Being in two minds - the voice of insecurity

Feeling vulnerable - my successor visited the churches yesterday. Like me it will be his first appointment as a minister following training, and I suppose a bit of me had been thinking about I had felt at the start.

The 5 years experienced me considering what the nervous new me would have liked to have known, not quite reached the idea of the old hand pegging out the safety net for the new kid on the block - but some confidence in myself.

Then we hear who has been allocated to come, and he visits, experienced business life, good rural knowledge, had lots of experience of different roles in church life, been a school governor..... and all the feedback is that he is likely to be good at the very things I have struggled with.  This is good for the churches and the strength of a regular change of minister - that we have different mixtures of gifts and weaknesses so the next one can balance things out.

It is great news for the churches, but another opportunity for the depressive insecurity to surface - not only does he sound better equipped than when I started out, the niggle starts to suggest he will be better even than the 5 years of learning and growing version of me.

I do know that I have a whole range of gifts, that people have appreciated my ministry here, and we have achieved some things together - it is just at the same time, in the same mind I have these thoughts of insecurity and falling short, that I have been just been muddling along and don't really know what I am doing.

How can it be possible to hold two opposing views in your head at the same time? I don't know, but it is something I have experienced for years.  It seems to be healthier than just believing the voice of negativity, but the positive knowledge is just not enough to drown them out.  This is my experience over many things, and I have been very low all autumn and into the winter.  Knowing that it is the illness not reality doesn't stop the emotions of uselessness and pointlessness, it reduces the risk of acting on those feelings but doesn't stop them settling in, stretching out on the sofa and picking what TV channel is playing - like an uninvited guest you can't get rid of.

Living with two minds seems to be my normal, and it can be hard work.  Days like this are a reminder that although I have left the uninvited guest in one room and got on with living elsewhere, they are still in my house and can make a big noise.

Testing the market

First of all - 'Happy Centiposting to me, happy centiposting to me.....'  Yep I have reached 100 blog posts!

Today I had a stall on Ludlow Market - Manse Crafts going fully public, beyond the safe church fairs.  It was a dry day, not a common thing at the moment,  and although I covered my costs it was not really the market for  craft items so not the most efficient use of time and resources.  But a useful lesson to learn and  I did cover costs.

However a conversation with a fellow trader - meant for my learning and important because they were right and I am better off for the knowledge - pressed some old old buttons.  Stupid Helen. Useless Helen. Failure Helen.

I was a good girl and reacted appropriately at the time and in all visible ways - but inside I have spent the rest of the day fighting against the inner buttons that have been firing at full power. I had thought that I had grown beyond those undermining weaknesses and felt doubly useless to find they still had such power over my emotions.

I am still feeling that low and frustration but trying to hold it in context - it is normal to feel put in one's place and some of those emotions, it is just that because I have had years of over-reaction that I see all reaction as pathological when some off it is actually just normal life. 

And then I need to remember that only a few years ago I would have been unable to have stand behind a stall and banter with passers by.  So on this centennial blog post I do have positive progress to report - pity that my inbuilt bias wants to dwell on the gunk, but I guess that is par for the course for a depressive.

Let's meet for a drink...

Last Friday I did something amazing, really amazing.  Sorry I didn’t manage to save the world, or do something life changing for others, but it was still an amazing act – I went out socially in Birmingham, at night, on a Friday.

Ok so it wasn’t exactly riotous clubbing, but it was well outside my normal comfort zone.  I had arranged to go to a gathering where I knew people very little, and that through a web forum. I lived in Brum for 2 years when in college and only once ventured into the centre after hours.

On Friday I socialised, I arrived by train ahead of time so tucked myself into a safe chain pub for food (having found their deals when at conference). In the midst of the  after work drinks crowd I found a corner to settle in.  In that last half hour before the planned gathering, at a real ale pub down the road, my fears crowded in.  Could I talk with almost strangers socially? I mean although I do it every day with work that feels different, it is within my familiar range. Would I manage the complex etiquette of The Round when applied in a largish group? Would I be better off turning and heading for home and my duvet?

Such is my insecurity and fear of ‘not fitting in’ (which then is interpreted as failure or rejection), but I stood firm and turned up.  I felt the fear and went anyway – afterall I had already spent money getting there which would be wasted if I didn’t follow through, and I can be stubborn on these matters!

I went, I settled, I even enjoyed myself.  I managed to go with the flow, to be able to receive drinks from some and buy for others, to share in conversation without being any more or less odd than any other human being. I then managed to wander through town for a late night train  and got myself home. 

For some a Friday night out is normal, for some an occasional treat, for me it was a victory over the old insecurities.

Confidence Flashback

I am a driver. It is vital in this job in a rural area. I don’t drive for fun – apart from anything else who can afford that? But I am confident in my driving, and can do it without thinking much about the process (though I do try to think about the road ahead!)

At least that was the case until yesterday. I changed my car, my first car, after many years together. The replacement is a little bigger, a grown up car with back doors – much better for giving lifts to folk , and power steering which is new to me. 

It was delivered yesterday, 6 years old but looking pristine. I took it out cautiously, off the drive, round the corner of the close and onto the next corner –where I braked but the brake wasn’t there and the car rolled across to the garden wall opposite and scratched the car below the bumper.

The car is bigger, the pedals didn’t align with where my feet instinctively went, I’ve made my mark on the car – and have lost my confidence.  When I sit at the wheel the fears and doubts of learning to drive are back, without the reassuring presence of the instructor and dual controls. Now I know that I am not back there, I know that I have years of driving experience – but it doesn’t feel like that.

I feel like a little girl in a grown up world and not able to cope with the responsibility.  All because it is new to me, because I am not in my comfort zone, because it is not the safety blanket of the familiar.  Ok so the scary moment happened, no harm – apart from a scratch or two which can be dealt with, and I will get used to the lights and the wipers being the other way around and the feel of a bigger, different car.   In fact I went out after midnight when the roads were almost deserted for a 30 mile drive and feel a bit better, though still with the learner’s insecurity.

How vulnerable we are to confidence flashbacks. Or at least I am.

Even when things are going well the stress of a change can link back to the emotions of the last time, in this case the last time I had to get to know a new car as a driver.

Or staying with parents, how easily we slip back into the routines and identities of a past stage in the relationship.

Looking back at past places I can see and celebrate the huge emotional journey I have been on to find the self confidence and self esteem I have now. Are times like this, and the weeks to come as i work through this driving wobble, a step backwards? A sliding down a deep dangerous slope? It felt like that, but I am asserting to myself that it is just the twinges of an old war wound, a reminder of those times but not a return. And I guess many of us will have these twinges from time to time, and though painful may just be normal.

Meanwhile if you see me coming and the wipers go, that means I’m turning!