What I Know vs. What I Feel

What I know versus what I feel sucks ass right now! My track record tells me I know I’m going to be ok, but I feel like I’m headed into a dark, defeatist mindset. I know I am smart, capable and valuable as an employee. But I feel incompetent, inadequate and overwhelmed by the unwieldy workload along with the new metrics and numbers I’m judged by at work. I know I have options and choice about the direction of my life, but I feel afraid and powerless.

My daughter thinks I don’t know her. She’s told me this many times. Sometimes in anger, in exasperation or sometimes jokingly. But she really believes that I have no clue who she is. I can’t tell her the things I know about her because I’m her mother or because I’m a woman who has been where she is right now. I can’t tell her the wonderful  and amazing qualities and values I see in her. Some of them she got from me, some she got from other really good people she gravitated to and stayed close with. Her smart ass humor, her generosity, her addictive personality when it comes to junk food and tv watching, her sensitivity, her service to her community are all me. All me, but I can’t tell her that. I could explain to her that the closeness she feels to her youth director, his wife and their young children fills her need and longing for a sense of family. One I’ve been unable to provide on my own since her brothers are long gone out of the house and she’s just at an age where mom is not cool to be with. I know my Baby Bub, but I feel disconnected from her.

I know I’ve made progress in my yoga practice, hell, I actually HAVE a yoga practice now and I’m planning to get certified to teach it. But I’m feeling uncertain and doubtful in my abilities on the mat. I know I called breath, focus and follow through as my anchors for the coming weeks which helped for a few days, but I feel choked with emotion, completely unfocused and scattered at week’s end. I signed up for another Tension/Trauma Release Workshop at my yoga studio. Remember how well I did with the last one in http://buildyourownbrave.com/2015/09/22/its-time-to-replace-my-old-stories/? Yeah, that’s tomorrow afternoon.

Right about now, I know I’m supposed to bring the tone up and try to wrap this up in a sweet little spiritually uplifting bow but I’m just not feeling that. Sorry, not sorry. What I do know is that feelings are not facts. Feelings. Are. Not. Facts. But I’m still feeling pretty fucked up about myself, my life, my future right now. Just right now. Hopefully, a good night’s sleep, some overtime at work tomorrow morning, some lunch after that, then the Tension workshop and a nap will do wonders for me. If not, there’s always my Saturday night 12 step meeting and oh hey, I forgot my spiritual advisor is coming to town for that meeting so I get to see her. In fact, I think she wants to try to do dinner or something too… Well damn, I’m starting to feel better already, despite myself. How about that?