Websters defines codependency as: a psychological condition or a relationship in which a person is controlled or manipulated by another who is affected with a pathological condition (as an addiction to alcohol or heroin); broadly : dependence on the needs of or control by another.
Great. Awesome. Wait, what?
The therapists at my outpatient program diagnosed me as codependent. At the time I didn't even really know what it meant. The above definition didn't really help. There are no addicts in my circle. I have no burning desire to be controlled by others. Dependence of the needs of others? What does that even mean?
Melody Beattie takes pages upon pages in her book "Codependent No More" to define codependency. She lists 231 symptoms. 231 symptoms. Those symptoms are grouped into 14 different groups: care taking, low self-worth, repression, obsession, controlling, denial, dependency, poor communication, weak boundaries, lack of trust, anger, sex problems, miscellaneous and progressive. You can find the full list of symptoms here. I have way way more than half of these symptoms.
Fifteen years ago or so I had a boyfriend, who, in midst of our seriously bad breakup, told me that I wasn't happy unless I had a crisis in my life. I immediately responded that he was a piece of shit and didn't know what he was talking about. Who on earth would WANT their lives filled with crisis?
The Co-Dependent. Turns out the guy was right. And he was wrong.
No one, not even the codependent person wants crisis and chaos. Not really. But the codependent, while it is exhausting, finds self worth in helping to resolve other's problems. And if you are constantly running around trying to solve other people's problems, two things are happening. First, you aren't taking care of you. Second, you are creating chaos.
Many of the books written about codependence are written for the loved one of an addict. It's a little easier to see. The enabling, the overcompensating for that person's actions to make their life appear "normal" to outsiders, and I think, most importantly, the inability to walk away from the addict.
But what about me? As I said, no addicts here.
Back to that boyfriend. He had lost his father at a formative age. He had very little in the way of rules after that and he, and his brother, ran relatively wild. He went from relationship to relationship. Even while in a relationship he always had another woman on the side. At one point I was the other woman. At one point, there was another woman. It took 3 YEARS after our "official" breakup, for the relationship to finally actually end. Because I couldn't walk away from someone I considered so damaged. I was going to "fix" him. I was going to make him see the error of his ways, why he was the way he was and bring him to enlightenment, thus making him the perfect guy for me. And, also, because whenever he was feeling lonely he came back to me. Instead of believing my friends who saw that I was allowing myself to be used, I chose to believe that he kept coming back, because he wanted my help.
Eventually I got too tired, mentally and physically to deal with him anymore. But I still didn't walk away because he was a jerk. I berated myself for giving up on him. I could no longer stand to be in his presence, but I couldn't liberate myself from the guilt of not doing what I knew I needed to do to fix his problems.
This is classic codependency.
I accepted the diagnosis once the symptoms were laid out for me to see. I had vowed when I signed myself into the hospital for my breakdown that if I was going to go into inpatient treatment, I was going to do everything in my power to do whatever I had to in order to get well. That meant lifting the blinders over my eyes. It meant that when the list of symptoms was presented I had to be honest with myself. It was a horrifying experience to realize that I had spent the vast majority of my life trying to please everyone. That I had put all of my energies into making sure that I was liked...by everyone.
No wonder I was always tired. It's absolutely draining to calculate everything that you say, do, wear and project in a way designed to make sure that EVERYONE accepts you. It's draining, because, quite frankly, it's not possible to make sure that everyone accepts you. There are people that I run across that simply don't like me. I may or may not know why, but I would spend so much time focusing on making the people who didn't like me change their minds, that I neglected the people who DID love me and care about me. And I neglected me. My feelings didn't matter, theirs did. My problems didn't matter, theirs did. If I could just say the right thing, dress the right way, then maybe I could gain their love.
Fact is, some people just don't like me. Some people just don't like you. And that's their issue, not mine, not yours.
You've heard the saying that the biggest step is admitting that you have a problem. In my case, that's true. Don't get me wrong. Fixing this is really hard. I had been thinking in this codependent way for so long that it was now just instinct. I had to retrain my brain. I think of it like training a puppy.
The puppies instinct tells him that when he has to go to the bathroom, he should go. The puppy's human has the job of teaching the puppy that he only goes to the bathroom outside. It's a matter of small steps. First it's praise and rewards for going when you take him outside. Then you train them to go to the door and its praise and rewards for scratching at the door to be let out. Eventually the dog is trained and will hold it for practically forever until he's let outside.
First I had to reward myself for noticing what I was doing. Ok, I got over involved, but I NOTICED it. Then a reward for stopping myself midway through over involvement. Then a reward for not getting over involved.
It's a long process and if you suffer from codependency, you will have back slips. The important thing is to NOT beat yourself up for the slip. You reward yourself for noticing and try to do better next time. The rewards are always something that is self care. A nap, a book, and an "Atta girl"!
I'm not going to blow smoke up your butt and tell you that I'm cured. I'm not. It takes a lot more then recognition of the problem and a few months of work for that. But I'm a LOT better. I see it when it happens. And I'm often able to stop getting myself over involved. Not always, but often.
That boyfriend is now married and has newborn children. We haven't spoken since we finally split, but I hear about him now and then from mutual friends. Has he fixed his life? I don't know. He seems to be doing well, and I don't pry for information from our mutual friends, because, frankly, I don't want that information. He's not my problem. And I don't even need to know if he is a problem, because I wouldn't want to risk getting sucked in.
So...me? Codependent?
Yup.
But I'm getting better!
Still breathing....
Monday, May 14, 2012
Saturday, May 12, 2012
Living in the Moment
I read a book once about living in the "now". It may have even been called Living in the Now, but I forget. It was about living in each moment as it came. Not thinking about the future or the past but enjoying what is happening just this second. However, one of the biggest problems that I had in trying to follow this advice is that my brain races. All the time. Quiet moments are hard for me to come by. Even sitting down to write this blog, my brain is three paragraphs ahead of my hands, I'm considering what to do with the chicken I took from the freezer this morning, what I'm going to wear to church tomorrow, how long will I work today and what time will I start, and when will I start to read the books I borrowed from the library this morning.
But I practice because practice makes perfect, right?
Right.
But our move to South Carolina has taught me something else about living in the now. It's a lot easier to do if you are happy where you are.
I have set up my home office in our new home in one of the spare bedrooms. I have placed my desk directly in front of the window that looks over our backyard. We seem to have a large amount of male birds in our backyard. I know they are male because of the bright beautiful colors. In the wild, the men wear the fancy clothes and makeup!
I have realized that taking a couple minutes between phone calls and emails to just sit and stare out the window every so often, has been unbelievably therapeutic. Take time to smell the roses is a cliche because it's true. Appreciation of the beauty right before my very eyes has forced a slow down in my brain. It takes me into the moment. And the moment is serene. My brain slows down to concentrate on these beautiful birds and what they are doing.
I have realized that the state bug is probably the ant. They are everywhere. Red ants, black ants, little ants, big ants. The thing is, I'm not a big fan of ants. But I have noticed that they are fascinating. Fire ants blow my mind. We have a fire ant mound in the backyard. Before I began with the task of eradicating them (more so the dogs don't get covered in them than a wish to disturb them) I started screwing with them. Weeds had grown on the mound and every so often I would go to the mound and pull up a weed. Hundreds upon hundreds of these nasty little ants would immediately swarm around the damage on their little mountaintop and begin to fix it. By the next day, you wouldn't know that anything had ever happened. I would sit and watch for 5 or 10 minutes and my head would empty. Just sitting in the now watching those ants work and work and work. I have however suffered some fire ant bites from being a little too close. Small price to pay for a silent brain!
So my advice to you today is to find something that you find beautiful and sit and enjoy it completely for a bit. Don't let those moments of beauty or reveling in something you find interesting pass you by.
You'll feel better for it.
But I practice because practice makes perfect, right?
Right.
But our move to South Carolina has taught me something else about living in the now. It's a lot easier to do if you are happy where you are.
I have set up my home office in our new home in one of the spare bedrooms. I have placed my desk directly in front of the window that looks over our backyard. We seem to have a large amount of male birds in our backyard. I know they are male because of the bright beautiful colors. In the wild, the men wear the fancy clothes and makeup!
I have realized that taking a couple minutes between phone calls and emails to just sit and stare out the window every so often, has been unbelievably therapeutic. Take time to smell the roses is a cliche because it's true. Appreciation of the beauty right before my very eyes has forced a slow down in my brain. It takes me into the moment. And the moment is serene. My brain slows down to concentrate on these beautiful birds and what they are doing.
I have realized that the state bug is probably the ant. They are everywhere. Red ants, black ants, little ants, big ants. The thing is, I'm not a big fan of ants. But I have noticed that they are fascinating. Fire ants blow my mind. We have a fire ant mound in the backyard. Before I began with the task of eradicating them (more so the dogs don't get covered in them than a wish to disturb them) I started screwing with them. Weeds had grown on the mound and every so often I would go to the mound and pull up a weed. Hundreds upon hundreds of these nasty little ants would immediately swarm around the damage on their little mountaintop and begin to fix it. By the next day, you wouldn't know that anything had ever happened. I would sit and watch for 5 or 10 minutes and my head would empty. Just sitting in the now watching those ants work and work and work. I have however suffered some fire ant bites from being a little too close. Small price to pay for a silent brain!
So my advice to you today is to find something that you find beautiful and sit and enjoy it completely for a bit. Don't let those moments of beauty or reveling in something you find interesting pass you by.
You'll feel better for it.
Wednesday, May 9, 2012
The Deaths
Catchy title huh?
Are you still reading?
It's not where everything started, not even close, but it's when I started to notice things weren't quite right with me.
I was lucky enough to get to my 30's with all four grandparents. No one in my family started having children particularly early. We just tend to live long.
Poppop wasn't the type of man you argued with. He had been in the Army. He had been in the Navy. He was a carpenter, a railroad worker, a husband, father, grandfather and great-grandfather. And he knew what he wanted. He taught me to measure twice, cut once. Whenever I walk down a flight of stairs I hear his booming voice 'Hold the handrail Les!', whenever I make a left hand turn in my car I hear him again. 'Look left then right then left again!' He inspected the very first house I wanted to buy and helped me with repairs once I owned it. He was my mother's father.
Mommom was a quiet little woman. She was 4'10" standing up stick straight and weighed in around 90 pounds soaking wet. She was a homemaker, wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and in her later years worked at my father's drug store as a cashier. She taught me love and was my confidante. She kept the crappy little clay projects we all made as children on display in her home. Santa always stopped at Mommom and Poppop's house. She was my mother's mother.
Neither of them were real healthy in their late 70's and their 80's took them further downhill. Heart attack and triple bypass for her. Gout, recurring shingles and various other ailments for him.
2002 was a disastrous year.
Poppop was diagnosed with aggressive lung cancer. He took all the chemo, but once the treatment was changed to radiation, he told his doctor's to suck it. He wasn't getting better, he knew it, and he wasn't going to let them burn him. He just wasn't. And there was no arguing with him. The grandchildren accepted it before his children. You just don't argue with Poppop.
Mommom spent all of her time taking care of him. But she was slipping, too. You could see it.
Come September, Mommom had found out that she needed heart valve replacement surgery. Poppop went on hospice care. I called my parents back from their vacation. I spent nearly every night at their house taking care of them and my days at work. It was a paradigm shift like none I had ever encountered. I was picking him up off the floor in the middle of the night when he fell trying to get to the bathroom. Soon he was in a hospital bed in the dining room and I was emptying chamber pots. I, and the rest of my family, had become the caretakers of those people who had always looked after us.
Mommom would not get her surgery. She was terrified that she would be in the hospital and Poppop would need her and she wouldn't be there. He knew this. In the early morning of September 23, 2002 he got up, had his night nurse (thank God for this woman) get him up so he could have a cigarette, went to bed and never got back up.
I don't remember the funeral. I don't know if I blocked it out or if it was just so emotional that it's a blur. Kind of like your wedding day, but in a bad way.
We all knew that he had willed himself to die. He knew Mommom would never get the medical treatment that she needed as long as he was lingering. We buried him in one of his many many many Philadelphia Phillies jackets with $10.00 for the bar. We buried him at the cemetery attached to the church where my father's father had preached for 23 years. The cemetery that was my weekend playground as a child. The place I had called "alphabet park"when I was little because there were big stones with letters on them everywhere. The place I used to go when I was an adult when I needed to feel calm and strong and peaceful. Now he was laid to rest a mere 200 feet from the outdoor pews where I sat as an adult.
He died to try and save his wife. So, we immediately turned our attentions to her medical condition. No time to mourn, no time to grieve. Now we prayed for Mommom's health.
She went into the hospital two weeks later for her heart valve replacement. She came through the operation fairly well. Problem was that her heart was broken, and not in any way that the doctors could fix. The doctors tried and tried to get her off the ventilator. Everytime they tried, her oxygen levels went down. She cried and tried to talk to us, but couldn't. On October 18, 2002 my mother and aunt (my mother's sister) signed the paperwork to turn off the machines. And Mommom went to join Poppop.
Grass had not even started to grow on his grave when we buried her next to him. We stood on his grave as we put her in her's.
Our family ripped apart less then 24 hours after her death. My aunt went after the material possessions of my grandparents, of which there was little. She verbally attacked my mother, my father verbally attacked her and I had a nervous collapse. Not even dead 24 hours and already her children were fighting over Mommom's stuff.
Again, no time to mourn, no time to grieve. Too much arguing, fighting, screaming and drama over possessions.
I have since realized that death is selfish. Whatever you may believe happens to the soul once the body dies, and even if you don't believe in the soul, the person who has passed is taken care of. They are elsewhere and they are now fine. It's those left behind who suffer.
I bring this up in the context of The Big Move because I have finally begun to deal with their passing. I realized while I was in outpatient therapy after my last nervous breakdown that I had not even started to cope with their deaths. The cemetery became a place I avoided, taking away the space I could always count on to feel at peace. My aunt and I have not spoken since the day after my grandmother died and I seriously doubt that we ever will.
The crappy clay dinosaur I made when I was little now sits in MY china cabinet. It's not a reminder of me, but a reminder of her. My grandfather's Army and Navy papers are all in my possession as well as his Navy ring which I occasionally wear around my neck on a chain.
The healing has started. I imagine it will take awhile, but there is a part of me that is at peace, now that I have started to cope with their loss.
Still breathing....
Are you still reading?
It's not where everything started, not even close, but it's when I started to notice things weren't quite right with me.
I was lucky enough to get to my 30's with all four grandparents. No one in my family started having children particularly early. We just tend to live long.
Poppop wasn't the type of man you argued with. He had been in the Army. He had been in the Navy. He was a carpenter, a railroad worker, a husband, father, grandfather and great-grandfather. And he knew what he wanted. He taught me to measure twice, cut once. Whenever I walk down a flight of stairs I hear his booming voice 'Hold the handrail Les!', whenever I make a left hand turn in my car I hear him again. 'Look left then right then left again!' He inspected the very first house I wanted to buy and helped me with repairs once I owned it. He was my mother's father.
Mommom was a quiet little woman. She was 4'10" standing up stick straight and weighed in around 90 pounds soaking wet. She was a homemaker, wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and in her later years worked at my father's drug store as a cashier. She taught me love and was my confidante. She kept the crappy little clay projects we all made as children on display in her home. Santa always stopped at Mommom and Poppop's house. She was my mother's mother.
Neither of them were real healthy in their late 70's and their 80's took them further downhill. Heart attack and triple bypass for her. Gout, recurring shingles and various other ailments for him.
2002 was a disastrous year.
Poppop was diagnosed with aggressive lung cancer. He took all the chemo, but once the treatment was changed to radiation, he told his doctor's to suck it. He wasn't getting better, he knew it, and he wasn't going to let them burn him. He just wasn't. And there was no arguing with him. The grandchildren accepted it before his children. You just don't argue with Poppop.
Mommom spent all of her time taking care of him. But she was slipping, too. You could see it.
Come September, Mommom had found out that she needed heart valve replacement surgery. Poppop went on hospice care. I called my parents back from their vacation. I spent nearly every night at their house taking care of them and my days at work. It was a paradigm shift like none I had ever encountered. I was picking him up off the floor in the middle of the night when he fell trying to get to the bathroom. Soon he was in a hospital bed in the dining room and I was emptying chamber pots. I, and the rest of my family, had become the caretakers of those people who had always looked after us.
Mommom would not get her surgery. She was terrified that she would be in the hospital and Poppop would need her and she wouldn't be there. He knew this. In the early morning of September 23, 2002 he got up, had his night nurse (thank God for this woman) get him up so he could have a cigarette, went to bed and never got back up.
I don't remember the funeral. I don't know if I blocked it out or if it was just so emotional that it's a blur. Kind of like your wedding day, but in a bad way.
We all knew that he had willed himself to die. He knew Mommom would never get the medical treatment that she needed as long as he was lingering. We buried him in one of his many many many Philadelphia Phillies jackets with $10.00 for the bar. We buried him at the cemetery attached to the church where my father's father had preached for 23 years. The cemetery that was my weekend playground as a child. The place I had called "alphabet park"when I was little because there were big stones with letters on them everywhere. The place I used to go when I was an adult when I needed to feel calm and strong and peaceful. Now he was laid to rest a mere 200 feet from the outdoor pews where I sat as an adult.
He died to try and save his wife. So, we immediately turned our attentions to her medical condition. No time to mourn, no time to grieve. Now we prayed for Mommom's health.
She went into the hospital two weeks later for her heart valve replacement. She came through the operation fairly well. Problem was that her heart was broken, and not in any way that the doctors could fix. The doctors tried and tried to get her off the ventilator. Everytime they tried, her oxygen levels went down. She cried and tried to talk to us, but couldn't. On October 18, 2002 my mother and aunt (my mother's sister) signed the paperwork to turn off the machines. And Mommom went to join Poppop.
Grass had not even started to grow on his grave when we buried her next to him. We stood on his grave as we put her in her's.
Our family ripped apart less then 24 hours after her death. My aunt went after the material possessions of my grandparents, of which there was little. She verbally attacked my mother, my father verbally attacked her and I had a nervous collapse. Not even dead 24 hours and already her children were fighting over Mommom's stuff.
Again, no time to mourn, no time to grieve. Too much arguing, fighting, screaming and drama over possessions.
I have since realized that death is selfish. Whatever you may believe happens to the soul once the body dies, and even if you don't believe in the soul, the person who has passed is taken care of. They are elsewhere and they are now fine. It's those left behind who suffer.
I bring this up in the context of The Big Move because I have finally begun to deal with their passing. I realized while I was in outpatient therapy after my last nervous breakdown that I had not even started to cope with their deaths. The cemetery became a place I avoided, taking away the space I could always count on to feel at peace. My aunt and I have not spoken since the day after my grandmother died and I seriously doubt that we ever will.
The crappy clay dinosaur I made when I was little now sits in MY china cabinet. It's not a reminder of me, but a reminder of her. My grandfather's Army and Navy papers are all in my possession as well as his Navy ring which I occasionally wear around my neck on a chain.
The healing has started. I imagine it will take awhile, but there is a part of me that is at peace, now that I have started to cope with their loss.
Still breathing....
Tuesday, May 8, 2012
Moving past anger...Is it possible?
Well, hell if I know.
A friend of mine suggested that I blog about a situation I was in once where I lost my temper, quite spectacularly I may say, at a real estate settlement. I used to work at a title insurance company, several in fact, where I conducted settlements for people buying houses. I was known for my patience, my ability to defuse difficult situations and keep all parties relatively calm.
Until this one day...
It looked like a normal settlement with the exception that I had been warned the sellers were a little difficult to deal with. Well, that wasn't a big surprise. Eighty percent of the time I would be warned that one party or another was difficult. Normally I would merely take it in stride. Normally. Today, on some level, I had just had it with difficult people. These sellers were beyond the pale. Trying to change standard legal documents, which cannot be changed. Whining, complaining and holding things up to the point that I suddenly realized it was 6:00pm or so, I'd been off the clock for an hour and we were no closer to being done then we were when we started at 4:00. The sellers were calling me incompetent and generally making derogatory remarks aimed at me. No problem, I'd been here many times before.
Or had I?
Apparently not. Today was the day that I had officially reached the end of my rope. Well, actually the mid-point of my rope, because the end of my rope is a whole other story.
The look on the sellers realtor's face when I broke was unbelievably priceless! I really, to this day, wish that I had a picture of it. She and I had worked together for years and she was, also, the model of calm at a settlement. I stood up from my chair at the head of the table, slammed my hands down on my desk for everyone's attention and informed the sellers, loudly, that they would sign the documents as is, or get out of my office, as I no longer had time for this. I don't remember what I did next. Walk away for a few? Sit back down? Don't know, it was years ago. But looking back I know what happened that day.
An anger trigger had been punched. I didn't realize it then. Then, I believed the sellers were just assholes and I, and their realtor, were stuck dealing with them. Were the sellers assholes? Well....yes. But I'd dealt with that before and not lost my cool.
Today was different, because these men were attacking my ability to do my job well. I knew I was good at what I did. The realtors knew I was good at what I did. I had thank you letters and recommendations out the wazoo to prove it. These men were, pure and simple, bullies. Trying to get their way, trying to make the women at the table uncomfortable. And they succeeded. Because even though I did eventually stand up to them, I did it in an uncontrolled manner.
I freaked.
Now I look back and I laugh. But I'm also working on the issue.
We all have anger triggers. Things that happen in the past that we bury are brought to the surface by someone years down the line. I am not a professional therapist and this advice is not intended to be accepted as coming from a professional. I will say, however, that I'm still working on this issue. I've identified the source. I know why I'm so insecure about the things that I do. What if I'm not good enough? What if someone finds me out? So, when someone challenges me I lash out. I KNOW I'm good enough, why don't you see it!? Because they don't. Because they are bullies. Because they're damaged themselves and need to attack to feel strong. Who knows.
But I do still look back on that day and laugh.
So does the realtor!
A friend of mine suggested that I blog about a situation I was in once where I lost my temper, quite spectacularly I may say, at a real estate settlement. I used to work at a title insurance company, several in fact, where I conducted settlements for people buying houses. I was known for my patience, my ability to defuse difficult situations and keep all parties relatively calm.
Until this one day...
It looked like a normal settlement with the exception that I had been warned the sellers were a little difficult to deal with. Well, that wasn't a big surprise. Eighty percent of the time I would be warned that one party or another was difficult. Normally I would merely take it in stride. Normally. Today, on some level, I had just had it with difficult people. These sellers were beyond the pale. Trying to change standard legal documents, which cannot be changed. Whining, complaining and holding things up to the point that I suddenly realized it was 6:00pm or so, I'd been off the clock for an hour and we were no closer to being done then we were when we started at 4:00. The sellers were calling me incompetent and generally making derogatory remarks aimed at me. No problem, I'd been here many times before.
Or had I?
Apparently not. Today was the day that I had officially reached the end of my rope. Well, actually the mid-point of my rope, because the end of my rope is a whole other story.
The look on the sellers realtor's face when I broke was unbelievably priceless! I really, to this day, wish that I had a picture of it. She and I had worked together for years and she was, also, the model of calm at a settlement. I stood up from my chair at the head of the table, slammed my hands down on my desk for everyone's attention and informed the sellers, loudly, that they would sign the documents as is, or get out of my office, as I no longer had time for this. I don't remember what I did next. Walk away for a few? Sit back down? Don't know, it was years ago. But looking back I know what happened that day.
An anger trigger had been punched. I didn't realize it then. Then, I believed the sellers were just assholes and I, and their realtor, were stuck dealing with them. Were the sellers assholes? Well....yes. But I'd dealt with that before and not lost my cool.
Today was different, because these men were attacking my ability to do my job well. I knew I was good at what I did. The realtors knew I was good at what I did. I had thank you letters and recommendations out the wazoo to prove it. These men were, pure and simple, bullies. Trying to get their way, trying to make the women at the table uncomfortable. And they succeeded. Because even though I did eventually stand up to them, I did it in an uncontrolled manner.
I freaked.
Now I look back and I laugh. But I'm also working on the issue.
We all have anger triggers. Things that happen in the past that we bury are brought to the surface by someone years down the line. I am not a professional therapist and this advice is not intended to be accepted as coming from a professional. I will say, however, that I'm still working on this issue. I've identified the source. I know why I'm so insecure about the things that I do. What if I'm not good enough? What if someone finds me out? So, when someone challenges me I lash out. I KNOW I'm good enough, why don't you see it!? Because they don't. Because they are bullies. Because they're damaged themselves and need to attack to feel strong. Who knows.
But I do still look back on that day and laugh.
So does the realtor!
Monday, May 7, 2012
Why "The Big Move"?
So, if you know me, you're assuming right now that this blog is about my move from Pennsylvania to South Carolina. You know, the big move. But it's more than that.
As I look back over my life I realize that the "Big Move" is not just a change is physical location. It's a change in perception as well. This change in perception has taken years (longer then I care to think about) to occur. It's a confusing mass of good, bad and evil that I feel I've finally come out the other end. A newfound sense of happiness, which is confusing at times, because it's been so long since I've been truly happy.
The nervous breakdown of 2011 was the final straw. Being hospitalized in a psych ward was not enjoyable, but it was educational. If I was ever going to be happy, truly happy, there was a lot of work to be done. And I've been doing it. All of it. The uncomforable, the scary, the things that seemed not to be useful at the time. Looking back, it all makes a lot of sense.
Yes the meds are useful. I find, however, that soooo many people are on the meds, but not doing the work. Guess what? It won't work. If you aren't willing to put in the time with therapy and learning, the meds aren't going to make you better. They will merely mask the symptoms. Stop taking the meds without doing the work and you will feel just as badly as you did before you started the meds.
So I guess introductions are in order. My name is Leslie and I'm a 42 year old woman married to an extremely wonderful (and thankfully patient) man named Joe. I have three stepchildren from Joe's previous marriage and we've been blessed with a beautiful grandson as well.
I lived in Pennsylvania for my entire 42 years of life, within 20 miles of where I was born. Joe and I (and my eldest stepson) have just moved to South Carolina. I spent many years working in the title insurance industry till I finally burned out in spectacular fashion last November with my second nervous breakdown. A one week stint in the psych ward, 2 months at outpatient treatment and continuing therapy, resulted in THE BIG MOVE. The shift in perception that has lowered my anxiety, mitigated my depression and allowed me to live my life with happiness.
A new job, one that I love, has also helped with THE BIG MOVE. Customer Manager for a life insurance agent who specialized in clients with diabetes. Helping people that no one else wants to bother with, because it's hard. But often, that which is hard, is extremely rewarding. I have a wonderful boss who understands my issues and I am able to set my own schedule to a large degree.
So the healing continues. The Big Move continues. And this blog continues.
Till next time...
Just Breathe
As I look back over my life I realize that the "Big Move" is not just a change is physical location. It's a change in perception as well. This change in perception has taken years (longer then I care to think about) to occur. It's a confusing mass of good, bad and evil that I feel I've finally come out the other end. A newfound sense of happiness, which is confusing at times, because it's been so long since I've been truly happy.
The nervous breakdown of 2011 was the final straw. Being hospitalized in a psych ward was not enjoyable, but it was educational. If I was ever going to be happy, truly happy, there was a lot of work to be done. And I've been doing it. All of it. The uncomforable, the scary, the things that seemed not to be useful at the time. Looking back, it all makes a lot of sense.
Yes the meds are useful. I find, however, that soooo many people are on the meds, but not doing the work. Guess what? It won't work. If you aren't willing to put in the time with therapy and learning, the meds aren't going to make you better. They will merely mask the symptoms. Stop taking the meds without doing the work and you will feel just as badly as you did before you started the meds.
So I guess introductions are in order. My name is Leslie and I'm a 42 year old woman married to an extremely wonderful (and thankfully patient) man named Joe. I have three stepchildren from Joe's previous marriage and we've been blessed with a beautiful grandson as well.
I lived in Pennsylvania for my entire 42 years of life, within 20 miles of where I was born. Joe and I (and my eldest stepson) have just moved to South Carolina. I spent many years working in the title insurance industry till I finally burned out in spectacular fashion last November with my second nervous breakdown. A one week stint in the psych ward, 2 months at outpatient treatment and continuing therapy, resulted in THE BIG MOVE. The shift in perception that has lowered my anxiety, mitigated my depression and allowed me to live my life with happiness.
A new job, one that I love, has also helped with THE BIG MOVE. Customer Manager for a life insurance agent who specialized in clients with diabetes. Helping people that no one else wants to bother with, because it's hard. But often, that which is hard, is extremely rewarding. I have a wonderful boss who understands my issues and I am able to set my own schedule to a large degree.
So the healing continues. The Big Move continues. And this blog continues.
Till next time...
Just Breathe
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