It is amazing to me how closely linked my anxiety is to my IBSD. There is a connected pathway between the two. It goes both ways. For the last few days I was really stupid and didn’t take some of my medicines. The results were what you would expect. I ended up with a bad episode. It’s what happens when you get disorganized and don’t follow your regimen. Now I’m suffering for it.
It shows how life goes along just fine and then we ignore what we need and we bear the results. I know there are people who don’t deal with issues such as this but no one is perfect and they have other things to deal with. Life is never perfect and we would be bored to death if it were. It would be like living in Pleasantville (old movie). Nothing changed and life was desperately ordinary.
Sometimes it is hard to cope with the things that plague us but most of the time I can see other problems that I wouldn’t want. I once went to a lecture where the presenter asked everyone to write their biggest problem on a piece of paper and pass it to the front. She then asked who wanted to come up and take someone else’s problem. No one did. Like it or not we have a relationship with ourselves and have developed the coping skills to mitigate our health issues.
Each of us has the life we have been given and our purpose is to make the best of it that we can. This means continuing to learn, grow and live!
If only our accessibility to the world would grant us better understanding. If the population continues to grow at this rate we will have to learn to live together or die out. My daughter lived in Japan for a while and experienced the way that people living in such juxtaposition to each other have learned to manage by their awareness of personal space and their ability to center down into themselves among others.
We grow and strive toward acceptance of ourselves and if we are blessed we achieve some achievement of that as we grow older. I almost think it takes age for us to realize our own worth and not depend so much on others. If we do it earlier we are rare.
“Shoulds” can also come from the outside. We often hear someone say “she “shouldn’t” do that.” Unfortunately we can be very quick to “should” someone. The word is used to tell us what some people think is the right thing. It is a form of judgement.
We have to learn to recognize when our programming is getting in the way of our living. The things that no longer apply or work need to be rooted out. We have to take a good look at the things from the past that make us feel guilty about what we do now. If those old “shoulds” are getting in the way they have to go. The trick is to recognize them. Find them and let them go!
The past week has been up and down. My friend who lost her husband has had some good news….although it hard to have good news after a death. Before his death she planned to move them both to an independent living facility. There was a two year wait that suddenly disappeared and she got called Tuesday that there was space for her. This is an amazing coincidence. Two weeks after her husband’s death and she gets to move to a good place.
God did not promise us an easy time but he did promise to hold us up when things are a problem. He has been doing that. If it is one thing that I have learned over the years it is to not stop your life for anxiety. Stopping living just makes it worse. For me, being with people off and on and sharing with friends and writing makes a great deal of difference.
Someone said recently “old wounds never heal.” I so disagree with that statement. In medicine, there are wounds that are difficult to heal. Some may take a great deal of time and attention. With work they will heal.
So what happens to wounds? They heal. There may be a scar to show that something happened to us but it may not even be noticeable. It may stay there forever but most of the time we will not even notice it. The healed scar may also help us to see the things that we have overcome. It can give us courage to face the next thing that appears. We can also use our scars to prove to others that healing is possible and give them hope.
The main character had blister on her foot from walking. She had that day put several band aids on it and it had now popped and felt better. She thought to herself (my rendering)”If we will just do what we can about a problem to fix it and move on after that things will work out.”
Families are wonderful and terrible things. When we are connected to others life is not always smooth. I am a fixer. I always want to solve problems, smooth over disagreements and mend hurt feelings. I said I want to. That doesn’t mean that I always can and sometimes even trying can make things worse.
worry-less-journey 