“Beauty is how you feel inside, and it reflects in your eyes. It is not something physical.”

Sophia Loren

What makes a woman beautiful? Is it strictly her pleasing physical attributes? Or does true beauty involve a woman’s soul, character, and personality? Can you have one without the other?

I have never fit into the mold of being physically beautiful.  Cute, yes.  Pretty, yes.  There have been times when I have felt jealous of the beautiful people.  I felt so inadequate when I compared myself to them.  I have even felt angry at them simply because they were beautiful and I was not.  I hate to admit it, but I was a cheerleader hater, they were all so cute and perky…and beautiful.

In the last few months I have discovered something about myself and why I disliked and was jealous of the beautiful people.   I realized that in addition to being physically beautiful, they had beautiful personalities.   They were beautiful inside and out.  I believe that was what I was jealous of, the beauty they had on the inside.  I wanted that for myself.

In the part of the South Eastern United States that I live in, you will often hear parents telling their children to not “be ugly”.  When they say that, they are referring to their child’s behavior/attitude.  I have had an ugly attitude for most of my life.  I looked at every thing from a negative point of view, I was always the victim, and it showed.  It showed in the expressions on my face, in my posture, in the words I spoke out loud, and how I responded to the actions of other people.  My inside ugliness was marring my outside. Worry lines on my forehead, crows feet around my eyes, and a constant frown on my face. People could see the ugliness that was inside of me on my face, and they avoided me.  I do not blame them. Who wants to hang out with someone who is so negative and angry looking?

Since I began realizing my own self worth, and gaining self confidence I have noticed a change in myself.  I am more positive, happier, and no longer accept the victim role that had been a part of my life for so long.  I feel beautiful on the inside.  My worry lines have disappeared, I smile more, I laugh more and it shows.  It has changed the way people react to me.  Since my face no longer looks so angry, I am more approachable.  People actually want to spend time with me.

I think beauty can include both the physical aspects of a woman and what she is like on the inside.  However, I no longer envy women who possess both.  I feel beautiful in my own way.

Worry has the potential to be helpful to us, if it propels us towards taking action. However, if we are preoccupied with worry, what ifs and worst case scenarios, worry can become a problem.  Unrelenting worry can deprive us of our emotional energy, physical energy, raise our anxiety levels to dangerous highs, and interfere with our ability to function on a daily basis.

Have you ever known anyone so filled with worry that it seemed to paralyze them?  Have you ever been so filled with worry that you felt that there were times it interfered with your ability to function?

I have been and not all that long ago.  I was an expert worrier.  I could and would worry about anything and everything.  If I could not find anything real to worry about, I would make up something to obsessively worry about.  Every waking minute of every one of my days was filled with worry.  I would literally wake up in the mornings with a knot in my stomach.

If my husband was late coming home from work, I would worry that he had been in a horrible wreck and died.  If he and the kids were out some where, I would worry that they all had been in a wreck.  These worries, even though made up, seemed so real to me that they would make me cry.  If someone said they needed to talk to me, I would instantly worry that I had offended them in some way.  If I left a certain square mile radius around my house, I would have to call my house constantly, checking to see if it had burnt down.  I knew if it had the phone would give me a fast busy signal. If something actually did happen that I needed to be concerned about, the worry would paralyze me.  I would just sit on the couch, not moving and it would feel as if i was barely breathing.  My brain and body simply could not handle a real worry because they were already so overwhelmed by the fake ones. Constant worry kept me up all night and kept me edgy and cranky.

Being a chronic worrier made it very difficult for me to adjust to changes, or adapt when something did not go according to my plan.  I needed know what was going to happen 100% of the time.  I could not handle doubt or unpredictability.  It was as if my constant worry was a way to prevent bad things from happening.  The problem was that it did not work.  What it did do was get in the way of me enjoying the things that were happening around me right then. For my own sanity and for the sanity of those around me, things needed to change.

• I had to come to grips with my intolerance of uncertainty.   I had to learn that nothing in life was certain and no amount of planning on my part would change that.
• I set aside 15 minutes every morning and every evening as worry time.  During my worry time, I could worry about anything I felt the need to.  If something to worry about popped into my head during the day, I wrote it down.  After that, I would go on with my day, saving the worry until it was my worry time.
• I began to challenge my worries.  I no longer accepted them as fact, instead I would ask myself a series of questions to figure out if something was a realistic worry or not.

1.  What is a more positive way to look at this situation?

2.  What are the chances of this actually coming true?

3.  What is a more likely outcome?

4.  Is the thought helpful?  How will worrying about it help or harm me?

5.  What would I say to a friend who had this worry?

• I learned how to relax.  My counselor taught me progressive muscle relaxation.  Basically, what this means is that when I feel overwhelmed with anxiety or worry, I tense and then release different muscle groups in my body.  As my body begins to relax so does my mind.
• I raised my emotional intelligence.  What those fancy words mean is that I try to remain hopeful during trying situations, I work hard to quickly rebound from frustration and disappointment, I ask for help when I need it, and I find positive and creative ways to solve problems.

I can truthfully say that worry no longer consumes my life. I no longer wake up every morning with a knot in my stomach.  I am no longer kept awake all night worry about real and imagined things.  I feel like a huge weight has been lifted off of my shoulders.

On Monday, I attended my first Depression Group. It was rather nice. There were only four other people who attended. My counselor said that usually there are more people, but not too many more. The people I met were warm and friendly. They made me feel welcome.  I am very relieved things went well and I seemed to fit into the group dynamics.Right now, the plan is for me to go to the group therapy sessions every Monday and meet with my counselor every two weeks.

I found out that the psychiatrist will be leaving the treatment center.  He found a place closer to his home.  His last day will be Thursday.  The thought of having to get used to a new psychiatrist has me anxious.  I know that change, for the most part, is good, and it is a vital part of life, however, I feel like I am going to have to reinvent the wheel with the new psychiatrist.

The good part of this change is that instead of only having a doctor available two days a week, there will be one available all four days during the week that the center is open.  There will be a doctor available in person two days a week, and the other two days a doctor will be available through something called TeleDoc.  Basically, a monitor with a doctor on a live feed from his location.  That actually seems pretty cool to me.  I am sure that will mean less wait time to start new patients on medications or less wait time if an established patient is having issues with their medications.

Even with my anxiety over the psychiatrist changes, I think Monday went really well and I am looking forward to the next group session.