved when you can’t do it wrong. it took developing habits, making sure i stayed in practice, to achieve this. and finally… i got a good grade in therapy.
my habits include:
- reading tarot for myself when i’m stuck (a great way to pull back the curtain to my unconscious mind)
- asking trusted friends for insight
- learning how others perceive me and believing what they say
- fucking around and finding out
every good lesson i’ve learned was by burning my hands. literally and also metaphorical.
i learned today that a good exercise for people like me is figuring out who i want to be, and then imagining what my loved ones might say about me, if asked for their opinion.
note: does not mean actually go ask them.
your perception of what someone else’s opinion of you might be us just another way YOU perceive yourself and is a pretty effective way to identify gaps between who you ARE and who you want to be.
but like also… go ask your friends what their favorite things about you are. go ask them to love you a little louder. then screenshot that shit or write it down.
letting people live on me and noting what they tell me in some tangible way is the #1 way to shift the way i’m looking at myself. they want me to love me too.
so now i do, and fuck if that doesn’t make a huge difference in my life experience.
Leave a Reply