Quote: I've been feeling overwhelmed lately...I have so many things that I want to change and improve and I don't seem to make much progress in any direction. In the past H has been able to ease my anxiety by just listening and telling me all would be ok... I see what I want to be but can't seem to take the small steps to get there.
Tessa, you need to rely more on yourself to not be anxious than on someone who may or may not continue to be with you. Whenever you feel overwhelmed, keep in mind that you may be thinking of too much too soon too fast, and develop the habit of taking it one moment at a time. If we thought about all the meals we have to prepare this year, and all the grocery shopping that involves, and all the cooking, and all the planning, and all the cleanup, cooking dinner would be overwhelming. But we don't think like that. We think very short term, what it is we'd like to make for meals this day or this week and systematically do the shopping, cooking and cleaning, without thought to anything much more than that. And we handle it that way.
The "small steps" are the building blocks of new habits and behaviors. If for instance you wanted to work on not being quick tempered, try to visualize what an even tempered person would do when you're faced with that trigger to explode. Then do the same. Maybe it requires leaving the room and doing something else, or counting to ten. It certainly requires giving thought to where on the scale of things the importance of blowing your top on the matter is, and why that's so. This is just an example, I'm not saying you have a temperament problem. By doing those small steps over and over again, they become habitual and replace the bad habits.
So, in other words, concentrate more on small achievable, realistic, practical steps that combine to make the other small steps, rather than on the big ultimate change.
