I Don't Feel So Regular...

Thought I should check in since its been a few days. Have been trying to catch up on my sleep. Hasn't gone so well. We'll analyze that in a minute.

First, I'd like to take this opportunity to reference the legendary, sometimes controversial, author and philanthropist, Jamie Berry, of 5 Million Kids. In one of his recent posts, Mr. Berry initially blames a ghost for his behaviors that, in his wife's terms, ruin their balanced set, and he finally concludes that perhaps what has actually been haunting him lately is in fact not a ghost, but rather his own lack of balance.

I don't know about you, but I can relate to Mr. Berry. I, too, can feel very off balance at times, and when I do, things just don't go as well. And when things don't go well, it often takes more effort to get nice and balanced again. Working with kids who sometimes have a lot of sensory needs, the idea of being off-balance comes up quite a bit when discussing with their parents what plays into various behaviors. Except I use other translations of the word, such as, "out of sync," "dysregulated," "out of sorts," "off-center," "disorganized," and so on and so forth. Off-balance also fits quite well. Basically, a sensory train wreck can make a person feel out of whack, and the best thing to do is to first learn how to avoid the sensory train wrecks in the beginning, and then to have a plan for how to get the trains back on their respective tracks.

Over the past several days, I've been doing a bit of soul searching, or more like incidental learning, if you will, and have come up with a few things that almost always result in me feeling off-balanced. The first is lack of sleep, as we all know. Another one is what my husband likes to call my "time unconsciousness." I'd like to think of it more as being time-consciousness challenged. Anyways, the third is my severe lack of planning, which contributes more than I'd like to admit to my lack of time consciousness. Take, for instance, my day yesterday, which started with me running out the door with my toddler and her buttload of toys to bring to the babysitters (I pick my battles), running anywhere between 10 and 20 minutes late, which sent me into a tailspin of lateness to each of my home visits and meetings, with each commute flooding my already caffeine-drenched veins with insane levels of cortisol (a hormone that is released in response to stress, which is great when you're already jacked up on insane amounts of caffeine). Not a good pace to the day. And this is a typical work day for me. All I can say is thank God stop lights don't have feelings.

My advice to parents is usually to anticipate the sensory break-down before it happens- to open the windows before the walls start caving in. Planning, which is not my forte, has a lot to do with feeling good. I've always sorta rebelled against planning (probably an internal conflict that my Type B side wants to win), but I realized this while discussing with one of my parents- that once a routine is established and a good plan is in place, things click into place more automatically and ironically allow for more freedom and spontaneity. On the other hand, flying by the seat of one's pants usually amounts to feeling pressured, which only provides the right amount of motivation when its at a reasonable level, but can quickly unravel into a huge mess of panic. At least this happens with me. So, inevitably, a lot of energy is spent talking myself back into a recuperated state.

If you are like me and my friend Jamie and are feeling a bit unbalanced, it might help to find out what's been tipping your scale the most. If you don't know, ask your spouse- he/she would love to clue you in. We all know that Step 1 is admitting the problem. Since coming to terms with my poor sleep habits, issues with being time consciousness challenged, and disorganized planning, I now can move in the right direction, which will probably start with releasing myself from my late night Bravo TV addiction so I can go to bed earlier. Sorry, Millionaire Matchmaker. And I've already got a new babysitter lined up to watch the kid HERE on my work days so my days of leaving the house in a mad scramble are soon over (thank God!!!... and babysitter). And finally, as another stepping stone to minimizing the chaos and getting me back on track to being a more balanced person, I plan to at least try to even up my water-to-coffee ratio. None of this will be easy, but I at least gotta try it.