Over the past two weeks I have had a lot of time to reflect on the conversation that I had with my gastroenterologist and the session that I had with my therapist. One item that was causing a lot of stress in my life came to light during those appointments. I was spending almost all of my time and energy making sure that no one had to deal with the natural consequences of their actions. For years, I had been anticipating every bad outcome that could occur from a decision that someone in our family made and sometimes even trying to guess all of the different decisions that they could make beforehand so I could prevent anything negative from happening. It made sense to me why I was doing this, but realistically it wasn’t really helping anyone. People learn best from dealing with the consequences of their choices, good or bad. By preventing that from happening, they weren’t learning anything and I was destroying my health. I had taken steps last July to step back from this behavior, but until the doctor explained exactly how doing this was a direct physical cause of pain for me, I knew that I had to stop completely.
Because of this, I have let go of the guilt of not going the extra mile for others and instead have started to focus on myself. For the past two weeks, I have exercised daily, watched what and how I ate, put my interests first and set boundaries. The difference has been amazing. I have only experience severe pain a few times in the past two weeks. I have lost weight. I sleep better and I am happier. I wish that I would have understood that this behavior was making me sick a long time ago, but am thankful that I understand it now. It has definitely been a life changer.
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