Tag Archives: relationships

Arguments and Panic Attacks

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Happy Sad Faces

Happy Sad Faces

When I started this blog, I wanted it to be brutally honest and deeply personal. It is hard to do that when I am really upset and things look really bleak in my life. I know that to really help others however I need to share the tough times as well as the good.

I often panic when I have a bad argument with someone I love. I can only describe these incidences as panic attacks because that’s how they feel. When I reach that level, I feel like I am totally out of control. I cannot stop crying and I feel experience an ever increasing, growing and rising sense of anxiety and chaos. In these times it feels like everything is hopeless and blowing apart inside of me.

What I learned today since my panic attack last night is this:

On my spiritual journey, I have to stay focused on changing and improving me – not my loved ones. I cannot drive them away from me with constant nagging and criticism. Here’s a great article on “What You Can Do to Improve Your Marriage”.

I still have a lot to learn about listening. I found a great post by Filipina Mom Blogger about listening to a husband that loves to rant.

About Panic Attacks I found this resource on Negative Self Talk. It is actually about panic attacks that occur when you take a test, but the phenomenon is the same regardless of what causes the behavior.

Grateful for My Mother

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Mom

Mom

I have not always been grateful for my mother and when she died we were not on the best of terms.  Recently my perspective has been changing somewhat as I have been helping a friend whose children keep pushing her away saying they aren’t responsible for taking care of her now that she is getting older and weaker. It has hit me hard how grateful I have to be for my mother and how I want to honor her memory today.

My mother was a wonderfully strange and funny creature. She was very different than any of the women in my family. There was not a woman anywhere in my known universe at the time that was even remotely like this woman. She never had any time for gossip or negative talk about anyone. She never wanted to speak evil of anyone or anything. She loved to read more than any person I have ever met and was always busy with some creative project. She loved working, she loved selling, she loved shopping for her children. She loved people so deeply that when she died it was not just her family that grieved, but her church and her community all felt a deep sense of loss. I miss that woman and today I honor her memory and her hard work to make me the wonderful person that I am today. I am as unique as she was and I am proud of it.

As I help my friend deal with being rejected and abandoned by her children for “being too much trouble” I know now that I must have hurt my own mother deeply at times by not responding when she called out for help. I forgive myself for my own selfishness and I know that my mother in heaven forgives me too.

I affirm for my friend that she will be able to some day be close with her family and have everyone reach out to each other freely without any baggage from the past, without any emotional wounds or resentments and simply love and respect each other in the present moment. I see her with her children and her grandchildren in a warm and happy family gathering of peace and joy.

Sometimes You Just Need To Say It

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Black and White and Rust Abstract

Black and White and Rust Abstract

There is no handbook for relationships and sometimes I just don’t know when I should shut up or when I should just say what I have to say. There are no hard fast rules on these things and deciding what to do, when to speak up seems like an impossible task.

Recently I learned that I went through all sorts of emotional traumas simply because I withheld what I really needed to say when the other person really needed to hear my opinion. Sometimes when we hold in our feelings all we do is make for a really messy argument later on.

I am glad that I am learning to think before I “blast off” and upset someones feelings, but at the same time I still need to learn to speak the truth without judging the other person and to speak the truth in love. It is not easy. I am grateful that I am learning to be honest, gracious, loving and gentle in stating my mind.

Learning to Listen

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Listen . Water . Waves . Light

Listen . Water . Waves . Light

One of the things that I am learning right now is how to listen.

At times when I listen to friends talk about their problems I am tempted to jump in and try to offer solutions even before they have finished describing the situation. At other times I feel overwhelmed by what they are saying and have a hard time not letting their chaos or despair overtake me and make me feel hopeless.

I know that the best thing for me to do is sit and wait and let them come to a natural stopping point. I know that the best thing is to see the situation they are describing as outside of myself. I guess I can sometimes be so empathetic that I put myself at risk. I also want to maintain a certain openness. I do not want to be clinical and detached. I guess I am seeking balance.

It’s time for my walk.

Letting Go: Challenges of a Perfectionist

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Yellow Flower from the Garden District in New Orleans

Yellow Flower from the Garden District in New Orleans

I think I probably could have called this Blog “Letting Go” because on the spiritual journey that I am on it seems that I am coming up on the need to do this over and over again, each time in slightly different ways. My need to let go is very strong evidently.

I have always felt driven to always tell people exactly what I think about them and about the best course that I think they should take. The problem is that, not everyone wants to hear my opinion all the time and sometimes I just need to shut up and let it go. I have to trust the universe to get the message out without thinking that I am the sole messenger of truth or wisdom.

I may be driven to perfection, but I don’t have to use it as an instrument of torture over myself, my family, my friends or my associates. I have to learn to let things work themselves out sometimes or simply fall where they may and find their own way.

I am grateful that I am learning to temper my perfectionism. I am grateful that I am learning how to express it. I am grateful that I am learning to let go of my perfectionism. I am grateful that there is a wonder and a beauty to the world around me that is an imperfect world.

Learning about perfectionism is learning about forgiveness.

Neat Little Packages: Emotional Perfectionism

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Neat Little Packages with Bows

Neat Little Packages with Bows

On my walk the other day I was thinking and meditating about an argument that I had with a friend a few days earlier and I was trying to figure out what the problem was or what had gone wrong, and for the life of me, I could not come up with anything that had caused the problem that morning. I could not see what I or they had done wrong. All I came up with was an image of a tiny little package tied with a bow. At that point, it made no sense and I gave up on trying to understand it’s significance, and just kept on walking.

When I turned around at my two and a half mile marker, it hit me. I always seem to want to tie up “all my packages” with neat little bows. This can be an emotional package, a relationship package, a conversational package, a work package or any number of things that I might encounter or experience as part of my life. Life in all of it’s glory is not easily packaged in a neat little box. Friendships and intimate relationships certainly can never be neatly contained and perfectly wrapped. I guess this is part of my perfectionism that I need to learn to release. I cannot expect any relationship to not have a certain amount of dynamic tension or mystery in it. I have to learn to be comfortable with letting things be unresolved sometimes. I have to more trusting that the answers will come to me over time if I am patient.

I am grateful for the things that I am learning. I am grateful to be able to release the need for neat little packages. I am grateful to be able to embrace a larger and more powerful truth. I am grateful that I can enlarge my perspective on life. I am grateful that God and truth are bigger than my neat little packages. I am grateful to release more of my perfectionism to be able to embrace life as it is.