I am delighted to be continuing to experience so much improved emotional wellness these days. Even so, I have to say that I sometimes still get quite frustrated with and at times embarrassed by functional impairments that remain. Before I had direct experience to draw from, I had little idea how depression and anxiety could affect someone so much more broadly than the more obvious impacts on mood, outlook, and emotions. One such impairment that so frequently haunts me is my reduced capacity for what might be best described as executive functioning. Overall it has become markedly reduced over the years, and is also much more variable and unpredictable than it once was; perhaps I never properly appreciated the ease with executive functioning I once had until it faded!
When I accept myself
as I am rather than as I want to be, and focus on my gratitude
for my greatly improved emotional state, my frustration over impairments diminishes and a
sense of equanimity soothes me like a balm for my psyche. But, this
requires conscious effort, so keep trying to remind myself of it when, like today, I am bothered by my limitations. Still, it quite baffles me at times that despite having a Mensa-qualifying IQ and being able to heft heavy objects and to walk for miles on end it is often somehow just too difficult for me to keep up with my correspondence, keep up with xanga, keep up with my cabin, cook meals, work with my photographs, read books in print which interest me greatly, be around other people, or to think things through in the presence of someone else or even think clearly when I am alone!
And basic things like paying a bill or making a choice at the grocery store can stupefy me! Blah blah blah blah! Blah! I could go on and on! It seems silly to complain about what I often can’t do when there is so much good in my life, but I think I just needed to vent a little. I did manage to do some cooking this week – and in big batches so I’d have extra for the freezer – which was a major accomplishment, but then I got all frustrated not to be able to sort out my cabin and photos and catch up on my email and visiting xangan friends. And, so often it takes all my cognitive energy to just read my email or the HSP board or xanga, that I don’t have any energy left to write anything anywhere.
I guess I need to stop here and re-calibrate my standards and expectations once again. I can choose to focus on my cooking success this week rather than what I did not get accomplished, even if it appears trivial based on my old abilities since those abilities have changed. And, to recall that being actually happy to be alive, on a fairly even emotional plane, in excellent physical health, and living with loving critters in a beautiful forest, is a wonderful thing.
