The Health Chronicles: Progress is Not a Perfect Incline

Being More Kind to Myself

I am a person of extremes.

This is something that shows up in a lot of ways in my life. I can allow myself to ride the clouds of things that get me too high, and then when I hit a rut, I can really be stuck in it for an extended period of time. Some of you that are reading this can probably pick up on the latter. I tend to shut myself off from the world when this happens.

It’s not healthy, and I am working at it. But it is not something that is going to change over night, especially if I want to actually understand why it happens.

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This past week I know that the reason I fell into a rut is because I fell out of my routine. And since I am a perfectionist, when we fall out of our routines, we tend to compound the problem by beating ourselves up too much because we have “failed” and it can get out of hand very quickly.

There was a slight difference this time. While I have eaten terribly the last few days and I have not gotten back into my original groove, I did not allow things to completely spiral this time. All things considered, my sleep has mostly stayed consistent, and even though I have eaten terribly, there have also been spurts of healthy eating in there as well. I have also been drinking my tea and water.

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I did isolate myself though, and that is kind of a defensive mechanism. For better or worse, I am used to outside forces, sometimes justifiably, getting on my case for failing. I try to beat myself up before others can get to me, and of course that never goes well.

There was also a difference this time in that isolation though.

While the living situation isn’t perfect right now, it does not allow me to isolate completely. Plus, the folks I am living with are very supportive. Furthermore, I went to two separate therapy sessions this past week that really helped. In previous funks, there’s a real possibility I would have cancelled those appointments and compounded the problems by feeling bad about that. Shock of shocks, going to those sessions really helped me as well.

So I don’t have much more to say on that. Falling off the incline of self improvement sucks, but how we respond can show if we are making real progress. We can respond to our failures by compounding the problem, or we can learn to forgive ourselves for these falls. I can honestly say that this time I was able to get back on track much quicker than I would have been in the past, and that is a real blessing.

Writing this little health blurb is also an indication of improving. I didn’t necessarily feel like writing this, but I did so anyway.

And, it helped.

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