The first I have in "spades"...to the point that I don't breath correctly anymore...I have an MRI to prove it.
The second I don't have at all.

Made two presentations this past week...Thur and Fri...both the same...words and slides.

Thursday not too bad.
Friday...horrendous!!

I have posted about personal "value" before. I just can't find it in myself. Don't give me the love-yourself lecture, please.

I can hand it out, I just can't live it.

I always return feeling inferior to the rest of the world.
No matter what I do in live, I always feel inferior.
To the point that I have cancelled attending conferences and symposim...big ones that I really, really wanted to attend...cancelled because I just didn't feel I fit in anywhere.

Fit In...I haven't felt that I fit in anywhere since I was a kid. An never fit in back then...never!

Having one of those nights about "can't someone just stick me in a hospital somewhere and loose the key"...forever!!

Think I will go back downstairs and finish watching my saved episode of Damages.

Hi Carolyn! I have been wondering how you have been doing. I actually wrote it out on a piece of paper and read it several times every day out loud for me to change my thoughts about my value. I wrote out "I am a valuable person" and read it daily. I think that I believed it after a week.... Also, remember where it came from and tell yourself that he was WRONG.

Sannah, yes it is rooted in my childhood...and my husband...and my son.

None of them felt I lent value to their lives or the world. Except that now at age 34, my son has changed his tone...my value is rooted in his beling "homesick" and wishing to leave Iraq before the Spring of next year. And, to realize my doubtful value in his life, I just have to revisit my Yahoo IM with him last night when he told me that he was going to return to Florida when he returns from Iraq...not here.

Today, Monday, as I sit here, since I returned home from Nebraska last Friday night, only one of the team I have worked closely with for the past seven years, and for whom I went to Nebraska to make the presentations, has bothered to ask how it all went. I suppose I should be grateful for the one that did.

Survival instinct is all that keeps me planted on planet earth and I hate that word for the planting. Hate it...hate it...hate it.

I just want to run and run and run and hide and hide some more...all the time...year after year....all 58 of them.

I am glad you have found balance in your life...maybe the inability to do so in my life is just habit.

Carolyn, everyone who has given you grief had their own enormous problems. They did what they did because of their own needs. It had nothing to do with your value. They couldn't/can't even get beyond their own problems to think about your value.

I also hear you saying that you crave others in your life to take notice of you and show you that they care and then I hear you saying that you want to run. Do you think that your running is causing you to be a bit invisible to these folks so maybe this is why they aren't showing you too much how they care?

Habit is a huge part of it. This was the last thing that I worked on here in the last year - the triggering of my anxiety. I would get anxiety that had nothing to do with my present and everything to do with my past. I just had to nip that in the bud.

Yes to the invisible part. I hated being put on the spot at work all those years ago too. I have been on disability since 2000...no more "spots" for me...I am done with them.

I go to NYC to a PD conference on the 10th of October. Gratefully, I have nothing to do there but visit old PWP friends and listen.

Oh yes, and hiding is just easier than working on the problem. I am tired of decades of working on issues. Just leave me alone world and let me sit in my chair. If I could do it I would, but my survival instinct is just too strong to do it...hide that is.

I have mild anxiety 100% of the time...no trigger needed or it is something that is present 100% of the time that is triggering.

And Thurs I will be "hollering" to Dr.Jim that I can't live this way anymore...Help!

Have a great trip!

Maybe you have anxiety 100% of the time because it IS habit and the only way that you have ever been.

About being invisible, when I discovered that I did this it helped me to see how my behavior was getting in the way of what I wanted. I was then able to gradually change my behavior when I could see that I was getting in the way of what I really wanted.

You have a good trip too! Thanks!