staying sane

Hello again, it has been a long time, and the ideas for this blog quickly took the back burner to the demands of a growing infant and a big move with lots of changes. In the meantime, I have been through quite a lot on a personal level, and I have fought battles I never would have imagined would be so difficult. I wrote about giving up alcohol, and I was successful for a time, but I did relapse, just because I didn't know what else to do. I have learned that I am a person who will always deal with an unhealthy anxiety level. I know I'm not the only one with social anxiety, and there are tons of self-help books about how to deal with it, but I'm not always the best at implementing the methods that I know will work. I know that daily exercise, eating well, and hanging out with friends can help to stabilize my moods and make me more resilient, but do I do those things? Not necessarily...in fact I think for some time I was doing the opposite of what I knew I needed, and every time I would have an emotional breakdown, I would blame it on the fact that I'm not getting enough exercise or I didn't eat well or I haven't had enough social time. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. Sound familiar?

Every social encounter I engage in results in a neurotic analysis of every detail of my memory of the experience, and sometimes the memory is so vivid that I actually respond to it out loud, asking myself, "why did you say that?" Sometimes the anxiety is so distracting that it becomes impossible to think about anything going on in front of me, and my mind would immediately begin to think of ways to self-medicate. I could buy some cigarettes, I could have a drink...and then those thoughts take over. The anxiety paralyzes me, and then the guilt about how I wasted all this time obsessing takes hold, and then any little thing that needed to be done seems impossible because I was beating myself up so much that I'm exhausted. I'm told this is a familiar pattern for many people, and that the stresses of modern society increase our baseline anxiety levels so that it is becoming more common for people to experience chronic stress symptoms, which can actually destroy parts of your brain over a long term, making it more difficult to manage the anxiety. This is the pattern I am trying to break. I'm trying things. Things that I've known about for a long time, but haven't been able to do before. Things that are meant to strengthen the parts of the brain that are damaged from long term stress and alcohol abuse. I am making a decision to stop self-destructing, which would be the rational decision.

Thus, I will soldier on with this blog, and share my rational thoughts on parenting, not only my children, but also parenting myself. Isn't being a parent all about forgiveness, understanding, acceptance, love, generosity, connection, protection, and encouragement? Well, then I deserve a little rational parenting myself! I know I'm not the only one who struggles, especially having small children, to balance my devotion to my family with my own personal needs, and I know from my experience that at times I can't see the balance ever tipping in my direction, and it is very difficult to see anything but impending disaster in every aspect of my life. But, meanwhile, every day does bring me joy if I open my eyes to see it.

I think the irony lies in the fact that I named this blog "rational parenting" and then proceeded to be a most irrational person in my moments of weakness. I want to address the process of overcoming irrational fear in my life while also bringing information on how to manage being a parent without losing it completely. Really, I just want an outlet for my thoughts on life, so here goes...!