Spiraling and the Universe of Opportunities.

Maybe the universe if giving me the opportunity to learn something here.   Yesterday i got into a car accident – a bus hit me on a round about.  no one was hurt and i believe that the police are writing it up with the bus being more at fault than me since he was to yield and did not.   

Never the less, when these things happen, even if it is not my fault, I blame myself and inflict a lot of negative emotions on to myself.   I got into a car accident last summer that was also not my fault, but i was manic at the time and had been driving recklessly and i can never really separate that fact from what occurred, no matter what the reality is. 

but this time i am almost certain i am not manic.   however, the feelings i have of it being my fault are there.  

if i were more responsible,

if i payed more attention

hmm, was my disorganization in the morning an indicator that i must have been distracted during the driving?

If I wasn’t a manic depressive i wouldn’t have gotten into this accident.

When I have these thoughts i, in a small way, implode on myself.  I start a downward spiral of shallow breathing, obsessive thinking, which turns into anxiety and spins out into these catastrophic declarations about myself that are not really based in reality.   I think reality is that a bus hit me, everyone is ok, and it was not my fault and it was just an accident.  

Yesterday a very good friend suggested to me that I might take this experience as an opportunity to examine what self-talk I do to myself and what it can spiral into.   Take it like a tangible object and try to shift the pattern that has become ingrained in how i deal with crises in which I am involved.   Examine it to see if I can take the pattern of negative self-talk and catastrophizing about myself and shift my thinking to see if i can start to avoid this spiral.   

The spiral is so unproductive and spins into other people also.   my anxiety turns me inward and then it becomes selfish – i feel humiliation and pity for myself, i get self-absorbed about every negative feeling, examining it to the nth degree.   one of the consequences of that is that my kids and my spouse suffer – I am more irritable, shorter, i don’t have the time to be present with them because I am so busy flogging myself and creating the problem in my own mind. 

What I want to do is see this for what it really is -an accident that happened.  period.   no one was hurt.  nothing is permanently damaged.  I want to breathe through this chaos in my mind and be present for my family and my friends.

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