living without anxiety

Overcoming trans-generational conditioning is the greatest achievement of my life.  I always hated the classic interview question; what is your greatest achievement.  It was one I was never comfortable with.  Since I overcame my conditioning to be modest and not boast I could list so many achievements.  Last week my mother came to stay as my children were ill.  I was more than a little stressed about it as she tends to criticise and I used to feel so inadequate.  I have learned to expect to feel well.

I have learned not to panic when confronted with a change of plan or difficult situation.  I have learned to accept my limitations.  I have learned to accept myself.  I watched my mother start to panic as I had no definite arrangements made for who would mind the children the day she was leaving.  I realised that it was just a small thing and arrangements could be made, there were options and there was no need to panic.  It is so nice to be back to my normal optimistic self.  The one who believed if you plan it it will happen, the one who believes that the world is full of possibilities, that there is a solution for everything.  Its nice to be well and its better to be better.

So today why not take the time to look at the things you do well, your greatest achievements and pat yourself on the back for your efforts. 

dont fence me in , learning to live without anxiety

So here I am back home after a very not eventful morning at work, no desk , no boss, but all good.  Best day at work ever and am not being sarcastic.  Nice and gentle easing back into the world of work where everyone is preoccupied with their own stuff and I am incidental.  This is a marked contrast from my previous job where there would be a disorderly queue forming on my return from holidays or a day off.  I am just incidental and not the main attraction, just the side show.  It is very liberating being out of the spotlight and being fairly invisible again.  I did not like the scrutiny I was under, where my every movement was questioned and judged.  Amazingly wonderful to be able to go home to the comfort of my home at lunchtime to a happy family cared for by the lovely nanny.  I was visited by anxiety this morning but it soon passed.  I thought of how I need to learn a new way of being in the mornings now.  For years morning was a time to be anxious, what crisis would I face today, what problem would visit me, who would be making a complaint today, what irate person would shout at me.  I did not have the skills to deal with all that and now I do.  I learned not to try harder but to try easier.  I now ask myself how can I make this easier, how can I do this in a more gentle way.  Why not show kindness.  I am living life again.  There are so many people advising me on how I should be and what I should do now.  My episode had given me insight into why they are doing it.  I am tempted to tell them what they are projecting from themselves onto me but so few people are open or interested enough to want my insights.  I am viewed by many as being the same as I was before the episode but I am more like I was when i was 24 not 44.  I have reconnected with my soul.  My children are going through the is there a God phase, the nanny is bud-dist, their father is an atheist, i am non religious but raised a very strict catholic, their granny is Methodist, the other granny catholic, great granny is Church of Wales and I have had a few friends who are witches or whatever the politically correct phrase is for those people who heal with herbs and worship the goddess or the universe, not entirely sure what they do exactly.  Yesterday I was asked about the existence of heaven and I concluded that I could not live in a world where there was no heaven.  I suppose heaven represents hope for me.  The hope that there will always be something good to look forward to.  Having things to look forward to is what keeps us all going.  Planning nice family outings, thinking about the next lovely flower that will bloom, waiting for the sunflowers to bloom, and they did yesterday finally, all these things go a long way to keeping us well and contribute to our well being.  

Dont fence me in was the song rattling around in my head today as I walked into the new office I will work in.  We have a joke in my family, go to work for a rest as my mother found running a home far more difficult that having a full time job outside the home.  She lived in the days of the ban on married women working, wow no wonder she pushed me to have a career.  So now we live in an age where there are so many machines to make the job of running  home and caring for a family so much easier.  I shall miss being at home with my family but I will not miss the anxiety and depression that put me there.  I am now learning to live without anxiety and it is a strange habit to break.  I am surprised that I am expecting to be anxious and am thereby creating the anxiety feelings.  I read about this and realise that it is my thoughts that I need to change to change how I feel.  So I shall focus on how I am well and I have learned so much about myself and how to be alive.  Anxiety can become a habit if I let it in again.  So I am off to have a lovely cup of tea and wander back to my afternoon meeting with the director.  

We can all fence ourselves in.  We can all lock ourselves into those bad habits that do us no good.  It is up to ourselves to release us from our self made bondage and free ourselves to live.

So today go off and look at where you have fenced yourself in and ask your self what would my life be like lived without fences.