Wed 9 Apr 2008
Over the last couple of months I have realized how negative my self-talk is. If someone else said the things to me I was saying to me, I would have decked him or her. Or at least walked away. But for months I let my personal demons and critics beat me up over and over again. No wonder I never felt good and always thought I was skic. I was running myself into the ground and wearing myself out.
All I did was tell myself I couldn’t do whatever it was I waas working on. The book proposal was never going to be finished, let alone a book written and published. My sermons sucked: all of them. Who did I think I was to plant a church? Regularly posting to my blog and drawing attention to it? A pipe dream. It was no wonder I was depressed, had no energy, and thought I might have chronic fatigue syndrom.
I am slowly changing how I talk to myself. For the last couple of months, I’ve started to pay attention to what bounces aroun in my head. It wasn’t good. I am slowly stopping the negative thoughts in their tracks and replacing all of that negative chatter with postive affirmations:
- I am a good writer.
- I’ve already written a book: my graduate thesis. (For those who don’t know the book proposal I am working on is rewriting my thesis for the general public. That is how Career Women of the Bible was born.)
- I can write another book. And another book. And another….
- I am a good pastor.
- I am a good preacher.
- If my sermons sucked, my PK Hubby would have said something.
When I’m working on Career Women of the Bible and I think, “This will never happen, I cut off the critic. Then I say (if I’m alone out loud): “I am a good writer, and I am going to finish this book proposal.” I’ve also set up a little group to be accountable to daily, so I do write instead of psyching myself out.
Self-talk is very important. How we talk to ourselves makes all the difference. If we don’t believe we’ll succed, then we don’t try very hard, if at all. At one point, I’m not sure I could have seen that due to the depression. But now that is under control with antidepressants, I am able to stop, look at what I’m saying to myself, and say, “No. That’s not right. That is not who I am. This is who I am.”
What have you been saying to yourself? Is it good? Positive? Or are you running yourself into the ground? How do you deal with negative self talk? What do you say to build yourself up and live into your potential?
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I don’t take too much literally. My favorite genre of fiction is fantasy after all. But there is one verse in the Bible I do get very literal with as a way to cope with depression and the anxiety and worry that accompany it (or do the anxiety and worry come first then the depression–chicken and egg, I guess). The verse is: “Cast all your cares on God for God cares for you” (1 Peter 5:7, my paraphrase). I like the wordplay of the two “cares” when translated this way.
The last six weeks or so have been very up and down. Of course there have been many things happening. Tracy’s infection, waiting to hear back from Beacon Hill on my book proposal, working on the novel and the
My goal for most of this year has been to learn how to be nice to myself, to take care of myself, and to nurture myself. And to be okay with it–not feel selfish or that I’m wasting time. It is amazing how hard it is. It should not be this hard to simply take care of one’s self, to like one’s self, to love one’s self. The second command is to love your neighbor as yourself. Growing up I learned a lot about loving my neighbor, but no one taught me how to love and take care of myself. Now I am learning. Now I know how important it is to love me. But it so hard. Why is it so hard?
I always say I’m in a fog when I’m depressed. Yes, fog makes it hard to see and hear. But light in the fog is so beautiful. Moonlight, street lights, or lights from signs–it doesn’t matter. They all take on this beautiful, otherworldly glow in the fog. The fog softens things, blurs borders and boundaries, and makes you see everyday things differently. It opens new possibilities of gateways to other worlds. It can be a pain to navigate in, but where will you wind up if you follow the lights through the fog? I don’t know. But it gives me a different way of looking at my fogs of depression. What if I pay attention to the fuzzy and ethereal lights I do see? What if I follow them? Where will I wind up? What if someone follows my fuzzy light? Where will we end up?
I sat in my car and took a breath. This would be the first time I met with my spiritual director. I was a little nervous. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I knew I needed to do this. I needed someone to help me find my way out of the depression that had darkened my life and back to intimacy with God. I hadn’t sinned or wandered off—nothing so dramatic. What I had been for the last five years was busy. First I attended seminary plus worked a full-time job. After seminary, the full-time job continued, and I added a part-time pastoral position. Somewhere in the midst of preparing for ministry and actual ministry, I had lost my own way with God. I was tired, burnt-out, and I needed help. I had also been diagnosed with clinical depression and was on anti-depressants. But I needed someone to help me sort through all of the negative images and feeling; I needed someone to help give me hope. I needed someone to talk to without one more person to tell me to hang in there and just “have faith.” I needed someone who could listen to me—listen to my story—then help me to connect my story back to God in my daily living. I found help with my depression from a source I had not known about until a retreat at a Benedictine monastery: a spiritual director.