I’m trying to live by my values. The “seven” values I chose for myself in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy group are Adventure, Empowerment, Independence/Autonomy, Lifelong learning/Transformation, Creativity, Healing, and Honesty. I was supposed to choose 6, but I chose seven then tacked on the ones I’ve been thinking about since my autumn retreat for the Writing Center two Septembers ago.
I post a lot of love stuff on Tumblr. This is funny because I didn’t even think about Love as a value until just now, writing this. But it’s one of my long-lived goals in life to find it. Right now, however, I have to work on loving myself as I wish to be loved. I’m not perfect at it. But these pictures remind me of how I want to be loved, and when I look at them, I practice sending myself the affection I see between the people in the photos to myself.
In some sense, they’re about memories. In another sense, they’re about hope for the future. For so long I didn’t believe I was worthy of full acceptance and caring–both my failures and my successes celebrated, in one way or another. And even though depression is living in the past, and anxiety is living in the future, this practice is somewhat balanced by how they remind me to care for myself now.
I can easily be honest with myself that I don’t want and can’t handle striving for accepting another person into my life right now, and I especially can’t risk falling into old habits. It takes one moment of intensity to change my brain back to an old, negative pattern, and many weeks to alter one neural pathway for the better. But I’m doing it. I’m healing. And I respect myself for it. And that is something I have not been able to say with honesty for most of my life.
wow it sounds a lot nicer than it feels
