Everything is awful

I have very strong feelings. I also tend to have all or nothing thought patterns and add to that a sense that i am responsible for the well being and success of humanity, i am rather vulnerable to thinking "everything is awful and it's all my fault".

If you know anything about the Myers Briggs personality types, based on the work of Carl Jung, I am an ENFJ. So I am all about how I feel and this can be a problem.  It can be hard to know if the way I feel is because of certain circumstances or whether my feelings are actually driving my perception of my circumstances.  Probably both are happening in a kind of self-fulfilling feedback loop. Whether the feedback loop is positive or negative depends on all sorts of factors.

Here is a list of contributions to the mix organised into loose categories. These are the negative influences on how I feel about life snd myself. If I can tick too many on the list then it will only be s matter of time before everything feels awful.

Physical
- poor or interrupted sleep
- hormones (I can guarantee a bad week due to pmt
- missing meals, too much junk or sugar.
- lack of fresh air, sunshine and exercise.
- having any illness or pain.

Environment
- mess or lack of visual order
- jobs around the house that need doing
- no connection with nature
- a negative vibe such as conflict or anger

Parenting
- feeling that I am not 'coping'. This usually means I am struggling to meet the practical demands and expectations I have of myself as a mum.
- tough stage of development for kids such as needing lots of supervision or hitting etc. Or clingy so lots of crying and high needs.

Relationships
- lack of quality time and connection with hubby
- conflict or hurt in friendships
- not keeping healthy boundaries with others.

Activities
- social, either not enough or stressful
- stress at work
- over committed and dont have enough time to do it all.
- lack of selfcare such as brushing teeth before bed
- not making time to read, pray, write.

Medication
- did I take my antidepressant and is the current dose and type working?

Random stuff
- bad traffic
-running late
- unforseen happenings ...

All the above and any combination can trigger negative thought patterns which then turn into...

"Everything is awful
I am awful."

And the feeling of that becomes my reality. The darkness comes down and if I am not careful, it can overwhelm me.

Last night I found myself seriously thinking about going back to work full time, despite knowing only 24 hours earlier that not only was that unwise, it was not what I truly wanted.

But that's the problem with extreme thinking and big feelings. You get lost so fast.

After a good talk with hubby and the process of recognising what contributed to it, I seem to be seeing things more clearly. I am able to take some steps back and start to question the thoughts that lead me down that dark hole. But that's a whole other post...

I guess I am realising that if I dont learn to see the signs that I am not ok then I am at the mercy of this horrible roller-coaster.  It has already had such a devastating impact on me and if I let the feelings keep dragging me down it threatens to keep me down and I might not know how to get up again. They are feelings, not facts. They are based in fact but if I give them too much power they can stop me from actually being ablevto function.

I miss this

So I gave up... including writing. Not that it has been a regular thing for the last year or so but almost every, single day I think about something I want to write. But I don't. Cause I don't want my thoughts to be for the purpose of publishing first and me later.

I am a natural teacher. Before a revelation about life has even revealed itself to me I am already thinking about how I could share this new found clarity. There is a large amount of ego in there I think. Something to do with proving that I am somehow wise about this world and how to live in it. But there is also this inbuilt reflex in me to be a teacher or guide. Not someone ahead showing the way but maybe someone who doesn't mind being honest about their own journey so that you can know you are not alone. Or so that you can see things in a new or different way. Or receive some sort of comfort or hope or something.

But as part of my "Year of No", as 2014 has been affectionately dubbed, this has included a no to writing this blog. I wanted to check in on the motivations and just what I wanted to achieve. I also wrestle with the vulnerability of how honest I want to be and also the privacy and respect I want to give my husband and family. I am not a secret keeper. I am probably an oversharer. So I am still working out how I can be authentic and real here but also guard myself. I am not an island and the ripples from what I write have surprised me at times.

But I miss this.
I miss writing my thoughts and journaling just doesn't seem to do it for me in the same way. I know that out there or here, on the inter-web, thousands, probably millions of people, are blogging about some aspect of their experience here on this planet. And it is easy to say it is not worth the pixels it is written in. But by what are we measuring its worth? The example of the continual popularity of cat memes and videos shows that worthiness is not something easily quantified.

So I want to write again. As I feel restless and struggle to keep saying No this year and try to stay strong in the face of my addiction to trying new things that are too much for me to manage, writing here is a little yes that doesn't require too much from me and is something that reminds me that I am more than the daily repetition and sameness I feel right now. It is a little piece of creativity and creation just for me.

Oh and you.