And then feelings got in the way

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ok.

pizza week was epic.

I ate 13 slices of pizza over five days (yikes).

I learned my body likes pizza but it also appreciates some veggies.

~                 ~                ~

Today I was telling my therapist about some stuff at work and she asked my if I had to leave the kiddos when they had feelings because it implies that their feelings are too much to deal with. And it just brought up a lot of things.

I think I’ve always considered myself a feeling person. I cry a lot. I laugh a lot. But the truth is, I know there are a lot of feelings I am not tapping. I have a lot of feelings. And I guess some part of me still thinks that those feelings are too much. I tend to spread them out among my support system. But after I share something with someone, I feel some need to be the fun friend for a while. I push the pause button on sharing in that relationship for a while.

I do not know how to convince these kiddos or myself that feeling isn’t bad. That having a lot of feelings is just having a lot of feelings. That it’s ok. That there is nothing wrong with them for feeling so much. That there is nothing wrong with them for acting out when they have big feelings that they don’t know how to deal with.

Work has been really hard. And that makes everything else really hard. And my feelings have been really hard and that makes everything else really hard.

And that is ok. They are just feelings.

It is ok that it’s hard right now.

 

 

PDX Pizza Week, pt. 1

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It’s Pizza Week in Portland and I am really making the most of it this year! Get yourself for three (that’s right) three posts about pizzas! Starting with…

How to eat pizza according to my weird weird way:

Step 1: Admire your pizza with your eyes and your nose! Smell it, look at it! Take a picture if you must. You don’t have to post it or anything…sometimes I just take it for myself.

Step 2: Tear off a piece of the crust. Eat said piece. Yep! I’m a crust first kinda girl. But I’m also a tear-it-off kinda girl. Continue tearing and ripping until you’ve eaten the entire crust! I don’t know why I do this. If I had to make up an explanation right now, on the spot, I would say it allows me to get an idea of how a place does on just their dough!

Step 3: Now to really throw you for a loop, pick up that slice and bite that pointy end off. Yep, that’s right–I start with the crust, but I do NOT eat the pizza backwards–although I used to. I’m not entirely sure how I pulled this off.

Step 4: From here on out, it’s a free-for-all to finish the pizza. Usually, I’ll take bites in rows until at some point I start eat up the sides and then who knows from there. On a VERY rare occasion, I will fold the pizza. I do it rarely because I don’t want to get the cheese stuck to the cheese. I only fold the pizza when it is SO SAUCY that folding helps the sauce stay contained on the pizza. It reduces the mess.

Step 5: Clean your face. Wash your hands.

*PS I usually do not add pepper, parm, or nutritional yeast to my pizza. The only times I do is when I’m having a cheese pizza and then it’s usually nutritional yeast (Portland represent!).

*PPS eat your pizza however your like. I have gotten the STRANGEST looks throughout my life for eating the crust first but people can suck it! If they don’t like how you eat your pizza, they can eat it however works for them. No comments or weird looks necessary.

And that’s that!

Supportive Workplaces

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On my second week of work, I came in to two escalated kids and short staffing–twoof our most experienced staff had called in sick. When I walked over to a meeting with a supervisor (not my own) and she asked me how I was feeling, I told her that I was feeling a little nervous and unsure of how the evening was gonna go.

She beamed with happiness. She exploded with joy thanking me for being honest about my feelings on this day. It was such a weird and rewarding experience. She was super validating and then just nudged me to consider that sometimes what we expect (the worse) paints what happens.

The evening, if I recall, went pretty ok. There was definitely a blow out, and we made it through. I left feeling exhausted, wired, and really proud of what we had done.

~                  ~                  ~

Two weeks earlier, when I was just training, I spent the first four hours of my training holding back tears.

Why?

Firstly, it was something we were told when being introduced to this organization’s trauma-informed approach. That basically, instead of asking ourselves “What is wrong with this client?” “What is wrong with this family?” “What is wrong with my coworker?” We are encouraged to ask “What happened to these people?”

This made me think of all the times I’ve thought internally that there was something wrong with me. Or said externally something along the lines of “I don’t know what’s wrong with me…”

Secondly, it was the understanding this organization has that we cannot check our humanness at the door when we come to work every day. It’s an understanding that we are going to have feelings on the job, and that talking about them with our co-workers and getting their support and understanding will make us better employees and the organization more successful.

Of course, in a way this is something I’ve been looking for for a while. But it’s one thing to search for something in theory and a completely different one to find it.

You see, as much as I’ve wanted to find a place where my (many) feelings were welcomed, it also freaks me out. “Professional” (read unemotional) workplaces are hard, sure, but they’re also safe. I know what’s expected of me, I have an excuse to push my feelings down, and I don’t need to be too vulnerable with people. In fact, it’s expected that I am not vulnerable with my coworkers. And that’s comfortable. Being vulnerable can be scary. And so now, in my head, I find myself questioning this supportiveness.

~                  ~                  ~

Last week, I got super annoyed at a coworker. I got stuck with a task that I had specifically asked not to do that day, and I definitely blamed them for my ending up with it. My supervisor could tell that something was up and kept asking me if I was ok and I kept saying I was. Because I’m aware that my feelings don’t always need to be aired out. I’m aware that while my supervisor would not hold these things against me, this is also a job and sometimes I’m gonna have to do things I don’t want to do.

As soon as I could take space, I did. Taking my notes into a back office to finish them up. My supervisor asked me again what was up and again I chose not to share it with him.

There have been times when I’ve word vomited at my supervisor all the frustrating things that happened that day and all the irritation I was feeling. They were immensely supportive. This is part of the job. But there are times that I still tell myself that I just need to suck it up. And I don’t know if that’s true or not. But I know I’ve never been challenged in this way in a workplace.

~                  ~                  ~

Yesterday, I really did not want to go to work. I had to trick myself to leave the house for a free burrito which I didn’t even end up getting because the line was so long.

When I did get to work and we checked in, I was honest with my team that I was feeling really anxious and that I hadn’t wanted to come in that morning. It was harder to be honest with them than with the supervisor who wasn’t my supervisor.

But their reaction was much the same. It was filled with validation and understanding. And when they asked how they could support, I admitted that I needed to do a better job of asking for help when I needed it.

Being in a supportive workplace is weird. Part of me doesn’t trust it, doesn’t want to say “this isn’t working for me right now” or “I need help.” Part of me doesn’t know when the appropriate time to share things is. And part of me just wants to be with my own feelings for a little bit longer. And part of me also wanted this. Wants this. Is done with workplaces where I’m expected to check my emotions and humanity at the door.

Daring to Trust

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Hello, dear readers. And a happy April to you all.

Fun fact: April is National Poetry Month and I’m really loading up on poetry anthologies to enjoy in the month ahead. Poetry is not my go-to style of reading or writing, but I have definitely found some poetry books that speak to me. My favorite poetry book so far is Warsan Shire’s Teaching My Mother How To Give Birth. If you have any favorites, please let me know about them! I’d love to keep growing my understanding and love of this genre.

Anyway!

With the start of the new month, comes the wrap up of the one before and always (on this blog) through the lens of find your word.

I’ve found myself struggling in my relationships again this month. But it’s interesting because I’m not in the usual space where I feel that everyone hates me and everyone is gathering without me behind my back. (A) With my new job, there is a lot of gathering without me going on and I’m doing my best to find peace with that because (B) the feelings coming up for me are mostly this awareness that things are changing. My friendships, their friendships, the network of relationships around me is slowly shifting. And that leaves me uneasy.

And being uneasy in my friendships, these relationships I’ve built and nurtured and relied on for years and years above almost all else (but not always and not all all else), leaves me uneasy in life and in my other relationships.

The thing that leaves me more confident, always, is being honest with people. Being really fucking honest with them. Being honest with them when I’m sure that being honest with them is gonna hurt their feelings, or make them bolt, or lead to their telling me that I’m too much.

Being honest when every bone in my body is screaming at me TURN THE FUCK AROUND YOU CAN’T SAY THESE TO THE PEOPLE YOU CARE ABOUT!

But the people that I can be honest with. The ones who can manage their feelings in the face of my words, who stay, who try to sit with my many feelings instead of minimizing them. When I find those people, and I can only find them by telling them those things I’m not supposed to tell anyone I care about, then for a moment I feel more sure in the world.

Today I listened to an etymology (yeah linguistic nerds in the houseeee) podcast about trust, and I loved the definition the host had for trust: “a confident relationship with the unknown.” And it is absolutely key that the outcome be unknown. Because if the outcome is known, then trust is not required.

Daring to trust people, daring to be horrifyingly, mortifyingly honest with them can be really hard and scary. And it is also so so worth it. Every time I have one of these conversations with a friend, a sibling, a stranger, anyone really, I feel like that relationship has leveled-up.

And that’s why daring is such an important word for me this year. Because I don’t always have that trust. Because my experience has taught me in different times and different ways to do the exact opposite of trust. It’s taught me to coddle and shove down my emotions for the sake of other people. But trust is something that can be relearned. It’s scary and it’s nauseating and sometimes the prospect of trusting someone makes me want to cry. But it’s also a key to the life I know I want to live.

So I keep daring.

Surrendering is Not Doing Nothing

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Something really interesting has been going on in my life lately. Something that makes me wonder. In the past couple of months, I have had opportunities open up for me in the most interesting ways. Some are career related. Some are more about my personal life. But all of them brought to mind something I’ve been contemplating since 2017 when my word of the year was surrender.

You see, at that point in my life, the concept of surrender was totally foreign to me. I was used to planning, to being in control, and to believing that the only way to a fulfilling life is to plan and be in control. Of course, that was challenged at times. Like when I decided to move to Portland with the hopes of getting into a more creative field, but the only job offer I got was not creative and not so different from the job I had just left. I had a plan, but alas that’s not what turned out to happen. And when I got the offer I did, I was wary but excited. I had a good feeling about it. So I took it, even though it was not what I had planned.

The last two-plus years of my life have been a more intentional exercise in surrendering–ironically seeking surrender instead of letting it come to me. They’ve been an exercise in recognizing that control was at the very best a harmless illusion and at the very worst a lie I was using to hold myself back.

But in these two years, I kept struggling with the balance between surrender and action. Could I surrender and still work towards my goals? How can I be both an active participant in my life and passively surrendering to my lack of control?

And I think this week it dawned on me. Maybe.

I am starting to realize that surrender is more about trust than about not doing anything. Surrender is more about believing that there isn’t a right way, a right answer, a right path. It’s about recognizing that there are many paths and trusting that any path will lead you somewhere worthwhile and interesting.

The balance between surrender and action is that surrender is trusting that the doors will appear and open and action is trusting yourself to choose the one that fits you best at that moment. It’s also trusting that more doors will open regardless of the decision you make.

Before I started considering surrender, I was doing all the work. I was designing the door and getting the materials and building the door that I believed wanted to walk through. And I did it because I thought I was the only one that could design the right door for me. The thing was though, sometimes by the time the door was built, I didn’t want to walk through it anymore. And because I was so freaking focused on my door, and so sure that no other door would be good enough, I felt that I had no other options but to walk through the door I was no longer particularly interested in.

Now, I’m letting the doors show up and I’m considering each of them. I’m thinking about what feels right at the moment. I’m gathering information about each door. And I’m making a decision. And the doors keep showing up.

Just to keep it real, though, I don’t want you imagining me peacefully walking through my life by any means. I don’t think that’ll ever be me. I’m still anxious at times that I’m making the wrong decision. I still worry that if I say no to this door now–even if it’s something I think I might want in the future–I won’t get the opportunity again. I’m still scared sometimes that my life will not turn out to be worthwhile or interesting.

And I still keep walking. I still keep picking the door that feels right even through the fear. I still keep letting other doors shut even if I hope to see them again someday.

 

 

Phase Change Philosophy

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So yesterday I was talking to my two best friends from high school about life, what else? We’re all the same age, but feel like we’re in really different places of our lives in some regards. And in other regards, it feels like we’re in the same place. We’ve all been struggling with our careers and jobs for a few years–complaining, jumping around, trying new things.

And it seems like we’re all slowly getting to a point where we’re ok with our jobs not being these grand careers for the time being. We’re starting to get more comfortable with working without these plans that are supposed to get us to huge achievements.

As my friend was talking about being more stagnant at work, my brain flew back to high school and thought freakishly quickly of the phase change graph. Here’s a refresher:

Image result for temperature state of matter graph

I thought about how in those phase change plateaus, the temperature stays the same, but other things are still changing.

I think we often think or are told or are shown that we need to move up quickly at work (take moving up to mean whatever you will, I don’t just mean promotions and such). But the truth of the matter is, sometimes we gotta stay stagnant to do other kinds of work too–maybe work on personal lives, maybe work on side projects, maybe work that’s related to your career.

The truth of the matter is, life if graphed would probably looks more like:

Recovery_Graph

But the nerd side of me still likes this new phase change philosophy.

 

My Struggle with Movement

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*This post is related to a series from my old blog: My Body Story. 

Last weekend I went on my first hike of the season. It was short and it didn’t involve too much elevation change. But I was breathing hard and I was exhausted! And that made me so so sad.

I used to be in shape…in the height of my disordered eating sure, but I was lean and strong and I could run and sprint and lift heavy things and do pushups and burpees like I was unstoppable. I ran half and full marathons and completed a tough mudder–things I’m really proud of.

And now…a two-mile hike had me breathing hard and in bed by 8.

Through my recovery, some things have been easier than others for me. And some times have been easier than others. I really really struggle with movement. There’s a lot of research that shows that the health benefits of intuitive eating and joyful movements are the keys to long-term health regardless of size.

But I really struggle finding joy in movement in the long term. I always get to a point where my body isn’t having it, and I decide to give my body a short break that inevitably goes long. There seems to be little to no internal motivation to keep moving. And that really bums me out. Because I know I feel better when I move. And I miss being that in shape. And I know that’s not the goal anymore. But I do want to be strong and in a new kind of shape.

I know I should be more kind and compassionate towards myself with this struggle, but maybe this is a new place for perfectionism to rear its unhelpful head. I just don’t understand why letting go of eating rules and embracing intuitive eating was relatively easy for me, but finding joyful movement is not. Every time I start working out, I’m scared I’m going to start losing weight or changing the way my body looks and getting really attached to that, and losing everything I’ve worked on so hard these last couple of years.

And this language, ironically, is not all that different from my old diet culture language. This fear of change. This holding on tightly to the way my body looks.

I know that my feelings towards my body are often a gauge of other things going on in my life. When things are good, my body is a non-issue. But when I’m struggling with something–things in my control and out–I often return to body issues. It’s like a twisted comfort zone that I know well, that was the way I was told for so long to fix my life that when something is amiss that’s still where my brain goes.

I have no solutions today. No present nicely wrapped with a bow. This is something I am still figuring out. And I hope that you respect that and accept it along with my body and my journey.

 

 

Seasons Weepings

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When the clock sprung forward, Portland yelled “it’s spring!”

We’ve had highs in the sixties for about ten days and the sun’s stayed out to warm us all up. Portlanders can be found in the parks on blankets, at the bars outdoors, at the brunch lines in the sun.

And I am happy.

I think every winter I forget what it’s like to have sun every day.

And every spring I wonder why I choose to live in a place that is gray and rainy for so much of the year. And every spring I think I probably wouldn’t appreciate this nearly so much if I lived somewhere that looked this way year round.

The weird thing that happens with the sunshine–with the sigh of relief and the easy smiles–is the easy tears. I become a cry baby in the spring. And I remember that whenever my ability to feel more joy expands upwards, it’s paired with an ability to feel more sadness too. Because my sensitivity to all emotions expands, not just the positive ones.

And to be honest, I love that.

I love crying because I remember the times in my life when I’ve been unable to feel anything. And I’ve decided that I’d rather feel all the things than none of them.

I’ve decided but it’s not always in my control. Depression is not always in our control. It grows and it shrinks and it twists and it turns and it takes us on rides that we’d often rather not go on.

And then it (sometimes) lets go and we get relief for a bit.

And the sun shines again.

And we feel again.

Lessons from Ice Cream

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This week I went to get ice cream with one of my friends at one of the (several) local ice-creameries in town. I hadn’t been this month, and hadn’t tried out the monthly flavors yet, but after a quick look at the website the day before, I was set on the flavor I was gonna get.

(yes, I am a person that often looks at the menu of a place beforehand and usually decides what they’re gonna order in advance…so sue me!)

When I got to the shop with my friend, she was (awesomely) excited about all this month’s flavors and when we stepped up to the counter she asked to try all of them. The person helping us out asked if I’d like to do the same, and I figured…why not!

Thank goodness I did because the flavor I thought I wanted was nothing compared to another flavor of the month which I excitedly ordered–one scoop in a cup.

All this to say, sometimes we think we know exactly what we want, exactly what is best for us, and it turns out we’re wrong. Sometimes it’s good to give things we don’t think suit us a try!

Strange Discoveries

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Last week at work, a strange thing happened to me.

I was standing in the office with a few of my coworkers when a stress ball came flying out of nowhere, hit me square in the eye, and dropped into my cross arms.

I looked up to a room full of eyes staring back at me. The coworker who had thrown the ball was beet red and immediately started apologizing profusely. I thanked her for her apology and eventually told her it was fine. But internally I was confounded. Why had she thrown this ball at my face without warning?

I went to my staff meeting, my head in the clouds, still trying to understand what happened.

My supervisor, who had witnessed this whole event, walked into the meeting soon after me and checked in with me about what had just happened. I told him I was mostly confused about what had happened. I found out from him that my coworker had said “Think fast!” before throwing the ball at me. But I had not heard. I had not heard so intensely, that even knowing she said this, I can’t look back at my memory and hear her saying it.

Suffice it to say, I was still immensely confused discovering all of this.

When later that same day, I had another similar incident–I was completely unaware of an escalation going on in the next room–it brought back some memories. Memories of being at home with my parents and their complaining that I get too focused on the TV. So focused that they often would have to try to get my attention for a few minutes before I responded.

I didn’t know that I dissociate until last week. And now that I do, I’m kind of freaked out to be honest. What have I missed? How many times have I dissociated with no awareness and not had anyone around to let me know something strange was happening? And what is going on now that has brought back this behavior?

I know dissociating is a coping mechanism. I know we all have coping mechanisms, that we need them to get through life. I am just freaked out at how cleanly these memories are cut. I am fascinated and scared by how efficient the brain is sometimes, at removing the triggering. I am also grateful for it. I’m aware it’s likely protected me from some intense things.