Laugh

One main way I can tell that I’m heading down a bad mental road as far as worry, overthinking, and anxiety go, is when I realize it’s been a really long time since I sang along to a song on the radio.

Two ways I can tell that I’m in a good mental place:  When I have this recurrent dream of driving in a convertible on a sunny day, and by how much I laugh out loud.  Since my Progress post, I’ve been noticing how much more I’ve been laughing out loud.  I just really give thanks to God for getting me in a place where I can embrace and enjoy the holiday season.  I think I can easily say this is the healthiest Christmas season I’ve had since my marriage nine and a half years ago.  I’m so looking forward to the next two weeks with my guys…

Heaven

One thing that I would really love to know when I get to heaven is how much money I saved using coupons throughout the course of my life.  Would it be in the thousands?  The tens of thousands?  Higher?

I hope I find out.

Drained

Do you ever feel like things just start piling up on you and at first you’re like, “I’m good.  I’m handling this well.”  and then one more thing happens and you’re like, “Okay!  That’s enough!”?  Now all those other little things that were being handled suddenly feel worse than before just because of the sheer number of things you’re dealing with.

I have no idea why we ended up scheduling so many doctor appointments in December, but this week I learned that:  My son has acid reflux and has started medication that he may very well be on for the rest of his life (at least his tummy aches should improve), he also has two cavities (despite the fact that we filled two a month before and the fact that I brush, floss, and use top-dollar fluoride on his teeth every single night), my husband’s health issues (which have an impact on our efforts to conceive) haven’t been resolved, and then Wednesday I found out I had an abnormal pap smear.  (I had no idea that was possible when you’ve been married ten years.)  That last bit of news led to a meltdown.  Thankfully, the sister-in-law that I often butt heads with, is an OB/GYN.  When she’s in that role, she can be surprisingly kind.  She allayed my fears and while I await rounds of further testing, my body will most likely (hopefully) resolve everything on its own.  (I appreciated my sister-in-law giving us the benefit of the doubt since she knows us so well…  That is SO awkward to have a nurse tiptoe around the suggestion that maybe my husband cheated on me and picked up an STD.  I realize she doesn’t know me from Adam, but still… awkward.)

Add to all of this, the undercurrent of my son’s heightened sensitivity this week.  First of all, I volunteered in his classroom last Friday, and I helped the kids decorate gingerbread men.  My son chose to bring his home so he could show Dad.  After showing Dad twice, he sat at the kitchen table and got big tears in his eyes.  Luckily, it was my husband who understood this one:  “You can’t eat it because it’s like a person, right?”  The big tears spilled over as he nodded his head.  My husband empathized saying that he had that same problem when he was a kid and he shared a sweet story about feeling bad about eating a dolphin-shaped sucker.  My poor son sat there, staring at that cookie, and sighing for nearly five minutes.  “It looks SO good, but I just feel SO bad!”  It finally got to the point where I gently said, “Take a bite and just do it or let me just set it back on the counter.  This is too much stress over a cookie.”  He chose to eat it, but when nothing but the head remained, he burst into tears all over again.  “He looks so bad without his body!  He misses his arms and legs!”  I advised him to hurry and eat the head so it could all be together again in his stomach.  He did.  Whew.

Then one morning when I was driving him to school, I pointed out how fiery the orange and red trees looked against the gloomy sky, and from the backseat – again with tears in his voice – I hear, “I know.  They’re so beautiful it almost makes me cry.”  Then Wednesday, we had made plans to make our own gingerbread cut-out cookies.  When I picked him up from school he said his tummy hurt all day because he just wanted to be home with me making those cookies.  I reassured him that we had plenty of time to make them together.  (I ignored my pounding head and drained body from the day’s medical report and dove in.)  We had a fabulous time making and eating the cookies, and my headache dissolved while we worked.  That night in bed, he started crying and when my husband went to ask why, he said, “It’s just the gingerbread cookies.  I love them so much and we had so much fun making them.”  My husband asked if he was crying because he was happy and he said yes.  I understand how he feels because I’m still the same way.  I just have to protect myself from being sucked into all of his emotion ON TOP of mine.

So, I’m drained.  I went to the gym though, and I have a massage scheduled so I expect to spring back to life before long…

Progress

So my goal was to take better care of myself from last Wednesday until today.  I already shared how the first part of my experiment went in my last post…  But, the weekend was fabulously relaxing.  It often is, but I make myself work for it all week which means neglecting myself for five straight days just for the sake of two.  So, perhaps the real test was Monday and Tuesday.  You know what?  I did pretty good.  I tried hard to slow down.  I tried hard to find little ways to enjoy myself throughout the day.  And I was actually enjoyable to be around in the evenings.  I’m not convinced that this is the “new me” though, by any means.  Those two days could have been total flukes.  Some days are just like that – they come easier for no real reason.

The main conclusion I’ve come to though, is that taking care of myself has been the theme of my entire journey back when it started three years ago.  It’s just that back then, taking care of myself meant figuring out why I was having panic attacks and how to avoid them.  I suppose you can say I’ve now arrived at a point where I need to focus on the daily ins and outs of taking care of myself.  When my son is home, I feel productive if I’m doing something enjoyable with him.  With my son gone for seven hours every day, however, I pretty much just have me.  And one of the many, many things I learned in therapy is that I’m not a very good friend to me.  I’ve come a long, long way in these three short years, but I’m realizing that I have a long way to go.  When I would tell my therapist the kind of self-talk I had, she would ask me if I would ever hold a friend up to those same standards – or if I would criticize her as readily as I do myself.  That was really eye-opening.  That radio program I was on said a healthy marriage attachment means you know when to go to your spouse to get your needs met, and when to rely on yourself.  I’m getting there, but I still find myself waiting for permission from my husband to relax or take care of myself.  I (cringe) fall into my mother’s role of martyr, complain for ten minutes straight, wait for sympathy (something my mother never got), and then he tells me to go do something fun.  I’m hopeful that if I continue on this path, I’ll quit leaning on him (and friends!) like that.  (Thanks, Erin, for all the times you’ve told me to relax and enjoy myself…  I really took that permission to heart!)

So I plan to continue on this path.  I’ll try to check in and offer little updates on how I’m doing.  It helps me a lot to feel like there are people out there holding me accountable in a way.

Act

I just got done reading this post and commenting on my blog-friend Jodi’s site, and I thought it was worth mentioning here.  First of all, Jodi has set some pretty impressive goals for herself for Advent, and then another blog-friend just successfully completed NaBloPoMo.  That – combined with all the talk of goal-setting on one of my favorite shows, The Biggest Loser – has me thinking about the power of setting goals.

The task-master in me loves the idea of saying, ‘I’m going to set out to do this by this date.’  My therapist told me about a technique where you sit down once a day and write out a sentence – setting forth what you hope to accomplish – something like 25 times a day, every day for a month.  It obviously isn’t magic; it’s just supposed to work because you are putting that goal at the forefront of your mind.  You become open to the opportunities that present themselves that may help you attain what you seek.  I gave up probably less than a week in, but what I was hoping for worked out anyway simply because I was trying harder to make it happen.

So I went to Adoration this week (as the radio hosts suggested), and it was kind of ridiculous.  This week has been pretty insane with doctors appointments, school volunteering and other odds and ends, that once I knelt down in the dim church I struggled so hard to stay awake, I couldn’t help but think of sitting through a boring college lecture.  I could hardly focus on what I came for.  I kind of gave up, struggled through a rosary, and then just opened my ears.  I really felt like God said, “Seriously Amy.  Go home.  Take a nap.  You can come back next week.  Same time, same place.  I’ll be here.  By the way, take better care of yourself and the answers you seek will come much easier.”  I suddenly realized that for all my “self-awareness” I’m still not ACTING on any of it.  I’m still ignoring signs that I’m overdoing things and it’s still making the people around me miserable.

On my drive home, I thought of all this talk of goal-setting and decided that I would try to take better care of myself from this Adoration until the next.  Well, that was yesterday, and today was crappier than ever.  I worried needlessly over my son about something pretty inconsequential, I spent an inordinate amount of time in my car, I started vacuuming the house before I rushed out to teach my first one-hour theatre class at a nearby private school, and when I came home I had about 30 minutes before leaving to get my son.  I stood there looking at my poor, neglected dog who hadn’t been on a walk since Monday and I was like, “What do I do with these 30 minutes?  What do I need?  Can I really discern this?  If I sit on the couch and do nothing I’ll feel horribly guilty.  Maybe I can go on a nice, relaxing walk with the dog and meet both of our needs!”  (The task-master in me LOVES multi-tasking as well.)  So, um, the walk.  I’ve decided that God was trying to send me a pretty clear message:  Someone’s little yip-yip dog came charging across the street at us.  My dog freaked out and the two started fighting and I got knocked on my rear in 30 degree weather.  Ouch.  Everyone turned out fine, but I went home with a sore hip and a pounding head, and a good sense that I had chosen wrong.

Pray for me that tomorrow is a better day.

Snow

Thank you, Lord, for yesterday’s Texas rarity:  Snow in December!  What a fun way to wake up and easily get out the door for school!

Famous

Okay, I’m not really famous, but I was on the radio!  Okay, it was just a small little Catholic AM station, but, hey, that’s something!

I was driving home from my allergist last week listening to my local Catholic AM station.  Most of the shows are nationally syndicated, so it’s actually FM in some cities.  The show I was listening to is one of my favorites because it’s hosted by a husband and wife and the husband is a psychotherapist.  I like a lot of the other programs as well, but I particularly enjoy that when callers call in, the response is two-pronged with his psychology background and her family-life education background.  And I like that they’re married with kids.

As I listened, I quickly experienced one of those ‘I was meant to hear this’ moments.  They were talking about how childhood attachment (which specifically describes how much you trust that your parents will meet your needs) is directly related to adult mental and emotional health.  They said many studies have been done that show a link between weak childhood attachments and adult resiliency.  I absolutely think my issues with capability are the same as whether or not I am resilient.  Then Dr. P. said something that I think I’ll remember for a long time.  He said that adults who have suffered weak or non-existent attachments often experience healing through parenting their own children.

I got to the grocery store, parked, pulled out my little post-its and started taking notes!  After I heard one caller, they said the number again and I thought – what the heck – I’ll call in.  The screener picked up after two rings and I about died!  I had kind of pulled together what I wanted to say, so after I told her, and waited on hold through one more caller, I got to talk to them!  (I thought about sharing the link, but it’s just so embarrassing! My voice is all high-pitched and nervous…  I figured you could live with just a summary.)

Just like with my therapist, I felt like after I spoke for less than two minutes, they understood who I was and what I was about.  The woman first spoke to me lovingly as a mother to a mother.  She reassured me that everyone goes through the same cycle of getting up their confidence about having more children and then psyching themselves out.  She said her childhood experience was similar to mine and she suggested that I pray in front of the exposed Blessed Sacrament.  (Something I have done, but not specifically for strength/discernment about having another child.)  She told me that if I left there feeling positive and empowered, then no matter how much psyching out I do, I can always draw on the memory of that experience.  (I was drawing on the sense I got after we prayed our novena last fall, but now that seems so far away!)  Then she turned it over to her husband to speak to the psychological aspect.

He was thoroughly supportive.  He said that the fact that I’ve been able to see parenting as a healing process from my childhood suggested that I’m at a good point in my journey.  He first told me to acknowledge that that healing process is very taxing (so true!), then he said to explore what is holding me back and if it was specific issues that could be worked through with the help of a therapist or supportive friends, then to go ahead and work through those.  If, on the other hand, it was just a generalized fear or anxiety then that was a temptation to be avoided with all of my strength.  He defined anxiety as the fear of doing something that would be good for us.  That made a whole lot of sense to me because, through my own reading and prayer, I had already concluded that succumbing to my anxiety is my biggest temptation.  Some have alcohol, others have gambling; I have worry.  I have been given the tools to recognize it and combat it, so to choose to succumb to it now is a matter of weakness or laziness on my part.

They ended by suggesting a… wait for it… self-help book!  You will be shocked to know that I’ve already ordered it and started reading it.  It is supposed to help me think clearly and objectively about my attachment to my parents as a child so I can have a clearer perspective and better sense of control over my ability as a parent.  Just from that short radio program, I’ve already had several ‘aha’ moments.  Since I did not trust my parents to meet my needs, I lack confidence that anyone – myself included – can meet my needs.  This explains why I used to obsess over “expert” opinions and why I’m unsure about my capabilities as a whole.  My parents played a God-like role where they told me what I needed, and they gave it to me whether I needed it or not.  This explains why I have such a tough time discerning what my needs are.  Lastly, because my parents never took the time to try to discern my needs and because of the environment of conditional love in our home, I understand the deep, deep fear I used to have that I would eventually lose the love of my husband and son and would end up alone in some psych ward.  (I have my mother to thank for all of her fatalistic stories that happened to involve psych wards.)

It was a little thing, but being a part of that radio program, and getting to hear advice from people whose advice I’ve come to respect, was a true moment of grace!

Thankful

When my son was about three-years-old, we started a family tradition that has quickly become one of my favorites.  To build anticipation for the coming holidays, and to keep our focus on what’s important, we tape a big piece of paper to my son’s bedroom door.  At the top it says, ‘The ___ Family is thankful for…’  Then every night from November 1st until Thanksgiving day, we take turns writing something we are thankful for.  Each of us has our own marker color so we can keep up with the rotation, and also because it’s fun to look back and see who was thankful for what.  Then, after Thanksgiving, I take it down, jot the year in the corner, fold it in half, and tuck it into our family bible.  (It’s huge, beautiful, and not overly practical for reading, so this is it’s main purpose right now…)  Then we do a different list to countdown from Thanksgiving to Christmas.  It’s harder to do, but in a way more rewarding.  I’ll try to remember to share it with you.

So our thankful list covers the obvious like food, clothes, our home, our dog…  But we also have the obscure: spiders, sweet tea, changes in weather…  And then the heartwarming ones from my son: Jesus, my school, hometown heroes (firemen, policemen, teachers)…

With that in mind, I thought I’d offer a more specific thankful list just from me.  I’m thankful…

1.  That my youngest sister and I are at least talking via e-mail and the phone.

2.  That I got out of a trip involving my sister-in-law.

3.  My son is home all week.  Sleeping in, no lunches to make, just hanging out…

4.  That all three of us are having a blast playing Super Mario Bros. Wii.  We have never spent this many hours excitedly playing a video game together.  (What time are you coming home Dear?  I need to time dinner to maximize our playing time…)

5.  That this is the first holiday season where I have known where I stand with my family going into it.  My boundaries are up high and they were up EARLY.

6.  For my new small Why Catholic group.  I’ve already learned so much from these ladies and I look forward to getting together with them more.

7.  For my blog friends, and for my pre-blog friends (some of who I think still read even though they don’t comment).  Both of these groups have so thoroughly supported me… and my pre-blog friends were there during some pretty serious BS.  Some of the help and friendship that I’ve been offered are acts of kindness that I think of regularly with deep gratitude.

8.  And, of course, I’m thankful for my amazing husband.  He has so crucially shaped who I am today, and he is so completely my support for the road ahead.  I am thankful for his willingness to listen, for his patience, and for his love.

I know this is an incomplete list and I’m likely to think of more the second I post, but these are the ones that are at the forefront of my mind…  How about you guys?  What are you thankful for this year?

Capable III

And, finally, the third installment of a three-part post on my capability.  Thus far I’ve been able to link my fears to my narcissistic parents, to the way they parented me as a highly sensitive child, and the way I parent myself now as a highly sensitive adult.  My goal for this post is to inject those thoughts into the issue of the day which is the decision we’ve made to have another child.

The way I’ve been talking thus far, you may have reasonably concluded that this post is no longer relevant, and that I’m back on the fence.  That really isn’t the case.  We’re still trying because I still have faith in the answer we received to our novena last year.  The part of me that is wavering is my confidence in myself.  How I feel on any given day, does, of course, effect how gung-ho I feel about trying, but all in all we haven’t given up.

I mentioned to Jodi that I was going to bring God back into the discussion with this post, so here goes:  God knows how much I question myself.  When I had my son and the whole hospital incident happened, I had huge doubts about whether I was capable of keeping this baby alive.  My biggest fear was that he was going to choke and die.  In an attempt to bring me down a notch, the post-partum nurses even had me, my parents and my in-laws watch a video on choking to boost my confidence in being able to care for him.  So when my son was about a year old and he came down with croup in the middle of the night  – without a single symptom of sickness during the day – I felt like the time I had been dreading had come.  My husband was asleep in our bedroom with the baby monitor.  I happened to walk into the room right when I heard my son’s strangled little cry.  I ran into his bedroom, saw him on all fours, trying to cry, with thick liquid dripping from his little mouth.  I lifted him out, saw that his lips were blue and unzipped his pajamas.  His little chest was heaving so deeply, I could count every rib.  I yelled to my husband to call 911 as I yanked down his pajamas, carried him into the bathroom, and stabbed his outer thigh with his epi-pen.  By the time the paramedics arrived, he was breathing a little better but had a wicked cough.  We rode to the Children’s Hospital with adrenaline and anxiety running through all three of us.  The aftermath of that day involved apathy and selfishness from my mother, an outpouring of support from a dear friend, and a slightly higher sense of confidence because I had taken the steps I needed to to keep him alive.  Was I cured of my doubt?  Hardly.

So, when the same thing happened less than a year later, I was ready.  I had taken him to the pediatrician THREE times in the days leading up because I knew his cough was bad.  My doctor was out of town, so I saw a new woman who was a NEW doctor (who also doesn’t happen to be in the practice anymore).  She treated me like a hysterical mother and told me to feed him chicken soup.  When he had stridor again, I moved much faster and much more confidently this time.  My husband knew his role was to call 911 while I administered the epi-pen.  This time the paramedics arrived and were like, “Weren’t we here for this same thing another time?”  But this time I wasn’t shivering with fear.  I started ranting on my driveway like a madwoman:  “YES!  AND I TOOK HIM TO THE DOCTOR THREE TIMES BECAUSE I KNEW THIS WOULD HAPPEN.  SHE FUCKING TOLD ME TO FUCKING FEED HIM CHICKEN SOUP!  I KNEW I would be in the ER tonight!!!”  They took his vitals and as we walked to the ambulance, I apologized for my foul mouth and the men just chuckled saying they had heard worse.  The aftermath of this one?  I was now confident.  I had predicted it.  I had managed it.  I had lived through it.  Whatever you need to throw my way life – BRING IT ON.

God knows what I can handle and he knows to throw me tests when I need to grow.

Here’s what my Highly Sensitive Person book says about HSPs having children:  “Children seem to thrive when their caretakers are sensitive.  And I have met many highly sensitive caretakers who were at their happiest tending to their children… I have also met some who have not had children or who limited their family to one child entirely because of their sensitivity…  No one can deny that children do greatly increase stimulation in life.  To a conscientious HSP, they are a great responsibility as well as a joy…  Sometimes it’s smart to see our limits.”  (Feel free to buy some copies of the book from Amazon in case Dr. Aron has a problem with me quoting her in my blog…)

So my overriding question is:  Do I know my limits?  The really great thing is that I can’t guarantee that I get pregnant, only God can.  And, like I said, I trust that He knows my limits.  And when He thinks those limits need to grow, He’ll test me.  So maybe my job now is to stop questioning.  Stop analyzing my capabilities.  And start trusting.

Capable II

First of all, thank you for your outpouring of support!  Even though these are virtual relationships, they are very much real and I truly take to heart what everyone has to say.

Here’s my second installment.  How my fears of being incapable tie into my newfound discovery that I am a highly sensitive person (HSP).  Surely you don’t think I traveled this leg of the journey without the help of a self-help book, right?  Now, I’m still finishing this book, (I didn’t gobble it up like I did The Highly Sensitive Child) but I’ve read enough to understand that up until now I have considered my sensitivity to be a major flaw – mostly because I didn’t realize that my problem is just that I’m sensitive.  To simplify things, I will clump together my sensitive personality traits into two categories:  those dealing with risk-taking and those dealing with my sensitive nervous system.

First of all, the book talks a lot about HSP’s having a strong ‘pause-to-check’ system.  Meaning we don’t dive into anything without first taking in thousands of pieces of information and analyzing them for possible danger.  The first six months my son was at The Little Gym, he was content to sit in a corner and just watch all of the other children as they climbed, tumbled, rolled and explored the padded equipment.  As a mother, this means I have to walk a fine line between encouraging him to take risks and giving him permission to observe and analyze before entering in on his own terms.  Based on my last post, I’m sure you can guess what my mother did for me.  With her deep need to be needed, she was content to let me cling to her leg instead of joining the other kids.  Thankfully as I grew older, I decided to take risks on my own so I could weigh for myself the benefits and drawbacks.  The main problem was that when I suffered a consequence of having taken a risk, I was on my own in dealing with it.  My mother’s general opinion was, ‘This is what you chose.  I would never have chosen something that took you away from the family.  So deal.’  For example when my boyfriend (now husband) and I decided to attend different colleges, I was proud of myself for not following him.  I needed to go to a different school because of my major.  I took a risk, but I was devastated.  The main reaction I remember from my mother was the equivalent of an eye roll and shoulder shrug.  She didn’t even want me to take the risk of living away from home on campus.

So without any kind of parental support or encouragement, my choices seemed black or white.  Play it safe and follow Mom and Dad forever, or take some risks but do it completely on your own.  Consequently, the book helped me learn that I don’t know how to parent my adult self.  I don’t listen when my body is telling me that I’m getting overwhelmed.  Worse, I beat myself up for it.  I feel weak because I don’t take more risks in life.  For example: traveling.  Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy traveling.  Under highly controlled circumstances.  With lots of pre-planning.  There is so much potential for things to go wrong and, if you remember this, then you’ll get that trips are even harder because in my family each trip was going to be the best ever.  Throw into the mix all of the new sights, sounds, smells that come along with living somewhere else for a week and I’m left with a recipe for a major meltdown.

Now, the second category:  my sensitive nervous system.  Apparently 1 in 5 of us was born with a highly sensitive nervous system.  Every little thing we take in through our senses has to be analyzed and put into little compartments in our brain.  The author talks a lot about being over-stimulated and over-aroused.  That feeling that you really just need some quiet or you want to be back in a familiar place.  I learned about this through my son before I ever noticed it in myself.  From even a very young age I could see him ’shut down’ after a series of errands, and knew that he would perk up once we got home and he had some quiet time in his room.  When I get over-stimulated, however, I’m not nearly as generous.  (Remember, it was:  Take risks or forever be shackled to a life of co-dependency with my parents.)  So, I get angry with myself.  (‘You’ve been in this store for maybe 20 minutes!  How can you be starting to get a headache already?  You haven’t even looked at that back section yet!  What are you gonna do?  Go home and lay on the couch like with your hand on your forehead Blanche DuBois-style?  Ignore how you feel!’)  So I ignore it.  Then I feel awful and I start lashing out.  My patience is gone and I am to be avoided.

Hopefully through this new awareness of my sensitivity – and the fact that my parents are narcissists, which is practically at the opposite end of the spectrum – I can learn how to make better and more loving choices for myself.  Including choosing to believe that I am capable of raising another child.  Especially if I parent myself better than my parents did.