Habitual Awareness
An assignment from The New Codependency (p 105):
Strive for habitual awareness. Spend a few minutes a day making a list of what’s going on with you. What are you feeling. What’s taking place? What’s upsetting you? What’s bothering you? Who is bothering you? What are you doing or not doing to take care of yourself? If you don’t know, write a goal: I want to become aware of what I’m feeling. Spend quiet time, or engaging in prayer or meditation help increase awareness. We can tell ourselves we’re too busy, we’re already overworked, we don’t want to do one more thing. But staying busy may be how we’re avoiding what’s going on with us. Invest ten minutes a day in taking inventory of our most valuable asset: ourselves.
Today is Sunday. D❤️ is at a friend’s house for a playdate, and the mom texted me to let her stay a couple extra hours because they’re having so much fun. What a total blessing, giving me more headspace and time. I’m feeling grateful for that, for my friends who have rallied around me (in small but supportive ways) since I told them about my separation.
I’m feeling free. For the first time in forever, free. I didn’t realize how much having H around all the time (thanks Pandemic) caused me to have a level of stress that never went away. I’m feeling guilty, because I notice that he’s trying to communicate more and I don’t see a path to us staying married. It’s just the start of six months, and things can change, but at this point in time, I’m so much happier without him around.
I’m feeling stressed because my sister asked me to bring her kids (daughter same age as mine, son two years younger) with me when I take D to my parents’ place over spring break. I want to be helpful, but her son is a lot more work than D❤️ and her best friend/cousin. The thought of a six+ hour car trip with three kids, stopping for bathroom breaks, gives me anxiety. Going to the beach with a six-year-old beginner swimmer is much different than with an eight-year-old strong swimmer.
I’ve done some work in the DBT skills workbook and the first exercise is an acronym (REST: Relax, Evaluate, Set an Intention, Take action.) I’m trying to apply it to the situation with my sister’s question. I asked her if we could table the discussion because I needed to think about it. Which is a good step, but it didn’t do anything to calm the tension in my stomach.
I’m also starting to work on self-esteem and began reading a book called Radical Acceptance, recommended by MT. He thinks I need to do affirmations, but affirmations make me really fucking angry. Which is why he thinks I really need to do them, but ugh.