Sticking with It

Good Morning -

As I mentioned in a previous post, my partner is off being a gay camp counselor this week, so I am unto myself.

I woke at 8 yesterday, which is later than usual but not wholly slothish, and created my usual mental list of all the things I would think about doing with my day. Like Saturday, I watched many of them expire from my place on the couch where I was sitting and thinking.

I had a moment yesterday afternoon during this sitting and thinking in which I was bored with myself and a bit antsy, which led to all sorts of "shoulds" popping into my head. As a great therapist told me once, shoulds are someone else's idea (or else you'd say "I want" or "I need", rather than "I should"), so I knew better than to act on any of these. (Not all shoulds are bad advice, but they won't do well until you internalize them so that the should becomes a want or need). (Wow - this is like parenthetical therapy. Therapy in the margins...:)).

Anyway, as I sat there on the couch, I had all sorts of ideas and judgements run through my head - you should do something, you should do the dishes, you should do a load of wash, you should go for a swim, you should finish that book etc., etc., etc. As you can see, none of these are bad things to be doing, but none of them were anything that I really wanted to be doing in that moment.

I had a sense that I was fighting my quiet time for a reason. Sometimes I'm a great distractor of self and can cut myself off from good reflection time by convincing myself that it would be better if I was busy, busy, busy.

Sometimes this is a cue that I need to settle into one of my working naps and clear my emotions up a bit through some of that deep work (imagine a toddler fighting nap time even though she is clearly tired - this is how I get sometimes when I'm avoiding the deep work through sleep). I tried laying down and did sleep for an hour, but it wasn't deep, deep.

Still restless, I made a smoothie for a late lunch, distracted myself online for a bit, and then eventually settled back onto the couch. Sitting there, I witnessed all sorts of old messaging about myself float through my head - ideas I no longer believe about myself but that come through in times of stress. I could have chosen to latch myself onto any one of those outdated beliefs about myself and get really invested in it, but instead chose to watch them float by from a distance and use them as a validation that my stress is up right now.

Strange as it may sound, it felt really good to just watch these ideas float by and not invest in any of them. That sort of healthy detachment is something I haven't always had and I still feel a little smile of growth when I am able to witness my nonsense without participating in it.

Acknowledging that my stress is up right now decreased the sense of the stress - sometimes emotions just want to know that you know that they are there. I was able to go through the situations right now that are causing stress and appreciate how they could be stressful. Prior to this moment, when the thought of the stressors came up, I would immediately bat it down with "I'm not stressed. That's not stressful. If this happens, then I'll do this, or if that happens, then I'll do that, so I have a plan, so there's no need to be stressed."

Except that part of me wasn't convinced of these plans, didn't want a solution, and just needed to hear me say, "Yeah, wow. This is stressful."

I was finally able to do that yesterday evening as I sat on the couch. I let myself feel the stress without trying to distract myself from it by creating all sorts of great solutions to it. The amazing thing when you do this is that it only takes a minute and then it's gone. Part of my distraction is that I get nervous sometimes that if I feel the feeling, I'll get stuck in it for a really long time. Like I said before, though, a lot of times the feelings just want to be greeted then they go away.

Once I had acknowledged the stress and sat with it for a bit, I was much more relaxed and able to create a lovely, centered evening for myself. I read more of "Grassroots Gardening", thought a lot about the power of food and community, and enjoyed the goal-oriented salad I made to go with my mojito (I'll be joining my partner on Thursday out east for a week with her family and I know we will come back with lots of good produce. To that end, I have the personal goal of finishing up all the produce currently in our fridge so that it doesn't go bad and so there's room for the PA produce).

All that thinking about food and community is what led to our Virgen, which is constructed of a collage of images from the Heifer magazine. I really feel drawn to doing something with this idea of growing food and teaching and am curious to see what comes of it. During the stress distractors yesterday, some of the messaging involved all the myriad reasons why this is a bad idea and why I'll never do anything with it, and such and such.

Oh, I'm glad I watched those go by and didn't hitch on for a ride.

Here's to that. Here's to growth, here's to healthy detachment, and here's to paying attention to passion.