Tuesday, December 27, 2011

Stuff is Fleeting, Meaningless: Overcoming the Addiction

You know, overcoming materialism is a hip trend. But as I write the blog post (avoiding the inevitable - cleaning the hurricane tossed tornadic ship-wreckage that vaguely resembles a corner bedroom), I can feel my anxiety rise as I think about even starting it. I'm at least committed to piddling around in there for an hour and hitting le hay about 11. But I know I want to put it off...the anxious monster is there and he mocketh me with a daunting task: you are going to have to sort.

Sorting is love/hate for me. On the one hand, it is very therapeutic in small, productive dosages. On the other, when you are a living, absent-minded, shambles like me, when the sorting is ridiculous, I want to bail and abandon my ship. As I was journaling this evening, I began trying to brainstorm (which is now what I do to retrain my anxiety) on how to at least make a dent in the task without overwhelming myself into despair and thus purging the attempted task into certain (yet indefinite) oblivion.  Let's just say that I dig myself a giant hole, panic when I realize what I am doing, think about how I can get out of the 3-5-year hole in 1 day, get overwhelmed because that's unrealistic and I can't commit to more than 1 day, then give up. I'm ignoring my anxiety at confronting a mess that I have made until I absolutely cannot avoid it anymore...

The problem is, I have become an EXPERT in avoiding. If this were Warcraft, I'm a guild leader. This Old House? Bob Vila. Painting happy trees? Bob Ross. I am the foremost authority in how to avoid anxiety by making busy with other stuff. I have my PhD in ADD. And I am (mostly) fully aware of it.

Brainstorming simple tasks (so simple like clothes, books, jewelry, no sorting, just grouping) brought on a hard, yet necessary look at my stuff problem. I have so much stuff and the stuff has emotions attached to it. This to me is a MAJOR issue. I have a hard time getting rid of certain sentimental items that would mean nothing to anyone else normal.  I suppose this might be linked to being rejected and holding on to "good emotions" - not having many friends, stuff begins to mean things.  This is an idolatry I would love to avoid examining, especially here in a public-ish way.  But it is an idolatry that has held me back too long. I can feel the sadness welling in my heart and mind as I think about such a ridiculous attachment because I know just under the surface it is masking yet more pain. Both pain to let go, but really pain that I didn't bother to resolve - it is the pain of very acute loneliness. Even admitting that now is hard.

While part of me feels shame in admitting that, part of me is so sad that I have felt so lonely for so long. Such isolation - almost a non-violent violent reaction if you think about it. People recede because their wounds are so large, then they turn to things that actually accumulate, but also cannot mend the loneliness. Just a mask. But to dismiss the emotions tied to the possessions is an error.  I'm so angry that I have to do it because I don't want to feel sad over things or even cry. But how can you get better if you don't address the illness? I know what God is calling me to do in addressing something "I really dont wanna" deal with. So far, God has been good to the little child that I act like - letting me deal with the things --> I <-- want to fix. But this is something I'd rather procrastinate on until the day before the second coming...certainly, my doofusy perception is that "it's harmless" but really, it keeps me in a clutter, overwhelmed, scrambling, and depressed because in that pile of nonsense is a pile of unresolved grief and emotion that "I just can't deal with right now." But I'm on holiday. And I just can't live life like this.

So, for you conceptual people out there, as I deal with the emotions and purge things that I ought not hold dear, I heard Dr. Phil (yus, I said it - bite me) say that you should pick your top 3 goals, and if some tasks and chores and things and, sometimes, people (the kind that are unhealthily involved in your life, I'm not suggesting some sort of "Eat Pray Love" vomitous philosophy), you need to make some ajust[deletions]ments.  This helped me to really take an honest look at how I'm drowning myself, my relationship to Jesus, and what I believe I am here to do. So, as I go in to the pit of despair, I hope to emerge triumphant, downsized, and emotionally healthier. Happy New Year, Erin

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

How I'm Digging Deep to Overcome A Lack of Motivation: Rambles 3

Ha! I hope that any of the 3 folks who read this are encouraged and helped through any trying time through which they are dragged kicking and screaming. I am living it and I am surviving it.

I have cried more on the way to work in the past 5 months than I probably cried between ages 7-10. I've probably had about 4 diagnosable (not a word), verifiable (a word) panic attacks. I have wracked my brain, stretched my limits, and spent myself on worry the past semester. I am so glad I dropped grad school in October for the time being. I think it's the first honest thing I've done for myself in several months.

My post about my dad really brought a great opportunity to meet with a counselor to work through it. And I will tell you, focusing on what is actually stewing in the cauldron of my heart rather than the absolute natural disaster-type devastation it has caused (or rather, poisoned) is the hardest thing I've had to do in working through my depression. My depression has subsided to a degree. I am motivated, I'm looking forward to finishing the semester, and I am getting things done. But, if I were a country, I'd be on the foreign aid list, needing food for the starving inhabitants, medicine for the sick, leadership in the political arena, an economic model to closely follow, and essentially, a 3rd world country. I, Erin, am a 3rd world country. That is not good.

I have gotten so used to neglecting and avoiding dealing with what's brewing in my heart that it is a task put off. I have too good a memory to write down my history. And it's not remarkable and actually boring. AND I don't remember it sequentially (this could be helped if I slowed down and really concentrated on thinking my writing through, but we have seen how that is). I've made it to first grade in my personal narrative, and that's nowhere when you consider I remember more and more as a I write through my past.  But I have to conquer what is eating me alive: what I believe about God's view of me, my view of me, my purposeful life, and what is right and wrong. If there is anything I have learned, it is that my parents have taught me certain platitudes as well as education that don't match up with the Bible - and these things I've kinda made a "personal law" are bondage that I am battling against. That's hard when you feel like they are your parents' rules, and you didn't break rules as a kid, so while the Bible is breaking some down with the TRUTH, you feel like you are disobeying the people you were taught to obey by violating their principles (or what your interpretation of those were). That is a beast of a task - a hairsplitting one at best.

What I can say is that by prayer, God has allowed me to examine how I am in my classroom, how I react or provoke, how I defuse a situation, how I make one worse, how I inspire, how I bore, what my strengths are and the great chasm that my weaknesses present to me being successful at what I currently do. God is using the difficult situation where I am in this career to breakdown falsehoods that are tightly woven into the perfect tapestry of His Law. It's not like the platitudes are necessarily bad - but they present a bondage to someone who zealously takes them to heart. They aren't to be treated as absolutes. And this is where I am examining my own personal philosophy and how my own mouth betrays a knowledge of the head unacknowledged in the heart. Unbelief is a killer, and I'm learning the role that knowing versus believing plays in it's ability to handicap even the most skilled at introspection.  It is hard to discern principles long harmonized to a young Christianity that aren't really Christian principles at all, but cultural ones that feel comfortable and seem valid.  I'm finding that certain passive-aggressive tendencies, the chaos and the drama, and my own lived-out philosophy are colliding because of a values mismatch. 

If you know anything about computer programming, you might know what an infinite loop is. If not, an infinite loop is when the user commits an error in a program and the computer tries to execute (the natural execution is repeat until result), and if you enter in a letter when you should have entered in a number, the computer can try working with the letter forever, not "aware" that it will never compute, but restarting the process each time to try for a result. This is what I am going through, but I'm finally tackling the lived-out philosophy because that needs reprogramming. All the chaos and emotions (like anxiety and depression) are residuals of a philosophy that is broken (for me, at least). And I need to rebuild from the Bible up. Knowing this has encouraged me to continue working while figuring out my difficulties with getting tasks accomplished - it has opened my eyes to some of the broken proverbs offered as wisdom by non-Christian-based "sages" who, while well-intended, have imprisoned many a student and free spirit.

What am I saying? I'm saying I gotta figure out what I really believe by examining who I really walk life out.  How I'm walking isn't looking too great, but at least I can bear witness to it and to the fact that something needs to and is about to change.