My amateurish emotional management techniques...

I had this kind of low-grade hum of nerves (anxiety?) in my belly & chest this past weekend. I could feel it there… and I kept trying to pause and figure out what it was about.

- Mr D being away and me being on my own and solely responsible for the house & boys?

- Having a bit of work on - needing to write an article for the HPA's AlcoholNZ publication and needing to work up my presentation for these speaking events in October?

- The ongoing responsibility of monitoring Living Sober, making sure interactions are kept friendly, spammers are banished to cyber-hell and technical queries are answered?

Probably all of the above. I couldn't think of anything else specifically that I had to be worried about..

Or this just what being a raw (sober) human being with a busy brain entails..? Thinking, thinking, thinking all the time.. planning, executing, interacting, worrying, general rushing-around madness?

I just wrote a post over at Living Sober about the amount of naval gazing I do nowadays and how it helps. It really does. Even though some of the techniques I have developed from all my research are quite half-cocked and amateurish (I'm sure) - at least I'm trying.

So what do I do? Well for this low-grade hum of nerves (or anxiety?) in my body this weekend … three times I literally paused what I was doing and closed my eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. Once when I was standing in the middle of the kitchen, once when I was sitting on my bed and once when I was in the bathroom. I just paused, closed my eyes and took a deep breath, looked inward and thought 'what's going on in there..?'. Kind of tried to think it through and reassure myself with positive thoughts that everything was ok, I was doing fine, there was no immediate danger and this was just normal life.

Told you my techniques are sort of half-coked and amateurish…!

But it seemed to work somewhat. I think partly what is helpful is just pausing and recognizing how I'm feeling. Acknowledging it .. recognizing it.. accepting it.

And in the end I got through just fine.

Love, Mrs D xxx