Stress Center Peer Support

I am more recovered everyday. No matter how negative I feel or what symptoms come up, I am still ok. I accept the reality of each moment and do not fight it. I have goals and I achieve them. When I feel frustrated, I know it is a sign that I'm on the verge of making a breakthrough and taking a big leap on a goal.

Lesson 4 is my favorite so far. I can completely relate with having unrealistic expectations.
I have lived my life trying to meet other people's expectations, and always feeling that I am not good enough. That whatever I do, is not going to be enough.
The worst part about this is that I am not even sure of what is enough. I lived for so long taking other people's expectations as mine. My parents expectations, my ex-husband's expectations, my sibilings' expectations. Somehow all those expectations were/are inside my head.
Now that I live far away from them, it is like being empty... it is not easy to explain... I am not sure of who I am or what should I do. I was so used to do what other people expected of me, that now that I don't have them, I am not sure about anything. I can be my worst enemy sometimes.
It has been a long road to re-invent myself.
I think I will struggle more with the expectations lesson, than with the one about negative thinking.

I am more recovered everyday. No matter how negative I feel or what symptoms come up, I am still ok. I accept the reality of each moment and do not fight it. I have goals and I achieve them. When I feel frustrated, I know it is a sign that I'm on the verge of making a breakthrough and taking a big leap on a goal

First round through Lesson 4 cd;

I decided to make a whole post for this because there was alot of things in this lesson that I found to be very important.

1)

When you realize your expectations are way out there and you lower them its alot easier to take a risk

I agree completely with that. If you lower the expectations of how you should do or what the outcome will be as well then its easier.

2)

Its Important to stop and look at your expectations and some of your shoulds and say these are some of the goals that I want to achieve and so how can I go after these goals, what can I do tomorrow to bring this thing a little closer to my life and make it a reality? So I stop putting it out there so far that I don't even bother going after it

This is what I want, not this is what I should do...and how can I fulfill this want? What can I start to do to make it a reality? Instead of making it such an overwhelmingly big task, breaking it down into smaller pieces.

3)

Theres no such thing as failure

If you got that belief in place then what would stop you from achiving any dream you ever have? How great would you feel if you allowed yourself to try again and again with a challenge, skill or opportunity the same way you did when you first learned how to walk?

4)

Alot of people who get ahead are simply the people who have the drive and determination to really, really go after something and they have the ability to fail successfully.

I think everytime I fail instead of beating myself up I'm going to try and say, I failed successfully and see how that feels like.

In other words they have to try again and again and again and sometimes they put all their efforts into something and it still doesn't go right. But they are the people who think hey, "i'm going to do it no matter what it takes" but you better enjoy the trip because the outcome might not be as wonderful as you think it to be. How do you know you're going in the right direction? alot of it has to do with how happy are you getting there

Like Chris says in lesson 4, he had to push himself to do things. I also push myself to do things and then I don't enjoy what i'm doing. What I'm starting to see is when I'm focusing on the things I could get or will get from doing the task (like confidence and such) then I enjoy what i'm doing. This is much better then telling myself I should do this or that.

5)

Go and do these things and expect to feel anxious and work your way through the anxiety, depression or feelings of stress

So instead of fighting the anxiety, feelings of exhaustion, possibility you may fall asleep while doing the relaxation cd or whatever...expecting to feel those things is accepting them which is the first step to the 6 steps in lesson 2.

6)In the group sessions I really relate to Chris. He has generalized anxiety, obsessive thoughts, isn't housebound but if he didn't have to leave his house he wouldn't because it takes up alot more effort (Carolyn also mentioned about sometimes you feel you don't have what it takes and I really relate to that as well), living in the past. So much in common and if he can recover then so can I! Dianne used to be afraid to drive, socialize, I think agoraphobia was there as well but now she works, has been on cruises, got a promotion and enjoys life. Whats the diffrence between these people and us? Not a whole lot besides the level they got with their skills and we can get to that same level. Skills are something that you grow on each time you use them!

7)Also Lucinda said her son would say "its not fair, its not fair" when he wasn't allowed to do things that his sister was because of the age diffrence and Lucinda taught him to say "life's not fair" and it worked! I think i'm going to use this in my self-talk whenever I see a situation that isn't fair or if someone believes something about me that isn't true or if I get angry because someone didn't live up to my expectations. Hopefully that'll help to reduce my expectations!


Mike

I am more recovered everyday. No matter how negative I feel or what symptoms come up, I am still ok. I accept the reality of each moment and do not fight it. I have goals and I achieve them. When I feel frustrated, I know it is a sign that I'm on the verge of making a breakthrough and taking a big leap on a goal.

in response to mcshope

I'm also finding lesson 4 to be my favorate one this time around. I don't think I've felt as strongly about this lesson before as I do now. I actually find that I still have alot of unrealistic expectations and they make me completely miserable. I relate to how you feel about trying to impress people and live up to their expectations and not really feeling good enough. You do something and then you expect a certain response which you usually don't get and then you just feel worthless, is that how it felt for you too?

It sounds like you don't really have anybody in your immediate surroundings that you have that same desire to impress in the same way and thats what you made your life about. It kinda becomes a way of life. I know this all to well. I mean before people were saying I am too serious because i didn't laugh or smile and then I laughed whenever I thought people expected me to laugh or be sad or whatever. I only really began to stop that a few months ago when I wrote out all those affirmation scripts. I created one whole script of affirmations on expectations itself and that seemed to help. I feel that I become stronger with the affirmations each time I listen to them. Perhaps they would help as well.

I hear you on the re-inventing. I've been trying to do this for 15 years now! I was 12 and my whole world flipped upside down. See with me, I was brought up to pick on others and I felt good about doing so until I was interested in this one girl. I insulted another girl to impress her and she went with it for awhile and then gave me my first guilt trip. I felt guilty for the first time and then I realized how I was raised was wrong and since then i've been analyzing my life, my beliefs and basically looking for the kind of person that I wanted to be. It can be a long journey and this lesson is also going to be one of the more challenging ones for me as well but hey we can definately help each other on this one!


Mike

I am more recovered everyday. No matter how negative I feel or what symptoms come up, I am still ok. I accept the reality of each moment and do not fight it. I have goals and I achieve them. When I feel frustrated, I know it is a sign that I'm on the verge of making a breakthrough and taking a big leap on a goal.

Wednesday;

Relaxation
Relaxation cd in the am;
I didn't get my 8 hours sleep so I was having a hard time focusing on the words being said but I kept up with it, I did my best and I resisted the idea of PMR again but I focused on how relaxed it would make me be and I was more present with it instead of getting the obsessive thoughts again.


Goals
1)Went to Yoga
->I was planning to do the yoga at 12 but I was running late and instead of rushing myself like it was a life or death emergency, I took my time. I did some working out before hand and took the 1pm class instead. It was fine and I had used that blue stone to remind myself to slow down. The yoga itself was really fun and I forgot about my problems with the anxiety while doing it.

2)Worked out
->Working out before yoga was fine and didn't really have much problem motivating myself to do it but after the yoga it was very difficult. I was telling myself I didn't want to do it but then I focused on how it would give me more energy in the long run and how it will help with the problem with my tight hips. That helped but it was very challenging.

3)Gave shiatsu treatment
->This was pretty challenging because I was really resisting doing the treatment. This is the part where I still feel I need to impress the other person and I can easily feel hopeless about it and tell myself that i'm not good enough. Also I was already feeling tired and exhausted but I told myself thats fine to feel that way but I'm still going to do it and I did. I felt good about it and it was strange because I did the treatment in the park and a lady came up and asked me what therapy I was doing and I told her and she asked me how much I charge and so I potentially got a client out of it! That was pretty cool actually! I struggled to explain certain things when my friend asked me about shiatsu and the treatment. That usually gives me alot of anxiety but I didn't seem to have as much anxiety about it as I have in the past. I'm getting mroe confident about it!.


Mike

I am more recovered everyday. No matter how negative I feel or what symptoms come up, I am still ok. I accept the reality of each moment and do not fight it. I have goals and I achieve them. When I feel frustrated, I know it is a sign that I'm on the verge of making a breakthrough and taking a big leap on a goal.

I was talking with one friend about some other friends of mine which i consider really good friends and I'm having an expectation right now that i'm struggling with. Last year I spent so much time hanging out with them and it was really fun and this year well I saw them both in june and I havent' seen them since then. I know some things happen well one of them got a new job and such and I've tried talking to him about how we haven't hungout a few times and I get the same response about how they are both really busy lately. I start to think well you do have some control over your time and you do choose where to spend it and you aren't choosing to spend time hanging out with me. It makes me feel unwanted and it really hurts. Has anybody else felt this way too or dealt with it in the past?


Mike

Ok so to help with the goals and expectations and such I came up with a really great idea! The idea is to just picture how life would be if there was no such thing as failure and to come up with a list of skills you would learn or like to learn or other goals in such an event. I suggest everybody to do this because I'd like to take that one step further and help each other come up with plans of action in order to actually fulfill those goals. We'll figure out how to address that depending on how many goals people decide to put up. For instance for me, I wouldn't expect us to go through all of my goals because I have alot of them but maybe it would be more reasonable to go through maybe 3 of them for myself and other people. I suggest this because well it has been very difficult for me to understand how to plan and do things in smaller steps. I didn't really understand how to do this and I'm sure there must be many other people reading this who feel the same. I think it would be great to share our ideas of how the process of figuring that out works.

My list;
Hip-hop
1)to be more at ease with my footwork so I can make a routine look really cool
2)Moonwalk and other foot gliding things
3)Armwave
4)Popping

Japanese
1)Learn how to be fluent in japanese
2)learn how to write japanese

Sing
1)Increase vocal range
2)Increase the volume of my speech
3)Increase my confidence with singing

Exercise
1)Increase Lung capacity so I can run for 30 minutes straight
2)Have nice abs
3)big chest and arm muscles
4)Be more flexible in the hips so I can do all the yoga movements

Other
1)Write a book
2)Increase my ability to visualize so I can see things as if they were right in front of me
3)Increase my ability to be assertive so i can feel more confident and can call my sister and try talking through the problem she has with me
4)Increase my knowledge of cooking
5)Increase overall confidence



Mike

Hi all -

I'm still here. Sorry for not posting in a while. I'm going through a bit of depression right now and have been keeping mostly to myself.

I'm glad to read that you all are doing so well dealing with anxiety in positive and creative ways. The challenge has been a great experience. Thanks for starting it, Mike!

I listened to about half the Session 4 CD last night. I'll finish it today and post my thoughts later.

Take care,
Jamie

Searunner

No worries, take your time and do what you have to in order to take care of yourself. When you feel better just come back and join as no matter where we are in the challenge.

Your welcome! I cannot take all the credit for it though. We all make it work and help each other.


Mike

I am more recovered everyday. No matter how negative I feel or what symptoms come up, I am still ok. I accept the reality of each moment and do not fight it. I have goals and I achieve them. When I feel frustrated I know it is a sign that I'm on the verge of making a breakthrough and taking a big leap on a goal.

Ok so I went through lesson 4 in the workbook and I got excited (i don't know if that makes me a self-help nerd or not, who knows) and thought hey why not compare should lists. See if we have some things in common and maybe share experiences. I crossed off the ones I thought were unrealistic and the rest I'd like to make goals.

Shoulds I have for myself;
-<STRIKE>I should be happy</STRIKE>
-<STRIKE>I should think clearer</STRIKE>
-I should be working
-<STRIKE>I should be more consistent at the gym</STRIKE>
-<STRIKE>I should be more confident</STRIKE>
-I should clean my room more
-<STRIKE>I shouldn't spend lots of time at home</STRIKE>
-<STRIKE>I should always spend time outside</STRIKE>
-I should be better at hip-hop
-<STRIKE>I should be able to visualize better</STRIKE>
-I should be more in the moment
-<STRIKE>I should be a better shiatsu therapist</STRIKE>
-<STRIKE>I should be able to communicate better with in person social situations</STRIKE>
-<STRIKE>I should be more assertive</STRIKE>
-<STRIKE>I should be making lots of money</STRIKE>
-<STRIKE>I shouldn't be spacy and exhausted</STRIKE>
-<STRIKE>I shouldn't have high levels of anxiety</STRIKE>
-<STRIKE>I shouldn't share my negative feelings </STRIKE>
-<STRIKE>I shouldn't spend too much time on the computer</STRIKE>
-<STRIKE>I shouldn't spend too much time on videogames</STRIKE>
-<STRIKE>I should be making more progress with my weight trainning</STRIKE>
-<STRIKE>I should call people more often</STRIKE>
-I should spend more time with other people
-<STRIKE>I shouldn't upset people</STRIKE>
-<STRIKE>I should be more outgoing</STRIKE>
-<STRIKE>I should be facing my limitations more</STRIKE>
-<STRIKE>I should be relaxing more</STRIKE>
-<STRIKE>I should have my life together</STRIKE>
-<STRIKE>I should remember things better</STRIKE>
-I should stretch more often
-<STRIKE>I should be more flexible</STRIKE>
-I should learn more about cooking
-<STRIKE>I should always stand up for myself</STRIKE>
-I should be more lax about jokes
-<STRIKE>I shouldn't be so serious</STRIKE>
-I should get back into shiatsu
-<STRIKE>I should be more productive with my time</STRIKE>
-<STRIKE>I should always catch all of my negative thoughts</STRIKE>
-<STRIKE>I should always be able to calm myself down to the point where I don't feel anxiety anymore</STRIKE>
-<STRIKE>I should be more encouraging</STRIKE>
-<STRIKE>I should care more</STRIKE>

So thats a little bit of what is inside my head! If anybody wishes for me to clarify as to why I choose to cross off certain things or not just ask and i'll be happy to explain if it'll help you with your lists.



Mike

Expecations I have for others;

<STRIKE>
-Everybody should treat me with respect
-People should always be considerate'-My friends should always make time to hangout with me
-People should understand my opinions and views
-People shouldn't be rude
-People should appologize when they wrong me
-People shouldn't think bad of me if I didn't do anything wrong
-People shouldn't blame me for things that aren't my fault
-People shouldn't be perfectionistic
-People should take care of themselves
-Families should stick together
-I should be invited to every party or get together my friends have
-Friends of mine that meet other friends of mine through me shouldn't hangout together without inviting me
-People should call when they say they're going to call
-People should follow through whent they say they'll do something
-People should repsond to all of my messages I send on facebook or msn
-Everybody should appreciate all that I do
-people that do bad things should have to pay for what they do and do something to fix it
-My friends shouldn't have fun with someone who really hurt me
-People shouldn't try to manipulate or take advantage of me
-Everybody should be understanding of what I'm going through
-My mother should have protected me from being sexually abused
-People shouldn't escape to drugs
-I should make the person who abused me do something to help himself with his sickness
-The abuser should tell everyone that I was telling the truth
-People should work on bettering themselves
-People shouldn't choose who to believe in the context to serious accusations, based on how well they like that other person
-Everybody should recognize my achievements
-Everybody should be more encouraging
-People shouldn't lie
-Everybody should care about what I say
-I shouldn't be avoided and treated like an outcast</STRIKE>



Mike