Christine's Diary

The reason I decided to try this is that I have been fighting self sabotage at work for a long time. I have my own business, so if I am productive and reach out I am as successful as I want to be. However, it gives me a prime opportunity to punish myself day in and day out by not being productive and not reaching out, so failure becomes a self fulfilling prophesy. I can punish myself by making it hard to pay my bills. I can only give the recession so much credit for me not being successful if I am not doing the work I need to do.

NM history: She is a self help/recovery tourist. She talks the talk, but obviously nothing changes her behavior. So, it has made me naturally skeptical about anything like EFT.

My reaction: I opened the pdf [with the tapping instructions], skimmed it and closed it then told myself, “Oh, I’ll start this tomorrow morning.” Why I have to wait until tomorrow morning I have no idea, it was only 2:00 pm when I downloaded it.

Next, “I have to wait until DH is gone or he’ll make fun of me for doing it.” DH and I both work at home; he leaves the house maybe twice a week without me. This was big whopper of an excuse! Recognizing this as exactly what Danu said, that the part of me that wants to punish would be out in force, I resolved to tell DH what I am doing and he can be as skeptical or supportive as he wants (lately he has been very open and supportive of most self help stuff, although his eyebrow does still go up now and then). At least if I tell him and he comes into my office while I am doing it I won’t immediately think he is going to ridicule me!

So, I did it within an hour of downloading the script. I guess I am tired of sabotaging myself. I only procrastinated for a while! I found that I could not speak the script out loud; all I could do was whisper. I was alone in my office, but I still had the overwhelming feeling I was being watched by someone who would ridicule me. Hmmm…probably me!

I followed along with the video and about halfway through tears welled up in my eyes. Of course I felt stupid for that and suppressed them. Then I became very sleepy for minutes 7 through 10. By the end I was focused. But I still wanted to take a nap right after. With 30 minutes I was writing away at my latest report, but still fighting the sleepiness. The one big urge that has not come up is the mindless checking news online or refreshing icanhascheezeburger.com. Although, the local Siberian Husky breeder has the puppy cams up from 1:00-6:00. I don’t think anything can prevent me from looking at husky puppies! But I ended up only looking at them twice.

Okay, I got a good bit of work in, but I finally gave in to the sleepiness. Physically I felt exhausted, my chest was very tight, and I felt short of breath. My head hit the pillow and I was out like a light for about 40 minutes. Usually, if I have an afternoon nap my whole afternoon is shot. I don’t wake up for about 3 to 4 hours.

During the EFT session the tears welled up again, but a lot sooner, about 1:30 into the video. I didn’t fight it and I let them stream, that continued until about 3:30 into the video. Then I lost focus for a few minutes and regained focus about halfway through the video. I still whispered the script. I was not immediately sleepy this time. And, I had no need for a nap today.

Well, today was not so full of drama. Today was an administrative day. I just paid attention to how I felt about doing this administrative work and I found that I really resent it. I don’t like doing this part, but I did it anyway. There was some stuff that I had been putting off that I finished. I got a good bit of writing done in between the administrative tasks. Only one cheezeburgering, and one puppy cam session.

I took Danu’s advice and moved the EFT session to later in the day. I didn’t wait until bedtime, but I did wait until after work hours. I got a little sleepy and unfocused in today’s session. However, an interesting thing happened. While my mind was sleepy, my body wasn’t. I’ve been practicing listening to my body (not continuing to eat when I am full, exercising on my body’s schedule and doing routines that my body demands no matter what my mind says). I was able to listen to my body instead of my mind and push back against the sleepiness fairly quickly. (Come to think of it I did get up an hour earlier today too, so I’m going to pay attention to see if this is anomaly or if this might hit my wacky sleep habits too) I did get hungry again :-p, guess I need to wait until after dinner!

After all of that I just walked by and told DH I would be sending out a marketing email on Wednesday like it was the most normal thing. I never do that. I only tell people when I have a new report. I never actively ask them to buy things like normal business people do! Asking someone to buy one of my reports directly usually freaks me out. Now let’s see if I do it on Wednesday.

My resistance to doing today’s session was up. I had vague “this isn’t going to work,” and “this isn’t doing any good why waste the time” feelings. The session was fine. I was mostly focused, but I was getting texts from a good friend and those were hard to ignore just for 12 minutes!

Forgot to mention that I was able to say the self-harm text out loud during yesterday's session. It was back to whispering today, but DH was in his office about 20 feet away so I’m sure I was being quiet because of that.

Well, the marketing email is done and queued up to go out at 9:00 am. I stopped in the middle of the process and did and EFT session on hiding. I just wanted to go to the dog park or do something else completely. It takes a couple hours to put one of these together. I had plenty of opportunities to run away so I thought a good session in the middle of it all would help. I think it did. I got some writing done as well.

I ended up putting off the self-harm tapping session until right before bed. I found myself getting really impatient during the session. I think I detected a bit of sabotage in the vein of “this might actually be working I better stop right now before I really heal from something!”

Self-harm WIN! Well, not in a good way. I really mean that I have succeeded with aplomb in making things hard for myself. I have avoided, delayed, and distracted to the point that the mortgage is going to be late, and I do not have the money to attend the most important trade show of the year in my industry! Woo Hoo! The writing has been on the wall and I chose to continue down this path. As the results of my neglect became clear today, I had the urge to commit more neglect. I found myself reaching for the mouse to cheeszeburger away and I checked a couple of news sites about four times. I decided if I was going to do something other than work than it would be EFT. So, I did the self-harm session and then the healing resistance video. While I still felt really disappointed, I got back to work.

I was distracted again during the self-harm video, but I was able to say it out loud with DH on the other side of the house. However, when it came to the healing resistance video it was almost comical. If a stranger had been listening to me repeat the words they would have thought English was not my native language. I was stammering and replacing words. I was so unfocused and resistant I barely paid attention. Hmmm…that one must have hit a nerve.

Later, I had to force myself to write. I obsessively checked the stats on the marketing email. They were not normal (fewer repeat click throughs) and I kept trying to divine what it meant. I was completely distracted with the trade show that will not be. I have appointment requests stacking up that I know I am going to have to reject within the next week. I think the next few days, as all of my pigeons come home to roost, is going to be tough. All of these failures can be used by my saboteur to validate all of the negative things in my head.

A side note, I have been about 3-5 pounds away from my goal weight for about 5 months. My calorie program says that to finally reach my goal I am allotted 1200 net calories a day. I have rebelled against this for months. However, the last two days I have met that goal without even thinking about. Normally, I get all “oh I’m deprived” and go over it by a several hundred a day. I am maintaining my current weight, but not getting to that elusive goal. If a side effect is to finally get there I will be sooo happy!

Still having a hard time dealing with the mess I’ve created. I was fairly productive in the morning, but I felt the old habits creeping up so I did the tapping sessions earlier than normal. I re-read the directions and really focused on the words this time. I really had to force myself to focus on the healing resistance video.

I think today was probably the most productive day since the beginning of EFT. I did the healing resistance first today and then the self-harm sessions. That just seemed to make more sense to me. The huge difference is that missing the trade show would have been proof of my “incompetence” two weeks ago. Today it was “what can I do to mitigate the fallout.” I found two conferences within driving distance in the next two weeks that will help mitigate the fallout. Going to both of those will cost a fraction of what the major show costs so I can fix some of it. The mortgage will be late, but it will get paid.

All I can say about the day is it just felt less “life and death” than when I’ve set myself up like this before. I know that comes directly from NM. Everything is life and death when dealing with her. I think I got so used to that feeling I thought that was how it was supposed to be! Today it wasn’t.

If you'd like results like this, I invite you to check Tap Away The Urge To Self-Harm for yourself:

 
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