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The whir of the wall heater lulls me to sleep. I’m in seventh grade again, at my friend’s house, dreaming of my life as an adult. We just watched Dirty Dancing and inhaled a bag of Doritos with a 2L of Dr Pepper and no one considered the carbohydrates involved. In reality, I am an adult. With children. And two husbands by now. And a whole lot of disappointments and triumphs along the way. I still feel like that awkward seventh grader when, I’m actually the mother of a seventh grader. How did this happen? I’m typing this in a cottage in the woods. A writer’s weekend, that’s what I claimed it to be. And in late 2022, I am stuck trying to decide how much of my life to share on social media and how many posts are “enough” to promote my writing. The internet connection is poor here and it’s a blessing and a curse. When did we become so tied to people we’ve never met and numbers oft generated by bots? Do I measure the importance of my work by likes, shares, and follows or by actual lives impacted? And let’s be honest, we rarely know when we impact a life because the Enneagram and Myers-Briggs tells us that a certain % of folks are introverts and would never tell us if we helped them, to no fault of our own. And the trauma we have all endured. I am not joking. The real actual trauma and pain I have seen my fellow GenXers and patients and friends endure. We all go to therapy and spend countless hours trying to right some of the wrongs between scrolling and TikToking, working our regular jobs, raising tiny to full-sized humans, and trying to eat whole foods. In this world of 2-4 second attention spans, I feel lost. I feel lonely. I feel drained. Am I the only one? And so I sit. In Midlife. In the Southeast. In middle school bleachers and while planning a wedding for the oldest. I sit at baseball tournaments and in my car traveling to see my patients. I sit at kitchen tables discussing hospice the same morning I sit with my fifth grader studying vocabulary. I know I’m not alone. The Middle is weird. It’s not the beginning, like I am reminded of with my oldest and his fiancé. The furniture shopping and the bedspread and dishes selections. It’s not the end either. The disbursement of family heirlooms and quiet days sparsely populated by visiting friends or family. It’s not the days of toddler-parent-survival where bath time and nap time ruled the schedule. But it’s not the days where everyone can drive yet either. And oh yeah a pandemic happened. School shootings. A nation so divided I can’t even recognize it. But just keep on going folks. Keep on posting and hashtagging and hustling. Meh. I will take this Middle. I will take the Menopause and the investment planning and the figuring out how to parent adult children. I will take it and try to learn from it and admit that it’s uncomfortable. See, we are too old to fake stuff in this Middle. We have seen too much. I think my writing will continue to be what it is. Real. Raw. With a flimsy filter and a side of sarcasm. It will grow as I do. I hope you join me. If anything in this little diary entry stirred your insides, then know that we are in this together. Let’s go. Awkward but not alone.
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Have you ever found yourself at an event, dinner, movie, party, etc and thought "why am I here? I had / have no desire to be here."? Have you ever been sweating in the 1 million degree summer heat doing some random and laborious task asking yourself WHY or HOW you signed up for this? Ever felt like you've wasted hours (or even an entire weekend) doing something that did not align with your goals or soul? THAT feeling is most often the result of people-pleasing and failure to set clear boundaries. Boundaries are tricky. They're difficult to set in the beginning but become rote after lots of practice. They require forethought and communication. Licensed counselors are often EXPERTS at explaining and helping you set boundaries, so please find a good local counselor if you identify this as an area of potential growth for yourself. One word of caution, however: once you get GOOD at setting boundaries, you will never look back. Tell your best friends and loved ones to say goodbye to the Doormat You and hello to the Assertive You. 🥰 In addition to the lists below (which are both excellent references), I want to give you my tips and insights around setting boundaries.
How many events have you attended that you DID NOT want to attend? How much self-care have you missed out on in your efforts to make OTHERS happy? How much TIME have you wasted doing things you had no desire to do? People-pleasing usually originates from old emotional wounds. Someone somewhere told you or showed you that you weren't good enough AS YOU ARE, so you started "performing" in ways to please those same people that hurt you. Those habits of pleasing others can bleed over into your romantic relationships, work friendships, family dynamics, and regular friendships. When we people-please, we ignore our own boundaries. Until we do THE WORK (counseling usually), we people-pleasers usually don't even know what boundaries in relationships look like or feel like. Since I'm a list-maker, let's look at some strategies to STOP pleasing once and for all!
Let's go into each strategy in a little more detail:
Being a people pleaser is exhausting. It's like running a marathon every day but never receiving a medal, no cheering crowd, just you. It's the unnoticed HARD work for others' gain. So yeah, it's not even like a marathon, because at least in a marathon your body might reap some of the benefits. Use the strategies listed above to start changing your people-pleasing behavior. Comment below if you can relate to this or especially if you have "overcome" some of your people-pleasing tendencies. Here's to Healthy Boundaries and More NO's in Your Life! Godspeed. How on earth is it already time for 2022? Where did 2021 go? I'm not sure, BUT, I am ready for 2022. 2021 was messy and ugly in many ways. On a personal level, it was unkind to my health. I received a new diagnosis of psoriasis in March and had to miss an entire month of work while my body was adjusting to new medications and my skin was trying to heal. October revealed an unexpected opportunistic infection (since I'm immunocompromised) that required strong antibiotics and made me feel pretty lousy. Since November 1, I have been hobbling around on painful swollen knees and am facing unexpected knee surgery. Pity party? Nah, not my style. Swallowing it all? That's my go-to. When I think about my health and how unfair it is that I've tried to take care of my body my whole life and I'm still getting the short end of the health stick, I can get pretty low. Then I think of all my patients who have it "worse." And I swallow it. I shove it down. I brush it off. But is that healthy? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. So I'm learning to acknowledge my own feelings. I'm sad that my body is not behaving. I'm angry in some ways. I'm frustrated for sure. I'm still thankful that I can work for right now. I am beyond grateful for my parents who live 2 doors down and help me daily. I'm tired. I'm realizing I have X amount of energy each day and my family needs the bulk of it. If my job takes most of it then I'm robbing my family of my best self. Filing for disability has been on my mind more in the past 9 months than it ever has during this 5 year sarcoidosis journey. So what next? New year, new adventures, new planner, new goals, new.... what else is new now that I'm 45? I have a lot of old. Old hurts. Old unmet needs. Old furniture. Old clothes. Old shame. Old junk in my kitchen drawers. Old relationship issues that deserve a conversation. An old van that has chipping paint but it's paid for and gets us to ball tournaments. I think the reflex for all of us is to replace the old with the new and that will make it all better. New clothes. The newest kitchen gadget. New furniture or decor, ON TREND, my dear! A shiny new SUV that costs more than most people's annual salary and gets 12 mpg. But boy does it look good and that's what counts, right? I'm no longer trying to replace the old just by reflex. It's harder to keep it and try to keep it running. Purging the clothes and kids' toys is definitely good, but when we throw out things that still work but aren't "good enough" for whatever standards, what does that say about us? Who and what have you thrown away and replaced with newer and easier? (ouch)... I'm falling apart health-wise in a lot of ways, but I "still work." Will my family or employer throw me out? Will my friends forget about me if I'm not as active and fun as I used to be? Where does that leave me? As an Enneagram 3 (Performer, Success Driven), I've been gut-punched this year by my body's betrayal. But God must be telling me something. I know He has a plan. I have to trust and slow down and just be. NOT. MY. STRONG. SUIT. Perhaps 2021 leaves you feeling like I do. Maybe you lost someone you loved. Maybe you were also betrayed by either your body or someone you trusted. Maybe you felt out of control all year like I did? Maybe you spent too many hours googling vaccines and viruses and death tolls like most of the world. Maybe you feel all the "junk" you've shoved down and swallowed for however long starting to surface and want to be named and noticed. I feel that with you. 2022 can be a renewal for us, my friends. I'm going to intentionally name what's working, what's not working, what is worth repair, and what really needs to be purged from my life. This goes for relationships, time spent, health choices, what I consume digitally and physically, items in my home and closet, and my thought life. I'm going to check myself when I just want to replace the old for that quick dopamine hit. I'm going to try to sit in the uncomfortable and define what's causing it. I can't keep running 90 mph. 2022 is for slowing down. It is for evaluation. It is for growing up, finally. Godspeed. |