A Few From the Questions? Post

I will answer all of these in the next few days but I’ll start with these which talk about balance.

From Bluebird:

Susan, I know you’ve studied the subject of griefwork in depth. I’ve recently received a serious medical diagnosis (part of why I was left, I think-the thought of too much responsibility for someone who already had a lot of trouble with that). I’ve had some serious losses in my life over the last few years and I know I need to mourn them in order to move on with my life, but I have a fear that doing so might compromise my health, so I end up just trying to keep a stiff upper lip.

Sometimes I feel that if I started to cry, I’d never be able to stop, there’s just so much to process. Do you think it’s better to let yourself grieve, or just to try to focus on what there is to be grateful for, or how do you strike that balance?

When I was doing the core of my work I had fears that if I got in touch with my sorrow, I’d never be able to stop crying or if I got in touch with my anger I might actually kill someone. But you can’t physically cry forever, it’s impossible. It is important not to stiff upper lip it. It is very important to honor and process your feelings. Unresolved grief does NOT go away, it just stays and festers. See the Mourning Theory page for more on this.

But you MUST balance the work with positive energy, positive thoughts, gratitude lists and affirmations. You must do both. The balance is often self-directed. Sometimes when you’re in the pits and you have been in the pits you have to consciously and willfully say, “Okay enough of this, I have to go out and do something or go out and take a walk or go out and meet new people.” At the same time if you’ve been running around like a maniac, you have to stop and journal and spend some uninterrupted time alone and get in touch with your feelings.

It is a balance and too often people who are in the throes of grief just allow themselves to either be swept up by their emotions or they suppress them altogether. It IS a balance. And it has to be a decision, a conscious, proactive decision, to turn off whichever one you’re doing to the exclusion of the other and delve into the other side.

I’ve thought of trying a 12 Step program, specifically Codependents Anonymous, but am afraid I would feel too shy to contribute anything. I was wondering if you might offer some thoughts about what to expect and how to approach the experience, for those of us who have never tried it before. A big worry (I’m in a small town) is that I might somehow end up violating the privacy of someone else in my life and I don’t want to do that.

You can go to any 12-step meeting and just listen. In fact, they encourage newcomers to do just that. If called on you can say, “Hi my name is Jane and I’m a codependent. I’m new so I’m just listening tonight. Thanks.” or “Hi my name is Jane and I’m a codependent and I pass.” It’s important to identify yourself as a newcomer but sometimes people don’t even want to go that far so you can just pass. You don’t HAVE to say anything you don’t want to.

If you go to a 12-step meeting you will hear an axiom, “What goes on here, stays here.” They are all about the ANONYMOUS part of the program and that is how you deal with it in a small town. You don’t talk about who you’ve seen there or what you’ve heard there. It’s not that no one ever breaks this….but they deal with anonymity issues all the time. If you go to Tradition and Step meetings, you will learn more about how to deal with that.

If you pull up to any 12-step meeting and go inside, some regular at the meeting will most likely come over and talk to you. That’s how it works. Some meetings have “greeters” which are people who stand by the door and greet people coming in…usually they know who goes to the meeting on a regular basis. They will offer you “names and numbers,” people who sign a list for newcomers to be able to call. Even if there are not formal greeters, there will be people there who will come over and say hello.

I would not be where I am today without the unending support and incredible wisdom of 12-step folks. I had to go to a lot of meetings in the beginning to find ones that I liked or that worked for me, but I kept going and kept trying to find the place and once I found the ones that worked, my life changed dramatically.

And it works for balance too. I remember one night going to a meeting with my sponsor and the speaker didn’t show up and they asked me to speak. I was about 6 months along but feeling suicidal this particular night. What did I get up and talk about? How life sucked and there was no point to living? I didn’t think that would be good. I had been deep in the doldrums for DAYS. My sponsor said, “Talk about gratitude.” I thought, “GRATITUDE? Are you freaking kidding me?” Then the ex’s girlfriends ex-husband walks in the door. Talk about your perfect storm of horrible. He comes over to me like we are long-lost friends and he says, “Hey your ex and my ex are living together, how bout that?” and he was all happy/thinking that ironic. This was the first I had heard they were LIVING TOGETHER and I was mortified. Then it was TAH-DAH! time…time to speak.

I got up there and I spoke about gratitude. And as I talked about it, I felt it. Even though two minutes prior I was ready to kill myself and/or someone else. I spoke for 30 minutes on gratitude and after those 30 minutes I felt as if a HUGE weight had been lifted. It was wonderful. It worked. Without lecturing me on being grateful or kicking me out of my depression, my sponsor simply said, “Talk about gratitude.” and with that, I became grateful. Amazing.

Also, I’ve been using the thought stopping and it helps, so thanks for that. I snap my wrist band and then quickly turn my ex’s name in another (healthier) direction. GARY (not his real name (-;) I use as an acronym to help change my thoughts: G (Gratitude for all I have in my life) A (Act as if) R (Reject the rejector and/or keep reaching out) Y (Yes to new experiences, yes to my own life).

That is a WONDERFUL ACRONYM! Thanks for sharing it!!!

Moving On writes:

Here’s a question that may seem strange: How do you know if you’re relaxing or being lazy/depressed? I’ve always been a workaholic, running around, hanging out with people, getting things done, etc. This was especially true during the past year, where I drowned myself in a myriad of tasks to avoid focusing on the fact that my relationship was deteriorating and couldn’t be saved. Now that I am “free,” I’m living on my own, taking the time to relax and unwind in a way I haven’t in a long time. But I can’t tell if what I am doing is genuinelly relaxing or just lumping around. It feels peculiar to me not to be busy. I go to work and see friends a couple times a week, but I have a lot more downtime. I know this is time I could be exercising or journaling but it’s time I am instead just zoning out, because I haven’t had the chance to do it in so long. Napping, watching TV, reading, surfing the Web, etc.
When does it stop being relaxing and start being depression?

That’s NOT a strange question. Even if you were depressed, a certain amount of lying around is healing. It becomes detrimental when we do it too much.

Think of it like the flu. You are getting the flu and feeling awful each day that passes and you keep trying to do what you normally do. At some point you have to recognize that you are NOT operating at full capacity…in fact you are becoming a danger to yourself and others as you try to go through each day as if nothing is wrong. Something IS wrong.

Its similar when you’re grieving. You know you’re “off” and that you are not concentrating and could pose a hazard to yourself or others. At some point you have to stop and recognize you’ve had a loss. A big loss…and you might need to go home and cry and be depressed for a few days.

After you’ve had the flu for a few days and have stayed home to GET BETTER, you start to feel better. Maybe you could go to work today but you feel like you should give it another day and then maybe another and another. At some point you KNOW you’re well enough to go to work but hey, let’s milk this for what it’s worth. Not your conscious thought, but your actions. You’ve become complacent and lazy. What started out as necessary rest and relaxation for recuperation has turned you into a slug. The only way to battle it is to get up, get honest and get back in the game.

But perhaps you were a workaholic before the flu struck…now you know that laying around could be healthy and recuperative even if you DON’T have the flu. So you go back to life with the intention of putting some relaxation into your day, going home early, spending time with you. So now you’ve been ill person running around when you shouldn’t be, ill person under the covers as you should be, well person under the covers as you shouldn’t be, workaholic trying to put some balance into your life. But make sure you have that balance and KEEP that balance in your life and don’t fall back into old habits of never relaxing.

It’s the same with grieving and relaxing. You have to learn some lessons in relaxation by purposely “going down for the count” and allowing the process to happen and heal you. And then you realize that you might feel good enough to go out but staying home and being a slug has taken hold and you just continue to veg out, snack and watch bad tv. You might think: It’s not so bad this hiding from the world thing….

…but at some point you have to put yourself back out there in LIFE. But you need to take the valuable lesson of relaxing and spending ME time. It’s uncomfortable at first but eventually you get used to it. If you feel that you are doing too much relaxing at the detriment of journaling or exercise, then you are doing it too much.

Spend some time each day relaxing and vegging out. But also spend time exercising and journaling. It’s all a balance. It’s all about doing ALL the thing you need to do to take care of you.

Write a list. Write down all the things you have to do each day and make sure that relaxation, journaling and exercise are on there. Make sure you schedule these things if necessary.

Yesterday I had a chuck full day and I scheduled just about every single thing I did minute by minute.

My magazines have been piling up and reading my favorite magazines is important to me. I knew I had been neglecting them. I wanted to get through my latest issues of The Week, New York magazine, The New Yorker and PC Magazine. I also wanted to get a bunch of appointments out of the way. I also wanted time to spend alone and eat out. I also wanted some vegging time and time to spend on the blog. We were also going to have a snowstorm today (it’s snowing now) and I wanted to stop at the store and get some birdseed (I’m a sucker for feeding animals). A lot to pack in a day. Yes.

I read The Week on the way to my first appointment. I took a long lunch at Grand Central Station and read New York Magazine and The New Yorker while watching the New York world go by (Grand Central is a great place for people watching, something I LOVE to do).

I did my afternoon appointments and then read email on my Blackberry on the way home. Hubby met me and joined me at the store. We had a good talk on the way home and at the store and agreed to go out to dinner ALONE this weekend (something we have not done in a while and NEEDS to be scheduled). I then went home and got into my pjs. I took the laptop into the bedroom where I clicked on the tv, did some blogging, read my fav baseball blogs while watching Celebrity Apprentice and Lipstick Jungle (my vegging out time), clicked off the tv, finished my magazine reading in bed and then answered a few more emails before finally turning out the lights. My day started at 5:30 am and ended at 2:30 am. A full day but very productive and I wasn’t that tired at 2:30 am but I knew I needed to get some sleep. And I had a schedule in front of me the whole time. Sometimes it just all has to be scheduled. :) Other days I get up at 7 am and do next to nothing but work until around 11 pm where I go to sleep. On the weekend my husband and my daughter and I schedule our movie times around everything else. Each day is different.

You can do it. You can schedule relaxing and journaling and exercise and whatever is important to you.

Balance balance balance. that is why OBSERVATION is so important. Keep checking in, keep keeping tabs on yourself. Make sure you’re doing everything you want to do that is important to you and that you are taking time for you.