“Remember the past for memories and achievements, have optimism and hope for the future, but live each moment in the present.” Cheryl Tondreau, “ReBUILD self esteem after stroke and to live well with aphasia and apraxia” 2023
"Look back, but live forward." Cheryl Tondreau, using my voice blog 2023.
"When driving you must look back from time to time, but focus most of your energy to the front because that’s the direction you are going in."
It may seem counterintuitive to say that looking back will help you rebuild self esteem, but that’s what I’m going to suggest today. After I had the stroke, I was purely focused on my present - my present physical challenges; my present speech challenges, my present writing and reading challenges, my interpersonal challenges, mental health challenges, etc. You get the gist - I was focusing on challenges. I was also focused on what I had lost - lost abilities, lost chances, lost dreams. I was grieving the life I had. I was grieving the dreams I had for my life. I cried a lot of the time. I cried especially when I had negative thoughts about my abilities. I cried about my many losses. I cried because I had thoughts of not being good enough anymore.
But I was able to focus on speech therapy because I knew that without it I would not/could not, get what I wanted back - my ability to speak and write and express myself. My ability to work again. My ability to be an active member of my family, community and church.
I continued to cry even though I was progressing with my speech. I could then communicate effectively, if only tentatively and with a staccato voice. But people could understand me if I tried really hard and the listener was patient.
I still got very depressed and anxious about my life. That sounds so strange to me today. What did I have to be anxious about? I no longer had a stressful job. No one was pressuring me to do ANYTHING. That may have been some of the reason. There were little expectations. My family was just happy to have me alive. (I'm so grateful for this.) I felt that I had no direction anymore. I put pressure on myself to do more but I couldn't think of how to do it.
When I was moving on with my communication goals, I was at a standstill with my life goals. What was I going to do with my life? What would I spend my day doing.?
I had been to two mental health counselors with no change in my situation. Thankfully I met the right one at the right time. I really needed to talk and get some things straight in my mind. Focus on what was really important. It was only short term counseling but I started to feel like I was able to make more decisions in my life. I could handle some of the really frustrating things in my life. This clinical psychologist used Acceptance and Commitment therapy. This helped me to focus on what was really important to me.
A while later, I still needed mental health help and I was finally referred by my speech therapist to a longer term counseling. This neuro psychologist was absolutely perfect fit for me. She used CRT primarily in her practice but und once again that ACT really resonated with me. She helped me to focus on my core values and see how these could be used to set goals for myself. We also talked about strengths, motivation, resilience, self esteem and core beliefs. Strategies for self care and being mindful were discussed and tried. All things that I focused with my adult students about all those many years ago. I had a revelation of sorts. I knew all these things. Why wasn't I able to use the things I knew helped so many of my students. This focused me enough that I could remember the skills I had before. I needed to remember the skills and strengths that helped me throughout my life. I had to remember the times that I struggled but succeeded.
It's important to note that we all have experiences in our lives that we can learn from. We all have unique strengths and skills that we can use to overcome challenges. The first step is to look back and remember.
I'm not going to able to give details today about all the ways that looking back can help improve self esteem. But I'll leave with some things to think about:
"The past is just "a conscious memory". Use it to your advantage.
Look at the past for the fond memories
look back to learn from the past
look at the past for achievements and successes
look at the ways you overcame challenges in the past
The only time we truly have is the present.
Live in the present
use the present to do what you can to recover
use the present and plan for the future to have your best life
Now, we are almost finished with my reBUILD self esteem strategy; we only have the D left. I hope you will join me next Tuesday on the last day of January’s Ultimate Blog Challenge.
Until next time…..
NOTE to myself: I use my blog to tell my stroke/aphasia story, but I also use this blog to document my feelings as I go along. I have been blogging consistently every day this month for the Ultimate Blog Challenge and also have been trying to post meaningful comments on my fellow bloggers‘ pages. This has gotten very difficult for me after 23 days. Maybe it’s because I really like the other posts in this challenge this time and am stretching my skills. Maybe it’s because the topics I’ve chosen to focus on, especially on Memoir Mondays and these ReBUILD Tuesdays. These are really important topics for me, especially ReBUILDing self esteem as I really believe that by focusing on rebuilding self esteem could help a lot of people recover easier and potentially faster than I did.
I know that I am doing too much and potentially thinking too much about the blog. 1. Even though I’m trying to pace my writing with other activities (less cognitive ones), I’m doing more writing blocks than I’m used to doing.
2. I woke up in the middle of the night 3 days in a row think ing about upcoming blog posts and last night I. actually got out of bed to write notes.
3. I am getting the neurofatique headache which caused me to retire from work on 2/14/20 4. I am making a lot more grammatical and spellings mistakes that I have to correct which is making the writing more difficult and taking longer.
I completed the challenge once before, last July, and I felt the same way then but didn't write about it extensively as I am now. for most other people in the challenge I assume it is not affecting them negatively. It IS a challenge, however, for all of us in some way or another. Isn't that what a challenge is? When I do something cognitively challenging I'm reminded why I needed to retire. It makes me a bit sad but the reality check is good for me.