Rachel’s Room🛋️Gratitude For Stress

Happy Wednesday Cadre crew. Hello. Hello. I'm gonna give folks a few minutes to trickle in per usual. I'm in my car today because Milo and I. Milo, say hello. Are waiting outside Petco. It is time for him to get a haircut. He is a total floof right now. So we usually go. We usually go to a different spot, but the place I normally go is pretty expensive. So we're gonna try out Petco. My neighbors told me that it's like half the price and that they do a good job and my neighbor has a doodle. So I'm hoping that this works.

We'll. We'll see how it goes. But every time he gets a haircut, he always looks so silly to me because they blow dry his hair so he just looks like very fluffy and weird. But the point is that he will be, he'll be groomed, he'll get his nails cut and he'll be able to see a little bit better because right now his hair is like covering his eyeballs. I am feeling so much better than last week. I was sick with the flu, which is why last week I did my live on Thursday instead of Wednesday. And I'm finally back to what I would say is like 90%.

So I have like a teammate of stiffly nose and a little cough here and there, but fever free. So very happy about that. So today I want to talk about using gratitude for coping with stress. So after being sick, I basically like, I've been. I'm behind on like a week's worth of work. So I've been really stressed this week because I feel like I'm behind and trying to catch up. And I have this feeling of like, I don't have enough time, I have too much to do. I don't have enough time, I have too much to do.

And last night I was about to go to bed and I just could feel like all this stress running through my body. And I knew that if I felt like that before going to sleep, like I just wasn't going to sleep well. And so I started to think about the fact that it is actually it's such a privilege to have work to be behind on. It's a privilege that I have a job that allows me to take a week off because I'm sick and keep my job. And I just started to try and reframe all the things that I was feeling stressed about as positive things.

And not in a silver linings kind of a way, but in the way where the fact that I have these kinds of Things to stress out about is a sign that I have things to lose. And it was just a reminder for me how there have been times in my life where I didn't have steady work, I didn't have a support system or a community of friends that could help me if I got sick or wasn't doing well. I didn't have the capability to cope with the isolation of being sick for a long time. And so to be able to reflect on all of these things that I do have and how the fact that I'm stressed about these things is a sign that I have so much in my life was a reminder that it's that I can be grateful.

And so I tried to reframe it and say to myself, I'm so grateful that I have. That I have work that I have to catch up on because it means that I have a job. I'm so grateful that while I was sick, I had friends who were willing to support me and help me with my dog and help me with groceries. I'm grateful that I have the ability to access medicine and can see a doctor when I'm sick. And it kind of like it just reminded me how out of my gratitude, practice I've been and how it's not that I've become negative in my life, it's that I have lost sight of just those small moments where we can reframe our thought process from a negative to a positive and how much that shifts our internal stress.

And I was talking to my therapist about this this morning too, because I was explaining to her how something I'm struggling with right now in my eating disorder recovery is it takes me about like an hour and a half to get dressed during the morning. And a lot of that is because I get really hyper fixated on how my body feels in clothing and get really hyper fixated on how my body looks in clothing. And it's. It's getting in the way of me, like, doing my life like it should not. It takes me too long to get ready because I'm in my head thinking about all of these things that really, at the end of the day, aren't the most important thing.

And as I'm doing this, my self talk is incredibly critical. Like I'll say to myself out loud, like, jesus, Rachel, just f****** pick out an outfit. Like, figure it out what is wrong with you. And my self talk is negative. And it's not, you know, it's not to the degree that it's been before, where it's clearly coming from a place of self hatred or self loathing. And at the same time, these small moments of negative self talk are still contributing to how I feel about myself. It's still contributing to how I feel about my day and how I operate.

It's still contributing to a general feeling in the world of things aren't going right or things aren't good when in reality they are. And so another thing I'm practicing is noticing and interrupting those patterns when I get into that self critical mindset and, and being loving with myself. Like my therapist asked me this morning, you know, when you have those thoughts, like how can you be loving on yourself instead? Like what can you say to yourself that is loving instead of self critical when you notice that experience coming up throughout the day or during the morning?

So this is what my practice is gonna be this week is finding those small moments to interrupt a tiny bit of negative self talk or a tiny bit of negative thinking, no matter how small, and just gently reframe it. Gently reframe it with gratitude. Gently reframe it with loving self talk and finding ways to just change those small moments and see how it impacts me on a greater scale. So I wanted to share that with you and see if it was helpful for anyone. And I'm looking forward to seeing how it impacts me.

I'm also going to start journaling a little bit more. She, My, my, my therapist, you know, suggested that in order to sort of support these new narratives internally, it's good to kind of set myself up for success by writing things down and starting my day with a little bit of journaling around. You know, how can I, like, how can I help my future self out by, you know, writing down like one thing I'm going to do today that I'm going to feel really grateful for to myself for having done at the end of the day.

So with that being said, I don't want strangers to be in the video. I did not get content. I'm gonna take my little pup and we're gonna go get a haircut and hopefully it goes well. No, wait, let me. Here's a moment. I'm gonna reframe it. I am so grateful that I can take Milo somewhere and get him cleaned and groomed so that he can be a healthy little puppy. And no matter what that haircut looks like, Milo, we love ourselves, right? Okay, my loves. I will see you same time, not same place. We'll be back in my, in my room again next, next week, Wednesday, 2pm PST.

Hope you'll have a lovely rest of your day, and I will talk to you very soon.