Therapy Anyone??

I have been very lax at blogging and now I figured it was time to restart yet again. I had my counselor read my last post and talked about how amazed I was that people actually read it and the responses I was getting. Some of the responses were very humbling and others very encouraging. I want to start off by saying to all of you is  1. don't take anything I write personal. I type as my mind races.  2. Please don't be offended and if you do get offended PLEASE tell me. And 3. take and use what you wish of my journey and apply it to your own life or better yet share it with someone as I have found in my sessions I am a giver. That being said I want to write about the discussion we had.  Sorry if it is to long!!

We started talking about this a few months ago and this has been a great tool in unpacking the "BAGGAGE" of my life. By this I mean the pain, problems, hurt, and craziness I have packed away to protect myself.
Picture a perfect Heart. A perfect heart is full of the Basic Emotional Needs: Love, Safety/Security, Understanding, Significance, Purpose, and Belonging. These are our core needs, but we also have personality needs that complete the heart. Mine for example are Respect, Self Worth, Order and Sensitivity.

Now picture a heart that looks messed up and distorted. The distortion occurs when certain needs aren't met or abused in a sense. A good example of this is you have a friend who you think you can trust and find later that you are the butt (no pun intended) of their humor, in other word you are their comic relief ( this by no means is a part of my specific situation it is merely an example) and it turns up to be an unhealthy relationship that maybe you have put a lot of time and effort into but they haven't. Some people tend to move on and end the relationship while others might hold onto the feeling and start to build the "Pain Layer" of the heart. The pain builds and since you might remember that pain when you start to develop another friendship with someone new and you don't want to feel that pain again you might be a little less responsive to the new person which is the "Protective Layer". In the protective layer you can start to cut yourself off from others and therefore your needs aren't able to be met.  I would start to build a close relationship with someone and then I would find just cause to distance myself suddenly if I felt the person was starting to see the real me and then wouldn't want to be around me or found I really wasn't worthy. I felt as if I needed to keep people at arms length to protect myself. I might have let my guard down and didn't realize it so then I would distance myself by busying myself and not allowing myself to spend a significant amount of time with them. I was afraid of being "used". Stupid I know..

The "Provision Layer" is formed because you are to afraid of getting hurt again and therefore you are protecting yourself from the hurt and so you don't let anyone get close and therefore they can't meet your needs and so now you must find a safe way to meet those needs. My form of meeting my own needs I found in multiple sessions was: shopping, spending lots of time on the computer, eating a LOT ( which caused me to gain weight and made me more depressed),throw myself into working more so I didn't have time for anyone to prevent them from getting close, getting overly involved in things I really didn't enjoy to feel self worth and belonging and I am sure I am forgetting the others. I finally cracked because I was so involved I set myself up to be emotionally involved in the things I was doing and I was in overload and just suddenly dropped my involvement in everything i.e.  Church, my marriage, my relationship with family, work relationships, community involvement. The worst thing was I was being selfish in a sense and hurt myself more.

 As this Provision layer grew it led to a "Punishment Layer" in which I would either punish myself by not letting people get close to me or punishing others i.e. losing my temper at the smallest things and shutting those that love me the most ( my husband and my girls) out. I would come home from work in a bad mood more than not and I would yell a lot and nit pick every little thing i.e. house chores not done properly and so on.

In essence each "layer" is what distorts the heart making it rough and jagged and out of shape. Unfortunately I don't really know what is the exact cause of me building my layers but I am working on reshaping them so I have a prettier looking heart. I may never know what started all of this. It could be that I let myself be used by people because I wanted to belong, maybe I had this desire to have a purpose other than what God has planned for me. I know that I want to be liked and to "fit in" and so I tend to put myself out there to be hurt because I tend to try to hard and push a relationship into what it might not be meant to be. I don't know but I have found that I do have healthy relationships with a few people and I am trying real hard not to push them away but let them fulfill needs and I try to fulfill their needs as well. This is a work in progress that is what I know.. A little therapy goes a long way..

A New Year Hopefully A Skinnier Happier Me!!

It is officially 2012. 2011 was a very long and trying year for our family and at the same time a very adventurous one too. I am coming upon my 2 year anniversary working for the school. Our Great Nephew was born and is now a year old. My cousin and Aunt got married and another cousin and a good friend is going thru a divorce. I wanted to separate from my husband but we started counseling to avoid it. My sister hand mother have been in and out of the hospital. I about gave up on church. I secluded myself from those I love and walked away from those I thought cared. Dakota almost walked away from a life long dream. Ashley is suffering social acceptance from her piers. Terry had surgery and is still not back to work and is struggling with a decision of where he wants to be and what he wants to do. My best friend moved to Texas. I don't know where to go from here. On the positive side Terry and I are doing a lot better. We traveled to Michigan and spent almost a week with my Aunt. We traveled to New Mexico for a friend of mine's daughter's wedding. I have been enjoying scrap-booking more and have even finished a few good books. Dakota didn't walk away from her love of dance.

I am going to start this year by exercising and trying to eat right. I also have a goal of getting more organized and having money in savings. I want to be more thrifty and using my time for the important things such as family and real friends. I want to scrap-book more and read at least 1/2 of the books on the book shelf.

I am still in counseling and not doing to hot on the homework. In my last session I was given the task of evaluating my friendships and why I let certain people get close and keep others at a distance. I have come to the conclusion that if a person is easy to talk to I tend to trust very quickly and if it is harder to scratch the surface then I take my time to get to know the real person. In this I have found that the easier it is to talk to someone the further away I need to be and the ones it takes longer to get to know then that person is a genuine friend and trustworthy. I use to be an open book and over that past 5-7 years I have started to close and distance myself. It seemed the more I gave and the more above and beyond I went in a friendship the more I was taken advantage of. Don't get me wrong I am sure those people didn't mean any harm but I let it happen because I was trying to fulfill a void in myself by pursuing said friendship in the manner I was. I was trying to meet a need and although I didn't realize it at the time I was adding to the heartache by pursuing the relationship in the first place. I am talking about the people I tried to help when I couldn't even help myself. The people who's sad story made me want to make things better for them so I was quenching the I am needed thirst.They gave me purpose. They accepted me for my crazy unpopular self. I look back at the time I invested in these relationships I could have invested in my husband and children. I think of all the times I ran to be with someone abandoning my own family. It breaks my heart to see how I could have had what I needed at home but I wanted to be a part of something more. It was the longing of belonging to a crowd of people. To be socially accepted. I wasn't very well known in high school as being a part of the "in crowd" I wasn't really a part of any crowd. I had friends and I got along with everyone and I didn't feel as though as I was hated or not liked but at the same time I wasn't a part of anything. Even today as the girls, Terry and I watched old home videos I was sitting there trying to figure out how I could have done things differently and remembering the tough times we had but I was also remembering those that are still a part of our lives today. The one person who sticks out in my mind is a young ambitious woman we met 16 years ago, who spoke her mind and didn't care what people thought. She looked at the facts and for truth. She stuck by my family's side when we were going through the worst time in our life. She never judged us and she saw through the walls we built up. She was and is of GREAT support for us yet I have failed her as a friend by not being there when she is sure to need a good friend right now. I don't know what happened but I know I need to make amends. No we aren't fighting and there was never a disagreement we simply lost touch. Life goes by so fast that we easily lose touch with those we love the most. Kind of like taking our time with them for granted. I am forever saying I need to call so and so but I put it off thinking I have plenty of time to do it later but later never comes. You shouldn't put off till tomorrow what you need to do to day. I need to make notes of that everywhere I go to remind myself that I need to get off my butt and get things done. So I am going to end this entry on this note. Water and exercise is going to consume my lazy time which by the way means I need to go to bed and get up in the morning to workout. I am sticking to it !!! Happy New Year!!

A New Begining.

It has been almost a year since I last blogged and a lot has happened. I had to kill Pixie since she really isn't me (more explanation will come later). I started seeing a therapist in July and since going I now have HOMEWORK ugh :(   I HATE HOMEWORK!! but I have to get through the "layers" of my life, so I decided that since it is hard for me to talk about certain things openly without thought I would blog them since I tend to type without thinking and I promised my therapist that I wouldn't censor any of it if I blogged about it. I just hope I don't scare what few followers I have off :) The whole therapy thing started off as marriage counseling but then we discovered that I myself have a lot and I mean a lot of things hidden in my closet of life that need some much needed attention. So this is the reason I changed the name of my blog as it is more fitting :) I figure even if no one reads it I will in a sense get my H word done.. So that being said Welcome To My Crazy World.   PS: Hubby and I are doing good and we seem to be on the right track. Besides can't we all use a little therapy in life??
 

More Memories.

I am going to start this particular post off by apologizing to my fave cousin Amber (I won't get upset if you get me back ten fold) and my bestest friend Ronda (she has been thru a lot of crap with me over the years). I am sorry but I couldn't resist. Love you both and you both mean the world to me :)

Since I have been running down memory lane recently and stories are being told and memories have been shared I decided to start  going through pictures and maybe just maybe get them organized when I came across a few pictures. I sat on the floor looking at these photos and remembered how much I miss being a teen. I really miss the traveling and daily socialization with friends. When we would talk on the phone for hours after school about the guy we were in love with and what we were going to do over the weekend. There were times of tears too when we found out that said guy had broken our heart or we found out that they only wanted to be friends. One of my most favorite memories is when each summer Grandpa would take my cousin Amber and I and sometimes one of our friends on various trips such as Nashville, TN, Branson, MO,  and so on. Then Amber moved to Phoenix, AZ so I would ride with Grandpa to pick up Amber and bring her back to Iowa for the summer. I loved going to Phoenix. I wanted to move there when I graduated from high school.  So instead of writing a bunch of things I will show some embarrassing photos although I must confess that I love to look back through pictures and remember the good old days. 

The photo below is Ronda and I racing and I think she beat me if I remember correctly. She and I have been thru Teenage Hell and back and this was taken on a trip we went on in high school with my Grandpa Dick to Branson, MO That was probably one of my favorite trips. Enjoy!!

Family and Memories

I am finding myself really torn with family. I love them all dearly almost to much since I worry about them all the time. My surviving grandparents' health seems to be deteriorating all the time but they manage to stay active and keep telling me to stop worrying but I can't. They don't want me to make a fuss over them but that is how I am. I am also noticing that the health of my parents is starting to deteriorate too.My Mom had a heart attack just before Thanksgiving and is on the mend thankfully she is taking some much needed advise and putting it into action and that was after my dad had not one but two heart attacks this past year and trying to get him to listen to the doctors and take better care of himself is like trying to pull teeth out of a tiger..He thinks that eating Mc Donalds and continuing to smoke is ok and insists that he will be fine. On a lighter note he is going to church and has since the heart attacks. He hasn't regularly attended church in a very very very long time. We had the pleasure spending our day with him and beings that Christmas fell on what we call "Sabbath" we went to church and then went to my aunt's house for dinner and Christmas. I would have to say that this Christmas was one of the best in a long time. If only Grandma &Grandpa were still with us it would have been even better. I miss them terribly.

It is very hard for me to not want to go back to the church I grew up in but I have been away for so long I think it would be very hard to go back. I credit that church for a lot of my beliefs but at the same time don't want to face all the questions as to "Why do you go on Saturday instead of Sunday?" or "What kind of religion is that?"and so on. The truth is I don't know and couldn't tell you the answer since simply put that is how I was raised.

Growing up my sister and I spent every single weekend at my Grandparent's house (even after my parents go divorced) that was until I was able to drive and it wasn't cool to hangout there. We went on Friday night and I always remember Grandma would have everything she needed to have done and after sundown T.V. would be shut off and we would get things ready for church the next day. We would get our baths done, get clothes set out and go to bed. Early Sabbath morning we would get up and have a simple breakfast (mine being saltine crackers, Helman's Mayo and tomatoes). We would get all dressed up and go to Sabbath School. After Sabbath School we would use the restroom get a drink and get settled into our seats ready for church. It never failed that Grandpa would start nodding off during the sermon and Grandma would have her arms crossed and be sitting close enough to Grandpa that she would pinch him hard enough to wake him up. My sister and I would try very hard not to laugh as Grandpa nearly jumped out of the pew. It still makes  me laugh thinking about it. The other church members around us had no idea what Grandma was doing since her arms were crossed in a way that her pinching hand was covered by her arm. Grandpa even tried to sit on the opposite side on occasions and she would switch how her arms were crossed so she could still get him if he dosed off.

After church was over we would either go back to their house or we would stay for Potluck. I love the Sabbaths where we had Potluck. There would be so much food and I would get to hang out with my friends longer. On non-potluck Sabbaths we would eat lunch and go take a nap. After our nap we would go outside or play games with our Aunts. At Sundown Grandpa would turn the T.V. on and watch the news while Grandma got dinner ready. After dinner we would watch Wheel of Fortune. The best part came after dinner Grandma would make popcorn the old fashion way and we would eat while watching  various shows. Sunday morning we would wake up to the yummy smell of pancakes. Oh how I looked forward to Grandma's pancakes. Sundays were spent cleaning the house and doing the laundry for the rest of the week. Sunday's meant get the work done and the going home to get ready for school. I find myself want to go back to those days. It was a simpler time. You didn't worry about living up to anyone expectations and you could be yourself and didn't care what other thought of you.

I am really finding that small town living has huge down falls. Don't get me wrong I love Wilton but it comes with a price. Everyone knows your business whether you want them to know or not. You can trust very few people and the ones who you can you are still cautious about what you share with them. It is a very cliquey town. People don't ask you about things instead they talk about it to everyone else. I remember a sermon that the pastor of the church my family has been attending for a few years about gossip. It kind of makes me laugh since recently we haven't been in church due to reasons I am not going to bore you with but non the less I was told that they heard that we were going to another church. The things that make me go humm. Gossip!   Shame on those that took the liberty to tell people that we were going somewhere else. Did anyone even bother to call and ask if that was the case? No. Instead we get a Facebook message from a few people asking if things are ok. YES people we are fine. We have been spending time with our F A M I L Y !! :) It is the holidays and we have family that live out of town. As a matter of fact we got to spend time with our new great nephew Landyn. Who by the way is the most adorable little boy (I am just a little prejudice i must say) he had a rough start but is home and doing A W E S O M E!! I can't wait to see him and spoil him some more.. Soon Landyn soon.. So get a grip people we haven't gone anywhere.
  On the positive side small town schools are the best. Wilton Schools are by far the most adaptable and have been awesome for my oldest who has Cerebral Palsy.

Just Me!!

As I was laying in bed the other night I came to the realization that I am not myself. As a matter of fact I haven't been my true self in a very long time. I don't know where the turning point happened but I really miss being the happy go lucky person that would rather sit at home or enjoy a shopping trip and lunch with my best of friends. Instead I am the on the go, wanting to help with everything and being out there everywhere and wanting to be a part of everything because I thought it was the right thing to do.

I miss a lot of things that make me who I am and I would say that the biggest ones are my family, my church (which was a big part of my life growing up), my shopping buddies, my once a month lunch date, my date nights with my husband, sitting down with a bottle of wine and basking at all the things I am truly thankful for. 

I have become this person who is fighting to "fit" in to a place I don't belong with people who aren't meant to be in my life and who just are there because I seek them out. The so called friends who tell me they miss me  when they hadn't seen me, but really they are just saying that to be nice. I see the looks and know the routine because I myself am guilty of doing that to the people I love the most. You get that "oh no what do they want now"  look and then start looking around to send out the silent signal to someone to come rescue you because it is not nice to be rude and you would rather be talking to anyone but the person you are talking to. The I don't dare ask how they are because I don't have the energy to talk to them or yet listen to their nonsense.

I find myself wanting to go back in time and have a do over so I can avoid making the same mistakes. I know I would choose wiser and not go astray from the values that were instilled in me by my grandparents. My grandparents were and are my rock when things got crazy in life they were there with a load of advise open arms and a shoulder to cry on. I really leaned on them and now I hardly see or talk to those that are still living.

I miss my one and only "best" friends from high school. The one who if we did not talk to for a long time we could pick up right where we left off as if we had been there the whole time. I miss our lunch dates. I miss her introducing me to new restaurants, food, wine and drinks. I miss the long talks about nothing and everything. I miss the see who can bee later me or her since being on time is not one of our strong suits. I miss griping about the kids,significant other and the woes of life. I miss reminiscing about the crazy stuff we use to do.

I miss the late night calls to my most "Fave" cousin. I miss talking to her about the crazy times we had growing up and the trips we use to go on with grandpa and what new creations she has come up with in her addiction to crocheting.  I miss hearing about her adventures and telling her about the girls. I miss her period.

I miss my husband. I miss the silly little notes we would write to one another. The date nights which we would go to dinner and the go walk off the food we at at either Target or Walmart sometimes we would go to the mall and just walk around. I miss dreaming and planning with him. I miss snuggling with him. We still live in the same house but I feel as though we are separated, more like roommates rather than a couple. I feel like I have changed and yet he is still the same.

This is me venting wanting to change the unchangeable. My outlet, my story. Plain and simply put just me!!

New Direction

I decided to give this another shot since I have been pushing the blog world off to the side for the past year as life has been filled with changes in jobs, personal life changes, family illnesses and deaths.

I took some time to reflect on exactly why I wanted to start blogging in the first place. I needed an outlet to keep my sanity and then I foolishly tried to fit in the blogging world with trying new weekly segments but it didn't work out the way I had planned. I had imagined this awesome blog with everything from beauty tips to going green since I am a Hair Stylist and BeautiControl Consultant and I am trying to be more Eco- friendly, but lets face it I am not as good with words and advise as I was imagining. When it came time to put my thoughts into words I struggled and got so frustrated that I gave up. As a matter of fact I haven't logged on here since my last post until now. Pretty pathetic I know.

Last February I accepted a job as a Teacher's Associate (or Para) at the elementary school. I still work two nights a week in the salon, but I am finding the job at the school to be a little more fulfilling. I love working with children especially those with special needs. I wish I could talk about the things that happen at the school but I can't because of confidentiality but I will say that kids both say and do the darnedest things, They are so cute, funny, energetic and yet so stressful all at the same time.

I have hopes to post a new random blog at least once a week but I am not making any promises. I will gladly accept any in put, encouragement and criticism. Thanks for reading!!