Luna Tail

A couple days ago I posted about how I felt so responsible… well, that has turned around and now I feel very irresponsible.

I guess things just happen in life and prevent me from doing things.. and I’m not going to go into that here because it’s private and not for the world to know. But when that happens and there are things I really need to do, I get more and more anxious about not doing the things I should/want/need to do, and then I actually start to put them off. And the more I put them off, the more stressed I get about them.

It’s a vicious circle, I think. And when I get stressed, instead of shopping around to find the best buy on something, usually I just buy whatever I find, and then I’m spending too much money, and I get even more stressed because my Husband and I are running out of money.. since he doesn’t have a job yet.

But actually his job thing isn’t stressing me. I love him… I want to encourage him and support him and help build his confidence. And for the first time in my life I actually feel comfortable and secure in a relationship. There is no thought at all about not being with him. We are married… and this is how marriage is supposed to be. In my past I’ve always thought about what I would need to do if I was out of a relationship.. prepare myself, but now.. I don’t think that at all. Instead I just think of what I need to do to support and love my husband. And wow, I really like this feeling!

Anyway, thinking of my husband is helping me feel more responsible. I hate being irresponsible… yet at the same time I have a need for it, and so I create it for myself. It’s odd… for sure. Maybe someday I’ll work it out. But I doubt it! I sure am better than I used to be though!

Well this morning I gave a training class at work. I have to admit, it makes me feel responsible. Like I’m getting something done. And I will admit, too, that I’m rather proud of myself. There were ten people in the class, and I was only a little nervous.

A couple of years ago, and before the Zoloft, I would have been a wreck. Thank the gods for drugs.

And I also know the subject matter a lot more than I did just a year ago. Which definitely helps me. I didn’t even have to go in overly prepared like I did the first time I gave the training. I’m a programmer, not an accountant… so I ask the accountants, the students, what they want, and I can, pretty much, put something together.

So yup, I feel responsible, mature, and proud of myself that I can give a training class. Really, I never thought I’d be able to.

I’m going to Colorado tomorrow morning, too, so this might be my last post for the weekend. No Hilton Head rental for me, though, I’m staying at the cheap Motel in Colorado to do dog agility!

Lately I have been thinking about my own frustration tolerance, as well as my husband’s. And, of course, the dogs.

See, my husband is not working right now. And he did take a Semester at the Salt Lake Community College, but he really didn’t like it. He had a hard time dealing with the instructors lack of knowledge, ineptitude, and being unorganized. I went to SLCC years ago to get my associate degree, and I understand how the instructors are. The adjunct instructors are better than the full time ones. But for me, I am just able to brush off the frustration level and get through it, because I wanted that piece of paper.

But my Husband has a harder time dealing with frustration. I think he has, in some areas at least, a lower frustration tolerance than I do. We both have social anxiety, which makes tolerating being around people harder. I work at it… keep doing it, and I am better. I’m also on meds for anxiety and oh boy, they help me a lot. He doesn’t want to go on drugs, he is afraid of their addictive nature. But this is not a post about that.

I think a good thing my parents taught me was to be able to just deal with frustration and let it slide off my back. Thus, I can work, and even if it’s a miserable day, I can get through it okay and go on to the next day. I can eat foods I don’t really like and tolerate them. Life is just life and can be pretty miserable sometimes. But most of the time it’s okay.

Many people, an couple of old boyfriends of mine for example, had very, very low frustration tolerance levels. To the point where they could not hold, and keep, a job. Little things would bother them so much they had to quit. Long customer lines, heavy lifting, coworkers that complained a lot. It’s interesting, to me, to see people with different frustration tolerance levels. I don’t think it means a person is bad, to have a low frustration tolerance. But I wonder if it’s a sign of a mental illness? Or is it an upbringing thing?

What are your thoughts on tolerating frustration? Can you tolerate a lot, or do lots of things bother you to the point that you have to remove yourself from the situation? Or are you somewhere in the middle? What is the ideal place to be?

Just an interesting thought.. at least I think so. Maybe I’ll have to find some adjustable beds to lay one and really think about this topic!

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I’m in Colorado and scheduled this post to go off while I’m gone, so as to keep my content going on this blog. So I won’t be dropping Entrecards either for a week, sorry about that!

Anyway, I woke up this morning, hating to have to wake up, thinking what is going on with me and why do I get to feeling miserable when most of the things in my life are good.

Why can’t I stop eating… why do I think I don’t get enough sleep, enough down time, enough… whatever. I often think that I just don’t get enough of things, food is one of them. And so I over eat.

And I sat there and thought really, the world is apathetic. The universe doesn’t care much about me. The food sits on the shelves, or on the plate, and doesn’t taunt me. I do it to myself.

I’m always trying to get five more minutes of sleep… that ends up at a half hour or so. I resent that I have to work, and not get to do what I want to do.

So I have to change my attitude. The world is not cheating me out of things. I am doing it to myself. I control most of my own world. I control all of my own thoughts and my own actions. I can, for the most part, have what I want if I work for it. That’s the great thing about our country, the USA. I am limited only by myself and the patterns that were drilled into me that are no longer working, and I need to change.

This is something I need to spend more time thinking about, too.

Well… yes, my back still hurts. Not nearly as bad as it did those couple of days last week before I went to flyball. But it still hurts in the morning when I wake up, and I think I need a chiropractic adjustment to work it out.

My new mattress topper is so nice! It’s that great memory foam.. I should have taken a picture of it before I put it in the bed. We stuck it inside the liquid proof mattress cover we have, and it fit. You know.. having so many dogs on the bed that once in a while one will pee on there, and so I needed a spill proof mattress cover. It works really well, too (yeah it has been proven!).

So anyway… the bed is more comfortable. My neck still cracks and pops, though. Which sucks. I do need to learn some relaxation techniques. They give me anxiety though. Relaxing makes me anxious. Not sure where that came from but it does. Hrmph!

This morning as I was drying my hair, and curling it with my curling brush that is metal in the center so the curl holds better… I was trying to list all the things that I do that have anxiety attached.

My hair.. makeup, clothes… cleaning the house. Work… training the dogs, cooking… the list kept going on and on and I realized that my anxiety is attached to all my activities that take some kind of effort. And it would be easier to make a list of activities that anxiety is NOT attached to.

That list consists of, basically, two things. Watching TV/Movies, and playing on the computer.

Hrmph.

When I’m having PMS, the anxiety is much worse. I hope I won’t have PMS during my cruise in October… or I’ll have to look at cruises at different times of the month! Actually I can handle it okay, but it is still annoying.

There is a book out called ‘Taming the Inner Brat’, and I haven’t read it, but I want to. Because I think my anxiety ridden self tends to argue with my adult self. And thus I have a lot of conflict going on in my head when I do things that are responsible. Like cleaning and cooking and making a menu with myself.

I want to make peace with that part of me, so I can be more responsible more often. And organized. I want those things, and at the same time my Inner Brat doesn’t. It’s an interesting mix.

One of the things I learned in CoDA (Codependents Anonymous) recovery.. was that the top layer of most people’s problems is called denial. And that denial allows us to keep doing our addictions… because the next layer down is behavior. We are denial to cover up our behaviors that are unhealthy, or downright destructive.

The layer below that is the feelings. We are in denial so we don’t have to face the behaviors that cover up the horrible feelings we can feel… including Anxiety.

There are more layers, below the feelings are the beliefs we hold, and below that is self-esteem and whether we hate ourselves or love ourselves. But this post is about the Behaviors and the Feelings layers.

Lately I have been realizing that my blogging is becoming a pretty major addiction. And this addiction allows me to not feel the anxiety I feel. Anxiety about work… mainly. And also just general anxiety that I think I have learned to feel on a daily basis and I really don’t know how to stop feeling. It’s like a bad habit.. like popping my knuckles. I don’t know how to stop that either and I’ve tried a few different things.

Fortunately I am no longer addicted to men, emotionally unstable and lazy men at that, nor am I addicted to drugs or alcohol… so I don’t need alcohol rehab. But the anxiety is still there, even though I do have the Sertraline as a tool I use to keep it much, much less than it used to be.

It’s hard for me to just sit… to just sit on the couch and look out the window and not think. It’s hard for me to meditate… I’ve tried, but when I do a huge package of anxiety comes along with it and makes it unpleasant. Being still allows the anxiety to come up. Being busy keeps the anxiety down to a more manageable level.

But… as we all know, the only way to conquer our fears and anxieties, is to face them. I need to face them. I want the anxiety to go away more. Work gives me the greatest anxiety… because I have short-timers disease (even though I have over 5 years left before I can retire) and work just always has given me anxiety. I’m afraid of appearing to be an idiot. I’m always afraid of that in all aspects of my life, though.

So I do have to stop being on the laptop as much as I have been. This weekend I have an agility trial, so I won’t be blogging much. But on weekends I’m not doing dog things I have to start to enforce non-laptop time so that I can try to sit and relax and examine the anxiety that I want to get rid of. Of course.. today is day 26, which makes me even more anxious… which I forget every stinking month when PMS comes along. And so maybe using the laptop to get away from PMS is okay, for a little while.

I am selfish now. Okay.. maybe compared to other completely selfish people, you can’t call me selfish. When I was seeing my therapist a year or so ago, I told her I was being selfish and she just laughed at me. Told me that no, I am not selfish, even though I might think I am for myself.

Why do I say I’m selfish now? Well, because I spent so many years, many many many years, living for someone else… usually a dysfunctional man, being codependent, that I didn’t do anything for myself. And now, I really feel like it’s all about me.

I do my own dog sports. I watch the TV shows and movies I want to watch. I travel when I want, clean my house when I want, go outside when I want, stay indoors when I want… and basically just do what I want to do.

Of course I do want to make sure everyone else around me is okay with it… LOL maybe that’s why I’m not truley selfish. And I really don’t like doing things like plumbing fixtures and home improvement, I prefer if my husband does them. But still, I really love living for me and making sure my own needs are met.

And my dogs fill my maternal instincts very well. I do hope my husband thinks I’m not too terribly selfish now. Because I do love him and want him to be happy, too. But for the most part, I love being selfish, and I’m going to keep at it!

One of the things I want to change about myself is how much I fight myself on things.

Like what.. you may ask? Well, when it’s time to empty the dishwasher.. part of me says to just go do it. The other part, the fighting part, complains and whines and fills up with anxiety and fights against doing it.

Same goes with washing clothes (well, putting clothes away is worse than washing clothes), cooking, shopping, going upstairs while I’m being comfortable watching TV… and the worst one of all is work.

I really resent having to work for a living. I know, I know… ever living being has to do something to provide for shelter, food, and those things necessary to live. However, I don’t want to do it! I don’t want to work anymore… I want to play. I have some years left before I can stop working so I better just suck it up and work anyway, which I am doing.

But it’s annoying, fighting with myself all the time. Maybe I need some sort of strategy to get rid of this. I do know it’s tied to my general anxiety and social anxiety too. Which I am covering with meds, but I do have some more to deal with. Hrmph. I just wish I had some nice land where I could relax and play with the dogs, maybe some Branson property, in the middle of nowhere… and a housekeeper and a cook too!

I had a good weekend and I’ve been looking around at the people I admire. And I like to have those traits in me, and some of them I think I already have. So this is a self-esteem, self-promotion, ego post, if you will!

• I like the life I have built for myself.
• I like that I was able to fight and, for the most part, beat my codependency.
• I like to think that I am good at seeing the world as it is, not as I want it to be. Sure there are things I still see like I want them to, but I like to think I’m open to seeing things as they are.
• I like having an open mind.
• I like being liberal, and a democrat.
• I am secure in my sexual orientation.
• I like to think I know myself pretty well now.
• I love my husband.
• I love my dogs, and doing dog sports, and I’m so glad I finally did what I love!

I don’t like it when people put themselves down, and I try not to do it when someone gives me a compliment. Though that can be a hard thing to do. I need some alarm system monitoring to make sure I accept compliments and I know, and am proud of, my strengths!