Anyone would agree that going from couch potato to marathon runner in a week would be ridiculous.  Yet, I tend to do this to myself emotionally.  I can barely get out the door on a good day then I expect myself to attend a large party or a highly stressful event without feeling wiped out.  Ain’t going ta’ happen.  I took a week recovering from being partially in charge of a fashion show for our students at school.  I am thankful I had a co-teacher that helped me with many parts of the preparation.  The actual event was a large group of people with lights turned out, special effect lights flashing, and my back to most of the audience.  It was an emotional marathon of coping second by second.  I focused on my main part, taking pictures of the students.  I survived.  I also took all week to recover after the show.

Too often, I listen or read about people trying to recover from trauma and expect to go from totally not coping to functioning perfectly in every situation after a few counseling sessions.  Or they expect themselves to giant step through the healing process and get discouraged that all this stuff takes time.  Sometimes LOTS OF TIME and work.  I could sit around doing nothing to improve myself and I will remain exactly as I am.  I hit rock bottom before I started turning my life around.  I remember the warning said on Callanetics that if it took 10 years messing your body up, it will take about the same amount of time to straighten it out.  I used the video and read her book. It was where I began to take back my body and my life.

Callanetics https://search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?p=callanetics+exercises&ei=UTF-8&hspart=mozilla&hsimp=yhs-001

Along the way, I learned that I can do anything for 5 minutes.  I lived 5 minutes at a time for years.  I spent almost 3 years in bed before I started fighting back to try to figure out how to live.  I went to the doctors and they ran every imaginable test.  My body was supposed to be normal, it didn’t work that way.  I learned more about baby steps from Flylady.  I also discovered that her rate of improvement is much faster than my.  I became quickly over whelmed by her 15 minute method of baby stepping through life.  That was 3 times too long for me.  5 minutes, I can do 5 minutes.  Add up 12 five minutes and I made it an hour.  I learned from Flylady but set my own slower pace.

Flylady baby steps http://www.flylady.net/d/getting-started/flying-lessons/babysteps/

Each puzzle piece I learn about self improvement started to fit together in counseling.  If we tried to do too much in one session, my emotions would flood and I would completely shut down to the point I couldn’t drive home.  I would plan to wait an hour afterwards until I could function again.  I wanted to get through the healing process as quickly as possible.  Like a toddler walking across the room, if I went to fast I would crash to the floor.  Back to couch potato to marathon runner, I need to change my ways a little at a time.  Expecting too much too soon sets me up for failure.  My counselor finally forbid me to work more than an hour a day on the healing process.  He encouraged me to smell the flowers, color in a coloring book, or watch a good movie.  Putting all my effort into running an emotional marathon drains my resources for anything else.  I want to heal but healing needs to be done in baby steps.

Not everyone is a roadrunner….neep-neep