I'm standing in my own way. Again. I hate it when that happens.

I had really thought my next blog would be about the exciting thing I'm doing in exactly 49 days. But, that'll have to wait. (Sorry for the tease! Promise I'll talk about that soon.) In the meantime, you should probably go get a snack and get comfortable. It's time for me to come clean.

I've made no progress so far this year at the scale to speak of.  I've undoubtedly toned up and increased my overall fitness, but the weight loss stalled.  And this time it's not the dreaded plateau. It's me. I've been standing in my way.  I've been subtly sabotaging myself.  Not by sneaking in pints of Ben and Jerry's or midnight trips to the McDonald's drive-thru. No, by tearing my whatever smidgen of self-esteem and sense of self-worth I'd managed to claim for myself into hundred's of little pieces and tossing them into the wind.  Okay, perhaps that imagery is not very subtle.  But that's pretty much what I did.  I've blamed it all on the disappointments and 'emotional' upheavals that lined up like waves stacked on the horizon. Those events, etc have been quite real and quite distressing. But I let them determine how I felt about MYSELF. Not the events or relationships. MYSELF.

One of my biggest issues is that I've always looked for validation from external sources. I have not been able to sustain any kind of validation that comes from myself, to myself.  And to make it even worse, I yearn for external validation, but then promptly dismiss it when it comes along.  The bottom line, that I finally need to face head-on, is that my self-esteem has been broken for SO long I am really incapable of fixing it on my own.  And I'll be honest, I sometimes worry that it's so screwed up it's beyond fixing.  But I have to try.
I have to. I have proven to myself that I'm not afraid of hard work or a challenge. I expect this process to be both.  I have fleetingly considered getting back into therapy over the last couple of years, but I didn't. I stood in my own way. And I've spent a good portion of the last couple of years living so far below my potential level of happiness.  I don't think I wanted to see that I was doing it to myself. But it's time to deal with all of the "it's". The it's I know and the it's I don't.    And oddly (or not), as soon as I started the process to find a compatible therapist and schedule the appointment, I felt emotionally better than I have in months and months.

Everybody has their kryptonite. I'm just tired of mine being...me.