Comfort zone
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| My comfort zone: Sitting on a bus on a rainy day |
I have a busy mind, and a strong sense of responsibility or duty. That sort of thing easily leads to stress because I've lost the ability to say "no" without guilt. So anxiety has been creeping up on me for almost two years. It's mostly work, but that means that anything bad happening outside of work becomes harder than it needs to be because I have nothing extra to give.
I canceled a trip to Czechia this summer. Prague, home of the astrolabe clock tower, is a city I've wanted to see for years. But it went back on my bucket list due to being so utterly stressed out I couldn't even think about packing without crying. I wasn't staying in the moment but instead had leapt ahead to the week after vacation at work.
Bad move.
A good move was telling a friend and getting some time to talk. Another good move was looping my boss in on what was going on when I got back to work. She sent me to the company shrink.
The psychologist was in a neighborhood I hadn't been to before, so I had to figure out bus schedules, and timing so I wouldn't get stressed out if I got lost. I made a decision about which bus to take, and I had taken it before so I knew that leg of the journey.
Sitting on the bus, on a rainy day, knowing I didn't need to worry about missing my stop, I started to feel myself again. I was back in my comfort zone. I know this. I know how to ride a bus. I know the rain. I know how to get myself to an unfamiliar address. I know how to adult that much. So I watched the windshield wipers fight the weather, feeling all warm and fuzzy.
The meeting with the psychologist gave me what I needed. A chance to think out loud and get some feedback. I know all this shit. I know about meditation and affirmations and etheric oils and about not trying to live up to the imagined expectations of others, but all that is beyond my grasp right now. And I kind of want it to be. I don't want to figure this out by myself even if I do know what to do. I want to talk to someone else, get some perspective my own brain can't come up with. Most importantly, I need to hear I'm normal. I don't know that I am, you see.
The psychologist told me I am, and it felt good to hear. One thing I told her was that I feel guilty just sitting. I like surfing the 'net. I like solving sudokus while I listen to my favorite podcast. I like knitting while I watch TV. I like sitting at a keyboard, typing. I like writing. But according to every article I've ever read, all this sitting will kill me, so I feel bad about sitting.
But I like my "sitting hobbies"! And especially the writing and knitting, both activities that produce something, are rewarding. So she asked me, since I was already down and didn't need more pressure, what about not beating myself up further, but instead look upon my "sitting hobbies" as something good, something helpful?
Hmm…
Coincidentally, in the way only the universe knows how to organize, a fellow blogger challenged me to write about song lyrics for three days and, boy, did that feel good, even if it was a topic I would never pick! Just the act of writing, of looking for links and words and putting them together.
One lesson learned.
Stay tuned. I'm not done yet. With any of this.
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