[chocolatelover55]

My life has been out of balance for a long time, not enough sleep, lack of self care, over weight, keep getting urinary tract infections, problem with low frustration tolerance, had a problem yesterday with frustration at work, and brought unneeded attention to myself. I have problem with talking too loud and much, have add, bi-polar group 4 and anxiety disorder. Have not been good with keeping in touch with others as well, have lost friendships because of this. My room is like someone threw a grenade in it. I go to therapy, and it looks like I will be there till I am dead. No hardly ever calls me, because I talk too much. I have so much to work on it's not funny. Poor posture, bad feet. I know I need to grow in maturity, to help me to get my life back on track. I am open to any suggestions/ideas , thoughts.

[Nicks_Nose]

Chocolate lover: You and I would be the perfect conversationalists. I don't talk much so I wouldn't mind listening. I went to a dietitian and she told me to follow teh national food guide and I would be fine. She gave me calendar sheets to record what I eat everyday. Then she saw me one month later and helped me tweak a few things but I lost 9 pounds that month just by eating more food. I was barely eating before and still gaining weight. When I simply followed the national food guide for one month, it made a huge difference.

I have anxiety disorder also (Known as Avoidant Personality Disorder), and deal with depression and self esteem issues first triggered in my chlidhood by school bullies, then by dating too many men who lied just to get sex, then a marriage gone wrong, and finally a man who gave me a health issue relating to sex. The workplace was always telling me what i was doing wrong OR praised me for being such a great worker, but I never was promoted to anything because the supervisors loved where they were...so I have kept looping for 30 years never making it above minimum wage even after 4 trades and a university degree...no experience. I have mentally followed the idea of just shut up and do as you are told. So I went to a counsellor to taught em of the mind and thought distortions and how to recognize when I was using distorted thoughts. http://sourcesofinsight.com/10-disto...king-patterns/
Now I am reading Feel the Fear...And Do It Anyway by Susan Jeffers. It ahs helped me a lot. I still struglle frustratingly with mindful meditation. Being a person whose thoughts go off in a million directions all the time...it is still challenging me to learn mind control, but I am working on it. Maybe try a couple of things I mentioned. I wish you all the best hun. Big Hugs to you.

[Perna]

I'd make lists; buy a notebook and start a "project". One of my projects is called "Operation Self-Care". It's a lifetime thing, you don't get perfect and get to stop, go on to something else.

Figure out what you are good at and like doing and then figure out how to put that into use helping you with other stuff you aren't so good at or don't enjoy? I'm very creative and made a "game" where I made a collage on a 3 x 4 foot piece of poster board, pictures from magazines of all sorts of "chores"/areas of my home I needed to work on. Then I got gaming dice (8-sided/numbered) and named 8 areas (bathrooms, kitchen, "free", dollar store, filing, general cleaning, cats, etc.) and made up my gameboard (day glo numbers delineating each area :-) and each morning, first thing, I'd roll my dice and then do whatever, for 30 minutes! The "free" number meant I didn't have to do anything that day and the "dollar store" one meant I had to go up to my local dollar store and find ONE item, buy it and bring it back and use it do whatever.

I love going into stores, grocery stores especially, and challenging myself with thoughts such as, "If I could only buy one thing, what would I buy" and finding it for myself. It's like a treasure hunt! So, you can see how the dollar store/chore thing appealed to me.

I really like school so sometimes I structure what I have to do as part of a "course" and find books to go with the general subject (I love to read :-) and I'll start blogs on specific subjects, etc.

I had the "Ides Health Project" going between 15 March and 15 April as I was seeing my doctor for my quarterly appointment and a physical the 25th of April and wanted to lose a little weight and take all my meds properly and be in "good" shape. I like shorter projects as I figure I can do something for a day, week, month.

Right now, I'm going to travel to the Caribbean in February 2013 so I'm starting to get ready as I want to do a lot of walking when there and I hate walking/am horrible at it so figure I had better get that to the front of my mind. I do a lot of work on http://sparkpeople.com and the Daily Challenge, just kind of jolly myself into making sure things that I say I want to do stay in the "to-do" portion of my brain, front and center. I've let go of being "perfect" at doing stuff, I start new stuff and don't do much, quit then start over somewhere else; it's all good, I'm moving forward bit by bit but mostly, I'm enjoying the ride!