On my mind

Pinterest is evil, it will suck you in and never let you go and all of a sudden you find yourself sitting on the couch way past your bedtime, pinning recipes you will never cook and crying over beautiful quotes or dreaming about the perfect (but horribly expensive) dream vacation on St. Lucia.

BUT

The really really great thing about Pinterest is that you find quotes that tell your story, that express exactly what you think or how you feel.

These are the ones that explain my life right now, some are even surprisingly spot-on!

And if you made it this far, I think the most powerful one is this one!!

I wish he knew...or cared! Or actually, I think I know that he knows...I wish he would tell me he knows and he is sorry for it!

Irene

HSP

During the times when I was depressed I tried to find reasons for my situation, I didn't want to be stuck being the way I was, so I tried to find out myself why I was struck by my mood swings, what could be the reason for me not wanting to get out of bed, for feeling down, for crying almost every day. I googled and read a lot about Depression, what could be reasons someone develops a Depression, how being physically sick for such a long time could have influenced it, if there are also reasons in my past, in the way I grew up, if my parents and their behavior towards me played a part in it, too.

When I googled I came across something else that was very interesting and struck a chord with me. Not only because it was something concerning me, but I also realized it might be something that concerned my son, because I had noticed his behavior was a little different than the one I remembered from his older sister and it seemed he was more sensitive, he felt pain a lot more, he started crying easily, it was hard to calm him down and other things. I read about AD(H)D and came across something called HSP.

HSP is the short form of "highly sensitive person". HSP is something that has not been researched a lot but is gaining popularity during the last few years. The first time HSP was mentioned was in 1996 by Dr. Elaine N. Aron who had been doing research about differences in behavior for a few years prior. As I can't write down all the things about it I will link you to Wiki for it, you can find everything about it here. Also if you are interested, Dr. Aron's website can be found here.

Someone who is an HSP is overly sensitive to stimulation around them (stimulation can be any impulse or sensation or feeling). HSPs tend to be easily overwhelmed by lights, sounds, smells or a hectic environment, also when they are asked to do a lot of things at once or if there is more than one problem that needs to be solved at the same time. They need to withdraw from situation that are too overwhelming to feel better, which often means they withdraw to a dark room or a quiet place to come down to find relief.

HSPs often pay a lot of attention to subleties, they are very empathetic, they can notice a change in the mood of others quickly and try to help those around them if they can. HSPs put a lot more effort into their thoughts, trying to shine a light on any possible outcome of the situation they or others are in. They reflect more thoroughly on the past. They also tend to ask for a lot of opinions from people they trust before making a decision.

All these traits make out an HSP. Most of these are not very useful in a world where everything is loud and fast and people pay more attention to materialistic values instead of emotional worth. Which is why a lot of HSP try to fit into this environment so no one notices they are different, they jump trough hoops to fit in and in the meantime are totally overwhelmed and unable to cope with it. They feel out of place because they don't fit in and try to find the fault in themselves because everyone else seems to be "normal" while they are "weird" or "different".

I have been told by a few people that it my way of coping with emotional things is not normal, it takes a lot of time for me to overcome something that makes me sad, I always need to reflect on it very long, trying to find out what happened and why it happened and if there was a point when I could have changed the outcome. I always need a lot of time to overcome situations where I had a fight with someone or if I lose a friend. Heck, I lost the love of my life 14 years ago because I was so stupid to let him go and he was too stupid to forgive me and I still struggle with the "hows" and "whys". Same with meeting him again last year and everything that happened and I still don't understand why exactly he behaves the way he does. Most people tell me "he just does, why the hell do you need a reason for it...get over it and move on, not everything needs an explanation"

Guess what, for me it does or it is not finished and it is upsetting and disturbing my life because my emotions can't cope with it.

I am an HSP and I am trying to find the best way to live with it right now!

Would love to hear from you if and how you can relate.

Irene

P.S. for all my German Readers, here is the link to the first few Chapters of an interesting book I came across about HSP. It is called "Zart besaitet"...go here to find it.

Appreciation

via Pinterest

After reading a few posts I came across during the last week, about people debating the pro and cons of their lives paths and how everyone is responsible for their own life and has to set their own path I realized that I am pretty much struggling myself with who I am and where I am in my life right now.

I am now 36, I have two kids, I am renovating a house which I will then own later (right now it technically is still owned by my parents until the paperwork is done)...I have everything that people (as I have come to learn when reading those posts about societal expectations) expect someone my age to have. On top of that I have a Diploma in Business Economics. Everything should be as expected.

Unless it is not.

Societal expectations are that I should either be a happy stay-at-home mother who feels that being a housewife and mother (I once heard the term "family manager") is everything she ever wanted and her life is fulfilling and she wouldn't want to change a thing. With a husband who earns enough money so she can comfortably stay at home without any financial problems. Or I should be a mom who works part-time, handles everything perfectly, manages all the things at work, comes home, cleans the house, cooks dinner and falls asleep happy and content that everything worked out the way she wanted. Every.Single.Day.

To be honest, I'd love for it to be either way. Unfortunately it is not. Life rarely works out the way you want it, things go wrong, there are little twists and turns and all of a sudden you find yourself at a point you NEVER imagined yourself, thinking that you NEVER expected your life would ever turn out to be that bad.

Like (I think) John Lennon once said "Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans" I have liked that quote all my life because it is so true. You can plan as much as you want, you can imagine your prince to come on a white horse, treat you like a princess, shower you with diamonds and life will be perfect forever and ever, and the last take everyone will see is you, sitting together on an iron bench, watching the sunset...well, life is not a freaking Disney Movie unfortunately.

What actually bothers me the most is that I get the feeling what I do (while doing very little compared to what people expect me to do) is not appreciated. That might just be a feeling, but I have heard it from a few other moms I know and even my mother told me she has heard my father say it a lot when she was home with me and my siblings.

"What exactly are you doing all day anyways?" or
"how I envy you, you can watch TV and drink coffee with your friends all day"

Being a housewife and mother is mostly not considered to be "work". Yes, women are appreciated and praised for having children, for surviving 9 months of pregnancy, complete with nausea, heartburn, swollen feet and gaining an enormous amount of weight and for going through the pain of labor. But afterwards, life is all peachy and happy and having a baby is all kinds of fun and cuteness.

Except...it is not!

My kids are 5 and 8, I am fortunately past the phase of sleepless nights, crying babies, breastfeeding and changing poopy diapers. But as they always say "small kids, small problems...bigger kids, bigger problems" Now I have short nights with not enough sleep because I stay up late, trying to have some time for myself after the kids finally sleep around 9 pm, yelling and fighting, arguing about whether or not Cereal is considered a "healthy Dinner" and dirty bedrooms. I have to check every day that my daughter is doing her homework, I have to remind her to take a healthy lunch to school, I have to help my son clean his room, have to drive them to and from their friends, kiss bruises away, put band-aids on cuts and dry tears when one of them was mean to the other.

I am a negotiator
nurse
cleaning lady
maid
cook
drill instructor (sometimes)
chauffeur
teacher

and on top of that also
mother and wife

I should be earning a fortune, working 10 jobs, 24/7...365 days a year, no vacation time, unpaid overtime and weekends. I do not earn anything, except the love of my children, which is awesome but some days just not enough. And even if I know deep inside, not only my family but everyone around me probably appreciates what I do, it is not enough. I want to be told that I am appreciated, as in actually saying "thank you for doing laundry so I have a clean shirt for my important business meeting today" or "thanks mom for cooking my favourite dinner"

During those years when I was sick, had to have all those surgeries and was battling depression, getting up and doing what I was supposed to, trying to keep up with every day tasks was hard enough, back then appreciation was even more necessary than it is now. More often than not I had to force myself to do even the simplest things. And even now, being physically healthy and feeling a little more mentally stable there are days I don't feel like getting up. Those days would be much easier with a little more appreciation. My husband asked me a few days ago, a little astonished and with a hint of sarcasm in his voice "what do you want, do you want to be applauded for just getting out of bed?"

YES...as weird as it sounds!

Life is so much harder and feels so bleak and unfriendly when no one appreciates what you do...because why exactly are you still there if no one recognizes what you are doing?

Irene

via Pinterest

I am

There are so many things going on in my life right now that I feel totally lost and I often wonder who I am, who I have become and who I used to be. Recently I have been wondering if I have made the right decisions in the past. I am questioning and doubting the things I did and I am not sure if I can go on with my life the way it is and was the last years. I have been asking myself so many things over and over again and there are still a million questions that I haven't figured out yet.

As if that itself wasn't scary enough, it seems that I am surrounded by people who not only HAVE it all figured out but seem to have perfect lives, or at least they make you think they have, or even if they don't have perfect lives, they are way better at coping with their imperfect lives than I am.

Fortunately (well, that actually isn't the right way to put it, because no one is fortunate if they have to struggle, but I don't know how to put it any other way) there are also a few people I know that haven't figured it all out and am struggling too. Whenever I talk to them, I feel a bit better because I know I am not alone with feeling helpless and lost.

I have been thinking about writing a post about who I am right now, because my blogger friend San recently posted about it which made me think and then today I read her newest post and it hit a nerve even more. (you can read it here) It is exactly the way she puts it into words in the title of her post, the only one who has to be happy with my life, is ME. But what if I am not happy with it. That alone is a horrible thing. And what if everyone else around me doesn't understand why. Or they do understand why, but have a total different opinion about how I should go about changing it.

I just turned 36 on January 21st and until about 5 years ago I had a pretty good life. I wouldn't say it was perfect but it was close to the way I had it imagined to be. I had a husband and two kids, my daughter was 3 and my son 8 months old. My husband had a good job that payed well, I worked freelance and even though we had some struggles, like living kind of far away from family and having trouble finding friends and a social network, life was good. And then it happened, life changed, unexpected and in the worst possible way.

I have written posts about it before and I won't repeat it, but everything that happened led me to today and the fact that I am questioning my life and the decisions I made, even those before all that bullshit happened.

And then I question myself for questioning my life. Lots of bad things happened, but do I really have to let them define me?

Yes, even though I was diagnosed with Cervical Cancer, I was lucky it was a very early stage, so it could be treated.

Yes, my daughter had a hole in her heart and needed open-heart Surgery, but it went great and now she is cured.

Yes, I was diagnosed with Depression, but I was lucky and have found an awesome therapist (up until we moved, right now I am trying to find a new one) and I am also lucky that I have found some medication that helps and I have enough money to buy it (it might sound weird but I do know people that don't...)

I have been through all of that and even though it "didn't kill me, but made me stronger", it led to a point were:

- my husband and I barely talk to each other and if we do we mostly fight, me being sick and him
  being the one who had to take over all my tasks at home on top of work has led to him being
  stressed and bitter

- I feel insecure and overwhelmed if I have to make decisions on my own, I don't trust myself
  anymore

- I am tired all.the.time because my brain just won't shut up, even when I sleep. I read once that some
  therapists use sleep deprivation as a way to treat depression, because it is common that patients feel
  tired a lot due to the brain being active even during the night

- I worry a lot more about everything and anything, health, decisions, life, death, friends,
  family...you name it!

- I am not able to live in the NOW, I always try to figure out how my decision today could influence
  the future and in which way...constant worries about the future of my health have led to that I think

I want to go back to being happy and carefree, to live here and now, to be able to laugh even if I spill my coffee, break my favourite mug or am late for an important appointment, enjoy life and love my kids even if they annoy the hell out of me.

And there it is...the problem that I have...all that is not possible with the life I have right now. I could try to change my life, or I can try to live with the fact that sometimes your life changes and you have to adapt to it. Yes, I could do that...and I should. I should do something, anything, to change it. And I did, to some point. I did not change my life, I changed myself...I made myself happy for a short period of time...by meeting someone who made me happy again, who made me feel better, who made it possible to laugh even if I spilled my coffee while the kids were fighting next to me. But as always, life is never easy, and being able to actually BE together with that person is the most complicated thing I have to face right now.

Which leads to the question if following my heart, fighting for something almost impossible, that is complicated and even unrealistic to happen is worth it. Should I turn my life upside down, risking to hurt people, because I feel I can become the person that I wish to be...

What if I feel that I AM more me when I am living that other life instead of the life I live right now?

Irene

Differences

Every person on this Planet is different and every person on this Planet deals with stress or frustration or obstacles in his or her life differently. There are as many different reactions to a single problem as there are people involved and neither one is more right or wrong than the other. Unfortunately sometimes people tend to forget that and try to apply their way of reacting to others, meaning no harm but making everything worse by doing that.

I have learned this in the last couple of weeks by experience. I met my ex and we both realized there are potentially more feelings for each other than expected. So we had to deal with the situation, knowing that however we decided to go on with our relationship, it would have an impact on both our lives. While my initial reaction was that we just try to be friends, staying in contact through social media, messages and phone, his reaction was to play dead and disappear from my life. Which isn't very helpful for me because I miss him terribly but won't get any reaction whatsoever from him, no matter how hard I try. Eventually I have to accept that this is his way of coping with the situation. Maybe one day he will be able to get back in contact.

When my Grandmother died everyone in my family reacted different. While my mom started feverishly calling everyone she knows, all relatives and close friends and everyone who knew my grandmother, my aunt fell into some kind of organizing mode and started sorting out all the stuff my grandmother had, giving away everything that wasn't personal things, like pictures or books or clothes. My mom is a really emotional person and started crying when my aunt yelled at her. Which shows that my aunt is coping by being pretty angry and dishing out, which she did even more when my mother started being emotional. I pretty much curled up on the couch and cried as much as I felt was necessary at the beginning. I sometimes cry when I think about the last time I saw her, or when we had to pack her stuff and empty out her room at the retirement home she had lived at the last few years.

Whenever I am hurt, sad, frustrated or stressed I usually talk about it. I need to get it out of my head, I feel the urge to put my thoughts into words. I overdo it a lot of times (I blogged about it before, read the post here if you want), creating problems that were not there before I started looking at that tiny problem from a million different angles. Sometimes it frustrates me and everyone around me even more, but a lot of times it helps, at least for me. Getting a few other opinions from friends usually helps me getting my head straight. Sometimes it makes me realize that I have a totally different opinion, sometimes one of my friends, looking at it from a more distant point of view manages to put my thoughts into words far better than I would have been able to do it.

On top of that I love quotes or phrases or poems, those little sentences help me cope with whatever is happening, and music. Sometimes reading or listening to the lyrics of a song makes me realize that I am not the only one who has to deal with problems, pain, frustration, stress or heartache.

How do you cope with things if nothing is going as planned? Any tips on how to cope with stress? Or good ideas on how to relax?

Irene