If you do, you are part of the ranks of the clients I see who also have the same issues; and for the record, I can join you too. Since I am autistic, anxiety goes hand in hand with me, but I have some great strategies for coping and dealing with it.
It made me wonder. Do you listen to everything you hear? And do you believe everything you are told? Do you believe everything you tell yourself? Just because you think it doesn’t make it true .
For some people in the workplace, there is nothing more likely to provoke the dramatic ermahgerd eye-roll than to hear about someone’s issues with anxieties. Particularly if you were born in the 80’s to early 2000s.
Trending on eBay for all us fatties….
I don’t often take too much notice of the “trending on eBay” heading, but, given that it’s the third week of January, desperation can start to set in, and they are often too good to be true, particularly for my line of work. Yes folks, we’re seeing the plethora of gadgets for “get-slim-kwik” promises that are made in January, and turned to dust by the first week of February.
Thank goodness it’s 2019, and I hope that 2018 has had the door well and truly slammed on its arse on the way out. It’s been a tough year for me because I’ve been diagnosed with early onset Parkinson’s and migralepsy, but at least now I know which monsters I’m fighting, I can face them and do something about them; I’ll never get “better” but I have reason for motivation and optimism.
My word of the year is resilience; I think I may be cheating here and I’ve used it before, but this year I have to be #reslilientaf (are you gonna join in with me?) and the themes here for the month are motivation and optimism.
Okies; I’m sitting in bed writing this post because I overdid it yesterday and today I feel like I was hit by a building (my body doesn’t yet understand when to stop because I’m ill), but I’m still motivated and optimistic. I’m also very Stoic (or maybe I just don’t know when to stop, but you know, work to be done, dollar (English pounds actually) to be made.
I get it that there are people out there who are worse off than me; and if you’re not sure who the stoics were, you should totally go and check them out, I’ll leave some links for you later, but if I don’t make my point now, it’ll never happen. I’m not one of those therapists/coaches that tells you that everything is fine, you should skip about barefoot in daisy fields, leave your high paying job, find yourself, by the way, here’s my fee.
I am optimistic, but I am also realistic. I have been through the wringer in life. You will find no positivity where there’s none to be found. You’ll find solutions, though. You’ll find perhaps that nihilism is not such a bad thing, because let’s face it, what IS the fucking point of all this? Just enjoy the ride along the way. And if you get in a bit of a pickle, as one of my clients calls it (and I love her for it……she also says, “I mean, fuck me” a lot too, for which she is also greatly appreciated), get in touch with me and let’s work out what to do.
I am a realist. I know that sometimes life is just a shitter. I had to go to Leeds last week and witnessed a scene that nearly broke me. A homeless man, sobbing his heart out, and a lady sitting next to him, holding his hand, talking with him. I might also add, it was pouring with rain and it was piss wet through.
Not fifty feet from this depressing scene was a young lady in a bright red waterproof jacket, emblazoned with a relevant charity’s name, covered in one of those umbrellas that’s see through and you could almost live under. She was toasty dry. I tapped her on the shoulder, pointed out this guy, and said “there’s someone you can help right there.”
She mumbled out a few sentences such as, “It’s mainly for children,” “We give them a number to call”, “We don’t help them directly”. All with a patronizing tilt of the head. I had to be pulled away from her and it made me icky for the rest of the day.
I’ve worked with the homeless before, before anyone says, but Paula, why didn’t you do something? That’s kinda not the point I’m making here. The proximity of a charity 50 feet away, and there’s no help? That’s what the breaking point was. And at this point I thought, we all need to give a shit more. Give a shit about your life. Where are you going? What are you doing? Do you have plans beyond the end of the day/week/month? If not, what the fuck are you going to do? I don’t mean to scare you but it’s 2019 in Tory Britain and I fucking care what you do. I care what you do, what I do, and that poor bloke….
I care about how I’m going to live as an autistic elderly woman with Parkinson’s, and migralepsy…….but a cracking sense of humour. And tons of optimism, stoicism, and reslilience.
Be resilient with me. Goals AF. If you’re waking up each morning and your first though is “can you not” then make your second thought “I’m getting in touch with Paula today”.
Happy 2019. Whatever that means to you.
Now go and check out the Stoics. They had it right all along.
If you’ve ever had to walk past a line of people to take care of any type of business, while you’ve been acutely aware that your hem is falling down on your trousers, you’ve struggled with the Spotlight Effect. You know when they all turn around to look at you at once, and you’re embarrassed and trying to hide? That’s it. You’re under the spotlight. In fact, all the lights around you have been switched off, and there’s this single beam, trained down on you. Come out, come out with your hands up.
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