This really is a trust exercise: my present self trusting that my past self has my best intentions at heart. And that my future self will thank my present self for keeping a promise. But if the person I’m supposed to trust is telling me that I’m a failure for not living up to expectations, for not getting my lazy ass off the couch, then of course it will be impossible to build that trust.
From the journal entries and freewriting I've managed to do, I'm creating a stanza a week to capture both the personal and world struggles during the pandemic, how "pre-covid" life concerns (aka anxiety/depression) weave with new stresses and situations to create a tapestry of worries and gratitudes, indignation and hope.
I stitch all the wonderful photos and stories and captions together to create a mutant Frankenstein’s monster of a person who does all the things and against whom I compare myself.
I don’t want to lose my ability to find patterns. I do want to stop my brain from concluding that if I can’t find a pattern, I must be a failure or wrong.
A weary look at what's now and what's next.
This is going to be a hard week. Is everyone hanging in there?
Living in the limbo of having identified an obstacle but not yet having the tools to address it.
I want to understand why my brain is wired in such a way that feeling appreciation, gratitude, pride, celebration is so fleeting. But, I don’t want to turn that understanding into another way I can criticize myself.
I'm taking a blog break while I text bank in advance of tonight's election and catch up on some other projects. Stay safe, all.
Anxiety isn’t something you can just “fix.” In Sequoia’s case, and in mine, the anxiety may always be there. It’s working out how to react to the anxiety that’s the key.
