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Chelsea

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Viewing 7 posts - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)
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  • in reply to: Are people from the past meant to stay there? #278109
    Chelsea
    Participant

    I think there’s a lot to be gained by reflecting on your past memories with people. Sometimes you’ll learn new lessons, and other times you’ll simply be reminded why they’re no longer a part of your present.

     

    Do you feel like reminiscing on people from your past is negatively affecting you?

    in reply to: What can I do when my boy friend is married #278107
    Chelsea
    Participant

    “He is very angry and difficult man” — all the more reason to end things now. It might make things awkward at work, but if he retaliates at all, it’s just all the more reason to have left him. You leaving might hurt him, but it will hurt you even more to stay in this relationship longer than you want to. He made his choice and now you get to make yours.

    in reply to: Putting on weight and dont know why #190903
    Chelsea
    Participant

    Bodhi is such a great name for a dog, Mark!

     

    Alexandra, I can’t speak for everyone, but cutting carbs worked MIRACLES for me. I went from borderline diabetic to healthy and dropping weight without trying because my sugar cravings are gone. I will say, though, that I had to go cold turkey–absolutely no grains/pasta/sugar/etc for a week, only meat, dairy, and veggies. I couldn’t do strict low carb, but keto (low carb, high fat) was a breeze for me because it kept me full.

    in reply to: Finding a Remedy for a Severe Case of Perfectionism #185245
    Chelsea
    Participant

    Hi Mary,

    Here are some Tiny Buddha articles that I found tremendously helpful while starting on my journey of self-healing. Some of them may not seem entirely relevant, or may have off-putting titles, but I think if you read all of them in their entirety and take the time to reflect, they’ll help you a lot. 🙂

    Quit Trying to Be Perfect (You Already Are)

    The Fascinating Reason We Fear Rejection and the Key to Acceptance

    https://tinybuddha.com/blog/5-life-changing-realizations-fear-anxiety/ (and anything by that author!)

    A First Aid Kit for When Life Falls Apart

    As for books, I liked The Dialectical Behavioral Therapy Workbook because it had very practical, hands-on exercises that helped me asap, however if you’d like more information & can handle dense reading, anything by Marsha Linehan (the creator of DBT) is highly recommended.

     

    I wish you well on your journey–I started mine about a year ago and, while I have a ways to go, I’m so much happier for having put in the effort!

    Chelsea

    in reply to: Finding a Remedy for a Severe Case of Perfectionism #185069
    Chelsea
    Participant

    Hi Mary,

    I think Anita hit the nail on the head. What she’s described is identical to my own experience, and working through that fear is pivotal to your success. What you mentioned, the “knowing” but not necessarily DOING is called cognitive dissonance; you know something is happening, but feel powerless to stop it or change the outcome. Unfortunately, (at least for me) that hasn’t really gone away; what HAS happened is that I’ve found some new tools to keep in my arsenal to remind myself that this is just something I do, and I’ve started finding ways to snap myself out of dwelling on the bad situation. It’s not perfect, but it’s a practice that takes time to turn into a habit, and my bouts of ruminating on the negative have gotten drastically shorter.

     

    Here are the things I started with:

    -Identifying why you feel this way (i.e. for me, I didn’t want people disappointed in me because it makes me feel worthless, which only happens because I don’t see my OWN self worth, so I seek external validation from others via people pleasing to ‘create’ my worth; from my understanding, this is a pretty common reason, especially when childhood trauma was present.)

    -What it is you’re actually afraid of (since fear is a symptom & not a cause)

    -Developing the mindfulness to be able to be a passive observer and recognize these emotions without identifying with them. Tiny Buddha has many articles on this and was a tremendous help to me during this process. If you need help finding any, let me know and I can post some links. (A useful, Google-able phrase for this one is “I am not my thoughts”.)

    -Read a book, or find a group, that is about Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT). There’s tons of useful stuff in there, but it’s a type of therapy that is specifically geared towards retraining your brain to snap out of these vicious, negative spirals. One specific section that helped me a lot was distress tolerance–literally, just learning to function and be mildly okay in stressful situations (i.e. thinking someone is mad at you), and using that to work up to actually being okay with situations that used to be triggering. DBT pairs especially well with mindfulness and meditation practices, which I’d recommend as well.

     

    These things are deceptively difficult to do, and can require feeling a lot of rather unpleasant, usually long-buried emotions; if you find it challenging, therapy (especially DBT, cannot recommend it enough) can help a lot. However, the blessing in disguise is that once you’ve done all the digging, it’s all out in the open air–you can now quantify it, and put the words to it, and get validation that you’re not alone in feeling like this.

     

    I wish you well on your journey.

    Chelsea

    in reply to: Finding a Remedy for a Severe Case of Perfectionism #184985
    Chelsea
    Participant

    So with cases like this, it really helps to dig to the root cause of your perfectionism–in this case, it sounds like you’re a people pleaser who doesn’t like disappointing anyone. I’m the exact same way. For me, it’s rooted in having a turbulent (ha!) childhood with parents who were regularly upset with something or another, so as a child, I started going out of my way to make mom and dad happy; that habit then became thoroughly ingrained in all my interpersonal relationships. For me, what helped a lot was reading about boundaries in interpersonal communication, and how to better enforce my own personal boundaries. It taught me that it’s never really possible to get everyone to like you, and that someone else’s emotions aren’t my responsibility to ‘fix’. (And, sometimes, trying to ‘fix’ the situtation is actually a far worse choice.) It allowed me to learn how to just be me, not a people pleasing me.

     

    Hope this helps!

    in reply to: New Year, Same Me? #184831
    Chelsea
    Participant

    This is precisely what I realized last year and made my resolution. A year later, I’ve made tremendous strides towards accepting myself as I am while still challenging myself to grow. I think that this realization really does bring an ever-so-slight mindset shift that’s necessary to be able to accept the paradoxical, internal yin and yang that is loving oneself while continuing to push forward to promote personal growth. It’s such a fine line to walk, but from your post, I think you’re well on your way. 🙂

Viewing 7 posts - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)