I have been too busy trying to stay afloat of all the craziness lately, of the new job and other things, to write about all of the realizations/adjustments I have been trying to make, or have decided that I should make. I've had to do a lot of thinking/writing out in the past - way too much to post here - it was helpful to me, but probably not for others, though it would show the crazy long thinking process it took for me to sort through my scattered needs and limitations. Anyway, as of now, things have trickled down to what's in this post. A few things that I have learned about myself along this recent journey - that will have to be built into a routine:
- I need to be in bed by 10 pm routinely, by 11 pm at the very latest as a fluke. Sleep is the biggest foundation to setting the tone to my next day - I can't start a fresh new day without proper sleep - it's the worst feeling physically and mentally, to just be dragging on from the past x number of days without good sleep - and for me, it's not just a once in a while thing, poor sleeping habits have been the norm for years now. Part of it is just that I wasn't sleepy at night, I would naturally want to sleep late in the morning - but I would get up anyway because I had to. I do think I've found that if I do a routine where I do some light reading just before sleep, then I can be relaxed enough to sleep at 10.
- I need the peace and quiet of morning solitude, at least for a bit, and I feel much better about my life goals when I spend at least a little time in religious study (my longest standing special interest, as well).
- I am terribly uncomfortable in my own skin, as well as causing physical and mental/emotional health problems, by not working out and losing weight. But the only time I'm going to work out is in the morning. I simply will be too tired when I come home after work. So I need to keep it short (half an hour) so that I can squeeze it in before work.
- When I come home, it is so, so, so tempting to collapse into some form of escapism or special interest - or to just gorge (more on that later). But I need to do 2 things right away:
a) Walk my dog immediately, before I take any of my outdoor clothing off, because once I take it off, I won't want to get uncomfortable putting it back on and reacclimatizing to how that feels and how it feels outside. Also, my dog isn't much fun to walk - she is extremely slow and fights the leash a lot, so as much as I love my dog, I hate walking her - so it feels SO much better to have gotten it overwith right away rather than having to do it later after I've settled into being home.
b) Take a shower right after I bring my dog in. Honestly, I would prefer to do this immediately after getting home, if it weren't for what I observed above. But I have noticed that I have so, so much to process from work - and I can wind up doing that all evening and ruining all of my time off from work, and not even getting anything effective out of it. Somehow, the ritual of a shower while letting that processing occur helps me really relax and shift into home mode, I come out of the shower on a different wavelength, a much better one for home. Maybe despite thinking that whole time, the fact that I am also performing a physical ritual helps me get past preseveration? My shower ritual is the only true, rigid ritual that I have, and also the longest standing one, so maybe it helps me in ways I don't understand.
- So what gets in the way of everything is my disordered eating. I won't say I have an eating disorder, but I do have disordered eating. I think it started with weight I put on from emotional eating, though also likely due to my undiagnosed thyroid issue at the time - so I decided to go on a diet. I counted calories, did everything "right". I lost a bunch of weight and felt great. Then all of sudden something very strange happened - I could no longer tell when I was hungry. I had to keep eating of course, I didn't want to become anorexic - but I didn't know what to eat or when - whey I didn't just keep going with the strictly planned out diet - I think once I got a new job at the time I just didn't have the life balance required to stick to it - but then, yeah, basically, my eating went crazy and out of control through mounting stress and not being able to tell when I was truly hungry or truly full. I still struggle with this - I feel I have zero control over food in my life, I just can't figure out what to eat that will be effective for me. What has made this a lot worse is the real effects of a thyroid issue that leave me feeling low energy to begin with, and the many dietary restrictions I've had to deal with for health reasons....all the simple, healthy, clean foods I would have eaten before to get back on track are off limits much of the time. I end up barely eating all day, not even sure what to pack for lunch, then I get home famished and gorge - but even then, due to the restrictions, I never feel satisfied, just yucky. I do think there's a link between a healthy gut and a healthy mind - if nothing else, it leaves me feeling physically uncomfortable as well as mentally foggy. And food is one of very few creature comforts that I have, so it has been very hard to not turn to it as a tool/crutch - to lift, to calm, to comfort, to strengthen, etc......only now, I don't think it's even accomplishing that anymore, I think I always just feel kind of bad....
....Which leads me to think, I think I need to face the fact that I am just sad deep down inside, and have been for some time. I've tried to escape it through food and shopping and escaping into special interests. Maybe because of all the major craziness of the past decade plus new stressors all the time....because of unexpected circumstances that are difficult and confusing....uncertainty of the present and future, feeling unstable in some ways....just being overwhelmed, just too much to process and not enough time/resources to do so. I'm hoping a healthy lifestyle will help process and prevent some issues, I think bodywork can really help. I've been engaged in all kinds of things over the years to help process emotions and anxieties....but that journey continues. But I think I need to just face and accept my inner sadness over some things - things that haven't turned out the way I would ever have thought, things that scare or confuse me that I can do nothing about. And that's entirely in addition to the "usual" scares of living in a crazy NT social jungle.
