The Flu, Values, and the Belated Utilization of Therapy

This past week has tested the resolve of my Wellbutrin. The flu came to visit and got each of us in turn. Lorelei was patient zero — we all had flu shots months ago and got Tamiflu quickly after I took her in for a flu test, so it was overall not as bad as it could have been.

I caught it while Lorelei was still sick, and we spent most the day in bed watching Sophia the First on my computer. We kept the kids separated for a couple of days, hoping it would prevent Rowan from catching it. Regular colds send him to the hospital, so the flu legitimately scared me. But then Thursday night after we got home, he spiked a fever and got progressively more miserable. After a night of little sleep, he woke up Friday morning feeling much better. Crisis averted.

Except, I was still recovering and now living on the fumes of what amounted to a nightlong series of cat naps.  I zombied my way through the day, but by the time I got home I was a mess of sleep deprivation, wondering how I had managed to live like this for months and years at a time.

I finally had a night to myself and decided to live it up by … going to bed at 7:30.

via GIPHY

My brain decided this was the exact moment to really work through my values

A couple of years ago, my therapist did a two-day training on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). I walked into her office the following Thursday and she said, “I kept thinking about you during that training.”

Thanks? I think?

Anyhow, one big part of ACT is paying attention to your values and considering if your actions move you closer towards those values. In order to do that, you have to actually decipher what the values are. I was game for the work, but still unintentionally resistant in some ways, as per the usual.

Then I started the Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) group. DBT has a lesson that includes a values worksheet.

So that makes two values worksheets I have done for therapeutic purposes. I understood the concept on paper but just could not wrap my head around it on a deeper, more personal level. Reading through a list of common “values” and marking the ones that I felt applied to me was easy enough. But I couldn’t make sense of what to do with that knowledge. Some sort of resistance again, I’m sure.

It’s a concept that my therapist and I are planning to revisit when she gets back from maternity leave.

Of course, my brain decided that it needed to figure it out RIGHT NOW as I was trying to fall asleep Thursday night. In that lost place between wake and sleep, it all started to come together. There was no epiphany, but rather a slight crystallization of ideas. A movement towards myself.

I contemplated the differences between what I want in a given moment vs what I value. What I think I should value vs what I actually do. Not necessarily the things I wish were different about myself. It isn’t a list of things you enjoy; I enjoy lots of things that are actually not in the best interest of my values. And sometimes the road towards values is painful and confusing. They aren’t goals — though you can make goals based on what fits your values. You can’t reach a value; at best, you hope that you move along in concordance to them.

I still can’t quite put it into words. But it suddenly feels beneficial, to really figure out what you value and then make decisions that inch you along that path. I’ve been floating around in this ether of grief and loneliness feeling hopeless and without direction.

This concept is still not entirely formed for me, but it seems like a good therapeutic pool to play around in while my therapist is gone.

Today, I wrote down some of the words that flittered through my head the other night, picking through them to avoid the wishes and desires and get down to the distilled values. I found some themes that could probably each be delved into more deeply. Some might make good blog posts, some can wait for my therapist to return.

At some point, I’ll revisit the worksheets and give more thought to the suggestions there. But for now, it felt important for me to write them in my own words, rather than pick from a generic list.

• Personal growth
  • This is where my love for therapy fits, but sometimes I get in my own way.
• Creative expression
  • Writing, obviously. But it also includes the consumption of creative expressions, such as my love for books and music. Recently, as writing has felt more like a struggle, I have found it in drawing. Not great drawing, but something that immerses me and keeps me out of the sneaky hate spiral in my brain.
• Deep and meaningful friendships/relationships
  • This one is difficult because it frequently feels like there isn’t much we can do to adjust our course. I am lucky to have amazing friends, but sad at how little time I get to spend with them.  I value people in my life who are open and authentic and willing to be vulnerable. I strive for the same.
• Being kind to my body
  • Oh man. If there is one that I self-sabotage, it’s this one. This is a prime example of what we want in the moment being at odds with what we value. My health is never going to be perfect, but luckily it’s a value and not a goal. It isn’t about working towards being some specific amount of healthy, a specific weight, or a certain dress size. Rather, it is doing things that honor that value. It probably means exercising and not eating all the Girl Scout cookies currently in my living room, but also taking my medications and going to the doctor when I need to. It means spending time outside, working my muscles.
• Space
  • I’m an introvert. If I want to have the capacity to do anything other than merely survive, I need quiet time to myself. It’s a value because it lets me have room for self-reflection and keeps me on track to be able to stay on track with any other value.
• Understanding
  • Maybe this one should go into the friendships value. But I think it’s more than that. There’s also a feeling of being understood by music or books. To truly understand and be understood as much as is possible. Mutual understanding.
• Empathy
  • I find that this has become more important to me the older I get. I guess it fits in with understanding — to really understand someone you’ve got to spend time imagining yourself in their shoes, considering that there are other realities than your own.
• Spontaneous planning
  • Sounds sort of weird as a value, I guess. But it is part of who I am in such an integral way that I cannot imagine leaving it off the list. It’s where my P meets my J in Meyers Briggs. I want to go on last-minute trips, but I want to make spreadsheets of what to pack and learn as much as I can before I embark. It makes me feel whole to put these parts of myself together.
• Acts of kindness
  • This is the golden rule in action. I feel genuinely fulfilled when I do things that will make other people feel good. The potential pitfall here is when we put others before ourselves; when we try to make other people happy at the expense of our own happiness. Sometimes empathy can work against me, but I generally keep a decent balance because otherwise, it’s not fulfilling at all.
• Sharing life and making memories with my kids
  • Ever since Lorelei was a baby, I have tried to bring her along for the ride. It’s harder with two kids — so it is something I am going to have to be mindful about. I know that memories are not necessarily the big events, but can be found in any number of small excitements, so I try to create those.

There are a lot of sort of sub-values that I might expound upon later and goals to use as way stations on this infinite road. I’ll come back around to this once my brain digests some more. I want to continue to drill down and clear up what the actual core values are, because it’s not as easy as you may think. Sometimes what seems like a value is really just part of something bigger. Those are still important, but I want to understand it all more deeply.

It may be that the biggest value for me could be described as “connection.”

It is probably no coincidence that the last appointment before my therapist’s leave was full of realizations about my deep longing for connection and authentic relationships. It’s written all over this list in various ways — really almost everything on the list comes back to either connection to myself or connection to others.

And if you think about it… that’s the exact purpose of this blog.