A lot of my meditation has revolved around me. During the past few nights I've really been working on my negativity. I've come to realize that my negativity is quite a bit more than I had originally thought. I've been living with my in-laws for a year now and although my relationship with one parent has gotten better over time, I fell like my relationship with the other is strained at best. My original goal was to meditate to not feel so negative towards her. Turns out that a lot of my negativity stems from other places within myself.
I have an incessant need for people to like me and I go about this in two ways. First, I try to be myself; friendly, funny and nice. Second, if the first step didn't work, I aim to impress. I had a breakdown the other day when I ruined some lemon sauce that I was making for a dessert topping. I realized (with the help of meditation and then talking about it with my husband) that I had gotten so caught up in being a perfect cook and trying to impress my mother in-law with all my cooking abilities, that I was no longer able to let myself make a mistake in that regard. This was kind of a big wake up call for me. I need to stop trying to be something I'm not,(although I am a good cook) admit I'm not perfect, (no one expects me to be) and not care so much. I care waaaaay too much about what they think about me and I often ignore the sentiments of those who actually like me for me.
This lead to exploring my feelings about myself. Over the last year I've been very depressed. I live with my in-laws and although I have a good job supply teaching for a school board, I am not financially independent. My husband works for himself and does not make enough money to support us both and to be able to move out. I feel useless and often lazy because I don't work very often. This isn't entirely my fault but I need to start thinking about ways I can work as a supply teacher (which will eventually lead to full time work) and work on the side to make extra money. We can't survive like this and if my husband won't take action, I need to. Also, I need to gain my independence because if something were ever to happen to him (Goddess forbid) I would not longer be able to stay here. This would leave me either homeless or jobless living with my parents instead. Working on myself is going to be tough, but worth it and if I can feel better about my situation I can feel better about other aspects of myself such as my self esteem and sexuality.
I'm a plus sized girl and I have low self esteem. No big surprise there. My next challenge (which will be overlapping this challenge) will be to complete this book with two of my friends. Hopefully this will help these feelings of self deprecation. I also talked through some things with a very good friend last night about some things I didn't realize I did or wasn't ready to admit to. When someone constantly bugs me to do something I have this rebellious streak to not do it even if it's what actually would be best for me. My in-laws are always trying to get me to exercise. They feel I'm too overweight and they do not sugar coat it. The more they keep asking me to go for a walk or do something active, the less likely I am to do it. Apparently this is called reactance and is actually common. It made me feel better to hear that I'm not a weirdo and knowing it might make me feel better about ignoring it.
I've also been thinking about the what ifs and should haves during my meditation. I think uncovering all the little things and my reasons for doing them has made me regress to wishful thinking. Good for one night but if I want to get the serious work done, I need to deal with the real stuff first.
Horses and Crows have been joining me the last few nights. I'll have to look into why. That's all for now.
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