stop beating myself up

Meds help. But still a work in progress.

After the stress of the family stuff had passed away mostly, I fell back in my old ways in many areas, including this one. It made me very sad and angry because I thought that I had fixed this issue… So now I’m beating myself up because I’m still beating myself up. It’s a spiral and so very very tiring…

It doesnt matter what I achieve, I always think I could do better, I never really congratulate myself only reprimand myself for not doing even better than I did. I tell myself I was too lazy, too stupid, too old, too young, too naive etc etc. If I get something wrong, I find it really hard to let myself off and I just keep thinking about my mistake over and over in my head and what I could have done differently. I need to start loving myself more and reminding myself that everything is a learning experience.

During the last few weeks my whole life came to a stand-still because of family circumstances. And that’s okay. A very small voice in my head is telling me that I’m using this as an excuse, but I’m getting better at being kind to myself.

At. All.

This will be a work in progress for years, if not forever…

Although not a lot of things have changed, the future looks a lot brighter lately. I’ve made some progress in important areas and I’ve made some good decisions about where I want to go from here. Just trying to take it step by step. I think one of the most important things now is: knowing what to do if things go bad again. When I feel more prepared, it might not get that far, because I feel more secure.

Yesterday I had a long talk with someone about where I stand at the moment, study-wise. It was a very non-emotional talk, I just explained everything I had been doing, and what I should or could be doing now, and what obstacles there were in the road. It felt like looking at all this from a distance and that helped. It’s not all that bad and scary. I think I might need to write some of this conversation’s conclusions down somewhere.

It’s hard to say if I’ve made progress on this goal or not… It’s so much easier to be nice to yourself when you’ve accomplished things. Things are definitely looking up since this past week, but I can feel that I’m still very critical on myself. For instance, I’ve done a lot of work on my thesis, and a little voice in the back of my mind keeps calculating the average work I have done, and what that means for the total progress, and how much that means I have to do today to keep the same average, etc etc… Hard to switch it off. I try to laugh at it, that helps a bit.

I usually beat myself up when i don’t go to the gym, but I’m trying to get more perspective on my life. I’m working on a ‘personal mission statement’ (7 Habits) and working out is not the most important thing in the world to me. I had other pressing issues like studying, spending some quality time with a friend, preparing for a presentation, and spending some time with my husband.

Also, I’ve been less rigid in my food rules. I know the more rules I put around food and the more I beat myself up the harder I crash when I end up binging.

Last night I had a ‘paradigm shift’—it dawned on me that whatever level of maturity or ‘goodness’ I’m at it doesn’t affect how ‘worthy’ I am. It makes no difference at all. I think I have been attaching too much importance to improving, and not accepting myself because I don’t measure up to my own standards.

It was really liberating to realize that my worth doesn’t change with my moods, or even with how I choose to act.