Selfcare or selfindulgence: Are we selfish when focusing on ourselves?
Heidi writes
In this meeting of WOMEN MATTERS we start out with the question: how can we balande the care for others with care for ourselves? Is it considered selfishness when we respect our own needs and stop being avaolable for others all the time? Starting here we touched a variety of related topics in the our of our meeting.
You can check the AI Summarizer or transcript availabe con NoteGPT
The conversations took place in August, 2024
Summary
A group of women discusses balancing self-care and self-indulgence amidst personal challenges, including caregiving, aging, and emotional struggles.
Highlights
- 👩👧👦 Meeting of women sharing personal updates and experiences.
- 🏊♀️ Importance of self-care, especially during stressful times.
- 🏡 Challenges of preparing a house for sale amidst emotional upheaval.
- 🎨 Creative outlets as a means to channel anger and stress.
- 🤔 Reflecting on the difference between self-care and self-indulgence.
- 🌱 Embracing the process of aging and letting go of past expectations.
- 🎶 The significance of finding joy and expression through music and art.
Key Insights
- 🌈 Self-Care vs. Self-Indulgence: It’s vital to distinguish between taking care of oneself and escaping responsibilities; awareness helps maintain balance.
- 🤝 Creative Expression: Engaging in artistic activities can transform anger into something constructive, fostering emotional healing.
- 🕊️ Mindfulness of Emotions: Recognizing and accepting emotions, including anger, can lead to healthier responses and self-preservation.
- 🔄 Aging Gracefully: Accepting the limitations that come with aging encourages a focus on being rather than doing, promoting inner peace.
- 🧘♀️ Support Systems: Delegating responsibilities can alleviate stress, but trusting others requires ongoing self-reflection and acceptance.
- 🎉 Community Connection: Sharing personal struggles within a supportive community fosters understanding and provides various perspectives on challenges.
- 🌼 Balance in Life: Life’s challenges necessitate finding a balance between emotional needs and responsibilities, ensuring overall well-being.
00:02
we start with the meeting of the women of women matters and today is 26th of August 2024 and just always check in Let It Be first with Christine we didn’t see you last time so give us an update what is going on at your side yeah um well had a nice weekend my uh childhood uh best friend was here with her husband for a few days so so that was really fun just enjoying well one enjoying getting back to a normal routine because uh didn’t have a lot of time to check email or or do just routine things um but we had fun
00:45
it was it was a good time took them up to lagona beach which is a Seaside town here and all around it w it was just good to see her and her husband um and other than that not much new everybody here is healthy and uh yeah en enjoying things yeah feeling good and I will pass on to line okay well I um I went up to LA this weekend to see my stepdaughter and her daughter and uh and that was nice to to Really catch up um her daughter is four years old so it’s a really cute age and Rowan is starting to look up to look
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forward to my visits and she calls them Grandma sleepovers so it’s really cute I love being around little ones um so that was good but hectic friend of mine also in La was hospitalized last week so we were sort of dealing with the other end of the life cycle you know illness and aging issues um so it was still good to kind of catch up and help her out a little bit and just be there you know just kind of touch base with her and now I I come home to today is going to be a day of getting ready to put my house on
02:22
the market for sale and Realtors are coming and Termite people are coming and all of these now you can’t just put a house on the market I don’t know what it’s like in Europe but here you have to we have this expression put lipstick on a pig you have to doll something up you have to make your house look really really good and appealing so you have to invest money in making it look but good doing all these little repairs and you know in the in the old days here you didn’t have to be so fussy about stuff like that but
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nowadays you do so it’s an investment of a few thousand dollar just to get your house ready and then the Realtors are going to um you know um oversee most of it and they have contractors they’ll bring in so it shouldn’t be too too upsetting but it it’s going to be a whirlwind I’ve already started trying to put things away to make the house look more presentable and uh and I I’m losing things I’ve forgot where I put them so so the chaos has begun you know even though you’re shooting for something
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you’ve been wanting to do for a while so so I’m entering the um the Whirlwind but feeling okay the saying I didn’t understand it uh of the saying putting lipstick on a pig putting Christine do you know where that comes from is that a southern thing I don’t know know the idea is a pig is not very attractive and you you make this very superficial effort to make it look attractive by putting lipstick on it and it’s really not going to change anything at all you know it’s a very superficial effort to uh pretty up something that’s
04:24
a little bit you know run down so anyway that’s my world right now lorine is the woman up in La who’s not doing well is that the same person that you went up to help before is that the same woman that’s Helen yeah yeah yeah she’s my age so it’s a little freaky you know that she’s having so many problems but uh anyway hopefully she’s on the men you got to pass off yes I’m sorry and I’ll pass it along to Mona yeah well as I mentioned before you started recording we have now cooler nights and we had a cool morning so we
05:09
went grocery shopping and this was the second time I witnessed a temper tantrum of a of two children one had a screaming pitch that really went through all your nerves and the other one just threw herself on the on the floor and the mother sat next to her and waited so maybe that’s the new way of uh getting children out of temper tantrums uh well I just went by I didn’t even look it’s just I couldn’t yeah so this is something well I never had temper Tums with my children but I guess that’s more because
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I’m very much in tune with I was very much in tune with them at that age and I sort of knew what they wanted before they could spell it and then when they they talked rather early in life anyway um my husband and I were rather stunned about child raring today but that’s the way it is and yeah it’s still green outside and the funny thing is the animals we feed during the winter they start approaching us now there is uh the squill was on the on the balcony and one of the birds I don’t know the English
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name in German it’s a so it’s a beautiful it has beautiful blue and white feathers on its wings and all of a sudden it sat there and he looked inside so when are you going to start feeding us but won’t feed them until the snow starts anyway so that was rather funny my husband Abby felt sort of surrounded by all the hungry animals waiting to be fed okay so that’s it’s easy living right now and I’m passing on to Victoria thank you um let’s see what do I have to report not a great deal still a lot of trauma um the
07:38
the drama and Trauma um with my mother’s estate continues um it just horrifying I mean I’m not sleeping at all anymore um what’s keeping me alive thankfully is um is swimming in my I’m grateful I have a pool and so um lately I’ve been thinking at like at 2 o’clock in the morning I’ll just go out and go for a swim but I haven’t done that because I’m I don’t want to get onto a totally crazy schedule um but I usually go to go swimming around by by 6 um just to start the day regardless of whether or not I’ve
08:18
slept um I was oh maybe since I saw you last I was up in Portland visiting beatric so those of you who know beatric I don’t think you met her Lorraine um uh she’s uh well actually even as we speak now um she’s out in the middle of the desert somewhere uh there’s there’s a festival called Burning Man which probably Lorraine and Christine have heard of um I think actually someone told me it’s International now but it started um actually one of my cousins oddly enough started it um it’s it was started by very um I don’t know what the
08:59
German equivalent is of geek but um sort of uh computer people who were very um very much live in their heads but they they have artistic aspirations so it’s a festival um well anyway you can look it up because I don’t know any I don’t know that much about it except that my cousin was one of the founders so he was very proud of that um anyway it’s a festival out for like nine days out in the middle of nowhere in Nevada and um and and people bring there’s no water there’s nothing it’s out literally out
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in the middle of the desert no nothing and you have to bring everything that you’re going to need to survive for nine days and people um engage in different kind of artistic activities and so Beatrice’s group um her her her partner has gone there a number of times and so of course it was his idea and she called me last night um she said they’d be arriving by about 2: a.m. this morning and pitching their tent um and she called me to say you know for the next nine days she’s off off the grid because
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there’s no there’s nothing out there no internet no telephone service no anything so I’m you know I’m I’m kind of excited for her but also you know slightly apprehensive um because it they were getting a late start and it’s a 10-hour drive from where they live in Oregon anyway I was in Oregon um to see a wonderful Opera last weekend that beatric was the stage manager um based on the Hunts Christian Anderson story The Rose elf and um by a young uh young composer uh Young American composer and um it was just really great because
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everything about it was good the the the music is really fabulous he wrote the labretto himself so that was very impressive it’s kind of he’s kind of like well I shouldn’t say he the new Vagner but um but it was a real kind of gazam K thing and um so that was exciting we went to there were only two performances um it’s amazing they go all that work beatric it was her like a summer contract that she got because her her regular job is for the ballet um so that was that it was nice to um for me to get away and do something creative
11:21
and and um I walked in the forest uh which was very regenerating very beautiful huge huge huge trees um and just it’s only like a five minute walk from where she lives so that was kind of magical um but then I came back here into the Maelstrom um which I won’t bother to describe because I think I mentioned it the last time um so did everyone already check in oh Heidi of course okay Heidi over to you okay hopefully I’ll catch up with you Christine I’m sorry I’m late I was I was at church so anyway I came
12:00
okay what do I say it’s still hot here things don’t have changed a lot I had a guest here and she went away another guest is here now she is a young woman with a huge car and where she she wants to drive alone with a little doggy all through Europe and now she is for a week she is here and I admire women to do that I mean young women she’s attracted very much so oops in the southern countries I mean that’s okay but I think it’s it’s sort of safe and she knows to defend herself but it’s not that I wanted to talk about
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her I was with other friends on Saturday I was in the October Fest here in the next Village they are doing October Fest in August but it was sort of fun it’s German people they are um um how do you say um um partner cities with a with a German City and so the the orchestra of brass instruments they came and then they do some dances and beer and food and you know and there were about thousand people that was for a little 12, no thousand about thousand oh about a thousand but for a little that’s a
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little place I mean but they come then from from around and three days they’re doing it but it was fun I was with a few friends and normally I don’t go to these things but okay I went and it was fine what else not really anything interesting um what topic did I hear all together maybe taking care for somebody or or for some animals or um do you have a topic which you would like to discuss getting older for instance I heard that always that we talked about that already but it seems to be a permanent
14:18
topic did we resolve it I forgot I don’t think we resolved it yeah yeah yeah do you have something which is what you were thinking about the last weeks and you would try to you know get some either feedback or Co co-creative conversation about I wouldn’t mind talking about um I mean it’s been very much on my mind because of all this trauma the finding balance between um like nourishing nurturing positive experiences when we’re in a state of Affliction finding the balance between that and dealing with the things that
15:06
have to be dealt with because sometimes I feel like I’m okay let me see I think Christine was about to say something but oh sorry yeah well actually I was gonna say kind of the same thing that Victoria’s um bringing up but I was going to call it self-care when you’re caring for something else when you’re involved in having to be the caregiver caretaker um person who’s making things happen how do you care for yourself at the same time swimming sounds good okay so let’s go I don’t know if that’s a topic yeah
15:41
it’s good does that kind of fit Victoria with what you were had in mind yeah yeah the only the only thing I wanted to add because this is this is the point where I’m struggling right now is is how to know when it’s still self-care and when it’s um avoiding things that have to be done like like what point is it maybe like where does self-care where’s the boundary between self-care and escapism or self-indulgence well self-indulgence I’m not there by by any means but that’s kind of the the where I’m struggling
16:17
right now is because I feel obligations but I’m also um I’ve been told by all my doctors every single one down the line regardless of what their field is that I need I need to totally focus on self-care right now and just let if if necessary let the obligation slide just for my own health and um survival so it’s very extreme right now and I’m I’m struggling with this like but shouldn’t I do this or that task that needs to be done you know so so it’s a it’s really hard for me right now so I’d appreciate
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feedback or ideas so self-care and self-indulgence are the two opposites or H more or less but I yeah I’m far away from the self-indulgence sadly yeah or maybe not so sadly Victoria do you know what your doctors um why they’re saying it or what they mean I mean those are sort of general terms I mean self-care do they think you’re not taking care of yourself or yeah um well most the most extreme is my um psychiatrist who is from Switzerland so he’s got the very holistic um right now I’m I I told him
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the other day I said I’m you’re my you’re my doctor for everything right now because I’m I’m in between primary care doctors my my doctor um retired in June um and I haven’t seen the new one yet and um he he’s very extreme like he said that he finds he thinks that he the last thing he said to me the other day was he said I if I get a call from the emergency room saying that this totally eccentric crazy lady was picked up on the street dancing and acting totally bizarre he said I’ll be completely delighted he said and I’ll
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I’ll be right there for you and what what he meant was um because I’ve he feels that that that that I’m I’m still so burdened with um well just I mean I’m not going to go into all the details because I want to hear you you guys talk it’s essentially what it boils down to is is I had a very very abusive controlling oh here’s gout so she can um um very abusive controlling mother and a very abusive controlling sister and um and I haven’t hiker turn um and and so I’m still living in this this self pun even though
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I’m not in contact with my sister directly but she’s very much alive unfortunately um and my mother’s dead since 5 years but I’m still living in in this tyranny that was imposed on me from my for my whole life and so what my doctors are saying is my only hope not my only hope it’s not that dramatic well it was dramatic a few weeks ago um I really need to like like Break Free of of that tyranny and that the abuse and it’s you know it’s bigger than self care issue it’s like self self um I don’t know like I’m taking on the role
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of the people who abused me and I’m doing it to myself so um so that’s what he’s saying is is just let go he said just do calls it as healthy selfishness that’s his term um so do do what seems totally selfish and he said crazy the crazier the better like things that have no purpose or meaning so if I do something totally silly that’s why he said like if I just go out and start dancing in the street he’s delighted like he wants me to break free of the um of this this you know tyranny and and just live because
20:16
you know I’m still here so I should live finally so does that make sense I I don’t know how yeah it does I I’m just wondering and you don’t need to go into this but um are there things you need to address about whatever this estate issue is uh that are important to your ongoing safety and Care oh it well I mean you don’t need to name them a list them but I’m wondering what this dancing in the street is in contrast to or if there are things you know if there are things on your to-do list for this estate issue whatever that you need
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to address and you don’t have the energy for it or something yeah there are a million things what I’m what I’m doing right now on the advice of my doctors is just is delegating So and I’ve pretty much I’ve pretty much handed everything over now um to I mean for the time being to to my daughter because it’s all it’s all going to be hers anyway so she so I’m just kind but it’s hard because I’m a control freak so like I I would like to be responsible for every you know pencil and eraser and but it also sounds like you trust
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her um well yeah I TR I trust her but she’s you know she’s out in the I mean what she’s doing is a perfect example she’s out in the desert dancing May instead to get this in a therapy session to First welcome hello yeah I was just trying to answer self-care vers to versus self-indulgence so you know uh and uh Victoria was talking about her inability to break off the expectations on her and doing things and which she thinks are not good for her and so she had the advice to to break free from this so now first let get Che
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in first yeah yeah I said yeah yeah come on go ahead I’m coming from celebrating birthdays and um having climbed in a climbing forest for the very first time and um having um like I don’t know six seven two year olds this is not my normal life at the moment but it was really nice to celebrate her birthday and preparing for my daughter’s wedding on Friday so I’m pretty much in this family bubble which is really really nice um yeah and a challenge for me is if I made a mistake um uh two weeks ago I had a a speech or
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yeah Workshop something in between presentation and I think I’m not a presenter I’m a workshop guy I I I can interact with people but not like just talking um yeah so I think I was not the be yeah it was was not the best speech ever and the lady who asked me she wrote an email like I couldn’t I couldn’t um say anything about it felt really honey and the moment I feel criticized not critique as as a whole but like I’ve made a mistake I have to immigrate to New Zealand I can it it’s it’s like a trigger that really
24:32
collapses my inside completely and then I have to climb out again and um so I’m a good climber out of th those yeah and and just have some support some backup some coaching to this is so automatic it’s not yeah I’m not um somehow I’m not involved in that so yeah so the question uh concerning self care uh in your case would that be I mean we try to explore how we do self care or or or indulge in not doing something which we should do what would be the the self-care moment for or strategy from for yeah to ask for
25:26
support I mean this is like like to immediately go out breathe and say they’re not talking about you it’s it’s not about survival something like that and really immediately reach out and have like an anchor in reality again because my internal would just life sentence whatever yeah that’s a little different than what you said Victoria about delegating I mean delegating is a a way of um involving other people to help um getting supports a little bit more from the emotional Spectrum not So Much from
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the you know task oriented emotional yeah yeah it’s not even emotional it’s like like adrenaline flood that’s not it’s it’s like yeah doesn’t feel very emotional more really triggered really like completely knocked out so how are your strategies in these moments and which moments do you remember where you had to to decide if this is okay or if it is Self Indulgence I think one of the reasons why we came up with the traffic light model was this yeah because I I feel don’t know what traffic light model is yeah I guess so
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so how the brain works and and how to do with it so we came up with a model and how to get adrenaline out of my body so to do a lot of body work breath work whatever but in this case I had to reach out to somebody else to have an anchor in reality because it’s it it feels really physical I mean it’s I hold my breath I I feel the tension so it’s it’s like being squeezed what I’m hearing completely into a little box yeah it’s fear I mean it’s fear based completely fear based survival Christine what what is
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your um well I’m still thinking about swimming that’s certainly a sematic therapy to help get the adrenaline out of the system and use use the energy for something good that serves um but you know avoidance isn’t a terrible thing to some extent you don’t want to crawl into a cave but for instance this weekend when my friend was visiting Tom and I both took time to be away from them for I I took less time um to to have some alone time but he you know he didn’t participate in everything we did because when he was then that enabled
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him when he was with us to be with us if he had to do it for three days three and a half days straight it would have been like this declining participation and it wouldn’t have been good so by taking by being there but then totally removing himself from an act ity he he was better um so avoidance I would call it avoidance it’s you know it’s not participating so it can it can serve its purpose as long as it doesn’t it enables you to go back so maybe self the difference between self-indulgence and
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self-care is if you feel you can return to what you need to do you know if it makes sense that you then can resume whatever it is you’re supposed to to address then it probably is self-care if you’re still wanting to you know go to that Bliss State and not have to deal with anything maybe it ends up being a little bit more you know not helpful you know uh coming from psychology I guess it feels to me like triggering events of which you I still have many of them myself um you know there is um there’s
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sort of a Cho for me this is strictly for me and this is really out of psychology it really has nothing to do with integral but um when I get triggered I can depending I guess on the situation or the theme go one of two ways one I can use a coping strategy which it sounds like you did beautiful okay I don’t really enjoy this I’m not going to do it anymore this is just me and this is not me um and then the other is okay so what is the trigger and then dig deeper to the feeling that’s connected with the trigger like in my
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case it would be shame um feeling that I’m not good enough that sort of thing and then there are times when I would choose to spend some time with that and to really allow myself to feel that well shame not feeling good about myself and to try to spend time to understand where that came from what it’s connected to you know sort of on a deeper level but it does feel to me like again from the point of view of psychology you can go one road or the other one you know one is not better than the other it’s just what
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fits for your life and what helps you move on to live the life you want to live you know it sounds like now I don’t know you but it sounds like this was kind of a minor blip this is just one thing in a complex life that you do and you decided Well if you’re going to get triggered why bother you know just why bother and everything else in your life is good so um you know but when I’m working with someone in therapy and they’re there for you know a deeper experience of working on themselves then I go for the
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pain but I also support that through it and put it in a context and and try and help them make it more manageable but it does seem like we all have choices about those things and maybe we don’t feel like we do have choices I guess that’s the tougher situation where we feel just kind of Trapped in something and that happens especially with trauma you know when there’s there’s been a variety of trauma you kind of lose that ability to choose because you’re getting you’re getting impacted a lot so it’s much much
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harder but it sounds like you were able to exercise a choice so for me I had many situations in my life where I choose avoidance for to avoid um not a not nice situation and then it gets ever more difficult afterwards and sooner or later you can’t avoid anymore and you have to to face these problems and that might be might have been and probably it is um much more painful than than it was this is a in in relationships for instance no when you feel something is not going well and you pretend not to not to say
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aoid to talk about it blah blah no and then at a certain moment then I explode exploded at least it was my my strategy and um getting very cold and very offensive and very unkind you know which I could have avoided in the when when in the first moments when these things appear talking about it you know and with Mark I sort of arrived at this point that we could talk about the things which were happening but with previous relationships wow and then it blows up everything and I don’t think that in
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this case avoidance seems self-care to to avoid the conflict but it’s not really selfcare it’s it’s makes it worse at the end so that’s what I noticed well me it’s a question of the intensity of that trigger and um and the acuteness so if I’m in a situation that is really acute then I try to have coping mechanisms to because I have to function in a way um uh yeah be at at work I cannot if I have a client and he triggers me I can voice that maybe but otherwise I have to breathe and have to just try to to to be
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that way but then I go to a colleague and say can you support me and and then work it through or in that situation that I was talking about I was really like completely knocked out and tried my coping mechanisms nothing worked so I had to go to to somebody and and really uh talk about this and find a way to like I don’t have to write back right away I can leave time in between and say okay this is Friday and I’m not going to answer before Monday so it’s like uh things like that so I didn’t want to
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take away from Victoria I just wanted to bring my two cents in that’s yeah thank you we haven’t heard from Mona yet amazingly I don’t have any resonance to what you feel because OB ly I just maybe through Buddhist practice I learned not to react but to act and uh I let’s KN on W but a situation like that I haven’t had it in in years and years and years so ladies you will all grow out of that equinity right it’s a good out Outlook thank you because you all of you and all of us we know our mechanisms and when they are really
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challenged after some time there is a way of uh not reacting but but maybe it’s because I did a lot of meditation but it’s it’s just a for example my hus hband uh he needs a lot of vitamin B because he’s rather nervous about losing his strengths Etc and so when something unexpected happens he yells and I don’t yell back I just say I don’t say anything I just do whatever has to be done to correct the situation usually something dropped or fell or something and then after some time he comes and he said I didn’t mean to yell
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at you so that’s very nice so uh by being myself obviously he can resonate and accept that maybe he was a little over indulging in his mentality um yeah that’s about the only thing I I remember or I could contribute maybe go talking maybe I I I find something else well as you were saying that monia I was thinking I can control my reaction and not yell but my thoughts it’s like you know my thoughts are still reactive that’s the harder thing for me to uh to master yeah however you are not your thoughts
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you are more than your thoughts etc etc etc we I not good enough I did something wrong yeah Victoria what would what would be your concern about passing from self-care into something more selfish if you see those as the polar things what where what would be your con concern of crossing over well um I have to I have to be willing to sacrifice a lot it’s of um I mean in this case it’s you know my inheritance essentially I mean I just I have to be willing to take the risk to lose money and lose possessions well most possessions I’ve
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already lost so that’s just in its um final whimper um so yeah so monia talking about equinity I mean I’m studying Buddhism 247 as all of you I’m sure know already um but I haven’t achieved Nirvana yet maybe I have to wait till I’m Mona’s age um I mean it’s it’s a minute by- minute battle literally like like I was swimming in the pool this morning and I I had all these afflictive thoughts of anger about the things that that have been stolen and all the lies and all the Intrigue um that’s been perpetrated by
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my sister and and then I had to you know go through the whole practice of like you know none of this matters these are just material things I’m alive I H I’m you know unless I drown the next few minutes which which would be a great relief um I’m here so what do I want to do with the next minute you know and then I look up at the Hummingbird on the on the power line and I look over at the you know I want to look up if you can spell that bird in the chat monia I I was trying to just before you called on
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me in the check-in I was trying to find the English name of it but I’m not sure I was spelling it like um iin um I mean like a bird version it sounded like I hair like the hair of the AA um I don’t I’m sure that’s not how it’s spelled um anyway yeah so it’s just a it’s a minute by- minute thing and I but I have to be I if I’m not going if I’m going to relinquish control of the situation I mean in so far as I can control anything um to other people then I have to accept how they proceed and if they make mistakes
42:16
or forget to do things or or something gets left out I have to be willing to accept that so I have to so that’s my ongoing thing of the choice like um as I said I’m basically a control freak so I I know that if I had the wherewithal to jump in there and do everything myself I then you know I can hold myself accountable and because I’m a perfectionist I’m pretty sure I would do a completely thorough job with everything um but it my doctors are saying you know maybe that maybe you’re not in a position to do that and
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maintain your equilibrium you know I I had a complete breakdown of few weeks ago as I mentioned and it was scary I’ve never had that in my life so so I’m trying that’s the path I’m trying to walk right now you know and so there’s a part of me that’s saying you can do it you can do anything you you know you’re capable and there’s the other side that’s saying um like well my psychiatrist put it very succinctly he said if you broke your leg if you had broken your leg and you wanted to go swimming you wouldn’t
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be able to you’d have to wait till you till your leg heals period at the end so he was essentially the metaphor is with mental illness it’s not visible our society tends to not take it seriously um we try to like have workarounds you know we can we can override the Affliction we can override the depression whatever um and it’s but it needs to be taken just as seriously as a physical illness in the sense that there are certain steps that need to be taken well I don’t need to tell you that Christine so I
43:57
won’t say more I mean but that’s the whole point that we’re in a society where it’s very hard I think for most of us unless we’re in it professionally to really take seriously what it’s like to be to be ill or not of you know whole mind and body um mind yeah body is obvious if you break your leg everybody sees it so that’s kind of where I am right now well thank you good good description triggered um something in me that I experienced this weekend um and I was just I had planned a weekend to drive up to LA and you know
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that’s about a 100 miles right maybe a little more and then back again so you know you’re taking two or three days setting aside it was my stepdaughter’s birthday I wanted to cook her a meal so I spent Wednesday Thursday preparing this meal getting it all you know in coolers and everything else to go up to La seeing her finding out my other friend was not feeling well going over to her place attending to her coming back and knowing I was facing the um preparation for um getting my house ready and in the past I could do all of
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those things at the same time I can’t do that anymore and I’m I’m having to set limits okay so how am I going to do this am I going to do it serially am I gonna postpone things I mean it’s it’s not the same as what you’re experiencing Victoria but it’s that it’s that okay so I can’t do it all I know I’m very capable of doing all of that stuff but maybe I can’t do all of it at the same time now and that’s and I’m kind of facing that you know so I have to make some decisions about how much I can handle and how much time I need to
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handle it and it’s kind of hard and it for me it’s um now experiencing a sense of loss because I was able to be on top of everything before and I really can’t I really can’t anymore I losing things yeah yeah that’s just the first step to old age you no it’s that’s that’s what I have to do all the time just reducing reducing really that pattern yeah yeah knowing I can’t do oh I was fabulous in multitasking I can’t any I still can do three things but not five or six that’s uh yeah but uh that’s what old age is it’s just
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letting go oh that’s just a cliche but very hard lately in another group we decided letting go we should uh substitute it with letting be because being is the more important part now than than doing and let it be means in many ways that as it comes either accept it let it go through or find the right way of handling it you know but Letting Go seems to be like and dismissing it in some way whatever you need to let go you know like in the case of Victoria letting go of her let’s say anger of her sister and
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being robbed or whatever letting go is like trying to something like this but letting be is much more gentle in some way because you open also in I’m speaking totally spontaneous now you open the the possibility to a change while letting go is is gone letting be it can be and can be different you know so I found it a nice um finding in this group and I consider to think about it more Paul McCartney had it right right let it pull out your Beatles album Victoria yeah was just reminded of The Beatles yeah they all knew it already
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so yeah they had some help you know in this in this period to experience the letting be state so I’m wondering Victoria how is it going with you now how are you feeling how you responding to what we are saying um I’m multitasking because Mon and I I’m I have to confess Mon and I were were chatting privately about birds um because of the she sent me the the IAL hair and then I looked it up and it’s it’s uh it’s blue jay um I guess all all Jays can be iel hair but but the when she said blue and white then I know
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um whereof she speaks and um so I was just mentioning um we should be completely in the moment and listening to each other instead of doing multitasking as Loren said we shouldn’t be able anymore well I was completely in the moment that’s how I got whed because because the birds are my favorite the birds are my refuge right now um you know it’s it’s it’s very it’s very spiritual to I mean it’s goes right back to the you know Jesus talking about the lies of the field and the birds of the air that this
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um so no I was I was no I I I was also listening um and I I think I think the being versus doing is really is really a really good point that you brought up py that needs to be I mean I need to remind myself of that all the time that um and I think that that interfaces well with the whole idea of Aging um because that’s part of the aging process and also the maturing process is is um you know really ultimately we’re responsible for being more than doing I mean our society says otherwise but that’s I think the spiritual path if if
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anything has taught me if if one Embraces it that um it’s all about being and the doing will flow out of the being so that um I mean I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately that instead of you know getting worried upset about the stuff going on with my mother’s estate I should be focusing on um you know like you were mentioning about anger before I I should be focusing on what work can I do in the invisible Realms of virtue like how can I am how can I work on my anger issues how can I work on my forgiveness issues
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how can I work on generosity um instead of trying to hold on to things that I see slipping away how can I you know consciously say no I’m I’m making a commitment now and and that’s you know that’s what I call the how of the Buddhist path is like the eight full path is all it’s cultivating these eight virtues and that’s enough for a lifetime like forget about trying to be a concert violinist it’s like it’s like it’s enough um that was my Epiphany this morning is that um instead of lamenting that right now I don’t have
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any concerts lined up on my calendar and I have all these professional issues that you know that I’m feeling depressed about because I’ve lost opportunities um why not say oh this is great I have all this extra time now I’m going to work on cultivating kindness cultivating patience cultivating generosity um cultivating self-control I’m on this very strict diet still and um I saw that doctor the other day and he said um he said Just remember he said you know he congratulated me on my progress and then in the next breath he
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said remember that you’re old now so um it’s going to be a lot slower like you know to lose the more the closer you get to your goal the harder it’s going to be and the slower it’s going to be you know and I thought okay so that gives me an opportunity for patience you know so I don’t know it’s it’s all very nebulous I mean it’s I’m far from Mona’s state of Enlightenment you were talking about the diet I have the same problems now and but I know it’s and I I I call the phase when nothing changes that’s
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consolidating so when I step on my on the scale and I see oh God no it’s just the same again and then I know it’s consolidating because if I lose way too quickly then I’ll just trumple up and have all this you don’t want that vioria right well that’s what’s so unfair because I have a dietician that that says um be careful about losing weight even though that’s of course the goal because she says you know you’ve got to be going to the gym and doing all these exercise of course she’s like 30 years
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old you have to do work your you know suddenly I can’t get into my my blouses because look at this this is all so she said oh you’ve got to start lifting weights and you know it’s just it’s endless it’s endless and the older you get the tireder you get the more you’re expected to do it’s it’s but if you if you put up muscles then you won’t lose as much weight because the muscles weigh as well so it’s a no- win situation oh I have to say something when you on muscles they have a bigger turnover so at the beginning muscle is
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more weight than fat but um but over the long run you have a higher um basic turnover and so so you you maintain it a lot better and and it becomes less about the number on the scale and more about how you feel yes you you’ll feel different and feel better even though the number will or will not change yeah yeah so putting on muscles is a good thing well the great thing about sweep swimming is that is that for for a good hour after I get out of the pool I feel very light still it’s like my body still
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remembers the weightlessness then of course it all comes back but um but there’s something there’s something liberating just for me like even spiritually about that sense of weightlessness just for that brief moment being taken out of this heavy heavy Earthly existence I wanted to come back to the anger that we mentioned and to be kind and all this letting go and whatever what if we were interested in the nonviolent part of the anger and we just look what is the power behind the anger that because mostly we
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we as girls we shouldn’t be angry and and also we were afraid of the the aggressive of the violent part of the anger and if you’re really interested in said okay if if I’m really interested in that what is the power in this and the creative power in the power so sometimes we come up with so different solutions than the pure anger because we if we go with the aggressive part then we are in fight flight freeze mode but if we are interested in in the sheer power that’s behind it and the why are we angry what is the purpose
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of that anger and and to to go there then then I think we come we come up with a lot of more Creative Solutions and not just dismiss anger as such and rip off the power that’s in it I agree uh the fight flight response is activation that you know activates us to address an issue that’s threatening us so that’s what its survival purpose is and um you know it it kind of brings our attention to something that does feel like a threat maybe something we were ignoring before or we hadn’t realized was a threat so you know if nothing else
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than identifying oh I feel threatened by that person let me think about this what is it about that person that makes me so activated whether it’s anger or fear um yeah I agree it’s very purposeful and you know women who have stuffed it are at risk for becoming codependent and never getting in touch with their anger so you know it I agree it can be super healthy and a guide something’s triggering me now what is it that’s my next question okay so what what pissed me off so much I don’t even know I have
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to that’s sort of the first step for me figuring out what it was and then more consciously either doing something about it or avoiding it or you know making a decision like a conscious decision de ision about it uh kind of works for me and sometimes expressing anger I would also say to ask what need of mine or or uh right even of mine is violated yeah anger and also a uh um even fear can have a positive uh uh thing about it no depends how we manage it yeah what would be an acceptable way to express
01:00:09
anger my my psychiatrist told me um because I I said to him last time I saw him a few days ago because I’m very disregulated I said oh by the way I tried to kill my friend the other day and um I said I just went flew into a total rage from stress and I tried to kill him and he said ‘did you succeed and I said’ no unfortunately and he saidwell he saidit is the healthiest to directly act on the emotion he said that is the the healthiest action he said Al although I mean he was you know said it with a
01:00:41
twinkle he said although I don’t know if if killing someone is terribly therapeutic in the long term and then he said something very important to me um he said he said the second best thing if you don’t directly act on the anger you know and and just do something violent is to sublimate it into something creative and he said you know you’ve got it all there Victoria he said you can play the violin you can play the piano you can play the organ you can you know whatever so so in other words the and I thought about that afterwards
01:01:15
and I thought that’s maybe what’s behind artistic creation is that that Primal energy which can be it can also be Aeros you know that people can’t just go around raping you know every time they feel some kind of Desire they have to um so artists have to sublimate that the Aeros energy too all the energies can be transformed into something creative and artistic because we’re not animals we can’t just act on our Primal emotions so that’s I would say the yeah get out and do something artistic of course people have punching
01:01:54
bags too that’s why I love lately not to sing on notes but to express do um uh improvisations because there you can can explore the the moods and the emotions and it’s actually when Mark died and we put him into the grave I really spontaneously did some you know some of this sort of singing lamenting you know I think the old um the old uh Habit of people to to the CL Viber the the the women all crying and and or or or sort of singing lamenting I think this is a good a good way we have forgotten all
01:02:36
these things and to me I really it came out also sort of crying crying loudly you know I don’t know I have not controlled it and it’s not uh recorded but I felt it like the right thing to do in this moment you know so yeah and it’s artistic in some way so with the violin I would like to do a improvisation session with you yeah so maybe we can do it on internet we can try it next next time or or or with us privately try it out to do in response we cannot do it together but in response we can do it you know I think I’ll just
01:03:20
come to Italy that would be the best idea anyway ladies we over the time now what I found curious we started with self-care and all things and at the end we came to the normal women’s discourse of dieting that’s question so monia I wanted to say I there’s obviously not a correct way to express anger or a correct reaction to it but it’s kind of self-preservation isn’t it to to preserve oneself is okay when you’re feeling angry I think that may be one of the main purposes of anger is self-preservation and it Times Yes it
01:04:05
means killing somebody else I did my I so K in the extreme but there’s obviously less less violent ways to respond to anger that preserves your whether it’s your sense of yourself or you know something about yourself that you that this assault is trying to eradicate you can try to preserve it in what whatever way is necessary uh which means that you have to be very attentive when you are angry and to find out why and not keep being angry time not ignore it or say no it’s not in my I’m just a peaceful and calm person I’m
01:04:46
never angry it’s a lie yeah authentic to be authentic and creative yeah so in the context of relationship people get angry all the time I mean another alternative to use that anger once you develop the skills is to say you know when you don’t listen to me it really makes me angry and talk about it and if they love you they’ll engage with you about that I think putting those feelings into words is very important that’s part of the whole integration thing left brain words right brain feelings and to use that energy to
01:05:32
communicate what just happened and what it was that triggered it you know in couples’s therapy that happens all the time learning how to you know talk well that’s the advantage we have over the animals I mean Advantage SL disadvantage depending on how we use it but depending on how good you are at it we do have we do have language and it can be used as a as a tool for healing and and understanding and and you can do it without being unkind you know you can stick up for yourself without trying to
01:06:10
hurt the other person intentionally right right so the last word yes anger I can see that it is self-care but I know many people who are angry continuously and then it’s not care but it self-destruction so we always that’s the balance you were talking about Victoria finding the balance in all these things not exclude one thing because it’s considered bad but find the good things out of that and yeah so when you are going out into the street and dance Victoria don’t do it naked just bance I’ll do it I’ll do it naked once
01:06:52
I’ve lost all the weight good luck and let us see a video bye bye ladies in two weeks bye bye
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