Confidence

Lately I've been giving a lot of thought to the subject of confidence and why it is that I don't seem to have much of it.  I like to think that my younger self, say from the ages of 16 to about 22, was fairly confident.  That, at least, is what I was told on more than one occasion by several different people.  And, more importantly, it's how I felt.  Over the years I have lost a large part of whatever confidence I had and it has become clear to me that I need to regain it.

Thinking back to the Confidence Era, there are a couple of things that I think are significant.  Firstly, those were my student years (highschool and university).  Secondly, I was single for a few of those years.  And although I lived at home, I was fairly independent and led a fairly autonomous life.  It's interesting that my most independent years where those when I still lived with my parents.  After that, I became an au-pair and lived with another family and then lived with my husband.  I have never lived on my own (and I have never held a full-time job).  I wonder if perhaps that has led to this loss of confidence.  Maybe if I had had the chance to be independent and rely on myself a bit more, I would have developed a fuller sense of who I was before I began sharing myself with a husband and children. 

I am back in school now and I have noticed a slight boost in my confidence, which I suspect will continue to grow as I work my way through school and continue to learn and grow.  Otherwise, I really have no idea how I am going to build up my confidence, which I see as a reflection of my sense of self.  I suppose if I try to take better care of myself, physically and emotionally, I should see some kind of benefit.  It will be slow going and the growth increments may be subtle, but I hope to get there some day. 

Happy New Year!

Out with the old and in with the new, they say.  2010 was a tumultuous year for me and I am glad to see it go.  I am also hesitant to usher in 2011.  This year will bring with it many changes - of that I am certain, although I am not certain what kind of changes they will be.  I hope most of them will be positive in the end, even if they may not be easy. 

My resolutions are simple: to take care of myself both emotionally and physically, so that I can embrace the year ahead and all the changes and complexities it may bring.

My wishes for the new year are also simple: that I might improve myself and continue to evolve into a stronger, more confident version of Me; that I may continue to have friends, family and perhaps even a caring stranger or two accompany me on my journey.

My hopes for you, dear friends, is that the coming year will provide you with love and light, health and happiness, and anything else you may require and desire.

Ped Xing

My instructor said today that people come to my school because they are at a crossroads in their lives.  At school they learn about themselves and how to navigate their way through this part of their lives.  Oh, and they learn massage, too, which is what keeps them grounded and focused while they're figuring out the other stuff. 

Obviously, this is true for me.  I found Irene's school because I am at a crossroads.  I just really had no idea how big the intersection was...

Frustration

Today has been frustrating on so many levels.  At the top of the list was a home renovation project I've been working on.  Today, all I had to do was to hang curtains: put up two rods and hang the curtains.  Unfortunately, home improvement projects have a way of never being as simple as they initially appear to be.  At least for me.  This one luckily didn't require any trips to Home Depot, but something that should have been simple and taken a very short period of time has taken me all day (off and on) -- and the curtains still aren't up yet!

The thing I've noticed is that, despite the many frustrations of the day, I am still in a relatively good mood.  And there were no tears.  I have no explanation but I will look at this as proof that perhaps, for the time being, I have become a bit more emotionally stable.  I'm not confident enough to think that this is a permanent state, but it's certainly a nice change to be able to face a mountain of frustrations and maintain a calm demeanor and a dry eye.

I am hoping that tomorrow will see the successful end of the curtain debacle, preferably without any more setbacks.  I don't see any solutions in sight for the other frustrations, but I'm not going to let that get me down.  Not today.

Negative vs Positive

I've been spending a lot of time today wondering if perhaps there are just too many negatives in my life and not enough positives.  Or if maybe I'm just focusing too much on the negatives.  In therapy, we seem to focus on the negatives in order to fix them, and while the end goal is positive, it has us concentrating on all those negatives much of the time.  I wonder if I've forgotten how to celebrate the positives -- or if there are just so few left that the occasion seldom arises.

Time Crunch

Over the past while, I have become acutely aware of a serious lack of time in my life.  Part of this is due to me going to school, part of it is likely due to the impending whirlwind that is the Holidays and part of it is, no doubt, due to me being just plain terrible at time management.  Regardless of the reasons, I have noticed that I just don't have time to do all the things I want to do.

I could easily spend more time doing homework and studying than I do now.  I would like to put a few more hours into cleaning the house (on a regular basis).  I need to paint/renovate my dining room and turn it into my own little massage haven.  I have a very large backlog of books I would like to read.  I would like to bake cookies (Christmas and otherwise).  I want - and need - to write.  I require new shoes (for those of you unaware, I have very hard to fit feet so shoe shopping takes a vast amount of time).  And the list goes on...

The interesting thing about the above list is that it's comprised of things that I want to do.  Honestly, I can't remember a time in the recent past when I've really wanted to do anything.  I am feeling oddly inspired lately to get things done, which is a rather new and exciting feeling for me.  The biggest thing holding me back is the time in which to get it all done. 

I know it's a problem most people have, but it's a new one for me.  For years I had all the time in the world (or so it seemed) and no desire to do anything with it.  I'm not sure how long this burst of inspiration will last, but I hope it's long enough for me to get at least some of it done.

Depression

Yesterday I had a 4-hour lecture on "Emotional Response" which was designed to cover the basic concepts of emotions and how massage therapy can elicit various kinds of emotional responses in people: some good, some bad and some completetly unexpected.  As myomassologists, we need to be prepared to deal with any and all cathartic moments that may occur in the scope of our practice.

We discussed the basics of emotions, different schools of thought from leading psychologists on what emotions are, how we identify them, how we learn to deal with them, especially as children, and how that can affect us throughout our lives.  In this part of the the lecture, we touched on Depression, which was described in our literature as "another internalizing problem that is related to the emotion of sadness".  It goes on to explain that people who are depressed may: feel sad, be irritable, lose interest or pleasure in activities they previously enjoyed, sleep too much/little, lose their appetites/eat more than usual, be agitated, be tired, have difficulty thinking/concentrating, feel worthless/hopeless/helpless/guilty and have low self-esteem.  As I was reading through this list, it became a personal checklist -- and all the little boxes on the checklist were neatly ticked off.

I will admit that this did not come as a huge surprise to me.  I have felt like this for most of my adult life and have many times wondered if I was, indeed, depressed because it seemed to me that it just wasn't normal to feel how I so often do.  I was pretty sure most other people didn't feel this way, at least on a regular basis.  And I was also pretty sure that when other people had bad days, it wasn't quite as debilitating as when I did.  I also did not know anyone else who, like me, spent 3 weeks sitting on the couch last winter, unable to get up and make herself do anything but the bare minimum required to keep her children fed and functioning. 

I don't know why I never really discussed this with anyone or tried to do any kind of research, but I didn't.  Until yesterday.  I showed my little checklist to my husband, who agreed with all my little tick marks and said that our therapist had once told him (likely last winter during my couch episode) that I was depressed.  So last night at therapy, the topic came up - in a roundabout kind of way - and sure enough, my therapist did indeed say that he thought I was prone to depression, which gets worse every now and then.

Huh.

I'm not sure I entirely agree with my therapist because I think it's always there -- it's just that most days I'm fairly capable of ignoring it or at least working around it.  Other times, when things get a little too overwhelming, it gets the better of me.  For the past few weeks, I've been walking a very fine line.  I'm still functioning but there have been many days when the swirling mass of sadness that hovers above threatens to descend and smother me.

I'm not sure that knowing I'm depressed - or even prone to depression - is going to help or change anything, although at least now I know I haven't completely lost it.  What I do hope is that this knowledge will help the people I am close to understand me just a little bit better.

Breathe

It's amazing what happens when the world slows down, and I have had a wonderfully slow today.  As I promised myself a couple of weeks ago, I have run away for a day or two, and while this little hiatus is not as long as I might have wished for, it is proving to be just long enough to have a positive and uplifting effect on my mood and my spirit.

The day started off slowly due, in part, to the repercussions of a late night and one drink too many but it also continued slowly, even after the remnants of the hangover fell away.  I spent the day with my best friend and we went out for lunch, enjoying food that I love but that the rest of my family is not so keen on.  We then spent the afternoon perusing a number of little shops, all of which happened to sell gemstones and crystals, and I added a few new stones to my collection.  (As it turns out, all the stones I chose today are grounding stones and are good for balancing emotions.)

In the course of the day, I remembered what a life without stress is like.  Today there was no emotional stress (thinking about my place in the world and my troubled marriage) and there was no time pressure (school, homework, kids, lessons, dinner, eek!).  I may not have had any epiphanies or come to any grand conclusions about life, but at least my head stopped spinning and I was able to unclench my teeth.  Just for a day, I was able to just be, just breathe.  Which was just what I needed. 

Girls Just Wanna Have Fun

I used to be a social being, possibly to the point of excess.  In my younger years, between school, work and my social life, the only time I spent at home was sleeping -- of which I did precious little.  Even as I grew older, I maintained a fairly healthy social calendar.  When I moved to Germany and didn't really have any friends, I still went out frequently.  I never let the lack of a social network deter me so I went to movies and to dance clubs (discos, as they are called there) alone.  As recently as a few years ago, I still maintained a steady habit of going to movies or out for drinks with friends, even though I got strange looks from the other moms as to why I went out with my friends "so often".  I never questioned it - that was just a part of who I was.

It dawned on me lately that I haven't been to see a movie in at least 6 months (aside from, perhaps, a film or two with the children) and I haven't been out with friends more than once or twice in the same time period.  I just don't go out anymore.  It's not that I don't have friends, I just don't make much effort to contact them or make any initiative to see them.

At school, while I am slowly getting to know some of the other students (I am actually quite shy so this is work for me even at the best of times) I have lunch alone.  My husband can not understand this.  In the same situation, he would know everyone by the end of the first day and would have lunch with a crowd every day of the week.  He is a pro at networking.  I am not.  However, I also used to be much better at putting myself out there than I currently am. 

So, I'm not making new friends and I'm not going out with my old friends, both of which are fairly unusual behaviours for me.  The question I asked myself, naturally, is "why?" and the only answer I could come up with is that I just don't think I'm very good company for anyone.  I find it incredibly difficult to put on a happy face for any length of time so unless I'm with the few friends I have who don't expect that of me, it's just way too much effort to be around other people.

While I don't mind seclusion and being solitary every once in a while (it IS good for the soul), this is getting to be a bit much.  I hope things turn around soon - or even eventually.  I kind of miss having fun. 

Leaving

I'm going to run away - at least for a while.  If I didn't have so many commitments (primarily school and the children) I would no doubt be dreaming of a much longer, more involved getaway.  One that at least involved me getting on an airplane, preferably to somewhere mountainous.  However, given my current situation (timely & monetary) I have scaled down my dreams to something much simpler: I will go somewhere and be gone at least one night.  My schedule is rather hectic and there are plans every weekend this month, leaving me with precious little time to go anywhere.  Luckily, my husband has booked 3 weeks off of work so I am hoping for at least a little mid-week interlude on a couple of the days when I have no classes.

It may not sound like much of an escape, but right now I will take what I can get.  I desperately need to remove myself from my current circumstances.  My life is in such constant turmoil that I need to find some other space in which to breathe, to purify and to cleanse -- if that's at all possible. 

Presently, my mind won't stop spinning, not a day goes by without me crying and I have been clenching my teeth for weeks on end.  I had a 50-minute massage in class today -- with my jaw firmly flexed nearly the entire time.  Who does that?

So I'm leaving. 
Not on a jet plane. 
Don't know when I'll be back again.  But I will be back.  Well, some version of me will return, which I hope will be one that is a little more relaxed and a lot more stable. 

Oh, babe, I can't wait to go.