pick-me-up

you know those days when you're just feeling down?

I hate those days. they've been more frequent lately, with the whole breakup and all. you know the days. the days where you watch Crazy Stupid Love and lose it at your tv because if Steve Carrell can find love, why can't you? the days where everyone is busy, and you've had too much "alone time." the days where you feel bored and listless and just sort of low.

well! I have a list of my favourite ways to beat the low-days.

exercise. boost those endorphins! go for a ten minute walk, do some Zumba or hit a yoga class. no matter how you do it, make sure you do it for at least ten minutes. exercise is shown to decrease mental illness extraordinarily well, so it can also decrease the crappy-day-blues.

do something you love. which sounds obvious, but baking a cake, blogging or organizing your tool shed will distract you from whatever is making you feel low, give a sense of purpose and will also make you happy.

let someone know. telling someone that you're feeling like crap can be really therapeutic! it's like getting someone on your side, and it can also provide a fresh perspective.

take a shower. okay, this might be me-specific. when I'm sad/angry I really love to take a shower. it's my own personal space where I can think, cry and sing. plus, you come out smelling better than before.

remind yourself that it's not forever. you will eventually feel happy again. if it becomes something that lasts a significant amount of time, it might be worth discussing with your doctor or a psychologist. and in the meantime, there's always this song:

graduation + studenthood

Yep. Finished my degree. Convocation is on June 10th! And it's just starting to set in - a few days ago, I got home from work and turned on the tv. After mindlessly flipping through channels for awhile, I realized that I should probably be more productive. I turned off the tv, and sat down at my desk... only to realize that I have nothing to do. No homework. No readings. No papers.

It feels pretty great. Also a few days ago, I was filling out some kind of form/survey. I got to the question "how much education have you completed?" and for the first time could answer "Bachelors Degree" instead of "some college" (whatever that means).

It does make me think, however, that being a student has been a part of my identity for such a very long time. I've been a student for about 17 years - and I've only been alive for 22! But I'm excited to see what non-student life is like. Once I get past the post-exams-12-hours-of-sleep-per-night phase.

I'll miss this guy!

on anxiety

A few months ago, a friend of mine uploaded a picture of herself on instagram and included a long paragraph about her mental health status. This inspired me to write a post about my anxiety problems - I think it's so important for open and honest communication. These things will help erase the negative stigma surrounding mental health and can make it easier for others to reach out for help.

Having said that, I've written and rewritten this post a billion times. It's so hard to talk about and I wanted it to be perfect. Which is ironic, when you consider the source of my mental health issues.
But here I am, writing a post about my mental health. This isn't easy, but I just wanna share where I'm at.

I've known for awhile that I have an anxiety disorder. A few years ago I was sexually assaulted and I spiraled into a dizzy, exhausting few weeks of excruciating anxiety. I had panic attack after panic attack. Although this wasn't my first encounter with anxiety, this was the first time I'd felt like it was unmanageable. So I went to counselling - and sure enough. Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD).

So over the past few years I've had ups and downs with my anxiety - learning that I had an anxiety disorder was liberating. I met others who had anxiety spectrum issues, and I learned how to manage anxiety.

I began exploring where I think my anxiety started. I think it started in childhood, as so many things do. I've always put such a massive pressure on myself to be perfect. When you look at me as a person, you probably wouldn't notice that I'm a perfectionist. And I'm probably not, by traditional definitions. But I have this massive, unhealthy desire for everyone to think I'm perfect. I feel like my worth comes from how close to perfect I am.

Over the last few months, as I've been exploring life outside of Christianity, I've also come up to a massive identity crisis. If I'm not a Christian, which was previously the only thing I would use to define myself, then who am I? Add that crisis to the hardest academic year I've ever had and some issues in some personal relationships... you see where this is going!

In December, I had the most overwhelming mental breakdown of my life. I felt like everything was meaningless, I was worthless and I felt so so SO stressed out by my life. I became a bit of a zombie through exams and then went home for Christmas. And I continued to have panic attacks over the holiday.

When I came back in January, I knew I needed to head back to counselling. And so I have. And I am on the path to managing my anxiety. I think anxiety is part of the human experience - I doubt very much that I will ever be completely anxiety free. But I am in control of my anxiety, not the other way around.

Probably should have been anxious to be sitting 1500 feet above Chicago!

ENFP Confessions #4

Sometimes I feel like my imaginative life is maybe more active than my actual life.

Recently, some friends and I went to see the Secret Life of Walter Mitty. It was fantastic - a definite idealist movie and I definitely recommend seeing it if you want some inspiration. [Favourite quote: "Beautiful things don't ask for attention."]

From the moment I saw the movie's trailer, something about it stood out to me. If you haven't heard about it, it's a guy who lives in a daydreamy world where he is a heroic champion and must go on a journey to discover his true identity. And that stuck out to me. 

I know I've mentioned it on here before how intense my daydreaming life is - sometimes it distracts me from what's really going on in my life. I can daydream for hours if nothing interrupts me, and I always go on the most exciting and incredible adventures. In my head. Yup. 

So I was pretty convinced that this movie was going to be about an introverted, male version of myself (and I was right). I think my little daydreaming problem is such a beneficial gift - sometimes it teaches me valuable things about people, relationships and myself. Sometimes, however, I need to go live my adventures instead of daydreaming about them.

ENFP thought for the day: I think emotion and imagination are rational logic in their own ways.

ENFP Confessions #1

Trying to keep my thoughts on point is like trying to keep a wave on the sand. Honestly, sometimes I think the reason I talk to myself so much is because the thoughts don't fit in my head anymore. The other night, I didn't know my roommate was home and I was chatting away to myself. Later on, she got up to go to the bathroom and my face went BEET RED! She must think I'm crazy!

I'm just like Dory from Finding Nemo; enthusiastic and talking a mile-a-minute... except far less forgetful. Conversation is of extremely high importance to me, so I'm unlikely to forget the things you tell me.

My feelings and my ability to trust others? That's another confession for another time :) ENFP out!

Things I Believe in Today

My week started with a little bit of much needed relaxation, and I thought I'd make this happy little list 

I believe in extra extra large cups of coffee and extra spicy chai tea lattes.

I believe in staying in bed for a whole weekend.

I believe in dreaming out loud to your closest friends.

I believe there is always time to enjoy the little things.

I believe in eating cookies, trying on dresses and painting your nails.

I believe in never giving up hope, even when everything seems to be hopelessly falling apart... and staying true to yourself, even when it seems impossible.

easily influenced

This post may be hard to understand. It might have mistakes. It might not make any sense at all. Just know that this is intensely personal and intensely emotional.

I've always been a good at writing... but I've never been very good at putting my most personal thoughts and struggles into words. Sometimes, my reluctance to talk about my most deep struggles is not necessarily a fear of being judged. It's a fear of being influenced.

I'm a person who is easily pushed to believe and feel a certain way - and I mean this from both sides of the spectrum. I am as likely to be swayed by a Christian perspective that I don't necessarily agree with as a cultural one. And I think humans in general are easily influenced, but I feel like I'm easily influenced on steroids.

Over the last several months I have been going through the largest internal struggle of my life so far. Though many have heard fractions of the issue, I have yet to tell anyone the full extent of the struggle. As many of you know, this is really hard for me - I'm very much an extroverted external processor. It's extremely hard for me to work through things on my own. Yet, I have shut out all opinions for months because for once in my life I want to know and understand how I feel about something, not how someone else thinks I should feel about something.

So I've been trying to nail down what I think about this struggle on my own, but it's proving to be exceptionally difficult. I feel like no matter what decision I make, I will be disappointing someone. So, even in my own head, I am still swayed by others.

It feels contradictory: feeling alone, yet overwhelmingly surrounded. I keep telling myself that I'm in control... so why do I never feel like I have control over anything?

The question still comes down to this: who will decide how I live?

Bow Down

Today at work I had a grotesque realization about myself.

We always have worship music on at work. I think I was born with a song in my soul, so I constantly sing along without even realizing it! Every so often, the words I'm singing seem to bubble to the surface of my consciousness, and that happened today. I can't even remember what song it was from, but the lyrics were "we bow to You alone, Jesus."

As I sang them, a little voice in my head said the only thing you bow to is fear. And isn't that true!? I'm such a fearful person! I struggle with fear of failure, fear of being unloved, fear of being worthless, fear of being wrong. The list goes on.

When I tell people that I'm fearful, they rarely take me seriously because of my personality. I'm willing to try anything and everything. People seem to equate being fearful with being shy, but that is not always the case.

I remember one time, I was going skydiving (see picture!) with a good friend. As we drove out to the skydive centre, he said that the thing that struck him most about me was how fearless I was. I remember bursting out laughing - "you think I'm fearless!?" I started describing my anxiety disorder to him, and soon he came to realize that I'm not so fearless at all.

So I got to thinking - how can a person overcome to urge to bow to their fears? I think that identifying your fears is probably a good place to start, but I sometimes think that fear is a bigger entity than a worry regarding a specific object or concept. Bigger than a feeling gone wrong.

So how do you overcome fear itself?  I guess that's the direction my journey is headed in next.

Feel Things

Hey y'all.

For those of you who don't know me, I'm a very emotional individual. I feel everything hard and in a typical day I experience a full (and intense) range of emotions. Regular day-to-day things can stir deep emotional responses in my heart - both negative and positive. I'm just a feeler. A typical ENFP.

I've just been thinking so much lately about how these displays of emotion have become a negative thing in our society. I have it nailed into my head that sharing my heart and emotions is a bad thing. I'm so tired of hearing emotionality portrayed as rationality's evil twin. I think both play an important role in today's world.

I want a society where both tenderheartedness and good sense  are valued equally. More than anything, I'd like people to respect my emotions and feelings; I want people to stop telling me to stop being myself!

Emotions are a good thing. Period.

weird & surprising

Something I never thought I'd pray for is a release of emotions.

Some stuff has happened lately, and as I choose God more and more, I feel all these emotions inside just being walled in. I'm scared of that, but for some reason I cannot seem to let them free.

Doesn't sound like me at all, right?

I don't know what's going on. I want to cry, but I can't! I want to feel joy, but I can't! I want to be able to talk out these feelings, but I can't! Except it's more than just that - I feel all of these things like they're under my skin. It's as though I don't explicitly feel them, but I know they're there.

I need to feel these things to be healed and to let God have more of my heart! all of my heart! but I can't seem to figure out what's wrong. This is never a problem I've had! I'm always the first to cry - but I can't seem to cry at all.

praying for tears. very weird.

for BH

Dear BH,

I'm writing you this letter and posting it on my blog because this way it's very unlikely that you will see it - but I believe that if you're meant to read it, you will.

Where to start, where to start? I saw you today. I want you to know that I'm still so attracted to you, but you also still make me cry. I'm still a mess and it's been three or four months now.

Out of everything I'm going to tell you now, what I want you to know the most is this:

I'm most angry because my life got torn apart, but yours didn't. You're perfectly fine and I know that. And I think it's unfair.

Lucky for both of us, we aren't the ones who decide what fair is. Thank God for grace.

BH, you broke my heart. And I don't mean you put a little hairline fracture in me. I mean, you BROKE me. I ask God regularly why you were allowed to do so, and He tells me it's because I gave you my heart in the first place.

Sometimes, I sit in lectures and my eyes fill with tears because I think about how you lied to me and I have to get up and leave. I have a hard time being alone because I just start reflecting on how things felt and things you said and it distracts me from just about anything else.

You blamed me at first. While I know you changed that around afterwards, it's stuck with me a lot. I still feel like it's my fault. I still feel like I blew the only chance I'd ever have with a "godly" man. I still feel like anybody who tells me I'm beautiful is lying.

And as for you being a godly man... I think you really need to reflect on what that means and what God wants from you before you label yourself like that. I know we're all sinners, I know that I have fallen just as short of the Lord as you have, I know you're no worse than I am - but I think that the difference is that you don't seem to try. This is pretty much pure speculation because I'm trying to make heads or tails of how you seem to be so much more okay than I am.

Out of all of the things you said to me, the one that hurt the most was when you used God's apparent calling to the priesthood as an excuse for why you couldn't date me. It seems legit on the surface, but if you look a little deeper, making out with me and refusing to date me was, I think, less priestly. And let's not forget that you started dating someone a few days later.

I want to say that I'm sorry for sinning against you - I know that it takes two to tango and I should not put all of the blame on you. I believe for the actions that occured between us, we are equally to blame.

So out of all of this, what do I want to conclude with?

You broke my heart, BH. You have diminished my hope that a godly man is worth waiting for. You have also made me feel like no man will ever love me, and that I am just some desperate fat girl to use while you're in between people who will have sex with you. I know that's mean, and I'm just trying to get out how I'm feeling. I'm sorry. I guess I take some of that back. But I still think you used me, and I still feel like nobody will ever truly romantically love me.

However, I want to forgive you. Because Jesus said to. Because He loves you and says you're worth forgiving. That I'm worth forgiving. We are both God's children. I hope you can sort things out with Him before you find yourself on a very terrible path. I mean that honestly.

So I forgive you for sinning against me. I forgive you for lying to me. I forgive you for using me. I'm trying to forgive you for breaking my heart. I'm not sure how to do it, so I'm just going to say I forgive you over and over until it's true. God forgives you. I forgive you.

Ultimately, it is not my job to hope that you can experience this kind of hurt. It is not my job to decide what's just. As my pastor always says, I'm putting you on God's hook and taking you off of mine.

Tonight when I was expressing my anger towards you, my best friend suggested that in those times of anger, I need to pray for you. So I'm going to start doing that. I don't want to be angry with you any more. I want to move on, to be healed. To let God heal me.

I hope that you will stop looking for that love you long for in girls, BH. You know it comes from the Lord. Don't give up.

Robin.

Giving it Up

So, today begins Lent. And quite a strange season I am found in this Lent! I decided to give up Facebook, #1. Since you don't have to fast on Sundays, I've decided to be allowed to check it for 10 minutes on Sundays. The problem is not Facebook, the problem is that I spend more time on face than in prayer. So there's that. I'm also going to be reading through Romans 12 prayerfully every morning. There's a couple other smaller things I'm doing, but then there's a bigger one.

I've liked the same guy since September. It's starting to get ridiculous, I'm insane about him. So I decided to give him up for Lent. Basically, this doesn't mean I don't spend friends time with him, but it means every time I think of him or daydream or feel sad that he doesn't like me back, I'm going to pray for him, and ask God to redirect my feelings to Him.

I hope it works out.

2 Corinthians 10:5b - Take captive every thought and make it obedient to Christ.

PS - in relation to my last post... I started further! I gave my testimony at our C&C last weekend. It wasn't THAT hard. Actually, it feels kind of nice to know that everyone knows my heart now, and where I'm coming from. I'm somewhat relieved. In other (more serious) news, I gave my best friend M my full testimony - the one with the part you just don't share in a group setting. It was really hard. But again, it's relieving to have her know, you know?

Arms High and Heart Abandoned

Yo, homeslices!

Today I was reading in Mark 8. I saw some very valuable things, and I'd love to share them. I'd also like to share where I began to feel challenged.

PS, feelings are so messed up. I never know if I should trust mine or not!

Also, when I saw this picture, I teared up. Oh my GOD, I love You!

Okay, so the first thing that stood out to me was Verse 2, where Jesus says: I have compassion on the crowd, because they have been with me now three days and have nothing to eat.

When I read this, I thought of a few things. I remembered a few months ago when I went through something traumatic, I tried to fast for 3 days. My body REJECTED the plan, and I got really sick. So, as I see it, 3 days is difficult. Yet here were 4000 people who'd been following Him for 3 days with (assumably) little to eat, and were continuing to follow Jesus around although they had nothing to eat (listening to Him and watching Him HEAL LIKE CRAZY must have been INCREDIBLE. I'm so thankful for the Bible). And these people had given up food, and how did Jesus feel about that?

Jesus took compassion on them.

That's my God.

Compassion, according to the dictionary definition, is "Deep awareness of the suffering of another coupled with the wish to relieve it." Jesus desires to relieve our suffering. For real, He just said it. This is amazing, I'm being continually blown away as I ponder what this means. I just grasped something.

Compassion give strength. Strength under testing, hard times. Times when God feels far, but really it's us.

It amazes me that the whole Bible seems to be a huge love letter from God saying "I LOVE YOU! I WANT TO SAVE YOU!" I mean, my pride kicks in and feels uncomfortable, but this is wild. Jesus is wild. And I love it.

Being a human is weird.

The place that I begin to struggle when it comes to Mark 8 is verses 33 and 34. I don't understand what it means to deny myself, or how. I also struggle with knowing when what I'm doing is His Will or not. Any advice?

My song of the day... or week, or something, is "Something Heavenly" by downHere. It's a gooder.