03/21/23
I am feeling vulnerable. And I am feeling so good inside this new space I’m making.
I am feeling a little like the snake who just shed his skin. A little.
As I work toward adopting mindfulness, I feel lighter. And accomplished.
But I also know that generally my habit is to become enthused, then work really too too hard, then fall away from the positive shift in paradigm.
I do not want to sabotage myself.
But I have the weekly therapy session and the weekly class. These will make the difference. And all the worksheets in the big book DBT SKILLS TRAINING HANDOUTS and WORKSHEETS by Marsha M. Linehan. The book is massive, unwieldy. It is an overwhelming assortment of positive skills—training, writing things, working through emotion. And these are designed to be done over and over and over and over. But yesterday I began to figure out how the book is put together and I’m feeing better about it. It feels more manageable. And it’s really brilliant this book. The techniques are self-evident in the way that so many things you see to deal with the problem are really quite simple, but somehow everything comes together when you write things down. And repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
So today I have many things that I want to do and some things that I have to do. I’m taking James to the cardiologist this afternoon and I am feeling, well I don’t know what I’m feeling exactly. I’m preparing myself for the absolute worst–that the doctor would walk in and say James needs a heart transplant. I just do not know how we would deal with that. But I don’t know what’s going to happen so I just need a plan to get through the stress of it.
Of all the things I want to do the largest project is cleaning the ROOM. The ROOM was made available to us when Roslin moved out of the house. It is a small bedroom that I have turned into…basically a storage room. Groceries, cleaning products, medicines, empty boxes, art supplies, junk. There’s also a small fridge in the room and we put cold drinks in there and occasionally extra produce. There’s a little freezer that I have stuffed full of things right now that I need to go through and take out cause I’m sure that they’re probably all bad.
Mentioning all bad. in my effort to not buy so many things, so many duplicates of things that we already have in the house, I am paying more attention to expiration dates or not keeping meat too long in the freezer, i.e. actually following the two week guideline for a pound of hamburger meat in a regular refrigerator freezer. Which seems crazy to me because I have always kept hamburger meat available in case I want to throw something together really quickly. (I also grew up with a deep freezer, which I do not have, which you can leave hamburger meat in much, much longer) But I’m really trying to change the way I approach shopping for groceries.
If I lived in a big city like New York or Chicago, I could do that thing that city dwellers do. They don’t have cars, or a way to get $400 worth of groceries into their apartments at one time, unless they have them delivered. I’m trying to getting to thinking of that approach where you get exactly what you need for dinner, except I’m trying to get what we need for just the week. Or even by weekly. Or little trips here and there. I like to go to the grocery store once a week or once every two weeks and just stock up on stuff, but that is the mindset that has gotten me here. There is no scarcity of food. There is no scarcity of food.
Yesterday I cooked vegetables. Very simple, very wonderful. I’ve been inspired by the Japanese influencers that I’ve been watching on YouTube. The way that they eat is very just fascinating to me and so yesterday, when I made this pot of vegetables, I did it very differently than what I usually do. I cut everything into chunks basically and then I used chicken stock I think, salt pepper, butter, a little time and garlic and parsley. It is oh so good. Dale was kind of shocked about it because I never put big chunks of anything into anything. I don’t like big chunks. But this turned out so wonderful and the chunks don’t bother me.
In spite of the fact that I was feeling overwhelmed with trying to instill a new food environment, new eating habits into this household, I feel like I’m getting on firmer footing with that now. Because it doesn’t have to be hard. I don’t have to spend an enormous amount of time in the kitchen. Although I do love being in the kitchen and cooking, the process can take up hours and hours of time from the day. Sometimes I want to do that but other times no way. So being able to just throw things into a pot (instant-pot as a crock pot) is easy easy. So is making an Israeli salad if the salad is small. Also Israeli salad does not keep you have to eat it right away as Dale’s not eating the Israeli salad that I made, the enormous Israeli salad, attests to.
All in all I feel much better about the food thing. To help me learn to be mindful, one of the DBT suggestions is to eat with awareness. All through the counseling that I received for my food issues (I don’t want to say eating disorder anymore), fostering this kind of awareness around food was basically the goal. Now over these last couple of days, I have begun to eat with no distraction. This is difficult in that a big part of me does not want to eat without distraction, without the TV on, without my phone in my hand, without a book to read or something to look at while I’m eating dear eating gods what a punishment. But really it is not such a big thing if I just go ahead and sit down and pay attention to my food. And eat slowly. Which pretty much happens when I’m paying attention to my food. And I don’t eat all my food because I get full during the process of paying attention to my food. I can hear/feel the “fullness sensation” loud and clear.
But really this is enough about food and my issues with food and my issues with binging and my issues with just blah blah. I think today will be a good day. Yesterday was a smashingly good day.
On to it,
~r.
(There is clear weather in my head. No migraines. I do occasionally take a rescue pill to nip in the bud, and I am still sensitive to light, but the change is remarkable.)
