Letting go gives you freedom to be.
Tag: #bekind
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Anxiety is a very real thing for some people, and I’m talking about the type of thing that goes far beyond normal anxious stress about things. This does not refer to the butterflies before a big presentation at work, or the sweaty palms when meeting your crush for dinner. What I’m talking about is the crippling, terror inducing anxiety that effectively renders you useless for any activity that requires rational thought.
I have dealt with that feeling, I have struggled with those kinds of racing, chaotic thoughts that feel like they’re simply going to come flying out of your head for all the world to see and criticize and ridicule. Or that sometimes, feel like they are going to split your head in two and leave you a twitching, spineless pile of goo on the floor. Speaking of, that thought reminds of me of the backpiece I started designing years ago. It is a self-portrait. I am screaming, hands clutching the skin falling off my face as my skull is splitting open and the entire universe is rushing out of the top of my head. I need to get back into drawing again and finish that piece and get it started on skin….
Anyway, I had a point here. Back to that.
I have gotten to a point where I can sometimes use my anxiety as a weapon against itself. For example, at work. I have a tendency to double, triple, quadruple check things. This, of course, is inefficient, and led to missed deadlines and late nights and arguments with my husband and exhaustion and stress and burnout. So, being the problem solver that I am, I asked myself, how can I satisfy my need to check things, but still deliver quality work on time? Simple, really. Do smaller checks more often during the project. Take a firm, concise mental note of each verification, and move on. It really does sound simple, and it really is that simple, but it is hard as hell to see that simplicity when you’re in the middle of a compulsive, anxiety ridden episode. But once you get a feel for it, and more so, learn to trust yourself enough, it really does work. It provides the comfort of checking something multiple times, but it is built into your process, so takes less time than doing multiple big checks at the end, highlighting problems during the project so they can be fixed with less effort.
For a long time, I struggled with OCD. I still have my moments, don’t get me wrong. But one mental health professional told me once, with regard to my obsession for checking things – locks, the stove, the dogs, whatever – take a picture. Literally, take a picture of what you’ve checked with your phone. It will have a timestamp, and is available if you start spiraling downward to remind you that you did what you should have done, even when your mind is screaming that you need to check it yet again. I got to the point that I could take a mental picture of whatever, and be ok. Mind you, this is progression from a written list with checks, circles, boxes and Xs to denote my checks before leaving the house, which would sometimes take upwards of an hour. And now, I take a mental picture, and most times, am fine.
I believe that any problem has a solution, and that any difficulty can be turned on its head and used as a tool. Can’t sleep? Use that time to be productive and reduce your stress level the following day. Can’t focus? Go for a walk, get your steps in, and a change of scenery. Can’t think straight? Draw, or do some stream of consciousness writing. Capitalize on whatever the difficulty is.
And if all else fails, remember to just breathe.
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It’s so strange that some people are just incredibly inadaptable. People exist in the world who literally cannot handle even the slightest bit of chaos or change. It baffles me.
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Why the hell is printer ink so freaking expensive??
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Who were your favorite and least favorite characters from this movie? And I’m talking about from the original animated Disney film, not the more recent live action version, which I haven’t seen. I ask because something I saw this morning reminded me of the croquet game they played, and of course, my mind spiraled down the proverbial rabbit hole, which is, actually, rather appropriate for this train of thought.
Anyway, I imagine a lot of women would say that when they were little girls, Alice was their favorite character, and maybe they changed their mind later in life, but I didn’t think that way. I was fascinated by the Cheshire Cat. He was always smiling, and seemed to speak in riddles. Why was he always smiling? And why couldn’t he just say whatever he wanted to say? He was, to me, a puzzle to solve. I would rewind the movie and watch the scenes with him over and over trying to figure it out.
My least favorite character was probably the Mad Hatter. He was mean to Alice, though in a different way than the Queen of Hearts. With her, you knew what to expect. He seemed nice at times, but other times was just rude and…. icky. I’m sure there’s a better word for it, but thinking about it from a childhood perspective, that’s all I can come up with. He made things confusing in a frustrating fashion, asking questions and never letting Alice answer, then getting mad when she got upset. I did, however, enjoy the idea of celebrating un-birthdays.
That’s all. Just a dose of Saturday randomness. Back to studying now!
Have a great weekend!
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I’ve always been fascinated with the idea of lucid dreaming. Mostly, I just have very strange dreams, but some pretty terrifying nightmares too. I actually have a collection of writings about my recurring dreams over the years that I thought to publish one day…. dreams for another time, I suppose. Anyway, the thought of being able to realize that I’m dreaming and exert some measure of control over the scenes playing out in my mind is just – wow. That would be phenomenal.
I’ve had dreams where I realize that I’m dreaming, but once that thought is fully formed in my mind, I wake up and the experience is over. But not last night….
I began dreaming shortly after falling asleep (I think). I was home in the dream, and Sandy was running around doing dog things. She barked once or twice, and I look over and see this spider, and feel an immediate sense of horror. I’m not a fan of spiders by any means, but as long as they are away from me or the dogs, I generally don’t care much. This one was different. I could almost feel evil emanating from it, or malintent. I don’t know how to explain it.
Either way, the spider was shaped in such a way that its legs spread in front and behind it, and you could overlay a perfect figure 8 on top of it with the center of its body being where the figure 8 crosses itself. It wasn’t like any spider I’ve ever seen, and yes, I have since done an internet search and it looked like an elongated version of a St. Andrew’s Cross spider, but with a smaller abdomen, and thicker legs with a little more distance between the legs in each pair. It was probably 3 or 4 inches long, maybe? The odd thing was that its body was weird… it almost looked like it had two abdomens, one at the top and one at the bottom, no head or anything.
In the dream, I thought, I hope the spider leaves the dogs alone; we don’t have benadryl handy and I don’t want to have to rush anyone to the vet for a spider bite. Right then, the spider jumped onto Sandy, and somehow I knew that it intended to bite her. It was then that I realized I was dreaming. The spider was crawling up to her neck, and I was trying to get to her to knock the spider off and kill it, but suddenly my legs were sinking into the floor. I could barely move. Time felt like it slowed down and I was watching things in slow motion. I could feel my heart rate and sense of fear increasing, and I just said to myself, “it’s ok, this is just a dream, Sandy’s not actually in danger, I just need to get to her and kill the spider. I wish I could just float instead of being trapped in the floor.” And voila, I was floating! I imagined a rope, and then used that to pull myself closer to Sandy. As soon as I touched Sandy and went to knock the spider to the floor, I woke up.
What an intense freaking experience!! I knew I was dreaming, I held on to that knowledge and was able to influence the events of the dream with my thoughts!
I need to research this a bit and see if there are ways to induce lucid dreaming, because I absolutely loved that feeling and am so curious as to what kinds of things I could co-create with my subconscious!
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Quote of the day.
“If you want to make a difference in the world it means you have to be different from the world you see.”
– Hatebreed
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How good are you at keeping secrets?
I can’t make a general statement about this because I am certainly not omniscient, and I don’t know what I don’t know. But.
I do know that there are people who love to gossip. Who can’t wait to share whatever interesting tid bit they found out, even if it’s not the whole story, and perhaps not even true. I also know that there are people who like to share all the details of their life, sometimes without regard for the interest of the audience in those details.
I heard a saying once, “Three can keep a secret if two of them are dead.”
The point is, if someone tells you anything overly personal or confidential in any way, and especially if they flat out tell you that it’s not public info or that they’ve told no one else, or very few people, you have an obligation (via the trust placed in you) to not say anything about it to anyone else. It is not your place to share because it’s not your information. There are, of course, exceptions. For example, if the person is planning to hurt themselves or others in any way, that’s a time to seriously consider breaching that trust. In fact, it’s the only time that I am aware of that a heath care provider can (and has the obligation to) breach patient confidentiality.
Everyone has their own secrets but not everyone can keep the secrets of others. How do you rate?
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In response to Weekly Prompts – Weekend Challenge.
I’m astonished at the level of coincidence surrounding this prompt. Just yesterday I posted about my fascination since childhood with the question “Why?”. Today, I see this prompt, and within it, a quote from Neitzsche that I literally just saw on Monday during my Trident Mindset lesson.
Why? Why am I seeing this quote for the second time in a week? Why is “why” following me around in real life instead of being trapped in the maze of thoughts in my mind? I ask why a lot, but this kind of recurrence from external sources is a bit much.
So many questions. Is it simple coincidence? Is it serendipity? Is it god or the universe giving me a metaphysical smack in the face because of my trend of posts about the possibility of life being random and not orchestrated? Is it kinda like when you are thinking of yellow cars, you see more yellow cars, but only because you notice it more not because you’re actually seeing more yellow cars than usual?
I don’t know. But I am tired. I’m quite sure my brain will continue to process this while I sleep, giving me more inspiration for tomorrow.
Good night!
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I have come to realize that people are nice for different reasons.
Some people are nice simply out of adherence to social convention.
Some people are nice because they are manipulating you; they need or want something from you.
Some people are nice because they are just a nice person, and may even be a bit naive.
Some people are nice because they have walked through hell and fought demons every single day at some point in their lives, and perhaps still do. All the while, the world goes on as usual, expecting normal things from people in very abnormal circumstances.
The problem lies in the fact that you never truly know which category a person falls into, and you may never know. This is why it is important to always be kind, but also important to protect yourself. This may mean saying no if you need to, establishing boundaries, and so on. This may also mean not taking advantage of someone’s niceness, because you may not want to find out what the other side of that person looks like.
A Peculiar Cerebral Tangle 