Be Assertive.
That is my new mantra.
As I was afraid of, when I started opening up more to others about how I was feeling, my pain, and my frustrations, all I did was drive people away, and make them stressed out too… and it didn’t help me feel better at all. So I went back to the drawing board, and started thinking about things. I remember years ago, when I had lost a lot of weight, and I was down at my ideal weight, I felt really good. I thought I felt better because I was thin, but I think in actuality, I felt better because I had become assertive. That was one of the many things they taught me how to do in Weight Watchers. Weight Watchers is actually very interesting, as they use a lot of mental techniques that I really didn’t understand at the time, but that now make a lot of sense to me. For example, they talk about Mental Rehearsing, where you practice something in your mind before you actually go and do it. It really makes it a lot easier when you have prepared yourself. As far as being assertive, I had learned the techniques through things like asking for things to be prepared in a special way at a restaurant, or asking people not to make me feel like I had to eat a piece of their birthday cake.
That assertiveness is totally missing from me now, as is my weight loss, unfortunately. But it seems that those things go hand in hand.
I don’t want to let people mentally beat me up anymore. I’m tired enough from fighting pain and exhaustion all of the time, I really don’t need to let others hit me while I’m down. I’m not sure what started the snowball down the tunnel of poor self-esteem, but I’m tired of going down, being pushed down, whatever. I don’t want to analyze or be analyzed anymore. I just want to have a good life. I just want to do the best I can do with Fibro. I think the key to that is to be assertive. I really hope (arg, hope is not a strategy) want this to work for me. I’m tired of the way I am, and circling round and round solutions I don’t/can’t/won’t follow through with.
