Comment Answer

Saturday's blog received a couple of comments.  I appreciate Tundra Woman's encouragement and mulderfan pointed out 2 important lessons. I like her Great-Aunt Kath. "I pleased my parents, I pleased my husband, I pleased my bosses, I pleased my kids. Now, it's bloody well time to please MYSELF!" ~ Great-aunt Kath

Tundra Woman said...

Ruth, FWIW, I've never seen you "ramble." Ever. And the process of going through the stressors to figure out what's up was a skill you were taught: Look at how successfully you're able to integrate those skills now without KevenCoach's "Presence." What I'm saying is in this situation and so many others I've seen you confront, those "Lessons Learned" have not some how disappeared when your Coach pinned on your "wings" and told you, "Yes, you're ready to fly solo now." And you were scared. With each successive challenge, you're gaining in a deep-down kind of knowledge the reality that, "Yes. I CAN do this!" And you are.
Aiye, *another* reflexive "Yes" woman! Oh, I do get this Ms. R. (sigh.) It's as if it's simply not enough to take on the task, we then take on the "worry responsibility" for it as well. I'm still challenged by this especially the "worry" part. I'm terrified at times-no, more correctly I terrify MYSELF-that I'll let someone down if I don't put their task right at the top of my list of other "top priorities" so I end up with all these mental "Priorities" sitting in the #1 spot and NOTHING in #'s 2, 3, 4 etc. (Yes, it's a silly looking mental "Priority List.") This has become particularly acute since I've started saying "No" more frequently simply because my body is forcing some real limitations. So when I DO say "Yes" I worry even MORE about the affirmatives. I can't trust my body any longer to "produce on demand" no matter how I try to mentally make it do what I know needs to be done secondary to my "yes." I can no longer mentally shame, blame, cajole, bribe etc. myself into doing it. I know this relates to a core value of mine in that if I say I'll do something, I'm gonna do it: I gave my word.
I hope this makes some sense and if it does, if you have any tips to share on managing the "worry responsibility" part of saying "Yes," I'd really appreciate it. Thanks! And if it doesn't make sense, I can well understand why ;)
TW


mulderfan said... A couple of hard won lessons I've learned:
1. NO is a complete sentence.
2. It's OK to ask for help.

A good quote from my great-aunt Kath, who was in her eighties when she said this, "I pleased my parents, I pleased my husband, I pleased my bosses, I pleased my kids. Now, it's bloody well time to please MYSELF!"


The interesting thing about being a people pleaser is realizing that some where in the shuffle you can loose yourself. A person may start out with the best intentions of being Christ like and putting other's self but they forget that Christ spent time alone, praying and renewing himself. Christ was asleep on the ship during the storm. His disciples woke him up when they were fretting about the storm. And Christ demonstrated healthy boundaries. He asked for help. He asked his disciples to pray with him. So when other people chide me for not being giving and Christ like for not doing everything they ask me to do, I recognize this as manipulation and nothing to do with Christ.

Tundra Woman asked, "if you have any tips to share on managing the "worry responsibility" part of saying "Yes," I'd really appreciate it. Thanks!

I can tell you things not to do that perhaps will help since I am great at doing this stuff all wrong.  First of all don't destroy your own health meeting someone else's request/demands.

Second, keep in mind that the final results is still the responsibility of the person making the request.  I tend to forget this and make the problem mine when in reality the problem still belongs to the other person, I'm just helping out. 

Third, and this is a big one, remind myself how many times I have succeeded.  Abusers tend to point out short comings and use that as a whip to keep me doing what they want me to do.  However, if I remind myself how many things I have done things right and the task is well within my skill set that takes a lot of worry out of a situation.  For example, someone asked me to solve a problem on a computer, I spent 14 years solving computer problems, setup several computer labs, and built computers.  I have the skills, I need to believe in my own ability of things I have already done.

Forth, is the newest one that I am working on, worry is an emotion....if I ignore or suppress an emotion it takes energy.  My goal, I am emphasizing that this is a theory in progress, is to acknowledge how I feel, then work out a plan to solve the problem.  Thank the worry emotion for bringing to mind possible glitches to my plan then allow worry to walk off my mind's stage and ask "Can do" attitude to step up.  However, for me this is very important, if I don't have any control over the out come, I give myself permission to stop worrying.  This is a fairly new experience of truly letting go of a problem that is unresolved.  I did it with one of the problems at school.  I will no better in August how it turns out since start of the new year with not doing stuff in May to be ready....not sure how this one will pan out.

One last aspect of worry that I am working on is "Who's worry is it?"  I am hypersensitive to other people's emotion.  I had to be.  My mother's current emotion could affect me greatly if she was pissed off at my Dad, my head would roll.  I catered to her emotions of worry, distress, anger, frustration, and other volatile emotions as a matter of survival.  This is something KavinCoach talked to me often.  I would tell him about some worry I had then he would ask if the problem was actually mine or someone else's.  I was confused at first, I had no emotional boundaries.  I learned that some of the "worry" I experienced was actually responding to someone else worrying.  I can not do anything about someone else's worry.  So if the worry emotion doesn't belong to me in the first place, I am returning to sender.   This is also a new activity for me.

TW, I hope these suggestions I am working on to solve my own 'over worry' will be helpful to you. 


Reader's, I would appreciate any other suggestions on what works for you to kill the worry bug.  Thanks.