Inner stuff

You may have wondered what happened to my use of 'Mood Manager' recently, and the answer is that my month's free trial expired at the end of March so I've stopped using the software.

Was it useful? Yes, but not in the way it was intended to be used. I didn't actually find that monitoring my moods was particularly helpful; what has been helpful has been taking the time to think about myself and how I'm feeling as a regular part of my daily life.

I've been thinking about this over the last few days. I found myself feeling stressed and anxious and I hadn't taken the time to reflect so I was getting more and more worked up, and feeling that I had too much to do and possibly couldn't achieve all that I had set out for myself. This is a bad point to come to for me because there's a real possibility of spiralling into a whirlwind of negative emotions along the lines of not being able to do anything, failing, not being good enough... I'm sure you get the picture. I can find it quite hard to get out of that very negative way of thinking, but on reflection that has the effect of being an avoidance strategy. I get so worked up that I have to drop some activity in order to salvage any achievement at all. Perhaps that's why I do it? I'm confronted with lots of things that apparently interfere with the things that I really want to do, so I allow myself to fall into a pit of despair - which is horrible but familiar - rather than having to deal with the situation, perhaps? I don't know, which is to say that I find it uncomfortable to think about it, so I'm not going to follow that line of thinking any further right now!

Anyway, luckily I had only just got to the early stages of this rapid spiralling descent when I realised that the real problem is that I simply haven't made any time for myself recently, and certainly not any time in which to reflect upon things. No wonder I'm having problems coping! And as soon as I realised that I began to be able to manage my feelings of anxiety, and to gather together some strands of self-control.

I find the state of being in a worked-up panic about things very disabling. I feel as if I don't have control, that external forces are driving everything and that I'm about to disappear along with my own wants and needs. It can descend into total panic, but on those rare occasions on which I manage to avoid going any further down that path and I calm down I manage to reclaim a sense of control about all sorts of peripheral anxieties that manage to tie themselves in with the main causes of worry.

For example, I realise that I've not been sticking very well to the CSIRO diet that we've been following successfully for almost a year. And having made the effort to get back into going to the gym I haven't been to the gym for two weeks. Now I do have a semi-reasonable excuse for both of these perceived 'failures', which is that it's the school holidays so our daughter is with us AND we drove around southern New South Wales visiting family and friends for a week which put us out of our routine. But since we've come home my rising sense of panic has at once allowed me to say that I can't cope with controlling either exercise or diet and it has prevented me from taking any control.

The word 'reflection' keeps appearing as a key to all of this. I don't need special software; what I need is acceptance that in order to stay sane I need to spend some time every day or so reflecting on myself, how I am and what I'm doing.

Having paused for long enough to reflect a little on my current condition I seem to have retrieved some enthusiasm for getting back into exercise and the diet this week, aided by the fact that school starts again on Tuesday which always seems to make things easier. Fingers crossed.

Now you see it, now maybe you don't...

I really hate the whole ageing thing. In the old days I could rest easy, knowing that my blood pressure was incredibly low and that I was fit, fit, fit! Now I'm suffering from stress, I'm a little bit overweight, distinctly less fit than I used to be AND it seems that the pressure inside my eyeballs is increasing, putting me at greater risk of glaucoma. I went to the optometrist in Coffs Harbour recommended to me by my optometrist brother-in-law, Tony, and was told that I'd got high pressure readings in my eyes. This isn't good news. Ten years ago I lost the sight in my left eye for nine months and had various other episodes of unexplained bleeding into both eyes so I already know what losing my eyesight is like... Since the first bleed I have spent many hours in the optometrist's chair and this is the very first time that my eye pressure has been elevated, and it marks a distinct change from the situation two years ago when I last had my eyes checked. The days when my doctor used to tell me to start smoking and drinking in order to increase my blood pressure are clearly long gone!

What does this tell me? Well things have clearly changed! I'm older, probably fatter, probably a bit less fit than I was two years ago. I've experienced a lot of stress - possibly no more than usual in my up-and-down sort of life, but still lots of stress. I've started drinking a cup of real coffee most days, but I don't drink as much alcohol as I used to. I've been on the CSIRO Total Wellbeing Diet for most of the last twelve months.

I think it also tells me that I should be taking my efforts to change unhelpful aspects of my life seriously. I've been following the CSIRO with great results, but I still eat too much meat and I haven't put great emphasis on the low fat part of the plan because I shifted a lot of weight by just dropping carbohydrates. I eat too much chocolate. I probably don't eat enough potassium, magnesium and calcium, mainly because I'm lazy about ensuring that I eat bananas every day and/or take a supplement. This is particularly short-sighted of me as I'm on HRT and need to ensure I ingest enough calcium to avoid osteoporosis. I have started taking more exercise, so we'll see if I can keep up with two Pilates classes per week and two gym sessions per week, and I will need to increase the length of gym sessions and the variety of weight training and cardio work I do.

In the spirit of taking responsibility for both the good and the bad in what I do, I think I've made a start, which is good, and now I need to stick at it. I need to recognise that what was true when I was in my twenties and thirties is out of date now I'm in my early forties, and adapt accordingly. I need not to slide into a pit of depression about how wrong everything is and focus instead on being calm, reducing my stress levels, getting my chocolate cravings under control and improving my overall health. Cheers!