Tag Archives: self-doubt

Lessons Learned This Week

7 Replies

I don’t really have anything concrete to talk about right now, but I do have the undeniable urge to write, so I thought I’d just check-in, and go over a few things that have happened this week. It’s for my peace of mind, more than anything else – a way to purge my head of a load of junk, in order to find some semblance of calm.

This week’s main event was my second group therapy, CBT session, on Tuesday. After the previous week’s opening two hours, I felt quite positive about the whole thing, but as the week grew on and the next session got closer, I began doubting it again. I do that a lot – the self-doubt thing. In almost everything I do, that little whisper of doubt, is in the back of my mind, niggling away, but I digress.

This time, I slowed down and tried to take everything in, that we were being taught. When you only have two hours each week, to learn the techniques needed, in order to change the entire way that you have been thinking, for years, it’s a lot to digest. However, having taken the time to reflect on it, I’ve learned quite a few important things.

Mindfulness 

Mindfulness is a technique used, to focus your attention on what is happening in your body. The example used with us was to sit comfortably in our chairs and to focus on the sole of our feet – the part of the body that is in contact with the floor. We were told to note the sensations in that part of our foot. Did it feel different to how it normally felt? Did we notice any other sensations in our bodies that we usually wouldn’t? If our minds began to wonder, we were asked to note the thoughts that made us drift, and to then gently, move our attention back to the foot. This constant re-focusing of your attention – drawing it back to the foot, is supposed to help you learn to be in-tune with your body and mind. To learn that whatever thoughts and emotions you may be experiencing, are just that – thoughts and emotions, and that they will also drift off.

Personally, I found this a really frustrating exercise. My problem was that I couldn’t focus on my foot – my thoughts kept flitting in and out, and yet I couldn’t focus on the thoughts either. It proved to highlight to me the sometimes conflicting nature of thoughts and that indeed, they are just that, thoughts. No matter how horrible, self-destructive and debilitating they can be at times, they are just thoughts, which I guess is the point of the exercise. (and I obviously say the word ‘thoughts’ too much)

Anxious Predictions

An Anxious Prediction, is when you get that “Oh I don’t want to do that” thought, and then proceed to predict what would happen, if you followed through with the thing that you didn’t want to do. For example, one of my anxious predictions is, “I really don’t want to take Big Bro to nursery, because I’ll have to walk and walking makes me hot and sweaty. If I’m hot and sweaty, people will look at me funny and think I’m a mess, untidy, disgusting, and no-one will want to be nice to me.” Anxious predictions in someone who has an anxiety/self-esteem problem, tend to be crippling in their effect, because it stops that person from taking part in the things that make life enjoyable. If you’re constantly too anxious to go out because of the predictions you make, the likelihood is, you will avoid going out, in order to prevent those predictions from coming true.

I also learned a lot about self-esteem and lack of it, being able to have compassion for myself and the benefit of taking things slowly. So I will be taking things slowly. One step at a time.

If I don’t blog as often, it will be because I don’t feel as if I have anything worth saying. I’ve realised that I don’t need to blog every day. The blogosphere won’t disappear, if I miss a couple of days. I want what I do post, to be good quality and worth reading. My ambition in life is to write a book, so pouring my brain out onto this blog, without thinking about what I’m doing, is not going to help me improve my writing skills. One or two posts a week is what I’m going to aim for, so I hope you’ll all stick around to read them.

If you have anything else to add, in relation to things you’ve learned through therapy, or even just life experience, that you think may help with either mental health or my ambition to write, then please share your thoughts with me. I’m always interested in people’s opinions and read every comment I receive.

Thank you for reading.

 

Related articles

New or Used – My Purchasing Dilema

Leave a reply
4448797256 7944d04370 m New or Used My Purchasing Dilema

Recycling is good for the planet (Photo credit: stuant63)

As I begin to write this post, I am sat on a second-hand armchair, which is perched on a second-hand carpet, typing on a second-hand laptop and drinking out of a second-hand coffee mug. In fact, almost everything in this room – and indeed this house – has been previously loved/played with/used/worn by somebody else, at some point in its lifespan.

You see, I’m not a huge fan of buying things new if I don’t have to. While I love slipping my feet into a brand new pair of shoes, or ripping the tags off a brand new pair of pyjamas (I have an unhealthy obsession for buying PJs O.K. don’t ask!), I also know that financially it really isn’t feasible for me to be kitting the house and family out, in brand new shiny things. Raising children is expensive! More-so when you have three of them, under the age of three and of both genders! Therefore, it has always been my mission almost, to try and find what we all need either pre-loved, or at a discount price.

My problem is I’m starting to doubt my reasoning behind doing this. I tell myself that I’m doing it to save money, so that I can pay the bills, stock the cupboards and fridge and keep the family ticking over nicely. Then I make the fatal mistake of comparing myself to others and self doubt hits me, like a wet flip-flop to the face.

I see children, the same age as my own, running around wearing designer clothes that look like they’ve hardly been worn, their presentation absolutely immaculate and their toys looking like they’ve cost more than my entire wardrobe! Then I look at my own three: my 9 month old daughter who has just learned to crawl, can’t keep clean for more than a minute and is always rolling around in a pile of her elder brothers toys, of which whose cleanliness is questionable. My 9 month old son can’t quite crawl yet, so enjoys sitting on the floor with a pile of cushions around him – much like the commander of his own fleet of space ships – adorned in his elder brothers cast off clothes because really, he is growing so fast I see little point in buying him new stuff! Then there’s my 2 year old who is  3 next month, going on 30 with mud smeared all over his face from trying to herd the ants in the back garden, his toys in a heap in the corner of the living room because I can’t face organising them yet again and his clothes a combination of hand-me-downs and Tesco’s finest.

I get that parents take pride in theirs and their children’s appearance – as a mother or father it’s almost a given that we like to see our little ones looking presentable, if only for the five minutes before they eat that packet of chocolate buttons, but I think that sometimes it is taken out of context and is more of a showcase – a way of showing off what you have.

People have commented in the past, that they couldn’t possibly put their children in ‘second-hand’ clothes and I think Why? Will our children actually care if their possessions are state-of-the-art and their clothes – careful creations of the worlds most popular fashion designers? My twins would just carry on with their usual rolling around and my eldest would probably just look quizzically at me if I asked him and then ask for a biscuit and some ‘monkey juice’, (the cartons have monkeys on).

I don’t want my children to grow up, expecting that they will get new things whenever they want them. I’m not a complete Scruge – I do indulge them when I think they deserve it, but I certainly won’t nuke our finances into orbit in order to do so.I hope that by doing what I do, I am teaching them the value of money and the importance of saving and working for the things that they desire, instead of them growing into adulthood and expecting the rest of the World to fall into their way of thinking.  So much of adult life is targeted towards purchasing goods that really, we don’t need and probably won’t use once we’ve satisfied the urge – much like the huge pile of pyjamas I’ve accumulated. Do we really need to inflict this consumer rivalry onto our children at such a young age?

What stance do you take on this in your house? Do you buy new without a thought, or do you go down the second-hand route? Maybe you do a bit of both? I’d love to hear from all of you!