Wide awake and faking it.

Love when its 1am and I am still awake! It usually means I can't turn my mind off or I am not feeling well. Tonight its both :( My ear is not feeling all the cold weather and allergies I have going on. Well, actually, it IS feeling all that. Which means my ear is hurting and clogged and annoying. Good thing I go see Dr. Y on Friday. I am starting to think we will become BFFs before me and my family pack up and leave Chambana. I see him all the time... ha. Not to complain too much but that is one reason I am awake.

The other is that my stupid mind can not slow down tonight. I have been thinking a lot about feeling... inadequate. Not good enough. Like I work so hard but never measure up. Tonight my mind has just been going through all the things I feel so mediocre to horrible at. I know, pity party right? I wish I had more confidence and could just turn these thoughts off. I feel it is useless to try and explain the thoughts because I don't want them to have feet. I don't want to continue giving my thoughts power. I mean, they have power now. I want them to lose power. I want to replace them with healthy and empowering thoughts.

I have a couple of friends in recovery. They give me great advice. I don't mean this lightly. They are two people who understand me better than most people have ever even bothered to understand me. They have been through some similar things and struggles as I face. I have never had a chemical addiction to overcome, thankfully... but they believe strongly that recovery concepts can help me. And they are right. Because their advice has gotten me through some hard days. One such piece of advice I have gotten from both of them lately is to "Fake it until you make it". To act as if... I am succeeding in therapy. To act as if... I don't have anxiety. To be fully in my recovery even when I don't feel like it and even if I am feeling incredibly inadequate. To just keep faking it... and eventually I will get there. Eventually the self-defeating thoughts will diminish because I will be taking action against them instead of living in anxiety. It completely makes sense. I have been trying it... and I am reminding myself of it right now so that when I lie down to try and go to sleep in a few minutes I can fake it and get myself to sleep instead of continuing to dwell on things that I don't want to dwell on.

Anyway, I just want to remind my friends who are struggling... who might even be awake right now thinking about some of the same stuff I am thinking about that if we keep faking it... if we keep aligning our actions with the outcome we want... we are going to get there. And I want to thank my friends L and T for always being an encouragement to me and pushing me to keep faking it, even when I don't feel like it. I love you both.