Old Habits

I am still going through a kind of internal, self-analysing that I wrote about, before.  Not liking the current me ( both physically and mentally) I'm trying to figure out how to get back the parts I liked while maintaining the life lessons that are making me a more complete and understanding person. 

I've been spending the mornings, quietly reading on the couch.  Once I let the dogs out and get them fed, I go open all of the windows that let the cool morning air in, pick up my book and lie down on the couch and read.  It's quiet and comforting.  I just finished a few chapters before sitting at the computer.  I get up early (5ish) still, even though it is summer break. I am a morning person.  I love the early hours of the day. 

When my daughter wakes up, she quietly pours a cup of coffee and slips onto the other end of the couch and quietly begins to read, too. She's on book three of the Game of Thrones series--very thick books.  Anyway, it is a beautiful routine that I find healing and calming. 

Sometimes, when I'm sitting there, before she wakes up, I try to do an inner assessment of how am I really feeling?  The one word that pops up most often is stressed.  I find that I'm on a kind of stress/worry overload.  Where before my experience with addiction, I would worry or be stressed at the appropriate times, there would be long sections of time that the unhealthy, gut churning stress wasn't there.  That's not the case, now.  I realize that I am on a 24 hour stress watch.  I worry about everything now, big or little.  I worry about my kids, my dad, my friends, my brother, my bills, my house repairs. I even realized that I am beginning to worry that I worry too much.  You can eat all of the right foods and exercise until you're near exhaustion, but more stress than is necessary to go through a normal day can cancel all of that out and do damage to you physically, spiritually, mentally, and emotionally.  I need to get a handle on it.

Trying to figure out a problem, I always try to find the root.  I know it is the experience with addiction that has thrown me off on the inside.  I think it breaks so many internal boundaries that eventually, if not stopped and harnessed, the stress thinking begins to flood into every experience and emotion, where even being happy can't be fully appreciated because the stress causes you to be anticipating some unseen catastrophe to occur. 

I looked up cortisol and how to control it because that is what is released when you're stressed and too much of that hormone coursing through your body can eventually cause damage. 

What I really wanted was a pill (easy and simple).  But what I found as the best ways to control it was to listen to music that you love. Exercise.  Drink tea.  Meditate. And my favorite, laugh more.  So, I have to make that forward movement and effort to control my stress.  I did use to do all of those on a daily basis, but not any more.  Today, though, I get another chance to live it the best that I can and so, I'll make that effort to get back to my old habits--the good, old habits.

P.S. In one of the books I've been reading, the author shared a quote by Paracelsus, "The most famous physician of the Renaissance,"  according to the author.  Here it is:
     "There is only one source of health:  the irresistible, wise, limitlessly powerful healer within us.  This healer has the ability to cure all things.  The only reason that someone becomes sick is that the inner healer has been weakened and obstructed through careless habits of living.  When I want to treat a person, the only thing I attempt to do is to restore the healing power within."

I love that.