At last psych session Carrie gave me a chart containing several boxes labelled with areas of life such as work, hobbies, parenting, family, social relationships. Called the “life compass” its function is to help me decide which values in each of these areas are important to me, to prioritise the importance of each area and to indicate how well I think I am doing in each area.
What a hard one. This exercise requires me to take action and confront things I’d rather not face.
I remember doing one of these things a couple of years ago, the last time I was seeing a psych (just before I stopped going!) and I think I left the “parenting” box blank because I’m not a parent. This time I wrote “more time with family – nieces and nephews”. Carrie said I next had to set myself a small task which would take me a step closer to achieving that. I said I would call my brother and ask how the kids were.
Trouble is I hardly talk to my brother anymore, I always feel a bit nervous around his wife. I guess I’m worried about how she must perceive me, and that I’ll make a mess of things. We don’t have a lot in common, she’s had 7 kids to my brother, I’ve had no kids. I feel a bit inferior next to that, like I don’t have a true grip on real life or something.
I guess this is less about the nieces and nephews and more about developing the relationship with my brother and his family.
I miss my brother, I feel like I’ve lost him, but I realise that if I had involved myself unobtrusively with his family life I could still have had a good relationship with him.
So I guess this really belongs under “Family Relationships” rather than “Parenting”. I want to re-establish that contact but right now it feels like a very hard thing to do.