defeating worry
on the plus side, we are finally starting to move along at high speed on our compilers project, so that is becoming slightly easier to reassure myself about.
i managed to pick up another threatening thing to worry uselessly about today.
i remember two years ago when knightofstarz told me "yeah, don't think about it too much." i was mystified. but of course there are both times when it's useful to spend energy churning over some problem and times when there's just nowhere you can possibly get by tossing it around any more.
...so i let myself be sad for as long as i needed, found a hand to hold, then eventually decided it was time for it to stop bothering me. now this is the tricky bit, of course; i only have so much energy to use for lifting myself out of the pits. plus, when one thing bothers me, everything else also bothers me, and shame and overwhelmedness show up for a feast. the standard tricks - tell myself "you are allowed to not be thinking about this"; visualise the problem as a piece of junk that i box up and bury under the floorboards until it disintegrates - were of limited use. then i tried "write it down", one i'm making new fast friends with, and made a list of everything i could think of that could bother me. the list said, "i am your friend! i will worry about these for you so you don't have to.", and it worked like a charm... for about an hour.
i figure this is really the sort of thing i want pen and pad for, so i can write solidly with my hands instead of abstractly with my head, and so i can do it as often as i need to without losing effectiveness. still, i am afraid that it would not help with how much it actually takes out of me to stay in focus. how can i find stable ground to stand on?
i managed to pick up another threatening thing to worry uselessly about today.
i remember two years ago when knightofstarz told me "yeah, don't think about it too much." i was mystified. but of course there are both times when it's useful to spend energy churning over some problem and times when there's just nowhere you can possibly get by tossing it around any more.
...so i let myself be sad for as long as i needed, found a hand to hold, then eventually decided it was time for it to stop bothering me. now this is the tricky bit, of course; i only have so much energy to use for lifting myself out of the pits. plus, when one thing bothers me, everything else also bothers me, and shame and overwhelmedness show up for a feast. the standard tricks - tell myself "you are allowed to not be thinking about this"; visualise the problem as a piece of junk that i box up and bury under the floorboards until it disintegrates - were of limited use. then i tried "write it down", one i'm making new fast friends with, and made a list of everything i could think of that could bother me. the list said, "i am your friend! i will worry about these for you so you don't have to.", and it worked like a charm... for about an hour.
i figure this is really the sort of thing i want pen and pad for, so i can write solidly with my hands instead of abstractly with my head, and so i can do it as often as i need to without losing effectiveness. still, i am afraid that it would not help with how much it actually takes out of me to stay in focus. how can i find stable ground to stand on?