"iT's A pRoCeSs" in Runaway

If I’m asked to not leave items on the stairs to the basement because it’s a tripping hazard, I change it. Done. You likely won’t have to ask me again.
If I’m asked to put the spoons in a certain way while they dry, done.
Need to teach me how to use a new program, tool, procedure? Consider it learned.
I am a fast learner and a hard worker, but if I’m asked to change my perfectionism, how hard I am on myself, my core beliefs, my negative/destructive automatic thoughts - I fail.

I wonder if my motivation for improving, changing, evolving, transcending, healing etc. was just seeking perfection. My all or nothing kind of thinking If I’m perfect then I won’t struggle. But I guess seeking perfection is a surefire way to end up sad especially when it’s as something messy as me.

My counselor brought up this concept that’s he says is more of a fact than a theory. He called it… something depression… redistributed depression… reallocated depression… damn I can’t remember. But the first word had forceful tones because it’s what an emotion will do - if it can’t be expressed, it will force its way out; if it doesn’t feel comfortable coming out as its true emotion, it WILL find a way to be expressed though not in its original form.

I’m angry, at times seething, with what I have to on a daily basis to have a happy, healthy life.
For the most part, the basics are easy for me - nutrition, shelter, breath, love, exercise - pretty easy. Now, having to be mindful all the time of my actions, words, thoughts because what is familiar is destructive. I have to choose what and how I react to things. I have to choose to want to find a solution. Choose to see situations more than all or nothing, black or white. Choose my words carefully when talking with Robin. I have to fight to be better than what I was raised to be.

I went through a grieving pRoCeSs when I went back to counseling in 2015. I grieved for young, shy, little Shayna. What she went through, how alone and unimportant she felt, how she needed to be loved by the most important people in her life but wasn’t - not a healthy love, how she couldn’t properly express her emotion of “this is not right” or “I’m really angry with how I’m being treated”. So, because that anger couldn’t be expressed, it came out as sadness. Dr. Adams says it’ll do good to revisit that anger and express it within reason. I know I’m angry - I’m angry with Robin, with Zach, with myself. I’m angry that in order to have a happy, healthy life I have to make these never ending choices because for 27 years I didn’t know what a happy, healthy life was or how to have it. Inside my brain, I am almost always at war - choose to do what is familiar or what is healthy.

Mindfulness, pauses, choices. Let’s see what happens when I don’t try so hard. Maybe I’ll see the real me. Maybe then I’ll know who I am.