Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Always spend a little time on yourself...

Here's the deal, I love my husband. A lot. And that doesn't even come close to touching the depth of feeling that resides within me. He's funny, smart, caring, motivated and just in general a great guy. (You can stop gagging now, I am about to tell you some faults.)

The other night I was in a FOUL mood. Like, beyond foul. Of course, it was one of the only nights that my normally "sensitive and in tune with my needs" husband felt like I was having some sort of a bipolar episode and needed to be around people. If the people in question were at my apartment I may have been more receptive to the idea, however, it wasn't at my apartment and I was really in the mood to be a complete bitch. In order to not ruin everyone else's night, which turned out to ruin at least Terry's night, I opted to stay home and keep my wretchedness to myself.

When I went and picked him up from hanging out with his friends the ride home was extremely tense and when we got home the tension just rose. The actual conversation ended up being pretty ugly at the beginning, but as usual it was not an argument but a conversation. In addition, as usual, there were some very helpful points that were brought up:

1) Terry spent a long time telling me that I hide behind my bipolar and that we need to figure out when I am bipolar and when I'm not. This was huge because it tells me that I am doing a few things wrong. Like communicating my needs, releasing my emotions properly, among a few other things. It was an important discovery, even though every time he opened his mouth I was deeply offended (mostly due to my foul mood).

2) He asked "do you ever just sit and do nothing?" The answer to that, of course, is no. I am always doing something. I am actually the definition of Benjamin Hoff's Busy Backson version of rabbit. Meditating is one of the most painful activities for me to do. Which means that I should be focusing on that more than anything else.

As the next few days went by I realized that I do actually sometimes sit and do nothing. There are very specific activities where I allow myself the time to just relax. Anything involving pampering of any kind is a huge release for me. It must be the girl in me that one of my favorite things to do is get my hair done, my nails done, my eyebrows waxed...When I do those things I release everything and immerse myself in the feeling of being renewed and rejuvenated. When I'm shopping for clothes, new makeup,  nail polish, books, cd's, movies...I let go then too. The problem is all of those activities can cost a lot of money. Money I don't really have right now because I am in school.

I thought about it some more and I realized the one thing I do that is a stress release that doesn't actually cost money is clean. Well, clean and organize. If my space around me is organized and everything has a place my brain acts the same way. Every thought has a location and those unnecessary destructive thoughts no longer have a place to hide. When that happens I am a much calmer person and others emotions are much less likely to affect my personal emotions. It doesn't get rid of the foul moods and bad days, but it does control them a bit. I can allow myself to indulge in that bad mood without actually panicking because I can do something to be done with it.

So, as of yesterday my entire filing cabinet is cleaned out, the computer area is clean, the table where I keep my backpack is almost clean, the living room has been picked up, and this morning I vacuumed and cleaned the kitchen from last nights dinner. My physical world is getting more ordered and as a result my brain is following suit.

Now I just have to regularly get back into my exercises to relieve some of my back pain and relax my brain even further...

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