Worrying

Recently, I received some news that has left me troubled. There are two problems with this. The first is that worrying is a useless and wasted emotion. The second problem is that at this point there is no confirmation of the problem.

The doctors require more information before they can say it is a problem. The reason is that what they are seeing may be pre-existing and not a new or worsening problem. It may just be status quo.

Let us look at both problems one at a time.

The first problem is worrying about the situation at all. No amount of worrying about a problem will correct the problem. If you worry a little, a lot or not at all it will affect things in the same manner. The effect will be nothing.  It reminds me of something that the Dalai Lama once said, and I am paraphrasing, if you have a problem but no solution exists there, is no reason to worry and if you have a problem and a solution does exist there is no reason to worry.

If a solution exists, what do you gain through worrying? Enact the solution and the problem will go away. If there is no solution, not all the worrying in the world will make the problem go away and you have a great opportunity to use the skill of radical acceptance.

The second problem is that right now there is no confirmed problem. I am “borrowing trouble”, or in other words, I am creating a problem where one does not yet exist. We all have enough real problems, stress, and difficulties and flat out drama that we need to deal with every day that we do not need to make up new ones that are not there. Besides the universe will kindly provide you with real things to deal with if you really feel the need for more problems.

Worrying about problems that do not exist wastes valuable time and energy. There is a discipline called risk management in which you identify, categorize and provide a plan for how you will deal with a possible risk.

For example, if you live in hurricane alley, you know there is a high risk that a storm a hurricane will hit during certain months. You would come up with a plan on how to mitigate the risk as if you cannot mitigate it; how you would, deal with it is it happens. The plan might include having a bag packed fit each member of you household, including your pets, in case you need to evacuate. It may also include making sure you have enough canned goods, batteries, after, etc on hand in case you lose power.

Once you have the plan in place, you do not worry about it anymore. You do not sit there worrying that maybe a hurricane will hit this weekend especially if there is no tropical activity.

I joke at times, I might walk out my front door and are hit by a meteor, but you know what, I am not going to worry about it actually happening. I could be hit by a car walking across the street, again I am not going to worry about it and assume it will happen. I will make sure I am careful crossing the start though. If I worried about everything that could happen, I would be paralyzed with fear and never move.

I need to try to live my life and only deal with actual problems that exist without making up be ones.

 

Relationships

During the best of times relationships can be complicated, at the worst of times they can be a disaster. I do not mean just romantic relationships either, I mean any relationship. We struggle at times with our relationship with ourselves. Regardless, unless we plan to move to the mountains, live off the land and become hermits, we will have relationships with people.

While becoming a hermit may sound appealing to some, the problem is that humans are, by their very nature, social animals. Regardless of of we admit it or not, we all need and long for the approval and love of other people, even if it is just one person. From the very first day we have needed the love and caring of others, just to survive.

If you think about it, there is a mental health condition called anti-social personality disorder (ASPD). This means that being anti-social is a personality disorder and that being social is considered the “normal” behavior in people. Please keep in mind that ASPD is considerably more complex then described here. This is a gross  simplification of a very real and serious condition.

I was recently thinking about a relationship I had with someone I used to work with and how complicated it seemed. As people, we got a long time and liked each other, in different circumstances we may have even developed a true friendship. As co-workers we had a mutual respect for each other, but at the same time frustrated each other. While I cannot speak for them at times I had a very negative view of them, almost to the point of pure hatred of them.

This is just one example of a complex relationship with a person that I have had.

How do you handle and resolve all the parts?

One unhealthy way is splitting, where we see the person in extremes depending on how they treat us at any given time. In the above scenario, I feel comfortable saying I was splitting.

One of the things that makes relationships so difficult, at times, is that it involves someone other than you. You need to factor in their thoughts, feelings and opinions and act accordingly. You need to understand their feelings as well as your own. You need to distinguish between how they may feel about you in the moment versus how they truly feel about you and see you.

Take the example of a couple who just had a bad fight. During that fight they may have said things like , “I hate you” or called you any number of profane names; however, they do not mean it, they are just angry with you or hurt at the moment. The reality of how they really feel is often the opposite of what they say during the heat of an argument.

You will find that the better your relationship with yourself, the better your relationships with others will become. The reason for this is that when you have a good relationship with yourself, you understand your emotions, feelings, wants and need as. You are comfortable in your own skin.

The better you are able to relate to yourself, the better you can relate to others. You can use what you know about relating to yourself as a building block on learning to relate to others.

Once you can relate to others, you still need to act on that ability. You need to use that understanding to treat people in the appropriate manner. Probably the best advice here is the “Golden Rule”, do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Trigger Warning: My Struggles – Part 4 (Suicidal Ideation)

NOTE: The very nature of this topic requires the need for a trigger warning. While parts of the article are a higher level discussion of my bouts of suicidal ideation, some parts will provide more detailed and descriptive examples of the thoughts and actions tied to my ideation.

I have in the past struggled with the decision on whether I should share this part of my struggles and journey. It was only this morning that I made the decision. I made the choice after my most recent bout of suicidal ideation.

Before I go any further, let me provide a definition of suicidal ideation. The following definition comes from http://bipolar.about.com/od/suicide/g/suicidalideatio.htm

suicidal ideation means wanting to take one’s own life or thinking about suicide without actually making plans to commit suicide.

Recently a discussion my wife and I had triggered a bout of ideation. The discussion left me feeling they was no way out of the pain other than death. It consumed me for a few days. I sat there all day listening to the songs “Suicide is Painless” aka the theme song from “M*A*S*H” and the traditional version of “O’ Death”,  overcome with the same thought, dying will make it all go away.

That same morning while I was waiting for the train, all I could think was how easy it would be to jump in front of it. I just wanted out, I wanted the hurt to stop.

I have had other bouts, mostly in my teens and early twenties, where I have sat on the floor with a knife at my wrists or throat, wanting to end everything. Other bouts have involved disturbing images in my mind.

In all the bouts, no matter how deeply depressed I was and how badly I wanted out, I never tried. Something inside me always prevents it. Typically, I am somehow able to stay connected to the fact that it would devastate my family.

This might sound troubling or confusing, but these days when I feel that way I am no longer scared or troubled by the feeling. I have come to accept it as a dark place that I fall into sometimes. More than that though, I know I will never act on the feeling.

The following is something that I do, but would not recommend it to others.

Sometimes, rather than fight a feeling, I embrace it. Instead of going against the storm and wave, I ride it to its natural conclusion. That is why I do things like listen to songs like I mentioned before at times of dark depression. They mirror my mood.

It’s all about Control…

The other day I wrote about an event that turned my life upside down and left me in a really bad head space, complete with suicidal ideation. You can read about it here if you like.

The event left me in a tailspin all weekend long. When I was heading to work Tuesday morning I was still spinning. This situation was a case where radical acceptance by itself was not enough.

From the very start I was able to accept the situation, but it still left me extremely depressed. I couldn’t change the event, but I needed a way to control my life. I knew the alternatives from the start, but did not like any of them. The middle path seemed as destructive as either extreme. I also knew there was no way to talk to my wife about it and have a positive outcome. I felt trapped and life I had no control of a big part of my life.

In typical Jason fashion, I thought about almost nothing else the entire weekend; however, this lead to the beginning of a plan by Tuesday morning, Tuesday plan that would put me back in control of my own life. I immediately started leveling out.

Tuesday morning I shut down my Facebook account temporarily. Facebook makes situations like this more difficult for me. I think it is because it distracts me. I also started thinking about how I might be able to implement the middle ground, if I could get me wife on board with it. I still could not talk to my wife about it. However, I remembered a few conversations my wife and I had about situations related to the middle ground in the past, conversations she initiated. This gave me a sense of hope, but I still could not safely broach the subject myself.

I remembered that my therapist knew someone who handled both could counseling and was well versed in the interest at the heart of the problem.  The next thing I did was call my therapist. I confirmed my appointment with her. I explained the situation I was in and asked if she could get me on the schedule weekly for the next month or so. She told me that would not be a problem. Finally, I asked her for the contact information for the doctor she knew.

Coming up with the plan and starting to implement it has turned things around for me. It has helped me take back control of my life.

Trigger Warrning: House of Cards

Trigger Warning: since I am going to discuss some recent difficult events that have left me in a very depressed state I am adding this generic trigger warning. Descriptions and events in this article may be triggering to some individuals. I will categorize them as relating to relationship and feelings of despair.

Some days, I am afraid of the concept of happiness. While I desperately want to happiness and to recover, they both share me.

Why do they scare me? Too many times in my life I have seen one or both of them in my grasp. I start getting optimistic and feeling good about things, but then all to often the rug gets yanked out from under me and the house of cards comes crashing down.

That’s where I am right now. In 2006, I got divorced, partly because there were things I needed in my life that my ex-wife did not want to share with me. Those things were very important to me. I decided that I would not get married again unless the person shared those same interests. I also wanted to have kids.

After a few years I found my current wife and we shared the same interests; however, she wasn’t able to have children. I thought about it and decided that sharing the other things with her would make up for not being able to have kids.

Over the last year, that has changed. The things she was once willing to share with me, she no longer will share with me. In some cases it is by choice, in others it is related to ability. The reason that the relationship had changed are not important. The important part is that change. The things are just as important to me today as they were seven years ago.

If I ignore them and bury them it is another form of self-harm. It might not be physical, but it is emotional and psychological self-harm. Ignoring these things would leave me feeling numb, angry, hurt and a big part of me would be missing and unfulfilled. I would never be truly and totally happy.

It is not a matter of life, I still love her more than anything else. It is a matter of missing vital parts of me. The moment she told me, everything came crashing down and it sent me into a tailspin. All weekend I have had my head filed with morbid and dark images. My heart and soul have felt totally empty. I have wanted to cry since Saturday but have not been able to for some reason.

It has also awakened a white hot rage in me, not for my wife but for the “person” that hit us four years ago. Maybe without the accident this never happens or maybe we would have found out before we get married and could have walked away friends

The last four years I have dreamed about the day we could share the things together. It was one of the things that helped me get through all the hard times, helped me but hate the woman that did this to her. It was just a matter of time, it was a delay in attaining, not a destruction of, what we wanted. My wife’s words the other day were the destruction that the accident started.

It crushed my dreams. It has left me feeling dead inside, full of pain and rage. The extremes are not desirable and even the middle ground that exists does not sit well with me. It is almost as undesirable as the extremes.

There is so much hopelessness in my life right now. A few months back my therapist and I talked about a small subset of this problem. She seemed to agree with me that depriving myself and neglecting this part of myself with be unhealthy and self-harm.

There does not seem to be any good solution. I am devastated, lost, angry and empty.

After last year, this year seemed so promising. I was full of hope and optimism. I do not even feel like trying anymore. I am tired of getting there…almost but never able to get the brass ring and hold on to it.

Identity

One of the things people, myself included, struggle with is maintaining a healthy and stable identity. In this article, I am going to talk about healthy identities.

Having a stable identity is only one part of the equation, the other, having a healthy identity is equally important. Establishing a stable identity is an important step in healing from mental illnesses like borderline personality disorder, but if that identity is not healthy, it is still a harmful situation.

I have personally had problems with my identity over the years. While I have developed a stable identity the last few years, it is still not truly healthy.

In my case, the fact that I tie most of my identity to a single aspect is what makes my identity unhealthy. I tie most of my identity to the role of caregiver/protector. When you tie your identity to one thing, any challenge to that aspect of your identity risks destabilizing you. The bigger the challenge, the bigger the risk, the bigger the effect on your stability.

Recently, I had a situation at home that left me frantic. I was left in a position where I had to leave my wife alone at home in as potentially unsafe situation. There is a lot to the situation, but the bottom line is it was a challenge to my role of protector and caregiver.

With my identity tied so heavily to this single aspect, it had a massive impact on my stability. It took every trick I knew to prevent breaking down, and it was still a fight for me to stay stable. Had my identity been more diverse, the impact of a challenge to the one component would not have been so devastating.

I am not Atlas and Neither are You

Do you ever feel like the mythical Greek Titan Atlas, who was condemned to support the weight of the heavens on his shoulders in order to keep the heavens from touching the earth once again?

It is not a pleasant feeling. While everyone feels this way at times, a bigger problem arises when we start feeling like this every day. Eventually the weight begins to crush us. When it starts crushing us, we need to find a way to shift the weight or when possible lighten our burden. The number of ways to accomplish this is as vast and diverse as the number of ways that the problem can occur. There is no one right way.

Here are a few ways that have worked for me.

Lighten the Load:

Stepping back and looking at what you have going on in your life and evaluating the importance of each item in your life is an effective technique. Next, determine if any of the things that you can live without. This should immediately lighten your burden.

A few years back, I had to employ this technique. I was working full time, taking care of my injured wife, taking care of our apartment and cat and going to graduate school.  My job is very stressful and requires me to commute three hours a day, round-trip. I was dysregulated almost every day and getting worse each day. I was engaging in frequent self-harm and each day my depression grew worse.

Something had to give and soon; otherwise, I would have wound up needing to check myself into a mental health treatment center.

I knew I was not about to give up my wife or my cat, I love them both too much. I was stuck at the apartment until the lease was up which was months away. I love my job too much, am paid well, have good benefits and work with good people. I was not about to give that up.

That left graduate school.  I had wanted to get a Master’s degree for years, but I could never figure out the right concentration and degree to pursue. Then finally, a year earlier, I figured it out. I applied and I was accepted. I was so excited. The thought of dropping out scared me. I was worried I would feel like a failure for quitting. I agonized over the decision for months. Then I finally realized it was either graduate school or my mental health. I came to peace with the decision when I realized the stakes, and realized I could always go back to school later when things calmed down.

Once I made the decision, I just felt so much weight vanish.

If you cannot lighten your load for any reason, then another technique to use is:

Share the Load

If you cannot get rid of anything, then look for someone to help you with it. Reach out to family, friends, support groups, anyone that can help. Build a support network. Ask for help. Nothing in the ‘rules’ says you must do everything yourself. Let people know you are overwhelmed.  Remember, you are not Superman/Superwoman.

For example, a few years before I started dating my wife, I was getting ready to enter a relationship that I knew would be difficult at times. One of the first things I did was to reach out to my family and closest friends to start building a support network. I explained the situation to them and told them I would need their help at times.

The final technique I want to discuss is:

Shifting the Load

I am not sure if “Shifting the Load” is the best name for this, so if you have a better one let me know.

If you cannot find anyone to share the load, I know not everyone has friends and family they can trust or rely on, then look for ways to shift things around in your life.

There are two ways to do this. The first is to look for ways to adjust your schedule. This allows you to spread the load around more. If you can adjust “when”, it can make life easier. If you do not need to do everything at one time, it will allow you some down time to breathe, relax and detox.

The second may sound counter intuitive, but look for MORE things to do, BUT they need to be things that help DISTRACT you or give you some form of SAFE and ENJOYABLE outlet. For example, take up a new hobby or if you have hobbies you have neglected, start engaging in them again. The key here is that whatever you choose, it cannot be something stressful. If you join a club, do not take on any responsibilities with it, just participate in it.

Physical Health and Work

A recent email from Amanda at My Dialectical Life on treating a physical illness to reduce your vulnerability to emotional mind, is the inspiration for this article. This article stems from a conversation that I had with Amanda after reading the email. I have found Amanda’s daily emails through My Dialectical Life to very helpful and inspiring. They have helped turn my day around more than once since I signed up for the service.

Taking care of your physical health is very important to your mental health. When you are physically sick it reduces your ability to cope with daily stress factors, makes controlling how your react to things more difficult, and makes you more emotionally reactive. The more sick you are, the worse it gets. Unfortunately, a lot of times we neglect our physical health because we worry that if we take time off of work to take care of ourselves that it makes us less of a person than the people around us because we are sick. The past week I have been dealing with a bad case of bronchitis. I have had to figure out what the best course of action for me was. Do I take time off or do I go into work? How do I balance my health with my need to make money so I can take care of my wife, cat and I?

Personally, I worry about the following things:

• What if I am out and people need me, will things come to a grinding halt?
• <insert manager> will be pissed/I am going to get in trouble

 

It is difficult for me to deal with the thought of having too take time off to be sick, I think it is partly rooted in the way I brought up. I was raised with the basic concept that unless you are “dying” you drag yourself into work, because you made a commitment to the people you work for and work with and you should take that seriously. So, I think that plays into how I deal with things. What makes it so hard for me is that I am the only source of income for my wife, cat and I, so if I lose money we are in trouble. It takes about 1/2 of my monthly take home pay to cover just rent.

Over the past few years I have started to get better with handling these situations. I used to only really take time off if I was pondering going to the ER or running the bathroom for one reason or another. I once went to work with pneumonia, not realizing what it was at the time. I had had a really high fever, was coughing up a lung and was in agonizing pain. I originally thought the pain I was in was because of a pulled muscle from coughing as much as I was at the time.

The way I look at, or try to these days is to run through the following “checklist” (in no order), mostly subconsciously and quickly:

 

• How sick am I? (e.g. Is the bathroom my new “best friend”? Should I be considering going to ER?)  => this is about the only one where if I say yes, I am definitely staying home

 

1. What do I have going on at the office? Can they get by without me for the day? (e.g. Important Meetings, period in the project where I play a crucial role, etc)
2. How much time have I missed lately?
3. How much vacation time do I have?
4. How many days are left in the pay period (only important if I do not have enough vacation time)
5. Who am I working with (Do they have young kids? Is it someone I have a good relationship with and would be worried about putting in a bad spot?)
6. What are my bills like this month? (Do I have higher than usual bills? Do I have extra expenses? etc)
7. What is the weather like?
8. How productive will I be?
9. If I am on the fence, I may ask my wife what she thinks I should do.
10. If I am at the doctor’s I will ask them if I should go into the office the next day or stay home. I figure they are trained and know what they are talking about, so I trust their judgement. It also absolves me of any ‘blame’. It allows me to say that I was doing what my doctor advised me to do.

I also weigh things like:

If I stay home I will probably feel better tomorrow and everything will be fine the next day vs. If I drag myself in to the office, I may get worse and miss more than just a day (this is where #8 comes in). This also costs me less money in the long, and is better for everyone involved.

I think to myself that, hey other people get sick and THEY call out; therefore, it is OK for ME to call out. I have as much right to be sick and stay home and take care of myself as they do. They are no better than I am, I am just as human as they

I also look for compromises/middle ground like:

Are there enough days left in the pay period that I can make up the hours by working late/not taking lunch/staying late?

Do I feel well enough that I can work from home, but too sick to go into the office physically and/or do I have something contagious?

Can I go in and leave early to accomplish something important but then go home?  (this really comes into play if I am in the center of something or have an important meeting)

I also will send an email to my teammates letting them know I will be out sick, but if something crucial comes up that they need my input for right away they can call me; otherwise, I will deal with any questions when I get back in to the office. This prevents me from feeling like I am abandoning them by providing them with a way to get in touch me if they really need me.

When possible, I also “delegate” things to other members of my team. For example, if I am the primary author on a document, I may ask one of the other people to take ownership of it while I am out to make sure it gets done on time. This also helps with mitigating the feeling of letting people down.

I think that is everything, at least everything I can think of right now. I am getting better with this, I think my wife being in the physical shape she is in from the accident and other health issues, has forced me to change my approach. I have to always keep in mind that she needs me healthy both physically and mentally. I cannot afford to take the same careless risks and disregard for myself that I could when I was single.

Trigger Warning: “I Remember”

Every now and then I like to take a few moments to share a little about myself. I do not do it often, typically because I find the things I do write about to be more interesting and useful than the story of my life; however, today I have both the desire and need to share a little about my past.

This entry should be seen as potentially triggering and viewed with caution. The entry focuses on the affect a very severe car accident my wife and I had on the afternoon of July 3, 2009. If you find discussions and descriptions of auto accidents triggering, you may not wish to proceed. Even four years after the event it can still trigger me at times.

On July 3, 2009, my now wife and I were driving around Carteret, New Jersey heading back to my father’s house to get ready for a Fourth of July barbecue at a friend’s house.

My wife and I lived, and still do, in Virginia. I was taking her around to places I had worked, ate and hung out growing up. We had lunch at the Reo dinner in Woodbridge and banana splits at a nice little ice cream place, that had been a favorite of my mom’s, in Perth Amboy. As an aside, the ice cream place was wiped out during super storm Sandy in 2013, along with a lot if places from my younger days. After the banana splits we walked out onto the pier for a little while.

We drove around a bit and wound up in Carteret, which was one of the places I worked in my twenties.

As we were heading home we came to an intersection and stopped at the stop sign before going forward. That is when my world was thrown into chaos and hell. About midway through the intersection we were t-boned by a speeding Acura MDX. The force of the impact was so great that it pushed our car from the middle of the road across the street and into a telephone pole. It was so bad, that both my wife and I thought the car rolled over twice.

The front windows, sunroof and rear windshield were all shattered. My wife’s seat broke falling into the back seat and leaving her in a near horizontal position.

I remember the other drivers reaction, which was to jump out of her car and swear she did nothing wrong, telling I didn’t do anything wrong you saw it to the people that were outside. She never came over to see if there was anything she could do or if we were dead or alive. It is hard at times not to hate her and wish ill will on her, not because she hit us, but because of her reaction after she did.

I remember more of that accident than I wish I did. I remember sitting in the car waiting for the rescue personnel to get there. I remember being terrified that she was going to die there next to me in the car. I remember trying to keep her conscious for fear if she blacked out she would never wake up again. I remember screaming for someone to get help because I didn’t know the intersection. I remember the phone call she made to get parents. I remember watching the EMTs cut her out of the car over the course of an hour and a half. I remember sitting on the back of the ambulance and hearing them call for an airlift. I remember the EMTs trying to convince me it was just a precaution, not necessarily a necessity. They did wind up taking her by helicopter to a level one trauma center in Newark.

I remember telling the EMTs that I wouldn’t leave until she left. I remember being at the hospital in the ER getting the cut in my arm cleaned out. I remember them fast tracking me because all I could think about was needing to be there for her. I remember walking out of the ER and signing out AMA because fast track was taking too long. I remember sitting in the ER waiting room waiting for updates and to be allowed back in. I remember that it felt like a lifetime. I remember signing for her valuables.

I remember talking to the doctors to find out what they needed to do and what was the most important test they needed to do. I remember how angry and belligerent she was to the doctors, of course she was in a ton of pain so it was to be expected. I remember trying to calm her down enough to let them do the tests they needed to do. I remember succeeding too.

I remember sitting in the hallway at midnight, outside the room they had put in her. I remember that room, all the black and green from the monitors. I remember the nurse’s station in the room. The room had to have its own nurse because of the nature of everyone’s injuries. I remember my wife in traction, the slightest shift of the bed causing her agony. I remember the nurses “scolding me” because I still had not had my arm stitched up. I remember getting back upstairs at about 3 AM and having the nurses tell me that she was looking for me because she woke up in the middle of the night scared and disoriented.

I remember her surgeries and waiting for her. I remember arguing with her that she had to get a blood transfusion during the surgery because of her blood count. I remember her getting mad at me for ’emotionally blackmailing’ her into getting it. I tried everything to get her to agree to it because she was scared and stubborn. If she had not had to transfusion they could not have done the surgery and she would have been in traction for months in New Jersey, alone. I remember her saying if I did it again she would never speak to me again. I remember knowing that I was doing what I felt was best for her and if she hated me for it, that I would have to live with it, but I would know it was in her best interest.

I remember the month she was in the hospital and sleeping there with her in a chair for the whole time. I remember my dad being there every day. I remember a few of my friends and family members stopping by to check up on us. I remember the first time I had to leave the hospital to take care of some business, getting pictures of the scene, getting pictures of the cars, getting our stuff from the car, and looking for a new car. I remember how terrified I was to even be in a car. I remember clutching the door handle  so hard that my knuckles turned white.

I remember the months at the rehab center with her, sleeping on an air mattress next to her, then doing the same thing at her condo before we moved in together.

I remember how the event set me back years of a therapy. It took me over two years to get back to where I was before the accident, that two and half years started last year. Even now, almost four years later I still have trouble with coping with this event. I still cry at times over it. When I first started writing this entry two weeks ago, I wound up crying one of my contacts out on the metro heading to work. I have been afraid to touch this entry until today.

It has to be one of the worst and hardest days in my life so far.

No Fair, You aren’t Fighting Right!

I do not know how I got on the train of thought, but on the way home today I started thinking about a breakup I had a few years ago. It was a relationship that neither of us wanted to end at the time, but life circumstances required to happen.

This particular breakup stands out  for several reasons. The one of importance, for this entry at least, is the way it played out. One exchange that I remember well was when one of us said, “Not every breakup has to be a bad one.” The response from the other person was “this is the only bad breakup I have ever had because you are not playing by the rules!”

You see, there was no fighting back and forth, one of us was able to stay grounded thankfully and not cause the situation to get worse by fighting back. They were not playing by the rules.

When you have need for things to always follow a “set of rules” and something or someone changed those rules it can cause at the very least a state of confusion if not total panic. It leaves us scrambling to either force things into the mold of “it MUST happen like this” out trying to adapt to the new situation.

On some level, we all crave structure and an unchanging set of rules in our lives. Unfortunately, life is not that nice at times. We get thrown into situations where the usual rules do not apply and we are forced to adapt.

These days, with all the changes in the world, it is even more important to learn to adapt to new rules. Learning to adapt is a key learn to learn. If we learn to adapt, It reduces out stars and anxiety when things change.

If you are wondering, we got through the fact one of us was not playing by the rules in a positive way. We ended the relationship, but without invalidating the whole thing. We were able to end it with the good memories and  positive image of each other intact.

The conversation ended positively. While the ending of the relationship tore me apart, I left knowing we both had those memories intact. Knowing that brought me some sense of happiness.

I wanted her to walk away with the good memories intact, so she would have them for the hard times. Something she could remember and hopefully something that would help her get through them. I knew I would always hold them special and remember them when I was feeling alone and scared.