This is a small incident that I think shows that maybe the lessons are starting to enter my subconscious mind.

I was taking my daily walk and I came to a place where someone had lost part of a deck of cards along the sidewalk. I idly looked at them as I walked by. I came to the king of clubs and my thought process was something like "king of clubs" -> "club" -> "for beating on someone" -> "king of clubs" -> "queen of clubs" -> "Don't be the queen of clubs - Stop beating on yourself."

If I had found a queen of clubs card, I would have brought it home as a reminder.

Lefty,
Hi and thanks for the great post. I'm so very happy for you. Sometimes we want really big changes or differences we go to bed and expect to wake up noticing this HUGE change. Well it's not that way....it really is the little changes that come about that one day when they are all added together make a HUGE change. Thanks again and congrats to you . Your post put a smile on my face
~Begone

Lefty,

That is so great to hear that you are making progress. I believe that there ARE NO little changes when it comes to anxiety/depression. ANYTHING that we do to progress and move forward toward happiness and fullfillment is a BIG STEP-ACCOMPLISHMENT. Give yourself a great big pat on the back...you are heading in the right direction.

Best Wishes
Marcia

Lefty,

Awesome progress. It is a day to day process that you do build up and out on. Things start to click and the puzzle pieces start to look like something. That is great. Keep going, it gets better! Warm wishes, LizB

PS- There are baby step we take, but no victory is tiny.

Hello Lefty,

Well, that's the kind of victories that BIG changes come from!

That was also great insight that you showed in your thinking. Give yourself a big pat on the back for it!

--Phil.

Thank you all for your encouragement. I feel like I still have a long way to go and the encouragement feels good.

Lefty,

You're right!! It is little changes at a time. Like for me..............I've noticed that I don't experience anxiety about going to sleep at night anymore. I was having problems sleeping and I developed anxiety about it. As night would approach I would say to myself "I wonder if I'm going to be able to sleep tonite" and then bedtime became an anxiety producing event in my life. But I changed the recording that was playing in my head. Instead I started say to myself "I'm going to be out like a rock when I hit that pillow tonite" it worked!! I sleep fine and I don't experience any anxiety and I look forward to going to bed again. Another thing is waking up in the morning. Morning were very hard for me. I would wake up depressed. But not anymore. That just kind of happened as I implemented different things in my life like exercise, eating right and learning how to relax. Oh, and I enjoy my days alot more. Although I do have challenging days, like today was one of them. But the fact that I know I'm making progress makes the challenging days not so bad. God Bless