Shoulds

These are the things I should be grateful for:

I should be grateful I have lost 127 pounds. I should be grateful I can run and jump and chase and play with my children again. I should be grateful that I can wun (walk/run) on the treadmill for 45 minutes without feeling completely drained and then go to a flexability class after. I should feel happy that I desire to work out in a way I never have before. These are the things I should be grateful for...instead I have entered a realm of unhappiness that is pretty unexplainable to most people.

A physician explained to me last week that there is a depression that, sometimes, goes along with this surgery. It is more a mourning. Mourning a past way of life. He had good advice in my opinion and that was to not run from those feelings. He even suggested (horrors) to feel them and recognize them and allow myself the opportunity to mourn. I decided to try this because so far my response to these feelings was to become angry and beat myself up and remind myself why I was a failure for feeling these feelings. If you all recall in the beginning I was not going to allow this. I was going to be kind to me throughout this process. Having made a small detour off that path I did need help correcting this directional challenge. I have found it.

I am allowing myself to feel these feelings now when they come up. Suprisingly this allows me to control my response to the feelings rather than allowing the the feelings to control me. I am able to recognize them and still follow what I feel I want to accomplish. For example I recognized sadness over a repeated behavior and instead of looking in the refrigerator to fill up my anger and frustration void I just sat and "enjoyed" the feelings but more importantly recognized them and acknowledged that I was angry and frustrated and then I took the time to change the behavior and took a walk rather than going to the cupboard. It felt good.