Thursday, July 26, 2007

Todays Word is: Victory

So, if you have been following along, then you know I am in the Summer Blog-off Contest.
I get a word I must write about before Midnight on Thursdays.
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2007 Blog-Off For Breast Cancer


Victory,

Well Courtney is really challenging me. Each post is becoming more personal and more personal. First you find out about my boobs and Cross Dresser and Trans Gender and how I used to help them float their boat, and now I have to speak of Victory.

To me Victory is the end of a very long process of self change I am going through as a means to an end.

For those who have been following along since the spring you will know I am on a metabolic diet as my final part of my recovery from my brain injury. The diet itself has not been a problem at all. It is simple and I only required the removal of two things from my diet as I knew it to accomplish weight loss. So I am good with that.

I mentioned that in the future I would talk about a choice I made to also coincide hypnosis into the mix of things.

It became apparent during the treatment of my brain injury and permanent trigeminal nerve damage that there were some things I just had to accept and own. One was that I would never be the same again, and it was up to me to find a new normal so I could be comfortable with my limitations and to feel well about my situation.

I came into the brain injury sporting a long term auto immune disease that the Dr said is a high clue about what is happening to me. She said that I have to accept and own this injury and not try to push it aside or belittle it.

I had to come to terms with my own personality issues that could throughout my life have made me much more susceptible to problems reguarding my auto immune disease, and my subsiquent issues with Shingles of the brain that finally damaged the nerve deep in my brain and throughout my head.. And in feeding these personality issues was definitely taking away from my health.

I spent years and years working on self. I thought that I had covered everything. I missed one clear thing that was easy to see from a medical practitioners point of view. Sometime in my life I seeded a message that to be successful one must push through everything. Work through exhaustion, work through hunger and thirst, and having to pee even for the end result.

You will read this blog and see what I do and say geeze she is a be-all kinda girl. Must be a great friend, and a fun Mom and wife and an exciting person to know. Well, I am kind and I do care way too much about people than necessary. I am exciting because I shift and change and re-invent myself all time. My instincts are cunning and I am a highly competitive businesswoman who just couldn't be good at stuff. I had to be the best. My biggest competitor is myself. In business I chew and spit out people because I expect only of people what I can do myself. Yet to be this high end achiever I shut down my needs to get there, so of course I could never understand why others can't push themselves that one more inch like I can.

Can you see where I am going with this?
If I want to live and stay well and just achieve life, I now have to retrain my whole personality to listen to my body and only live within my physical means. I knew I could not do this alone. This means shedding my ego and listening to my heartbeat. For over 40 years my ego has screamed the rules, it is hard to shut off.

I had to look at the series of events that started way before I stopped driving the transport truck (and being the best darn female truck driver on the face of the earth...said tongue in cheek) and see how they snowballed into my autoimmune disease making me susceptable to a rare form of shingles saved only for those over 60 years of age. When I was 41 years old.

I also had to look at when I gained weight this last time, and what I was doing in my life that put me on the obesity team once more. And when I looked at all this with honest, instead of rose coloured glasses, I knew I was in real trouble.

What good was two years of recovery work, ending with an extreme weight loss if I still had issues that were plaguing me and pushing my body into survivor mode. (Oh look! one of the earlier words)

So now I am ready to tell you about the hardest work I have ever done. And in doing this work I have been burned by my own personality quirks to set me back again and again. I will also tell you about my successes that affirms that this personality shift is doable, and VICTORY is 30 days or so away.

After several attempts to lose weight the right way (exercise and diet adjustment) with limited success, I knew that when it came to the end of my recovery and it was time for the weight loss, I had to have a trump card. I needed that knowledge I could draw upon to ensure that I would not have to go do this weight loss more than once over the age of 40. Once you hit 40 as a woman the body chemistry sets up against you. It is calming down and slowing down to ready you for menopause, and once this starts every body change accomplishment has a really high price tag.

The lady who hypnotizes me is hypnotizing my negative and destructive personality right out of me. The first appointment was to talk about goals and to start a script for the hypnosis.
My script identifies my push through behaviors and quashes them. It enhances my desire to recreationally walk and exercise. It compels me to drink water and to get a very positive feeling from the act, and to not wait wait and wait to go to the bathroom, or sleep or rest. Plus helps me stay focused to accomplish tasks in a timely fashion. And when I don't I pay a price, because my body is being hypnotized to Yell at me very loudly with pain, or sickness or exhaustion. It sounds like a punishment but it is breaking of a vicious cycle.

Who knows when I got this idea that I needed to put ME last for the sake of the doing or the task. I could have been a small child, a teen or an adult. It doesn't really matter, as long as recognize I do have the ability to change all for the better.

So I set out with my intentions in place. I say my script and I write my cue cards for the in-between days when I use self hypnosis, and on the days I see Silvana for hypnosis I just let go in pure trust.

I still compel myself to press on. The last three weeks is a good example. I had at least three times inwhich I chose not to listen to my body and I paid the price with pain, sickness, and exhaustion in a slap in the back of the head kind of action.

But on the days I listen: I exercise, I drink alot of water, I don't hold off going to the bathroom or sleeping or resting or saying no to people, and my life is smooth and I see attainable goals and I get rewarded with energy and weight loss and feelings of wellness.

Can anyone do this? I think so, but the hardest part is accepting that you own it all and only you can control it or fix it, and even when you do fix it, you have to be ready to see and be a different person.

It has been a hard lesson. One that could have cost me my life.
We usually hear that from folks who go through AA or NA and rehab.
Not usually from folks who have a life changing illness, that will block their every move unless they rehabilitate from being themselves.

So what I have accomplished since May? I have a small VICTORY each day.
What do I win? Life, and not just an existence.

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Everyone can leave a comment, and the comments will be greatly appreciated.




6 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's simply amazing what these words uncover. What a great, and raw, post.

Cupcake Blonde said...

Wow. After reading this I said quietly to myself "I need this." You described me to a T. Perhaps hypnosis is a solution for me since I am surffering from the same debilitation inability to stop myself from being self-destructive. Definately something to think about.

Evey said...

"the hardest part is accepting that you own it all and only you can control it or fix it, and even when you do fix it, you have to be ready to see and be a different person."

You nailed it on the head. This was a really great post Lynn. Like Courtney said, raw and real. And I loved it.

Nathan Pralle said...

An excellent post, very open and real.

Anonymous said...

I'm having the same thoughts as the others - very real and open - the same qualities I struggle for in my writing. I have a very serious weight problem and never talk about it. Thanks for sharing your wisdom about what it takes to change your life and your body.

Lynn said...

Thanks so much everyone for the support in the blog-off.
I was telling Courtney I feel like we belong to a secret club or something.
You are all great writers and I really enjoy being in the club!