We were back at the Oasis this week, thank you for all who came and thank you for sharing some of your thoughts and feelings. After our meeting I have been thinking of the "Thoughts, Feelings and Behaviour" cycle. Thinking back to my childhood and pondering over some of the thoughts I have about those times, what feelings those thoughts generate and do these feelings effect my behaviour? I've also been thinking, do I dwell too much on the things that went wrong during my childhood and wonder if this is why I've not got too high an opinion of my self and judge myself harshly?
Over the years I've spent an awful lot of time "blaming" my parents for the way I was. However, I now realise that that most parents argue, are not always perfect in parenting skills and probably do the best they can. But hey I had to blame someone didn't I?! Now that I have a better understanding I realise that my Mum and Dad didn't cause my problems, they may have added to them slightly, but not to blame. In fact they were extremely patient with me, I think of myself as a rather "challenging child". Unfortunately neither Mum or Dad are still around, so I can't tell them how well they did and how much I appreciate what they did for me.
So have I filtered out all the good things from my childhood? Possibly and because of that I've decided to reconnect with my childhood a bit more, so I've joined my old school reunion Facebook page and have been to a couple of "meet ups" with some old school folks. I was apprehensive about going at first. What will they think of me? "She's that strange girl who was always anxious and behaved a bit oddly"? "Remember when she did this" or "that"? "She wasn't very popular, keep away from her.." and so on. Well, as yet ( I like to keep my options open) no one has mentioned anything, in fact I have been pleasantly surprised that they remember me more for my sporting achievements and artistic talents! In actual fact they have reminded me of the fun times I had, the filtered out times. So my thoughts have changed a bit about my childhood experiences, this is helping me come to terms with the bad stuff that happened and find again a part of me that other people remember and yes I am beginning to feel happier about those times.
Although my journey through my mental health condition can be a difficult one, with many long roads to travel, I try to learn from some of the discoveries I come across along the way.
Hope the coming weeks are good to you all
Ruth D