Being Nice to Myself

"You put too much on your plate." "No wonder you forgot. You have so much going on?" These are phrases I hear from the people that love me when I make a mistake and then beat myself up about it. "You don't play with the boys enough. You need to set aside time for structured play and for free play with them." "Take them to play groups. It's great for socialization." "The laundry piled up. You need to do some every day." "The floors need cleaned and you need to get the pile cleared off the microwave." "Get your notes done early next week so you're not dropping them off late Thursday night!" "Keep track of your list better so you don't spend so much time at the grocery store." "Exercise!" "Why did you eat two banana muffins? Just eat one, or none!" "Go grocery shopping. Make that doctor appointment today, not tomorrow!" "It's dinner time and you only gave Landon eye drops twice." "You waited too long to call reorder Landon's prescription. You need to keep better track of that." "Put aside money for the boys preschool tuition." "Fax that, today!" "Buy those birthday presents. And, why didn't you send out thank you cards for the boys birthdays? People will think you are unappreciative!" "Don't yell at Landon when he isn't listening. See, why did you yell? You need to stay calm." "You need to watch Jordan carefully. He is going to get hurt because you weren't paying enough attention." "You gained back weight since vacation. You were doing so well then. Get yourself together!" If I talk to someone else like I talk to myself, they probably wouldn't want to be around me very much. This weekend I loaded the trunk of my car with items to take to my cousin's bridal shower. My sister closed the trunk and my purse happened to be in it. The car locked and I stood in panic because my only set of keys were in my purse, in the trunk. I turned on my "auto switch" so I wouldn't yell or cry out of frustration. Jimmy went to investigate and to try to solve my dilemma as I did deep breathing and zipped around the house fixing the boys lunch and telling myself to calm down. He called for me 10 minutes later and stood looking at me with my keys in his hands. I left the keys on the wall as I was loading the car. I sobbed. "I feel like such an idiot. Why do I do these things? How stupid." Of course, my eternal voices (which happened to be my husband and my sister at that moment), disagreed and assured me that it was a busy morning and that its an easy mistake. I was not quite so forgiving, but was able to calm down. I'm aware of my shortcomings. I acknowledge that... I'm working on treating myself better. I am. I always tell Landon that he needs to use kind words- that words hurt. I guess that's true even when speaking to yourself.