2001-08-16 - 4:19 p.m.

On the internal soundtrack: "Stairway to Heaven"

So, now I'm thinking about self-esteem again. That, plus the idea of trying to overcome one's fears. Or trying to change habits. And how it's all kind of interrelated.

I'm thinking of this in the context of trying to overcome my own fears of confrontation, but Poindexter and I were talking about self-esteem again the other night, and I think that sometimes the methods for gaining self-esteem or overcoming fears can be similar.

Some people like to attack their fears head-on. Afraid of heights? Go bungee jumping! That's a pretty drastic way of doing it, and I suppose it has the advantage of being all over in one fell swoop, but it's also a good way to give myself a heart attack. It's never worked for me. I like to walk into the pool gradually rather than jumping in the deep end.

For me personally, the best way for me to do it is in tiny, tiny increments. Little tasks that I assign for myself, and I feel good when I accomplish them, like, "See, I can do it!" Not focusing on the big huge end goal, but on a lot of smaller interim goals that build up to the big one.

OK, so first I'll talk about my personal experiences, since I still don't get Poindexter's self-esteem theory and need to ask him more questions tonight.

Every time I take on a new task or try to make a change in habit, I do it incrementally.

I started exercising incrementally. Ten minutes a day, increasing by ten minutes a week, then increasing speed, until I was doing half an hour of brisk walking a day. Yay me! That's ten minutes more than I was exercising last week! And if I don't feel like exercising at all, I'll tell myself, "just ten minutes -- it's better than nothing", and usually end up walking or skating at least 20 and often even longer.

Same thing with trying to eat more vegetables and less "bad" foods. I didn't suddenly one day start a new diet. I started out eating more of what I knew I liked -- salads, raw carrots & peppers. Then I tried eating new stuff -- Poindexter cooked broccoli for me in an orange-soy sauce and suddenly I was a broccoli fan. Every so often I'd try something new, so that now I eat more vegetables and fruits than I ever did as a kid, and I *like* them.

The biggest things I've tried to change about myself -- as in, changing behaviors that are my "natural" state but that I wasn't happy with -- were my shyness, my distress over confrontation, and my mild anxiety troubles (not bad enough for medication). The confrontation one is ongoing, because it's harder to deliberately put myself in situations where it's necessary to confront someone and there's really no room for increment. Either you're confronting someone, or you're not. If a confrontation is expected, I try to prepare for it, but the unexpected confrontations are rather like being thrown into the deep end. The other two I'm doing pretty well with, though.

When I was in high school, I was really shy with people I didn't know. Couldn't think of anything to talk to people about. If somebody asked me a question, I'd answer it but not continue the conversation. It was pretty pathetic. I wasn't shy around friends at all, but someone I'd never spoken to before, forget it.

I made the decision, which I've spoken of before, when I started college, not to be shy anymore. The good thing was that in college nobody knows anybody else, so you're starting from scratch. This is easier than trying to talk to people in high school that you've known all your life but never actually spoken to. In college it's almost like a little script you can memorize. "What's your name? What dorm do you live in? Where are you from? How do you like college so far?" Having this little script was the first little increment I took. Then I got better at asking more questions depending on what the answers were. Then I got to the point where I'll talk to anyone, anywhere, even if I'm nervous. I still have to mentally rehearse occasionally (usually when I have a crush or am intimidated by someone), but most of the time it's natural and easy and I don't even think about it.

The anxiety thing was harder, because of the unpleasant physical symptoms. Besides the dizziness, heart rate increase, nausea, etc., the IBS aspect meant that I needed to be near a rest room at all times, and if I wasn't, I'd anxietize even more. But I dealt with it in a similar way. If I had a big thing I had to get through -- an airplane flight, for example -- I'd break it up into little pieces. The ride to the airport, the wait, the flight. If I got through one, I was that much closer to being finished. Also, I'd figure out how to manage each little piece.

One weird thing that helped me a lot with anxiety was imagining worst case scenarios. "I feel queasy. What if I have to puke when we're taking off and I can't get to a rest room?!?!!" It's a thought that could send me into pure panic. But I talk myself through it: OK, so, you have the little airsickness bag, and if you do puke, it'll only be for a couple of minutes, and you don't know any of these people and you're never going to see them again so you needn't be embarrassed, either." I swear to god, sometimes it helps when I'm feeling queasy in a car to just have a plastic bag with me and know that at least I won't puke all over the seat.

(You see how irrational anxiety is when you consider that I haven't puked in -- knock wood -- eight years. An irrational fear of throwing up? There's probably a name for that. I have a talk-through for the IBS aspect too, which an airsickness bag won't help, but I'll spare y'all that one.)

So anyway, I'm a big believer in doing things bit by bit. Jumping into a bigass difficult exercise routine, or changing my diet all at once would just have meant I'd be miserable and quit after a week. But by changing things one little bit at a time, it's actually pretty easy to do, and I just keep doing more and more until I look around one day and realize, "boy am I different from a year ago!"

(There are people who knew me in college who would be quite astonished at how I eat and exercise now. I used to be strictly a protein-and-pasta, don't-you-dare-make-me-exercise kind of person.)

Plus, I like the little rewards of accomplishing a small task. It may be only a small piece, but it's DONE. And I don't have the problem where the sheer magnitude of a task makes me not want to get started on it.

Part of what triggered this was the other night when Poindexter encouraged me to try an obstacle on my dirt bike. I thought the obstacle was too big, and wanted to start with something smaller. He seemed quite confident that I could handle it, so I gritted my teeth and tried it.

Uh, mistake.

I didn't hurt myself, but the bike jerked around a lot and I got scared, a hitherto unexperienced sensation with the dirt bike lessons. So now I'm going to do what I wanted to do in the first place, which was start with a smaller obstacle and work my way up. Something along the lines of a 1-inch board or even a speed bump would be a good start. AFTER more practice controlling what my hand is doing on the throttle when I'm standing on the bike.

BTW, I had a particularly fun time practicing the other night because we found a bigger parking lot. Not only that, but there were three other women there, one learning to ride a street motorcycle, and two learning to drive. I felt some learning-to-ride/drive solidarity there and gave the one woman a double thumbs-up for her driving.

Some random thoughts on self-esteem:

I have a lot of it. I've said this before. I'm happy with myself, in general, and I'm working on the parts I'm not so happy with, but don't let them get to me. When other people don't like something about me, if I agree with them, I try to change it, if I don't, too bad for them.

Online and in real life, I see a lot of really great people who don't seem to have any self-esteem at all. And it boggles my mind. "But you're so good-looking and perceptive and smart!", I think, "Can't you see that?!"

So given the self-esteem I've been blessed with and the lack of it in people I admire, I really, really want to find away to help people build it. Maybe this is an impossible task; I don't know. Have you ever seen anyone move from low to high self-esteem? If so, how did they do it? What happened to change things?

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