It was a stressful weekend. An article I handed in six months ago came back for edits. Again. It's a story about love and yoga. It's supposed to be helpful and happy and light. Not saccharine, but, you know, not grim reaper stuff. But I and the editor and her editor realized the problem: 3,500 words and not much joy. I finally confessed that I've been in love sucks and is hard mode for months. It was clear that despite my attempts, this was tinting things.
So then I did what every good writer does: Procrastinated. Worried. Stressed myself out by staring at the computer screen, canceling fun plans, and not going to yoga. And once that was all in place, I spent lots of time berating myself for being such a procrastinating, non exercising fraud of a yogi and a terrible writer with the efficiency skills of a meth head on crack.
Sometimes when I start setting myself up like this I can catch it. Some loving part of my brain goes, 'Oop, honey, watch out, you're spiraling into some dangerous territory.' And then I go for a walk or call a friend or write in my journal to exorcise the inner haters. But sometimes the self punisher just takes over. 'Nope!' he says, hovering over me, large and leather clad, giant paddle in hand, 'No light for you! You deserve to be this miserable, you procrastinating wretch!'
And then I'm in the Bad Place. And last night that Bad Place was my bedroom floor, me propped on a bag of undone laundry (more proof of my horrible, unfit for humanity ness), sobbing and saying mean things to myself about my fundamental unloveablity, cataloging all of the good evidence to support the notion that anyone I would ever love could never possibly love me because look, this IS me, at core. A crying, needy, dirty laundried, procrastinating wreck. 'Ha!' I thought. 'People think I'm so together (well, some), but this is the REAL me. If only they knew that I'm just a swirl of pathetic darkness.' Yadda, Ibid, etc. Ad infinitum. You get the idea.
By Valerie Reiss
THE LATEST YOGA NEWS, FROM IT IS YOGA
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