Age is Just a Number and Life is Invaluable - Day 166

I want to revisit the point of anxiety at work from a perspective that is easily generalized to all of my living.

My previous full time jobs have been in environments where there have been other people close to my age who had similar roles or titles and also have provided ample opportunity for casually getting to know and befriend one another even while at work, which easily eventually developed into friendships outside of work.

At my old job that was most similar to my current job, there were at least about 50 people with my same job title, of varying ages and levels of education and experience. Many of them were younger, like in their 20s or early 30s.

So the point / perspective I want to look at is age as well as education / work experience and how within this current job I have limited myself in my social acceptance of myself because I am one of two individuals in our 20s and I am one of two individuals who only have BA degrees, among a staff of about 20.

I have known throughout my experiences of anxiety that one point / belief within myself was that "I am young" and "I am inexperienced" and within this I placed myself in a position of inferiority. But amid all of the anxiety and much other unrelated stress, I have had some difficulty gaining stability in myself over the last few weeks, and so I did not question or investigate these beliefs but merely allowed them to direct me and feed my anxiety.

When the point finally turned for me was the other day in a yoga class when the girl sitting next to me, who is about 5 years younger than me, but is a yoga teacher and is incredibly mature and has served as a wonderful example of forgiveness and self-responsibility for me, made a comment toward / about the yoga teacher instructing that class, who is probably in her late 30s. She said something like, "you're such a sweet pea."

And this struck me as strange because of the age discrepancy.

But then quickly I realized how basically "age is just a number" and here are two individuals existing as equals in respect of one another as human beings with equal value as life, so that the year that one individual was born does not determine or dictate who or how that person should be or behave.

So witnessing this very small exchange brought this point back to me while I was in a more stable existence within myself so that I could relate the point back to myself and especially my work relationships, so that I was able to see that my beliefs about myself as inferior because of my age or my experiences, and my belief that other see me as inferior, is all self-created and thus manifested by me in the physical through my behavior and especially through my anxiety.


I have also struggled at work with "boundaries" in terms of delineating between seeking support for work-related stress versus personal stress, since I have had plenty of both recently (and since I work with therapists so in a very vulnerable state it would be quite easy to just spill!). In the moments of highest emotional turmoil and anxiety it was hard to tell the line. But in reflecting on this age point and also my old jobs where I was able to forge friendships even with the people who were significantly older than me (in fact for most of my life my closest friends have been 3+ years older than me) and also some of the people with graduate degrees, I was able to see even more how I was limiting myself through my self-beliefs about my "position" basically as determined / dictated by the year I was born in relation to the year that others were born.

And so yesterday I hit a point of frustration and stress while at work to such a degree that I ended up crying in front of two of my coworkers, and they were very cool and supportive in helping me talk out what was going on for me, acknowledging my experiences, and also helping me to find solutions for the stressors I was facing. Also yesterday I was able to receive support regarding stress in my personal life, so basically yesterday was a cool day of support! Then today at work I was able to show up more stable and able to direct myself without anxiety about what other people think, also directing myself to seek out relations with the people I most enjoy and admire at work only to find myself welcomed and my presence embraced.

So although I think it was like a "necessary" part of my process to go through this phase of anxiety wherein I kind of pulled away from some of my coworkers, it was cool to come full circle in a way and come back to those relationships / sources of support without the lenses of anxiety and paranoia.

I am learning a ton at my job about so many things, which is really cool. I mean although it is extremely stressful (and it's not because of the students!), it is like a fire to purify myself in... while getting paid!

Anyway:

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to somehow get caught up in age as more than a number.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to define and e-value-ate myself based on my age in comparison to the age of the people around me.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to think of myself as inferior and also believe that I cannot or should not or am not supposed to (like some secret rule about which I have not been informed) forge and form work relationships beyond what is absolutely necessary with the people that I admire because they are older than me and have more education than me and more letters after their names and they probably want nothing to do with me and probably get annoyed when I hang around.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to doubt myself in the shadow of people who have bigger numbers and more letters.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to ignore or forget or disregard or discredit any indication that the people I admire enjoy or admire / respect me in return, and then cling to any minor thing that I can interpret as being possibly indicative of confirmation of my fears and anxieties.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to put myself in a position of anxiety and self doubt and inferiority which is undoubtedly manifested in my behavior so that the other people around me probably or might sense that I am sensitive to criticism and so within this I become less trusting of the validity of what they say to me, doubting if it is true or genuine, believing that they are just trying to make me feel better.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself therefore to manifest these consequences of anxiety and beliefs about my own inferiority wherein I self-sabotage through living this out.

I realize that no person is ever going to bow down to me and tell me I am amazing in such a way that will ever appease my anxiety or self doubt -- and, even if they did, I would probably find some way to discredit and disregard this within my mind, seeing it as "not enough" evidence because I am the one who believes myself to be "not enough."

I realize I am the only person who can stop my anxiety and self doubt, because I am the only person who created it.

I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to see, realize, and understand how age is just a number and we are all one and equal as life.

I commit myself to this realization in my living as what is best for all (and best for me!).

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to limit my self expression and my LIVING through self doubt and self judgment and beliefs about my own inferiority.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to limit my self expression and my LIVING through these things in such a way that I believe that other people want to suppress me and do not want me to go above a certain level of self expression and living, like as if everybody knows something I don't know and I need to just keep a low profile or else something bad is going to happen or people won't like me or I don't even really know what this fear is, just that it's a sense or an energy by which I have suppressed myself.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to limit and suppress my self expression and living as life as one with and equal to all as life.


When and as I see myself entering into or participating within and as an anxiety about myself as an inferiority point in relation to others as a comparison point about age or education, I stop and I breathe. I realize that I am life and so I am one with and equal to all as life as the value of life. I commit myself to realizing myself as one with and equal to all as life as the value of life -- invaluable.

Analyzing My Dog's Eating Behavior, and My Reactions - Day 157

Hazel basil!

Tonight I want to write about my dog. I was inspired to finally do this after reading this post, because my dog is getting older every day (she is 9, nearing 10), I do not want for her to pass away, and I realize that I care more about her in my imagination of her passing than I do in her actual presence here with me, alive.

In the past I have begun to write about my dog because I have struggled to understand her eating behavior, and I have wanted to figure out what's going on with her relationship to food and how I can support her. 

I've begun to write, and then seen the obvious, and then scratched writing because I felt I already knew what to do (well, that is not the whole truth; I will get to that). The main thing I thought I should do is return to regularly scheduled feeding times, as that is how her eating was when I first got her (when she was already 5 years old), but eventually transformed into irregular feeding / keeping her bowl full for the most part. She seems to get anxious about food this way, and seems to stand and stare at a full bowl and whine at me, sometimes until I coax her to eat her food / give her permission, and sometimes she will not eat until I am also eating something (this I sometimes see as neat because sometimes I am delaying eating and am hungry and am risking a migraine, and she whines at me like as if to remind me that it is important to eat; but maybe that is just my imagination!). 

Sometimes she will go a day or two without touching her food, although lately, since I have begun to feed her more consistently every morning and every evening (would I previously go a day or two without giving her food...? I don't think that long, but perhaps I was not consistent enough for her to trust that she would be fed!), she seems to eat at least one serving (bowl) per day. Some days I come home from work and she still has not touched the food from that morning. Some mornings I wake up and she has not touched the food from the previous night. 

I don't know what happened with her previous owner. Although she was never without a sheltered space to live and someone who I assume fed her, she was basically abandoned, so I don't have a lot of information about her life before I met her. 

Truthfully though, my primary aim in trying to figure out her eating behavior has not been to support her. Primarily I have reached the point of figuring this out not out of curiosity or a desire to make her life the best quality I can provide. Instead I have in the past come to the point of figuring this out because I get so frustrated by her whining. Because I am more interested in doing whatever it is that I am doing, as if it is so important, indeed more important than this other life to whom I am the sole provider of care and who depends and relies on me for her livelihood, entertainment, protection, understanding, etc.  

So self-judgment on that point has been part of why I have stopped myself from actually figuring it out and making practical commitment / solutions to try. Instead I shut myself up in shame / guilt and a belief that I am a terrible person / pet owner. 

I have kind of tried to implement one basic change that I discovered through my preliminary writing, which is to return to a more regular feeding schedule. She seems to do better with regular feeding. However she still treats her food with mostly a seeming disdain, until I add fish oil capsules or some coconut oil, or scraps from my own meals. 

When I first took her into my care, she was eating Iams, which I have heard, although I've not researched for myself, is filled with things that are rather bad for dogs; maybe even roadkill. I think that I bought one large bag of some fancy kibble from some specialty pet store, then switched her over to raw food. I had met a dog a few months prior who was on a raw (homemade) diet and its fur was extremely soft; I couldn't believe how soft. So I wanted my dog's fur to be this soft. Interesting to recall this now, since her fur is actually why I started writing this particular post. Now in reflecting I see that this dog's fur was very much a different texture and length and style from my dog's fur. I thought that raw food would like magically make her fur soft and fluffy and light, but her fur is naturally straight and coarse. It's kind of medium in length, but sticks relatively close to her body. Labrador fur, basically, and australian cattle dog -- the two breeds I was told she's a mixture of. 

She was on raw (store-bought) food for quite a few months and she was voracious about her meals during that time. I purchased raw food patties, basically, and also turkey necks (which she preferred to traipse off with into corners of the house to enjoy by herself, but due to the mess factor I could not allow this), which I kept frozen, then thawed, then gave to her. She would generally consume her meals during this time in literally under 5 seconds. The whole thing was quite an ordeal that involved a lot of scheduling and cleaning. It was also extremely expensive, so much so that I was not really able to feed her quite enough (although as far as I know, dogs who eat enough raw food are still rather skinny, as was the one with soft fur that I first met). So, eventually I switched her back to kibble.

I don't know a lot about dog kibble beyond what the employees at the fancy specialty pet stores tell me. I've had her on at least 3 different highly recommended kibbles. Whenever we first make a change, she is usually excited and eager for about the first week, if that. However, every time, she eventually treats her food with somewhat of a disdain again. Leaving the dish full, avoiding it, just looking at it or ignoring it. 

Some other points to mention include a behavior she has toward her dish that she has displayed ever since we first moved to Denver (I don't recall her doing this in Seattle... I believe I had her on a timed feeding schedule for all of our time there, so perhaps it is part of this food anxiety from the change in feeding schedule that promotes this behavior?). She will nudge her food dish around with her nose, often ending up with the dish pushed under a shelf or otherwise inaccessible, or with the dish knocked upside down, often covering the food, so that in these instances her food becomes inaccessible to her and as far as I can tell she has eaten none. (hmmm, like burying her food??) She used to pretty much only do this while I was away at work, and I would also come home to find items (such as socks) that I had left on the floor put into her water dish (these I believe she was trying to nudge over her food dish, but her water dish at the time was positioned right next to it in a kind of wrought iron holder). This is unusual, but most alarming to me is that this has often resulted in her creating a little open wound on the tip of her nose which bleeds and scabs over. I don't suppose she's actually trying to hurt herself, but it bothers me that this is the result, perhaps in part because of my own history of intentionally hurting myself, and also seeing for example incidents wherein children have inadvertently hurt themselves due to engaging in maladaptive coping behaviors. 

Okay, so she is probably not trying to injure herself. She is probably, most apparently, trying to bury her food. Save it for later? Again this points to not trusting that she will be fed regularly -- so to go back to a strict timed feeding schedule. 

Another point to mention is that it seems that no matter what kibble I give to her, she eats dog poop at the park, and with the kibble she currently eats, she is also a voracious grass eater, every day, most opportunities she can get (so, I don't think it's that she's sick, because she very rarely throws it up). Recently she has also started to eat dirt, although it's not just any dirt, it seems like she'll find a spot she likes and come back to it -- so perhaps there is something else in that spot that I am unaware of. Some people I have talked to suggest that this might mean she is missing nutrients in her regular food, but this is frustrating to me since I buy her very expensive and highly recommended food. I suppose I need to learn more about what exactly is in it, and what exactly she might need. 

She also will eat any food trash she can access, and I have always had to use a baby gate or somehow otherwise make the trash inaccessible. This might again point to a lack of nutrients. It could also indicate that she is very bored with the taste and/or texture of her kibble, which could be the consequence of having been "spoiled" with raw food. It could also say something about her food-related anxiety, like that she will eat whatever she can get, except the food that is actually given to her, which she seems to either reject as worthless, or set aside for later as very valuable... How to tell which, I'm not sure. 

One thing I see repeatedly here is that I am frustrated by her behavior, when her behavior is most likely an indication that she is probably very frustrated herself. 

And so then that leads me to why I really started this post, which is her skin / fur. Part of why I choose to buy her such expensive food is because every pet store employee I talk to tells me that this or that kibble should be good for her fur, and make it soft. 

She has very bad dandruff. Usually even just 2 or 3 days after a bath, her fur is oily and/or dry and flaky. She also absolutely loves rolling in grass, although one person pointed out that she might actually be allergic to grass and this act of herself trying to scratch her own back might actually be making her condition worse. Or, she might have some other kind of allergy about which I am unaware.

(It has been presumed by many that she has an allergy because she is basically bald around her eyes. But, in the almost 5 years that I've known her and the variety of different foods she has eaten, this has never really changed.)

The main point for me here is that I do not like to pet, scratch, or even really touch her once her fur gets to a certain degree of being dirty, which happens quickly. So now I have a dog living under my care who does not like to eat the food I give her, and whom I do not touch as much as she would obviously like and deserves. 

The interesting thing here is that when I first got her, she was very very very un-trusting of me, and did not really let me touch her hardly at all, as much as I wanted to. So I took a long time gaining her trust, only to now be abusing it because I know that she loves me and needs me and wants my attention, and yet I do not give it to her because of details she cannot control -- details which in fact probably bother her a lot more than they bother me, because it is obvious that her skin is very uncomfortable and itchy for her. 

Here at least is a nice example of a time that we
learned and were challenged together to conquer
an apparent fear of swimming with a blatant
love of squeaky tennis balls. :)

(And here I could go off into a tangent about the quality of my relationship with her in general, what it is like for us to exist together in this home, and how it is unsatisfactory and really not acceptable that we are not more of a "team" so to speak, for lack of my own participation in creating / sustaining that kind of relationship.) 

Presently I try to give her a bath about every 2-3 weeks, although tomorrow I am planning to give her another one after only 1 week having passed because her fur is so dry and itchy. I have a "medicated" shampoo that has green tea and tea tree oil in it, but it does not have oatmeal which is one of the #1 things I have heard recommended (and which when I have used in the past has worked well), so I will have to also purchase some of that kind of shampoo and maybe switch back and forth. 

I also have to continue to stick to a routine feeding schedule, and I should probably also go back to having her sit and wait before releasing her to eat as this is what she was used to from when I fed her raw food and had her on a timed eating schedule, and is perhaps why she sometimes just stands there and whines at me until I encourage / coax her to eat. 

I can also investigate food ingredients and nutritional needs and see what other foods I might try. I can also continue to supplement her food with tasty treats that will entice her to eat the entire dish. 

I can rule out that the kibble is too hard, as compared to raw food, because she is a lover of bones and spends the majority of her day gnawing at them, so I am certain that her teeth are quite strong, but perhaps there is another point to look at in that realm, I do not know. 

I can be sure to brush her regularly too so as to release shedded hair so that it does not add to her itchiness (or my floor!). 

I can also suck it up and give my dog some physical attention multiple times throughout the day, and just wash my hands after since they become so dusty and dirty from touching her even less than a week after her last bath. 

I also really need to be on top of getting her nails trimmed regularly, which I have already determined will happen every other Monday morning, because I see that when they get too long her nails begin to bend toward or away from each other, which invariably affects her toes and joints and I have heard that this is how dogs get arthritis, among other avenues. 

I can also take her on more and longer walks, and we can also go running again like we did for a short while months ago. 

I can also be more observant and make greater efforts to understand her, rather than just becoming frustrated by her whining and other "strange" behaviors, because these behaviors do communicate something if I am willing to listen. 

I mean honestly at this rate I am not an appropriate person to care for a dog, but I see how I can do better, and so I will, because she deserves the best as life. 

So my action plan is as follows, I commit myself to:

1. Possibly purchase a different food dish that will be harder to nudge around or flip over due to structure and the rubber ring around the bottom. 
2. Return to a timed feeding schedule within an hour frame, taking into consideration my own eating times and when I am most consistently home at that time each day out of the week. 
• Including having her sit and wait until she is released -- I hear dogs like structure like this. 
• What to do if I feed her in the morning and come home and the dish is still full...? Should I remove the dish after x amount of time (before I leave for work) even if she has not touched the food...? This would probably only be an issue for a week or two if I do that, and then she might learn that it is time to eat when I give her food. 
3. Investigate different food options / a variety of food options.
• Within this, investigate nutrients and what she might need that she might not be getting.
• Continue to cook for myself and reserve scraps for her ***to give during timed feeding (rather than just as I am cooking / cleaning up / done eating)*** so that she has greater variety 
• Or, should I do none of this at all...? 
• One person suggested that I feed her pulp from my juicer, if/when I ever start actually using my juicer (haha). 
• Investigate how to make her food -- like the person who fed their dog raw homemade food. 
• Supplement her food with various basic "human" food options, or invest in wet dog food / canned raw food to add to her kibble
4. Bathe her frequently
• Try some different shampoos to see what works best
• Try my neighbor's suggestion to bathe her 3 days in a row to see if this will help any (boy she'll love that haha). 
5. Per the suggestion of a fellow dog-park-er, each day rub her down with a damp cloth to remove any pollen or other possible allergy irritants (also dirt, dandruff, excess fur, etc.). 
6. Brush her frequently
7. Wash/replace the blankets in her crate where she sleeps (probably lots of oil and dirt etc. in there that contributes to her fur / skin getting dirty faster)
8. Give her lots of love in the form of scratches, pets, cuddles, and words / sounds. 
9. Give her lots of love in the form of longer walks, runs, or playing fetch. 
10. No longer accept or allow myself to think of myself first when she is communicating to me about her needs. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to become frustrated when my dog whines at me or seems to want my attention for any reason.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to feel guilty and ashamed of that to the point where I not only have not wanted to write about it / share it here, but have even ignored it as true in myself by not changing myself and my relationship with her. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to ignore the needs of this animal that is under my care, who needs me and relies and depends on me, who I abuse and neglect by not giving her everything I can give to her, especially that which she cannot give to herself. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to feel guilty about ignoring my dog and basically understand this as the reason that she does not seem as affectionate as some dogs, or as affectionate with me as she is toward some people who do not seem to mind the way her fur is. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to understand that and see that something needs to change in myself and the way that I care for her, but for having not really done this as best I can, so that nothing changes and instead we are like "just two roommates sharing a space," but this is not best for either of us. 

I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to use the action of giving to my dog as an opportunity to also give to myself, giving myself a relationship and companionship with this animal and the opportunity to see myself through and as this animal and our relationship. I do see myself through our relationship, and I do not like what I see. So now I change. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to care more about my own frustration as a reaction to my dog's behavior than I do about the fact that my dog's behavior clearly indicates that she herself is very frustrated, in ways that I can assist and support her to resolve. 

I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to fully assist and support my dog to have a wonderful quality life because I am too busy either being frustrated or guilty or ashamed. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to sometimes imagine "what if" my dog died or got very sick and then died or died suddenly, how sad and upset I would be, and realizing in this imagination that I would regret the way our relationship was, and yet not do anything to change our relationship within that realization. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to wait until death to resolve my inner battles. I saw this also in my last post: "No one close to me has ever died. The few people who have died, I wasn't that close to, and certainly after they died I told myself we weren't really that close at all anyway. I mean in part this is relevant to my inability to connect with other people on an intimate level of really feeling connected in such a way that I can't just basically flip a switch and suppress any negative reactions I might have over their death (and yet look what happens if someone betrays me or hurts me in some way, how interesting)." where I saw that in life I remain in battle with myself about another, but in death I finally let go. 

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to wait until death occurs to face myself and forgive myself for who I am and have been, and realize that I never really needed to forgive another, that they are gone and I am still here with myself and the consequences of myself, so now that they are gone I can let that go, rather than letting it go unconditionally and changing now. 

I haven't experienced that, actually. That is speculation on my part. But I haven't not imagined my dad's death, for example, or even catastrophic "what ifs" about others, and in that imagination realized (or at least believed) that it would be very easy at that point to forgive and to let go of the energy. So why not now? It's an interesting point to look at, but quite separate from this post. 

Okay, that will do.... 

I've been feeling "out of it" in a way for the last few days, so even though there is much else going on, I determined that this was something I could write out in a productive way, whereas other points I am more just trying to live out right now.