The Struggle Switch is OFF

After the catharsis of last night's post about 1995 and its repercussive effect on me, I ate pancakes, cleared some crap off the floor, finally put away the tent from December and tucked myself up in bed. I love flannelette sheets and my flannelette doona cover and pillow cases. I am flannelette woman!!

This author of self-improvement 101 leafed through the book that changed her life. The Happiness Trap. Bizarrely looking for some kind of comfort, solace or wisdom. Brain too skewed to concentrate on narrative fiction.

What I read made me immediately regret spilling 1995's sorrow out into this blog. Made me regret all the anxiety I'd been anxious about; the boy-preoccupation that I'd been nervously preoccupied with; the emotions I'd been emotional about. According to The Happiness Trap, I've had the Struggle Switch ON. It's been stuck on. I've felt that my feelings and actions are somehow wrong. I've known and been told that they're natural, but they've annoyed me. I've been annoyed that I've been anxious about and focussed on the BG. It's like using two cleaning products together when they clearly state they should not be combined. Knock a potent emotion on the head with another potent guilt-riddled, shameful emotion - that should do the trick. So I'm turning off the struggle switch, or at least trying to. According to Dr Russ Harris (gotta love a doctor called Russ!), when the Struggle Switch is OFF our emotions are free to move, we don't waste time or energy fighting or avoiding them, we don't generate all that 'dirty discomfort' (emotional pain that is dirtied or made worse by feeling bad about it - that what we're feeling is unacceptable, wrong, negative, defective, fucked, etc.). So naturally I realised that I've spent most of my life struggling against or deeply analysing and investing in anything that was causing me emotional upset. I was bothered by being bothered. I was wasting time and alot of energy. Glorious hindsight, hey?

Now I'm fine! Ha! But truly, at risk of sounding like a new-age wanker, I am making profound inner progress. My strength, self-confidence and emotional stability is building day by day. I'm becoming a happy well-adjusted person - who would've thought?!

There's boundless merit in the particular therapy The Happiness Trap is centred on - Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). It finally clicked for me. Reading back on my post of last night makes me realise how absorbed I am by my feelings about things. I am even absorbed by the fear of feeling bad at some unidentifiable point in the future. This has to change. It will change. Lets hope this blog takes a turn for the better too. I'll keep you posted.