This has been another revelational week, with good and bad realizations. But I can still take a victory lap because I paid attention and recognized more often when I was out of whack. Less autopilot and more daily inventory equals a much less crazified Penny.
DISCERNMENT BETWEEN ANNOYANCES & PROBLEMS ELIMINATES A GOOD 90% OF MY DAILY STRESS! If I am paying attention to when I feel a “disturbance in the force” (losing my feeling of peace and calm), I ask myself if this is an annoyance or a real problem. An annoyance is something small (like a tiny gnat buzzing around) that is something I really can’t do anything about, and is just a part of daily life. A problem is a real issue affecting my life negatively which I need to address in order to find a solution.
90% of the things I let myself stress over are really only momentary inconveniences that won’t matter in 30 seconds. They distract me from the real issues and exhaust my energy that needs to go toward problem solving. Simply saying to myself, “This is just an annoyance, not a problem. Let it go.” brings me back to reality and the stress is eliminated. I encourage you to try it, too, and share how it works for you in the “Something I Learned About Myself Today” forum.
I CAN STILL BE BLINDSIDED BY ISSUES I DON’T KNOW I HAVE. I had a small binge this Saturday after working with my husband at our Good Shepherd Recovery House for Men. It stemmed from my continuing issue of interrupting people when they talk. I am trying so hard to stop this, but obviously I have an unidentified root that is causing this (I have a sneaking suspicion of what it is…).
My husband always claims to lose his train of thought when I interrupt him, and then stops talking to me if I interrupt him. I haven’t wanted to think about how that makes me feel, so I have just gone past it. But this time I forced myself to pay attention and felt the emotions, and felt “punished”, almost vindictively so. My stomach tightened up and my chest got tight.
I confronted him, probably not in a very nice way, saying, “I don’t know how you get anything done in the day if you lose your train of thought any time someone talks.” He responded that, basically, it was his way of training people who interrupt him. I asked him if he was basically punishing them by stopping his conversation, and he answered yes. I snarkily replied, “Well, at least you admit it.
Now, you must understand that he is not saying anything ugly to me, and it obviously is a very good method of training me because I desperately want to fix my issue. But that pushed me over an edge I didn’t know was there (emotional relapse). The thought of being intentionally punished by the most significant person in my life, despite my best efforts of fixing my problem, was like a samurai sword (not a little knife) through my soul. Obviously, I need to find out what in my past I connect that with, because it is a “don’t know” situation which I must pursue.
My response was to start craving sweets (mental relapse), stop at the convenience store when I left (physical relapse), and then ate 2 little fruit pies and 1 little chocolate filled pie on the way home (hiding my eating), a Little Debbie cookie in my office at home (hiding it also), and then started on some gummies and sucking candies (somehow I didn’t feel the need to hide those – I guess they are socially acceptable?).
I haven’t “binged” in years, and luckily I’m healed enough that I didn’t feel self hatred and wasn’t tempted to purge. I had the perspective to know I didn’t have to lose whatever weight I gained right at that moment. But I was completely emotionally blindsided by something I didn’t even know was there until I forced myself to pay attention to it, and willingly surrendered myself to my old coping mechanism.
I share this because I want you to know that everyone can have relapses along the way, and that being perfected means maturing toward the goal, not always getting it right. As long as we are alive, we will face more challenges. By sharing this with you, I’m living out Steps 4 and 5 in my 12 Steps toward recovery:
Openly examine and confess my faults to myself, to God, and to someone I trust. “Happy are the pure in heart.”Matthew 5:8
I CAN BE NICE TO CUSTOMER SERVICE REPRESENTATIVES WHO ARE UNABLE TO HELP ME! I also had an absolutely HUGE victory, over a 4 hour period of time, when I was tempted to lose all emotional and verbal control (as well as my Christian witness!) when dealing with a poorly run company’s customer service. It brings up such a feeling of helplessness in me when I feel I have no leverage over someone to make them provide a service I have paid for which they appear to have no desire or ability to do. I am normally completely and utterly crazified during these events.
I know it has historically been a real trigger for me, and I have been ugly and sarcastic and just not nice, and I’m sure they wouldn’t even think I was a Christian after dealing with me. So I did continual long deep breathing, I explained to myself that they are not trying to cheat me, they are just untrained and inept at their jobs. And I was NICE, sweet, kind, joked, thanked them for anything they did, and ONCE, when I did give in and interrupt the 6th person I spoke to, I apologized for doing it afterward.
So those are my 3 lessons from this week. I encourage you to keep working on your recovery daily – don’t give the enemy an opening to get another foothold in your life. Please go onto the Forums and share with the other community members what is going on in your life as well. And don’t focus on your failures, but remember Philippians 3:13:
I have not achieved it, but I focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead…
Your Sister In Christ,
Penny