One step forward...wait.....no thats two steps forward??

and two steps back it seems sometimes. Or is it two steps forward and one step back? either way this week I did move forward but it was a bumpy ride.

Last week was my first day on this new job - and after being in "hyper vigilance" mode the weeks before as I prepared my brain and body completely shut down. I could not think, my body felt weak to the point of just getting off the couch required superhuman effort it seems.

So I accepted that I needed to rest and in a couple of days I had some energy - my brain was working again and I dove into the follow up of my program - and the hard drive in my new-to-me 1 year old laptop - crashed.

Who'da thought? So I deal with that and set up my old slower-than-molasses pc and try again over the weekend and my internet server goes down. Phone calls. More phone calls. "So sorry - we will get someone out to look at it Monday".

So - the old way of coping goes something like "OMG I AM GOING TO FAIL AT THIS. HOW CAN I DO MY JOB? I JUST PUT OUT $X IN THIS NEW SYSTEM AND LOOK AT IT....OMG HOW AM I GOING TO DO THIS? THIS COMPANY PAID ME TO DO A JOB AND I CANT EVEN SEND OUT AN EMAIL..." Get the picture?

Now mind you - in the past, this was the only way I knew to cope I.E. not cope and blame circumstances and people outside of me for why I was failing.

So I had a moment. Ok; I had a FEW moments. I felt stressed. I felt agitated. I paced. I felt isolated and insignificant. And then I decided that I could do this anyway. And with this decision I took one step...then another.

I wrote my follow up email to my corporate group in a word document on my atiquidated pc. Then I let it go and went about doing other things and got a good nights rest.

Monday morning. Still no internet.

I made plans to head out to the coffee shop and hope my old laptop would 1. boot up and 2. not freeze up.

Then - as I'm talking to someone about which new external hard drive to buy I look at my modem and - whila! I have service!

So I quickly re entered my contacts into gmail (remember, my computer crashed right after my last group so they werent accessable to me here) did a quick cut and paste and sent it off.

I pulled up my powerpoint and started doing my revisions (as long as only 1 program is running I am guarenteed my old pc will SLOWLY get the job done). I saved my files. Printed to the printer that works with the pc and then copied in color on the new-and-improved-wireless printer that works with the laptop that does not work.....

And I was done and ready for work yesterday morning.

What's the point here?

The point is that my old coping patterns still come up when the stress level goes up - but - that with understanding of what was happening inside my head (overgeneralization, catastrophizing, black and white thinking etc...) and that I am no longer that little child victim, helpless to affect change or protect myself - I was able to pull myself out of what could have (in the past) been another excuse to stay in my hole and live life as that perpetual victim of circumstance.

So here we go - cheers to me for making lemonade when life gave me lemons :)