Anxiety Support Group
Anxiety is a physical condition marked by intense and persistent feelings of distress, fear, angst or dread. General anxiety caused by routine day-to-day stresses usually passes quickly and is experienced by almost everyone at one time or another. However, such feelings that linger over time and are very difficult to cope with, and which lack a clear cause, may indicate...
i am in the midst of yet another egg shell waltz with my beloved. i'm celebraing the fact that the waltz has yet to escalate into yet another round of domestic tit for tat. so far. our egg shell waltz has a herstory (history, too) of escalating to genuinely vicious tit for tat skirmishes before either of us realize the escalation has occurred.
it was i who triggered the egg shell waltz. the chemical/mechanical components of the trigger feel fairly irrelevant to me right now. the trigger is only a trigger. the heart of the matter is the volatile mix which the trigger sparks. "not trying to. . ." was the dominant refrain of the song. we both managed to do all the things we were trying not to and we still have no agreed upon names for the ^its^ we were trying not to do.
i find myself reviewing early psychotherapy where we identified "i'm trying" as a defensive mechanism by which i coped with the abusive lectures on what i ^should^ be doing. please remember that too many of these lectures were geared toward making me the perfect kiddie whorehouse "good girl." the similar lectures from sounder morals felt too socially distant to even attempt. "i'm trying" was an easy escape from both lecture sets. when i finally reached my first formal psychotherapy session, "i'm trying" became the driving mechanism behind my "help seeking denial" by which i asked freely for help and proceeded to find fatal flaws in every scrap of help offered. i jumped that hurdle by replacing "i'm trying" with, "i'm doing." it's okay if i do it badly in the beginning. just quit trying and start doing.
this morning's journey through accomplishing everthing i was trying not to do has me wondering if trying not to is a guarantee that i probably will do whatever it is i'm trying not to.
am i making sense? reality checks requested. personal experience welcome. unsolicited advice tolerated.
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Hey All...I hope that you have a lovely, peaceful beginning of your weekI have a bunch of chores that need doing but may put them off til tomorrow and just hang out with my landlord/roomie todayWhat about you?...Anything special going on?Have a great day and take good care of you!!..Xo
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check out that smoke ring. It tasted really good. I smothered it with Maulls BBQ sauce which is Local to St. Louis and one of the best I ever had.....
I was thinking of moments when I "try not to" and still do. I guess at the workplace is where I have these the most. Although, probably not the same manner you may be speaking of above, certainly "successful" I suppose. I "try not to" constantly be on top of other people, "guiding" them through their own work. I "try not to" notice how often they take breaks, slack off, And when I get called out for being annoyed or for getting in the way, I use the good old excuse of "I'm trying to help". As much as I hate to admit it, my partner and I working in the same place has really come to a breaking point over this.
The shifts where I choose to do other things, such as the deep cleaning and the extra prep, or even just join in with the friendly conversations and environment, I feel much better off. When I "do" that is when I am the most useful and helpful. When I "try not to" I obsess and end up turning into a bit of a monster. At least, inside.
My best unsolicited advice is keep on keeping on (and I stole that from elsewhere). I can feel a power in your reflections. Thank you for another great share.
i experienced this in work, as well. on construction sites, my efforts **not to** were puzzling, at best. every single one of my co-workers seemed to have a different theyism for me to avoid as a woman in construction. i spent far more effort in trying not to than i spent getting the job done. by the time i had half a dozen failures trying not to in a single morning, i felt like i was tightening nuts with my tits. metaphorically speaking, methinks that is precisely what my efforts not to surmounted to.
deep empathy on the challenge of working with hubby. it sure do change the dynamics. believe the current egg shell waltz is generating from the drive of trying to get a business operation up and running with the love of my life. the blue danube waltz (complete with the fantasia dancing geese) is the soundtrack playing in my head while we try to work things out.
i've often compared my mental illness to a game of connecting dots to find the bigger picture on a wrinkled and scribbled page. the aha moments where i manage to connect a few dots often feel magical. alas, so do the psychotic jags where i've only managed to wrinkle and scribble the page more.
but you are right on target that arguments are part of any meaningful relationship. the person i have known the longest and most intensively in this life is me. girl howdy, the arguments in THAT relationship are intense. the boundaries i set with myself are all too often disrespected my enemy me.
you are pretty amazing, yourself.
when i am actually doing, i will keep on doing it badly until i figure out how to do it well. as i have heard in the music circle, you don't get to sound good until you are willing to sound bad." mastery doesn't come out of a box you picked off the store shelf.
one of the aspects of domestic tit for tat which most amazes me is how different the views are from either side of the egg shell pile. insert eagles tune here. "you see it your way, i see it mine and we both see it slipping away." (best of my love) in my own egg shell waltz with my own beloved, it keeps it simpler when i take care of my side of the egg shell pile and let him tend his.