pegkerr | Solving problems

The only two problems like that I can think of were solved by saying, "I want a divorce" and "I can't believe this is a surprise to you, but I quit." I suspect that's not much help.

Wow- I just finished my long comment and when it posted I saw yours. I said the same- "I want a divorce"

Getting up the nerve to end my marriage. I had started back at college and took advantage of the counseling services covered by student fees to secretly go a counselor. We went over everything to prepare me to make the transition, but as absolute as I was about the decision, I couldn't take the first step and say "I want a divorce." There were a million factors in this, a child, my emotional regression, his newly acquired panic attacks, our families, etc. It took me 4 months to say it. It took an argument to do it, but once it was out there I had to take the momentum, because I was getting so much negative feedback and pushes from all directions to "take it back", suck it up and be miserable the rest of my life because it was a permanent decision. It was difficult to take that step- but I HAD to follow through and stick to my guns to get through it, and that was a challenge I was no longer equipped for (I had always been forthright and independent, but my marriage and relationship crushed those facets of myself, so it was difficult to regain them). He wasn't a BAD person, but it was not a good or healthy relationship, AT ALL.

How did it feel to solve it? I lost 20lbs in the next two months- without alterating anything else (diet, exercise, activity, all the same). It made me realize how important it was to rely on myself, to believe in myself. But I didn't feel euphoric, or even relieved- it was a process and journey- throughout it I still felt doubt in myself, but forged anyway. Looking back those many years ago, I feel good, but it didn't feel good then, just difficult. It has never been a matter of "see, I was right", but that right or wrong, my life is my own and I have to live it and make decisions for what is best for me and not feel selfish for it. I used regret not doing it sooner, but now I realize that it had to take the course that it did.

Depression. That is such a long story that I will link back to the relevant entries:

http://www.livejournal.com/tools/memories.bml?user=rachelmanija&keyword=Depression&filter=all

It felt great. Getting medical treatment is still the best decision I've ever made in my life.

Thank you. I feel honored to be permitted to read this.

I hope it was helpful.

Thanks so much for linking and sharing your views and experiences, Rachel. I have just read the first post and you have already given me valuable insights and much food for thoughts.

Thank you. Will send link to more people. *sends well wishes*

I'm glad to hear that. Do feel free to share the link-- it's public on purpose.

I was hit by severe depression while at Macalester College. I believe you know how competitive it is -- and how open. And yet despite my network of friends, despite the best efforts of the college, I was severely agoraphobic and just stopped coming to class. And all the other incidental things like eating. Intervention made things worse. I was faced with trying to recuperate in an environment where I had Failed with a capital F, with little to no support for what I rightly knew to be a physiological disease that had onset with adulthood. It had to be, because I was too unhappy to write, and there was no real reason for it; the loss of that love was totally out of character.

I tried two more times, at great cost, and after a particularly hard battle, I realized I couldn't go back to that environment, and neither could I continue school while I was still mentally unfit. So I dropped everything. I withdrew, I found a place to live, and I put myself back on track for survival and healing. No close relatives; after another semester, no close friends.

It was likely not the wisest of all possible roads, but in hindsight, it was the best. I could always work on my degree -- that was never the issue. My intelligence was not something I doubted. What was hard, really hard, was living in my own skin, independently. I had gotten myself into a number of ruts, and shamed myself into thinking those ruts would be there even when the people and/or situations who made them necessary were gone. I was, for a time, afraid of wanting something outside myself -- I learned I couldn't be vital without that. Or I should say, realized; learning and realization aren't quite the same.

Giving myself the license to be myself was the best freedom I could imagine. I still carry that little nut of pride in me, when the winter gets cold and I start getting down on myself. It wasn't the running away; I had to run back to myself and take my concerns seriously, even if they sounded childlike and silly. I don't think I can properly describe it to someone who hasn't done somethng similar -- after all, a rut is so shallow. Yet escaping it is like throwing off the heaviest chains.

I am not sure if I would have taken that road if there hadn't been such a conflict. Now I'm proactive, and I try to get things done before flashpoints can happen. I would have saved myself a lot of hurt -- but doing it the hard way taught me more than doing it the "right" way. I was so unmoored, then. Paddling in the middle of the sea without wind or stars. It's difficult to want without knowing what it is you want... some people would call it faith. To tell you the truth, I rarely call it that because a lot of it was making small changes one day at a time, and making them stick, one day at a time.

Moving to Vancouver. I'd reached a point in my life where it made no sense at all to stay in Ontario. I hated the humid summers, I hated the industrial grid of SW Ontario. I had finished a job that I didn't really like anyway, and at 30, I had no idea what, if anything, I wanted to do, in that town where I was born and grew up. And yet, there was nothing calling me Vancouver, nothing specific. Symbolically I suppose I was moving from the tight center to somewhere on the periphery. Was I not also moving from stasis, from a place and way of being that was essentially closed, circumscribed, circumferenced, to a place that was open, and moving, and alive in a somehow freer way that I had known?

Don't know if this is relevant, but there you go.

I spent years doing the "when I get brave enough, I'll submit my poetry for publication" thing but I just couldn't figure out how to get my toe in the door...and then

marcgunn told me about lulu.com and I put together a manuscript, uploaded it and the cover art and I just received my first royalty cheque :)

I use to get sick all the time. One big factor was never getting enough sleep and down time. Which hugley effects my health physical and mental.
I need a lot of rest too and that can be frustrating sometimes to accomodate.
I tried doing too much, work, school, raising someone else's kid, marriage and all those things we women do to try and make and keep everyone around us happy.

It took much effort and time to learn to say no to things I didn't have to do but felt like others expected it of me, and to restructure my time to accomodate what I did have to do and some of what I wanted to do. There were also money problems during this time tied to my seperation from my first husband so there was learning to live on an even tighter budget and pay down debt.

By paring down my life I've found I'm able to get more things done that I feel like I need to and want to, although it still can be a challenge and it's one of those things one always works at to keep in check and there are always life circumstances that throw a wrench in the system from time to time that can't be helped. But learning to identify what can wait and what really can't versus what we think can't wait makes a difference.

I also switched jobs twice in a two year period. This also helped because the environment I worked in was somewhat toxic.

I did not do this on my own I went to a conselor for 2 years. I was also severally depressed.

At any rate I hardly ever get sick these days.

In my current job, about 4 years back, I was very unhappy and overstressed on a daily basis. Not because of my direct bosses, but other staff and attorneys were treating me badly and the tension in the office was thick enough to require a steak knife to cut.

I started out by looking for another job, but after a couple of interviews I decided I owed it to my bosses, who have always been absolutely wonderful to me, to let them know I was looking. I sat down with one (who was the managing partner) for a talk that turned into a long discussion of what was happening to me. He assured me repeatedly that he'd address the specifics with the people in question. Then at the end he asked me to please stay at least through the end of the year because...the firm was splitting up! The good people all felt the same way I did about the bad people, which was a terrific affirmation of my judgment of the situation.

I've been at this same firm for over 17 years now, and all the new hires have been good people to work with.

I weighed 145 pounds when I finished graduate school in 1994. I took my first desk job then.

By 1997, when I got married, I weighed 185.

By 2003, when I got pregnant with my daughter, I weighed 219. (While I was pregnant, I topped out at 267.)

After Meg was born, and once the nursing tapered off, I went up again. Last year, I weighed 230.

It wasn't entirely an upward trend. I did diets every so often, and they worked for a little while. But then I'd get bored with it or decide I wanted chocolate more than weight loss, and that was it. I didn't see what the point was in dieting, anyway, because I love food and I love cooking, and dieting seemed like a punishment -- not just to me, but to my family.

But last year, I started thinking more seriously about my eating habits. It had been getting harder for me to move around. I have asthma, and the weight wasn't helping that, either. I felt sluggish and I began to wonder... "I'm hitting 35 this year. Am I going to just keep doing this?"

And that's when I had to sit down and evaluate how I ate, how I thought about eating, and what was really and truly going to work for me to be healthy. I recognized that a diet where I had to restrict anything (carbs, sugar, fats) wasn't going to work. I recognized that I had no idea what portion size really was. I recognized that I needed an eating plan that would work with my family's eating patterns and needs (I didn't want to be cooking an extra "diet" meal for me). I recognized that I didn't want to give up haute cuisine. And I recognized that I had to be the reason I lost weight -- not my husband, or my daughter, much as I love them.

The day that Half-Blood Prince came out, I went to my first Weight Watchers meeting. I had my husband take my picture and I put it up on the refrigerator, as incentive. And this time I stuck with it. I made it through the first week, thinking, "that wasn't so bad," and lost 4.5 pounds.

I was below 200 pounds by November. I'm now in the 180s, and still heading down. I've lost 46 pounds so far.

I think the plan is part of my success (WW is constructed so that you can eat pretty much anything so long as you plan for it and watch portions, which works well with my goals), but mostly, it was that I finally made up my mind to do it. The rewards have been wonderful -- I feel better, move better. I think I'm sexier.

And I'm not done yet (I'm about halfway to my goal), but I know I can get there.

I want to congratulate you and wish you luck with the rest of your goal! We are of like ages and weights. I am a short person who weighs 189 pounds. In 1994, I weighed 125 pounds. In 2001, I weighed 155 pounds. I am not liking the trend. My doctor and partner have both urged me to lose weight, but like you, I consider dieting to be punishment, and I don't feel I have done anything worth punishing. I am curious as to whether you think you could have done it without Weight Watchers (e.g., just by watching portion), or if joining Weight Watchers was that important to the process? Congrats again, and keep up the good work.

Thank you!

I think I needed Weight Watchers. I don't think everyone needs it or that it's a cure-all, and certainly if you have the self-discipline, you can follow a very similar plan on your own. I didn't feel I had the self-discipline; I'm very good at rationalizing things to myself (I can eat another handful of chips and salsa, 'cause salsa is no-fat; I deserve a candy bar because I've been good; I had a salad for lunch, so that was healthy, right?).

WW helps me with a couple of things. First off is honesty. The weekly weigh-ins are part of it, but writing down every scrap of food I eat is another. And being honest about portion sizes. It's much easier for me to be honest when I know I'm going to step up on the scale at the end of the week. And I have an incentive not to be dishonest with myself, because when I'm honest, the results are good.

Second is the points, which make it relatively easy to figure out what I can eat and make choices accordingly. It means that I can have, say, a slice of the hazelnut chocolate meringue cake with ganache frosting, or a serving of fries, or a fabulous French meal -- I just have to make sure I cut back somewhere else during that week.

And third is the encouragement and the acknowledgement that this is a long-term process, which will take time to accomplish (6 months so far) and won't be "finished" just because I hit my goal weight. I feel like WW is teaching me how to make good choices for the rest of my life. Not limitations, but choices.

However. If you are self-disciplined, if you're good at figuring up portion sizes and calories and so on, and if you are willing to be stern with yourself, you could probably do it on your own.

Good luck!

Not about me, but still inspiring: my father was an alcoholic who made my teen years fairly horrible and definitely abusive in places. The family didn't have any ability to talk about this or communicate in any useful way. One day, when my mother was away on some trip and it was just me and him, he came home and poured 7 up instead, and never went back. It is the thing I most admire about him, and will always remember.

I once quit a great job and moved to France for a year and a half, where was was not entirely happy and ready to come home after 9/11-- but I am glad I did it. I wasn't married and my rabbit died, and I did it. I think it changed me as a person to make such a radical move and shake myself up.

Go you. You can do it. If i can go to the dentist and get root canals, you can do anything you want.

For me, it was coming out. I spent twenty years hoping I'd never really have to know that I was gay. I got my heart broken in college by Lisa, who couldn't face herself. Twenty years of running from myself--long gray periods interspersed with black periods. Yech.

And then I went to seminary, which has a way of making you really honest with yourself. My lovely Rochelle presented herself very soon after that, and I was finally ready for her. Very tangible benefit there :-) but even better was being comfortable in my own skin FOR THE FIRST TIME. And finally understanding that living into your own truth is the most powerful experience there is, difficult though it may be. Nothing is as empowering as having the courage to own your life.

I'm not sure if I've ever had this experience. I think it may be because for a lot of my life I have not let myself notice the problems I've had until I was already in the fixing them stage.

Possibly my desire to write combined with my inability to actually do so will be it. It is certainly a problem which has seemed insoluble for years, and I *feel like* if I only get fed up and tackle it I'll be able to fix it. But I guess I'm not fed up enough yet.

I'm glad to be thinking about this.

Solving problems

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

Insoluable problem...

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

What a great thread of comments

Surprise, surprise...

no subject