zenLara's journey

[Lara]

CHAPTER 12.

 

Things have changed since that acrobatics class. I totally feel I have made a big step forward, and that now I am finally in the place I wanted to be more than 2 years ago when I started this battle log (when my goal was basically to walk 1 mile a day). This acrobatics class meant a lot to me:

 

· I dared to go. I overcame my fears. I'm mentally strong enough to do that. I'm still, obviously, really scared of those moves, but I have proved to myself that the atraction I feel towards them is stronger than the fear.

· I am strong enough to try these things. I could hold a handstand against the wall for 25 seconds (when I decided to come down it was not because of lack of strength but because my brain was feeling too stressed about being upside down so much time).

· The guy giving the lesson was an idiot and a bully that made it difficult for me to stay for the whole time, but I sucked it up and stayed and did the job. I'm not coming back there, but I was able to differentiate between the terrible teacher and the discipline itself. I'm already searching a new place to try again, hopefully with encouraging teachers.

· I've got a boost in self-confidence after this. I feel that I have opened a door that was locked and that new opportunities of having fun and growing up are approaching.

[Basement Cat]

Atta girl, Lara! Good on you for not letting that bonehead instructor get the better of you!

[Lara]

I've been feeling pretty proud of myself these days (this is more or less the same theme than last post, but I'll elaborate a bit more -say elaborate say ramble...).

The thing is I'm fully feeling now all the effort I've put these last 2 years and a half. I remember how it was a pain in the ass to get up everyday at 7, in january, and go out to walk that f*** mile. I had the judgment enough not to think about the future or of when I'd be able to do what I wanted, and that made it easier, but anyway, it was hard in some way. A few months later I finally understood what I wanted to do: gymnastics, bodyweight, acrobatics, but my first attempt at it was frustrated. It was a downer and it made me feel like shit, but I was wise then and decided to set aside the shiny things to work hard and build some strength. You can't erase 30 years of sedentary lifestyle in a few months.

I've worked my path slowly, and I've despaired many times because sometimes I seemed to go backwards and it was really frustrating. But I kept on it, and now that I'm receiving all the benefits and the fun I can't but thank my old me for all the effort.

There is still a lot to do. I'm not that strong yet, I'm not that fit. But I already can do activities I never thought I would do.

 

I have nonetheless to work a lot on my mindset. I still get mad because of the image people have of me: small, weak and unfit, and I'll have to accept that maybe that will never change. I recently suffered another episode of "oh, no, please, don't lift that, it's heavy and you'll hurt yourself. I'll do it" from a colleague (this colleague I'm talking about is an almost 60 years old woman, so, really? Do I look THAT small?). I just can't stand it. There is also a guy that attends the same self-defense group I do, and everytime we work in couples together, has to make comments about that I have to get confident and try the things "no matter how small or weak you are". I know he means well, because what he wants me is to forget how big and strong is everyone there and to make me feel confident I'll be able to throw down a big guy once I learn how to, but it makes me feel miserable. It is a work I have to do, to stop feeling bad because of what people think I look like, that's it. If it's someone who means well, they're not trying to hurt me. If it's someone who belittles me, I'd just punch them in their face I just shouldn't be paying attention to that kind of person. It is my own feeling of being a weakling what makes me feel bad, not what they say.

 

By the way:

On 18/5/2016 at 11:58 AM, zenLara said:

I'm already searching a new place to try again, hopefully with encouraging teachers.

Done!

[Basement Cat]

Hey, Lara!

 

About those comments you hear from people: have you told them how their comments made you feel? Specifically the colleague and the self-defense group guy since they seem to mean well. It's very easy for people to hurt others without meaning to, especially people with self confidence issues. That guy at the SD group, did he really use the words 'small' and 'weak'? I'd suggest calling him out on that. You can be straight forward and tell him that it doesn't help your confidence to be called small and weak. Or use humor. I'm fond of deadpanning myself. ''You suck at pep talks, you know that?''

 

If people give you a hard time, we're always here for you, Lara! You go girl! Rawr!

[Lara]

1 hour ago, Basement Cat said:

Hey, Lara!

 

About those comments you hear from people: have you told them how their comments made you feel? Specifically the colleague and the self-defense group guy since they seem to mean well. It's very easy for people to hurt others without meaning to, especially people with self confidence issues. That guy at the SD group, did he really use the words 'small' and 'weak'? I'd suggest calling him out on that. You can be straight forward and tell him that it doesn't help your confidence to be called small and weak. Or use humor. I'm fond of deadpanning myself. ''You suck at pep talks, you know that?''

 

If people give you a hard time, we're always here for you, Lara! You go girl! Rawr!

 

Thank you for your words (and for the shark! Never had thought of the protein content in faces, lol. Don't know why, it feels like something @deftona would say "you're super great and faces are high in protein. Supergreat I said" ). I guess I should talk to the guy, yes. Really, he means well, but sometimes he insists too much on me practicing exercises using more strength (practice is done with light pressure to avoid hurting ourselves) just to prove his point that I'm stronger than I feel. This makes me feel uncomfortable, because on one side I obviously don't want to hurt him, and on the other side, he does that because he knows I can't hurt him (because I am so weak, otherwise he wouldn't let me try...). So you see... I'll talk to him next time we practice together.

[deftona]

Well, you are supergreat, Lara  

[Basement Cat]

Pure thoughts and a kind heart are trumped by a clumsy mouth. If he is really a nice guy, he'll mend his ways.

 

[Lara]

One month later, after 5 acrobatics lessons, I feel in the opposite side I felt. I try to stay positive, but it is hard. Seeing all that people being able to do such things while I can't isn't nice. I'm not talking about the guy that can chain several impossible pirouettes and jumps and all that, I'm talking about so simple things like a backwards somersault or being able to stretch my legs, or don't feeling destroyed after a warm-up. Or not being so damn scared.

I've tried today to reproduce at home some exercise I did on the trampoline last friday, and I've been able to confirm how much of the jump came from the help of the trampoline itself and how much from my own strength. The result: 99% of it comes from the trampoline.

I feel weak and stiff.

It was easier when I was all alone by myself at home, with no one to compare to.

This is the result of not using my body for 30 years, aside of walking and the occasional flight of stairs. I'm paying for what I've done (or, better said, for what I have not done).

There's another little voice in my brain, however, telling me all that doesn't matter. That it hurts, of course, both physically and emotionally, but that I'm making the right choices now, and that's what counts. Today, for example, I feel like crap, everything aches after that friday class (literally, everything, I can't get up, sit down, walk or cough without feeling pain in several places), and what I wanted was to loaf about the whole day, but I told to myself I already had a rest day yesterday. So, I'm maybe not ready for a tough workout, but got up from the couch and did some moves, like froggers, monkeys and bears, and some chin-ups and push-ups and then some stretching. And after that I cried for a while, don't know if from relief or because I feel I'm a hopeless case.

 

In fact, all this is just another consequence of that step forward I was talking about last month. I've made a step forward, and it is rewarding, but it comes with new challenges to face, and it is not always easy.

[Guest]

Big bear hugs. Wow you're a real trooper Lara. Getting up from the coach, I know it's weird but I felt really proud of you when I read you did that, chin ups and push ups! You've come really far from so long ago.

 

hugs, slow and steady, you're doing great, can totally see that, even if sometimes you don't think you are  waves some Pom poms you go girl!

[Guest]

Oh I forgot to add, I know what you mean by aching all over, I've been aching all week after a tough badminton session (I hadn't played in a long time) and so even my butt muscles and neck and soles of my feet were aching from DOMS, and the aching no matter how you move as you describe, yea that lol So that made me numb and feel a tad close to tears. If you don't already do it, I find self message really helps relieve the ache, though patience is key. Hugs take care Lara

[Lara]

51 minutes ago, Umodiel said:

you're doing great, can totally see that, even if sometimes you don't think you are

 

Thank you, sweetie. It's just a bad streak. I know I'll be ok, it's just I need time to adjust and feel less scared and less frustrated.

[Owlet]

wait what, you have a battle log?! I never think to check peoples' signatures. Turns out there are all sorts of hidden goodies  Forgive me if I don't read all 15 pages though lol. Maybe one day.

[Lara]

On 21/8/2016 at 9:33 AM, Owlet said:

Forgive me if I don't read all 15 pages though lol.

 

Yeah, it has grown a little too much...

[Lara]

As I did with my previous willpower challenge, I have opened a new thread for my stress challenge:

I hope this work will prove itself as worthy as the previous one on willpower. Working on willpower reduced a lot my anxiety about some of my life goals, and I hope this new thread will help me to change some things about my work, stage fright, general public performance and even about how do I look to some stressful aspects of life.

[Lara]

Anxiety seems to be taking over my life. The last few days it's been hard to do anything. I do it anyway, but my inner feelings are awful, and the word that I say more times is "no". Do I want to go out? No. Do I want to have dinner with friends? No. Do I want to go to acrobatics? No. Do I want to start my next challenge? No.

I try to anyway do the things I refuse to do, because I know that curling up under a blanket won't make me feel better. But it's so damn hard.

I know, this is the beginning of the scholar year and it is always stressing, and I am already fighting my own fears in several aspects of my life: I'm terrified of being upside down, but here I am working on handstands; I'm terrified of being beaten but here I am attending self-defence lessons; I'm terrified of public performance, but here I am preparing my next recital; I'm terrified of the new subjects I have to teach this year, but here I am preparing the material. I guess I have a lot on my plate right now.

[Lara]

Yesterday night I had slept only 3 hours when I woke up because of my boyfriend's terrible snoring. But instead of going to another room or spending the night complaining, I decided to do an experiment. I did my usual "go to sleep" exercise from headspace, to help relax, and then just tried to be present in the moment. I could feel my drowsiness in the moments in which there was silence, and my rage and frustration when my boyfriend would start to snore again. I noticed that I have a tendency to refuel those feelings, and it was quite an effort to just feel them and let them go. I also noticed that when I clung to those feelings small tensions and itchies appeared in my body. When I succeeded to let emotions go, those physical sensations disappeared too. I spent around 1 hour doing this, getting lightly asleep and being back to being awake, trying to accept I couldn't change anything about the snoring, but that I could work on my own self to make it better for me. So I did, and finally got asleep for 3 more hours.

 

I'm doing a lot of work on mindfulness right now and it's proving useful. Some days it's easier, other days the emotions are strong and not easy to be with, but I keep on. I've also noticed that I have a clear tendency to ignore or not pay as much attention to good sensations and feelings, making my life pretty unbalanced. I thought being more mindful would help me with anxiety -and it does help- but it never occurred to me I would discover such a negative bias.

 

For different reasons, I've decided to stop acrobatics by now, and instead focus on my self-defence lessons. I want to practice at home to start make some improvement. I have my first test today -I hope to pass it- and I feel like I could get a bit more involved in the practice. There are some things I am excellent with, like escaping, dodging and fast moves (being small and thin that's my asset) but there's a lot to improve on strength, technique and body awareness.

I also want to get back to parallettes workouts. One of the reasons I feel I'm not doing progress in acrobatics is because there is still a lack of strength. I want to fix my rational fears so I will only have to deal with the irrational ones. I could work on Floor 1 if I miss acrobatics. I would also like to get back to long walks and biking.

[Owlet]

Found you again  well done with the mindfulness, especially during the night! I know the rage of trying to sleep through snores well. Interesting about your bias to pay less attention to positive feelings, I suspect I might be the same. Good luck with the test. 

[Lara]

On 30/10/2016 at 10:11 AM, Owlet said:

Good luck with the test. 

Thank you! Test was fun, but I still don't know whether I passed it. They don't give the results until they've printed the certifications, so we'll have to wait. Anyway, I did fine. There were things I didn't remember properly, and I don't know how much damage it did to my final result, but let's have hope!

[Lara]

On 29/10/2016 at 11:05 AM, zenLara said:

I've also noticed that I have a clear tendency to ignore or not pay as much attention to good sensations and feelings, making my life pretty unbalanced. I thought being more mindful would help me with anxiety -and it does help- but it never occurred to me I would discover such a negative bias.

I'm thinking it may not be a bias that makes me pay less attention to positive feelings, exactly. I think that negative feelings become more intense because I always try to avoid feeling them, so they assure themselves they're noticed by going to the next level. On the other side, positive feelings are not being avoided, but because of this, they stay as they are, making them comparatively lighter. It's like I'm so used to feel in a "high volume", that when emotions use a normal voice I barely hear them.

 

I'm working on establishing my values for different roles or areas in my life, and reading the chapters on willingness. I understand what they explain on willingness being about a yes or a no, but saying yes makes strong fears appear. Fear of failing, fear of loosing my current coping strategies -not useful in the long run though-, fear of suffering...

 

And... I think it is time to begin... CHAPTER 13: Terra incognita.

 

I'm tempted by the idea of making this a challenge. But then I think I will start to design goals and wanting to attain them and it could transform this healthy process into a stressful situation. So no goals, no challenge. Just keep on reading, keep on writing, begin to feel and accept everything. Step out of the battlefield and into my life.

[Lara]

Finished my first read of the ACT book, and I've gone through some of the exercises and techniques proposed. Seems like a useful approach.

I've found interesting their chapters on values and goals because they include one thing there is usually left out on this type of schemes: barriers and strategies to work with them.

They propose 10 different areas in which you may find your values, such as family, work, citizenship, personal development and so. You can have one or more values in each area. Once you've decided your values, you begin to design long-term and short-term goals that make you move in the direction of your values. For every goal, no matter how short-term it is, you write the actions you need to take for this goal to be achieved. And here is where every book/article I've read on this ends. 

But in this one, they ask you to write all those actions, and find for each action, which barriers or resistances you may find, in the form of thoughts, feelings, body sensations, memories and behavior patterns. Then, for each type of barrier -usually many for every action-, you choose one of the techniques you've previously learnt in the core of the book to be used to face that barrier when it tries to prevent you from taking the action.

There are a lot of techniques for you to choose, that come from the same root, awareness and acceptance, but that work from different points of view.

They make it clear that their approach is not to get rid of the barriers, but to learn to function with the barriers. They tell you to stop fighting your anxiety, depression, or whatever, to stop being entangled with your mind, and get out there and get a life, despite of your problems. You don't need to solve your anxiety problem to have a life. They use the metaphor of the bus driver: you're driving a bus full of passengers. You know the direction you want to follow, your values, and you have a map, your goals, to help you move in the direction you want. But your passengers are of all sorts, some are nice old ladies that will go with you wherever you want, while others are gang members that will try to make you drive in the direction they want. Your job is to listen to this passengers, and to accept they are there -because in the end those tough guys seem to be there to protect you from dangers- but to keep on driving to the place you want, instead of going down the embankment.

They use another metaphor I liked a lot, to convince you to stop fighting with your own mind. They say it's like you're in a tug-of-war with your personal monster (anxiety, pain, memories..) and the harder you pull the harder your monster pulls back. It doesn't matter how hard you pull, you never win. The solution they want to give you is to stop pulling, and instead finding a way to drop the rope.

This work seems promising to me. I made a lot of progress with the anxiety workbook, but there is some remaining anxiety that seems will be here forever, because of my past, or my genetics or whatever, I don't mind. All I've done until now has been useful: exercise, supplements, outdoors activities, affirmations, planning, facing problems and avoiding procrastination... but there is always this thing that doesn't allow me to really do what I want to do. I seem to go back and forth, depending on how high my anxiety is at that moment. And this seems like a nice way to approach it right now.

[SymphonicDan]

Re-following you

 

I've thought before when I'm sleeping in hostels etc. with snorers - is there a way to use mindfulness/meditation techniques to help ignore the distraction and sleep... but I never managed it. Do you think you managed to sleep despite your boyfriend's snoring (or did the snoring just stop).

[Lara]

1 hour ago, SymphonicDan said:

Re-following you

 

I've thought before when I'm sleeping in hostels etc. with snorers - is there a way to use mindfulness/meditation techniques to help ignore the distraction and sleep... but I never managed it. Do you think you managed to sleep despite your boyfriend's snoring (or did the snoring just stop).

 

Hi! How's your trip going?

 

Yes, it is possible to sleep despite the snoring. It's just that, at least for me, it's difficult to let go of the sounds and of the frustration of being awake. But once that is done I can go to sleep. I do not always succeed, though.

[Lara]

First -aural- encounter with a wild boar. I had left the trails and was walking cross-country in a woody area when I suddenly hear a loud noise and think "a quad bike here? But who starts an engine and stops it immediately?" While my mind tried to find a better explanation, second warning came, louder. "Ok, not an engine". I bent down to try to see but nothing moved. So I moved. In the opposite direction. Fast.

Never thought running backwards would be so difficult 

 

I've been applying the techniques from the book to my usual inner discussions "it would be nice to go for a walk/do a workout/play the flute, but... (laziness, excuses, resistance...)", and it works. The feelings and thoughts don't exactly disappear, but they become less intense, so there's room for me to feel what I feel or think what I think and do the action. It also makes room to feel great about having taken the action.

[Owlet]

Yikes! Exciting but scary!

[Lara]

Pretty active days. Since saturday I've been 3 times to the woods and attended to 2 self-defence lessons. I'm also doing serious music practice and preparing many activities for my students, and... I've meditated 100 times in the last 72 days, which is absolutely awesome. Oh, and by the way, I passed my self-defence test! Got an 8, which I feel it to be a too generous grade for my performance on that day (max score attainable was 10), but of course I'll take it.

 

ACT is helping a lot. I like the way it has to help me keep distance from things, like meditation does. Specially useful with sugar: I've changed my usual self-chatter pattern from "I want sugar/I need sugar/I'm eating something sugary again/I'm destroying my health" and so on, for "what I'm noticing is the tendency of wanting to eat sugar". It looks stilted for something one would say to oneself, but after a few days I got used. It is not I+action+sugar anymore. Sugar is not something I want, right now, sugar is something that I can notice I have a tendency to want. I can acknowledge I have this tendency, but I can keep on acting in the direction I want (my health values). Also, I'm free from seeing it as a "bad habit". Habit implies it is something that is established and that will take a lot of effort to change. But thinking of a tendency makes it completely different. Another advantage is that it allows me to realize how many times I feel this urge but I don't really act on it. Knowing this is helping to reduce both the criticism and the guilt. I'm not even trying to reduce my sugar intake, I'm just trying to be present with the feeling of the urge, and it's making me feel much better. I feel lighter, less worried. I think this can lead to more positive changes in a near future.

 

I've also learnt to thank my mind for what it points out, whatever it is. This seemed a bit counterintuitive at the beginning, because it felt like I was legitimizing my inner critic, but the result after these two weeks is that my criticism has become less agressive. Every time my mind makes some critic comment or negative evaluation, I say "oh, thank you for reminding me of that", or " thanks for noticing", or "thanks for that information", without starting an argument about it. At the beginning it made me feel a bit stupid to thank my mind for something that was not useful to me, but after a few days, my mind seems to be less nasty to me. It has started to simply state my behavior or to make a comment on what I do. It's like "hey, you're doing "x". I thought you had established that your values were "y" and "z", right?" This is so liberating.

 

Also great success on beating procrastination or keeping myself active. Every time I feel a resistance to do something, I sit down and write which are my thoughts, feelings and sensations, I see if I'm being influenced by memories, and which is my behavioral tendency in this situation. Then I work with the techniques I've learnt. It seems like a long exercise but it takes less than 5 minutes, and before you realize you're doing that thing you were not sure of doing/didn't want to do at all.