You are doing great, Loves Trees! You are setting such a great example for others by taking care of yourself and firmly believing that you are worthy of that! Setting realisic and achievable goals is the key to success, isn't it?
This may sound wierd but I think it is accurate - the best reward i am giving myself is saying to myself daily "I deserve this" in terms of taking time to relax every day, not making a daily to - do list so long I can't get through it without rushing through, doing yoga daily even just for a few minutes, and all the while reminding myself "I deserve this" and believing it. After YEARS of not believing that i deserve a steady life with a SANE workload most days, this is the best gift I think i can give myself.
Since we've started to talk abouot the holidays on the site, I will say my goal this holiday season is to take as many time outs to breathe or do yoga or something else relaxing as I need, and to respectfully decline events if there are too many demands on me from others. The holidays is about something else now for me, not rushing around to meet everyone elses needs, although i do want to be there for those I love. but be there for myself first. and if that means staying home to rest after each busy day, so be it. i don't feel bad about needing what i need as much anymore. Very exciting.
Congratulations on your new success with learning to be assertive and also letting yourself grieve when you need to... This calls for a celebration thats for sure. You just have to get yourself something special as a reward because you deserve it for all of the hard work. I just went out and got myself a couple of new books to read as a reward because I deserve it too. I too find the Cbt program helps on so many fronts....Its really good to see you back on track and feeling better. I am so happy for you.......
I was so happy to read this from you! Thanks for the reminder that there is often "stuff" under the anxiety that has to be dealt with too. Sometimes when I get bogged down in all that I feel like I'm not making any progress, but it's important to realize that working through the underlying issues can be a big part of recovering from anxiety.
Hearing your speak so positively and honestly is wonderful! You have the skills to deal with the anxiety, grieving and being more assertive. Its clear that you're putting these skills to work and its working for you!
What are you doing with you free time and energy? How are you rewarding yourself?
I succeeded in raising an emotionally charged issue with someone without letting the feelings around panic take over. I managed to express myself based on optimistic beliefs rather than based on anxiety / negative beliefs. This is a huge success for me.
The number of times I have negative (anxious) thoughts during the day is lower. This in itself has freed up a lot of time and energy for me to focus on other things.
Most important to me is knowing and believing that the next time I get into a rut emotionally, I do have the skills to pull through it and that it won't last forever. My ruts have lasted anywhere from 3 days to 1 year in my lifetime. When I had a 1 year rut, I had no skills and no support to help pull me out of the rut and work on having positive beliefs about myself and living based on those beliefs. My most recent emotional rut was 3 weeks and based on processing lots of emotional stuff from the past. I wanted to include that info for people who find things "underneath" their anxiety when the cbt starts working and they wonder why there are still things to deal with. For me, there were things to deal with, the anxiety was its own issue, and a distraction from being able to deal effectively with other things such as grieving and also becoming more assertive in general. Cbt helps with the anxiety so that you can go on to tackle these other things. I was not prepared for what I was going to experience after going through the 12 steps of the program. Learning how to be assertive, learning how to grieve, those are still skills that take practice even with a lack of anxiety.
I feel i've had success today because I managed to take care of myself better and it is paying off. I am feeling much better.
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