Ways I’ve Learned to Self-Parent Myself and Dexter Dog Pics

So, I’m so glad I caught this in a pic. Sometimes when Dexter goes to get down from the couch, he just stays like this a while. lol. Our animals always have some kinda weird “thing”. It’s hilarious. Here’s another fun shot later, with him totally in action and not being patient for the camera. But he shook my hand!

Well, I guess the down side to blogging in the evenings is that I’m tired and my brain is a bit whipped at this point. The week has just been busy rolling from point A to B to C, and knocking things off the list as more things go on the list. Life is fun but I’m tired. I’m considering a day off down the line but we have Labor Day coming soon.

We ate dinner at Mom’s last night (Wednesday night). The two dogs don’t really get along (Dexter and Fancy). We just can’t let Dexter off the leash without starting a growling session and a fight. Sometimes the fight is between humans. Like when Dexter was trying to get in Mom’s way and Fancy was trying to protect Mom, and I was trying to help Mom get dinner on the table and George was sitting on the couch just being amused by it all. I asked him to “please do something with the dog”. He ended up taking him for a walk mumbling “ya’ll just eat then and I’ll take the dog”. So we did. lol We had to eat in shifts. Fancy is just old and tired (like most of us). Dexter just wanting to play and learn his world and also motivated and excited by smells of wonderful roast beef.

Dinner was great. Even if it was pandemonium and stress filled at the first. I honestly was about two measures of patience away from just breaking down into a tearful mess. But I refused to do it. I refused to let others hound my emotions. Yeah I did it! But I. AM. JUST. SO. TIRED.

Speaking of NOT letting others hound your emotions, I made a list recently of all the ways I learned to Self-Parent myself. I don’t remember learning these things from home nor in my childhood, but I wish there was a class on this at school. It would have made my life easier. Here are elements of Self Parenting that I have learned as an adult.

A few months ago I learned about the term “Self Parenting” which tends to be a term thrown around there in the psychological world. These are ways you teach yourself to handle and cope with life’s darts. It’s a way of managing to stay in control, comfort ourselves, and guide ourselves. For me it revolves on how I REACT in situations. I jotted down a few things I’ve learned in my 40’s and 50’s. Some things are a work in progress. 🙂

You should do your own study of self-parenting and make your own notations.

Ways I’ve Learned to Self-Parent Myself

• Reminding myself it is not appropriate to yell and raise my voice to get my way or to just get a point across. I will always have a tendency to do this because the models I had in life did this often. And it worked most of the time. So I have had to work at trying to use other methods of getting my point across. I can’t say I’ve succeeded in this but I’m about 50% there! Reminding myself it is not the correct way is half the battle. And I do that often.
• Telling myself that the world does not revolve around me. What? I’m the center of my world. Isn’t everybody? LOL. NO they are not. I think when I was about 30 I realized “the world went away” and I wasn’t the center of attention I was so used to having. But you know what? That was a good thing for me because that is when I became to learn myself and seek inside myself and seek God and figure out myself. I’ve been at it ever since. LOL It was easy for everyone to love you when you were pretty, thin, somewhat outgoing, and had the world in your hands. Gain a little weight, lose a little confidence, make a few choices in life, and the world drops you like a hot potato. No the WORLD does not revolve around me. And I’m glad I realize it doesn’t. It doesn’t mean I don’t slip into a wrong path every now and then, thinking I’m linked to everything in the universe, lol – or that every conversation behind a door must be about me, or that everyone is dying to read my blog or vlog (haaaa, they don’t, lol). I’m glad I’m the center of my own world and that alone gives me a right that none others have – like what I am feeling and thinking. Those are mine and mine alone. But I most certainly am NOT the center of everyone around me.
• Understanding that there is a difference between having confidence and “being controlling”. Sometimes people in life misread that. Don’t let others misguide or discourage you because of your confidence and strong sense of direction. On the flip side, I should make sure that I am NOT manipulative and controlling of others – running them over to get what I need. We still need to be accountable for our relationships and attend to them in addition to our goals and processes. And that can be a balancing act for sure. But because someone else is saying your are controlling does not define what you really are. That is my point.
• Telling myself to know the difference of when to be transparent, when to speak, and when to be silent. Woah! This is a big bullet point here. There is a time to speak up for yourself and others and there is a time in which to be silent, to peacemake, to be grey matter, or to be lit up like a Christmas tree.
• Setting boundaries. I think most of us are familiar with this now. I could do multiple blog entries on this. I think it’s important to set boundaries as long as your are still doing God’s will and not being selfish with it.
• Not letting others control my emotions. This one is hard especially where roots go deep. But I’m making progress.
• Not letting others cause you to react. There are some people that can push your buttons like no other that can make you go ape wild with reaction. And guess what! Some of them are actually doing it on purpose just to see you get your feathers ruffled. Don’t let them. You can identify the ones that do it. YOU KNOW who they are. Don’t tell them you are on to them though. Just don’t let them cause you to react. It drives them mad!

So that’s another of my little lists I’ve made lately for a rainy day. It’s not raining literally but I’m just tired and nothing really important to blog about. I’m very tired. The weekend will not give much relief or rest. Tomorrow I work, get my REAL ID, and have a baby shower after work for a coworker. Saturday morning is Fancy’s trim and Mom and I get pedi’s, eat breakfast and maybe find some shoes, maybe a store for a few items. Most of the day we will be gone. So Sunday is placing church membership as we are meeting with the minister, then home again to do laundry and try to do the long list of things that await us here. I’m tired of not having any time. The next Saturday we are gone too. It’s just going to be nuts for a very long time and we are heading into our busy season, which is fun, but often very very busy. I miss our friends too. We just don’t have time to go out and do much of anything. But God will only give us what we can handle right? I keep trying to squeeze everything in. But I’m left in a heap of a tired mess. I’m ok though. Just whining as I’m wining. I’m sipping Pinot Noir as we are about to eat dinner, watch a show (maybe if there is time – lately there’s not been time) and I’m most definitely looking forward to sleep and bedtime. I did get to work on the video some. The next one is pretty cute. But I’ll let you be the judge. I am hoping I can get it done in 2 weeks, but since I’m not getting weekends much to do anything that I WANT TO DO then that means I can’t work on these but 20 min here and 30 min there.

How are you doing?