Day 16
Today I went to a restaurant that I visited once several years ago with an ex boyfriend and I hadn't been back, but I drive past one of their locations every week and today I decided to try their beans and rice. Since I'm not always feeling brave enough to order something new, I realized ordering the same thing at a new place was still trying. :-)
I ordered two sides and some chips. I got way more food than I could ever finish! The beans came with a spicy sauce and what I'm guessing was ranch drizeled on top. If I go back I'll have them hold it off. It was too spicy for me to actually taste anything, I was the too busy trying to cool my tongue off.
After lunch I went to counseling, and Miss L asked if she could try something new with me, she pulled out a basket of toys and emoti dolls and started throwing them on the ground and I had to label each one as a problem I had to solve.
They weren't even all necessarily bad, it was just all the things weighing in on me that has me feeling overwhelmed. After we had thrown toys and playing cards on the ground until I was too emptied to think of anything else, Miss L pointed out that once they were all on the ground, I couldn't tell which toys represented which problems, which were big and important and which were small and no big deal and not urgent. I was giving all the problems the same amount of emotional energy.
And my default response was to sort and categorize the problems by kind (literally by color ;-P) which didn't actually help me solve or assess anything. What was helpful was remembering to sort problems by urgency and importance and that only I have to decide what that is for me. :-).
Such a basic obvious idea, but easy to forget when lots of problems start firing themselves at you quickly. It takes slowing down and stepping back to be able to determine what kind of problem something is and what kind of response it warrants.
And because I like sorting things, I decided to divide my apps on to pages by color. :-D
Oh no. Sorting by color appeals to me too. I think I need to rearrange my apps now. :P I'm trying to work on the whole problem-solving thing now too. It's so easy to just get overwhelmed by all of them and freeze up and not do anything about it. Which obviously doesn't solve anything!
ReplyDeleteThis sounds really silly I know, but if you picture the problems as little cute cartoon characters or stuffed animals and make them wait their turn so you can talk to them one at a time, it is an instant stress reliever and makes problem solving more fun. :-)
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