How Do You Hold Onto Hope?

I admit it; I’m feeling discouraged.  I am feeling as though nothing ever changes, no matter the amount of effort I expend.  This is true of my weight-loss goals, my job hunt, the quest for health insurance coverage… It feels like life itself is just stagnant, even in the areas in which I seek change.

Bathroom Scale, image from http://www.care2.com/

My weight has been stuck at the same place, give or take no more than 2 pounds, for probably close to a year now.  I’d dropped to about 7 pounds above my pre-pregnancy weight at one point, then gained a few pounds back… and there it stayed.  Since we moved to Florida, I’ve tried calorie-reduction and increased activity, and still it remained.  Whether I’m being “good” or not, the scale doesn’t seem to care.  I’m still going to the gym nearly every day, but recently I’ve stopped religiously counting my calories.  I’ve also stopped weighing myself because what’s the point?  It just leads to more discouragement.  (Of course, not weighing in leaves me with this fear in the back of my mind that I’m steadily gaining now, instead of continuing to plateau.)

Now Hiring, Must Have Clue. photo from http://www.carteworld.com

Obviously I can’t do the same with my job-hunt. I can’t scale it back out of frustration. The only thing I can do is to soldier on in the face of the incoming rejection letters and lack of interviews. The only change I can see making is to slowly reduce my pickiness and increase my desperation. I can look for jobs I don’t really want, jobs that are more likely to leave me miserable and tired at the end of the day, instead of leaving me feeling like I’ve done a good thing with my day. I don’t want to get to that point… but I am losing hope of finding the kind of job I actually want. And it’s not like I’m asking that much – I just want an office job with an area (or, really, anywhere in FL) university.

How, in the face of all of this negativity, do I hold on to my hope? How do I keep myself from drowning in all the rejections and letting it hammer away at my self-worth? I can write, and I can concentrate on the positives. But some days it feels like that is just staving off the inevitable.

I want a job, and I am more than qualified for the kind of job I want.
I want to lose weight, and 10-15 pounds doesn’t seem unreasonable.
I want health insurance I can afford, and everyone deserves that, I believe.
And most of all, I want to feel hope that all of the above can be achieved.

Writing As Therapy

It’s no secret to anyone that things are a little bit stressful here in the SJ household.  We’re in a new location, not even in our own home, and we’re both job hunting.  With so much up in the air, yes, anxiety levels are sometimes a little bit high.

So how am I, a woman with a mild-to-moderate case of GAD, coping with the extra stressors that have been piled on since July?  You know, other than resenting the ever-loving crap out of my husband’s former employer.  There are definitely better, more productive ways to manage my stress.

One such method is something I had started back in the dark, dark days of PPD hell – a focus on the positive.  My therapist at the time urged me to try to find positive things about each day and write them down.  I kept with it for a while, and I did notice a difference.  I’ve done it sporadically since then, when things felt particularly bleak, but it never became a real, solid routine.

A week and a half ago, though, one of my dearest friends started posting Daily Positives in her journal, and urged her readers to do the same for a period of eight days.  I latched right on to that bait, and immediately started to notice a difference.  In so doing, I determined that it was something I should keep doing.  Not just for eight days, but for as long as it feels right.  I’m starting with a month (today is day #11), but it may well continue after that as well.

In this time of recession, job loss, and personal turmoil, it is really easy to get lost in negatives.  Every day is NOT all sunshine and roses, even here in tropical Florida, where it’s hard to even remember that it’s autumn.  But every day does have at least a few rays of hope.  No, those rays don’t take away the worries.  They don’t stop my brain from obsessing about finding work, missing loved ones, or trivialities like Christmas plans or something someone said to me in passing.  But remembering the positives forces me to shift my focus, at least for the length of the journal entry (and usually quite a while beyond), onto something good and away from anything negative.  That can only be a good thing, as far as I’m concerned.

Coping Quiet

Buggie with his favorite "uncle"

This morning I woke up to startling news about a dear friend’s health.  It’s one of those situations which could be nothing, or could be very serious.  Only time (and likely a barrage of tests) will tell which it will be.  This man is the husband of one of my best friends, and has slowly become a friend of mine in his own right over the years.  He is also incredibly close to Buggie.

I told O about it as I was driving him to work today.  The rest of the drive passed in relative silence – a rarity around these parts, let me assure you.  When questioned, O said he was thinking about M.  It made me realize that I … mostly wasn’t.  Not because I don’t care, but because I do. That’s how I cope with things – I put them to the back of my mind until I can fully process how to cope with it.  I skip immediately into denial/distraction, moving along with life as if I hadn’t heard what I heard, until I can’t any longer.

My Gramma

This actually seems to be something of a family trait.  It’s not only a matter of self-preservation and pride, but also of strength.  There are a couple of us in the family – most notably myself and my Gramma – who have taken it upon ourselves to be The Strong Ones.  It isn’t a matter of stoicism, nor of hiding our emotions.  I’m absolutely no good at that; my face and eyes betray me, every time.  It’s just a matter of putting our own feelings on the back burner while others may need us to be strong.  For example, when my mother calls me with any kind of difficult news, I tend not to react right away.  I get through the phone call, hang up, and only then do the tears come.  She doesn’t need my pain to make hers all the worse.

Mind you, it’s not by any means a conscious decision.  Sometimes, I wish it didn’t work the way it does for me.  I would be able to heal faster, if I didn’t delay my pain.  I know this, but my brain seems to not be wired that way.  Instead, I grieve after the fact.  I panic when the danger has gone.  I cry when everyone else’s tears have dried.