Hi Again!

Please disregard if you’ve already done these. If you haven’t, do them immediately and I’m sure you’ll see a difference.

1. Talk to someone who specializes in Pain Management. Call you local hospital, go online, they are out there.

2. Go on a Paleo/Raw Food diet. Whenever I feel achy or sicky (I’m NOT comparing my issues to the hell you’ve gone through!!) I eat Paleo or do juicing for a few days/weeks/months and reset.

3. Set yourself up to have a lot of “Wins”. Get a sticker book and give yourself a sticker like a kid for any minuscule thing you do. Returning a phone call = a win. Putting a load of laundery in = a win. But it has to be miniscule!

4. Pick a series on Netflix and watch all of it in one sitting/s. Get so immersed in the characters you forget yourself.

5. A lot of churches have lay ministers. Ask for Stephen Ministers. They meet up with you every week just to talk. They are trained. Or get yourself on a Prayer List! It is amazing how situations transform when everyone is praying!

• This reply was modified 11 years, 2 months ago by Inky.

Hi Kristen,

Food is awesome and should be celebrated! Also, to “binge eat” was called “feasting” in the old days. It was allowed because of general food scarcity and a shorter life span. In the dawn of time for humanity, if you somehow procured food on the savannah, you had better eat all of it before any other predator/scavenger did!

Make the corner store and eating with your boyfriend into weekly events. So my weaknesses are the deli, take out and D&D/Starbucks. I go to each place once a week. That’s it! I have any “fix” of Coke/Frapp/pizza/Chinese/chicken cutlet smothered in too much mayo/BLT/drink of seasonal badness/etc. knowing that whatever else I crave is waiting for me next week. That there will be Coke later. That I can scarf on garlic bread later.

Turn your two “sins” into once a week events. Space them out so you don’t go crazy, like going out weekends, store Wednesday. But maybe buy only one junky thing at the store!!

And enjoy!

• This reply was modified 11 years, 2 months ago by Inky.

Hi Sandy,

I’ve noticed that when you’re young, everyone’s pretty much the same. Everyone has the aura of a shiny happy puppy LOL. But then as we get older everyone gets a little “long in the tooth” and their individual personalities really come to the forefront. Or they stop being “nice” and will cast you loose if you don’t dovetail with their agenda all the time.

I don’t spend mental energy thinking about friendships. I’m not pessimistic, I just have an “it is what it is” attitude. Everyone has their own lives and won’t easily expand their individual Universe sometimes. And if you can meet someone from the neighborhood, class or organization who won’t drift away once they’re out of the neighborhood and once class and the cause is over, then they are golden. But you can’t ask for it, it’s like Kismet, a great gift you stumble upon.

This is going to sound counter-intuitive to any advice anyone’s given you. Honor your depression. That means it’s OK to do nothing. You need a break: from the illness itself, from your “shoulds”, from your “have tos”, from your job, from your family, from society. That might mean doing absolutely nothing for two years worth of Sundays (on Sunday) or signing yourself into a retreat center where you can be in bed all day.

Honor your illness. Girl, I may have literally died in your place, and I consider myself to be on the high end of the Endurance category!

And Goddessdamn it, your extended and immediate family SHOULD cater to you! Who in your life told you you were on the low end of the totem pole, that you’re not worthy of a mental or medical doctor’s time?? Read Brene Brown’s books, they will really resonate with you.

It’s time to get Entitled. You are a Princess, a Daughter of The King in Heaven.

I would chalk it up to a lesson learned. Even porn stars who like the industry deep down want to be treated and seen as a princess. You can’t have love without respect. She felt disrespected and so it really might be over with her, especially if she’s doing the slow fade. Or you hit on an original wound and, in fact, she was covering the wound up with her confident punk veneer.

Maybe A Grand Gesture would help in starting over. A song. A poem. Flowers. Artwork. Any of those should be made public. She will be embarrassed, you will be embarrassed, and everyone will go “Awwwww”. But now she knows how you REALLY feel, and so does everyone else, so your fondness for her is now public knowledge, not some dirty little texting secret.

And then let it go, and let her take the lead.

On a more real life view, is it possible that you had sleep apnea? That’s when your body stops breathing while sleeping. So you stopped breathing and your dream state interpreted that to mean you are dying. Then your subconscious filled in the blanks as to how that would happen.

The gangs and the fact that being in a house and being a civilian didn’t save you from death means that you feel very vulnerable in waking life.

I hate letting people go. It’s the least favorite part of running a business.

This is what I’ve done, and it’s not honest but seems to work nicely: First, give him a heads up that things are going to change by the New Year. That you are revamping the company. That money is tight and you’re letting people go or cutting salaries.

Hire an intern or young person to be his assistant. Now, deep in his heart of hearts he knows that he’s not doing a good job. Knowing that he may only have a few months and that there’s new blood that could take over his job ~ You should expect great improvements!

Then, at the beginning of the New Year, say that as he knows, change has come. That you are giving him a new, smaller job with a smaller salary or letting him go. If you’re lucky he will already have moved on or improved so much the meeting isn’t necessary!

OR! Bite the bullet and say, “It’s not working”.

• This reply was modified 11 years, 2 months ago by Inky.

So it’s simple. Revisit her ten or fifteen years later. At least she’s mature enough to realize the depth of her own immaturity. What woman can’t handle kids part time? Even her own?? I know you love her, but Yikes! She sounds like a kid herself. Consider it a bullet dodged.

I also thought of something ~ I bet she’s feeling very real GUILT about her own kids. Like, “OK, I only see them a few times a week, and now I’m seeing his kids for half the week, so why did I give up my kids, when I’m going to be surrounded by kids anyway???”

• This reply was modified 11 years, 2 months ago by Inky.