The Little Book of Little Victories, and how I learned to do confrontation

Well hello there! It's been a while. Fundraising is currently taking a small hiatus while I figure out when to do my next event. In the meantime, life has delivered a good deal of excitement to my door.

The Little Book of Little Victories

When I first started my medication I decided to keep a 'victory' diary, which I affectionately call the Little Book of Little Victories, and still add entries to every so often. Depression, as I have explained, makes everything harder, from cooking dinner to socialising. So in order to get through, it helps to focus on the small things that have a positive impact; those things that mean, if only for a few moments, that you've beaten it.

In the beginning, the victories were simply things like, "Cleaned the kitchen and tidied my bedroom" and "Haven't cried today." Underneath these, I wrote how those actions make me feel. In mid September I recorded the first time that I had felt normal (for a given value of normal) in months. As the weeks and months have progressed, my little victories are growing, and recently I have been able to add two very significant ones to the list.

Last month I somehow managed to negotiate my way through a hefty interview process and find myself with a new job. Although my stress levels sky rocketed during this time, and I shed more than a few tears, I'm feeling pretty proud of myself for making such a step in such a short time. Once again I have to attribute some of this to the support of family and colleagues, but the fact that it's something I could never have done six months ago makes it all the more rewarding.

I've now been in my new role for almost a month, and have coped with the transition better than I imagined. For the record, I had imagined more than one meltdown by now. There have been none.

How I learned to do confrontation

I write this with some hesitancy, because I don't wish to claim that I have, by any means, nailed this particular issue of mine, but today, I had a conversation that required me to be somewhat confrontational, and I managed it without panicking, getting flustered, or feeling guilty.

Allow me to offer some background. Put simply, I hate confrontation of any kind. Historically I have found it sort of embarrassing and experienced feelings of guilt soon after expressing any sort of displeasure. At anything. I have talked, at some length, with my therapist about this, and when I happened to mention again that I don't like confrontation the other week in my session, she replied with a sly grin, "Don't you?!". You know you're getting better when your therapist starts getting sarky.

So the most recent victory for me was having that conversation, where I articulated my frustrations clearly, assertively and without embarrassment, and instead of feeling bad (which my brain tried a couple of times to make me do, resulting in an internal Smeagol/Gollum type scenario in which Smeagol ultimately won, getting Gollum to eff off) - I actually felt pretty good. Not, I'd like to point out, because I'm a heinous bitch who enjoys having a go, but because I had the courage to stand up and fight my corner. And that is a pretty big little victory.

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