January is pretty much over and already 2010 is shaping up to be an interesting - dare I say exciting - year. With change there are possibilities and possibilities are always exciting. In the past 30 days, I have terminated an employee (a week ago Thursday); let a consultant go for non-performance (yesterday); and called the dreaded Employee Assistance Program (EAP) that I thought nobody except the stressed out crazy at work called. I've since changed my mind about EAP and now realize that at the time it was just what I needed. I called because I needed something to help me out of the stressful period I'm in and because of that I decided to start seeing a therapist.
This isn't the first time I've sought professional help. Sounds like I'm totally loony, eh? "Seek professional help" - heh. There was a time in my mid/late 20s where I felt completely lost. I had graduated from college and accomplished what I felt I had been working for all of my school career (not counting post graduate stuff) and I had a good job - okay, a series of good jobs. But, there were issues that I needed to deal with; the stuff that you ignore from your childhood. Some people successfully deal with that stuff on their own and others, like me, need a little assistance. So, I dealt with it and was fine.
But life has an annoying way of changing. Life would be so easy, don't you all think, if it would just stay the same? And, with those changes one has to adjust and with those adjustments come the growing pains. I always thought that in my late 30s that I'd be over "growing pains" but I'm not. Life's lessons are not so easily ignored because if you don't adjust to those changes and you keep doing the same thing, sooner or later you find that what you're doing doesn't fit anymore and you're FORCED to adjust. So, here I am being forced to adjust and, once again, I need a little assistance. Cue the therapist.
Today I had my second session with my therapist and I can see that she is actually helping me deal with the stressful period I am going through. This time around, I'm not dealing with how I saw my childhood and how it affected me (the GOOD and not so good). I'm dealing with the decisions I've made and an inner voice that I have chosen to ignore pretty much my whole life - even though I should have listened. There have been many occasions when I've decided to ignore my inner voice only to find that I should have listened. The time when my inner voice told me to go home instead of hanging out with a friend (got grounded for that one). Or, the time when my inner voice told me not to hire a particular consultant (ended up firing that one last Spring). I could go on. And, the stressful period that I'm dealing with now has to do with me ignoring my inner voice - the one that is now saying "I TOLD YOU SO!!!!"
The reason for ignoring my inner voice, my gut reaction, my instinct is that I really WANTED for the decisions I made to be true. I really wanted to believe that the person I hired last Spring as a consultant would do a great job, but they didn't. I really wanted that decision that I made all those years ago, that is now causing me stress, to turn out ok when I knew that it wouldn't. But, I know - I've always known - that just because I WANT something to be true does NOT mean that it will be. I wish I could say that I've learned to listen to my inner voice, but as recently as last week I've silenced that inner voice when I know that I should listen. I really just don't want the message that it is saying to me now to be true.
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