Happy Saturday!

My daughter wanted to help with the title, hence the nonsense. Today begins my time away from work to recenter. Anxiety has been my constant companion, and after a particularly tough week, I made the decision to be more vocal about the pervasive anxiety I was experiencing. Thankfully, I have an amazing support system and was able to come up with a solution relatively quickly. I regret that it takes so long for me to recognize the extent of my anxiety, because it yields a lot of unnecessary suffering. Once I become aware and willing to accept the emotional toll, I feel silly and embarrassed for allowing myself to be ravaged by it for so long.

With that in mind, I’m working on acceptance. There’s a book I’ve read called Radical Acceptance that I definitely need to read again, and I’m reading through material from Kristen Neff about Mindful Self-Compassion as recommended by my therapist. I’m hopeful that during my time off, I’ll be able to lay the ground work for healthy practices that I can carry into my daily routine. This isn’t my first “re-centering,” and I’m sure it won’t be my last. I do hope, however, that I will learn to be kind to myself first and remove the massive amount of judgement I place on myself for having anxiety, “negative emotions,” and not being perfect. I’m so kind to others, so forgiving, and I have to learn how to give that gift to myself.

One thing I’ve discovered recently is that like many who experience high amounts of anxiety, I have an “intolerance of uncertainty,” which tends to manifest in my work life. For whatever reason, I’ve come to accept that there will be uncertainty, change, and trial in my home life, but something rooted in my childhood has led me to have the false belief that work “should” be certain. It “should” be consistent, constant, and exact. I “should” have all the answers and know exactly what to do. I’m not saying that anxiety never pops up in my home life, but for the purpose of this post, I’m focusing on my work-related anxiety. Digging deeper into my inner child stuff, I’ve realized that I used to fantasize about being able to work and be a professional, which was an outlet for the chaos that was going on at home. I remember thinking, “I can’t wait to go to work! I’m going to be so good at that!” I’m sure you can imagine that this mindset has lent itself to a certain degree of rigidity, because all of these imposed beliefs about work don’t exactly make for the most flexible employee.

I’m excited to do some more work around this and to share any insights as I go.

Until next time, take care!