Dear Skeptical Me: Everything Was Fixable

Listen to the Episode

Prefer listening? Hear the full Dear Journal conversation here.

Have you ever questioned everything that you thought you knew when nothing’s changed?

It’s like the people you trusted, you no longer trust.

The things you believed in, you no longer believe in.

I feel like I’m going through that right now.

There’s Just That Slight Tinge of “I No Longer Trust You”

So today, ordinary day.

Get up, go to work, you know, the usual.

Stopped for breakfast with my kid, laughed, joked, dropped him off, went to work, had a great day at work, interacted with everybody just fine.

Got off of work, came home.

Again, everything went well.

But there’s just that slight tinge of, mmm, I no longer trust you.

Now, this person didn’t actually do anything differently.

Didn’t say anything differently.

Hadn’t acted differently.

But for some reason, my Spidey senses are up.

And I don’t know if they’re up because of everything that’s happening, or if there’s really something going on that I’m extra cautious about.

I tend to lean towards trusting my intuition.

And I don’t know how to move with that.

I don’t know whether to say something, whether to do something, to act on it, or to just let it play out.

With everything currently going on in my life, my thought process is: I won’t deal with it for much longer, right?

Even if it’s something bad, it shouldn’t affect anything else that’s going on in my life.

I can just move past it.

My Head Says, “Let’s Investigate”

If only that’s how my head worked.

Because my head says, let’s investigate.

We need to know what we think we know.

We won’t settle until we know what we think we know.

Today, I am trying to challenge that thought process.

I am trying to challenge the fact that I need to find out every detail of the situation.

And just say, you know what?

It doesn’t matter.

It’s not gonna affect me.

It’s not going to weigh on me.

It’s not gonna bother me.

It doesn’t change anything in my life for me to act on this new suspicion that I currently have.

But I just feel so skeptical.

I just feel...

Like in this moment in my life, everything’s on the table for questions.

Again, things that I just trust and believe in.

I believe that I’m a good mom.

Today, despite doing good mom things and having a great time with my child and having another one of my children call me and say, like, “Hey, Mom, I need you. Can you help me?” and I was there to help, I still feel like they probably would be better without me.

My husband has been singing my praises today.

I made dinner.

I made turkey meatballs from scratch.

And they were really good.

I mean, they usually come out pretty good.

It’s a pretty easy recipe.

And my husband was like, “Dinner was really great tonight. Thanks.”

Why?

You’ve never liked this meal before.

Why all of a sudden do you like it now?

I am just questioning everything.

Mental Health Is Doing Mental Health Things

And then there’s the other little signs, you know, that mental health is doing mental health things.

When you think you see something scurry across the floor, but nothing’s really there.

So, what do I do about it?

Do I take the necessary precautions, make an appointment with my doctor, and say, “Hey, I’m a little concerned that these things are happening?”

Or do I say, “Hey, let me fall back and see if something changes?”

If you are deep in the trenches of mental health, you say, “We’re gonna see if something changes.”

That’s the safest answer for us.

Is that the healthiest answer for us?

No.

No, it’s not.

But it makes us feel better to think that we can handle it and we can take care of it on our own.

And I’m under the guise that, well, there’s so much stuff going on that clearly that’s gotta be what the issue is.

I don’t actually need to see my doctor.

Right?

I mean, it’s just my intuition telling me that something’s off.

Right?

How Do You Handle It?

How often do you do that?

How often do you have a firm grasp and belief on something and then you’re just like, mmm, something... I don’t feel so good about that today.

And then how do you handle it?

How do you manage those relationships, those issues, when something like that arises?

We can’t always just dump it and drop it and move on.

I mean, I had the fortune of doing that because I am moving, right?

But what if I wasn’t?

Then what would I do?

I can’t quit every job—although I’ve tried—every time someone sets off the Spidey Sense.

I can’t run and hide from people just because something seems off about you.

In the real world, we don’t get the chance to do that.

I still have to show up to my job, unfortunately.

I still have to pay bills.

I still have to be available to the people who need me most, my family.

Despite the fact that I’m just like, ugh, I feel like if we manage to step out of this house, something’s gonna go wrong.

Does It Affect My Life?

But how do you control that skepticism?

How do you reel it in so that it’s not so bad and not so wild?

For me, I think it looks like doing exactly what I’m doing today, which is:

Does it affect my life?

If I don’t address this, if I don’t touch it, if I don’t talk to it, if I don’t move it, if I just leave it be, what’s the worst that could happen?

And the answer is nothing.

This person has no power to do anything.

This person has no power to change my life, to change my employment, to change my bills.

Absolutely nothing.

Which means being skeptical of them doesn’t benefit me or hurt me.

It doesn’t bring more into my life by me jumping in and saying, “Well, I feel this kind of way about you.”

Sometimes what’s more important is protecting your peace.

I’m not always great with protecting my peace.

I Am Learning to Take Care of Me First

I think that’s what has been the big difference in doing this podcast and in making these moves.

I am learning to take care of me first.

You saw me days ago.

I was a big crying mess.

Today I’m not that same person.

Each day, little by little, I process my feelings.

I process what’s going on, and I say, “Hey, here’s how we can handle them going forward.”

If I’m going to do that for anybody else, I have to learn how to do that for myself.

So my child called me today in a panic.

Upset, crying, hyperventilating.

I said, “Hey, it’s okay. Take a deep breath.”

And she took a deep breath.

And I said, “This is a fixable problem.”

Even now when I think about that, it gives me chills.

Because most problems that occur in our lives are fixable problems.

We don’t think about them as being fixable because when we’re in the thick of them, they just seem overwhelming.

They seem like they’re looming over us and there’s nothing we can do about it.

But in all honesty, most problems are fixable problems.

I Could Stress About It, or I Could Find Some Way to Fix It

If I’m stressed about money—which many of us are—I get that.

I am too.

So my thought was, okay, so I’m gonna take this job.

It’ll bring me in substantially more money.

But while I’m taking this job, I can also work a part-time job to help bring in even more money without sacrificing my self-help, seeing my family, and doing things that I love.

Right?

So the idea was, my God, what if I move and finances take a hit?

I could stress about it, or I could find some way to fix it.

I’m so used to getting into that cycle where I just get stuck on it, where I just worry about it and I fret about it, that it’s hard to get out of that cycle of, let’s do something to fix it.

I Didn’t Actually Want It to Be Changed

My relationship with my husband is a perfect example of that.

For me, it was me getting upset because he doesn’t do certain things.

Well, I’m up on Saturday morning doing chores.

Why is he still in bed?

And then I thought about it and I processed it.

The things I’m getting up out of bed to do, I don’t really want his help with.

I don’t really need his help with.

Not only that, but at the end of the day, I love being able to get it done and sitting on my couch and just relaxing.

I don’t have to talk to anybody.

I can watch the shows that I like.

All that time I was being skeptical of something, but I didn’t actually want it to be changed.

It was a fixable problem.

But until I’m willing to realize that it’s a fixable problem, it just stacks up and it adds up and it’s overwhelming and it’s hard to do anything with.

I Don’t Have to Chase It

So today, what am I working on?

Recognizing fixable problems.

Today I’m looking at things and saying, “Hey, I feel some kind of way about it. I’m not sure that I trust it. I’m just going to leave it alone.”

I don’t have to let it consume me.

I don’t have to chase it.

I don’t have to figure it out.

I get to just say, “You know what? I can just walk away from that and leave it be.”

I’m going to protect my peace.

And I hope wherever you are, you’re protecting your peace.

You’re saying, “That’s a fixable problem.”

Yes, that coworker and I may not get along.

The fixable problem may be to stay away from each other, go our separate ways, or, if need be, we’ll take it to HR.

Get HR involved to solve the problem.

It’s a fixable problem.

The answer isn’t run them down, talk about them behind their back, talk to them about another employee.

No.

Fix the problem.

You’re not trying to create more friction.

You’re trying to scale back your stress.

And that starts with fixing some of the problems.

I Have to Do What I Need to Do

So I recognized today that, again, that was a fixable problem.

And with my mental health, I am gonna reach out to my doctor.

Do I want to?

Not in the slightest.

No.

He’s a great doctor.

Love him to death.

He’s always on top of it.

I hate admitting when I might need extra help.

So I avoid it like the plague.

But if I’m gonna take care of me and I’m going to fix the fixable problems, then I have to do what I need to do.

Even when I don’t want to.

My Bite of Pie

So my bite of pie today, let’s see.

Me and my kid got up extra early and got out of the house.

It was really weird.

So we were just like, mmm, McDonald’s.

Had breakfast, laughed and joked.

He got to school on time.

I got to work on time.

I had a good day.

I made fun of a friend, told him he should go back to work.

He won’t listen to me.

He’s not going to listen to me.

I think he loves his job, but he just secretly won’t admit it.

So whatever.

I had dinner with my family.

I cooked with my husband, sat down and ate dinner with my family, hung out with my kid, we played our games, we had our conversations, and then I sat down and I got to think.

Today, everything was fixable.

Everything that I had to interact with was fixable.

Even if something had gone wrong, had I been running late to work, how do I fix that?

Well, I call and say, “Hey, I’m running late,” but in the future I leave earlier.

It’s a fixable problem.

As I get more and more excited and stressed about my move, I’m learning to figure out what’s fixable, what I can control, and what I can’t.

Because I can’t do more than that, right?

I can only fix the fixable problems.

So that’s my bite of pie today.

And I hope, wherever you are, that you are dealing with fixable problems instead of tragedies, instead of things that just loom over you and feel so dark and gloomy.

We talk about it here all the time.

It’s one bite at a time.

And in that one bite at a time, we’re working with fixable problems.

Today is another page in the story.

It does not have to be perfect.

It just has to be written.

Before you close your journal tonight, ask yourself:

What was your bite of pie today?

Until tomorrow,

Love you loud.