I’ve been working on finding the feeling of being capable in myself, since WRT2 wrote her brillaince about visualizing being full of love… my original call-0ut of her lovely post and my own rumination on the topic is here.
I am a person who has rarely felt capable in her life… I am just starting to realize this. I often am anxious and hypervigilant. There’s the diagnosis of PTSD and ADD and maybe this is somehow related – I’m noticing a lot less of PTSD/ADD hypervigilance the more CAPABLE I allow myself to feel… neat, eh?
I have had such a habit of picking part any little thing I might be doing (even if it is just trying to relax). I have a running commentary in my head that tells me I’m going too fast… too slow… not careful enough… too careful… however I do something, it never seems good enough. When I’m at my worst, I can be afraid to do anything other than leisure activity, because I get so sick of the loud judgements in my head, but most of the time it is not that bad. Years back, my life seemed to be completely smothered with this icky kind of thinking, but years of recovery work and therapy have helped tons.
Since my focus on feeling capable, I have noticed huge changes in my hyperness and hypervigilance. I feel so much calmer. I feel confident. I haven’t been dissecting my every move… I haven’t been blaming myself for things that are circumstantial, as I often catch myself doing. For example, this morning, I drove across town to Target. Often my driving in the city is one of those things where I spend the whole time nit-picking myself for every little things… and things that aren’t even close to my fault. I noticed all the things I WASN’T dissecting myself about today… and it felt like a huge relief. I didn’t beat myself up for driving over a large bump that couldn’t be avoided. I didn’t second guess my every decision. I allowed myself to take my time making decisions and looking both ways at intersections and the like. It just felt normal and natural. It felt right… I didn’t feel smothered by the jury in my head… I think the jury was at the beach or something.
I’ve been thinking about how incapable I have felt my whole life and it makes me sad. Maybe it’s genetic. My guess is that it is a combo of nature and nuture. I have two parents that are PTSD’d and perhaps ADD’d… very anxious people. However, most of what I remember about being taught what a loser I supposedly am came from my step-father. I couldn’t even walk through a room without getting criticised about the way I walked through the room. No joke. It was constant, suffocating, negative commentary… and it didn’t start in my head… the first I remember hearing it – it came from someone’s mouth. Nothing ever seemed good enough… ever. Eventually my believe in my ability to do just about anything became crushed. Sometimes I still hear his voice in my head. Sigh…
In allowing myself to feel capable, I’ve really noticed all the ways I usually don’t feel capable… I haven’t felt capable in my ability to enjoy food, to make decisions about exercise, to relax, to hold down a job, to pick-out an outfit, to have a conversation, to drive, to be a pet owner, to wash dishes, to vacuum, to organize a room… I could go on listing stuff all day, but I’m sure you get the point. It is shocking to me how much this feeling of incapability has ham-strung me in my day-to-day life! It is shocking to me how free I feel all of a sudden… it’s like all these years I felt the anxiety, but never knew WHY… and knowing why has helped me understand the problem and therefore TACKLE it… and wow… things feel so much better right now. It’s amazing.
Life is feeling so much more enjoyable right now… life just feels so much lighter. Who knew I felt so incapable…? I’m sure people close to me could’ve pointed it out though… 😉
Moving forward, I plan to keep on with this focus on feeling capable and allowing myself to feel capable. Not that I need to start feeling capable of flying and then I go jump off the roof for a test flight. I’m talking about things that I know are realistic… I know I am a good driver. I know I eat well. I know I take really good care of my beasties. I know I can have a really good convo! I know I can hold down a job… I have a very stable job history, even if the jury in my head refuses to acknowledge it.
So, readers! How capable do you feel? Does anyone struggle like I have? How have you tried to work past it?
In the meantime… I am looking forward to taking life slowly for a while and spending time focusing on my own capability as opposed to focusing on nitpicking myself ad nauseum. 😉 Ah… what a relief… whoooooooooo hoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!! Life is so sweet when I’m not spending most of my energy hypervigilant for any evidence that I am an “incapable loser.” Oooo… I hope this sticks!
How much sweeter would life feel for those of us who nitpick ourselves if we were able to let it go….? What would you do if you were free of the nitpickers in your head?
–AngryGrayRainbows
You are also very capable of conjuring up a sweet ass blog that I can relate to better than anything else out on the ‘nets!!
MAN, do I hear you on that whole Step-Father thing! GAWD!! What IS it with that? Is it b/c you are a child of his Wife’s past lovers (which in my case my Dad turned out gay but my Step Dad is a Latin man from Costa Rica so maybe he takes offense to it?) or is it b/c they want a piece b/c like 99% of the time they do.
Which is why when my Hubs goes on & on about finding another Man or whatever I tell him I don’t care WHAT I have to do to take care of my kids whether it be having 3 jobs and some welfare, if possible, I will NEVER put another Man whose NOT their Father around my Babies…EVER!!!!
But I can’t even begin to tell you just how much I enjoy reading your stuff (as I’m sure you can tell by all my comments–I wish I had readers for my depressing piece of crap blog but I think it’s a lil’ E.D.’d out 4 this audience 😦 ) has helped me cope, made me smile, gave me tinglies…I LOVE your pic and how your smile just shines through!
If I were a lesbian (sometimes I wonder….) I’d Totally want you!!!
Thanks for the compliment about the blog.
I’ll tell you a secret. 😉 While this blog is new, I am not new to writing or writing in a way that gets people to read me. First there was all the journalism classes and years of personal journalling that I tried to write in an entertaining way as if people were actually following it. Then there were the years on an eating disorder forum where I got a lot of practice in how to write in ways that get through to people and that people can easily understand and follow even though I’m super-long-winded.
Also, after I got into the flow of this blog and felt confident that I could at least write at a certain level of quality consistently… I started emailing all my favorite bloggers to let them know I exist and to get on some blogrolls. I think if I had not done that, I prolly wouldn’t have any readers at all, frankly. Networking is pretty crucial. And some good soul put me on the Fat Liberation feed, which has helped out tremendously! (Thanks whoever you are!!)
Be nice to yourself, k? IMHO, calling your blog a piece of crap (even if you really don’t think it’s a great blog) isn’t nice to you and that is important.
I believe that there are some step-fathers out there who really can do right by their step-kids. I just didn’t end up with one of those… but it is good that you are willing to make sure that your kids don’t wind up with a step-father like mine was. I used to beg my mom to leave him and she never would. Sigh.
That jury in your head is really not made up of your “peers” — reasonable people like the person you are today.
For me, sometimes noticing those times I can realize that the jury is out to lunch and I can just live without the constant chatter, brings into focus how much more relaxed I am without it.
I hope you have more and more of those moments like you did today. It’s not your fault that the chatter is there. I admire so much what you have done and continue to do to minimize it or fight it.
Thanks for bravely exploring this.
Hmmm…. good point WRT2 – as always.
I was just telling my boyfriend the other day that while he may not be able to control the fact that there is a committee in his head telling him all sorts of crazy, untrue stuff… he CAN choose whether or not he challenges them or believes them. The annoying bit is sometimes I find myself believing them before I even know what I’m doing… however, with time, that is getting better.
Every night before I go to sleep, I just let the voices and images run in my head without trying to control them and without believing anything they tell me. It feels so freeing. It is one of my favorite times of the day…
Hi AGR,
I just wanted to start off by saying that I very much enjoy your blog. I struggle with PTSD as well as a tendency towards perfection, which can cause me at one moment to feel ultrapowerful, as if I can do anything, and in the next to feel absolutely powerless and incapable.
I think part of the struggle with PTSD is that you’ve been in those places of powerlessness, and so you know that there are some things you’ve had to endure that you can’t control. Therefore, it can be psychologically extended to other more basic areas of life — why should I plan for the future, if I can’t control the here and now? I feel as if I could do X and Y, but at the same time I feel like I’m wearing invisible handcuffs…and so forth.
Again, thanks for this blog. I’ve tried to stay away from being too personal on my blog (which is mostly an FA blog with a political bent), so it’s nice that you have a blog which tends more towards this very important personal questions I often share. 🙂
Thanks Big Liberty! That means a lot to me coming from another blogger that I admire. 🙂
It is also nice to hear that the “personal touch”, as Sassy put it so well in our mission post, of this blog is helpful to some folks. First and foremost, we write for ourselves, but after that, we hope that we can at the very least help other people who have suffered like we have understand that they are not alone… and that recovery is possible… so very possible.
You hit the nail on the head with the invisible handcuffs bit… except I would call it an invisible gag or even an invisible choke chain. Sometimes it is so tight, it is hard to even breathe – literally. PTSD symptoms are just so much freakin’ fun… as I’m sure you know.
After I hit a certain level of being PTSD triggered or just anxiety, I get tho this point where anything seems completely pointless… probably because of the internalized sense of powerlessness like you said. Hmmm… I’ve noticed that when I’m triggered that it helps to do something that validates that I DO have some kinda power… even if that is just washing the dishes… I think there’s a connection there!
hahahahaha, I read the comments and the main thing that struck me was HotMomma’s comment and then AGR’s response.
HotMomma, let me give you fair warning….you are not allowed to self-bash in the presence of AGR…she just doesn’t put up with it. I’ve tried. 🙂
AGR, when you’re feeling incapable again let me know! I think I can help you out with that!
~sas
Hahahahahaha Sassy! Maybe it’s some consolation that you’re not the only one I do that to. 😛
[…] being further exibited over and over and over and over and over to me… as explored here and here. Sometimes just reminding myself that I AM CAPABLE (and/or competant) makes me feel like an anvil […]
Hey, thanks for putting my picture to such good use, and for crediting me. If my image can accompany and illustrate such fine prose, I’m quite pleased.
JDYEZ
JDYEZ,
Thanks a lot for your kind words. I really appreciate it.
Thanks for the picture… somehow it just seemed to say by visual what I wanted to say in words… 😉