On a personal note...

I haven't been keeping up with this as much as I had originally intended.  I feel bad.  The whole point was to keep up with it, so that other people might benefit from my experience... but let me tell you.  When every day just seems exhausting, it's really hard to sit down, write about it, and re-live it all.

Also, there seems to be a lot of negative action going on in my personal life.  I think we need at least half of our roof replaced, I still haven't redone my bathroom, we have to sell our SUV, the mister's back still isn't completely healed and he's still not working, my job isn't as fruitful for me as it could be, and I'm just beat.  All of this stuff is very stressful and it weighs on me constantly.  I try hard not to turn this into a personal blog about ALL my crap, but in the interest of keeping it real, I just have a lot of BS happening.

I'm a little whiny.  I took some time off this week and originally had something specific planned for the weekend, but... that fell through.  I was also planning my big 30th birthday party for later in the summer, but now that mister isn't working and we just have my money and disability payments, looks like that probably isn't going to happen, either.  So poor me, lol.

Anyway, I'm going to try very very hard to wade through my crap and make sure I'm posting like I should be.  I really do care about helping others, and I need to make it more of a priority.

Trust Issues and Anxiety

What do you get when you pair trust issues with your anxiety?  You get paranoia & panic.  For me, I get obsessed with what people might be saying about me when I'm not around.  I get very withdrawn and very angry- internalizing it all.  For example, I often worry about what coworkers may or may not be saying about me.  Are they having a negative conversation with me as the central topic?  Sometimes I can't even enjoy my days off because I just sit around and worry incessantly about what other people are saying about me.  Maybe it's true and I should worry about it, or maybe it's not true and I should just chill the hell out, but the thoughts absolutely eat me alive.  This has proven to be a very stressful way to go about living my life.

This tells me a few things.
* The world needs nicer people
* I need to stop surrounding myself with busybodies or people I feel I can't trust
* More Meds!

I'm only partially joking.  Seriously, though, that's my biggest mental barnacle.  Can't trust anyone!  Add general anxiety and a dash of OCD and that is a recipe for conspiracy-theory-level paranoia...

And what THAT tells me is that my biggest trust issue is with myself.  If I can't trust that I'm the person I'm supposed to be, what else do I have left?  I try really hard, on the daily, to be the nice, cheerful, supportive kind of person I'm "supposed" to be.  What I'm really doing is over-compensating for my introvert qualities and the fact that I am actually very socially awkward.

I'm totally feeling like Eeyore, guys.  I don't want to drag you down, but it's just sort of ho-hum for me lately.

Keep it secret, keep it safe.
J

Bad Situations and Recommended Reading

Hey.  I don't have a lot to say.  I have been dealing with my own emotional and mental health, which has taken up a lot of my time and energy... I should be blogging about it, but I will provide a re-cap once my brain has stabilized itself a little bit.

In the meantime, this is an interesting post by a friend regarding how you see yourself, aka your self-value.  I think I could stand to read this daily, and make it part of my mission statement as a human being.  I have a very big issue with my self-worth.  I have a hard time figuring out exactly what I mean to myself and to the world.  This is something I've been going over with my therapist... who am I, what am I, where am I going?  It's difficult, but Mike offers an interesting perspective.

Enjoy.

May the meds be ever in your favor,
J