Where did my life go?

[AntoniaB]

IB if you have regrets that you didn't do everything you wanted to do to be strong enough, then you set your bar to an impossible height. Seriously.

There are a lot of really good books on overcoming perfectionism. You are a perfectionist (takes one to know one!) and you have too high of standards for yourself. You cannot reach them. No one can.

Someone here said to me that they bet I didn't place such a high bar for other people and that's true. Try to think about what you would say is acceptable or "enough" for a friend of yours, and I bet you it's less than what you think you personally should achieve, and try to bring your goals in line with the more realistic expectations you have for other people.

If there is one thing everyone has said to you over and over, it's that you are far too hard on yourself. About a month or so ago when I went back to work and got all these migraines, I realized that I was doing the same thing, and I really got rid of my focus on XH and just looked at how tough I was on me--and realized that I needed very much to "work" at cutting myself a break.

Focus on treating yourself with more compassion and care, taking more time for you, taking time to, when you say things like "I will always have regrets", to say to yourself STOP IB, you will NOT have regrets because you did X, Y, and Z, and you must take pride in how hard you worked and in what you accomplished.

Start to pay close attention to when you use language that is self-defeating and always have a personal comeback for it that reverses it and affirms the good you have done.

You can learn a new way to think about yourself that isn't so demoralizing.

And the work thing you did? That's amazing....I've never heard of someone writing a grant that was funded to that high of an amount of money. You should take yourself out to dinner for that accomplishment!

Also very glad to hear you are back to your crafts...I've recently gotten back into them too and really, when little things like this start falling into place you will realize that much of your life is right where you left it :-)