Still Navigating

[Zues126]

You're awesome. This guy is still dealing with a lot and I don't see him giving you what you need right now. You're looking for an R, he's spinning and medicating and lost. There is a reason most people wait for a while after a D and one of them is to not hurt or use other people. I wish he had followed this rule, but if he won't you should on his behalf. Stringing yourself along because the time you spend together biweekly feels good doesn't make sense when you have to go through mental gymnastics the rest of the time. Let him know you enjoy spending time with him but are looking for more, and he should keep your number and call you when that day comes and you'd be happy to see where you are both at in your life.

And yeah, teenagers are unbelievable. I am blow away with how my 14 year old son's brain works, I'll fill that in on my thread sometime. We could type the number 7 on a piece of paper and he can stare me dead in the eye and tell me it's a 3. Ug. But it does make me challenge myself and try to understand in what ways I am an ungrateful twit in my own life.

Finally, I'll share some thoughts on fear and anxiety. I've been talking about this with my best friend, how perfectionism and anxiety relate to competition. It's good to a point, then it's bad. It's like the movie Inside Out. Each emotion has something important to tell us, but it can't run the whole show. Where is that line? I think it has to do with what we can and can't control. For example, if I'm going to have a big match coming up fear might tell me to work really hard to prepare. This makes sense. I can control that, it is productive. Fear also might tell me to try really hard during the competition, and to value each opportunity. That makes sense too. I control that as well. But then fear might tell me not to trust my stroke or judgment and to force the ball into the pocket. That doesn't make any sense. I can't do better than my best, and I can't control the outcome, all I can do is sabotage it by gripping my cue too tightly and shifting my focus to what can go wrong instead of thinking about what I want to have happen. So at some point I have to tell fear "Hey, thanks for the concern, I did what I can thanks to your suggestion, but from here out I'm going to let go and trust it to work out, so you can sit back down now".

When it comes to housing and parenting and dating it's no different. Reflect. Think about what you can do that's productive and you can control. Take appropriate actions. But then, once you've done what you can, it's time to deliberately let go and put it away. Have faith that you can handle what comes. You'll be faced with situations and decisions, you'll use the same good judgement to handle those situations that has gotten you here, and all will be ok. I don't pretend that you can consciously decide not to be anxious and it just disappears entirely. But you can get better at managing it, not going spinning off the deep end.

Be well G.