Thursday, July 21
A strong leaning toward guilt and the total conviction that most everything is my fault are two of my less endearing traits. Active, to be sure, but not very enjoyable for me or anyone else.Between the guilt and the everything-being-my-fault, I have moments when my self-esteem isn't what it should be. I am, thankfully, aware of the ways these things manifest themselves when I'm feeling this way, and thus, can hopefully backtrack to make things better.
I suppose everyone has something they do to mentally avoid thinking about unpleasant things. Most times, I do it subconsciously. Only when I've been doing it often enough in a short enough time span do I usually realize what's going on.
For me, when something (or more than one something) bothers me in ways that I don't want to deal with, I tend to turn inward, blaming myself (guilt and fault all in one) by assuming that the problem is with the way I look. And then I begin talking badly about myself, both to myself and to others, and becoming frustrated with what I look like, what I wear, and on and on.
When I become frustrated with something with Mike that I'm not comfortable talking about with him, I tend to become annoyed with his lack of help around the house (which, though well-documented, isn't always the actual issue).
I've been doing both lately, and after a particularly unpleasant lunchtime with him, I realize that I need to stop and acknowledge the things that bother me now, rather than continuing on this unhappy pathway.
As for me, I've been worried about money lately, about how we're going to pay for his hearing aids and how we're going to manage to pay off the credit cards and add to our savings at the same time when I also think there are things we need to do to our house if we want to sell it at some point. And thus, I've set off thinking that we wouldn't have these problems if I didn't like cute, new clothes, which is less true in light of the fact that we're about to drop another grand on tuition this month.
As for Mike, I'm a little freaked out that he probably won't manage to finish his dissertation by the end of the summer, yet another self-imposed deadline missed. And because I know he's working really hard on that, and I don't feel right being angry with him for that, I'm annoyed with him for not accomplishing any of the home tasks he and Griff were going to do this summer.
There. I've said those things and maybe now I can quit hiding behind the fake issues and actually focus on what can be done to help the actual issues.
[ posted by Chel on Thursday, July 21, 2005 ]
[ 1 comments ]
1 Comments:
Yes! Focusing on the real issues. It's often more painful, but I believe, always more rewarding and maturing. Thanks for your prayer about the friend situation, by the way.
