An Exercise
2002-07-14 @ 12:25 a.m.
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>Things I like about myself
Nurturing
Adventurous
Gardening (which kind of falls under nurturing, but is also a crafting type hobby)
Cooking (also nurturing and crafting)
My hair
Generosity
Ingenuity
Creativity
Love of the outdoors and physical activity
>Things I find sexy about me
Adventurousness
Nurturing
My hair
Red toe nails
Childlike naivet�
>Things that frustrate me about me
Fragileness
Over-censoring myself
Lack of acuity with numbers, particularly money
Impatience
Part of my troubles recently have had to do with comparing myself to others and feeling like I come up short. So I'm trying to remind myself of the things I feel good about. ( I couldn't help including the last category.)
Some of the things I like about myself, or find sexy about myself, are related to things that frustrate me about me. In particular, I can have a childlike openness and naivet�, almost innocence about me sometimes that I'd like to think is sexy (I really don't know if anyone else finds that sexy. I worry that it frustrates others more than anything else.). But that childlike nature is also part of my inability to cope with numbers and money, and my impatience for the things I want (I want it now!), and of course my fragileness. I don't seem to be very good at turning that little girl off when I need to. She pops up whenever she wants to. Actually, I think she's there all the time, it's just that sometimes she takes over. No, I'm not MPD (multiple personality disorder), though I had a friend once who was and one of her personalities was a ten year old boy. I always wanted to meet that one, but I don't think I ever really did. We knew each other because we played on the same soccer team, and she said that the little boy was the one who usually played soccer. But if he did he was quiet about it.
You may be surprised to see that I am frustrated by the fact that I over-censor myself. I am usually pretty honest and willing to talk about what's going on in my life. The stuff I censor is my opinions and preferences in everyday conversation. I'm always afraid of looking stupid if I disagree with someone. I've gotten better about that one. But I've been doing it for so long that my natural tendency is to not speak up. I may not even realize until several minutes or even hours later that I kept myself from saying something that might have been important for other people to know. I've never been good at asking for what I want or need, though I have been getting a lot better at that one lately, too.
I've also had a tendency in the past to censor and ignore my own anger. I was raised to believe that it was wrong to get angry at the people you love. Not that it was wrong to act on that anger, but that the anger itself was wrong. My adult brain knows that it's not really possible to love people that you never get angry at. But I still resist it. Now that I'm learning how to recognize and say when I'm angry, I don't really know quite how to deal with it yet, and I still have a tendency to take it out on myself instead of simply expressing it to the person I'm angry at. What do you do when someone makes you mad? And what do you do if you know that your anger is unfair and unreasonable, but you still can't help being angry?
This is beginning to sound like a therapy session. I have another real session coming up in a few days. Maybe I'll save the rest of it for then.
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