Stress is taking a huge toll on my health

The constant stress of being around these chaotic, manic, obnoxious people is taking a huge toll on my health, to the point where I have been sick almost every day from a viral upper respiratory infection, almost every day for the past three months! I have had sinusitis, colds, the flu, pharyngitis and bronchitis, as well as allergies. The bronchitis makes it very hard for me to breathe properly.

My face looks terrible too. The stress is starting to take a huge toll on my looks lately. Even I can see how terrible I am looking every day! My skin tone looks bad, I have dark circles under my eyes, my hair looks limp and I have lost the sparkle in my eyes.

The viral infections mean I get hot and cold chills and fever, I feel totally lethargic and exhausted. My energy levels are so low.

I also don't sleep very well. I have really bad quality of sleep, often waking up many times during the night because I get sleep apnea - with my nasal passages completely blocked and then my mouth being closed too, I stop breathing, at which point my body realises that I am not breathing, wakes me a little to make me conscious and then I start gasping for air and wake up with a startle. It freaked me out the first time it happened and took me ages to convince doctors that it was happening (I don't fit the regular profile of a person with sleep apnea as I am not obese or even overweight), but now it happens every so often, I know what it is and I try to calm myself down after I wake up with the gasp for air and try to get back to sleep again.

With the insomnia, it means even if I do get to sleep and stay asleep, I don't feel at all refreshed when I wake up - sometimes I feel even more tired that when I first went to sleep!

I am a right mess at the moment and I just want someone to show me some kindness and gentleness.  But I think I will have to comfort myself with the cat's love as he is the only nice, sweet thing in this house. He tends to sleep in my room every night, at the foot of my bed. When he's ready to go out, he gets up from his sleeping position and walks around and makes a little purring noise and let him out. It's because I am such a light sleeper at the moment that I rouse immediately as soon as the cats wakes up. At least he loves to cuddle with me before going to sleep and before leaving, so that is the only time I get some loving and even though it's only a little bit of love from an animal, at least it's something and at least it's unconditional love and comes without any strings attached. The cat loves me for me and that's nice! At least someone does!

Major Realisation - Aha Moment

I think it must be because I have been reading a bit of the mindfulness and other positive psychology articles that I have had some realisations about my family and myself and that in turn has made things even worse between us!

It was a major "ahaaaaaaa" moment, as I started to see this whole situation (me and them) with completely different eyes, objective eyes, that allowed me to see it from a totally different perspective and understand it a little more, from a safe distance.

It was quite eye-opening for me, not only to realise these things, but to actually admit to myself that I had not accepted such great behaviour from other people in my life, which is something I did not want to see because it made me feel bad to think about it.  So that was a major breakthrough for me.  But it's just a start, as it has helped me break through the inability to really see myself and my life and the choices I have made and why I have made those choices based on how my family treat me, the messages I have received from them over the years and how I have manifested all those negative messages in all my major relationships with friends and boyfriends.

Let me talk about all the things I realised and understood a lot more clearly! I realised a few major things:

• I realised why I accepted less than I deserve from other people in my life
• I realised why I accepted it when people lie and use me and are not true and honourable to me
• I realised why I accepted scraps of attention and affection from people when they don't treat me that well otherwise
• I realised why I allowed myself to be used by people
• I realised why I craved approval and attention from others because I never felt like I ever had any from my family
• I realised why I let people abuse me and didn't stand up for myself much
• I realised why I never felt good enough
• I realised why I don't love myself

It just all made sense, because how could I ever have had good self esteem when I had the three of them (mother, step-father and brother), constantly criticise me and tell me all these negative things, send me negative messages about being ugly and that no-one would ever want me, that I didn't have a nice smile, that I wasn't good enough, that I always did the wrong thing, that I was a bad person, that I wasn't lovable!

So when someone is constantly flooded with messages like that every day, how are are you supposed to be happy with yourself?  No, you're not.