Thanks guys. I guess I've never been good at just living without that extra protection as Mouse says "Always sitting on my own shoulder" to make sure i don't say anything "stupid."

It's something that I hope I can some day do without.

I'm pretty excited that I was able to go into all that with my T today. I hope we can get through it all and help me to do a little better. I know it takes time and effort.

The other thing is I'm trying to stop focusing on myself ALL the time, and get back into living and helping other people too. I don't want to feel like my life is all about ME and MY feelings all the time. Or even just my family. I'm feeling a little self-absorbed and self-centered lately and I don't like it. I need to start going to the nursing homes and doing more at church and stuff like that.

I had just completed training for Stephens Ministry, to help others going through crisis, when our lives started to go crazy with our business and my husband's depression then my anxiety coming back. I hope that soon enough I'll feel better so I can get back to that. I know that life is not all about watching my own brain and feelings and thoughts all the time. I want to get back to the "real" living again.

But, in a way I'm glad for all the problems of 2006 because it forced me to look at a lot of stuff that I was ignoring, thinking I had it all together and figured out. . . but that was not true. I was a mess inside running from thing to thing to thing wearing myself out. It was bound to make me crash and burn eventually.

The best thing my counselor ever said to me which knocked me on my butt was when I told him I didn't want to take anti-anxiety meds because they'd slow me down and I wouldn't get stuff done. And he said "Oh, and so it's all about getting stuff done for you, huh?"

And I'm stuttering and trying to find a good come-back and instead I just sort of laughed it off. . .then later on that day (it's been about 3 or 4 months ago) I was like "HEYYYYY! You can't talk to me like that. . .LOL"

I did confront him about it and said he "messed up my life" by making me slow down and now I don't get as much done any more. He knows when I'm jsut being sarcastic and I think he's proud of himself for helping mess up my life in that way.

At that time I was staying up until 2am or 3am working trying to "get stuff done" for our business. I don't do that any more. Business is growing more slowly now, and I'm going through a period where I'm pretty tired. . . I guess my body is healing from the past 3 years of burning the candle at both ends. I have faith I'll come out the other side of this a lot more mellow. And if you knew me, mellow is not really one of my normal qualities.