avoiding avoidance

Today I realised the extent of my very very bad habit of avoidance, so I decided to make a list of all the things I learned during the course of my episode which would help me overcome such a pointless pattern.  What finally worked was the Recovery Inc tool; do things in part acts. I had a job to do that I had previously found difficult and I was avoiding doing it.  I realised why half way through the task but carried on anyway, another lovely tool, bear the discomfort to gain comfort.  These tools are very powerful but so too are many others.  The key is to be open and to be aware.  It would not have mattered what tools I had in my wellness tool-bag if I had not recovered enough to be aware that I had a problem.  They say experience is recognising your mistakes each time you make them.  I think it will be important for me to work on avoiding avoidance.  Like any other process the first step is to recognise and define the problem and to quantify the extent of it.  By consciously recognising the things that I like to avoid and by floating through them I am avoiding less and less.  By building on the small successes I find it easier to work up to the more difficult things and soon I hope that I will deal with everything in a timely way.  My biggest problem for ages was the post.  This probably stemmed from the days when I received alot of negative post and I hate reading it.  Now I have a lovely letter opener and I stab the letters with it as I open them.  This helps to dissipate the negative feelings I have for opening post.  Doing things straight away is also very good.  Doing things when they needed to be done was something I very much took for granted, when I lost my ability to do that I thought it was gone forever.  It was only through acceptance of myself and my limitations that I recovered.  

Acceptance is the key to so much.  Accept yourself and free yourself from the constraints of how you should be.  You are exactly as you are no more no less.  I spent a long time saying to myself I am enough as I am and I finally believed it.  

I AM enough as I am.