-Benjamin Hoff
Like many of you, I am good and stuck! I look at myself and my situation sometimes and I can't understand how someone who once skipped along all those roads I wrote about in previous entries finds herself so stuck now, seemingly unable to go forward, to move in any direction. I am loose and fluid here in my writing, like water heading for the ocean...but everywhere else I am experiencing one dam after the other. Nothing is getting done and often these barricades seem to be threatening to crash onto me leaving me beneath their rubble. What are those dams that seem to be preventing Life from flowing through me? I really, really want to be free of these blockades...I want to live openly and freely.
Concept Maps
I believe I/we need to know what the wall is before we can get through it. What are my walls? I asked myself that question this morning and took out a piece of paper to create a concept map around the word "Stuck". I drew a line from that word to other words "parenting/kids", "Health issues", "finances", "Social" , "House", "Writing" , "Relationship with D.," "grief/loss"
Around each of these subtitles I extended other lines extending to sub issues I am dealing with under each of these major categories. For example, from "Health Issues" I drew lines around it: "Physical", "Psychological(encompassing thought and emotion), "Spiritual" and "Health Seeking".
Around each of these I branched off further. For example, with physical health I branched off to "Cardiovascular", "Muscle skeletal", and "menstrual. "
From each of these I branched off again ...for menstrual, for example, I wrote "menopause" and "pelvic pain" .
With menopause I branched off to "sleeplessness" irritability" "fatigue".
I also connected all the things that were similar...For example..."Fatigue" connects many of my health issues even the "Health Seeking".
One Messy Map
I did that with all the issues...lines extending from lines, branching off into smaller and smaller more specific details and what did I end up with? One big messy page. I looked down to realize that is what was in my mind, a complete mess that was very challenging to understand. A mental health practitioner would have a field day with me lol.
No wonder why I am stuck. If that was a 'map" that I was living my life by, how could a person be anything but lost. There is so much going on around me, apparent walls sprouting up everywhere, only because I cannot see clearly enough through the chaos to know what step to take next.
The exercise: Control or No control
I knew I needed to organize my mess so I could at least make sense of it. So I took another page and made two columns: One that said "Some Control", and another that said "No Control" . I took each of the smallest categories on the map and created a separate list with that. It is only the smallest, most specific detailed branches that determine the quality of my life. That is all I have to focus on.
That list would look something like this:
- sleeplessness
- irritability
- hot flashes
- fatigue related to menopause
- weakness related to periods of bradycardia
- dizziness, weakness and presyncope related to periods of hypotension
- chest pain
- fatigue
- risks associated with decreased physicality
- risks associated with pushing past bodily symptoms
- experience of 'high stress' because of excessive amount of external life events to process through at one time
- situational depression
- fatigue related to sit depression
- thought addiction
- resurfacing of shame and fear from past traumatic experiences
- shame and fear from health seeking
- opinions and assumptions made about me during health seeking experiences
- fear for family members not getting diagnosed
- guilt for my failure to help them through my experience
- lack of support
- fatigue from unproductive heath seeking
Another Important step: Examine
Once this list of so called problems or issues to be dealt with is complete, it is really important to examine it thoroughly. Know, before we go any farther that these are just your perceptions of your outer world experience, subjective thoughts that belong to you and not necessarily based on reality. They need to be examined.
Eliminate the redundant and repeated issues. Fatigue, as you can see, is repeated several times so we can just say fatigue.
Look at how you described the issues on your list, what terminology did you use? Remove all absolutes like "never, always", remove the musterbators like should, have to and must and remove the drama. For example in the above list I did my best to be objective and to the point without any drama but I did write "lack of support"...which implies that I have had no support which is not the case. In my health seeking, I have had very supportive physicians involved in my care. It would have been better if I wrote " occasionally perceiving a lack of support from some individuals".
Next, ask, "Is this true? Is this a real experience in my life right now?" For example, I wrote "situational depression" but I don't know for sure if that is true. I assume it is true but can I diagnose myself with that label? Do I want to? Maybe it would be best if I wrote, "symptoms of depression in response to dealing with life events". Picky I know but it removes any absolute label from my thinking. So evaluate the truth of what you see as the details of your life struggle or your problems that are creating the wall around you, keeping your stuck.
Remove any futuristic or potential issues. Life is "now" remember, not in the future. Don't let your mind go there. So I would remove the two statements I made about "risks". Stick with the actual issues not the potential.
These minor adjustments made on examination of your list should shorten it. I began with over 100 on my list lol and now I am down to eighty.
The Control Issue
From that list and from that list only I determined what I have control over and what I don't, placing the item in the respective column. For example I might not have control over hot flashes and the weakness related to bradycardia so they go in the "no control" column. I do have some control, however limited, over the chest pain if I reduce my physicality...so that goes in the "Control column" .
The Control column
In this column of some control. I create small steps that I can take. They have to be "small" and clearly defined. For example, if my subcategory was fatigue" as it was for many of them, "what could I do to assist with that?" I could rest more, balance activity with rest, create a yoga sequence specific for fatigue. I can be honest about my experience of it to others and myself and at the same time change my perception of it. I can change my thinking and my self talk about fatigue. That is what I have power over.
The No-control Column
The rest in the "no control" column would be things I consciously released and let go of. I have no control over other people's opinions about my experience of fatigue. I have no control over outside help and lack of. This is the experience of my life right now. "And this is how it is."
Letting Go!
I intend ( have not completed this exercise yet) to tear that column off the page when it is done and burn it. As a small ritual of letting go, I will watch this column of things I have no control over burn in the flames as if burning on a funeral pyre . I will surrender to them and let go all worry associated with them. Worry is a senseless emotion, right? It is rendered even more senseless in areas we cannot change or make better.
Letting go...will not only clear away a lot of mess from my map but it will bring a certain relief and peace that I so want. It will allow me to take a step forward through the walls I have created.
Anyway, that is how I identified my walls and began to find my way through them. It may help you or it may not but it is worth a try isn't it? It takes some time to do this exercise and it is important to not rush through it.
I also cannot stress enough....that all walls are just barriers we created in our mind. I am confident that if we clear up the mess in our heads we will clear up the mess in our lives one tiny step at a time.
All is well
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