Friday, September 16, 2011

Making progress

After sleeping through the night I'm starting to feel a bit better now. I'm still tired although I think that one more good night's sleep will be enough. I'll talk to my oncologist about how tired I've been in case it is related to the denosumab. I wouldn't be surprised if there was a connection there.

Fortunately, being a bit tired today didn't prevent me from buying a new hat and scarf or from having a productive session with my psychologist. She didn't give me anything new to do for the next two weeks; I'm just focusing on getting more comfortable with mindfulness and visualization techniques, as well as trying to stay balanced in each area of my life.

I talked to her in particular about wanting to eat a more balanced diet and she suggested that eating mindfully all the time would be a good way to eat more slowly - and to eat better. It's hard be mindful all the time because I get distracted by other stuff going on around me. I can sit there and focus on the texture and taste of my food when all of a sudden I see a bird or something outside and my food is forgotten while I look at whatever the bird is doing.

Obviously this will be an ongoing process for me. Eventually I hope to be able to be mindful through a complete task but my goal right now is to try to get comfortable with these techniques. Eventually, with enough practice, I hope these techniques will be second nature for me when I need them. As well, we'll be building on these techniques in the future - next week she'll introduce me to emotional mindfulness - so it's important that I get a good grounding in these techniques now.

Going to see this psychologist was definitely the right choice for me. I feel so much better and so much more emotionally even since I started seeing her and I'm also feeling very comfortable with her. That's part of the point, I guess, isn't it?

1 comment:

manchester fat acceptance said...

so glad to hear it is going well with the psychologist! sounds like you are already learning some great techniques. sorry that you were still tired though.

love,
vicki